by Jeff Vrolyks
“It goes where I go, buddy,” Lucas said.
Garret shrugged and tossed the smokes to his friend, grabbed the eighteen-pack of Coors from the floorboard and closed the door behind him.
“Leave it open, dude. I’m gonna leave the radio on.” Lucas cranked up the radio and walked away, both doors open. The girls sang along to an Aerosmith song.
“Ladies, let’s get the game started,” Luke said excitedly.
“Yeah! Give me another wine cooler, Garrecus!”
“You drank them all on the way up here,” Garret replied. “All we have is beer.” The girls didn’t seem to notice the difference and accepted the beer offered to them. Lucas and the Greek mythological creature Garrecus made their way to a little patch of matted grass and sat down. Around them was a sprawl of underbrush and tall dead grass, some Manzanita and a few sycamore and poplar trees. A curtain of grass lined the bluff’s precipice.
“Have a seat, ladies.” Lucas produced a deck of cards from his flannel shirt pocket and explained the rules of the game, which were as sophisticated and complex as the girls were virtuous.
“I pass a card to everyone. Whoever has the lowest card loses, they gotta take a drink. Ace is the lowest.” And with that, they began. Lucas put a cigarette in his mouth and chucked one at Garret, who nodded his appreciation.
“Woooo! I’m so wasted!” wailed April, or Jenny, or Amy, or whatever the hell her name was. The other girl laughed and joined in. “Ooowwoohooo! I’m toasted!” It was spring break in Vacaville.
Lucas smiled at his buddy, and not because he was humored. The night was going to have a happy ending, which is always cause for a smile.
“Luscious, can I get one of them too?” asked a girl, prompting the other to follow suit. He tossed them each a smoke, and after he lit his and Garret’s, he tossed the lighter to the girl who sat nearest him.
Lucas shuffled the cards and passed out a single card face down to all four participants. “Okay, flip ‘em over and let’s see who’s drinking.”
“Ooo, I hope it’s me! I’m thirsty!” said a girl before sipping her beer anyway.
The other girl chortled and exclaimed, “Oh my god, guys! Guess what I just did?”
They all heard her, but nobody was interested enough to respond.
She graciously let them know anyway. “I just lit the wrong end of my cigarette!” She cackled like something out of a National Geographic show.
The cold breeze picked up, rustling the knee-high grass outside their circle. An earthy organic smell was mingled with cigarette smoke. After a few rounds of the game, Lucas flicked his cigarette to the dirt trail behind him and took the joint from behind his ear and lit it. He puffed until the tip glowed a mesmerizing orange, took a deep drag and passed it to Garret, who puffed on it before offering it to the girl nearest him, who was so hammered that she had to think about what was happening before accepting. She took a puff, inhaling very little of it, and passed it to her friend, who mimicked the process. Garret wondered which of the girls would be beneath him tonight. Lucas had long been wondering the same thing before concluding that it didn’t matter. They were both sevens—nines after this eighteen-pack was bellied.
Garret possessed a three of diamonds (the lowest of the lot) and thus lost the round and took a drink.
“How you feeling over there, bud?” Lucas asked.
Garret was searching for the moon but couldn’t find it. It was surely a thin crescent (a new moon, if he remembered correctly), as it was dark out. “Doin’ good.” He was high and his smile confirmed it.
They each took another puff from the joint. Lucas licked his palm and snuffed out the half-smoked joint, pocketed it in his breast pocket. Grass-squelching footfalls bridged the gap between a commercial and song. Lucas perked up and glanced over his shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Garret replied.
“Whose turn is it to drink?” slurred a girl, unsure what game she was playing. Lucas stood up and scanned his environment. Garret wondered what he was looking for.
“I think those bushes moved.” He gave it another second. “Maybe it was the wind.” Lucas relinquished his concern and sat back down, Indian style. He passed a card face down to each, lit a cig, and sat the pack and lighter between Garret and himself. He took a drag and flipped his card over: ace of spades. Garret flipped his card over: ace of spades. The two girls flipped their cards over: ace of spades and ace of spades, respectively.
“What the hell?” Lucas turned the deck over, finding a full deck of the same card.
“Damnit, I lost again!” Garret whined. “I’m drinking way more than the rest of you. That’s bullshit.” But he was laughing. It was happy bullshit.
“The fuck?” Lucas slammed the deck down. “We all have the same damned card! How the hell is that possible? Did you switch the deck? Anybody?”
“Dude, you are high, aren’t you?” Garret said cautiously. The image of a handgun in the glove box was fresh in his memory. Lucas glared at him, wanting him to be equally mystified by the pack of black aces, but instead found slack-jawed humor. The girls digressed into singing along to the music. Lucas checked back with the death cards: Garret was now the sole possessor of the card. Lucas’s ten of diamonds mocked him. The girls’ Jack of clubs and five of hearts were as real as their black aces had been. He shook the hallucination from his head, squinted, and rubbed his eyes.
“Be right back,” Garret said. “Gotta make room for new beer.”
Lucas shuffled, and to the girls said, “Did you see the four ace-of-spades a second ago?” The girls continued singing, ignoring Lucas. “Stupid bitch—” He froze. Movement in the brush twenty feet away caught his eye. Was it the wind? The hair bristling on his neck suggested it wasn’t. He stared at the now-still brush. Garret returned from taking a piss, stood before Lucas.
“There’s someth—” Lucas began saying before sensing more movement. A stone’s throw behind Garret a black animal parted through the brush and stopped.
Garret picked up the pack of smokes and lighter. Lucas sternly whispered, “Garret, don’t move!” Garret took a cigarette from the pack and lit it anyway. “Dude, there’s something behind you! Don’t move!” The animal stalked forward slowly. Please be a really large black lab, Lucas thought. Garret puffed furiously on his cigarette—the cherry grew. He casually glanced back at the animal. Lucas was expecting him to jump back or cry out or flinch, anything but grin. But grin he did.
Lucas slowly took to a stand. The Jeep was thirty feet behind them. The animal was the same distance away and undoubtedly quicker than he.
Garret mechanically asked if the gun was loaded. The singularity and queerness of the monotone, the mechanical way in which he asked such a portentous question, would have alerted Lucas on any other day. But at this moment, he heard nothing but a logical question, and was glad to hear it.
“It’s loaded. Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” Lucas began. To his horror another animal cleared the brush and furtively took position. Garret chose not to listen or participate, and instead burst into stride, destination Jeep. The beast descended upon Garret seconds later, put to work ending his too-short life.
The other beast waited for Lucas to move.
Chapter 10
At Greg’s house, Steve, Chris and Mike all slouched on the couch, watching sports highlights and were somewhere between conscious and dead. The room reeked of bitter beer and stale cigarette smoke. Greg rocked in his recliner with a warm beer in hand. Greg’s wife Steph came gliding out of their bedroom with her sister Deborah. Deb stuck her head in the other bedroom and told the kids they were leaving.
Steph stood in the front-doorway waving her sister off. She locked the door, asked Greg if his friends were staying the night. He said no. She jaunted to the bedroom with a bounce in her step, enchanted from the romantic drama fresh in her mind.
Greg glanced at the phone for the millionth time and decided to do it. He didn’t have the phone number but he h
ad redial. He got up and the made the call.
“Hello?” answered Alison.
“Hello, is this the girl Kev met at the store yesterday?”
A brief silence. “I think you have the wrong number. Who are you trying to reach?”
“I’m wondering if my friend Kevin made it there okay.”
“Oh, you’re friends with Holly’s boyfriend?” Greg couldn’t see her smile. “He’s here now. They’re in the Jacuzzi. Want me to get him for you?”
“Nah, I don’t want to bother him. Could you do me a favor? Could you check on him for me and if it’s not too much trouble can you keep an eye on him tonight?”
“With whom am I speaking to?” He gave his credentials. “I suppose I can do that. Is something wrong? Are you sure you don’t want me to get him?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to interrupt whatever they’re doing.”
“All right, Greg. May I ask what your concern is?”
Greg blew it off as no big deal, just mild concern over drinking and driving, and he confessed to overreacting. But just for the hell of it, he would appreciate it if she kept both eyes wide open tonight.
Greg hung up and sighed with relief, went to bed, kissed Steph and rolled over. Conscience relieved, he quickly fell asleep.
Chapter 11
“What’s up, Ali?” Holly said.
“I just got the strangest phone call.” Alison confirmed what I already knew, that it followed me here.
“Who was it?”
“Your boyfriend’s friend, Greg.” Alison grinned.
Holly liked this game. “My boyfriend, huh? After all these years you still think you can embarrass me?”
“Let’s not forget how we met.”
Holly nodded. “I’ll never forget, but I’ve changed.” Holly moved back to my lap and planted an open-mouthed kiss on me. My thoughts remained on Greg, unfortunately. This was unlike Greg. This was bad news. After kissing me she engaged in more banter with Alison. I interjected with a question, asked why Greg called. Greg had wondered if I was all right and requested that she keep an eye on me, just in case. Something happened at Greg’s and I had a feeling that Goth kid was responsible for it. It was going to eat at me until I spoke with Greg.
Chapter 12
The sizeable dog—if it was indeed a dog—landed on Garret with inexorable force. The girls unglued as it went to work on him with enormous teeth and claws. Lucas considered making a run for his gun but that didn’t turn out so well for Garret, who, in the midst of the mauling, lain disturbingly still and silent. That didn’t sit well with Lucas for more than one reason—where was the counterattack? The shrieking girls ran off along the hillside; the canines were indifferent to them. Lucas wished they’d chase after those bitches instead. He decided to try his hand at slowly gravitating toward the Jeep. Somewhere he remembered hearing something about moving slowly or not moving at all when encountering a bear or hippo or whatever it was—he was smoking pot during the program.
Eyes locked with the second dog, he side-stepped, baby steps. He wasn’t fooling anyone. The incorrectly identified dog (denial is an analgesic for fear) snarled, revealing a nasty set of long thin incisors.
The jig was up. Lucas switched to Plan B and exploded into a full sprint toward the Jeep. The beast pursued.
Ten feet away from the Jeep, Lucas thought he was going to make it. He clasped the open door with the intention of slamming it shut behind him. The animal had its own intentions and one hell of a stride to implement them.
Its weight coupled with incredible velocity came down squarely on Lucas’s back, felling and grinding him face-first into the dirt. Bony daggers sank into his back, tearing away strips of skin, muscle-tissue, and tendon effortlessly. Seconds prior he had given himself sporting odds at prevailing; now he was praying for help from a God he had never known. Adrenaline advanced his strength, enabling him to push up to his hands and knees under the weight of the quadruped still on his back. Strenuously he crawled toward the Jeep and gun, losing weight by the mouthful.
He reached the passenger-side seat at last. The animal abruptly changed tactics. It latched onto his forearm and began a game of tug-of-war, winner take all. The son of a bitch weighed every ounce of Lucas, and he [Lucas] would not win this contest. He was losing ground, pulled inch by inch away from the Jeep. He needed a miracle from God, any God, and he got it. Fucking got it!
The unfathomable miracle was his flesh ripping away from his forearm, clear to the bone, flinging the animal backward with a mouthful of Lucas.
Lucas was free. Never had freedom felt so damned wonderful. What mattered now, all that mattered now, was that he maintain this blessed freedom, and for that he needed to get his shit together right fucking now.
The beast recovered from its backward tumble. Relentlessly it charged forward, but stopped prematurely. Lucas thumbed the safety off the pistol and took aim. From rabid saliva-slinging snarl to silent fearful stare, the hideous thing’s forward progression was now in reverse. It was unthinkable that it was the same brutish beast from a moment ago. Lucas fired three shots, two more than necessary. Did it recognize and fear the gun? Lucas wondered. A nonsensical notion, but damned if it didn’t seem like it.
He hobbled to Garret, firing at his incapacitated friend’s attacker when he was near enough to ensure a clean shot. It yelped after a pair of missed shots (he had aimed wide lest he shoot Garret) and limped off. Lucas knelt beside Garret to examine the extent of the damage. There was fucking blood everywhere. Everywhere but where it needed to be: coursing through the veins of his friend. He was well on his way out. There wasn’t a surgeon on earth who would be of use at this point, though technically he was still alive.
Lucas regretted glimpsing his forearm, or lack thereof, and vomited at the ghastly sight. He staggered back to his Jeep while dressing his arm with his flannel shirt.
He sped to the hospital alone. To hell with the girls, who were probably fine anyway. How the hell did they get so lucky to escape this bullshit?
The mostly-unknown Vacaville lookout point had once again become quiet and still, save for the occasional gusts of wind. Nothing remained to mark the evening’s events, except for the wet red grass, scores of gory skin and muscle tissue chunks, a soon-to-be-dead twenty-something male, a dead bullet-ridden monstrosity, Garret’s smoldering cigarette, and the blazing inferno it started.
Chapter 13
Holly agreed that I should call Greg. Alison fetched robes as we left the Jacuzzi and entered the house through the sliding French door. Holly described her bedroom’s location and suggested I get her when I was through. Ali handed me a pink robe and an apology. I donned it and walked purposefully to the office. I dialed from memory.
* * *
“All done for the night?” inquired Holly of Ali as she dried off with a towel.
“Just finished Louisville.” Alison spied the box of beer on the other side of the sliding glass door. “May I have a Corona?”
“Of course. They’re Kevin’s, but he won’t mind. Grab me one too, please. And then I want to talk to you about something.”
“If you want boy advice, I want a raise first.” Alison went outside and procured two Coronas, closed the door behind her and followed Holly to her bedroom after popping the bottle-tops in the kitchen.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Holly.
“Boy advice? Because I was just kidding about the raise. You know I love you; all you have to do is ask.”
“I was referring to the raise. But hey,” Holly said jocularly, “if you’re offering boy advice, I’ll take it!” She removed the wet bathing suit, scooped up the bikini top and bottom with her numb blue toes, flung them inside the adjoining bathroom with the kind of accuracy that comes from years of experience. She opened a drawer and thoughtfully selected a pink silk nightgown and panties.
“You pay me enough,” said Ali.
“Oh stop it.”
“Besides, I live rent free. You’ve don
e enough for me. That is, unless you—”
“Let me guess,” Holly interrupted. “Give you my car?”
Alison nodded and bit the corner of her lip.
Alison drove a prehistoric Honda, on its last leg for years. Holly lent Ali her Mustang once when the Honda was in the shop, the car’s home away from home. Alison fell in love and swore she’d own one someday, somehow. Holly had since planned on surprising her with one when she could afford it. What Alison didn’t know, is that Holly had put in a special order at the Ford dealership last month. It would be like Holly’s beautiful car, only nicer. Loaded beyond what is customarily offered, and with a ten-thousand-dollar custom paint job that would knock her socks off. And if it didn’t, the special-order sound system would. It was due to arrive any day. She couldn’t wait to see Ali’s reaction, and had been fantasizing of different ways to surprise her with it.
Alison meandered to Holly’s open dresser-drawer and browsed the lingerie. She beheld a satin periwinkle nightgown, draped it over her bosom. “Sexy gown.”
“That looks good on you. Face me.” Alison dutifully modeled it for Holly, preening and posing like the ham she could sometimes be. “Take it, it’s yours. I don’t wear it anymore.”
“You sure? You would look great in this.”
“It’s too short. Makes my thighs look fat.”
“Oh whatever. You don’t want it?” Alison asked as she changed in front of a full length mirror. “Are you sure?”
Holly was sure. She rubbed body-lotion into her arms and legs.
“I love it,” Alison said, beamish. “It’s perfect.”
“So anyway, where was I?” Holly sat at the edge of her bed, left foot tucked under her bottom—Indian-style, with half an Indian missing.
“You were giving me your Cobra.”
“Oh yeah, the raise. How would you like to have a bigger role in managing VonFurenz so I can have more time for stuff that I’ve been putting off, like taking college classes?”
