65 Proof

by Jack Kilborn

  “G, I feel too uncomfortable to come in. Can we do this over the phone?”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Mr. Konrath. There are plenty of fat, ugly people who come here every day. You’ll fit right in.”

  “If they come there every day why are they still fat and ugly?”

  “You’re disappointing me, Mr. Konrath.”

  “Sorry, G. I’ll drop by later today.”

  “Great! See you then.”

  “Are you mad at me, G?”

  “No. Not this time.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  I hung up the phone, happy about recommitting myself to getting into shape. Twenty minutes later I was in the health club parking lot, finishing the last of my pizza. G greeted me warmly, pumping my hand like I was a lat machine. He was bigger than I remembered. I bet he had more definition than Webster’s Unabridged.

  Well, come on, all the jokes can’t be good.

  “How’s my bestest buddy, Mr. Konrath?”

  “Hungry. How about that smoothie?”

  “Sure thing. You bring your Visa?”

  “My wife took it. But I found some change in the couch.”

  G led me to the juice bar, and spent five minutes measuring out assorted powders into a stainless steel blender.

  “The base is macrobiotic organic yogurt,” he told me. “Low fat and sugar free.”

  “What flavor?”

  “Plain.”

  “Sounds good. Can you add a few scoops of those chocolate chips?”

  After the smoothie, G and I hit the equipment. Almost immediately I knew we were going to have problems. First of all, he wanted me to start a program he called “weight training.” From what I gathered, this involved picking up weights, and lifting them up and down. G gave me a preview, grabbing a barbell the size of a Cadillac (when they still made them big), and curling it up to his chest several times. I very politely told G that he was out of his freaking mind if he thought I was going to do that. You couldn’t pay me to do that. I certainly wasn’t go to pay them to let me.

  G let out a friendly laugh and then threw me a weight belt and told me to get started while he went to the juice bar for a creatine shake. “For a boost of energy,” he said.

  “Put in some of those mini marshmallows,” I told him. “And some ham.”

  While I waited for my energy boost, I sat on an exercise bike, content with watching a girl in a string bikini do leg presses. She had a body that could make a priest give up choir boys. When G came back I was sweating like a pig.

  “How are we doing, Mr. Konrath?”

  “Great, G. I’m glad I signed up.”

  “Let’s not overdo it your first day. Time for your rubdown.”

  While G rubbed my achy muscles for three dollars a minute, I had to admit that this health club thing was a good idea after all. Sure, I had to take out a second mortgage to pay for it, but seeing that girl do those leg presses gave my heart a workout it hadn’t had in years.

  And later that night, I actually got in a few minutes of strenuous exercise. With my wife, while thinking of the leg-press girl.

  I was so quiet I didn’t even wake her up.

  A Bonus Short Story by J.A. Konrath & Jeff Strand

  “Isn’t this when you start telling scary stories, Mr. Hollis?”

  Hollis grinned, staring at the boys around the campfire. Cub Scouts, none of them older than ten. For some, the first night they’d ever spent away from their families.

  “Are you scouts sure you want to hear a scary story?”

  “Yes!” they chorused.

  “Even though it’s dark and we’re all alone in the spooky, menacing forest?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Hollis sat down on his haunches. His face became serious.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you a scary story. Scary because it’s the absolute, hand-on-my-heart truth. You’ve all heard rumors about Troop 192, how they disappeared without a trace not too far from here, right?”

  Several of the boys nodded.

  “Well, the rumors were wrong. There were lots of traces of Troop 192. There were traces all over the place…on the ground, up in the trees, by the lake, maybe even under where you’re sitting right now. Imagine if you took a blender, like the kind your mothers use to make smoothies, but it was a giant blender, maybe…I dunno, eighteen feet high. And then you dropped the entire Troop 192 into it, and accidentally left the lid off, so that when you pressed the ‘blend’ button they sprayed all over the place. That’s what it looked like.”

  “I heard it was just one kid who went missing,” said Anthony.

  Hollis shrugged. “If you think one little kid has that many guts inside of his body, more power to you, but I was here. I saw it. It was gross.”

  “My mom said they found him the next morning. He was playing Nintendo.”

  “Oh, well, I guess your mom is in a position where she was allowed to accompany the law enforcement agencies on their search, huh? Did she somehow become deputized without anybody hearing about it? Do Hooters waitresses typically get to tag along on searches for missing children?”

  “She works at Olive Garden.”

  “Whatever. She wasn’t there on the night of the investigation. I’m telling you that it was the entire troop, and their insides were strewn as far as the eye can see.” Hollis made a grand gesture with both arms to emphasize the extent of the carnage. “And do you know who got blamed for it?”

  Several of the scouts shook their heads.

  “Madman Charlie. Oh, they arrested him, and sent him to the electric chair the next morning. But it wasn’t Madman Charlie. When Troop 192 was massacred, he was off murdering a young woman in a completely different county. No, Troop 192 wasn’t slaughtered by Madman Charlie. They weren’t even slaughtered by something…human.”

  One of the youngest scouts, Billy somebody, raised his hand. No doubt because he was too terrified to hear more.

  “Billy, are you too terrified to hear more?” Hollis asked. “Because that’s okay. Nobody here will judge you.”

  “No, Mr. Hollis. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Hollis sighed again. “Go ahead, Billy. But don’t go too far away. Anyway, there’s something inhuman in these woods. Something that hungers for human flesh.”

  Theolonious raised his hand. Probably wet himself he was so scared.

  “Do we have any more hot dogs?” Theolonious asked.

  “You already had three.”

  “Jimmy ate the one I dropped one the ground.”

  “Jimmy didn’t come with us on this trip.”

  “Well, okay, I ate it, but it wasn’t as good as the two that didn’t get dropped on the ground. Can I please have another one?”

  “This inhuman creature,” Hollis said, ignoring him and raising his voice, “slaughtered Troop 192 on a night very much like tonight. It cracked open their bones and sucked out the marrow, and slurped up their intestines like spaghetti, then flossed its sharp fangs with their muscle fibers. And rumor has it this insatiable monster still hunts in these very woods, on the night of…” Hollis paused for dramatic effect, “the full moon.”

  “Was it a Dracula?” Cecil asked.

  “Draculas don’t rip people up,” said Anthony. “Draculas just look unhappy a lot, and kiss girls like in that movie my sister watched seventeen gazillion hundred times.”

  “Those were dumb Draculas,” said Cecil. “But there are cool Draculas, like in Lord of the Rings.”

  “Those were orcs.”

  “Not those! The other ones!”

  “That was a Kraken!”

  “The horrible creature,” Hollis said, standing tall and raising his arms over his head, “was a werewolf!”

  “I thought werewolves just took off their shirts a lot like in that movie with the Draculas.”

  Hollis shook his head. “In real life, werewolves like to crack open the rib cages of little boys with their sharp claws and bite their still-beating hearts right from t
heir chests. That’s what happened to Troop 192.”

  “If they were attacked by a werewolf,” said Anthony, “wouldn’t they become werewolves?”

  “Not if their bodies were shredded and thrown around all over the trees and lake and ground. If you’d been paying attention when I started telling the story you could have caught that little detail.”

  “What if a werewolf bit a skunk?” Theolonious asked. “Would it become a werewolfskunk?”

  “A werewolf wouldn’t bite a skunk,” Hollis said.

  “Why not?”

  “Why would it bite a skunk? Would you bite a skunk?”

  “I wouldn’t bite a skunk today,” said Mortimer, “but if I was a werewolf, I think I’d bite a skunk if there was one sitting there. You’d have to bite it gently, y’know, so that its whole head doesn’t come off, but I think, y’know, werewolves can bite gently when they want to, even though they usually don’t. They couldn’t use their whole jaw or, y’know, anything like that, but if they just used their front teeth and didn’t close them all the way, I think they could bite a skunk without its head coming off.”

  The other cub scouts murmured their agreement.

  “Y’know,” Mortimer added.

  “And what if the werewolfskunk bit a deer?” asked Theolonious. “Would it turn into a werewolfskunkdeer?”

  “I want to know how one werewolf ate all of Troop 192,” said Cecil. “How big is a werewolf’s stomach?”

  “Haven’t I already explained that twice?” asked Hollis. “The werewolf didn’t eat their whole bodies. He ate the best parts, then scattered the rest of them all over the place so that the kids couldn’t turn into little werewolves. Do you want a demerit? Do you?”

  “I need toilet paper!” Billy yelled from the woods.

  “Use leaves!” Hollis hollered back.

  “I tried! They’re all stuck to me!”

  Fredrick raised his hand. “Would a werewolfskunkdeer try to eat people? Or would it just forage for nuts and berries?”

  “You don’t even know what ‘forage’ means,” said Silas.

  “It means to search for provisions.”

  “Well, you don’t know what ‘tourniquet’ means!”

  “Yes, I do. We learned about them last week. It’s that thing you twist around your arm or leg to stop bleeding.”

  “Well, you don’t know what ‘hypothesis’ means!”

  “Silas! Enough!” Hollis clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. “Anyway…”

  Theolonious frowned. “So is a werewolfskunkdeer a person who changes into something that’s a wolf, skunk, and deer all at once, like it has fur and Bambi eyes and sprays skunk spray, or is it a person who can change into a wolf or a skunk or a deer?”

  “I have no idea,” Hollis said.

  “I think he changes into one of them, but he can’t control which one it is. So he’ll be fighting Bigfoot and he’ll want to change into a wolf because wolves are better at fighting Bigfoot, but he’ll change into a skunk instead and Bigfoot just steps on him. That’s probably why you don’t see many werewolfskunkdeers around anymore.”

  “What if a werewolf bit a Dracula who bit a zombie who then bit the werewolf?” asked Cecil.

  “My baby brother bit the babysitter, but she didn’t turn into a baby.”

  “Shut up!” said Theolonious. “That’s not what we’re talking about!”

  “But what if a werewolfskunkdeer bit a wolf? Is it a werewolfskunkdeerwolf, or does the wolf part just not matter because it was already a wolf?”

  “Werewolfwolfskunkdeer sounds better,” said Anthony.

  “Soon the full moon will rise,” Hollis said, raising his arms theatrically. “And then the werewolf takes its supernatural form and…”

  “You mean the werewolfwolfskunkdeer.”

  “No. I mean the werewolf. There’s no such thing as a werewolfskunkdeer.”

  “You forgot the extra wolf. It’s werewolfwolfskunkdeer.”

  “I did not forget the extra wolf. We aren’t talking about the werewolfskunk deer.”

  “The werewolfwolfskunkdeer.”

  “We’re talking about a werewolf! A regular old werewolf! That’s it. Just a man who turns into a goddamn wolf, okay?”

  The scouts went silent. Hollis knew he’d gone too far by using the g.d. word, but the punchline to his story was so amazing and they were ruining it.

  “Mr. Hollis, is this poison oak?” Billy asked, walking back to the campfire holding some leaves.

  “Yes, Billy. Put that down.”

  “I wish I’d picked different leaves. Can I go home?”

  “No. There’s some baking soda in the tent. Let me finish my story and I’ll get it for you.”

  “Could a werewolf eat a baby whole, in one bite?” asked Anthony.

  “I suppose one could,” Hollis said. Actually, he knew that one could. Firsthand. Heh heh.

  “So when it pooped out the baby, would the baby be a werepoopwolf?”

  “What if a werepoopwolf bit a werewolfwolfskunkdeer?”

  “It would be a werewolfwolfwolfpoopskunkdeer.”

  “Enough,” Hollis said. “The next person who says something gets a bad report to their parents and they won’t get to come on any more of these trips. Got it? See that full moon up there? That ties into our little story, doesn’t it? Do you see the connection between what happened to Troop 192 and the lunar cycle of today? You get it, right? Do you know what Troop 192 was doing on that fateful night? They were—irony alert—sitting around listening to scary stories from their scoutmaster! Do you get where this is going?”

  The scouts remained silent.

  Hollis stood up.

  “That’s riiiiiiiiight! The story I was trying to tell you is foreshadowing what’s going to happen tonight! Ha! How about that, you little brats? The reason there are so many similarities in the fate of Troop 192 and our situation at this very moment is because I am a werewolf!”

  He stood there, facing the moonlight, waiting for the inevitable transformation.

  “What story did you tell the other kids?” Cecil asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Were you telling them about another werewolf attack before that one?”

  “Yes. That’s right. It’s all a vicious cycle. Each story I tell the scouts is about the previous massacre. I’ll tell the next troop about you guys.”

  “If you killed all of those Cub Scout Troops, who keeps hiring you as a scoutmaster?”

  He adjusted his angle. Change, dammit, change!

  Theolonious raised his hand. “So if you bit a mummy—?”

  Screw it, Hollis thought. He’d brought an axe.

  Frederick was first, right in the middle of another stupid question when the axe caught him under the chin. It cleaved his jaw in half, his tongue waggling through the gap, blood spurting like a lawn sprinkler.

  Hollis pinned Billy under his foot and hacked his arm off, then dangled it above his face, teasing him.

  “Stop hitting yourself!” he yelled in Billy’s face, slapping him with his own hand. It was good fun until shock set in and Billy stopped screaming.

  Cecil got a straight chop to the throat, but the axe wasn’t sharp enough to decapitate him fully, and his head flopped backward, still attached to some sinew.

  As he’d warned earlier, Hollis drove the axe head into Anthony’s ribcage, cracking it open, then diving in the feast on the child’s still-beating heart with his razor-sharp werewolf fangs that seemed rather flat and dull for the job. He did manage to bite off a piece of something that could have been a ventricle, but might have been an atrium. Hollis always got those confused.

  Theolonius watched, eyes wide, hugging his knees. He was covered in blood that wasn’t his own. Hollis raised the axe, ready to make a lupine feast of the boy’s small brain, when Theolonious began to scream.

  No, not a scream.

  That’s more like a howl.

  First the boy’s nose extended, becoming hairy and
snoutish.

  Then claws burst from his fingertips, curving into the shape of scythes.

  Hollis dropped the axe, dumbfounded, as the miniature werewolf then grew…

  Antlers?

  Theolonious quickly spun around, lifting his giant black tail, one that had a white stripe running down it ala Pepe Le Pew.

  “Oh no…”

  The werewolfskunkdeer sprayed Hollis with its anal scent glands while the scoutmaster was screaming, and some of the spray got into Hollis’s mouth. The smell…the taste…was so bad, Hollis had no choice but to whip out his Swiss Army Knife, thumb open the mini scissors, and immediately begin snipping away at his own nose and tongue, snip snip snipping until…

  “Mr. Hollis? Is this the baking soda?”

  Hollis blinked away the daydream and stared at Billy.

  Hollis sighed. “That’s it, Billy.”

  Theolonious raised his hand. “Mr. Hollis? Will we get our fishing merit badges tomorrow?”

  “Yes, Theolonious.”

  “Is storytime over?” Cecil asked.

  “I guess.”

  Silas raised his hand.

  “What, Silas? Do you want to ask me what ‘transitory’ means?”

  “I want to know what’s wrong with your ears. They’re getting longer.”

  Hollis slapped his hands against the sides of his head. Indeed, his ears were getting longer. Longer and hairier.

  He jammed a finger into his mouth, tapping the quick growing fangs.

  It’s about time.

  Hollis leapt onto Silas, taking the boys whole head in his mouth. He squeezed his mighty werewolf jaws closed, feeling the skull bend inward, then crack suddenly, popping open like a walnut, squirting hot brains through Silas’s nasal cavity.

  With Cecil, he dug his snout into the boy’s belly, clenching his teeth down on a length of intestines, holding tight as Cecil ran for the trees. Cecil managed to pull out his intestines, both large and small, his colon, his stomach, and something that might have been a spleen, before keeling over.

  With Billy, Hollis dug one of his claws through the child’s eye socket, then dug it through his skull and out the other eye, holding him like a six-pack. Then he pulled, tearing off the bridge of Billy’s nose.

  Theolonious cried out in horror, and Hollis ripped his lungs out of his chest, squeezing them like an accordion, making the scream go on and on and…