by JT Pearson
don’t know. I suppose it could happen. The specifics are a little cloudy about how it would work. Feedin him, and dealing with his excrement and all. Sick as hell if it’s true though.” Gunner looked me in the eye. “You sure as hell don’t want to mess with them Wormters, Jeff,” He erased his horse with the sole of his boot.
I took the advice that my friends from the trailer court gave me and managed to avoid confrontations with the Boss for a couple of months but then one day I had no choice. I had to get involved in what was going on. She was carrying Minnie off the premises against her will. She had Minnie draped over her shoulder like a cute but frantic little baby as Minnie called for help. I ran over and grabbed the Boss by the wrist. Some of the other workers gathered around us. The Boss dropped Minnie and grabbed me in a headlock and started walking around in circles, my face mashed into her pit, an extremely unpleasant Elvis-like moisture wrapped around both sides of my face. I begged her to let go but my cheeks were pushed together so hard that it really didn’t sound like words. Finally she dropped me on the ground in front of the other Taco Taco employees.
“You should’a just minded your own business, Cupcake. The Wormters are going to come for you. May be next week, may be in a month, but I swear as sure as I’m breathin we’ll be comin for you, and then, that’ll be it. Nobody will ever see you again. So sleep lightly, Cupcake. Because it’s comin.”
I just about wet my pants as she stared at me. She turned and walked off.
“I’m real sorry that I got you into trouble, Jeff. I sure didn’t mean for that to happen. I just wanted free of her. She never lets me go. You need to go home and pack. You need to move far away from here.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I took a stand today, Minnie. Somewhere my daddy’s probably real proud.”
“Well I hope you make it through all of this so he can tell you himself one day.”
“He might just get the chance real soon.”
I told the nightly gathering outside my trailer what had happened at work with the Boss. They came up with different plans for me to get away. Some of them said that they knew a guy that could get me a new identity. I told them that I had taken a stand for a reason. It was time that someone just talked to these people. They couldn’t all be bad. I told my friends that I was going to go back in the woods where all of the Wormters gathered together on weekends and talk some sense into them. The general consensus from my friends was, nice knowing you.
The following Sunday I came over the top of a hill in the woods and there the Wormters were. There had to be over two hundred of them. They had several pigs roasting over fires, motorcycles everywhere, twenty or so coolers of beer, hellacious looking dirty mongrels with matted coats, one Wormter woman with a python around her neck, a couple of vicious razorbacks that were not common to the area tied off to a spike. I walked down the hill toward them. My father’s words about having the strength of a hundred men when you’re in the right came to mind and I wondered what you did when there were still a hundred more. I hadn’t come to fight anyway. I got to the base of the hill and Wormters started wandering toward me. Some of them were bigger than I’d ever seen men grow and they looked angry at me for just breathing some of their air. Then I saw it and it was more unsettling than I ever could’ve imagined. A small brown dog squeezed into a root beer jug with his little brown nose pressed up against the glass. The jug hung from the finger of an enormous Wormter woman with a mouth full of chew. The Boss slid to the front of the line. It was time to talk.
“Wormters, greetings. I know that I angered one of your people and that you’re all very upset with me. I’ve come to talk. I don’t believe in violence. In fact, I’ve never brought harm to another person in my life except for the time that I slapped Billy Coxby in the butt with a plastic hockey stick real hard because he kept poking me with his. I was only in the third grade but still I immediately regretted it. Violence is never the answer.” They seemed to be listening. “I want to live in peace with the Boss and in peace with all of you. I don’t think my request is unreasonable. Can we reach an agreement? Can we live in harmony?”
There was silence for a moment and then they all busted out laughing. The laughter went on for nearly a minute. Then the Boss stepped forward and said, “You made this real easy, Cupcake. Do you know what’s going to be left of your body after you pass through them razorbacks over there? You actually came here by yourself?”
“Well, I thought that-”
“He’s not alone.”
The voice came from behind me. I recognized that southern drawl immediately.
“He’s backed by the force of the New Southern Army.”
I turned around and there he was, the long blond beard, the familiar black outlaw’s hat with the rebel flag and the skull. Mims May.
“Mims!” I said with relief. “You brought an army?”
He waved at the tree line behind us and four scraggly looking men, unshaven, and looking as though they hadn’t eaten in days, emerged. I waited for others, but it would be just the four.
“Four men, Mims?”
“Four very committed men,” he said proudly. “We keep an ear out for a fellow soldier. We heard that you were in trouble up here.” Then he spotted the dog in the jug. “What the hell? What sick sons of bitches do that to a dog?” he said with disgust and a hint of sadness.
Mims and his army moved up alongside me and prepared to fight. The Wormters were now forming in a line before us. Their line seemed to go on forever. We were squared off like armies had done in ancient times. Mims was licking his lips and rubbing his hands together. I thought it was some kind nervous tick or a strange lust for violence he was expressing but soon I realized that he was genuinely hungry and that the smell of roasting pig was nearly too much for the man to take. In fact all of the New Southern Army seemed to be more focused on the roasting pig than on a fight.
“We’re startin out one on one! Cupcake’s all mine!” the Boss yelled, and drew a machete from a sheath on her leg.
“I don’t want to fight with you, the Boss,” I said, putting my hands up as she approached.
“Let’s get this revolution started,” yelled Mims.
Suddenly there was a flash from the sky and the Boss disintegrated in mid step, her machete dropping and sticking into the burnt patch where she had been. I looked at the sky but there wasn’t a cloud in sight. No thunder had accompanied the strike either. Everyone stood, looking back and forth and up and then down at the burnt patch on the ground in confusion. Then came another flash and another Wormter disappeared. Then another Wormter was obliterated and another. Soon it was a steady downpour of bright flashes with Wormters disappearing from the face of the earth. They ran in all directions but there was no escape. It was like God’s wrath on Sodom and Gomorra times ten. I saw the dog trapped in the jug lying on the ground and dodged fleeing people and lightning-like strikes to get to him. I grabbed the jug and ran for the tree line where the New Southern Army had taken refuge.
“Take cover, Jeff,” yelled Mims. “We’ll bide our time until we find a good opportunity to enter the fight.”
I hunkered down under some tree fall with the men. Within a minute there was just a clearing filled with smoldering patches in front of us, not a Wormter left standing. I suddenly realized what had just happened and stepped out from cover and waved up at the sky. Apparently I was still in a partnership with Scotland Steibers. The New Southern Army decided not to let the pig and beer go to waste and enjoyed a hardy victory meal that they really seemed to need. The little dog in the jug was licking the glass. I put some pork into the bottle and he gobbled it up, his little tail going back and forth across the other side of the glass like a windshield wiper.
“Today’s victory was a good start, Jeff. With your leading this charge we could have the entire country under southern control within a decade.” Mims saluted me with his beer and his men followed him.
“I have a better plan, Mims. Didn’t you tell me that you had eleven children
back home? And that each of your eight siblings are raising similar size families?”
“Most of them ain’t soldiering age yet, Jeff. You sure like to pick the apples from the tree early.”
“Here’s my thought, Mims. All of you bring your families up North. Take good jobs in fracking and such like they have in North Dakota. Buy some big ol’ houses and just keep having more kids until you have the voting power to shape America any way you boys like. You’ll pretty much own America and you won’t have to shed a drop of blood, only a little sweat.”
That’s a pretty good plan of attack. Sure gonna take some time though. What do you want us to do in the mean time?”
I handed him the jug with the dog inside. “See if you can’t help this little guy get out of this jug.” I started back for my trailer.
Government agents investigated what had happened to the Wormter clan and claimed that they were one hundred percent certain that the Wormters were victims of an extremely violent lightning storm. Our television broadcasts in that part of Wisconsin for several months included many late night public safety messages about the dangers of lightning storms and how to protect ourselves. The folks at the trailer camp all figured that it was just another government cover up, that alien spacecraft had zapped all of the
