by Alan Spencer
The Indian's hand was shaking in anger. "I could split your head in two, cut your head off at the neck, wrap your head in tin foil, and throw you into a fire. Cook it like a baked potato. Mmmmmm-yeeeeeah."
The molester was more methodical with his methods. "I'd take something from the lower part of his body. His arteries are probably starting to harden. When you cook hardening arteries over an open fire, it releases a special taste. Smokey. Almost creamy."
Hayden, coming up over the hill, brought the Indian guy in close for a hug. Then he hugged the molester looking guy. Carrie did the same. They talked about a bonfire. Good times. Shared inside jokes between them. It was like Buzz suddenly didn't exist.
"How far out are we?" Carrie asked everybody. "Are we close?"
The molester pointed up the road. "Just beyond that bend. You can see the orange of the fire."
The Indian, "This one almost get away from you."
Carrie nodded. "Yes, he did. He's not for eating. He's new. We're breaking Buzz in."
Their eyes honed in on Buzz with a savage interest.
Carrie pointed her machete at Buzz's face. "He's doing better than they normally do. He's already showing some balls. But he's not made the transition yet."
The molester stifled a laugh. "This guy? Really? I can't see what he did to get himself here."
"Yeah, I know." Carrie smiled at Buzz. "You wouldn't think. But I've said that about other people too."
The Indian untied the lasso from Buzz's feet. Hayden offered Buzz a helping hand up to his feet. The cannibal dusted off Buzz's shoulders and gave his back a good slap. "Good as new."
Carrie eyed the cooler the Indian and the molester looking guy picked back up. "What's in there?"
"Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that," the molester guy replied.
Carrie poked Buzz's back with the machete. "Do as I tell you. It's for your own good. If you do anything, and I mean anything, I'll shove this knife into your back. Or I'll let my friends here do whatever they want with you. They're very creative when they're hungry. No funny stuff."
Buzz wildly shook his head. "No funny stuff. Got it."
They walked up the dirt road. There was a break in the woods. Wooden posts were set up creating a border of barbed wire, some of it still up, some it coming undone or stamped into the ground by weather and lack of upkeep.
A wooden sign on two posts up ahead read CANNIBAL ACRES.
CANNIBAL ACRES
The land was just what the sign had promised. Acres of land with parading cannibals. Numerous bonfires were raging, burning tall to touch the night sky. Dozens of persons, regular in appearance, were mingling, drinking beers, wine, hard liquor, while sporting paper plates greasy with—
Disgusting!
Buzz tried to hold back the need to retch. He lost it, landing on all fours, puking until it hurt.
"You pathetic loser. Haven't you seen people eat before?" Carrie was angry. "You're keeping us from our good time. You're supposed to be one of us. Move it. Pick up you feet. Just when I thought you were showing some balls. Get used to it. It's only going to get more messy for you if you don't get over it."
Hayden was gone. The Indian and the molester were gone. They had moved on as participants of the party on CANNIBAL ACRES.
Carrie grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and forced him up off the ground. "If you're going to puke, bend over and puke. Don't fall over like a sissy. You're going to need some big ass balls if you're going to get through this with your sanity intact."
Buzz's eyes veered in every direction, each thing he set his sights upon more ghastly than the last. A set of dirty hands were digging eyeballs out of a pile of severed heads with their fingers. Another shoved a suction tool, what looked like an old school hypodermic needle, to siphon out the brain matter through someone's ear. Corpses rotated on homemade spits. A handful of cretin backwoods children were picking up severed hands, feet, arms, and legs and throwing them into a giant cast iron cauldron of stew nearly overflowing with green peppers, carrots, onions, celery, and unknown spices (what smelled like dog food to Buzz). Fire pits sizzled with cooking bodies. Missing toothed yokels who looked like mountain people were sticking temperature gauges into torsos to see if the bodies have been cooked through properly. Lots of prep was going on. One dead woman had an apple shoved into her mouth like a pig. Corpses were wrapped in intestines as if they were bacon wrapped around filet minion. Severed heads were scalped, the top section of the skull sliced open, and they were placed on skillets until the brains were boiling from the heat, then the people shoved a spoon into the open skull, carrying the heads around and eating the brains bite by gray bite. Under a giant pile of orange hot cinders, bodies were completely wrapped in tin foil, cooking like baked potatoes. Mouths drooled as they devoured tongue and giblet kabobs. Kids slathered "chili" over bratwursts that were a strange shade of purple. People were slurping, licking, and sucking their fingers clean, belching and burping, and devouring meat. Severed hands were dipped in barbeque sauce, eaten of the precious meat, then cast aside into a giant dug up pit of bones. The pit contained other worthless pieces, odds and ends unusable to this culinary party, but most of all, the pits were occupied by heaps and heaps of guts. Thirty feet long, ten feet wide, and twelve feet deep, this pit was where Carrie directed Buzz.
Flies buzzed within the deep hole made mysterious by strange shaped shadows. He saw picked clean skulls, hideous facial expressions, meatless bone fingers reach up out of hills of viscera for help. The smell was rank porridge. Buzz closed his eyes, the stink stinging them. Buzz coughed and threw up nothing.
Carrie, "Get yourself together, Buzz. I'm trying to prepare you for what's ahead. You're going to need all the help if you're going to survive this alive. I can't say much else just yet. One thing I can." She patted his back with her free hand, the other clutching the machete. "Everything you're going to go through will be well worth it. And don't you for one second forget that."
The noxious smells kept hitting him. The sound of flies buzzing was enough to engage his gag reflex. The chewing, chomping, gnashing of teeth, the loud slurps, it all echoed in the foreground. People were wildly parting. Children were screaming and playing. Everybody was getting down on some fucked up barbeque.
Buzz swore he'd never eat again. He only wanted to know why this was happening to him. How the hell did he end up in a place like this?
Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy?
Carrie, being teacher, "Look real close into that pit. Our friends here have been dumping the useless pieces. The bones they don't want. The guts and organs that weren't juicy enough. Do you know what happens when cattle are slaughtered, and somebody doesn't tie off the guts properly? Poop gets everywhere. Nobody likes poop. Not even these guys."
Carrie jabbed the machete between his shoulder blades so hard Buzz was forced to take two steps closer to the edge. The waft was hot despite the cool night air blowing through the empty field. There was a lit farmhouse in the far background, some evidence of this actually being a farm, seeing the cows, cattle pins, horse pins, and chicken coups. It was very likely the people who owned the place were mingling with this sick crowd of foodies.
"Look real deep in the hole. See it? Do you see the backpack in that dead body's hands?"
The dead body was just a torso without clothes on. A beer bellied man well over four hundred pounds. Somebody had cut out his heart with a crude sharp object, emptied out his organs from his belly, and left the man a shell. He had no legs. The top of the man's head was cut off, the brains removed. The legs were probably somewhere else in the pile.
"Yeah, I see it."
Buzz pinched his nose.
"I need you to jump down and get it. Bring it up, and we can get on with what we're doing here. I know you've got questions. So let's answer them. First thing's first," Carrie twirled the tip of the machete against his back, teasing him, "dive in. You're one of us now. Start acting like it."
"What?—you're crazy! I would never eve
r do that. It's clear what's going on. You people are fucking with me. Yeah, fucking with me. I'm not going to take it. I don't have to do anything you people tell—"
It was like a hand covered his mouth.
A hand did cover his mouth!
Hayden's mean gruff, "Down you go."
Lifted up off the ground, Buzz was thrown, falling headfirst into the pile. He ripped the night with his protests. He expected to crash, but instead, everything was so soft. It was like one of those kiddy play places with the balls. Every shift was a squish, a sliding of flesh off of bone.
"Gawdohgawdaaaah-aaaah-aaah-aaah-aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Butchered faces. Yellowed eyes sunken deep in the sockets. Faces painted in anguish, frozen mid-death. He was wet with human wretchedness. Stamping in it. Sliding, squishing, swishing in mud, blood, and flesh stew.
"Grab the backpack, you idiot," Carrie shouted. "Quit flailing around like that. Go to your left. Paddle like you're swimming. You can't walk. The corpses are too deep."
Buzz spat out something that had the texture of raw salmon.
Nasty, nasty, nas-ty!
Everybody at the party was looking down from the top of the hole at him. The collection of roughly fifty people. Buzz kept sinking down. Inch by inch. Deeper and deeper. These people wouldn't save him, not even to lift him out to put him between two pieces of bread.
One thing kept Buzz from letting himself die. They knew why he was here. Carrie knew, at least. The burning need to escape added that extra notch of motivation. It had him swimming in skin to reach the backpack. Clotted blood, raw meat, emptied torsos (he was wearing a woman's torso over his head like some fucked up hat for two seconds before he threw it aside), Buzz beat his body against the awful tide.
"Left, yeah—keep going! You're two legs and a hand away. Almost there, Buzz. You're sooooooo close."
"Go to hell," Buzz said, and paid for it. He spat out two fingers and felt the seaweed gristle on the cut ends tickle the inside of his cheek. "Pah! Pah! Pah! Paaaaah!"
Carrie, "You look like you took a swim in strawberry jam. Righteous!"
Buzz kept gaining strength. Shoving aside corpses, parting through the sea of corpses, he finally clutched onto the backpack.
"Yes! You did it. Yeeeeah Buzz! Right on, man. Way to hang in there." Instructions now, "Sling the backpack onto your back. Then use this rope Hayden's throwing down to get back up."
Something hit him on the back of the head shortly after Buzz slung on the backpack.
"Hold onto it. We'll pull you up. Sit tight."
Buzz squeezed the rope tight. People were pulling him up. He heard their grunts and sounds of struggle. He kept his eyes closed until his body landed on the grass.
He was out of the pit.
CLEAN UP TIME
The cannibals were shoveling dirt over the pit to bury the remains. Carrie directed him towards the farmhouse. Fire pits continue to glow with hot embers. Plates were left in trashcans, pieces of bones and hands partially eaten. He was leaving the cannibal picnic. Buzz couldn't be happier to be putting those people behind him. He was covered from head to toe in foulness.
"You're covered in cherry pie guts," Carrie muttered to herself, not really talking to Buzz. Buzz could hear the swoosh of the machete slicing the air. Still taking practice swings on imaginary people. "Mince meat pie guts. Swim in the pie. Swim in the red cobber. Cobbler mess. Mince meat nasty time."
Carrie guided him forward. The farmhouse became clearer. A couple in their late seventies, looking like American Gothic, stood side by side. They each clutched a garden hose. The woman handed him a bar of soap.
"Take your clothes off, Mr. Salisbury."
"Do what?"
A cow mooed in the background. He saw dark eyes look at him through the far gates in the darkness. Or were those horses or goats? Too dark to tell. He couldn't see much of the actual farm in the black night.
"I said take off your clothes." The grandma's eyes were eager behind the silver rimmed glasses. She was ready to see Buzz naked. So was her husband.
"Well, you heard the lady. We ain't got all night," the farmer man said. "It's a lot of work entertaining our guests. We'd love to get some shut eye. But first, we got to wash your ass re-al clean. We're going to make you squeak."
Carrie was standing next to the farmers. "Hi Stella. Hi Carl. This one's been a handful. You always have to ask him twice to do anything. He's new here."
Stella and Carl understood.
She clutched the machete and pantomimed running it across her throat. "Take your clothes off, Buzz. I insist. Don't worry. I'll close my eyes. I don't want to see your wrinkly pecker. Can't say the same for Stella."
"I'd close my eyes too," Carl said in deep hick accent, "but I have to see where I'm spraying. So nope. Can't close 'em."
Stella removed her other hand from behind her back. She was clutching onto a sickle. "You take your clothes off, son. I can either clean your pecker, or I can cut it off. Whichever your prefer."
The crazy woman meant it.
Buzz removed his sticky clothes. The last thing he stripped off were his socks.
Stella and Carl aimed their garden hoses at him.
That's when the ice cold water hit him.
Buzz used the bar of soap to clean every crevice and surface of his body. Stella and Carl were toweling him off afterwards. He gave a yip when Stella dragged the towel between his legs, really getting every part of him dry.
"Hey—whyyougottodothatlady?"
Carrie was bent over laughing, busted up. "Your face. God, your face!"
Buzz didn't care that he was naked. He could take off running right now, but then he spotted them. They stood far off in the shadows like sentries. People clutching pick axes, shovels, scythes, and axes. Each one of them were dressed in human leather.
He wasn't going anywhere.
Dry, Carl handed him a new set of clothes and a pair of boots. Then Carl gave his back a pat. "See, wasn't so bad, was it?"
Stella with wild eyes, "Wasn't so bad at all. I had a good time."
The couple walked back into their house. They were done with their part of it.
Carrie unzipped the gore colored backpack. Inside was a single piece of paper.
Buzz's death certificate.
OPEN THROAT WOODS
Buzz fled into the woods after seeing his death certificate. He left the American Gothic couple to their farmhouse. The cannibals could keep their bonfire food feast party. And Carrie, who was making chase after him, could shove her machete right up her ass. He didn't care. The feeling inside him was far worse than drowning in a pit of human wretchedness. I'm not dead. I'm alive. I'm not dead! My heart beats. How did they get my death certificate in that backpack?
Bounding between the trees, changing directions, making himself lost in the process of losing Carrie, he suddenly couldn't run anymore. He leaned against a tree and bumped into the person tied to it. It was a man. His eyes were wild with fear, his body shrinking from Buzz.
"Shhhh. I'm not going to hurt you."
Buzz removed the gag from the man's throat and started to untie the rope bindings.
The man was grateful, and confused. "Why are you saving me? Aren't you one of them?"
"You mean a killer? No. I don't know why I'm here. I'm not one of them."
"Maybe you're a victim. Did you just get here without knowing how?"
"Yeah. I was driving down a highway, and I was lost, so I stop at the rest stop, and these people attacked me."
Once the ropes fell, the man startled Buzz by putting two fingers to his throat. "Wait. You have a heartbeat. Why do you have a heartbeat? You shouldn't have a heartbeat. You're not one of them, and you're not one of us. Just who are you?"
"I, I, I don't know. My name is Buzz Salisbury. I own a pawn shop. What else do you want to know about me?"
The guy shook his head, then started running in the opposite direction. "No. You're not right. I don't want anything to do with you. Fuck this.
Fuck you, man."
The man was four yards out when a chainsaw swiped the man's head off in one clean cut. The killer stuck the chainsaw into the man's neck like a toothpick into a sandwich and let the body fall. The killer picked up the head, shoved into the crook of a tree, and removed a .45 Magnum from the holster around his shoulder and started unloading it. The head was flying pulp pieces in seconds.
Buzz couldn't see the killer's features. The man was too much in the dark. The black rimmed glasses. The thick black beard. Only his bottom lip could be see in that mane, the color purple and fat. He was muscle bound and thick around the belly.
The man bellowed deeply, "I only want your head. The head shows your facial expressions. Your fear, your disgust, your sadness. The rest of your body doesn't show me shit. Just give me your head."
Buzz couldn't move, even as the man removed a backpack from his shoulders and produced a handsaw.
"Your head is mine."
-Your head is mine. The first time I saw through your skin, I'll break into the muscle tissue. The second time I saw, it will be bone. Your brainstem will disconnect. The brain will fail to deliver impulses to the rest of your body. This is why I take my time sawing through the brainstem connection, so you can feel every jolt of pain before I kill you. I make it last.
The face in the mirror, disguised by an arc of shadow, Buzz recognized the beard and the lower lip sticking out of the mane. The lip looked like a small cut of veil.
This was the man who killed him.
Buzz was dead.
Murdered.
It was coming back to him.
This was the man who hid in his shower, and when Buzz woke up that morning to brush his teeth, the man came out of nowhere with that hacksaw and said, Your head is mine.
Standing there in the woods, the killer had his hands around Buzz's throat.
-Buzz's daughter placed a package she received in the mail on the table in her dorm room. She had trouble removing the numerous reams of tape around the box. The sender was Buzz. But Buzz hadn't sent her the package. She finally tore through the protective tape, opened the top, and she sorted through crumpled up newspapers to a small foam cooler. Inside the cooler was Buzz's severed head crawling with maggots. And her screaming, and screaming, and screaming...
