Tony could feel other eyes on them, people crowding around now to get a look. “Gary?” he said. “Gary, what’s wrong?”
The boy finally opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Only black. Black saliva poured from his lips and a cough sent a black cloud into the air, close enough for Tony to smell it.
It smelled of gunpowder. Enough gunpowder to fill five hundred fireworks. More than that. Enough to blow him and everyone within fifty yards to oblivion. All poured down Gary’s throat, forced into every orifice, bursting out of his bulging stomach.
That was when Tony looked down and saw the kid’s pants looped around his ankles. He saw the trail of blood droplets on the ground. He smelled the burning. He heard the crackle of the fuse.
And in his head, the voices of that expectant crowd echoed again: Tres, dos, uno…
REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT LIVING OUT IN THE COUNTRY?
by A. J. Brown
I never wanted no kids. I don’t like ‘em, didn’t like ‘em when I was one. Sure as hell ain’t interested in raisin’ any of my own. Why put myself through that hell for the rest of my life? I even killed one of them fuckers when I was sixteen. He was a snot-nosed brat, around the age of eight or nine, annoyin’ as hell.
I had been fishin’ out at Mr. Lehman’s pond not too far from Ma and Pa’s house, maybe a mile or so up the road. The boy—I think his name was Wade—come up out of the bramble makin’ an ungodly noise, all twigs a snappin’ and leaves a rustlin’.
“Howdy, Mister,” he said in this curious I-want-to-be-friends tone. I tried ignorin’ him, turnin’ my back and watchin’ my cane pole for any hits. He rounded me, stuck his dirty face in mine, “Wha’cha doin’?”
“Fishin’,” I said.
“Wha’cha fishin’ for?”
“Bream.”
“Wha’s bream?”
“A fish.”
I stood from the stump I had been sittin’ on, stretched my back and took a few steps toward the water. Loose moss covered the embankment, makin’ it slicker than owl snot on a wet roof.
“You catch anything yet?” Wade asked.
“Nope. Too much noise. Them fish don’t like noise.”
He looked around, then back at me. “I don’t hear nothin’.”
“I hear you,” I said and squatted to pick up my pole. There wouldn’t be any fish bitin’ with that motor mouth yappin’ away.
The kid got right up next to me and when I stood, I stepped on his foot, tiltin’ off balance. Like I said before, that moss was slick and my other foot went out from under me. I fell onto my ass, mud and moss clingin’ to my breeches. My cane pole went into the water. I’d have to go in after it. Wade, he started laughin’ like he saw somethin’ funny. I saw nothin’ funny about what had happened and anger got the best of me.
I grabbed a rock from the edge of the water and stood. Wade laughed until he saw me comin’ at him. By then my hand was reared back and I was about to clock him one good. He hit the ground and the rock slid from my hand. That boy hollered like a brayin’ horse, his head all split open and blood spillin’ from the wound, through his fingers and down his face. I yanked him by one leg, pulled him into the water with me. About waist deep, I grabbed his head and shoved it under. He kicked and splashed, his hands beatin’ at my arms until he went all still. I lifted his head out the water and looked into those dead brown eyes then lowered him back into the pond. I gave him a good shove and he floated a little ways before sinkin’ on down.
I got my cane pole and headed on home. That’s the good thing about livin’ out in the country back a few years, ain’t nobody ever knew when you did somethin’ wrong and there ain’t no fancy city folk there to do any real lookin’ into someone’s death. Wade drowned and that was the end of that.
See, kids ain’t never been for me. Like I said, I never wanted them and almost every girl I’ve ever met has. It’s never really been a good combination.
Then I met Barbara. I was nineteen and she was seventeen. She wasn’t the best lookin’ gal in our neck of the woods, but she had all of her teeth and didn’t want no kids and that was good enough for me. I didn’t mind that she was a little overweight, not fat or anything, but she had some pounds in her gut that looked like a spare tire, except when she was on her back, and that’s where I liked her most anyway.
Me and Barb got along right nicely there for a while. Decent conversation and she was a wild one in the hay. And she wasn’t the clingy type. She left me to my own when I wanted to be. Then one day she comes by the house while I was feedin’ the pigs. She looked all sheepish and wouldn’t meet me eye to eye.
“What’s a matter with you, Barb?” I asked.
She started cryin’ and if there’s one thing I hate more than youngins, it’s a bawlin’ woman.
“What in hell has come over you?” I yelled, left the pen.
“I’m gonna have a child.”
I ain’t said a thing for a few moments, just took in what she had said. She gave me that sheepish look, like she didn’t know how that shit happened. Then that anger come over me again, just like it did with that kid a few years back. I stomped on over to her and took her by her dark hair—got a big old handful of it so she couldn’t run away from me—and pulled her head back.
“I told you, I ain’t no daddy and I ain’t havin’ no youngins.”
She yelled out like a wounded mutt and I slapped my hand over her mouth to shut her up. I took her round to the barn where we had fooled around many times. We climbed on up into the hayloft and I tossed her on the floor. She didn’t like it none and started to say so, but I didn’t care much for her speakin’ to me. She took the back of my hand across her face. A knuckle split on one of her teeth and her head rocked to the side. Barb yelled at me again and tried to get up, said she was leavin’.
Like hell she was.
I brought my foot down on the side of her head and she fell like a wounded doe. I took hold of the rope that runs the pulley system in the hayloft. We used it to raise and lower bails. While she was all dazed, her mouth bleedin’, a bloom of purple risin’ up on one side of her face, I took that rope and slipped it over her head, pulled it tight ‘round her neck.
Barb’s eyes grew wide and she tried to get that rope from ‘round her throat. Her face turned all pink then red. I yanked on the rope, letting it slide over the pulley. Barb come up off her back and slid across the hayloft until her feet met the edge. Another tug and she was danglin’ out over the barn’s floor, legs all a kickin’ and her face turnin’ dark purple. Her mouth hung open and her tongue lolled up out of it. It only took a couple minutes before she stopped strugglin’ and her arms fell down to her sides. She spun in circles for a few more minutes like a cow on a meat hook. One eye had popped out and sat by her nose. I let go of the rope and let her fall to the hard ground where she bust open like a pumpkin.
Remember what I said about livin’ in the country? I buried Barb out near the trees where Pa’s old tractor sat. I could have buried her out where Ma and Pa were, but she wasn’t family and I’ll be damned if she was going to be treated as such. No one thought much about her after that. Barb had just left town, got tired of bein’ a whore for a mean old country boy I reckon.
Like I said before and I’ll say it again, I never wanted no kids. Barb, she knew that and still got herself pregnant. She had it comin’.
It was a few years later before I met my wife, Mae Elizabeth. She had been workin’ at the feed store. Now that was a fine woman, unlike Barb. Sure she had all her teeth, but they was white and when she smiled she lit up the damn room. She didn’t have no spare tire in her gut either—her stomach was as flat when she stood as it was when she was on her backside. I ain’t gonna sit here and lie—I was right smitten by that little blonde-haired philly.
I reckon I was more smitten with her than I thought, ‘cause before I knew it we was married and I hadn’t even told her how much I hated children. Of course, she never brought it up that she wanted a few of �
�em either. I just guessed she wasn’t the motherin’ type.
For a few years all went well. We were happy together and she was a willin’ partner. But one day she got all sick and got to tossin’ her lunch for a couple hours. It’s just the flu bug I told her when she said somethin’ about seeing Doc Holloway in town. Then I noticed somethin’ all wrong about her. She had gotten a little fat in the stomach—not that doughy weight like Barb, but more firm and in one area.
A couple days later she came back from in town. I should have known better than to let her go by herself. She rubbed her belly like it was somethin’ special and she had a glow about her. Then she said them words.
“Today’s Mother’s Day.”
“Really? I didn’t know. My momma’s dead.”
I stared at her a minute, tryin’ to read what was on her face, in them eyes. They were different. She bit her bottom lip and said, “Cyrus, yah gonna be a poppa and I’m gonna be a momma.”
We had been standin’ on the porch when she said them words. It wraps around the side of the house and there are twelve steps that run from ground to the landin’. I ain’t never showed an ounce of anger toward Mae—not once since the day I met her in the feed store and my heart went all a flutter—but I felt my face get hot and it happened too damn quick for me to think about it.
I leveled a fist into her stomach. She doubled over and fell to her knees, clutchin’ her gut, her mouth open like she was a fish out of water tryin’ to breathe. I reckon I could have stopped there, that I could have gotten hold of myself and helped her up. But, I didn’t do that. Instead, I grabbed her by that long blond hair and shoved her as hard as I could off of the porch. She rolled down the steps and landed on the ground. One arm sat at a bent angle and there was a nasty gash in her forehead.
I went down the steps after her and planted my boot into her stomach, you know, just to be certain that baby wasn’t a comin’ out alive. I got on my knees and lifted her head so she could look right on up at me. “We ain’t havin’ no kids.”
There was a moment where I thought about takin’ her out to the barn and stringin’ her up just like I did Barb, but then my heart went all a flutter again and I felt bad for what I had done. I helped her up, even carried her up the steps and into the house. I bandaged her arm—it was broke pretty bad and I guess I should have taken her to see Doc Holloway, but this wasn’t between us and him. No sir.
Shortly after that Mae got to bleedin’ between her legs and she passed that baby out. I was there as she screamed and cried and that deformed lookin’ thing come out from her body. I snipped that chord with my knife and left the house to the sound of her weeping. Down at Lehman’s pond I tossed that bloody sack of nothin’ into the water, watched it sink like Wade had and made my way home.
It was a while before Mae talked to me again and she acted strange for long spells during the day, takin’ long walks and comin’ back with dirt on her clothes, like she had been wallerin’ around in the mud. She was a country girl so I thought nothin’ of it—them girls have been known to climb trees and go skinny dippin’ and get down and work right alongside the men out in the fields. She wasn’t the dainty type for sure, but she had changed.
There was no touchin’ her and that made me ache inside. After a while of this I got to where when I saw her my heart didn’t flutter and I stopped gettin’ sad at what I had done. And you see, I’m a man and a man has his needs and if she wasn’t gonna give it to me, well then I just as soon take it from her. She put up a holy fight the first few times, scratchin’ at me like she was a cat cornered by a big ol’ dog. A few knocks to her head took the fight out of her and I would take care of myself and be done with her for a while.
If Mae would have had some place to go, I think she’d have left me and that would have been that and none of this other stuff would’ve happened. But her Ma and Pa had nothin’ to do with her after she went up and married me. They said I was no good for her. Turns out, they was probably right.
The two of us went about our lives, sharin’ a roof and a bed, but not much more than that. I cooked my own meals and tended to the farmin’ and animals. She wandered about in the woods, I reckon becomin’ one with nature or tryin’ to find herself like them city girls do when they don’t know nothin’ else.
It was a Tuesday when she started to vomit again. It had been a little under a year since the first time she got all sick with them flu like symptoms. I knew it wasn’t no bug in her stomach causin’ them heavin’s. She had that look women get when their bodies are a changin’ with a child inside of ‘em.
That anger, it’s a mighty mean thing and it hopped on my back and steered me toward her while she made her way into the woods to do whatever it was she did. I came up on her, rope in hand and slapped the back of her head with an open hand. She tipped forward, landing in the tangle of some bushes. Before she could get herself out I pulled her free and roped her hands together, tyin’ her to a tall oak. She screamed and yelped like a wounded dog. A few slaps to the side of her head ended that nonsense.
I pulled her breeches off and tossed them aside. She struggled and her eyes said everything. She was scared of what I was going to do. I looked around the woods until I found a fallen branch, thick and sturdy enough. I didn’t mind with her screams when I shoved the tip of that thing straight between her legs and inside her. I moved it around, shovin’ it a good foot up inside her. I pulled it out and stuck it back in, roughin’ up her hole and insides and puttin’ an end to her baby havin’ abilities.
When I was done, bark and blood caked the inside of her legs. Mae sagged against the tree, her arms still tied tight around it. I grabbed her face, squeezed her cheeks tight. “We ain’t havin’ no damn kids. Yah hear me?”
I cut the rope and she fell to the ground. Mae closed her legs up and curled into a ball, her arms around her knees. And she cried. The anger flared up again, but I ain’t had it in me to kill her. I could have just drug her down to the pond and ended it right there, but I didn’t. I walked off, crashin’ through the woods like an angry grizzly bear.
Mae didn’t come home that night. Or the next. I went out to the woods, found the rope and the branch I had used on her. The ground was damp where she had bled onto it. But, there was no Mae in sight. I hadn’t seen her in, I reckon six weeks.
I had seen shadows move in the night, heard her howling at the moon like a rabid wolf or coyote. I went out looking for her several times, but never could find her. I could hear her all right, but it was like she was a ghost hauntin’ the woods and tryin’ to scare me away. That wasn’t gonna happen.
This mornin’ I got up and headed out, shotgun in hand. I wasn’t huntin’ no food. Not this time. I spent the better part of the day rootin’ around in the woods. There were some small tracks, like a woman’s, and then I found what looked like a small grass hut—mostly twigs, branches, and leaves, just large enough for someone to sleep in, but not much else. The shirt and breeches Mae had been wearin’ the last time I saw her was in there, layin’ in a heap in one corner.
There was a smell, like somethin’ had died. I followed it to the clothes. They wasn’t in a heap after all. They was folded over on top of somethin’. When I pulled the shirt free, somethin’ brown and skeletal fell out. It was small enough to fit in my hand. I looked a bit closer and that’s when I backed on out of there, my heart in my throat and the feelin’ like the devil was right behind me.
Well, I was half right. The devil, he wasn’t behind me, but Mae was and I don’t know when she got my shovel, but I caught sight of it right before it connected with my face.
I woke to the night. Crickets and frogs talked to one another like they always did. My head hurt like I had spent the night drinkin’ Cousin Billy’s moonshine up in the mountains. My shoulders ached and when I tried to move my arms, I couldn’t. Mae had tied them over my head, the rope around a tree, much like I had done her. I was spread out, my legs opened and all my clothes missin’. I tried pullin’ free, but you know, Mae,
she’s a country girl and she knows how to tie them knots so nothin’ can get away.
She come through the trees all quiet-like. I caught a glimpse of her in the moon that broke between the trees. She was as naked as the day she was born. Scratches and bruises covered her body and she was dirty like she ain’t never had a bath in her life. She held somethin’ in her hands—a tiny somethin’.
“Cyrus,” she whispered, drawin’ out my name like a school girl teasin’ another one. “Today’s Mother’s Day.”
“Mae, you let me go now and it won’t be all that bad, yah hear me?” She stood in the moonlight, her eyes on her hands and when she looked up I saw all the crazy on her face.
“Did yah hear me?” she asked and took a step forward. She knelt down beside me. The stench of shit and filth got all over me and I felt my stomach jerk. “I said it’s Mother’s Day.”
“I heard yah, Mae, but that don’t mean nothing—you ain’t nobody’s mother.”
She laughed, a haunting sound that fills my ears even now. “But, Cyrus, I am a momma. And you are a poppa. You just ain’t never met your son.” She set that thing on my chest, its dead body dry like a leaf and stinkin’ of water and rot. “We’re gonna celebrate, Cyrus. Our first Mother’s Day together.” She giggled, this time the craziness surfacing from her throat.
That brings me to where I am right now, all tied up, a dead unformed child on my chest. Mae, she walked away a few minutes ago, back through those trees toward Ma and Pa’s house. She’s comin’ back. I can hear her howlin’ at the moon. She’s gettin’ closer and closer and she’s wantin’ to celebrate. And, yah know, we’re out here in the country and nobody’s gonna hear me scream…
EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY
by Steve Lowe
Junior slipped up behind the bastard in silence, but that didn’t matter. The guy wouldn’t have heard him anyway, with his face buried in the rear of his whore. The bastard slurped and grunted and the whore moaned, a sound more akin to the sad lowing of a cow in a pen than one of ecstasy. Their musk filled the hovel, crudely scratched out of a limestone wall of the underground city, and caused Junior’s stomach to buck.
A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre: Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous Page 11
