“You drove better out of your mind.” She whispered.
“It’s that tree branch. I knew it.” Jake pointed at Tyler. “Stay!”
She replied. “Woof. Woof. Yes, Caesar.”
“What could Stew want with a patrol car? It is meant to be conspicuous.”
Tyler shook her head. “Need to know. I’m not a needy gal.”
Jake stood to the side of the door frame. “A real free spirit, yeah.” He scanned the old overgrown broken concrete road leading to the bunker. There were tire marks on it.
“I could float away sometimes.” Tyler stated.
“You and my mother.” Jake heard an engine in the distance. It wasn’t his patrol car. He knew his machine’s every sound.
“I liked your mother.”
“Yeah, she’s the life of the party.” The engine sound got louder. An unknown car was coming this direction. Jake walked over to the pile of trash and retrieved the crowbar. “I’m going to barrow this for a few minutes.” He held the crowbar toward Tyler. “See how borrowing works.”
Tyler shrugged. “It’s a cultural thing.”
Jake laughed. “It is not.” He got behind the door frame. “You keep quiet.” He pointed at Tyler.
She shrugged again. “Is too.”
Jake extended the baton he carried on his belt. “Quiet! Right?”
“Woof! Woof!” Tyler barked quietly.
Jake glanced out the door. The car was coming up the hill. He ducked back behind the frame.
The car pulled up. The engine revved and then shut off. Guys were laughing. Jake looked over at Tyler. He put his index finger over his lips for her to be silent. She blew a kiss back at him.
“Honey? We’re home!” One of the guys called out. The other laughed.
As the first guy entered the door, Jake hooked his ankle with the bent end of the crowbar and flipped the guy on the ground. At the same time, Jake hit the second guy across the nose with the baton. Both guys yelled out on pain, simultaneously.
Jake kicked the first guy, who was face down on the concrete floor, in the coccyx. The guy screamed louder with the increase in pain. Jake hit the second guy in the throat with the baton and then grabbed him by the shirt throwing him on top of the first guy. Jake pushed the baton onto the back of the second guy’s skull and searched for weapons. He found an automatic pistol and a hunting knife. He threw them into the trash pile. He searched the first guy too, finding two revolvers. They too ended up in the trash pile.
Jake rolled the top guy over. He pushed the bent end of the crowbar into the guy’s sternum. He stepped on the back of the knee of the first guy who, despite being face down on to concrete, was still groaning loudly. “Hi Stew. Where’s my car?”
“What the fuck!” Stew finally muttered.
“Yeah, what the fuck Stew?” Jake pushed the baton into the middle of Stew’s back. “What did you do with my patrol car?”
“Tyler! You bitch!” Stew yelled.
“You Bastard! Back.” Tyler replied.
“Answer me, Steward!” Jake stepped down harder on both guys.
“Hey, Stew answer him.” Whined the second guy.
“Yeah, answer him Stewy. Also, where’s the money?” Tyler laughed.
“You guys rob some place in my patrol car?” Jake pushed down harder. “Dammit. If there are bullet holes in it. I’ll make some in you.”
“No. No.” Answered the second guy. “No one suspected the patrol car. No one followed. Stew was right.”
Tyler laughed. “Surprises me!”
“Shut up, both ya!” Stew muttered.
Jake’s phone rang. Thankfully, it wasn’t his mother. It was the county sheriff. “Hello Sheriff.”
“Jake, yeah. We found your vehicle. You weren’t in it. Just thought I would call to see if you lost your hat again?”
“Oh thanks sheriff. No, no I have my hat. Thanks. I have three other things for ya though.”
“Ya always givin’ me presents Jake. I’m not your boss. Ha!”
“Well, I need a favor.”
“Thought so. See what a detective I am. Deduce. Deduce. Deduce.” The sheriff laughed loudly.
“Thanks Holmes. Could you bring my vehicle up to the old bunker on the point?” Jake stood up straight. His knee and back were complaining about his position.
“So that’s where you runned off to. Funny place for a lunch time quickie.” The sheriff thought himself very funny.
“Yeah, with my crime sluts, as my mother calls them.” Jake laughed.
“Hey! Watch the name calling.” Tyler whined.
“I’ll be looking forward to seeing you then, sheriff.” Jake clicked off the phone and pulled out his service revolver. “You guys are going to stay right there but hug each other tight.” Tyler laughed almost as loud as the sheriff had. “No, really! Hug each other tight. A big hug! Yes. Do it!”
“Those are my cuffs.” Jake called out to the deputy putting Tyler in his back seat. “I’ll pick them up later.”
The Sheriff was standing behind Jake muttering. “I don’t see it. Nope, but it must be there.”
“What? Are you admiring my backside? Sexual harassment goes both ways.” Jake chuckled.
“No, I can see that.” The sheriff clapped Jake on the shoulder. “I was lookin’ for the ‘hit me in the head’ sign. It’s becomin’ a regular thing with you.” He laughed.
“Well, sheriff, at least, I get noticed.”
The sheriff clapped him on the shoulder again. “What I went into law enforcement for too. Yeah. The attention. Ha!”
13
A BLUED ARMADA COMETH by Graham Wooding
The gates to Swanforth mansion creaked in the slight gust coming from the ocean a short distance away. The rusted coating peeling to show pinkish rust, a sort of fleshy looking under side, it would remain pretty and ignored until exactly the time the world would end.
The path was of course overgrown, as were the bushes leading out from the gate pillars and around the housing property, its shambolic features suffering from perpetual morning hair. The Mansion itself was not quite so vagabond. White paint had been applied at great expense in the nineteen eighties when it was given title. A foreign ancestor of the man of the house had the same equally pompous title adorning his own residence. Industrial grade lacquer helped defend the brick and its crusting glue against the often whiplash wind seemingly thrown by the gulf. The remote location defended from the annoyance of lesser peoples.
The houses windows were greyed from years of filth and three were cracked from contact with Mrs. Herman’s head whilst she was being brutally incapacitated in the kitchen. Byron looked up from his dominant position at her feet and over the brutalized body belonging to a ruler of nothing no more. He looked deep into her eyes, her head was caved in, three windows and a pick axe handle in the face tends to result in such atrocities.
Now for her legs.
The sadistic garden man looked along her slim body, a shiver had set in and her toes had curled up, a side effect of the massive unequivocal pain she now knew existed. He knew he was alone; a whole green swampy world lay between the house and other souls.
He twisted her legs until her whole body joined in and turned. Face down she could only whimper, her thoughts congregating in a miniscule part of her brain, the caved part of her skull was bruising by now and she could only hold her head up as the pain of contact with the floor bore a path to her inner sensors begging a furious NO!
He pulled her to the back of the house to an empty room once allotted the title of dining room. Here he broke her legs with the pick axe handle, an old foe in the employ of Mrs. Bitch’s garden and now a new wooden friend for the fuming Byron. The screams were muffled; a silver spoon childhood was not good preparation for a triumph of wickedness, her mouth unable to take commands from her battered brain.
His mission, half complete would pause now and begin again in a jiffy as upstairs the man of the house was in the bathroom for what was to be his last showe
r. A cleansing for what he was about to receive, the gift of eternal hells. Suddenly the operatic music blasting from a bedroom stopped. A noise that masked the horror below cut off mid flow and the squeaks of a tap or two replaced it. Byron’s ears on full power took all the sounds in.
Byron was a skilled man, a turbulent dalliance with his ground maintenance buddies and his newfound church of hidden sadism had left an indelible mark. He was surgical with his invisible theatre. He also saw the filthy cops at his church tent that day not long gone. They were cocky sniveling cunts, hiding behind sunglasses and shiny badges, eating the provisions provided by the lord for his flock, not two cheaply suited heathens gossiping like the unsullied girls they hunted for lust. Byron could smell them a mile off. Their sexual habits masked by the badged virtuousness of their chosen profession.
Byron had been considered slow in the eyes of the system and his filial overlords. He had however proven quick in the silent and dark arts of ritualistic murder. His daddy was too familiar and eventually too powerful, leaving the lonesome young Byron to his eventuality, a regime of cruel philosophy learned from the vulpine doings of false ecclesiastical abusers. Indelible atrocities lived everyday inside his skull and what was left of his heart. His was a cliché lot, obese and solitary he fitted the weird type exactly. But he didn’t fit into it. It fitted into him.
Time was an irrelevance to the killer, he existed around times periphery and powers core, no old rich lady was going to ever bother him, but the enemy was passing by in their shiny machines.
And now for the husband.
He was to join his Ladyship in defeated stiffness then shit stained shrinking. Then a maggot festival would dance its evil dance, it must be evil, nothing else would dance at a time like this.
The pick axe handle was for fun, a twisted theatre piece, earthly dalliance growing from boorish groundhog, the killer wanted what all god loving creatures wanted, freedom for their souls, and he would get his by balancing the brutal gifts of the good lord and wreaking vengeful campaigns on the Louisiana canvas with Satan’s wrath. Evils terminal for the terminal human hid its self in amongst the folk living in its marshy organics and deaden trees and fields of feeble corn storks. Broken children littered the area. Victims were ten a penny and they would never speak of the times gone; Byron couldn’t approach the reality of his. He could only share it, the burden too much, he must rid himself or worse things happen, his mind contracts and his blood moves in gulps. The headaches like the universe squeezing through his ears. Then comes the road trips and the digging and burning.
The blued armada continues.
Winning victory back from this family was not Byron’s only goal. His sadistic yearnings born from the youth room with its black light graffiti and his lessons in how to pleasure god’s messengers and circumnavigate reason, would become a reality at last, a last sonnet in this the very garden of his life’s work. The lady of the house had basked in its glory unawares that he was building it for now not for her. His tenure of digging the precious grounds had afforded him the access he wanted, the immunity from guilt was a medal from the days of yonder. The daughter of the Herman couple was, is and had always been his passion. He would taste her blood then offering his dark master the rest of her, he would join the nether world a triumphant lunatic.
The double glass doors were open and the disabled pair of shivering tyrants lay on the floor heads turned to the world, a scream and thump from a bedroom. Then a limp body fell and thudded heavily on the patio. The daughter made no sound. Children should be seen and not heard. Even in the face of death she was a perfect daughter. Shock surging through the only energized part of the dying parent’s fractured bodies, the eyes. All four widened, pupils shrinking into the future. The legs of the garden body moved. Then a hulking figure jumped down, landing awkwardly and nagging his leg, the slight on his macho image a fleeting issue as he was so close to the finale, just too lust fueled and semi-automatic. The parents would stare out at the flood lit garden, its expanse so big the night hid the boundary.
Again the Pickaxe handle.
The devil had done his dead. The stricken couples eyes watered and blinked, they could shut the quivering lids as much as possible, toes curled evermore they would suffocate looking at their hubris and their precious Eden-ish landscape draped in her blood, her lifeless body the centerpiece. Byron looked up and across the green. He had positioned the flood light to catch the drama and spill it daliesque on the garage wall with whitened fresh paint as per the plan. The shadows showing the two figures in flat blackened shape, then one shape grew horns and chants and howls, gouging true evil from its kraken depths. A short frisson of time would follow and see them through the welcoming parade.
The Blued light armada still cometh.
They were passing in the land bound distance in front the house, he knew only a matter of time before the devils came charging at him, hours, days, weeks, it could be a jazz trumpet solo of length. He would take his life before they took his freedom and answer the call to depart this broken world.
He wasn’t sure the world had that many cars. Let alone in one place, he only knew the trucks of family members and walking. They seemed to Byron like flashing ants swarming a struggling fly. Byron didn’t know the exact discovery those detectives made but he knew the occupants of the house for which the blued armada aimed, he knew them well. Whatever the reason the cops were magnetized, they were attracted to a piece of land down inland from the hill built colonial house of doom where Byron sat. The roads to the fly lit up like topographic veins.
Byron was watching from a porch in a chair rocking gently with victory. The chair had brought many bad times, as Mrs. Herman chose this antique piece to berate him in times of her loneliness. The family façade worked for those looking in but Byron had a close up and Mr. Herman was weak but cruel, a temper stemming from his lack of all else, Mrs. on the other hand was iron fisted and cold. Byron hated them for how they treated him and he hated them for how lonely and sad they made their daughter feel. Byron was not a man you want to be hated by. Now he was forced to bring the curtain down on his masterpiece early. The officers of whatever would find a monument to his existence in due course. He wanted it appreciated and poured over by the teams of scientist types who combed the crime scenes of the Yellow King.
And still Blue veins pulsated to the farm house.
His passion of grabbing victims and setting up kill rooms was over, no more could he exist; there was no point carrying on. He was ready for the ascension.
Before not long past, Byron had stalked the duo in the church tent set up in a field. The minister gave a stirring delivery of Christ’s work, a eulogy of Byron’s inner most now’s. His faith had been bound and sullied into serious darkness’s, but Jesus kept him safe. The cops walked off to the quiet side to chat with some of the congregation. Pretty girls in dresses took a walk with the tedious looking of the pair. Byron had boiled his emotions in the bushes near and far from the strolling meat. Byron watched the girls humming their goodness’s at the cop, he was shattered inside and confused deadly so.
The blued gets bluer still.
He did his kills up country; the detectives were on for a local killer. Byron pondered and chuckled at his lack of plurality. Many were dead by now, by many hands, the theatre at the house must have been spectacular like a twisted satanic circus from Paris or somewhere exotic.
Byron rocked the chair and guzzled whiskey, a bottle kept in the basement for special occasions and slipped into preacher mode. His mouth saying words itself, his eyes went back and back, white reddened balls replaced the norm. His chubby face wobbling, the sweat formed by lust only now dripping down his grayed face.
“Dark corners he knows your thoughts. The face you wear is not your own, God knows I’m coming. God welcomes me.”
Byron prayed for his soul and prayed for his arrival in the next kingdom. His work was not done yet; the lord was calling him for more.
“Don’t let em divide yo
u from what your heart knows.”
The blued armada was thinning by now. All in the one place the flashing blue machines were stationary. The house that evil built was swarmed. The fly dead by now, Byron could only pray it suffered. His earthly torment bound by the deeds of the dwellers. Byron had snuck down not long ago. His body was trembling with the prospect of being caught. The fat mother of the house was tenacious in protecting the goings on. The beast would terrorize Byron’s thoughts, every breath in was weighted by horror and every breath out congealed with toxic emotions. He had found a small outhouse with a chained human, so deteriorated he couldn’t work out the gender. He ran. No matter how expert he was at his thing, he would never match the people and the house or the memories.
His end was nigh anyway, now more so the blued armada warmed up.
14
THE LORD PROVIDES by Christopher Brosnahan
Things happen to kids around this area.
I went out onto the stage and gave the usual show. I made the blind see, the crippled walk and gave those with terminal cancer a clean bill of health. I laid hands on dozens of people and I walked away from that night with thousands of dollars.
I hadn’t been around the Mississippi for a while. I’d avoided it.
Because every time I came here, I saw her again. At some point in the night, I’d lay my hands on someone, and when I lifted them again, I’d see her looking up at me, with that straw red hair around her face and those glassy blue eyes. I’d see her, and then I’d close my eyes for a second and she’d be gone and I’d know that it would take some extra liquor before I slept that night.
I thought back to when I’d started in this calling. This vocation. I thought back to Pastor Dean, my mentor, who I tried not to think of, but I always thought of when I was back in Louisiana.
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