by Kirk Alex
This was a turn-on to him. Marvin had always gone in for thick thighs and a big ass. This was a booty ho. Large-boned. He wondered why Bigg’ never made any real try to put turkey neck in her asshole.
Cecil had told him once why he didn’t bother with the woman, but Muck had not believed a word of it. “She’s too ugly, too unpredictable. Besides, she’s staff. I don’t mess with staff.”
The explanation had not made any sense to him. Bitch looked just as good enough to do as any of the other hoe’. Dirty maybe, and that mask be freaky enough, as was the back of her head: the tufts of yellow hair consisted of clumps here and there. Grimy. Matted. There was bald spots, too.
Yeah, that was rank about her, for sure. The few times her ears was exposed he got to see that they didn’t look anything like ears at all: balled up, wrinkled, twisted lump’ of skin and cartilage with a small hole in the center to hear through.
“How about some company, mamita?”
CHAPTER 223
Marvin stepped in and sat down on her right. Greta made angry, guttural sounds. Shook her head. She wanted to be left alone. She was obviously fuming under her breath, but Muck paid no attention to that as he placed that toy monk in front of his crossed legs on the cement.
He made sure she could see what was going on, and then pressed down on the monk’s hairless dome and laughed when the toy figure’s sexual organ stuck right out.
“Bigger than shit. What do you think of that, Greta? Like the way his woody be out there? Kind of make you hungry for the real thang, don’t it?”
Greta continued to fume behind the mask; she was applying the nail polish and fuming. She simply wished to be left alone.
She made other sounds, in order to get her message across. She did not want to be bothered, especially not by some worthless male drip like Marvin Muck. More importantly, what the deacon did not know is that Greta held that paring knife in her other hand; it was that same blade she had stabbed at the pink blanket that time, the one Sassy and the Commie Ionesco had been in a tug-of-war over.
The blade itself was dull and measured a mere three inches (the only reason Cecil let her hold onto it), but since she did not have her deadly hobnailed Gestapo shit-kickers on to deal with this annoying pimp-wannabe, the blade was going to have to do.
“Still ain’t convince’ me, big mama, that you be likin’ to lick slit mo better than suckin’ dick. You be tryin’ to act like you go for trim, big mama. I know deep down what you really want is turkey neck, man meat. See, my dick be like that Maglite Omar got: big and black. I got special ability, too, lotta them hoe’ be akskin’ to see me do all the time: Lick my own dick. Wanna see me do it? Huh, mamita?”
Marvin reached out and pulled her mask off and it was enough to make him hold back, look at her that way. The homeliness of her utterly deformed features simply turned his stomach. Christ.
“No wonder Cecil don’t be wantin’ to jump your pussy. Man, what happened to you? Somebody sho put the ugly stick to yo face, tall mama.”
Greta stared at him now, her anger rising to a boiling point. The pus and sores and scabs; it was all there. That’s what her face was made up of. The discoloration, too, was much worse than what Marvin thought he had to be concerned with with his own face below the nose, above the upper lip.
She may a been a good-looking woman onced. Jesus Christ, who woulda guess’?
CHAPTER 224
Marvin couldn’t stop shaking his head. Moved away slowly. He didn’t want any part of this, not with the mask off her face.
“Please, big booty mama, put Cupid back on, or get one of them brown paper bag’ to put on yo face and I swear I will rape yo ass ’till we both drop, then. We can have us some good lovin’—but you got to cover up yo face, baby.”
She attacked him just then. Clawed away at his face, raked her nails down his arms. She cut him with the blade and kept cutting and swinging with it until Marvin Muck, clutching the miniature monk in his hands, was able to kick out with his feet and somehow roll out of the room. Greta stayed right on top of him. Then, just as suddenly as she had made her first thrust, she stopped.
The rest of the geeks, some of whom were scattered throughout the basement and had observed quite a bit of it, found it far more entertaining than the usual crap they were used to seeing on tv.
Julian “Red Menace” Ionesco, who happened to be seated at the patio table, got a kick out of it himself, as did Cecil O., who had opened the basement door and was standing on the landing at the top of the staircase—having expected nothing short of what had transpired.
Patience McDaniel was the sole disinterested party here, as was her way. She sat on the hard cement, huddled against the locked door to the Furnace Room, not saying anything, not laughing, just shivering.
Ionesco stopped snickering long enough to get a rag and a few time-worn Band-Aids and give Marvin R. Muck a hand. Helped stop the bleeding. Wiped away blood. Applied Band-Aids.
“We support one another, Tovarich.”
“That be one fucked-up, mixed-up ho. Goddamn dyke.”
“Ja ja, comrade. Greta Otto is uber fraulein.”
“Talk about ugly. I seen some ugly suckas in my time. She make’ an ugly ol’ ho like Mildred look hot. No shit.”
“Greta set hair on fire one time. She splash acid on face another time. She have terrible experience with someone she love very much. She was beautiful woman before—”
“Yo. Didn’t aks for her life story, suckah. So the lezzy bitch got dumped by one of her own kind. So what, man? That ain’t cause to cut me like that.”
“No, you do not understand, comrade. She love a man when she was young and very beautiful. She was pregnant with baby. Greta jump from three-story building, and the baby die. Greta attempt to commit suicide many time—”
“Maybe the bitch should try for number four. Yeah. My man who be talkin’ funny: Four could be the magic number.” Marvin extended four fingers for Greta’s benefit. “Yo, ho—try for numba fo’. Go up fo’ next time. Hear me, ho? Yo lucky numba could be fo’.”
“Ja ja, there was problem with Greta and her grandfather.”
Marvin Muck had had enough of the accent, more than enough.
He stood up. Brushed the Pinko Punisher off of him.
“Can’t take yo jive. Funny talkin’ refugee mothafuckah. I been wiff Bigg’ over a year and still ain’t got used to that funny way of rappin’ you got, egghead punk.”
“I explain to you—”
“YOU DON’T NEEDS TO BE EXPLAININ’ NOTHIN’ TO ME, FOOL! BUNCHA SMELLY-ASS, FLAKEY MOTHAFUCKAHS IN HERE!”
Marvin walked. Spun in Greta’s direction. Aimed a finger at her. “I’ll get yo ass, ho, when you least assept it. You think I let shit like that slide? No way, bitch.”
He negotiated the stairs. The door was open up there. Biggs was amused about something. Mothafuckah always be laughin’ when I be the one in pain, thought Marvin.
“By the way, I’m missing a paring knife. I suspect Greta’s the one who filched it.”
“You suspec’?” Marvin held up his bandaged fingers. “You ‘suspec’?’”
“She does the cooking. Stands to reason she would be the one.”
“Coulda tol’ me.”
Marvin reached the landing. Biggs closed the door behind him. Locked it.
“I did say I didn’t think it was a good idea to bother her.”
“Ain’t said nothin’ ’bout no shank.”
Marvin walked to his room. Biggs handed him a bottle of peroxide, some cotton swabs and gauze. Fresh Band-Aids.
“I can’t blame her for taking the knife. With Norbert and the others to deal with.”
“I’ll get her ass. She got my guarantee. Lizard butt white trash ho.”
Marvin stripped off the less-than-clean Band-Aids the foreign dude had given him, swabbed his cuts with peroxide and applied new Band-Aids and gauze. Biggs handed him a roll of white medical tape to tape over the gauze. Muck did that.
�
��I need the Leaper for the work that she does around the place. Best thing to do is forget what happened—and stay clear of her.”
Marvin cursed. “Still say you coulda let me know.”
He reached inside the rat cage. Lifted Snagglepuss out. Gently rubbed the back of his pet’s neck. The rat ground its jaws in that rhythmic fashion that rats have.
When Marvin looked back up, Biggs was no longer standing there, and could hear him walk down the hallway and open the door to his room.
Yeah, walk away, mofo, thought Marvin. Ain’t no skin off yo ass.
CHAPTER 225
Downstairs, in the basement, Greta “The Leaper” Otto was lying in her bunk. She had slipped the mask back on. Tears rolled down ’neath the plastic facade. Nothing made any sense. Life was one long ordeal.
When you were a young kid, a little girl, all you had wanted was to be happy, have a happy, perfect life, and if not entirely perfect, at least as perfect and happy as possible. . . . And then somehow, somewhere along the way it had all turned hellish and bleak. Your life has been a nightmare as far back as you can remember and stayed that way . . . a nightmare she was quite certain did not begin here in this dungeon, not here in this dark hellhole, the stench and slop, the mutilations that went on that she knew in her heart had to be wrong, but it went on just the same—but even that didn’t matter because her own nightmare had begun years before, snuck up on her many years before.
If only she’d been able to kill herself back then, way back there when she’d had the courage and had felt she knew how to end the flashbacks, the ugly existence.
She stared at the blade in her hand, thought about suicide, but with a dull paring knife like this it never would work. She’d attempted suicide so often, cut herself so many times . . . and it never got her anywhere.
Maybe throwing herself in the furnace . . . or getting her hands on one of the bigger daggers, or just cutting her chest open with one of the chainsaws Cecil owns and letting her heart and insides spill out. That could be the way. Chainsaw or hatchet. Next time you get your hands on one or the other, should the opportunity present itself.
Do you want to die, Greta? Do you want to die? All you have to do is make Biggs angry enough and he’ll do it for you. He would.
Don’t you think that he would oblige? Wouldn’t he want that? Insult him. Tell him what you think of him. But you tried that before and it hadn’t worked. For some reason he did not want to kill you, for some reason he saw no point in doing harm to those who made up his staff and were members of the board. Even after the incidents with the paying customers at his haunted house; even after this, the most recent of disturbing encounters, with the Mexican janitors who had attempted to sexually assault you in the women’s room. You’d beaten the shit out of them with an axe handle; in fact, made them vomit and piss themselves, cost them a few teeth—and Cecil hadn’t gone after you; hadn’t made you pay with a pound of your own flesh. DA’s office had threatened to keep the business locked up until the claim was fully investigated and satisfactorily resolved. Cecil had been in a rage about it, to be sure, and had gone into some of the details; enough so to put fear in her, force her to mind her ways, supposedly. She had defied him; urged him to follow through on his threat to annihilate her, make her disappear; chop her up, fry and cook her, and feed her to church members—the same way he’d had her doing to victims he’s been bringing in from the outside. But he hadn’t laid a finger on her. Not so much as a finger. What was that about? Asshole gave a damn? Actually cared about us? Sure, to the extent he needed us. Take out a board member, and you’ve got to find another to take his or her place. All you had to do was take a look at that worthless degenerate Olin Goodfellow. Made her belly clench to so much as stand next to him. Slime-faced troll.
Go figure it out. I can’t. I don’t know what’s going on. Just don’t know. You should have castrated Marvin. That’s exactly what you should have done to him, because now he’ll be back to fuck with you for sure. Like these flies around here, creepy-crawlies and rodents. He’s a rat-faced shit, and you can be sure he’ll try something.
Well, she thought, I wish he would; I really wish he would try again because I’ll be ready for him.
CHAPTER 226
It was a quarter past 4:OO a.m. when Ace Ortiz and Felix Monk decided to climb over Biggs’s front yard fence. Ortiz had had a harder time of it since his head hadn’t had a chance to clear from the model glue and MD 20/20 he’d had earlier, and getting punched in the belly by that sissy Rudy Perez hadn’t helped, either.
They made it to the Cadillac. Ortiz let Felix hold the .38, while he produced a slim jim from inside his waist. Got his wire cutters out, a screwdriver. Got the door unlocked with the slim jim and the alarm started wailing and Ace Ortiz had it cut off eventually. Took him longer than he was happy with, but he got it done. Was inside shining his penlight at the cassette player in the dash, figuring how to extract it with the least amount of damage—the less damage the more money he’d be able to fence it for—and then he toyed with the idea of simply riding off in the Caddy, just driving off in it with Felix. Remembered that there was a chain-link fence, a locked gate. They’d have to knock it down with the Caddy; just drive over it. It could be done. Wondered if it was possible? How much damage would it do to the body and cost them in terms of how much they’d be able to get for it. Would it even be worth it?
Yeah, it would. Why not? Drive it down to the border and sell it to a bent TJ roller, or else take it to Bellflower and sell the thing for parts. They could do well with it. Why waste time fucking with the stereo?
That’s when he heard his name being called by his partner. Biggs had snuck up on Felix with a baseball bat and a .357 Magnum. Had stuck the Mag barrel in Monk’s right ear and convinced him to relinquish the .38. At this point Muck emerged from around the corner of the house and took the slugger from Cecil.
Felix sensed what was about to take place and suddenly developed a bad case of the shakes. Felt the need to give his homie a heads-up; that the jig was up. It was over. They was busted by the man and fucked big time.
“Ace.”
“Keep it down, coño.”
“Get out of that Cadillac, Ace.”
“What the—”
Ace turned his head in time to see Felix get his face pistol-whipped. Cecil’s man Friday waited for Ace to step out of the Brougham and delivered the ball bat into his crotch. Followed that up with a whack across Ace’s upper torso. Ace and Felix were both sprawled in the weeds, seeing stars and feeling a lot of pain. The blow to Ortiz’s privates had him gasping and clutching his waist. Monk felt his jaw and knew three or four of his teeth were loose now.
CHAPTER 227
The bishop slipped on a pair of leather gloves and waited for Ortiz to stop carrying on, turned him over on his back and proceeded to punch him about the face methodically. Gave him shots to the mouth and nose region, then worked on both eyes until his fist was just about too sore to keep punching. Took a moment to collect himself. Gave Ortiz’s bad eye one good, final shot that sent the fake eyeball popping out of the socket.
Cecil found himself unable to resist: Picked up the glass marble and stuck it inside the semi-conscious junkie’s mouth and clamped his jaw shut for him.
“Let’s take them inside.”
“Could be a bad idea, Dawg. Yo.”
“Since when do you do the thinking?”
“Since I seen that old nigga Harold Crust watchin’ from his livin’ room window.”
Biggs turned his head. Sure enough, Crust was standing there at his window with the lights out and the shade up. It seemed he was pleased and gestured with his hand to indicate as much.
Biggs ignored him. Felt disappointed, if anything.
“Yo. We got us a fan across the street, too.”
Lloyd Dicker’s own lights were out. They were able to tell he had the curtains partially parted in his front room and he had his night vision glasses up.
Biggs had little c
hoice. Had Marvin unlock the front gate instead, and they carried the ex-con and his buddy back to their junker where it sat parked at the curb in front of Dicker’s place. Ace was dumped in the back seat that was littered with sardine cans, Chuckles wrappers and empty short dog bottles. Felix was dropped in the front.
Biggs and Marvin returned to the church. The gate was locked back up and they went inside.
CHAPTER 228
A moment later Felix and Ace Ortiz were coming to: battered, bleeding, still dazed perhaps, but coming to slowly.
“What happened?” Felix was moaning. Unable to raise his head. “Madre de Dios, what happened?”
Ace Ortiz had the door open on his side and stuck his face out with a possible urge to vomit—and out rolled his fake eye instead. He cried out in pain.
“You amateur. You was the cover, fool. You was the cover. Now I gotta go out and hustle up another piece.”
Felix continued to moan.
“Gonna cut that fruitcake’s cajones right off. Stomp them down his throat. That’s how you deal with a maricon like that. Pendejo. Hijo de la gran puta. He’s dead. He’s dead. Him and that pimp loser he runs with. Dead.” Ortiz paused to retch. “On my shit list. Rudy, too—and his brother.”
“Don’t forget Vester. You left out Vester.”
“Don’t know no Vester.”
“Slim . . .”
“Don’t talk. Don’t say a word. My head . . .”
“Panhandler. . . . One picked up the ring got knocked out of your hand. You don’t want to let him off the hook.”
“Shut your culo, Felix.”
“I need a doctor. At least a bandage. Some aspirin.” Felix struggled to sit up. Couldn’t do it.
Ace wiped his mouth with the back of his torn sleeve. Crawled outside in a desperate search for his glass eye. Got a hand on it somehow and made every effort to pull himself up. Got as far as his knees. Tried some more. Made it to his feet. Lost his balance. Went down.
