by Adam Cesare
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
The Still
Flies in the Brain
Rollin & Jeanie
Pink Tissue
Border Jumper
Trap
The New Model
The Girls in the Woods
The White Halloween
Bringing Down the Giants
So Bad
Free Book Offer
More from Adam Cesare
BONE MEAL BROTH
By
Adam Cesare
Published by Adam Cesare
“The Still” originally appeared in Necrotic Tissue #11
“Rollin & Jeanie” originally appeared in Shroud Magazine # 7
“Border Jumper” originally appeared in Unspeakable from Blood Bound Books
“Trap” originally appeared in Shroud Digital Edition #2
"Bringing Down the Giants" originally appeared in All-Night Terror w/ Matt Serafini
"So Bad" originally appeared in Splatterpunk #5
Copyright © Adam Cesare, 2016
Cover painting by Arthur Wang
Additional Cover Design by Dyer Wilk
e-book formatting by Guido Henkel
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Acknowledgements
Much of this collection comprises previously published stories, so I would be remiss if I didn’t thank all the editors who originally plunked down money on these things. Chief among them is Tim Deal, who gave me my first sale by putting “Rollin & Jeanie” in Shroud #7.
The Still
The barefoot boy ambled his way up the road, whistling a tune he had heard while trying to peek into the tinted windows of his father’s titty bar.
The pavement under his feet gave way to dirt as he reached the foot of the hills and started to pay closer attention to avoid any sharp rocks or pieces of glass. The young boy, barely ten years old, wore faded jeans and a dirty white T-shirt purchased with Marlboro points.
In one hand he gripped an empty plastic jug that once held a gallon of milk. The jug was wet from a recent rinse and mottled with brown splotches where the dirt and dust from the air clung to its still-damp crevices.
As he walked with his eyes down on the ground before him, a small cloud exploded a few inches from his exposed toes. A gun clap sent all the birds from out of their roosts. The boy jumped back and squinted into the woods. Laughter echoed from just inside the tree line.
“You son of a fuckin’ prick, Wooster,” the boy shouted. “You could have shot my foot off.”
“I didn’t even come close,” Wooster said as he stepped through the tall grass lining the road. He was carrying a rifle, its wooden stock dented and chipped from years of use. “Where you off to, Chasey?”
“Where ya think,” Chase said sarcastically and rattled the jug against his leg. “Gotta get a refill. What you doing back there, waiting for your sister so you can rape her?”
“Nah, I heard your mother was in town buying groceries. I figured I’d wait for her instead today,” the older boy offered in retort. Wooster was only three years Chase’s senior but nearly double his height. On stilt-like legs he emerged from out of the woods like a circus performer. His reddish-blonde hair and gently rosy skin added to the illusion.
When he reached the smaller boy, Wooster smacked Chase on the back of the head. The blow added an extra cowlick to Chase’s already greasy and unkempt hair.
The two boys walked together into the thickening wood, Chase banging the jug on his knee and Wooster using the rifle as a walking stick. Their topic of conversation rarely strayed from the women of their respective families. They joked until that particular well was dry, and their giggles slowly diminished until there was only the sound of their footfalls.
Chase was the first to break the quiet.
“Those bastards from downstate sure love this shit. Lawrence, Stockden, as far as Middle Town, they all travel for it,” he said. The boy lifted up the jug with one hand and, by getting up on his tiptoes, was able to push it under Wooster’s nose. The taller boy pushed the plastic container away, trying to hide his revulsion but failing.
“You’re such a pussy, Wooster,” Chase said, and upended the milk jug over his open mouth. The child caught only a few drops of dirty water on his tongue, but Wooster still wriggled up his face in disgust.
“You don’t really drink that stuff, do you?” Wooster asked. “I mean, I wouldn’t even try it and I’m a lot older than you. You are too young.”
“One time I did,” Chase said. “I waited until I was far enough into the trail, but not too close to the bar, and I took a big old swig.” Chase smiled to himself and looked straight ahead at the trees. They were getting closer to the shack. They would have to turn soon.
“Well, what was it like?”
“It weren’t like nothing at first,” Chase said, bravado in his voice. “That’s what I tried to tell myself, but then I ran into the woods and puked it all up.” He looked down at the stones at his feet, picked one up between his first two toes, and walked forward, trying to hold it for as many steps as he could.
“Your uncle would whup you if he heard that. Hell, your uncle would whup me just for hearing that.”
“That there is the bar’s merchandise,” Chase said, deepening his voice in imitation of his uncle. He laughed, but Wooster didn’t join him; he just pointed his freckled face down at Chase.
“Just don’t be doing that anymore,” Wooster warned. They walked in silence until they reached the path.
The trail to the still was not really a trail at all, just a couple of inches of faded red twine tied around the trunk of a small birch tree. When the boys reached the knot, they knew they only had to walk into the thick growth for a ways. When they were close enough, they would be able to smell their way to the shed.
The distillery was a hodgepodge of rotted wood and sheet metal. On each side it was missing a board just below the roof for ventilation. Chase walked up to the structure as if it was the most normal thing in the world, but Wooster trailed behind.
Wooster was old enough to know that this, Chase’s family business, was not right.
On the other side of the shed, on a stump that was far too small to sit on comfortably, sat Chase’s uncle Rhett.
Rhett was fidgeting with his pocketknife, whittling the thick calluses off the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. The back of his overalls was soiled and his thick back and shoulder hair glistened in what little sun managed to make its way through the branches.
“They want more,” Rhett said without turning around. “At ten bucks a shot, we’re gonna be millionaires by the end of the week.” Turning to face the two boys, he folded up his knife and dropped it into the chest pocket of his overalls.
“I don’t know about that, but you will have a lot, sir.” Chase could play the tough guy all he wanted around Wooster, but when he was addressing his pap or his uncle, it was strictly “sir.”
“Give it here,” Rhett said, and grabbed the jug from Chase’s hand. The door to the shed was merely a tarp affixed to the frame by three nails. Rhett lifted up the tarp, slinging it over the top of the shed so the boys could see inside. The smell was the worst either of the boys had ever encountered. Chase handled it much better, having been around
it longer than his friend.
Rhett was not a tall man, but even he had to bend at the waist to fit his gnomish frame into the shack that housed the still.
Wooster turned his back, not wanting to look inside at the still. He pretended to clean the barrel of his rifle with the bottom of his shirt. Chase craned his neck to get a better vantage point without having to step inside the fetid shed.
“Well, come on, it’s not every day yer friend gets to see this.” Rhett waved the boys over. His toothless grin was not even the most off-putting part of his face.
The boys reluctantly ducked inside. Chase’s bare feet sunk into the layer of mold and dried blood that coated the dirt floor. Wooster had to will himself from both gagging and sobbing.
There before them, hanging from a cobbling of bungee cords from the wall, was the dying woman. The woman was not only naked but part machine.
Plastic tubing and metal coils ran in and out of her skin at her arms, legs, and neck. She made no sound, but the pumps behind and under her made a rhythmic sloshing.
She did not react as they entered the cramped room. Her eyes had not seen anything for weeks; they had lost their luster and had begun to film over. Her once-plentiful tears had dried up. Wooster couldn’t stand the sight of her. Neither could Chase, but the younger boy did a better job of hiding it.
Wooster remembered when they had brought her in—a girl from one of the state’s more rural colleges, out on a bender with her boyfriend. She had supposedly caused quite a stir in the bar and then passed out, dead drunk.
The way the story went, the boyfriend had started giving lip to Chase’s father, who was tending bar that night. The men took him outside and killed him. The girl never woke or moved so much as an inch during the entire beating.
Now she was here, hooked up to the insane hoses and tubes Rhett had designed. Wooster didn’t know the science behind Rhett’s machine, how it mixed blood, bile, and spinal fluid and somehow converted it all to booze. He doubted Rhett himself knew quite what was going on inside the tubes and metal coils of the still. He’d probably learned most of it from the shiners before him, who took what they knew from their bastard fathers.
Rhett approached the girl. She moved her leg slightly, but Wooster was convinced it was just the twitch of a dead woman. She couldn’t be aware of them. Rhett knelt down, grabbed the smallest tube leading out of the rusty machine at the girl’s feet, and unkinked the end of it. He placed the tube into the empty jug. Wooster and Chase both jumped at the tinkle that the girl’s brew made as it hit the plastic.
Folk came from miles around to drink this shit.
The tube was so small it took ten minutes to fill the jug. Even Rhett was silent during the process. When it was over, he looked at the boys and smiled.
“This ’un is just about tapped out.” Chase’s uncle scratched his mustache and ran his hand all the way down the stubble on his neck, stopping to pick at a scab. “How would you boys like to make some extra money by going on into Middle Town and picking up another?” Rhett laughed.
Wooster didn’t think it was funny at all. He gripped his gun tighter and prayed for strength.
Flies in the Brain
Danny rolled up his comic book and took aim. He brought his hand down and crushed the fly just as it landed on the carpet next to him. He flicked off the twitching grey-green viscera and continued to read.
“Did you know that in medieval times they thought that crazy people had flies in their brains?”
Danny’s eyes widened and he put down his comic book. “No way.”
“It’s true, it says so right here,” Dylan said as he place the hardback book on the arm of his chair. He thought for a second about the effect this could have on an impressionable child and then added: “Well, they didn’t really, that’s just the explanation they used because mental illness was beyond their understanding at the time.”
“That’s silly,” Danny responded, returning to his own book. On the cover Thor was punching the Incredible Hulk. Dylan didn’t mind if his son read comic books every once in a while, as long as he was reading.
Dylan, Danny, and Danny’s grandmother all sat quietly. Grandma stared at the empty television screen, waiting for the boy’s daily “hour of reading” to be over. Her knitting sat in a lump, her needles collecting cobwebs on the floor next to her. She hadn’t picked them up since her last stroke.
Danny lounged on the carpet in the family’s small apartment living room. The coffee table was stacked with bills and magazines.
“Done!” Danny closed the comic and quickly glanced over the ad on the back.
“Still fifteen minutes left, sport,” his father said, not taking his eyes off the page in front of him.
There was a mild groan of protestation.
“To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t going to report itself.”
“Not done.” Danny flipped over the slim book and started again with the Jade-Giant crash-landing in Asgard.
Dylan smiled and thought how good a kid Danny was. He himself had liked To Kill a Mockingbird, and he knew his son would too. The child had all summer to worry about summer reading. He would let him come around to it on his own.
His mother’s passing has been tough on all of us.
Dylan stopped smiling and continued pretending to read A History of Mental Illness and Its Treatments.
Danny found a box of his mother’s things one day while he played hide-and-seek with himself. The apartment was very small and it was a very easy game.
He laid them out on his bed while his father was at work. A stethoscope, a white coat with her name monogrammed on it, a thermometer she had once used on Danny himself, and an otoscope.
He put on the coat and took all three tools into the living room. His grandmother watched Days of Our Lives, her glassy eyes fixed on the screen. The only time she would react was when the familiar chords of the theme song found their way past the dementia and brought her back to a time when solid food was an option.
“Grandma,” Danny said, not expecting a response.
She sat completely still.
“I’m gonna do a checkup, all right?” the ten-year-old asked in a soothing tone.
He parted her lips with the thermometer and held his hand under her jaw to keep it in her mouth. He then mimed checking his watch.
“Temperature’s normal.” He smiled at the old lady, but elicited no response.
He then took the stethoscope from around his neck, put it to her chest, and listened her faint heartbeat.
Easing the brittle woman forward gently, Danny put the end of the stethoscope to her back.
“Breathe for me, okay?” He heard a wheezing inhalation through the earpieces and then something else: a faint buzzing.
“Strong heartbeat, but the lungs don’t sound too good. Sorry, Grandma.” He frowned and returned the stethoscope to his neck. He then took the otoscope out of his pocket. “Tilt back… there we go.”
He shined the tiny flashlight in her eyes, with minimal reaction. He then placed the scope in one ear, made a slightly disgusted sound, and then composed himself like a professional.
He had just found something of interest in his grandmother’s nose when he heard the key in the door. He quickly peeled off the coat and wrapped it around the instruments, shoving the bundle under his grandmother’s chair.
“Hey, Dad.” The boy ran over to hug his father.
Dylan smelled of sweat and motor oil. He went into his bedroom to set down his bag and coat.
Danny sidled up next to his grandmother, and whispered, “Don’t worry, I think I know how to fix you.”
Danny fell to sleep right on the living-room floor. They had finished their hour of reading and the blue-and-white glow of the television had hypnotized the young boy. Dylan picked him up and took him to his room. He was getting big; soon he would have to walk himself, but not tonight.
After Danny was tucked in, Dylan put on his jacket and prepared to go out for a drink.
On his way out the door, he heard Grandma make a slight guttural sound, like somebody breathing into a paper bag ever so softly.
“Grandma?” He walked over to the old woman, and she didn’t move. She sat. The television was off, but her eyes still were trained on it. Dylan put his head to her chest, and after a moment he heard a soft exhalation and was satisfied she was still alive.
He threw a blanket over the old woman and left.
When Danny heard the door close, he knew it was time to operate.
The drinks weren’t what kept him going, but they helped. Dylan had met his wife in the bar, she had been sitting two seats over from the one he was currently in. He took another sip.
“So, how’s it going?” Ellen was too old to be considered conventionally beautiful, but Dylan thought age had added a certain attractiveness to the bartender.
“It goes,” he lied, and sipped.
“How’s the kid?” she asked.
“Getting big, growing up smart.” This wasn’t a lie, just an omission of the bullying and “emotional problems” Danny faced. The next sip finished the drink.
“Let me get ya another one.” Ellen brought the glass to the tap without taking a step.
Three drinks, every night he had three. Ellen charged him for two, but he paid for the third anyway. Every night.
He took his time on his last drink, sitting in the bar and letting the smell of the place take him back.
“Aw shit, let me get you another one,” Ellen said.
“What?” Dylan snapped back from his semiconsciousness and looked down at his beer. A bloated black fly twitched its way along the surface.
Sometimes the pain can seep in. Once it’s there, it sits and ferments, splitting and expanding till the cloud pushes everything against the walls.
He took another sip.
Danny ran his finger along the spines of his father’s books. Some of them had been his mother’s too. Thick medical textbooks, with a smattering of trashy crime paperbacks. The books were all dusty except for the one his father was currently reading: A History of Mental Illness and Its Treatments.
