Shut The Fuck Up And Die!

by William Todd Rose

  This was going to be even more fun than she’d hoped for . . . .

  SCENE SIXTEEN

  Earl looked down at the dead body before him. No final snorts of air flared the nostrils, nor did the chest rise and fall even marginally. The dark eyes already had a glassy look to them, as if they’d been secretly replaced with marbles at the moment of death, and the pool of blood surrounding the body looked as if it had caused the snow to sink down ever so slightly. Almost as if its heat had melted through the top layer as the thick, red liquid spread out from the trio of bullet wounds that punctured its tawny fur.

  The bellow that erupted from Earl’s throat escaped with such ferocity that has jowls shook as he threw back his head. Raising his fists to the sky, he punched at the air as if he could somehow sock whatever God was responsible for this squarely in the jaw. The tendons in his neck bulged and his eyes were clenched shut so tightly that the tears of frustration squeezed from them ran the risk of freezing his lashes together.

  “A fuckin’ deer? Are you kidding me? A mother fuckin’ deer?”

  On the short walk to the body, Earl had already figured everything out. He’d drag that dickhead out of the wood by the feet; Hell, would fireman carry the corpse if he had to. Once he’d made it back to the house, if Daryl hadn’t already killed her as well, he would have propped the dead body up on the living room chair and made it watch as he and Daryl took turns with that little cunt. And she would have been forced to look at it the entire time. He would have superglued her eyelids open if he’d had to. And then, the last thing she would see as the life drained out of her ravaged body would have been her sorry excuse for a man. The pathetic loser who couldn’t even manage to keep her safe.

  And he’d been pretty certain that was the way it would have turned out. Daryl wasn’t capable of finding a Christian in church, much less one woman in a two story house. Earl wouldn’t have been surprised if his little brother were sitting in the police car with the doors locked and awaiting his return. It sounded like something that turd would do.

  But now there was a chance that this beautiful plan had been flushed down the crapper. That piece of shit was still out here somewhere, still hiding and running through the woods. And, even though it was highly unlikely, there was the possibility that Daryl might actually find the woman. And an even slimmer chance that he wouldn’t get his ass kicked by her. And if Earl ended up hauling nearly two hundreds pounds of dead weight all the way back to the house for nothing, then someone was going to pay.

  “I’ll find you yet, cock knocker. Mark my words.”

  Stepping over the deer, Earl took up the trail again. Luckily, it wasn’t still coming down like it had earlier in the morning. If that type of accumulation had still been falling from the sky, then the footprints would have been all but covered now; there were hundreds of square acres of wilderness out here . . . miles and miles of nothing but trees, rocks, and hills. Unless you knew the landmarks, you could freeze to death before ever finding your way to a road or another house and, after that, it could be years before some hunter stumbled across your scattered bones. If you were ever found at all.

  And that was a real possibility as well: that Earl might be denied the satisfaction of revenge. If Matt found a cave to hole up in or if he just continued trucking on without ever losing steam, then sooner or later hypothermia would set in. Shivering in the freezing temperatures would turn to fatigue as the body tried everything within its power to protect itself. And all it would take would be for that pretty boy to think he’d lay down for just a minute or two, just a little cat nap to recharge his batteries. He’d close his eyes and slip into a darkness from which he’d never awaken.

  So, no . . . he had to find this son of a bitch and had to find him soon. After whatever he’d done to Mama, the bastard deserved far, far worse than dying in his sleep. He needed to scream. To beg. To know what it meant to be hunted and look into the eyes of his killer with the knowledge that he was about to die.

  “What the fuck?”

  Earl stepped out of the trees and into a clearing where the thick, gray clouds overhead could clearly be seen. They amassed in the sky like a gathering army, closing in ranks for one final assault against the world below. However, it wasn’t what was over his head that caused him to gape as his brow knitted in confusion. It was what was in the snow.

  Up until this point, Matt’s tracks had been pretty straight forward. They had been meandering impressions that, without fail, cut a path that lead deeper and deeper into the woods. Occasionally, they would weave in and out through the trees or cut a wide swath around a boulder or deadfall. But they were nothing like what Earl saw before him now.

  The clearing looked as if a hundred people who all wore the same shoe size had trampled through the drifts. Like the spokes of a wheel, the tracks radiated out in all directions from a central point that had been reduced to nothing more than a mire of muddy snow. Each spoke doubled back on itself, sometimes so often that it was impossible to tell which footprints were leading into the forest and which were returning to the clearing.

  Because of this, Earl had no idea which direction his prey had actually went. It could have been any one of two dozen possibilities and he stood, scratching his beard, as his eyes looked across the clearing.

  “You slippery son if a bitch . . . .”

  Earl walked forward as carefully as if he were stepping onto a frozen lake. He had it in his mind that he would put himself in Matt’s shoes but felt the need to be cautious. His plan was simple really: he’d walk to the middle of the clearing, just as Matt had done, and then study the different sets of tracks that branched off from there. Though they looked like a confusing mess at first glance, there had to be one particular direction that had more footprints leading out than coming back in. And once Earl was able to identify that set then he would be back on the trail again.

  Out in the open, the temperature seemed to drop nearly ten degrees. Without the cover of trees to cut the wind, a steady breeze gusted against him and rustled the tufts of dead scrub grass that poked through the snow like skeletons clawing their way out of the grave. The tip of his nose was now so cold that it almost felt like it were on fire and a membrane seemed to form somewhere just inside his nostrils. He could feel this film flex and relax with each breath and he cursed himself for not having the forethought to grab a ski mask before taking off after the man.

  By the time he reached the center of the clearing, snow had begun falling again and the tingling pain had spread to Earl’s cheeks and ears and the hairs of his beard felt like brittle needles poking into his neck and chin . The discomfort made him grumble to himself as thoughts of coffee and crackling fire plagued his mind; making Matt suffer didn’t seem as important as it had earlier. Now, he simply wanted to kill the bastard, get his ass home, and thaw out beneath a pile of blankets. And to do that, he had to solve the riddle of the footprints surrounding him.

  Earl spun around slowly, taking in each track with a critical eye. He wasn’t exactly thinking about them, but rather trusting his mind to seize upon something that was just a little out of place. Something that would separate one particular trail from the others.

  Halfway through his second revolution, he heard something. Almost like a snake’s hiss. Only this sound seemed to be coming through the air.

  Before his mind had a chance to decode what this could mean, pain flared in his chest so intensely that everything went black for a moment. He staggered backward as his hands groped for the source of the agony and felt the warm stickiness of his own blood gushing from his body.

  Matt watched the fat man stumble around like a dazed idiot. Obviously, the stupid fuck hadn’t realized what had happened yet. Otherwise, he would have been running for cover; instead he simply stayed in the clearing, blinking at his own bloody hands as if trying to figure out exactly what they were. Still, it would only be a matter of time before rationality broke through the wall of shock. And then he would run. Which meant Matt had to
act fast.

  He drew back the t-shaped piece of plastic that was squeezed within his fist. At first, it felt like it would take all of his strength to pull the cord it was attached to into position; but then the pulleys shifted and all of the tension seemed to evaporate. He held it for a moment, lining up his shot, and then released.

  There was a soft ting as the cord snapped back, immediately followed by the whizz of the arrow cutting through the air. Instead of waiting for the projectile to plunge into Earl’s blubber, however, Matt was already pulling another from the quiver on his back and fitting the notch onto the string of the compound bow he’d taken from the house.

  He released the barrage of arrows like a machine and their razor-like tips flew with precision. Again and again, they found their mark as fresh spurts of blood squished from Earl’s body. Within seconds, the man looked like an oversized voodoo doll stuck with feathered needles. His entire chest was red and glistening now and his face had turned pale and sallow. Sinking to his knees, he tried to raise the pistol, but Matt’s next shot pierced Earl’s forearm and the gun tumbled into the air as the fat man snatched his hand away.

  The bolt had passed through the arm and Matt was reminded of Steve Martin and the headband that made it look as if he’d taken an arrow through the skull. However, in Earl’s case, the business end of the shaft had strands of sinew and tiny chunks of flesh still embedded on the barbed arrowhead.

  “I’m a wild and crazy guy.” Matt mumbled to himself as he lined up his last arrow with a smile.

  He was being more careful with this one, for Earl had started to sway back and forth as mists of blood flew from his gasping mouth. Somehow, he looked smaller now: as if all of that bulk had been nothing more than hemoglobin and he was shriveling down to a normal size now that it was all spewing from his body. On top of this, the snow had really started coming down again. It was almost as if the clearing were actually the diorama in a snow globe that had been vigorously shaken by god and it made it difficult to track the man’s subtle movements.

  After several seconds, Matt finally released his shot. The arrow sped through the air and rammed into the center of Earl’s chest. Almost immediately, the man fell face forward into the snow, forcing the tip of the gore streaked arrow through his back as his weight fell upon the shaft.

  He lay motionless while a dusting of snow built up on his back.. Not trying to raise his head with the last of his strength. Not so much as even a finger or leg twitching as a crimson shadow blossomed beneath his body. If it kept coming down like this, within half an hour he would be nothing more than a mound of snow that was simply larger than the drifts surrounding it.

  Tossing the bow onto the ground, Matt raised his middle finger at this fallen giant, kissed the tip of it, and then snapped his wrist with a flourish. He felt like he always did following a kill: breathless, flushed with a mixture of excitement and release, slightly tense and tranquil all at the same time. It was like he was a virgin who’d just gotten his first piece of ass. Only he got to experience the giddy thrill time and time again.

  That feeling, however, quickly hardened when he heard a thin and distant scream warble through the stillness of the morning. He stood as still as an ice sculpture as he closed his eyes and listened. Even from this far away, he could tell it was a scream of agony and intense pain A scream of mortal danger. A woman’s scream. Mona’s scream . . . .

  SCENE SEVENTEEN

  Daryl felt the warmth spread across his crotch like the blossoming of a liquid flower. It trickled down his thighs as it’s sharp vapors rose like heat to sting his nostrils. He was only vaguely aware of the cleaver clattering to the floor as his hands stretched into the darkness as if they could somehow push it back.

  His screams came in short, shrill bursts that wavered with the trembling that seized his entire body and he staggered forward, hoping to find his way to the stairs. The darkness, however, had other plans: it wrapped around his feet like an over-friendly cat, made him stumble and fall, tried to force its way down his throat where it could choke the air from his lungs; every breath was a battle to be won, every beat of his heart felt as if might be that muscle’s last spasm. A tightness clinched his chest, but his legs felt as if they were as wobbly and unsteady as a newborn calf. In the time it took to blink an eye, he’d been plunged into the gaping maw of his worst fear and he was all too keenly aware of the gnashing teeth housed within this great, black beast.

  The concrete floor banged against Daryl’s knees as he toppled forward, scraping away both fabric and skin as his jaw cracked into something hard and metallic. His mouth flooded with a taste that was as if he’d stuck his tongue to the posts of a battery and his back hitched as sobs tried to force their way through the screeches that raked his vocal chords.

  On the floor, with the darkness squeezing in from all sides, he was an eight year old boy again. It was as if the scars that crisscrossed his arms and back had all ripped open with the disappearance of light. Rather than seeping blood, however, these wounds oozed the invisible muck of child-like fear. It coated his body with a cold slime that made the maturity of years wither into a man-sized husk; this atrophied shell pulled tightly around the youth within, reminding him of all the times cling wrap had been wrapped around his mouth while streams of water poured down. He was choking, drowning, gasping for air as his fingers clawed through dark waves for even the smallest hint of stability.

  And they were out there. He could feel their eyes, like pinpricks in his soul, burning into the back of his neck and piercing his mind with their primal hunger. Spinning on his knees like a dervish, his watery eyes searched the darkness for their red glow. But they were always just out of sight, always somewhere behind him, above him, closing in, and moving so fast that they would tear the flesh from his bones before he even felt the twitch of wiry whiskers against his chin.

  “Good boy . . . I will . . . I’ll be good, Mama, please, please, please, I swear . . . .”

  His voice was raw and raspy from the initial burst of screaming and cut in and out through the sobs that bubbled snot from his nose. At the same time, there was also a careening tone to the words, as if he might be set free if only he could plead his case long enough.

  “Please, Mama . . . please . . . .”

  He’d wrapped his arms around himself and curled into a small ball in a nest of crushed carboard boxes and trash bags stuffed with old clothes. His head was tucked so low that his chin rested on the tops of his knees and he rocked quickly from side to side as tears and urine pooled below him.

  “Mama . . . .”

  Mama was his only hope, the only thing that could drive away the darkness and turn back the creatures that slithered and scuttled toward the scent of his blood. Mama could hold him in her arms and wipe the glistening tears from his cheeks as she explained how he would never have to be in the dark again. How he would always be safe and protected and strong. If only, he would listen to her. If only he would be a good boy.

  His voice tapered off into a low moan and his teeth clattered between hiccups, sniffles, and weeping so soft that it almost seemed as if the air were leaking out of him. He pinched his own arms, gasped for breath, and tried to silence the pounding in his head long enough to hear that scuffling sound.

  It was somewhere in the darkness. Like the scrape of feet dragging slowly across the floor. Circling him, but never actually moving in for the kill.

  “Daryl . . . .”

  Mama’s voice whispered so sharply that his name could have been nothing more than a quick gasp of air.

  “Daryl, you’ve been a bad boy.”

  The sting of the reprimanding tone made his stomach feel as though he’d just swallowed battery acid. It rose through his trachea and flooded his mouth with acrid bile as he clenched his eyes closed.

  “A very bad boy.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama . . . I’ll be good, I swear I will . . . .”

  “You let them do this to me. You let them kill me.”

  The v
oice drew out the word kill as if it were a long sigh. And all the while it moved through the darkness, floating through the void like a disembodied spirit.

  “NO! No, no, no, no. I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save you. Ask Earl, he’ll tell you, I wanted to come home and make sure . . . .”

  “You let them kill me you bad, bad boy.”

  Daryl banged his head against the floor as if the dull thuds could drive Mama’s ghost from his mind. But with each new burst of pain, he saw those empty eyes . . . staring at him through the darkness. Judging. Accusing.

  “It hurt soooo bad, Daryl. All I wanted was for them to stop. For the pain to go away. For someone to help.”

  His hands were pressed tightly to the sides of his head now and he felt a pressure growing inside him. Almost as if he were swelling up like a leech. Only this pressure was cold and seemed to shred his thoughts into disjointed fragments. Past and present overlapped, memories and reality fought for dominance, and his brain felt as if it were being pulled in a thousand directions all at the same time.

  But still Mama’s voice kept circling in the dark. Taunting. Jabbing with its words. Feeding the confusion and fear and pain and loathing that roiled within Daryl’s mind.

  “I reckon you know what happens to bad boys, Daryl. I reckon you know all too well.”

  His tears now bordered on laughter and he ripped clumps of hair from his scalp to keep his hands from scratching open his own throat. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut and the shivering that had overtook him now seemed as if it had sank into his very core.

  “It’s not my fault, Mama . . . .”

  “All your fault, you naughty boy. You should’ve protected me.”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  This time the statement was louder and sounded more like a statement than a question. As if the pressure and trembling within were forcing the words out like bursts of escaping gas.