by Alan Spencer
Buzz knew it was weird he was asking her this. "Whatever happened to you? You just moved away."
"My father was arrested for robbing a liquor store. My mom and I moved to her mother's trailer in Missouri. Life pretty much sucked after that. Then I started killing people with a machete."
"Oh."
"It's okay. I'm not going to cut off your head."
"G-good. Thank you."
"So who did you kill? I can't imagine the uptight Buzz Salisbury going off on somebody."
"I didn't kill anybody. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, come on. Did you have a wife that cheated on you? Some guy banging the brains out of your wife?"
"Some guy banged the brains out of my wife, sure, but I didn't kill him, or her, over it."
"Oh. She was into everything. Yeah. Okay. Sure you didn't kill her. Look, I'm not the police. I'm not one to judge anybody. My thing, I'd cut people's heads off with this machete while they were watching TV. Another thing I do, if they're watching a horror movie, I try to mimic how the victim's being killed on screen to my victim. Now that's a scary movie!"
The machete kept switching hands. She was eager, biting her lip, tapping her feet, and repeatedly parting the pink dyed bang out of her eye. "So seriously, how many people did you slaughter? Give me the gory details."
Buzz couldn't think through the question.
Why did she assume he was a murderer?
Carrie gave him a secretive smile. "Maybe you should have a chat with Hayden. Man to man is how you like it. Some don't like to tell their stories to other women. They think it'll diminish their chances of getting laid." She said it while raising her studded belt up to her navel with one hand. "Man to man talk. That's how Buzz likes it."
She pointed the machete like a theatre usher would a flashlight towards the hallway. "Come on, Buzz. Go into the kitchen, and we'll have a real good talk. Don't worry, I'll just listen in. No vaginas allowed at this party. Sausage only."
Buzz crossed the living room. The coffee table, the floor, every corner, was covered in smashed tall boys, empty bottles of cheap rot gut whiskey, numerous crunched up beer cans, even those small sampler bottles of booze.
Carrie liked to party, and so did her mysterious friend named Hayden.
Somebody was waiting in his kitchen. The pop of a tab of beer. Something was sizzling on a frying pan. It smelled good. Meat cooking on a grill. The man was standing in front of the oven, flipping over what looked like a pancake. The man wore dirty boots, black jeans, no shirt, and an apron that looked like skin-colored beef jerky. Human skin. He could see the outlines of cutout eyes, nostrils, and mouths. Buzz was backing up. Imagining himself running right out the front door.
The tip of the machete poked his back.
"Ah-ah-ah. Sit down. We really need to talk."
The man flipped something in the frying pan. This time he saw it. A human face, sliced thin and clean. It was a man's face held in a scream.
Carrie laughed. "Put that between a bun, Hayden, and you've got yourself a hell of a Manwich."
Hayden grunted. He was balding with thinning course gray hair trailing down the back of his neck covered in gobs and cherries of flesh and fat. Hayden was well over two-hundred and fifty pounds. His face looked like something a meat tenderizer frequented.
"Forget the man-to-man talk. You need a beer. That's how you clear your mind. Go get yourself a beer. I put one in the freezer for you so it'd be extra cold."
Buzz didn't move.
Carrie trailed her finger down the machete's blade, then gave him the mean eye. "Get yourself a beer. You were never one to turn down a drink. Just like your father. Didn't your dad call you "Buzz" because he gave you a sip of beer when you were little, and you acted drunk and wasted? You even said you had to "drain the snake." I remember hearing that story. My dad thought it was fucking hilarious."
Buzz eyed the screen door near the kitchen table. He could throw it open. Run down the deck stairs, race across the yard, and then scream at the neighbors for help. Or he could run the hell out of there and really put some distance between him and these two psychos and forget this all had ever happened.
All he needed was the most opportune moment.
He bided his time.
"Okay, fine. I'll grab a beer."
"Get one from the freezer. They're colder."
He was in close proximity of Hayden. The man reeked of blood cooked out of meat and the reek of armpits. His belt loop had several skinning knives tucked in them, even a corkscrew with an eyeball connected to the end like some deflated dead fish. Carrie was a lightweight in the demented department compared to this lunatic.
Hayden flipped over the face in the pan so the features were sunny-side up. The nose was partially cut off to create a flat surface. The eyeballs were kept inside the sockets, cooked enough they were starting to blacken.
He turned away in repulsion and opened the freezer door. That's when Styrofoam package after Styrofoam package burst out of the overstocked freezer. Shrink-wrapped faces struck his chest and piled at Buzz's feet. More faces were trapped in ice in the back most section of the freezer. One beer was in the very back. A severed hand clutched it. The hand was icy blue.
"Forget it. I don't want a beer. It's not worth it."
"Then clean up your mess," Carrie barked. "Put those faces back. Hayden doesn't want his faces going bad."
Hayden at whisper level, throaty. "I like to eat the faces."
Buzz could've believe he was picking up the containers. Faces gawking at him in various spasms of terror underneath the sheath of shrink wrap. He only imagined what elevations of torture those victims reached to have such expressions permanently etched into their skin. Buzz rushed through the task, then slammed the freezer closed.
Carrie blasted, "What? You're not going to offer the lady a beer? Get me a beer."
Buzz didn't want to grab the hand clutched around the beer. The idea sent chills through him. This was the opportune time. Carrie could shove that beer up her crazy ass. Childhood friend or not, the bitch had a screw loose.
Now was the time!
He darted out of the room. Throwing the screen door open, he shot through it, bounded across the deck, down the stairs, and into the backyard. He couldn't think through the obstacles that surrounded him next.
Buzz wasn't going anywhere.
BACKYARD SHENANIGANS
Buzz could've jumped the fence on either side of the yard. The problem? Neighbors were out in their backyards. More crazy people. A wood chipper crunched as a father let his son pitch severed limbs into the machine. Father and son selecting them from a knee-high pile of mixed human remains. They waved at Buzz like, "Hello neighbor. Care to join us for some wholesome fun?" The kid was really putting some ummph behind the next pitch, what was a severed foot. Buzz could've lost it then. But he couldn't. Not if he wanted to live through this moment to see another day.
The other yard, from a huge oak tree, hung six twitching bodies from the tree's limbs. The people tied up upside down weren't screaming or fighting. They were shouting: "Me first!" "No, me me meeeeeeee!" "You promised I'd be first!" "Do me!" "No, me!" "Meeeee!"
Three women, who looked to be sisters with different colored hair, approached the tree with giant lumberjack axes. One of the women assured those hanging, "Each of you will have your turn. Be patient. I promise it's worth it." "What did we tell you earlier? Not everybody can be first." "Now be good victims and wait your turn."
Swoosh!
Swoosh!
Swoosh!
Each victim was beheaded. The swings were calculated. Dead on. Upside down, the heads seemed to eject from the necks by a harsh spray of blood. It was so harsh, the spray was audible.
What was in the yard he was standing in also kept him from running. In the lawn, people were buried up to their necks. Heads poking out of the grass like human dandelions. Fifteen, twenty, maybe twenty-five heads.
Thinking fast.
To
o late to do anything!
Hayden stood on the deck's stairs with his flesh apron waving in the air, flashing Buzz his protruding belly. In each hand was a skinning knife with insane, hand-crafted teeth designed to inflict intense agony.
Nowhere to run.
Buzz spat out words. This was a misunderstanding. He was sorry. He'd go along with anything they wanted. Please. Please. Please.
Hayden didn't say a word.
Carrie appeared in the yard with a push lawnmower. She called out to Buzz, "You ever see Sleepaway Camp 3? Awesome movie. I always emulate my favorite films. I wasn't creative enough to come up with my own ways to slaughter my victims. Watch this. This is so cooooool!"
She revved up the mower. Carrie lifted it up so the blade was visibly spinning. A gas cloud coughed out of the engine. The push mower was an old piece of crap.
The heads shouted, pleaded, and screamed. Buzz wanted to run out and stop her, but Hayden grabbed him around the neck from behind. Something sharp and cold was trained against his jugular. A blade.
"Step one of using humans for meat is to bleed them out. You want me to proceed with step one, or do you want to let the little lady have some fun? Speak."
"Let the little lady have some fun, yes, yes, yes."
"Very good. Then watch."
Hayden didn't let go of him.
Carrie whooped and hollered and cheered herself on as she guided the lawnmower over head after head. Head there one moment, head gone the next. She pretended like she was working hard mowing the lawn, giving an exaggerated sigh of exasperation, then wiping her forehead of sweat, then running over another head.
Buzz closed his eyes to it.
The lawn mower engine was cut. Carrie pretended to do a waltz with an invisible partner in between row after row of severed clean neck stumps burbling on their last life. The wood chipper father and son duo had gone back inside. The bodies hanging from the trees hung headless, the women sitting on the deck were smoking a cigarette and drinking wine and chatting casually. The women waved at Carrie, smiling.
"The Nightmare Sisters liked my show. What do you think, Hayden? You like my show?"
Hayden, "A proper demonstration of killing."
Carrie's features were ecstatic. Buzz saw that expression on his daughter's face when she was awarded "Student of the Month" in grade school. Carrie was very proud of herself. "Student of the Month" in killing.
Hayden didn't let up his hold over Buzz. Carrie stepped up closer to them and asked her partner, "What do you want to do with the rest of the night? How do we induct our friend into this new life?"
Hayden cleared his throat. "Let's go to Jeb's."
"Jeb's? Okay. Let's go for a ride. I'll drive. Jeb knows how to have a good time. I'll sit with Buzz. This one's got to be watched. He still hasn't gotten over himself. He will. And we'll help."
Hayden pressed the cold sharp thing against his neck harder. "You want to be good, or do you want to be bad?"
"Good! I want to be good. Anything you say, I'll do it."
Carrie put her hand on Buzz's face kindly. "You poor thing. You have no idea what's happening. It took me some time to figure it out too. We get through it because we have to. So okay, are we taking your truck, Hayden?"
Gravel and more phlegm, "I filled the tank up this morning."
Carrie clapped her hands. "Yay! Let's go for a ride. But wait a second. I can't forget my machete."
DOWN THE ROAD A WAYS
Hayden, cannibal cook, cannibal man, cannibal murderer, cannibal everything, was at the wheel of the Plymouth truck. Carrie was sitting on the outer edge of the passenger seat clutching onto her machete, digging underneath her fingernails with the tip of it. Buzz was sitting right between murderer and murder-ette. Nowhere to go but to stay seated.
Buzz asked them where they were going and why. Carrie wouldn't answer any of his questions. Hayden kept his eyes stone cold eyes on the road. They didn't seem interested in killing him, necessarily. Or was this a trick? Confuse him, drive him out into the woods, or some field, and slaughter him to the very ends of what their depraved minds could accomplish?
Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
Why the hell weren't the cops notified of the heads being run over in the backyard by a lawnmower? Both neighbors were unabashed in their murdering ways. The wood chipper father and son duo and "The Nightmare Sisters" weren't afraid to slaughter out in the open. Everybody he'd run into ever since visiting the rest stop were killers.
This isn't real. It just can't be. I'm not alive. That's it. I'm dead. I'm in the afterlife. No,
I'm alive. I can feel my heart beat. It's pumping like crazy.
I'm very much alive.
Then why is this happening?
Hayden pointed at the glove compartment. "Cigarette," he grunted. "You have one too, newbie."
He called me newbie.
Do they think I'm one of them?
Run. Hide. Get away. Escape. Call the police. Save yourself.
Carrie flickered a lighter, making Buzz yelp.
"Whoa, calm down, fella. Hayden's joking. We're keeping you on your toes. We're all like brothers in this place. But if you don't stop acting like such a pussy, you're going to be dead meat. It's like flaunting your butthole in prison. You keep doing that, somebody's going get you real good."
Hayden, "Dead meat."
"He's not dead meat if he sticks with us. We'll show him the ropes. Get him acclimated to his new surroundings. It took me awhile to really let everything sink in. Then I started to have a fucking blast. Don't worry, Buzz. Everybody's dead meat in Hayden's eyes. Everybody's a walking pot roast."
She handed Hayden the lit cigarette and lit one herself. Carrie offered Buzz one. Buzz shook his head.
"Lighten up." Carrie urged the cigarette between his lips. "You telling me if you thought you were going to die, if that's what you believe right now, you wouldn't enjoy one last cigarette, or one last drink? Or one last hotdog made of people, like Hayden would."
Hayden grumbled. Yes, he would indeed eat one last hotdog made of people before he died.
"You people are crazy. Hotdogs made of people? Faces shrink wrapped in your freezer. Kill me now, or tell me what the fuck you want with me."
Buzz was ready to burst from stress.
Gut check time.
While Carrie was mid-toke, he snatched the machete that was loose in her grip. He put it to her neck, "I'll slit her neck! I'll cut her open if you don't pull this car over and let me go. No arguments. Lemme out of here! I swear I'll—"
Wind blowing through a long tunnel, bells going off, then the drip, drip dripping of blood onto his lap. Buzz was swaying back and forth, drooping forward in his chair. His seat belt kept him from falling against the dashboard.
Was his nose broken? Yes, he believed it was. Hayden's elbow drove itself into his nose. Then Buzz's head snapping back. That cracked bone and cartilage feeling radiating in his face. Swallowing blood. White hot pain exploding into his face so intense he was blinking tears out of his eyes.
Carrie snatched the machete from his grip. "Don't you ever, e-ver touch my machete! You got that? We might be childhood buddies, but that gives you no right to touch my fucking machete."
She squeezed Buzz's nose and wouldn't let go until he said "Yes, yes, yeeee-ees! I understand! I won't touch your machete ever again!"
Carrie reached under the seat and handed Buzz a folded up cloth. "Press this to your nose. Stop the bleeding. You look like a clown, your nose all bloody like that."
Hayden humphed.
The cannibal thought her comment was amusing.
Fucking assholes.
Buzz pressed the cloth up to his face until he didn't feel blood going down his throat anymore. Minutes later, after shaking off the power of Hayden's elbow jab, he felt different. He wasn't shivering in nervousness. He wasn't about to burst from the tension. The anticipation had released itself when the pain took over. Now the pain was on medium boil. He was somewhat calm, co
nsidering everything.
Buzz reasoned with them. "Look, please tell me what's going on. I'm so confused."
Carrie was slashing the air with the machete as if leveling it into someone's face. She bit her lip, gave an evil grimace, and made swooshing sounds under her breath as she hacked into another imaginary face.
Hayden wasn't smoking a cigarette anymore. He was chewing on a finger bone like it was a tooth pick. It rattled against his teeth, bone against bone.
Buzz wasn't scared now.
He was pissed.
It wasn't anger. It was rage.
Are you really going to do this?
Then do it.
DO IT!
Buzz steeled himself.
I'M DOING THIS!
He jerked the wheel and steered it off the dirt back road. They hit a dip, went downhill, and hurtled nose-first into a tree. The crunch of steel. The windshield shattering The engine going silent. Buzz pushed aside Carrie. She'd hit the dashboard, bleeding out her nose. The woman landed on the ground, limp as a ragdoll. He stepped over her, hurling himself down the road. Hayden hadn't got out of the car, but he was working off his seatbelt and about to make chase.
Buzz made it up the steep incline. He was dizzy, weak, hungry, thirsty, and without a clue where to run.
"Stop!"
It wasn't Hayden from behind him, nor was it Carrie.
The moonlight peaked above the road on the horizon, making the people ahead of him two white outlined shadows. Two men. They were carrying a cooler between them, each one holding a side. One looked like an Indian, only in a vest and pants, the other, had big rimmed glasses and looked like a molester from the 1980's with his thin jacket, yellow shirt, and khakis pants.
The Indian had told Buzz to stop.
Buzz didn't stop.
Buzz darted for the woods. Clumsy footed and lightheaded, Buzz tumbled onto the dirt ground. A lasso wrapped around his ankles. The Indian did it. The Indian also held a butcher knife in one hand. Where the hell he came up with the blade as big as a person's face was beyond him. The steel reflected the moon.
