by Wol-vriey
It fell slow as a landing balloon.
In horror, Edison realized that it was falling onto the ranch house’s front. It was falling directly at him.
Edison flung Jude’s rifle out of the window and turned to flee. He’d only taken two steps when the rat god’s whale pierced carcass crashed into the bedroom.
The crash totally demolished the house frontage. Edison Bennett was crushed to a pulp of meat so mangled between whale bone and rubble that it was unrecognizable as once having been a human being.
Valhalla Swede’s semen witching had proven right once again.
CHAPTER 27
Jude and Nell made their way around the ranch house wreckage. Jude, unable to walk with a missing leg, sat on his once-again-normal horse. He fed the animal sugar cubes to keep it happy.
(He was certain it had found being opened up [and used as a weapon] a distressing experience.)
“I need to find father,” Nell told Jude.
Jude too, wondered what had become of Doc after he’d entered the ranch house.
“I need to find my rifle,” he said. He reloaded his white pistol and kept it in his lap in case of trouble.
Rattackus’s bulk lay through the middle of the house. “With all these bones sticking out, it looks like a rotting ship,” Nell said. She mused. “What is it, Jude?”
“A whale’s skeleton,” he replied. “These Comanche weapons sure are effective.”
He pointed. “There’s my rifle.”
Nell dug the weapon out of the rubble. She also found the bag of teeth bullets. She handed both up to him.
“Thanks.” He dusted the rifle off and stuck it into its saddle holster.
***
Nell pointed. “There’s Ike.”
Jude and Nell went over to look at him.
Between Rattackus’s rear legs, Ike Dallas lay bloodied. Rattackus had crashed down onto its front, so Ike was positioned looking up at them.
Ike’s head was pillowed on a monster green turd. The turd had bones in it.
Nell found the sheer immenseness of Rattackus’s backside staggering. The huge veins on its buttocks looked like a network of plumbing and ladders. “It’s like a meat house,” she told Jude. “Its anus looks like a door to somewhere.”
Nell worried that the huge rear opening would inundate them in excrement at any moment.
Ike Dallas was still alive, but fading fast. Even attached to Rattackus like he was, with his fused legs forming its penis and the rest of him its scrotum, Jude and Nell didn’t think Ike should be bent double like now, with his feet right behind his head.
“His back’s broken,” Nell whispered to Jude. “Serves the prick right.”
Ike nodded at them. His face was stony. His eyes asked for no sympathy.
Jude nodded back. He felt a grudging respect for the man. Ike Dallas was hard as a chisel to the end.
“Hey, freak,” Ike said to Nell. “You and your new boyfriend won.”
“Ike,” Nell said patiently. “Stop calling me a freak. Show some fucking solidarity. We’re both freaks.”
Ike spat angrily. “Yeah, that we are.” He spat again. “I hate being in the same category as you, Nell.”
He looked at Jude. “See you in Hell, Jude. You’re all shot up. Looks like you’ll be joining me there shortly.”
Jude shook his head. “That’ll be a long, long, time from now, Ike.” He nodded at Nell. “You see, Ike, Nell here is my longevity assurance policy. It’s sort of like life insurance, only it works while you’re still alive, not after.”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“Her pee’s magic — fixes you up.”
Nell grinned nastily at Ike. “Too bad you weren’t nicer to me, you prick.”
Now he was dying, Ike’s memory was foggy. Still, he remembered Nell peeing on Jude after he’d shot him up back at Zizi’s.
He scowled. “She wets the bed too? I guess even bladder incontinence has its uses.”
“Just admit he’s smarter than you,” Nell said angrily. “I’ll fix you too if you ask me nicely.”
Ike Dallas scowled. “Screw you, Nell, there’s no way under God’s blue sky I’m ever begging you or anyone else to pee on me.” He suppressed a groan of pain. “Okay, fucking get lost, both of you,” he said. “I want to die in peace.”
“Want a cigar?” Jude asked.
Ike nodded.
Jude got one from the horse’s saddle. He lit it and gave it to Nell. She handed it to Ike.
Ike took a puff. “Thanks.”
Jude turned the horse away.
“Did you see my father?” Nell asked Ike.
“Doc? Nah, I didn’t even know he was on the ranch. You have any idea what happened to Rosa?”
Nell gaped at him. “You don’t remember?”
Ike shook his head. He thought awhile, and then gave up. “Waste of time trying to recall things anyway when you’re dying.”
He waved Nell away. “Now get after Jude. Go on, Nell, git — leave me alone. I’ve got me maybe ten more minutes of living, and I want to enjoy this cigar.”
He resumed smoking, cold eyes focused somewhere in the sky.
Nell left Ike Dallas to die in peace. She ran to catch up with Jude.
***
Jude was looking over the demolished building when Nell reached him. “I sure hope Doc didn’t get buried in this mess.”
Nell looked horrified. “You’re not suggesting —”
“I’m just hoping. He went in, but doesn’t appear to have come out again.”
“Neither did mother, either,” Nell said, pleased.
Valhalla Swede walked into view just then.
Jude noticed her first. “That’s your mother, I presume. She’s quite good-looking — looks like you.”
Nell looked over at Valhalla and spat. “Speak of the devil’s sister.” She calmed, her worry for Doc overriding her dislike. “Have you seen father, mother?”
“You tried to kill me, you little tramp,” Valhalla replied, her expression aloft and cold.
Jude turned to stare at Nell. “You did?”
She shrugged. “I obviously didn’t succeed. I need more practice — I’ve never tried to murder anyone before.”
Valhalla looked coldly at Jude. “You killed my darling Edison, you dumb prick.”
Jude couldn’t think of a reply. Now the deed was done, everything seemed to have been for nothing.
Nell rescued the moment from becoming more awkward than it already was. “Is father dead, mother?”
Valhalla turned from glaring at Jude to look at her daughter.
“He isn’t dead, Nell,” she said. “He’s here with me.
Nell looked suspiciously at her. That didn’t sound right. “Mother, what are you talking about?”
“He’s with me,” Valhalla repeated. “Forever.”
She ripped open her bodice, so the pair could see what she meant.
Nell was horrified. Jude was stupefied.
Valhalla’s entire left breast was now Doc’s head.
The breast-head clearly lacked intelligence. Its eyes rolled idiotically, its mouth blabbered silently, and its lolling tongue slobbered spittle everywhere.
Nell froze in shock. Horror rolled over her like shower water. Urine filled her empty bladder and forced its way out.
Jude quickly got out his water bottle and stuck it under her. No point wasting my life’s blood, he thought.
“What the hell did you do to him?” Nell screamed. Echoes of her horror ricocheted back at them.
“He sacrificed himself so I could live, daughter.”
“You killed him? Wasn’t abandoning us both enough?”
Valhalla’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t get melodramatic, Nell.”
Nell grabbed Jude’s white pistol from his lap and pointed it at Valhalla.
“You’re going to die too, mother,” she said. “For good, this time.”
Valhalla’s eyes became unsure. “You wouldn’t d
are.”
For a moment Nell was herself unsure. But then she stared at Doc’s face gaping idiotically in Valhalla’s breast, his eyes staring in different directions, his dribbling mouth muttering garbled nonsenses. The horrid sight crystallized her resolve.
“Try me, mother,” she said.
She shot Valhalla.
There was that moment when nothing happened. Then a mass of shark spikes exploded out through Valhalla Swede Bennett’s body.
Valhalla gurgled and collapsed.
Nell’s eyes were expressionless pools, their surfaces reflecting neither pleasure nor distress at the act of murder she’d just carried out. She looked down at her mother.
Amazingly, Valhalla was still alive. Blood burbled over her lips and her body twitched like an epileptic’s. Her eyes spoke horrors unspeakable.
Doc was finally dead. A shark quill had exited directly through the center of his eyes.
Nell finally smiled. “Goodbye daddy,” she whispered to the breast-head.
Valhalla’s lips moved. “Ple... ple... ple…”
Nell shook her head.
“Not this time, mother. You’re slipperier than an eel. I’d like to see you wriggle your way out of this.” She extended a hand to Jude. “Your rifle. Fucking load it.”
He got the wooden rifle from its holster, loaded it with teeth and handed it to her.
Nell shot Valhalla in the face. Then after the porcupine had exploded into her head, she shot her in what remained of her face again. Then she shot her all over her body, leaving untouched only the left breast housing Doc’s dead head.
She fired and fired.
“For heaven’s sake — stop shooting!” Jude finally growled at her. “She’s been dead since you shot her in the head that first time. I can’t stand the squealing of those damn porcupines.”
Nell surfaced from the trance state she’d lapsed into. She gazed at Valhalla’s spike body in awe.
“Now you’re really dead, mother,” she said dully.
Her tension broke. Relief flooded her. The enormity of what she’d done settled on her and she began sobbing. She ran to Jude and wrapped her arms around his waist.
***
“We need to bury them,” Jude said. “The buzzards will get them if we leave them like this.”
“Let them rot together,” Nell said. She was once again seated behind Jude. “Let the vultures eat both of them. I don’t want mother pulling another of her escape acts.”
She rested her chin on Jude’s shoulder and giggled. “C’mon darlin’, let’s get back to town. I got me a fuckin’ brothel to run.”
Jude turned the white stallion toward Little Ass, and they galloped off.
Coda
The buzzards descended on the EVB Ranch to feed. They were hungry and came in their droves. When night fell, the birds departed and the coyotes took over eating.
There was a lot of food. The scavenging animals paid most attention to Rattackus’s immense carcass, but several of the smaller ones, unable to get bites of the main prize, foraged and ate the dead cowboys lying around the house.
A pack of juvenile coyotes faced the task of disposing of Valhalla Swede Bennett’s remains.
The creatures didn’t enjoy eating her. The porcupines punctuating Valhalla’s flesh couldn’t be bitten through. The coyotes had to settle for what little unpunctured meat existed between the spiky mammals.
The only part of Valhalla’s destroyed corpse that the young prairie wolves did enjoy eating was Doc’s head — her left breast. The head was tasty and meaty and despite its appearance of solidity, boneless, lacking even teeth.
The coyotes quickly ate it off her body, leaving a gaping hole in her chest. Then it occurred to them that they could gain access to Valhalla’s innards by pulling her body apart limb from limb.
While they worked at separating her flesh, transparent goo seeped out of Valhalla’s corpse. The goo had been slowly exiting her body since she’d dropped dead. The last of the goo seeped out when the coyotes ripped her porcupine-studded corpse apart.
This goo, Valhalla Swede Bennett’s essence, slid out from beneath the corpse’s torso. It slithered snakelike amongst the feeding coyotes till it found what it sought — a young female just on the brink of adulthood.
The girl-wolf was oblivious to the strange substance pooling beneath her rear region.
Valhalla’s goo coiled like a snake, then it struck upward, piercing straight into the coyote’s vagina. The coyote stood paralyzed while all of the goo disappeared into her sex.
Then, she began transforming.
She stood up on her rear legs like a human, and began growing taller. As she grew, so did her upper body alter also, becoming that of a human woman.
Finally, Valhalla Swede Bennett was herself again.
She smiled down at the prairie wolves ripping her erstwhile body to shreds. She tickled one or two behind the ears, while they rubbed themselves happily against her legs.
Of course, the coyotes made no attempts to attack her. She was one of them.
The End.
About the Author
Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall.
He currently resides in a state of uneasy stalemate with his threatening-to-thin-beyond-redemption hair, and believes there actually are things that go bump in the night.
Wol-vriey recycles the ridiculous into reasonable reality for the reader.
His WEIRRRD philosophy?
WEIRRRD = Warp/Write Everything into Real-istic Ridiculous Readable Distorted Dream Dimension Descriptions.
Wol-vriey blogs at:
http://oddityfarm.wordpress.com
Big Trouble in Little Ass originally appeared in Westward Hoes, a collection of nine weird western tales. For more gun slinging bizarro adventure, download Westward Hoes for your Kindle Reader.
Other Books by Wol-vriey:
The Bizarro Story of I
Meat Suitcase
Chainsaw Cop Corpse
Vegan Zombie Apocalypse
Boston Posh
Novellas and Short Stories By
Wol-vriey:
Big Trouble in Little Ass
A novella featured in
Westward Hoes
Forever Ago Sunshine
A short story featured in
The Big Book of Bizarro
Guiltessa Dolores