Family Tradition

by Edward Lee

  Esau hoisted his overalls back up, and from a pocket produced a pair of chicken shears. “Yeah, let’s just cut that hog right off. Balls too. Ain’t right fer you ta have a pecker.” He frowned at it once more. “’Specially one that big.”

  When Carol saw the shears she belted out a high-pitched and very feminine scream, then fainted dead away.

  Hmm, Esau thought. Now that it was time to get down to business, he hesitated. Maybe there was something better to do with it.

  “Come ta think of it, honey, maybe we’ll just wait a spell…”

  ««—»»

  “The goddamn hell,” Ashton muttered. He’d stowed the rest of the eel in the rear refrigerator, had another beer, another glass of wine, and another cigar. It was 1 a.m. now, by his Cartier watch. “Where the hell are they?” He peered frowning out the Winnebago’s side window. Across the moonlit lake, he could see Bob’s SeaRay tied up to the pier at the island.

  “What in God’s name are they doing over there?”

  A sudden rap on the door startled him. If everyone’s over on the island, he deduced, who could that be at the door?

  Ashton yanked open the door.

  “Hi, Mr. Morrone…”

  Ashton peered strangely at the pert, pretty girl in the doorway. A brunette in a white top and neat white shorts. She looked familiar…

  “You’re one of the bus-girls at my restaurant, aren’t you?”

  “Rochelle,” the girl said.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Well, the assistant manager, Mr. Curwen, he lost your cell-phone number so he sent me out. He needs to know which day that wedding party is renting the banquet room. He says you forgot to tell him.”

  Ashton’s face creased up in irritation. “Oh, for God’s sake. Come in.” He let her into the lit RV. “It’s Saturday, I told him repeatedly. But I appreciate your trouble, Michelle.”

  “Rochelle.”

  “Er, yes. I appreciate your coming all this way. That’s a long drive. Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Ashton grabbed himself what was probably his eighteenth beer of the day. But when he turned, he stared at her. Now that she stood in the light, he noticed—

  “My God, girl. You nose is as big as an Alaskan strawberry! What happened?”

  “Oh, damn!” Rochelle exclaimed, then began sobbing. “I knew it!”

  Her being here was odd enough, and her query about the banquet was just as odd. But then, through his dull inebriation, something even odder occurred to Ashton.

  I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here…

  “Roseanne?”

  “It’s Rochelle,” she sobbed, holding her swollen nose.

  “Whatever.” Ashton fingered his beard. “How did you know I was coming here? I know I told Curwen that I was going on a fishing trip with my brother. But I never said where.”

  Rochelle stopped sobbing, now wearing a look of anxiety. Her hand dropped from her swollen red nose. “I, er, uh…”

  “She did it for me, Morrone,” another voice announced.

  “You!” Ashton exclaimed.

  It was his arch-rival who’d just stepped into the RV:

  M. Gerald James.

  “My, but don’t we look fat today, hmm, Ashton?”

  “What the hell are you doing here, you fussy snoot?” Ashton railed.

  James smiled primly. “Topped three-hundred on the scale yet? Must be all those Big Macs, for certainly you don’t eat in that latrine you call a restaurant. I wouldn’t eat in that slop shop…with your mother’s mouth.”

  “Those are fighting words, James!” Ashton exploded. His man-tits swung back and forth under his shirt as he lunged forward until—

  click!

  James produced a small .22 revolver and cocked it.

  Ashton’s bravado came to an abrupt halt. “Are you out of your mind! What’s the meaning of this? Why are you here?”

  James ran a finger down the line of his thin mustache. “Oh, I was just a bit curious, my fine, corpulent friend. How’s the fishing out here?”

  Ashton stood fat and pouting.

  “How’s the trout biting, and the walleye? Caught any shad, caught any…Crackjaw eel? Hmm?”

  “So that’s what this is all about!” Ashton snapped. “Well, I’m happy to tell you that you’ve wasted your time. There’s no eel in this lake!”

  “Oh?” James said. “And those rather large coolers I saw you and your ridiculously obese brother dragging in? I suppose they were full of catfish?” James pulled open the rear refrigerator. He looked in, paused, and then took on an expression as though he’d just found the real Shroud of Turin.

  “My God…”

  Live eel were squirming in the coolers, hundreds of them.

  “Let’s make a deal, James,” Ashton bid. “We’ll split the wealth. We tell no one else about this lake, and split the proceeds fifty-fifty.”

  James brow arched. “A generous offer, I must say… All right, you’ve got a deal—” and then James promptly fired three shots right into Ashton’s massive chest. The bullets smacked—PAP! PAP! PAP!—and shoved Ashton to the front of the RV; the vehicle rocked when he landed flat on his back. He flopped like a gaffed salmon, then lay still.

  “You killed him!” Rochelle shrieked, holding her bulbous nose.

  “Of course I did!” James snapped back. “And he deserved it! He’s a fat vagabond masquerading as a chef. His very existence defames the culinary arts! Well, now I’ve ended that disgraceful existence.” James chuckled down at Ashton’s limp body. “I should get the James Beard Award for this.”

  “What are we gonna do!” Rochelle continued shrieking. Her rising blood-pressure only seemed to increase the swelling of her nose.

  “We’ll take the eel and return to Seattle,” James answered simply.

  “Well then let’s go! Let’s do it now! We have to get out of here!”

  “But what’s the hurry, my darling? No one knows we’re here. But keep in mind, there are still a few people who know about this lake and what it contains.” James smiled nefariously. “Ashton’s rotund brother, and the two women. They’re obviously over on the island.” The smile widened. “So we’ll have to take care of them, too.”

  — | — | —

  Chapter Eleven

  Bob had retrieved two flashlights from the SeaRay, and now he and Sheree stalked through the woods, bright beams roving to and fro.

  Bob was nearly in tears.

  “This is crazy! Where could she be?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sheree tried to console. “We’ll find her. We… Well, we were both pretty fucked up.” She declined to tell him about the “Bebo” LSD. “We, uh, drank a lot. She’s probably still buzzed. I’ll bet she just wandered off.”

  Bob didn’t seem convinced.

  “What are all these shacks?” he queried. “They’re covered with brush. It’s almost like they’re hidden out here in the woods.”

  “I don’t know,” Sheree said, but she had to admit, something about the row of long shacks disturbed her. Many of them were windowless, or only had windows high up toward the roof. And, from somewhere, she thought she smelled—

  Barbeque?

  “You don’t think Carol…”

  “No, Bob, I’m sure she didn’t go into any of those shacks,” Sheree retorted. “I told you, she’s drunk. She just wandered off in the wrong direction.”

  “Yeah but…” Bob sniffed. “Is it me, or do I smell some damn good barbeque?”

  “I smell it too,” Sheree admitted, walking on. “It’s probably a smokehouse or something. That fat redneck kid, he said he was a chef. Ashton’s his hero.”

  “Fuckin’ Ashton,” Bob muttered. “I knew that coming out here was a dumbass thing to do. He got his goddamn eel but…I lost Carol!”

  Bob began to blubber outright; Sheree patted his shoulder. “Stop worrying. We’ll find her.”

  They walked on. Their footstep
s crunched. Sheree could see the dual beams of their flashlights cutting into the darkness ahead. But suddenly—

  A louder crunch resounded, then a noise as if Bob—or someone—had grunted oof!

  —and all at once, Sheree could no longer see the dual beams of their flashlights sprouting ahead. There was only the single beam of her own.

  Stricken, she glanced madly around, aiming the light. There was no sign of Bob anywhere!

  “Bob!”

  No reply.

  Jesus Christ! He was standing right next to me a second ago!

  Her light whipped all around. “Bob! Where are you?”

  But there was no Bob—anywhere.

  First Carol and now Bob? she fretted. Now she was genuinely scared. The acid still buzzed through her system, making every leafy rustle fraught with terrifying significance.

  “To hell with this,” she whispered under her breath. She began to run back to the pier as fast as her sneakered feet would permit. “Gotta get back across the lake! Gotta get Ashton!”

  But when she got back to the pier…the pull-ferry boat was gone.

  ««—»»

  “That’s a good, fine girl,” James complimented. “I’d do it myself, of course, if it weren’t for this blasted bad disc in my back.”

  Upon instruction, Rochelle had cranked the pull-ferry back ashore, whereupon she and James had gotten into the boat, and now she was, with more than a little exertion, cranking in the opposite direction, toward the island. James sat anxiously in the stern as she worked the crank. Just three more people to kill, he thought, wringing his hands, and the secret will be all mine! But killing that bulbous fraud Ashton had been the best. Just recollecting the murder of his rival produced a throbbing erection in his pants.

  The scenery didn’t help.

  Oh, dear. What a sight!

  Rochelle’s petite bottom jutted out as she continued cranking the boat across the water. James couldn’t stand the moon-lit vision, and in the next moment he’d released his boner from the front of his pants.

  “God, my nose hurts,” Rochelle muttered, cranking. Her back to him, she couldn’t see what he was doing. But then she glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  “I can’t help myself, sweetheart,” James confessed, masturbating openly. His balls flopped up and down as he jerked the shaft. “Your beauty sets me ablaze.” His pulse rose; sweat broke out on his brow. He looked sheepishly at Rochelle. “Please, hon. I’ll only need a minute. You don’t mind stepping out of those shorts, do you?”

  Rochelle sighed, her shoulders slumping. She let go of the crank, then slid the white shorts off. “Such a fine, wonderful girl,” James said to himself. He squeezed drool out of his cock, rubbed it around the glans. Next he was on his feet, knees wobbling, and he was parking his wet dick into Rochelle’s vagina from behind.

  “Now,” James breathed. “Keep cranking…”

  Not a happy camper, Rochelle got back on the crank; all James need do was stand there grasping her hips. As her upper-body went up and down, her lower body fell into a sufficient sexual rhythm.

  “Yes, yes,” James muttered his pleasure. He began to stroke back now, amplifying the union of their genitals.

  “Be careful, Mr. James!” she shot over her shoulder. “You’ll tip the boat over!”

  James didn’t hear her. “Okay, my darling little thing! Now!”

  “Now what?” she griped.

  “You know,” James pleaded like a child.

  Rochelle couldn’t have frowned with more disdain. As James’ penis continued to slide back and forth, Rochelle began to urinate.

  Yes, yes! Now the hot flood poured back on James; his pleasure stung. “Keep cranking, Mommy!” he wheezed. “Keep cranking!”

  Rochelle kept cranking and pissing. Urine gushed from the slit of her sex, either pouring off of James’ balls into the bottom of the boat or soaking James’ pants.

  Closer, closer. James’ hips pounded her rump. And when he thought again of that fat stooge Morrone lying dead, James shuddered and went rigid, rising on his tiptoes. At the moment of his orgasm’s first spasm, he pulled a trifle too hard on her hips and—

  WHACK!

  —Rochelle’s hand slipped off the crank, and the crank flew up and hit her square…in the nose.

  When she collapsed forward, James remained standing, his climax, regrettably, not yet complete. Rochelle, in dire pain, squealed on the boat’s floor, her hands clasped to her face. “It hit me right in the nose!” she shrieked, blood trickling.

  Blast! James thought. Her and her goddamn nose again, and right in the middle of my—

  Primal instinct compelled James to jerk off the rest. Thin jets of semen landed on Rochelle’s back. Ahhhh, ahhhh, he thought. Good Mommy, good Mommy…

  Shorts off, face bloody, cringing in pain, and lying in her own urine, Rochelle cried like a baby. Her fingers daintily touched her nose. “It feels like a rotten tomato now!” she wailed.

  Spent now, James exhaled, greedily stroking the final sensations out of his softening penis, which he eventually put back into his pants. He licked his hand, tasting the girl’s ambrosial urine.

  “It hurts so much!”

  When she turned around in the moonlight, James had to chuckle. Her nose, indeed, looked like a squashed tomato. “There, there, dear. It’ll be all right,” he said.

  “No it won’t!” she rebelled, tears streaming. “It’s ruined!”

  “Once we’re done with our chores on the island,” he reminded her, patting the little gun in his belt, “this veritable treasure trove of Crackjaw eel will make me rich. I’ll buy you a new nose! And anything else you want. On this, you have my word.” Then James finally leaned over to help her up and—

  “Whoa!” he shouted.

  —his knees buckled and he fell overboard.

  At the sound of the splash, Rochelle reclaimed her composure; this might prove a bit more serious than her nose. “Mr. James!” she cried out, looking over the edge of the boat. The lake barely rippled. She’d heard the splash but nothing else after that. “Mr. J—”

  ««—»»

  “—ames!” M. Gerald James was able to hear beneath the water. Bubbles exploded from his mouth; something felt wrapped around him. He couldn’t see, and that was probably a good thing. He seemed to be cocooned in writhing snakes a foot thick, and pressed against an expanse that was like a cool wall of slime. The wall seemed to heave back and forth. James was blind beneath the treacherous water, and he was about to drown. Suddenly it was not blood that coursed through his veins but sheer electric terror, and just as suddenly, all the things he loved—cooking, being pissed on, Crackjaw eel, and committing murder—faded into nihility. All that remained was his life, which was now being clutched away by some—

  Thing! James managed to think.

  Whatever it was around him felt huge, more than a match for the thin debonaire pencil-mustached master chef. Nevertheless, within the moment before he knew the last of his breath would expel from his lungs and leave him to inhale lake water, a final superhuman burst of strength ensued. His legs pumped in the water as effectively as the back fin of a dolphin.

  And suddenly, in spite of the stout snakelike thing girded about his waist, James propelled upward in the dragging water. Higher, higher, fighting to the last fiber of his living being, until his hands broke the surface, and he’d grabbed the edge of the boat, and then—

  ««—»»

  —Mr. James hauled himself upward. Rochelle rejoiced…in spite of her smashed nose.

  “Help me!” James wailed.

  The side of the boat began to dip as Rochelle’s employer tried to climb back aboard. Something seemed to be holding him back, but Rochelle couldn’t imagine what.

  “Help me!”

  Bottomless, nose throbbing, and damp with urine, Rochelle bravely reached out. She grabbed James’ outstretched arm and pulled.

  But the harder she pulled, the further the edge of the boat began t
o tip toward the water.

  I’ll…sink the boat, she realized.

  Something, indeed, was trying to pull back, something very strong and clearly much stronger than she.

  Rochelle—

  “Noooo!” James shouted.

  —let go of James’ arm, if only for the common sense of self-preservation.

  During the bizarre tug-of-war, James had managed to haul himself up to the boat to the point of his waist, but when Rochelle let go, he snapped back down, clinging to the edge now only by his hands.

  “Help me, please!” his wet, manic face begged.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted back. “It’ll tip the boat over!”

  Rochelle then appropriately cowered in the stern, watching and shivering. In the final moments between the time her employer became her former employer, James regained a few precious inches, tipping the boat again as struggled to climb upward, and it was then that Rochelle, in the clean moonlight, was able to get a glimpse of the thing that had a hold of James.

  It looked like a shiny, slick elephant’s truck that was wrapped around his waist.

  Then the trunk abruptly tightened and—

  “ARRRRRRRRG!” came James’ muffled scream.

  —the entirety of his gastro-intestinal tract exploded from his mouth and landed in the boat. A final constriction quickly broke James’ back like a piece of dry spaghetti; a reflexive response caused his teeth to gnash which bit off the connective innards.

  James body was pulled back down into the lake, leaving his guts in the boat.

  Then—silence.

  Rochelle shivered from the fetal position she taken up in the stern. She was sucking her thumb she was so scared. From the water, something long emerged, rising. It seemed to look down on her, and it was not an elephant trunk.

  It slapped down wetly onto the floor of the boat, then it slithered about Rochelle’s waist. For one horrible moment she was able to see the vast thing that the appendage was connected to, then in one quick flex, it constricted, and, just like James, it squeezed all of her gastric organs out of her mouth.