THUGLIT Issue Nineteen

by Mike Miner

  The storekeeper's shoes stopped in mid-squeak.

  The Zippo shook in Donnie's hand as he torched the snot rag fuse.

  The shotgun roared. A tower of Heinz cans exploded on the shelf above Donnie's head. Spaghetti sauce sprayed down over him, nearly snuffing out the flame. The storekeeper reloaded, feeding shells into the shotgun like a degenerate gambler playing the slots. Donnie mopped the spaghetti sauce from his eyes and then leapt out from cover. They faced each other like Old West gunfighters. A tin of beans rolled like tumbleweed across the aisle between them. The storekeeper saw the Molotov cocktail in Donnie's hands. His mouth dropped open in shock. He started raising the shotgun.

  Donnie Hail Mary-ed the burning bottle…

  And then he watched in horror as it sailed harmlessly over the storekeeper's head.

  The bottle shattered against the steel shutters behind him and burst into flames. The storekeeper stood silhouetted before a wall of fire like a frog-headed demon from hell. Oblivious to the danger behind him, the storekeeper sneered at Donnie as he aimed the shotgun, his finger teasing the trigger—as flames started licking the fireworks display.

  There was a blinding white flash and then the fireworks boomed like Hiroshima. Instantly, the storekeeper became a human fireball, the blast blowing him off his feet and hurling him up the aisles like a missile. He sailed straight past Donnie and crashed into the STAFF ONLY door, thudding to the floor like a piece of barbecue you toss to the dog.

  The front of the store was now an inferno. Rockets ignited and screeched from the flames, setting shelves ablaze, the sound deafening inside the steel-shuttered store. The place was fast becoming a death trap.

  Donnie crouched beside the charred storekeeper. He took off his coat and smothered the flames of the man's burning cardigan. Wrestling the hoop from his belt, Donnie juggled the red-hot keys, yelping as they scorched his palms. Wrapping his coat around his hand like an oven glove, he unlocked the STAFF ONLY door to reveal another locked door marked DELIVERY, and stairs leading down to the basement. Donnie knelt in front of the second door and sorted through the jumble of keys, trying to find the key that would fit the lock—

  Something squeaked behind him.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the storekeeper staggering to his feet. His face was flame-grilled hamburger. The night-goggles were melted onto his head like devil horns. He propped himself up in the doorway, smoke coiling from the scorched rags of his cardigan. Before Donnie could stand, the Arab lunged at him, slamming the shotgun across his throat, pinning him back against the door. The fire had fused the shotgun to his hands. The melted flesh of his fingers was webbed across the stock as he crushed Donnie's larynx.

  Choking, Donnie grappled the shotgun and shoved the guy back. They stumbled across the landing, tumbling down the stone steps and thudding onto the concrete floor of the basement. Landing on top of Donnie, the storekeeper jammed the shotgun back across his throat and pressed down with all his weight. Donnie spluttered and bucked, the key hoop in his hand jangling wildly as he flailed at the man's face before he slammed a long mortise key through the left lens of the Arab's night-goggles, driving it deep into the eye socket. He then wrenched the key in the man's eyeball like he was forcing open a rusty lock.

  The storekeeper gave a hog-like squeal. His head jerked back, the keys dangling from his face like bloody jewelry. Yolky yellow gunk gushed from the shattered lens of his goggles, spraying across Donnie's face. Gagging, Donnie hammered the heel of his hand against the key, burying it deeper in the Arab's eye. The storekeeper shrieked, lurching to his feet and staggering blindly about the basement. Donnie scrabbled back across the floor, spitting eyeball fluid and heaving for breath.

  The Arab crashed against a stock shelf, cans and jars clattering and smashing on the floor around him. He reached up to remove the keys from his eye, before realizing he couldn't—not with the shotgun welded to his hands. His arms twitched pathetically. Once, twice… Then all the fight seemed to drain right out of him. His body sagged, and he slumped down on a camp bed parked against the cinderblock wall, the springs squealing like his squeaky shoes.

  Huddled on the bed, the man glowered at Donnie with his one good eye, the other a ruined hollow of red and yellow slime. He slowly raised his left knee. Donnie watched in disbelief as the man planted the sole of his shoe against the length of the shotgun and sucked a few shallow breaths…before he flexed his leg and the melted flesh of his palms ripped free from the stock with a sound like Velcro tearing. The shotgun clattered to the floor in front of him, but he was too weak to reach for it.

  With raw and bloody hands, the Arab grasped the hoop of keys dangling from his face. Donnie covered his mouth with his hand—nearly begged the guy to stop—but he couldn't look away. The Arab yanked on the hoop. The key ripped from his eye socket with a wet popping sound. He gave a yelp and fainted dead away, flopping back on the camp bed with the keys clutched tightly in his fist.

  Donnie almost fainted himself; his head was spinning as he staggered to his feet. He peeled off his ski mask and covered his nose and mouth to keep from choking on the thick black smoke belching down into the basement through the open trapdoor above them. Fiery ash rained down onto the mattress. It wouldn't be long before the fire spread downstairs. Already the basement was baking like a pizza oven.

  He took a wary step towards the storekeeper, eyeing the keys clutched in the man's fist. It looked like the guy was out for the count. All it took was getting burned half to death, blasted into a wall, thrown down a staircase and stabbed in the eye. But Donnie wasn't about to take any chances. This guy was like the fucking Terminator.

  He kicked the shotgun beyond the Arab's reach. It skidded across the floor and clanged against the legs of a workbench. Donnie paused when he noticed some kind of shrine on the wall above the workbench.

  The cluster of photos showed a young woman. The storekeeper's wife, Donnie figured. She was beautiful (even in a burning building, Donnie could appreciate a piece of ass) and very pregnant. Beneath the shrine sat a chunky security monitor—but it wasn't showing the store go up in flames. Instead it was hooked to an old VCR player running a short loop of silent film.

  The grainy black and white footage was timecoded in the bottom corner, dated six years ago. It showed the storekeeper's pregnant wife as she stood in terror behind the shop counter. She was opening the cash register for a jittery punk wearing a stocking mask that mashed his features. He was clutching a pistol in a sideways gangsta-grip. The cash drawer slid open. The punk's pistol spat fire. The back of the woman's long hair flailed as her brains splattered the cigarette rack. Bloody cartons of smokes rained from the rack in a waterfall. The woman crumpled to the floor. Leaning over the counter, the punk raided the cash register, pocketing bills as he fled the store.

  The footage looped and played again. And again.

  Donnie looked at the cushioned chair parked in front of the monitor, the cushion cratered by the weight of the husband, and the weight of the grief pressing down on him. How long had the storekeeper sat here? Hour after hour…day after day…watching again and again as his pregnant wife was gunned down by a two-bit stickup man. A piece of shit like Donnie.

  Before the footage could loop and play again, Donnie switched off the monitor. He saw his reflection in the blank TV screen, and was about to look away in shame, sickened at the sight of himself. Then something in the screen's reflection caught his eye. A sudden movement behind him.

  He wheeled around in time to see the storekeeper swinging a fire extinguisher by the hose like a makeshift mace-and-chain. The metal butt of the fire extinguisher scythed across his jaw, smashing teeth and bone, and Donnie dropped as though he'd been shot, like the storekeeper's wife, out cold before he hit the deck.

  When he came to, Donnie found himself facedown on the cracked concrete floor. His ankles and wrists were bound tightly with duct tape, hogtied behind him. He raised his throbbing head weakly off the floor. A rope of congealed blood drooled
from his mouth, puddling like black treacle on the concrete. His vision blurred in and out of focus, but he could see he was still in the basement.

  The room was fogged with smoke that was starting to clear. The fire upstairs had been extinguished. The storekeeper must have doused the flames while Donnie was unconsciousness. Donnie listened intently for the wail of EMS sirens outside. Surely someone must have reported World War III breaking out in the KWIK STOP. But all he could hear was the sound of someone digging.

  A section of the basement's concrete floor had been broken, probably by the sledgehammer propped against the wall, a slab of stone levered up to reveal the dirt below. The storekeeper was using a shovel to dig a hole in the plot of earth, piling up the dirt beside a steel drum with a skull and crossbones symbol and a label marked LYE. The Arab's wounded hands were swathed in bandages. He grimaced in pain as he worked the shovel. Whenever the pain seemed too much to bear, he would glance at the security monitor on the workbench, watching the footage of his dying wife again, and summon the strength to continue digging.

  When he was done, he climbed from the hole and loomed over Donnie.

  Donnie tried to beg, but his shattered jaw and blood-clogged mouth allowed only a pitiful choked whimper. The Arab planted a foot on him, his shoes giving the last squeak Donnie would ever hear, as he kicked him into the grave.

  Donnie landed on his back, his bound arms and legs twisting painfully beneath him with the impact. He watched in helpless terror as the storekeeper began shoveling the dirt over him. The last thing he saw was what looked like another shrine on the wall directly above him. No photos, this time. Donnie thought this one looked less like a shrine than a trophy wall. Nailed to the cinderblocks was a stocking mask, a bandana, and three ski masks, one of them black wool, with red trim around the eyes and mouth, and not so lucky after all.

  The Last Time We Saw Bears in Lake Castor

  by Eryk Pruitt

  Frances Mabley bent at the back over the only empty table at the All-Niter Cafe so she could reach the stain on the far corner with a dishrag. It was dinner rush, so she had no time to mind after the cramps festering her feet, no time to sneak that cigarette she felt was long overdue. No time especially for Roy Rains' shit and she thought to slap him every time he raised his finger to the air and asked for another cup of coffee.

  "You got a wooden leg, Roy?" she asked as zipped past him to fetch the coffeepot.

  "Just nervous is all."

  "Then don't you reckon coffee is the last thing you ought to hanker after?" She filled his cup, then leaned across the counter until she was inches from his face. "You going to tell me what went on out there?"

  "You know I can't say nothing, Frannie," he whispered. "Not until I talk to the Sheriff."

  "It ain't like folks don't already know about it," she whispered back. "I heard his throat got tore out."

  "Don't be ridiculous." Roy sipped his coffee. "Didn't nothing like that happen."

  "But he's definitely dead?"

  Roy squinted in her direction. Creased the corners of his mouth until it disappeared into the many cracks of his face. He wasn't giving her anything. She arched her eyebrows like she could care less and carried the coffeepot by the crook of her pinky over to the corner booth where sat Jack Linden and his grandson.

  "You need another Coke, sugar?" she asked the grandson. She hovered the coffeepot just over Jack's cup, but he waved her off. "Y'all want anything else today?"

  "We're fine," he said, but took hold of her wrist. "Say, what gives with the deputy yonder?"

  She slipped free of his grip. "What do you mean, what gives?"

  "I mean, his get-up."

  Frances knew what he meant. Roy normally would roll through the All-Niter in uniform. Wrinkled maybe, but always in his khakis. Not today. Today he dressed in hunting gear. A bright orange vest over camo fatigues and a stained feed store hat. Badge pinned fast to his chest.

  "He's been in the woods all afternoon," she said.

  "Ah, so it's true." Jack Linden's voice took on a reverent tone.

  "What's true, Grandpa?" asked the kid.

  "We don't know nothing right now," said Frances. Rather than deal further with it, she slapped the check face-down onto the table. She'd come back later for the dishes. Instead, she hustled over to collect payment from Captain Munson, sitting with her brother, Able Riggs, and Gil Tanner.

  "Keep the change, doll." Munson never so much as looked her way as she scooped the bills and coins into her cupped palm. Able winked her way, but it was Tanner who leaned forward in the booth.

  "Hey Frannie, when you get a second can you do me a favor?"

  She stuck out a hip. "I won't have a second for a good while, so make it a good one."

  "Run ask Roy why he's too good to sit with us tonight." He snickered with the others. "Is it because we ain't wearing our duck hunting gear? Because I can run home and get my waders and my—"

  "He's expecting the Sheriff," she said. "Y'all say you're his friends, but all y'all do is sit back and laugh when he gets in trouble."

  "You ever think we're just laughing," offered up Able Riggs, "and maybe Roy just gets in plenty trouble?"

  Frances had more to say, but had used up all the time she'd allotted for bullshit. Instead she took Munson's empty coffee cup and hustled around back to drop it in the dish pit.

  There she found old Larry, rinsing chili and ketchup and whatnot off plates before sliding them into the dishwasher. She took the cigarette from his mouth and sucked the last two drags down to the filter.

  "It's a mess out there, ain't it?" he asked.

  "You're telling me." She dropped the cigarette to the floor tile and stubbed it out with the toe of her shoe. "It's like everybody and their momma is out tonight."

  "Can't say I blame them," said Larry. "They been snowed in for three days. They're probably happy to be out of the house."

  "They can be happy over at the pizza restaurant for all I care," said Frances. "This is bullshit."

  "You think it was murder?" asked Larry.

  "I don't think nothing except I got too much to do to sit around and gossip."

  Around the corner, she heard the cowbell on the door ring—so she sighed, collected herself, and hopped to it. Came around the corner and back into the dining room and stopped suddenly to see Sheriff Lorne Axel standing by the cigarette machine, having sucked all the air out of the room. What forks were being used to scrape on plates stopped. Conversation suddenly shuttered, and not a soul moved as all eyes in the building were on either the Sheriff or the Deputy.

  Sheriff Axel removed his hat and held it by the brim at his thigh, then scanned the room.

  "Howdy, Sheriff," said Roy Rains. He spun his stool when Lorne approached, but didn't get up. "Pull up a stool?"

  The sheriff eyed the other men along the counter. "We better get a table, Roy."

  Frances felt for Roy. She'd known him nearly all her life, him and her brother running thick as thieves since they wore Varsity orange. She'd tell herself he didn't deserve half the shit they heaped on him, but she'd be a liar. A bald-faced liar. So she gave them a minute before stepping up alongside the table and asking could she fetch something for the Sheriff.

  "Coffee," he said. "Thank you."

  "You want a menu, Sheriff?" she asked.

  "No ma'am, thank you."

  Rains lifted that fat finger of his again and asked, "You care if I get a warm-up, Frannie?"

  Instead of answering, she toddled again toward the kitchen.

  "What do you think's going on?" asked Larry as he flipped over one burger with a spatula before pressing it down atop another. "You think Roy's going to catch hell?"

  "I think the richest guy in the whole county turned up dead and froze in one of those hollers and somebody's bound to catch it." She crooked her elbow and held the coffee pot about shoulder-high. "Might as well be Roy."

  They didn't mind her as she set down the saucer, then the cup, then filled it with brew. The
y continued on as if she wasn't even there.

  Sheriff Axel was in the middle of saying: "—and you ain't spending the day at the deer lease. You're on patrol. You got to dress like it."

  "We was on a search-and-rescue in the woods, Sheriff," said Roy. "Sam leases that land out to folks hunting deer and I didn't want nobody squeezing off a shot at me while we was trying to fetch him out the hollow."

  The sheriff dropped his head into his hands and said something sounded like "I need to know you've got this under control, Roy." Frances didn't dare stick around for more. She headed to the far booth to collect Jack Linden's money—no tip—then carried the dirties again to the dish pit.

  "Holy shit," she said when she took a moment to breathe.

  From that point forward, wouldn't nobody leave her alone. What were they talking about? Did they say it was Old Man McCarthy? Was he dead? If he was dead, had he been killed? She liked to get nothing done, on account of everybody'd already heard something.

  "I heard he was bled out," said Marge Ricker with a mouth full of french fries.

  "My brother-in-law works down at the bank," explained Stella Henry, who drank her iced tea with her goddamn pinky out like high society. Her iced tea. "He said the girl who cleans McCarthy's house for him came to work and saw he hadn't been home since Friday last, before the snow fell. Said last she saw him, he was headed out to walk his property. Said his bed ain't been slept in, nor had his dinners been touched."