Yo A$$ Is GRA$$: Tales From a Rednek Gangsta

by Jimmy M. F. Pudge

  She hugged back. “Let me ch-change, Rachel.”

  “Sure, baby. Mind if I watch?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and slipped out of that silky gown, and brother, let me tell you, she hadn’t changed one damned bit. I enjoyed the whole show and felt let down when she finally slipped on a T-shirt, hiding those amazing breasts.

  “M-my p-purse is in the office,” she said.

  I moved with her casually, yet cautiously, not one hundred percent sure I could completely trust her. Her purse was on the desk, and I watched as she went to pick it up. I followed behind closely, my hands finding her shoulders. I pressed against her, realizing I forgot to put my dick in my trousers.

  She turned around, screamed, and sank the letter opener into my right breast. I fell on the ground in rolling pain, just a cursing and a raising hell. I grabbed the handle and tried to pull it out of me.

  Laura fled the room, and I popped off a couple of shots, bullets sinking into the wall, missing her beautiful head all together. I heard the front door open, and I knew I had to do something fast because she was outside.

  I got to my knees and managed to lift myself up. Blood was staining my shirt red, and my hand brushed up against the wall, leaving bloody prints behind. I’d fucked up bad.

  The front door was standing wide open. I walked outside, looked both ways down the street. Not a single soul. I walked down the porch steps, the night air frozen cold. It was hard to breath with this wound, and I tried dragging myself to the Mustang.

  I was halfway there when I heard an engine. I turned around, saw red taillights, and the next thing I knew that SUV of Laura’s had backed right plumb into me. The impact sent me somersaulting across the street, the asphalt tearing my ass up. I came to a halt and tried to rise. I couldn’t even get on my knees this time. The pain was so bad I couldn’t open my mouth. I watched in complete and utter hatred as the SUV sped off into the night.

  Laura was a cold blooded bitch. The agony I was in made me shake, and the shaking hurt me even more. I tried crawling to my Mustang, but the task was just too trying. People were coming out their houses, staring at me.

  I wanted to shout, why won’t you help me? But I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t even put Jeffrey’s dick back in my pants before the cops showed up.

  THE END

  Stone Cold

  I’m sitting in a black, plastic chair at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, my head lowered, trying my best not to take anyone in.

  Tonight we have a special guest, a recognized speaker, a 10-year-old child.

  “Don’t lose your way,” the boy says with an innocent voice that booms out into the quite room, drowning the audience.

  “Sometimes the best thing to do is to just let it go. Whatever it is eating away inside you, there’s nothing you can do to change it. You just have to drop it. You have to let it go. Just move on my brothers and sisters. Just move on.”

  I don’t know if it’s this child’s words, life experience or broken little face, but I can feel my eyes watering behind the dark sunglasses. I haven’t cried in years, but tears are streaming down my cheeks, and I quickly run a sleeve across my face, destroying any evidence that I’m not a hollow man.

  My work beeper vibrates as the child tells us he turned to the bottle at the age of seven. I hobble out of the meeting and into the bitter, frozen hell of Fleur de Dew. The night is cold, and I see my breath as I turn on my cell phone and dial the beeper number.

  “Another body found,” my partner says. “We’re over by the Hennapenny Bridge right now.”

  “On the way,” I reply. I can feel my hair moving wildly under my top hat and know the venomous snakes aren’t happy. How can they be, cooped up in a cheap black hat?

  “Quit moving around!” I order them. “You’ll freeze to death in this weather if I take off the hat.” My words have little effect on the ill behaved motherfuckers.

  The Hennapenny Bridge is only seven blocks from the AA meeting, so I decide to get a little exercise and bypass my SUV.

  Despite the street lights, I can barely see the road ahead because I wear the cheapest dark shades you can buy. I must wear them. All gorgons are required by section 42 of the Fleur de Dew law to wear eye concealment in public places. Just one look from an ugly sonofabitch such as myself, that’s all it takes, and a man becomes forever young, never aging, never changing. Every detail forever chiseled in beautiful stone.

  I scratch the dead, gray skin drooping from my face and hope it is still smooth. If you scratch too much, the skin will look like scales. With a bulging purple tongue and bulbous nose, dry scaly skin makes me look reptilian. Smooth skin is what separates me from the serpents under the hat. It’s probably my most human feature.

  Tonight the streets are deserted as I round the corner and walk down Lee Street to the Hennapenny Bridge.

  Another body. That’s seven corpses this month. Bodies started falling like raindrops up and down the Hennapenny River last spring, and they haven’t let up.

  Despite the cold night, I can smell rotting flesh before I even see the bridge. Louis waves to me as I near, and I head down the embankment where a row of sad, tired looking assholes congregate in a patch of tall grass.

  Another angel faced girl, face up; nude and split open from her neck to her navel. I know this MO well.

  “Once again,” Louis mutters. “There just ain’t no end to this shit.”

  I only nod my head, my mind already shutting down. The voices distort to static, and the faces blend into the cool night.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Louis asks.

  Every now and then the voices break through the barrier. I look up at him and, despite the fact that we’ve been partners for four years, he cringes at my face.

  “I’m listening,” I spit out, reaching for a bottle of vodka in my coat pocket. I notice Louis watching me in sick fascination, his eyes fastened to the long, purple tongue bulging from my swollen face. I down the bottle, and he snaps out of it.

  “Weren’t you just at an AA meeting?”

  I nod my head and toss the bottle into the river. “The only cure for my drinking problem is leaving Fleur de Dew. Now, did we find anything?”

  Louis shakes his head. “We just sent the vacuum bags to forensics, so it’ll be about twenty minutes before we know anything for sure, but my gut says no. You can tell, looking at the body, that she wasn’t split open at this location but somewhere . . .”

  “I’m getting the fuck out of here,” I say, cutting him short. “I need some aspirin.”

  The stars are out, frozen in place against the black cloth that covers our ugly world. Talking is cheap and for the weak, and I return to my vehicle in the AA parking lot. I hesitate as I open the door. I could walk back inside, sit down and feel comfortable. All those broken people. I long for the companionship but realize some wolves just don’t travel in packs.

  I press my thumb to the steering wheel, and the engine turns.

  Where too, Mr. Clinical? the computerized car says in a mechanical, feminine voice.

  “Forensics lab,” I reply.

  The car rolls slowly down the road and tries to turn on the radio, but I quickly interject.

  “No music,” I say.

  The car must be angry; she doesn’t speak to me until we arrive at the police station.

  Don’t forget to lock the door behind you! she barks.

  I get out of the bitch and leave her door wide open.

  Once inside the Forensics lab, I see my favorite robot and give her my best smile.

  “Got anything for me, Sweetheart?”

  “Not yet,” she says with that sexy Southern drawl. I feel comfortable around machines because they’re not programmed to know the difference between a handsome Dan and your horribly ugly sonofabitches.

  I pull off the shades and look into her lifeless obsidian eyes. She stares back coldly, unaware of the sparks shooting from my system. If only she was programmed to love.

  Sw
eetheart rolls from counter to counter, her delicate hand removing contents from the vacuum bag. I wonder what her name would be if she was a living, breathing creature. I decide Jenny is an appropriate name.

  “Jenny, let me know when you find something.”

  She doesn’t turn around or respond, and I like that even more. Gorgons are used to attention; to be invisible is divine.

  I walk out of the forensics lab and enter the office. The new detective, Mason I think his name is, sits at his desk sipping something out of a Styrofoam cup.

  “Forensics lab finished yet?” he asks.

  “No,” I say, “it could be a couple more minutes.” When you take your Criminal Justice degree classes, at least online as I did, you get a little history lesson on the art of forensic science. Back in the old days, you had to wait months for results. I can’t imagine that. It seems like twenty minutes stretches on forever.

  Jenny opens the door to the lab, and I hear her motor whirring as she rolls down the hallway. “Testing complete,” my sexy Southern belle says.

  Mason runs to her outstretched hand and snatches a single sheet of paper. He looks shocked, and the color in his face disappears. He looks from the paper to me and back again.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Louis’ cigarette,” he responds.

  “Say what?”

  “Louis,” Mason says. “A vacuum bag produced a cigarette butt with Louis’ DNA on it.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “So what? He probably flicked it at the crime scene.”

  Mason shakes his head. “I arrived at the scene before Louis showed up. He didn’t smoke once at the bridge. Besides, Forensics estimates the butt has been lying near the body for about three days, which is how long they estimate our victim has been dead for.”

  I lean back in my chair and stare silently at the rookie. He’s clearly surprised, and that is because he is a rookie. This information has no shock value to me. Rule number one, Mason, I think to myself, always expect the worst in people. You can never be a good cop if you don’t suspect everyone and everything.

  Mason trudges over to my desk. “Does that mean you’re going to . . . .” He can’t finish his sentence, but I know exactly what he’s asking.

  I sigh at what has to be done. You see, every police department, sheriff’s office and federal agency has a gorgon at its disposal. We are always made detectives. It has nothing to do with our superior intellect or charming people skills. Our job is not to think. Our job is to eradicate. Forensics’ findings have already been launched to the main system. The main system will return the verdict in a matter of moments. I turn to the fax machine and printer and hear the machine warming up. A single sheet begins to print, and I don’t even have to read the message.

  I stand up and put on my coat. I grab the top hat from the rack and jam it over the snakes. They hiss and strike at my hands as the hat descends.

  “Aren’t you even going to read it?” Mason asks, his hands trembling.

  I snatch the sheet of paper out of the printer and read aloud, “Louis Sanchez has been found guilty of murder in the first and is herby sentenced to death by the power of Fleur de Dew.”

  “Oh,” Mason says, his head falling.

  I open the door to cruiser 41, the squad car that was assigned to me and my good partner Louis, and fasten my safety belt. The fan belt squeals as I back out of the parking space and zoom off into the night.

  Louis is a creature of habit; this will be his downfall tonight. I call him, and he picks up on the first ring.

  “Clinical! What’s up? Did you get the results yet?”

  “Where are you?” I ask.

  “Same place as always, my man, getting my drink on. Want to throw down a few with your boy since you haven’t committed to being sober yet?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I say, closing the phone.

  People handle death in different ways. Some get used to seeing decaying corpses and view it as a job; some never have a problem with it to begin with; but then there are those like Detective Louis Sanchez. These people are horrified by the grisly sights they encounter. They detach themselves from everyone and everything and use alcohol or other drugs as a crutch. They begin to question if there really is a God.

  When Louis sees a dead body, he always goes to the Nowhere Bar after the area has been policed and sealed. While I go to the office to wait on Forensics, he usually kicks back several shots of whiskey and a pitcher of beer.

  I open the door to the Nowhere Bar and immediately notice the empty pitcher on his table. He waves me over, a strained smile on his haggard face. Louis wants you to believe he shrugs off his job, but he’s a bad actor on top of a shitty stage.

  I sit down in the dark room and examine him closely as he gulps a shot of Wild Turkey.

  “Let me guess, our boy left nothing behind.”

  I say nothing.

  He takes a drag on his cigarette. He looks around the room and gives me a shitty grin. He takes another drag and shrugs his shoulders. “Well? You gonna talk to me or what?”

  I say nothing.

  He stares at me, the grin still plastered on his face. “What is it, Clinical? You want a drink?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Louis?”

  The smile vanishes on his face. He looks dead serious now. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We did find something at the scene.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he says, beginning to relax. “DNA?”

  “That’s right,” I say, “on a cigarette butt of all things.”

  “Fucking moron,” Louis says.

  “Come outside,” I say. “There’s something I have to show you.”

  He looks nervous; his cop instinct kicks in. “You’re acting funny, Clinical. Is something wrong?”

  “You can walk outside with me or I’ll drag your ass out. That’s your decision.”

  “Huh?”

  I stand up, grab his wrist and fling him from the table. He falls on the floor and stands up quickly, peanut shells hanging from his face.

  “What the fuck?”

  I’m through talking with him and snap his head back with a quick uppercut. He’s on the floor again, and I drag him out the door, cursing and bleeding.

  “Get up.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Get up!” I grab his comb over and jerk him to his feet. I pull a crumpled ball of paper from my coat pocket and hand it to him.

  He unwrinkles it and reads his death sentence once; twice. His face is a bundle of energy. He looks at me with pleading eyes.

  “I didn’t kill no one!” he screams. “You’ve gotta believe me, Clinical. You know me, man; I couldn’t do something like this! You know me!”

  “That’s what they all say, Louis.”

  “Clinical, I’ve got a wife and a two-year-old child. He needs his father! I can’t die! He needs me goddamn it!”

  “Louis Sanchez, by the power of Fleur de Dew, you have been sentenced to death . . .”

  “Just let me go, Clinical! I’ll disappear, man. They’ll never find me. You know I know how to disappear. Drop off the face of the . . .” he darts past me as fast as he can.

  Louis knows what I am and what I’m capable of. He’s seen me work hundreds of times in the past. He’s putting a good bit of distance between us as I watch him go, heading over a barren field. It doesn’t matter how far ahead he gets; I will catch him, and I will kill him.

  My movements are like the wind, and I am running beside him only moments later. He sees me and falls to the muddy ground, gasping for air.

  “Please . . . let me go.”

  I grab him around the neck and lift him off the ground. He’s choking, arms and legs flailing. He grabs my top hat and yanks it off my head. The venomous snakes attack his face, and I have to throw him down. He looks at me, his face bloody and beaten, knowing he’s a dead man.

  I put my hand on his skin, so I can feel its warmth. I lift my sung
lasses and feel warm, soft flesh go ice cold and hard. A stone statue sculpted by the hands of God. The perfect art piece: a sad looking man, kneeling before a hideous gorgon.

  Sometimes, for reasons unknown, they may come back. Sometimes a person can escape an eternity of stone and return to flesh and bone. Louis will not be returning. I send a swift kick to his head and the sculpture cracks: the head hits the soft earth and rolls across the field.

  I walk away from my partner and drive off into oppressive darkness. The car’s almost out of gas, so I stop at a filling station and empty out the ashtray filled with Louis’ old cigarette butts.

  As I’m filling the vehicle with regular unleaded, an angel faced sweetheart steps out of the convenience store with a plastic bag in her hand. I wave at her and she flashes me a glowing smile. I quickly return the nozzle and get inside the car.

  I think about that little kid at the AA meeting, and his words strike a chord within. “Just move on,” he said. “Just move on.” That is exactly what I had planned on doing when I framed Louis by planting his cigarette butt beside my victim.

  But seeing this lovely girl, this child of warm flesh and warm blood, I realize I cannot at this moment leave town. Not yet. Not until I can feel human one more time.

  I reach inside my pocket and am comforted immediately by the sturdy bone handle of my pocket knife. It’s a good fucking knife. Made in the USA.

  Gorgons are lonely, lowly creatures that long for the comforting warmth of a human touch. There’s something about pressing my cold, dead skin against a beautiful woman that makes me feel . . . normal. It takes awhile after they die for the flesh to cool. What’s even more important is that I can remove my shades and stare deep into lovely human eyes, and they don’t fade to cold, gray stone.

  You can’t turn the dead into stone.

  The angel faced girl turns out of the parking lot in her green Mustang, and I cut on my signal light, looking both ways before I pull out and follow her home.

  THE END

  Want more Jimmy M.F. Pudge?

  Look for Bad Billy, dropping September 2011.