Addicted to the Dead

by Shane McKenzie

  “I told you my name ain’t Ugh. It’s—”

  Before Ugh could finish, Calico brought his left knee to his chest, then thrust his boot into the door with his hip. It crashed inward, smashed into something made of glass and shattered it.

  Calico rushed into the room, left the cronies behind. He thought he heard one of them say something, but his attention was on the skinny pale man on the couch, wearing nothing but a smile and clutching a fistful of writhing meat strips. His erection was like a gun pointed at Calico’s face.

  The man barely acknowledged the intrusion, stuffed one of the strips into his mouth and smacked as he chewed.

  Fucking addicts.

  “Get up. Get dressed.”

  “And…and who are you my…my multicolored f-friend?” He licked his palm, reached down and slickened his cock with saliva.

  Calico threw his knife.

  Just after the man’s “multicolored” remark, he thought he heard either Ugh or Grunt snickering behind him, and once the knife had stuck into the addict’s foot and pinned him to the floor, Calico turned to face the cronies. The smiles on their faces turned to straight lines and their eyes averted.

  “Go get him, boys,” Calico said as he straightened his tie.

  The man didn’t even flinch when the knife stuck, and he just leaned over and looked at it. An idiotic smile spread across his face. He reached down and tried pulling it out, but only managed to carve a wider wound. Blood pumped out, soaked into the carpet.

  “Does it hurt?” Grunt said. He walked toward the addict with his pistol raised, fired two rounds. Each one found a knee.

  Just as Calico turned his back, he heard the bedroom door open. He didn’t have time to react before Ugh and Grunt opened fire. The woman’s body was thrown against the wall as the bullets ate through her chest and face. She slid down to the floor, painting the wall with a streak of blood. She made a choking sound for a few seconds, then went silent.

  The man stood up, his foot sliding off the knife and cutting it in half long ways between his middle and second toe. When he stepped back down with the ruined foot, he crumpled to the floor. Blood poured from his wounds and he chuckled into the carpet.

  Calico pushed past the cronies, knocking them aside with his wide shoulders. “That’s great work, boys.”

  “Hey, man. That bitch came outta nowhere,” Grunt said. “The fuck was I supposed to do?”

  Calico yanked his knife from the floor, turned and pointed it at Grunt. “You were supposed to follow orders. A man and a woman, remember?”

  “She fucking startled me…I—”

  “Explain it to your boss, not me.” Calico walked around the cackling man and knelt beside the woman’s body. He knew she was gone—too much dead meat in her for her to come back.

  “Shit, man. Fleet’s gonna be pissed.” Grunt paced back and forth, then pointed at the man with his gun. “We still got him…we won’t go back empty-handed.”

  Ugh had made his way into the hall outside the apartment. He looked left and right over and over again. “Get the fuck back in your apartment,” he said to someone and pointed his gun.

  Calico crawled to the man, turned him over. The addict’s knees were ruined bloody knobs with shards of bone poking out from the mess of red. The two now separate parts of his foot hung to either side, though the big toe still twitched.

  “I-I know who…you are,” the man said. Bits of meat still clung to the front of his teeth and gums.

  “Of course you do,” Calico said. “And you know why I’m here.”

  “Fleet’s…money.” He smiled. “I don’t have it.”

  “I know you don’t. You people never do.”

  “Hurry the fuck up,” Ugh said.

  “Yeah, grab him and let’s go.” Grunt still paced. Veins stood out on his neck and forehead.

  Calico leaned down and put his lips just above the man’s ear. “This your girlfriend back here? Your wife?”

  The man nodded, grinned.

  “She’s lucky. We came here to take you both alive…to clear your system of all traces of meat so you could come back after we killed you.” Calico pressed the tip of his Bowie knife to the middle of the man’s chest, put both hands on the handle. “You would have both been movie stars.”

  And he pushed the blade in to the hilt.

  The man’s smile stretched into a grimace, spitting blood, choking on it.

  Calico yanked the knife out, shoved it back in.

  “You fuckin’ bastard,” Grunt said. He stomped toward Calico. “Now we don’t have shit. Now we—”

  Calico slammed the knife into Grunt’s foot, spun behind him and pulled the pistol from his hand. He saw a flutter of motion to his left, swung the gun toward it and fired. Ugh’s knees went limp from under him, crimson flowers blooming on his chest. He crashed to the ground, kicked his legs and sucked for oxygen.

  “What’re you doin’, man?” Grunt said. He sat on the carpet, hissing as he gripped the knife handle.

  “You were right about one thing.” Calico fired a shot to the side of Grunt’s head, then stood over him and fired one more. “We won’t be going back empty-handed.”

  By the time Calico pulled his knife from Grunt’s foot, Ugh was already up and shambling down the hallway.

  - Chapter 4 -

  Paco parked his bicycle on the side of the house and sighed. He knew he was in trouble. The sun had been down for maybe a half an hour, and he could only hope that Papa was too busy preparing the meat to notice Paco was late. He had been walking through the woods, stepping in ant piles and dropping other bugs in: caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers—whatever he could find. As he watched the ants devour the larger bug, ripping away chunks of flesh and scurrying back into the ground with it, the image of the rotted corpse crawled through his mind and turned his stomach.

  He knew he couldn’t go through with it, and he felt like an idiot. If they would have bought a slice from the store, things might have been different. But seeing that dead body in the back of Papa’s truck, smelling it, listening to it moan as it struggled to move…it was just too much. Paco was trying to figure out how he would explain it to Papa, could already see the look of confusion and disappointment.

  He hesitated at the door, took a deep breath, then walked inside. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I lost track of time. I—”

  The first thing that hit him was the smell. Thick like festering custard in the air. Paco pulled the collar of his t-shirt over his mouth and nose. The dead meat lay on the counter, moving slightly, the stink worse now that it had been cut open.

  Papa walked across the living room, back and forth in front of the television. Paco stepped toward him, hands in his pockets. He had just opened his mouth to speak, but his words got stuck at the back of his throat when Papa turned in his direction. Papa’s eyes were wide and unblinking. He looked confused, lost. A black liquid stained his lips, chin, and shirt. He didn’t even look up at Paco, just kept going back and forth.

  “Papa? What’s wr—”

  “Ngh…”

  Paco flinched and turned to find Mama just beside him, bumping into him with her shoulder. The same black ooze ran down from her mouth, and she kept clicking her teeth together.

  “Mama, what are y’all doing?” He backed away, his eyes bouncing from parent to parent. She just kept following him, kept muttering.

  “Ngh…augh…ungh…”

  “Are you scared of dying? Of course you are.” The uppity voice shouted from the television. Paco had seen the commercial so many times, he could picture it without watching. Ted Fleet in his big black cowboy hat, the dead woman lying on the table in front of him. Then she sits up. “We don’t want to just shamble around after we pass on, right? We want to rest, we want peace.”

  The dead remains continued to writhe and twitch on the kitchen counter, making leathery scraping sounds. Papa’s butcher knife lay beside it, stained black. The body, missing everything below the ribcage, lay in pieces, all raw except for
one browned portion that moved in a slight painful motion. It appeared that slices had been cut away from it. Strings of cooked meat lay strewn about beside the remaining hunk quivering like dying caterpillars.

  Water boiled in Mama’s ceramic pot on top of the stove, the overflow hissing when it hit the open flame below it.

  “Just a bite of my meat every day. That’s all it takes, folks.”

  Paco pulled the lid off the pot, dropped it to clatter on the tile floor and backed away when he saw the head inside. Mama had followed him into the kitchen and she kept making those sounds. Paco glanced toward Papa who still walked in circles in the living room. Ted Fleet took a big bite of meat on the screen behind Papa and smiled. A different woman’s body lay in front of him now, her arms folded over her stomach, a bouquet of flowers clutched there.

  “Eat your portion of Ted Fleet’s Dead Meats every day, year round, and keep your body in the ground.”

  The head, bouncing atop the churning water, stared out with eyes the color of boiled eggs. Its mouth moved up and down in a slow labored rhythm.

  “But remember, folks. Eat my meat responsibly.”

  Paco wiped the tears from his face as Mama walked right up to him and bumped him with her chilling body.

  “Ngh…”

  “No!” He pushed past her and knocked the ceramic pot to the floor. The head slid on its neck-stump across the tile like a puck on a shuffleboard. Paco collapsed to the floor, ignoring the burn of the water as it soaked into the butt of his jeans, and wept into his arms.

  A cold hand wrapped around his wrist and he flinched, let out a scream that was sticky with saliva.

  Sophia was there.

  Her mouth was covered in the black substance, her eyes were staring at him with that wide, blank look.

  All dead. My whole family is gone…I’m alone.

  Then Sophia smiled, sat beside him, lay her head on his shoulder.

  “I think the meat was bad,” she said.

  ***

  “Goddamnit!” Fleet slammed his whiskey glass to his desk and spilled the ice. “Grab this asshole!”

  Calico shoved the two dead men to the floor where they writhed and bucked, then put his hands in the air and let the other men grab him. He’d hogtied the two dead ones so they wouldn’t try and shamble off, and the way they flopped around on the hardwood floor reminded Calico of freshly caught fish on a boat deck.

  “What the fuck happened out there?”

  Calico snickered. “Your guys were sloppy. I did what had to be done.”

  “Did what had to be done, did you?” Fleet filled his glass, took a long sip, hissed, smacked his lips, ran his finger over the tip of his cowboy hat. “How do I know you didn’t just kill ’em for the fuck of it, huh?”

  “I do my fucking job, and I do it good. Just ask around, man. Everybody fears me.” The Ugh behind him wrenched Calico’s hands behind his back, and when Calico turned to glare at him, the pressure eased some. “They went rushing in there ahead of me, got themselves killed, and I went in and cleaned it up.” It had been a while since Calico had let his emotions get the best of him, but it felt damn good to kill these sons of bitches. But now, for the sake of his daughter, he had to lie and get out of this predicament. He figured Fleet would believe him: he had plenty of cronies but only one Calico.

  “I know, I know,” Fleet said, then downed the rest of his drink. “Besides, you know what would happen if you ever tried to fuck me. So I believe these two dumb fucks were the cause for this fuck up.” He chuckled. “Let him go.”

  Calico threw piercing glances at the men as they released him. “Need to train your Ughs and Grunts better. Bunch of useless motherfuckers if you ask me.”

  Fleet nodded toward a large Samoan man in a black suit, the tattoos on his neck just visible. “Take these two to the plant for processing.” As the crony rounded them up, Fleet laughed, shook his head, filled his glass again. “And let this be a lesson to all you bastards. You fuck up, you’re on the cutting block.”

  There was a visible uneasiness in the men that made Calico chuckle under his breath.

  “What about the fuckers that owe me money?”

  “Dead.”

  “Seeing as how they’re not here, for your sake they better be fucking dead.” Fleet emptied his glass, replaced it with the one he’d poured for Calico. “Where are they?”

  “Taken care of.” Calico’s flesh begged him to stick it with something. He bit his lip until he tasted blood.

  Fleet nodded, studied Calico for a minute. “Okay, okay. I know…you’re the best. And I trust you.” He reached over his mahogany desk and held down an orange button. “Bring the girl.”

  Calico shifted his stance, but tried to keep himself cool. Nothing he could do about it. Just stay calm, cool, and once she’s in my arms, just leave the office calmly, coolly. Just like always.

  A door opened to their left and two men in pinstriped suits walked out with Beauty between them, each of her arms clutched in the men’s mitts.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Calico said and wrinkled his nose at her.

  “Nnnunh…ngh…” At the sight of Calico, the girl tried to wrestle free of the constricting hands, but the men held her fast.

  “Let her go already, would you?” Fleet plopped down in his leather chair, opened a drawer, tossed a writhing bag to his desk that crinkled with the movement inside. He opened it, fished out a sliver of wiggling, aged meat, and popped it into his mouth.

  Just watching him chew the hunk of meat made Calico’s Bowie knife crave the taste of the motherfucker’s viscera.

  “Go on, you’re dismissed.” Fleet had his head leaned back and his eyes shut, his hands roaming his body as if touching it for the first time.

  Calico lifted Beauty into his arms, gave her a squeeze, then started toward the double doors. The red light blinked rhythmically from underneath her flesh, the spot just between the bridge of her nose and left eye socket. An explosive device. Over time, Calico had taught himself to ignore it, but at that moment it filled him with volcanic rage.

  “Say, Calico,” Fleet said through a giggle.

  Calico answered with a glare that could have started a fire.

  “Are you black with white spots, or white with black spots?” He followed the question with raucous laughter. The Ughs and Grunts in the room joined in, and though every part of Calico wanted to see what their insides looked like, he just sucked up his pride and left the room.

  Once they were in the hallway, he planted his lips on Beauty’s forehead. “Did you miss your daddy, baby girl?”

  “Ungh ganganh.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  As he squeezed her against him, he felt how much weight she’d been losing. More every day it seemed. Her smell was something he’d grown used to, barely noticed it anymore, but it was present. It was always present.

  “I think it’s time for a bath. Does that sound good?”

  She clutched his face, her black tongue flipping in and out of her dry lips.

  The cameras lining the walls followed them as they strolled down the hallway, each one whirring as it turned to watch him go. But he didn’t look at them, had taught himself to pretend they weren’t there, the way he figured reality television stars had to do.

  When he reached his little apartment, he walked in without the use of keys. Locks were prohibited, one of the many rules Fleet had set up especially for Calico.

  The red light on the camera inside the apartment blinked, and Calico only glanced at it before setting Beauty down and heading to the living room. His stomach rumbled as he kicked his boots off and started unbuttoning his shirt. He reached down, yanked his knife out, pressed the blade to his arm and shuddered at the elation that filled him instantly.

  Beauty was on the ground, lying on her back with her Cabbage Patch doll lifted above her, chattering dry gibberish at it.

  “You can play for a few minutes, baby girl, but it’s almost bath time, okay?”

  “Gnanungh…
”

  Stepping over his daughter and her doll, he whistled “The Entertainer” as he trudged into the kitchen, pulled out a jar of peanut butter. Blood ran down his arm and dripped to the tile, but he wiped it up with the bottom of his sock. Using his finger, he scooped globs of peanut butter and popped it into his mouth.

  He moved down the hall into the restroom where he opened the cabinet and pulled out four jugs of formaldehyde. After the last bath, he was down to two jugs, but it appeared that Fleet had replenished his supply, which was part of the deal. One of the only parts of the deal that actually benefited Calico.

  One at a time, he emptied the jugs into the tub with one hand, fingered mounds of peanut butter into his mouth with the other. Once the tub had enough of the pungent fluid, he washed his hands and made his way back into the living room.

  Beauty circled the couch as she chattered away, her doll hanging from her grasp. When Calico entered the room, she stopped, looked up at him and muttered a string of nonsense.

  “I know, pumpkin, but it’s your bath time. We can play some more after.”

  He lifted her back into his arms, where he liked her best, and made for the bathroom. The whir of a camera followed his every move.

  - Chapter 5 -

  The preacher was saying things, probably nice things about Mama and Papa, but Paco couldn’t hear him. It was nothing but muffled gibberish to him. He had his arm around Sophia’s shoulders, holding her close. He kept catching whiffs of her stink, and he could only hope the officers couldn’t, or if they did, they just thought it was Mama and Papa, who stood only a few feet away.

  “This is weird,” Sophia whispered.

  “I know,” Paco said. “Just act normal, okay?”

  She nodded. Paco felt her cold flesh through the fabric of her dress, and he tried to hold her closer, to keep her warm, but it only made him feel colder. As she watched the preacher talking, she never blinked, her chest and stomach didn’t inflate with the act of breathing.

  Mrs. Addington from down the street emerged from around the house and trudged across the lawn. Paco locked eyes with her and she furrowed her brow, curled her lips over her teeth. She passed Mama and Papa, gave them a quick glance before joining Paco and Sophia. Her hand was warm on the back of Paco’s neck.