by Edward Lee
The girl shrieked again, so shrilly this time that the cords stood out in the old man's neck.
"Oh my God you crazy sick piece of shit! You're going to burn me alive!"
"Please, miss. I can't implore you more deeply. Be quiet. And, no offense intended"—the old man shook his head ruefully—"but your accent is killing me. And don't despair. I've no intention whatever of burning you alive," and then he closed the hatch.
Her terror dropped down a notch, her flip-flopping on the chain retarding. She blinked repeatedly, cogs turning in the spoiled brain. "Look, look—lemme think. Er, look, mister, I'm sorry I called you bad names—"
"Bad names?" The old man couldn't help but be amused. "That's putting it a bit mildly, I'd say. Your language could stop the Devil in his tracks—"
"Look, look, listen... " For the first time, her eyes appeared half-enlivened. "I'll do anything you want, no shit. You ask any of those guys at the truck stop and they'll tell you I suck better cock than any girl working. I'll give you the best nut of your life—just let me go."
"Please... "
"You wanna piss on me, shit on me?"
"I should think not."
"Oh, I get it, you're one of those guys. You want me to shit on you—"
The old man grimly recalled the sheer volume of the feces that was now reduced to ash. "Trust me, miss, even if I did desire to be so debased, I'm sure you're not up to it at the moment."
"All right, all right," she hurried, desperately assessing possibilities. "I'll tongue your asshole and suck your balls at the same time—how about that? Or—hey!—I'll put my big toe up your ass and sit on your dick. Think about it, mister. I can really do that."
The old man groaned. "Really, miss, I've no interest in your debauched delights, I assure you. Your being abducted by me and my associate is an example of ill-fortune, I'm afraid, but such are the pitfalls of your profession, hmm? There's a fair share of disturbed people out there, and, plying this trade of yours, you could fall victim to any one of them: psychopaths, rapists, the sexually monomanic, the mentally ill. But at least you didn't fall into the clutches of one of them. Instead, consider yourself privileged. You've fallen into the clutches of an eccentric antiquary who also happens to be a sorcerer of some authority."
She squirmed more on the chain now, but then stalled. "Sorcerer? You're into, like, satanic shit, devil worship and all that?"
The old man's bushy gray brow rose. "Indeed."
"Well that's great because I've got five kids back at the projects. Shit, man—I'll give 'em to you if you let me go. I mean, you satanic guys sacrifice kids all the time, right? And, shit, one of the little fuckers is only a month old. You can drink his blood. That's what you guys do, isn't it? Drink baby's blood and use it for rituals and shit?"
Oh, such a sad refrain... The old man pushed the girl toward the second of the six arched doorways. This was possible because the chain's ratcheted pulley was fixed to an overhead track which branched off to each door.
"What are you doing, you fuckwad!"
"Your time has almost been expended, my dear," he told her in a kindly voice. "I'd advise you to spend these last moments in prayer, because one thing I can tell you beyond all doubt is that in the course of my studies I've verified that there is indeed a God in Heaven and a Devil in Hell, not that I suspect any amount of repentance on your part could save you from meeting the latter... "
"You cock-lick dingleberry-eating piece of fuck!"
The old man re-opened the crematory's hatch.
"I knew it! A lying old shit-heap motherfucker!" she railed. "You said you weren't gonna burn me!"
As aforementioned, the wooden door in each archway had been fitted with a sharpened iron spike. The old man, next, grimaced when he placed both hands against the girl's flaccid breasts and pushed.
She tensed, then convulsed, gargling blood when the spike exited the hollow of her throat. The pale belly sucked in and out in horror, causing the atrocious LOVE DEPOSIT tattoo to sort of undulate. Her last words, though barely intelligible due to the puncture, were as thus:
"I never should've left Atlantic City... "
The retractors were out and ready; there was only the minor problem of separating the sternum from top to bottom. For this he used a simple branch-cutter. The sickle-like blades first cut up into the outer solar plexus, then eight or ten strokes on the tool clipped a reasonably straight line right up the sternum. The task never required as much strength as one would surmise, but that grisly clipping sound never failed to unnerve him.
The girl continued to tremor on the spike, blood seeping out nicely. She was still in a sense alive, and perhaps she even heard the old man when he said, "Have no fear, young lady. I'm not going to burn all of you, just your noxious heart," and then he applied the cardiac retractors and began to crank her rib cage open.
PART ONE:
ADVENTS
ONE MONTH AGO
(I)
It was a fine summer day when twenty-year-old Richard "Dicky" Caudill dragged two large plastic bags across Main Street, as he did every day, into Pip Brothers Laundromat. This was July 24th, 1991, six full years before Dicky would meet his death by having his spinal column torn out of his rectal cavity at a place called Wroxeter Abbey. The official cause of death filed by the Russell County Sheriff's Department would be "Death by traumatic mutilation via an unknown mode," but there were plenty of folks who knew full well that he was actually killed by a legendary monster called The Bighead, but that was another story. This would occur in the future, of course, as Dicky was alive and well just now, and what he had in the preposterously depressed town of Luntville was something many didn't: a job. Hence, the large plastic bags he was dragging into the laundromat. Dicky was fat, with a buzzcut, a symptomatic dopey redneck. The Caudill family went back a ways; in fact, his great, great, great grandfather was a Confederate general in the Civil War who had supposedly sold his soul to a demon named Anarazel, and who then allied himself with an industrialist named Harwood Gast... but that was another story as well. He also had another blood relative named Thibald Caudill: yet another story.
Dicky's T-shirt showed a flowing American flag and the words TRY BURNING THIS FLAG, FUCKER! but in truth he wasn't much of a patriot. A number of Luntville's young men had joined the Army and some of them had gotten maimed or killed in some place called Bosnia and right now there was this other war going on in one of those nutty sandbox countries called Iraq and the news was dubbing it Desert Storm. There was no way Dicky was going to go get his fat ass shot up in some place like that just for a paycheck and benefits. Besides, he already had a job.
And, to say it for the third time now, in a terribly undisciplined narration, he was dragging those two big plastic bags—the first two of many—into the laundry when he stopped at the door at the sound of footsteps. He looked up and saw a wiry fella with long hair, black goatee, and jeans coming down the sidewalk. The snapping footsteps came from a pair of beaten rawhide boots. The fella was wearing a John Deere hat, and he was eating what appeared to be chicken nuggets from a Wendy's bag.
Dicky blinked. Is that... "Balls?" he called out. "Tritt Balls Conner?"
The wiry fella stopped and stared, then his unpleasant face turned up in a sneering smile. "Dicky Caudill! Well shee-it my drawers!"
"I ain't seen you in, shee-it, two years I'll'se bet."
"That's 'cos I just got done doin' two years, in the county slam."
"Shee-it. What fer?"
Balls ate a few more nuggets. "Cop was hasslin' me one night, so's I'se beat his ass fierce, I did," Balls bragged, but actually this was a bold-faced lie. He'd received the two-year sentence for stealing a woman's purse in a Giant food store parking lot, but before he'd run off with the purse he'd felt up the woman's ten-year-old daughter. "Got out two days ago."
"Where's ya livin'?"
"My Daddy's house in Cotswold." Balls eyed a redneck woman probably in her forties walking into a pawn shop two storefronts dow
n. He rubbed his crotch, thinking it might be fun to fuck up her hair with his sperm. "He died whiles I was in stir, some disease I never heared of called hepatitis," but he pronounced the word as "heppa-tat-iss."
"Dang, Balls. I'se sorry ta hear it."
"Fuck," Balls gruffed. "I'se glad the fucker's dead. All he ever done was beat my ass and lock me in closets whiles he was fuckin' a bunch'a whores. I done inherited the house'n all the shit in it, not that it were much."
It needs to be mentioned now that Balls and Dicky had been friends in their early teens, both having attended Clintwood Middle School, and they both would've gone to the same high school had they not dropped out in the seventh grade. The two went back a ways in a history of petty crime, willful auto-sexual malfeasance, and entry-level redneck hooliganism.
"So's what'cha doin' now?" Dicky asked.
Balls stood hands on hips. When a young pregnant woman rolled a baby carriage by across the street, he spat. The woman was Hispanic, and he thought it might be nice to cornhole her on her hands and knees and then pull out just in time to send his load into the carriage. That would serve the bitch right for violating immigration laws.
"Fuckin' pepper-belly immer-grints," he complained. "Their men take all our jobs fer cheaper, then all's they do is keep their women knocked up shittin' out them little spic babies'n goin' on welfare. Ain't right."
"No, it ain't."
Balls continued to eye the young woman. "Like ta squeeze the milk outa them fat tits, I would." He slapped Dicky on the back and laughed. "Bet it tastes like tacos!"
Dicky laughed out loud. "Bet it does, Balls! Bet it does!"
"But you ask me what I'se doin', I'se beatin' the street lookin' fer a job."
"Dang, man. Ain't much in the way'a work here these days. Most places're closed up, ‘cept the Wendy's."
"I know me that," Balls snapped and pointed at the pregnant Hispanic. "'Cos of them. Hard-workin' American fellas cain't git no work 'cos they take all the jobs."
"Most of the gals work in the sewin' shops, and the fellas work in the meat-packers," Dicky informed.
Balls pointed down to the corner, to the Wendy's. "Even that place is full up with 'em. I'se asked fer a appler-kay-shun, but the spic manager jabbered somethin' at me shakin' his head."
"Ain't right, man, just plum ain't."
"What about that Jiffy Lube? It still here?"
"Yeah, but it's closed, and I heard the drug store don't hire ex-cons. But, ya know, Pappy Halm still owns that Qwik-Mart next to the Greyhound stop. Maybe he's'll give ya a job."
Balls frowned. "That old dog turd? No way. He caught me shopliftin' Neccos when I was a little kid, so's he told my Daddy and, a'course, my Daddy beat the shit outa me'n stuck a lit cigarette in my bag. So's then I went to Pappy Halm's house that night and shit on his car, and ya know what?"
"What?"
"He caught me doin' that, too. Called the poe-leece fer that one. My Daddy had to pay a fine on account I was a minor'n then he beat the shit out'a me again and sat my bare ass down on top'a the wood stove to teach me a lesson."
"Gawd dang!"
"Anyways, I need me a job to tide me over fer a month so's I kin eat, but after that I'll be just fine."
Dicky scratched his head. "What's happenin' in a month?"
Balls smiled again, the smile like a sneer. He lowered his voice. "I gots me a big score."
Dicky's jowls drooped. "A score as in a heist?"
"Sort of."
"Dang, Balls. You just got done gittin' outa the joint. Whys do somethin' that could git'cha right back in?"
"It's a shore thing, Dicky, but I gots to make me some kind'a money till then." He looked more intently at Dicky. "You got a job?"
"Dang straight," Dicky was proud to state. "I'se a... maintenance man."
"Maintenance? What kind?" but Balls pronounced the word as "kand."
Suddenly, Dicky was less enthused to talk about his position of employment. He kicked one of the plastic bags. "I do laundry'n stuff, cleanin'-up work."
"Yeah? Fer who?"
"Just a... a place across the street."
Balls looked across the street. He saw a liquor store, a thrift shop with a CLOSED sign, an ice-cream parlor with a CLOSED SIGN, another place whose sign read simply RELAX AT JUNES, and a shoe store with a CLOSED sign.
"Laundry, you say?" Balls questioned, confused. "Where ‘cross the street needs laundry done?"
Dicky shuffled his feet. "Aw, just a place, but the pay ain't bad—five bucks'n hour under the table."
Balls raised a brow. "Righteous," but then he squinted across the street again. "So's... where do you work?"
"The place that says Relax At Junes," Dicky finally admitted, trying not to blush. "Ain't nothin' I brag about much. See, it's really a massage parlor. Ya pay twenty bucks fer a massage, then if ya tip the gal another twenty, she jerks ya off."
Balls shook his head. "Hail, a buck's a buck, I guess, but... " Balls squinted at the laundry bags. "Dicky, I still don't git the laundry part. Laundry? From a jack shack?"
Dicky opened one of the plastic bags, and out wafted a rich, stifling yet readily familiar scent that was turning into a stench.
"Ho-boy!" Balls exclaimed. He stepped back, fanning his hand before his face.
The bag was stuffed to bursting with white wash cloths. Dicky continued, "See, after the fella blows his load, the gal wipes it up with one'a these rags... "
Balls scratched his head, befuddled. "Hail, Dicky, I'se smelt cum before, shore, but I'll be damned if I don't smell some shit in there too."
Dicky smirked. "Yeah, well, see, Balls, if ya tip the gal an extra twenty, she'll stick her finger up yer ass whiles she's jerkin' ya."
"Yer shittin' me," Balls replied. "Them gals workin' there... they ever lay any of that finger-action on you?"
"Fuck no!" Dicky assured his pal. "I don't want nothin' goin' up my asshole! I ain't no queer," and with that, Dicky stuffed the rags back down into the bag—with a bare hand—then twirled the bag closed again.
"Dicky, you just put'cher hand in a bag chock full'a cum-rags," Balls pointed out.
"Aw, shee-it, I ain't grossed out by touchin' 'em none. My Uncle Wally always said a little nut never hurt no one."
Balls reflected on the information. "Why would yer uncle tell ya that?"
Dicky faltered. "Oh, uh, no reason. Just somethin' he said once," he quickly excused.
Now Balls chuckled a bit. "So that's yer job, huh? Warshin' cum-rags from a jack shack?"
"Well, uh... yeah... "
Balls slapped Dicky on the back again. "Great job, Dicky-Boy!"
"Shee-it." Embarrassment drew tight lines in Dicky's corpulent face. "I knows it's a dumb-ass job, Balls, but, see, it's only temporary. You remember Randy Turcot?"
Balls sat down on a bench and struck a Thinker pose. "I know I'se heard the name—oh, yeah! That lowdown scumbag used to drive that shiny black El Camino ‘round'n was always pickin' up the few decent-lookin' chicks in town. Anytime I'd git somethin' goin' with a splittail, he'd come along in that hot rod of his and next thing I knowed, the girl's ass was in the seat next to him. Always hated that cracker. He'n his brother used ta jack deer on my Daddy's land, and I'se swear one time he sugared one'a our tractors. I hadda mind ta kill him, I did... "
Dicky snickered. "Well, some player beat'cha to it 'cos about a year ago he went ta Pulaski to buy dope'n the dealer pig-stuck him in some alley and took his green. Bled out right then'n there."
Balls' eyes beamed, and he hooted. "Well ain't that just grand! Dicky, that's the best news I heard in years!"
Dicky nodded, continuing, "And that shiny black El Camino of his? I bought it off his daddy 'bout six months ago, and been fixin' it up somethin' fierce."
Balls looked astonished. "Shee-it, Dicky, that was the fastest car in the county's what I always heard."
"You heard right, but, see, it throwed a rod ‘fore Turcot got shivved and that fucked the engine'n trannie all up. I do
ne rebuilt the engine with what I make at the jack shack, but the trannie's blowed. Gotta get a new one and, see, I cain't just use any ole trannie, it gots ta be a M-22 Rock Crusher, and that's twelve hunnert bucks. But once I got the bread, I'll be droppin' that trannie in myself'n then I'll be drivin' the fastest car in the county, and that's when I kin git me a real job."
"What the fuck's a fast car got to do with a real job?"
Dicky sat down on the bench, whispering giddily. "Runnin' ‘shine, man. Runnin' ‘shine. Snot McKully'n Clyde Nale got more stills in these parts than anyone, and they'se always hirin' fellas with fast cars to run the hooch ‘cross the state line to all them dry counties in Kentucky. They won't hire ya if ya ain't got the wheels, though, 'cos, see, you gotta have a rod that'll outrun the ATF boys and the state pursuit cars. But with my 427 ‘Mino and a Rock Crusher? I'll blow the doors off anything on the road."
Balls nodded, eating a few more chicken nuggets. "I don't doubt it would, Dicky."
