The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

“I got one of yours, fuckers! I told you I ain’t goin’ down!”

  A radio voice called back, asking who it was, but Gord was back in the truck. Slammed the door, tucked the cop’s handgun under his thigh, and started to drive.

  He twisted the wheel so that we intentionally ran over the cop’s body. He laughed and howled like a wolf as he hit the gas and we raced down the road.

  I held on, saying nothing, afraid to even look at Gord. A lake spread out beside us—a lot bigger than a pond—and the truck followed its banks until it narrowed. We got off the highway and onto a dirt road, bouncing across ruts and grass and twigs, the lake still in view out Gord’s window.

  I didn’t know what to say. My best friend had just killed a cop. We were on the run from at least two forces—the law, and whoever scared Gord in the first place. I thought about my life, and figured that being a boring teacher at a boring college really wasn’t so bad.

  “So, do you know how to use a shotgun?” Gord finally asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “I’ve seen them in movies, but I’ve never even held one.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Pick it up and get a feel for it.”

  I glanced at the seat beside my hip, saw part of the stock and the barrel jutting out, wondered how such a relatively small piece of metal and wood could cause so much carnage. I was afraid of it. I picked it up like I was handling a snake, thinking its barrels would double-back on me and strike. I aimed the barrels out my side window, cradled its body in two hands, finger nowhere near the trigger.

  “Go on, fire it! Watch the kick-back.”

  At Gord’s urging, I leaned the barrels on the window edge, my hands shaking too much to aim the weapon properly. Had to look down to see where the trigger was, my hands too cold and numb to feel the details of the gun’s design. I squeezed the trigger and the thing came to sudden life. Roared out its rage as it fired into a passing bush. It punched my bicep and ribs and fell to the floorboard.

  Gord laughed as my ears rang from the blast.

  “You’ve got too much college in you!” he said. “Just leave it on the seat—barrel pointing at your door, not at me…and hope we don’t need to use it.”

  I delicately lifted it off the floor and laid it behind my ass along the seat. I kept shifting and looking at the gun, hated to have it even touch me. Gord laughed, then slid the weapon out from behind me, lined it behind our headrests. I didn’t feel any better having the serpent resting behind my head, but if it wasn’t touching me, then I could ignore its existence.

  I dared to ask another question. “So…what if we die today?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Don’t worry about it. If you’re dead, you’re dead. Nothing you can do about it.”

  That didn’t relax me. I told myself that, yes, death was death, but it was the trail leading up to it that scared the shit out of me. Was that where we were going? To our deaths via back roads around a lake?

  I tried another question. “So, do you think Paco’s going to welcome us with open arms?”

  Smiling, Gord said, “I don’t know what he’s going to do. Probably freak out a bit.”

  “A bit?”

  “Or a lot. I’ll tell him, I dunno, that some punk tried to steal some of my stash, so I had a shootout with him. That’ll explain the windshield and bullet holes.”

  I looked at the hole piercing the radio, put my finger through it. Wondered what time it really was. Couldn’t see the sun behind tall trees, and the forest was too dark once were we inside it, but I figured it was still twilight, soon to be night.

  “And then what?” I asked. “You buy more drugs? Or tell him you just want to go for a walk through his tunnel? He seems like the paranoid type. Think he’ll be suspicious?”

  Gord bit his lip and nodded ahead at the road as it disappeared around a bend in the trees. “Yeah he will. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. How do we get around him? He’s like an ogre guarding a cave of gold.” He looked over at me, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “We might have to kill the ogre.”

  I took a deep breath through my nostrils, felt a wave of pure stress shiver my body, pressed two hands against my head and tried to squeeze away the tension I felt.

  I couldn’t take it anymore, so I yelled.

  “What the fuck, Gordy! You tell me right now what the fuck is going on! Who are you? What have you gotten yourself into since you moved out here? Why are you even messing around with this shit?”

  My voice rang, then cut off, and it was suddenly too silent. I shook, shifted in my seat, couldn’t get comfortable. I looked at him, then looked away, saw that he was thinking, choosing what to reveal to me. I wondered if, by telling me, he would put himself further at risk with some unknown person—and, if that was the case, it only proved further that he was into some bad shit.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you.” He inhaled deeply, then started patting his jacket. Then added, “Wish I had a fucking smoke.”

  Another new thing: I didn’t know he smoked. Cigarettes, that is. Instead, he reached down to lift the sandbag of coke that had fallen during our cop-killing.

  I sighed in exasperation. “Ah, fuck, Gord, haven’t you had enough of that shit?”

  “Hell no,” he said, trying to punch a hole with his finger through the bag. Some of the powder went up his nose, a lot more on his lap and the seat. “Now’s the best time for it. Gives me quick reflexes, good hand-to-eye coordination. If I’m going out, I’m going high. Say the word and I’ll give you some—but I ain’t giving it to you so you can throw it out the window.”

  He shoved another pinch up both nostrils, then popped the glove box and stuffed it in beside a couple boxes of shotgun ammo.

  I breathed like a pregnant woman in lamaze class. I wanted to snort and eat the coke bags. Part of me wanted the coke, but only to see if it would lessen my stress. I knew it would probably increase it instead. And I wanted to be sober when Gord confessed.

  “Don’t evade the issue,” I demanded. “Start talking.”

  After he was through sniffing and squeezing his nostrils, he said, “Okay. I’d say don’t repeat what I’m gonna tell you, but it may not matter at this point. Venus is an awesome girl—I gotta say that. But, like I told you, she comes from a big family. Huge. They’re all over this part of the world—and beyond. I don’t know exactly how far they’re spread out. And they’re powerful. That cop I killed was probably an uncle or a cousin. They’re in the police, the government, the courts…in the public works—even the sidewalk sweepers are related to Venus. They’re everywhere.”

  He licked his gums and was a little twitchy, eyes flashing from the road to me to his hands on the wheel.

  He continued. “With me marrying into that large and powerful of a family, I would have access to that power.”

  “Is Paco in the whole thing?”

  “No, like I said, he works for others. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the family gets a cut of his profits, and they keep him secret and protected. They probably own the land he’s on. They control all of the law around here. That’s how we can all get tons of shit from him. But you saw how paranoid he is—comes with the business. I can vouch for you, but he’s still gonna be a prick.”

  Wheels turned in my head. Sounded as though Gord lusted for Venus and for the power she could give him…that was the whole thing in a nutshell? There were still too many questions.

  “Is it her family who wants you dead? Because of whatever you said to the tailor?”

  He sighed, body sagging where he sat, as he tried to muster courage to tell me the next part of his confession.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. They’re a weird family. And I don’t just mean strange personalities and habits. There’s that too. Let’s put it this way: I saw one of them—a niece about nineteen or so—with a tail.”

  I stared at him, eyes bulging, not sure whether I should laugh or vomit. “I’ve heard about those. A vestigial tail, it’s called. An evolutionary leftove
r from when we were monkeys.”

  He was shaking his head. “Not that. Not a little nubbin…a piece of flesh-covered spine. I mean, a tail. About three feet long with all the colors of a bruise—black, red, purple, yellow—all blending into one another. And she could flick it. Snapped it in my face while she giggled—had about three teeth in her head. Speaking of which, her head looked like a lump of dough with thumb marks pressed into either temple. Fucking ugly bitch, let me tell you.”

  I felt a wad of bile nestle at the back of my throat picturing this person. Wondered if she was at the party. Hoped to God I didn’t stick my dick in her.

  “You think there’s a lot of inbreeding in this family?”

  “I’d put money on it. They keep the freaks mostly out of view. I met that girl—that thing—about six months after Venus and I hooked up. She had introduced me to her immediate family—they all seemed pretty normal at first, kind of eccentric—but then we headed out to a party in a shack in the woods—I forget where it was, I was so drunk and stoned—and that’s where I met some of the lesser-seen members.”

  Things were piecing together, and I still saw Gord’s old weakness playing a part. Giving in to a gorgeous girl, not caring about how strange she, or her family, might be, as long as she had nice cleavage.

  “It sounds like Venus has kept you doped up pretty good.” I looked at his flared nostrils and the powder still on his pants. “She’s controlling you with dope.”

  He only shrugged. “Maybe. You know me, buddy—I like a party. And she’s one helluva party girl. So what if her family’s a little fucked up? Whose isn’t? All that she offers is huge compared to what weirdness I’d have to tolerate. It looks—looked—like a great deal, and I’d come out on top.”

  “Looked?” I questioned, watching the change in his opinion about his golden ticket. “What happened back at the tailors? Is he family too?”

  Gord nodded. “Yeah. He’s Venus’ father. Everyone in town is related. That’s why I can have a ton of coke in the back of my truck and not worry about it getting stolen or have a cop bust me for it. It’s for the party—a thief would be stealing the party’s hors d’eouvres—plus the thief would be on the invitation list.”

  “That’s fucked up,” I mumbled. “So what exactly happened at the tailors? Venus’ father is…one creepy freak, to put it mildly.”

  His mouth tightened as he slowly shook his head. “I can’t tell you about that. It might be nothing, anyway. As long as we can get away from here. I’d rather say nothing so you can always say you never knew. Just in case.”

  “What ‘in case’?”

  He stared at me, serious, scared. “In case we don’t get away.”

  The light coming through the trees was dying. Gord turned on his headlights. One came on, the other was probably shot out. The road was still hell, parts of it overgrown with grass, just a trail of two dug-in wheel ruts. We were off-roading basically, still going around the lake which appeared from time to time through gaps where the trees thinned. Every time we saw water, Gord looked at it as though he was expecting something to come across it toward us. He was more paranoid with the single headlight on. Marking our passage, in case anyone was looking for us. Which, of course, they could be, especially with a cop lying dead on the highway, his body half-pulp, tire tracks across his face.

  The bush suddenly opened up into a bit of a clearing and what looked like a tall slope of earth. But at the top of the slope I could see stars. When you’re on drugs—still have them in your system, which I must have had from the night before—time does strange things. A minute can feel like an hour, and hours can go by when you think it’s only been a couple of minutes.

  We drove clear of the bush and Gord stopped. Let the truck idle as he hung his head out the window, staring in every direction, listening. Even told me to stop breathing for a minute. I did, listened, and heard only crickets and a small breeze through tree branches.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “I’m going up there to look around. It’s the road we need to take to get to Paco’s. If the coast is clear, you get behind the wheel, put the pedal to the metal, and get the truck up that rise. As fast as you can. Back up a bit and take a run at it if you need to, but I want the truck up there in one shot. Got it?”

  I nodded. Gord opened his door slowly, trying to keep its metal creak quiet, left it open. Walking softly, glancing in every direction as he listened, he stepped to the hill. Scanned its top as he took a gun out of his jacket. The .357, it looked like. Checked the rounds, but there couldn’t have been any bullets left in it. He tossed it into a thick clump of grass, no sound. Took out the cop’s gun, checked the clip, put it back in. Climbed the hill with gun in hand.

  I shifted over the seat and got behind the wheel. The engine was still running. One hand on the wheel, one on the stick, ready to jam it into drive. Waiting. Too many thoughts in my head telling me that I was becoming crazy. But once you were inside madness, I figured there was nothing to do but ride it to the end. I might die, but I’d go down fighting—I wouldn’t get killed by some backwoods, inbreeding family while slinking away, betraying my friend.

  Holding my breath, I watched Gord crest the hill and scan the area. Slowly, he stood up and paced at the side of the road, peering into the dark. Nothing drew his attention down either direction of the road, so I assumed no traffic was approaching, no distant headlights to be afraid of. He crossed to the other side of the road, I guessed, since he disappeared from my view. Checking out the opposite ditch most likely.

  I waited, prayed that he reappeared quickly. Twisted my hands on the wheel, eyes unblinking. I was awake. Very awake, from fear and stress. I looked between my legs at the floorboard, coke dusted everywhere, the gas and brake coated, the poked-open bag spilling its wealth. I reached down and brought the sandbag to my lap. Jabbed a finger in and coated my nose. If I was about to die, die stoned. Gord had a point.

  As I sniffed and squeezed my nostrils, a series of gunshots echoed from the road.

  I convulsed at the blast, the bag jerking out of my hands to thump beside me. I smacked it onto the dashboard, held from rolling out down the truck’s hood by a strip of ragged glass. Panic filled my veins, but I was able to use the panic to act. Slammed the truck into drive and stomped on the gas. As I did, Gord appeared on the road, waving me up. The driver’s door slammed as the truck lurched forward, wheels spinning, the rear end slewing, but my foot didn’t leave the gas pedal. The steering wheel wrenched in my hands as the tires bounced over rocks and ruts, smoke billowing out behind me as the engine churned and tail pipe rattled. The coke bag rolled off the dashboard and landed back on the seat beside me. Looked like a sign that I should do more coke. In thirty seconds, I was up the slope and my front tires were on the gravel edge of the road. The center of balance tipped over and the truck was on a flat surface again.

  I braked only long enough for Gord to get in the passenger side. He yelled, “Go! Go!,” pointing down one direction, but I was able to glance for a few seconds at the other side of the road.

  Two hillbillies were scrambling up from the ditch. The fatter one dressed in torn jeans, rubber boots, no shirt to cover his pot belly. Bald, with blood washed over one eye, and spurts of blood jetting out of his head over an ear. He carried a long shotgun which he tried to aim at us, but he lost his footing on the gravel. The skinnier one was in overalls and steel-toe workboots, also with a shotgun, but he couldn’t aim—had it tucked under his good arm, the other limb dangling at his side, dripping blood from the shoulder down.

  They swore and hollered as they skittered to the center of the road, the bald bleeder firing at us, the skinny one trying as best he could to aim and fire his weapon.

  Gord and I ducked when we heard a ricochet off the truck’s tailgate. I swerved across the lanes and soon put enough distance between us and the hillbillies. The road curved and the enemy vanished from the rearview mirror.

  Gord got off the floor (his turn to curl and hide) and looked out the bac
k.

  “Hell, that was some fun, hunh?” He laughed, but I couldn’t express any emotion except panic and shock.

  “Who were they? Family?”

  “Probably. Gorman must have half the town looking for us, checking all the roads, and where the road ends. Put those two boys there to wait for us.”

  “Do they have a vehicle?”

  “Didn’t see one, but that won’t matter. They’ll report back and say where they saw us, what direction we’re headed in. The grapevine, cell phones, and CB radios can move quicker than we can. But we’re coming up to the road to Paco’s—the back-way in. I doubt they’ll head down it to get us. They’ll take their time, think they’ll hedge us in, do a slow squeeze.”

  “You think they’ll figure we’re gonna try for the tunnel?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Remember all those guns and bazookas Paco has? They might think we’ll try a stand-off. We gotta get some of that hardware anyway.” He checked the cop’s gun. Empty. He threw it out the window, took the shotgun from behind the headrests, checked the rounds. Popping the glove box, he tossed out another bag of coke and pulled out boxes of shotgun ammo, reloaded as the truck bumped and threw shotgun shells everywhere. “We better get there soon. If more family members show up, a little shotgun ain’t gonna kill them all.”

  Gord saw the split open coke bag on the seat between us, winked at me, figuring I’d finally given into temptation. Which I had, of course. He snorted, then offered me the bag. I dug two fingers through the hole, widening it, shoved my powdery fingers up both nostrils. Wind whipped through the cab and puffed coke into the air. We were heading to Paco, who seemed to have an unlimited supply of good shit.

  And the Black Betty must have still been working in my system, because I wasn’t feeling it like I should have. Which meant, of course, that I needed to snort more and more just to feel a little happiness. Goddamn cocaine…created by God to turn people into devils.

  I stepped on the gas, saw nothing but black road ahead, stars littering the sky. The shotgun stood obscenely upright between Gord’s knees as he bowed his head like a praying priest and stuffed more coke into his nose. He offered some to me, but I tried to be a good boy and reigned in my urges, kept my hands on the wheel and concentrated on driving.