Was this the thunder they’d heard? When the fuel truck and bus struck?
Kids struggled to climb out windows of the burning bus, hair and clothes on fire. But the vehicle had buckled from the impact, one entire side crushed. Some had already been dragged from the blaze by rescuers, managing to get out through broken glass.
If the weather seemed hot before, now the surrounding air was unbearable. Marty noticed his grandfather sweating greasy drops, breath crackling gulps of electricity in his throat. Like most on the road, the road’s horror mesmerized him. Janis Hardisty buried her face in her hands, refusing to look.
Mason’s mouth hung open as the car came to a standstill in the onlooker jam. The ruddy glow reflected in Mason’s glasses, turning pink the dentures in his gaping mouth. He moistened his lips with his tongue and blinked as the fire finally reached the man hanging out of the on-its-ass-end car. The puppet body writhed in seatbelt strings, vehicle filling with sparks like a thousand fireflies.
Marty saw burning victims and thought about how Chaz died. Despite the heat, the back of his neck grew cold. There seemed to be a large chunk of ice in his stomach, pressing out frosty bile. He might’ve normally found himself in a voyeuristic trance, like others watching safely from their cars. Or he got his glut of horror from what he read, and this left him capable of realistic empathy. All he knew was that he saw each of these poor people as his buddy, roasting to death, mouths full of flames until they couldn’t even scream. Tears ran down his face as he whispered, “Oh man, Jazz, is this what it was like?”
Whether or not Mason Hardisty watched with sick fascination, he still stared as if this were unreal or at least somebody else’s misfortune. We are witnesses to the degradation of history kind-of-thing. It pissed Marty off.
“There’s some of that real world stuff, huh?” Marty leaned in from the back seat. “Take a good look. There’s horror in its proper place. It’s okay to see it now, right?”
Mason jerked his head around, glaring, also looking guilty, as if he’d been caught red-handed squeezing the tits of a deceased relative at a funeral. Suddenly every speck of color drained from his face. Even with the glow from the nearby fire, his skin was bleached mackerel. He groaned, stiffening until he appeared to be trying to stand up in the driver’s seat. His eyes rolled back in his head. He clutched his chest.
Marty shouted to Janis, “Grandma! Ya got an aspirin in your purse?”
Then he snapped off his seatbelt, pushed open the door, and jumped out. Damn, he hadn’t meant to do this. The wave of heat rolling from the burning truck and bus hit him, almost knocking him backward.
“Help! My grandfather’s having a heart attack!” The burning fuel blew down his throat.
No emergency personnel on the other side of the median heard him. He weaved in and out of the rows of stopped cars, jumping the divider. Firemen had arrived and sprayed foam sheets.
Marty skidded, looking up to see bacon rind—once the man hanging out of the on-its-ass-end car. He thought again of Chaz Chisholm and sobbed. A cop held him back.
“Ya can’t go over there, kid,” the police officer shouted over the noises of crackling fire and shrieking wounded.
“I need help,” Marty told him, pointing back toward the Range Rover. “My granddad’s having a heart attack.”
They took Mason Hardisty on a care flight helicopter there to fly out crash victims. It took longer to get the car out of the traffic jam so Marty could drive his grandmother to the hospital. Janis gave her grandson a hard look that translated, this is your fault.
Marty didn’t admit he was thinking more of Chaz than of his grandfather. Not that he didn’t care about his granddad. He didn’t want Mason to die. Mostly Marty felt numb. He’d endured more pain when, at school, a camera was stuck in his face and a callous reporter—feigning sympathy—told him his best friend was dead, asking how he felt about it. In front of the other kids, most of whom had hated Chaz in much the same way they hated Marty.
Marty’d lucked out meeting Chaz. He’d filled the aching void created when Seuter overdosed on tranks. He wouldn’t be that fortunate again. It wasn’t easy to meet guys into hardcore horror who were still regular people. Guys not budding serial killers looking for a warmly bleeding anus and a smiling head for the closet collection.
Now Marty foresaw nothing save loneliness. He’d always be a friendless, eternal bachelor. People like him swung around the perimeter… satellites, bound by genetic gravity but by no other common bonds.
Marty thought of his nickname. Was he called that because of his association with Chaz: i.e. Jizz and Swallow? Or because he was bird-like? He hadn’t acquired the nickname until after Chaz and he became friends. Before, nobody even noticed him. Even when Seut and Marty hung out, they were among the school’s dead, as good as ghosts in the halls and classrooms. Hell, even teachers barely knew they existed. No wonder he was into horror, seeing as how he was nothing but a teenaged corpse.
Why had Jazz done it?
Had he even done it?
Was he afraid Frank Bunny would inform the Chisholms about banging Rosie? Would this have ended anybody’s life? Not as happy as Chaz was to lose his virginity. He’d been on top of the world when he called Marty that night.
It must’ve been an accident. Marty knew about Chaz’s taste for the burn. Well, he always smelled like lighter fluid.
Chaz told him once, “You blaze some, die a little, cum a lot.”
Made Marty’s blood cold, watching those people burn. He wasn’t keen on real pain as a means of seminal release. There were better ways to get your rocks off without risking dashing your brains out against those rocks. Agony in a story well-wrought worked even for the barely-hung, some artist’s conception of bizarre mortality, his own imagination and his hand. Chaz humped his dream girl, then got careless. Not that Marty ever understood what Chaz saw in Roseanne Bunny. She was ordinary. Small breasts. Legs way too long.
Maybe the book was too intense. He hadn’t thought of that. Chaz must’ve lost sight of the real world’s boundaries and the burn thing went out of control before he realized he’d fucked up. What might’ve happened to Marty if his grandfather hadn’t walked in as he weirded out over necrOmania seXualis? Marty’s demise, of course, wouldn’t have been based on flame-out…providing Chaz’s obsession and the book had anything to do with each other.
Marty wandered the hospital. He even ended up back in the ER, watching doctors rush between critical victims from the bus accident. There were people with arms and legs gone, burned off or cut off in the Detroit steel mash. Gurneys of college-aged girls, stumps thumping staccato or a slower, dreamier gesture because of shock or morphine. He had an erection and pulled his T-shirt down low. He hurried away so no one noticed.
It made Marty sick, wondering if his granddad had been turned on watching the accident. If he’d suffered the heart attack because he discovered he was getting off on the mayhem. This wasn’t the same as passively reading it in a book, no real stench of ruin, no ear-straining stretchable wavelengths of screams, no brain-shriveling sense of catastrophe.
What Marty got into was fantasy. He’d never be like those creeps stopping to watch the real thing and get so excited they had coronaries (while they were on their way to CHURCH).
Marty stood in another hallway, far from the ER, upstairs, corridors away. He willed that erection down. He squeezed his eyes shut and exerted every ounce of mental strength he had. When it withered, Marty opened his eyes. He was bathed in sweat, and smelled of chemical foam and barbecue with too much lighter fluid used to crank the grill. It reminded him of Chaz.
He watched a young woman go down the hall, rubberized tips of aluminum crutches thudding softly. She was careful where she placed the crutches and her one leg so she wouldn’t fall. Clearly, she wasn’t used to them. The other leg was still bandaged, just above her recent amputation and the wrapped knee that swung freely beneath the folds of her terrycloth robe.
Marty stared, fascinated. Sh
e glared at him, then jerked her focus down to the floor, furiously embarrassed.
He wanted to apologize for gawking. Did she think she was less feminine this way? He thought her gorgeous. He’d never comprehend why this sort of thing appealed to him. He couldn’t have controlled it any more than if she’d had one perfect breast exposed.
She maneuvered to her room door, awkwardly balancing as she freed a hand from its crutch to grasp the handle.
“Do ya need help?” he asked as she struggled.
She shook her head, NO! She didn’t look at him as she slid into her room. He tiptoed up and listened through the door. He heard her crying.
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Marty murmured.
He wondered how she’d lost her leg. A car crash, vehicle sliding under a semi? Diabetes or cancer or flesh-eating bacteria?
How many other doors had he passed with amputees behind them? It strangely excited him. Perhaps he really could be as rotten as his grandfolks believed him to be.
“Hi, Marty,” a voice said behind him.
A nurse carried a tray of pills. It was Robin Pittman, Seuter’s mother. He hadn’t seen her since she’d brought Seut’s trunk over a month ago.
He smiled tightly. “Hi, Robin.”
“I was really sorry to hear about Chaz Chisholm,” she said sympathetically. “It must be really hard for you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marty replied, looking away in much the same way the lady amputee did under his steady gaze. He felt as if Robin detected something missing. Once upon a time, Marty’d been a dead kid at school. Now he was an emotional amputee. Did she sense that?
“What are you doing here, Marty?”
“My granddad had a heart-attack.”
“Oh, honey.” Robin placed a soft hand on the boy’s thin arm. It was an anchor in the night. “If you need somebody to talk to, come by the house. You know I’m there days.”
Robin had known the Hardistys since Seuter and Marty were in kindergarten. She knew what assholes Marty’s grandparents were. Marty used to go to Robin with his problems. She must be lonely with Seuter dead. He recalled that Calia Abrams had been arrested as the Triple X Slayer. Should he offer condolences? She wasn’t dead or anything—merely psychopathic.
“Thanks,” Marty replied. “I will.”
“I hope so,” Robin said. Such a nice lady to have so many of her own tragedies. “I’ve got to get these medications along the ward, but I’ll look forward to seeing you soon. I’ll check on your grandfather when I get free, okay?”
The kid nodded. “Thanks.”
Frankly, it was weird reading in the papers about Calia Abrams turning herself into a man and cutting up women. Heck, Marty used to go to sleepovers where Robin made them snacks and rented horror movies.
Somehow, even in a world as screwed up as Marty’s lately, he doubted he’d pay Seuter’s mom a visit.
««—»»
Rosie was prepared to lie. To prostrate herself on her belly and crawl to her father where he sat, stoic in his wheelchair. But she started with just asking him. No need to humiliate herself worse than she already had been.
“Daddy, I know I’m grounded but I’d like to attend church Sunday afternoon at 3:00,” she said, perhaps blurted, wondering if she sounded suspicious.
Frank was reading The Rise and Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer. Clearly annoyed at being annoyed, his head snapped up and he glared at this only child of his, wishing—as all fathers of true Spartan teachings must—that his wife’d born a useful boy. “What for? This a new place you’re turning tricks?”
“No!” Rosie exclaimed. “A girl at school died.”
Color rushed to her cheeks. No way would she admit the funeral was for a boy. No way would she admit it was for the buff-challenged, myopic, would-be-rapist yet only-romantically-misunderstood Chaz Chisholm.
Frank Bunny’s hands with their abbreviated fingers gripped the chair’s arm rests. “Who? Rita? Hannah? Lysette? They die from AIDS? No. They dragged you down the skull-strewn patch of exploded immune cells and mined DNA.”
Rosie bit back until she tasted blood on her tongue, restraining herself from what she wanted to tell him. That the slot (machine) business had been founded by her. Her money-sense coupled with the only course in school she’d ever been good at—gymnastics. Born double-jointed, the boys always had to find out what Kama Sutric things she could do that would’ve crippled for life their regular hook-ups.
For example, Rosie could bend herself in a complete arch, belly-up, where the back of her head touched the backs of her heels. There was a basketball player from Baucum High who liked Rosie to moan, shake, and drool in that position. She found out later that his little sister suffered from severe spinal meningitis, some of her seizures causing her to distort this way. The sister died last year, after falling from her bed during one of these fits.
Another thing Rosie could do was arch, stomach down, face emerging between her toes, arms brought forward to prop in front of the feet. Her face turned all the way up, she could lick her client’s balls as he thrusted.
She had a two rod bondage device set up at the wall in the store’s bathroom. Held by posts at each end, Rosie’s hands would be tied with red silk to the bar with her chin balanced between them. Her knees were bent over the lower bar, giving her johns access to the furry blond beaver. It took up very little space, even in that tiny space, and made her appear helpless to the future’s secret bondage freaks. For an extra $10, the boy could use a dayglow dildo on her ass as he occupied himself in the cunny.
Rosie had specialties her friends didn’t have. All they could do was the standard BJ for $15 (condom required for all events), or the usual Bunny Hop which was really just a vertical missionary position for $25. But for Rosie—as she demanded $50 for her arches, $70 for a trip to the bar (she never shared her tools with the other working girls) with it being $80 for the dayglow dildo.
Dean and Don Warvil invited Rita and Lysie to the party (on that same terrible night Chaz attacked her) and this hurt Rosie’s feelings. She’d reminded herself that the two girls weren’t ‘guests’. The twins had a budget and couldn’t afford Rosie.
What would’ve happened if the twins had also hired her? Then she wouldn’t have been alone with Chaz, and he’d never’ve had the stones to try what he tried. He’d be alive. Didn’t this make it a little Rosie’s fault for breaking his heart until he could no longer bear life without her?
“What’s her name?” Frank asked suspiciously.
“Teri Taylor,” Rosie replied. “She died in that crash between the bus and fuel truck.”
Mrs. Bunny picked up the newspaper about the highway accident.
“Says so right here, Frank,” her mother interjected. “Teri Taylor, sixteen-years-old, only high school student killed. All the others were college students. She was in some special, advanced program at Baucum.”
“Shame,” Frank muttered. “Surprised you knew her. Still…”
Rosie begged, “I just want to pay my respects to a friend, Daddy.”
Even though she hadn’t known Teri.
“I’ll drive her straight to the church,” Mrs. Bunny promised. “And I’ll bring her straight home.”
Rosie’d only attended one other funeral in her life, a year ago when Frank’s mother died—the same lady who’d given Rosie her toe ring. She wore now the same little black dress she’d worn then, no hose, but her sandals. Also a little gold crucifix—and the toe ring.
She was relieved there was no announcement for Chaz’s funeral on the church marquee, only the title of what had been that morning’s sermon.
What Happens In God
Stays In God
There were no cars in the parking lot.
“Guess you’re ahead of everyone,” Mrs. Bunny said, perplexed. “What’s this church’s denomination?”
They both saw the handmade sign on the far side of the roof.
CHRIST’S WRETCHED PAIN
“Honey, you loo
k real nice. I’ll be at the coffee shop across the street. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“I don’t go to church anymore,” her mother replied.
And it occurred to Rosie that her mother hadn’t attended the grandmother’s funeral.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Rosie shrugged, embarrassed, “is it because of Daddy’s accident?”
Her mother smiled a little too bitterly. “No. Oh, no. Right after we were married.”
Rosie gave her mother a peck on the cheek and exited the van, glad her father had stayed at the store.
She smoothed her black skirt and went inside through the unlocked door. She spotted a guestbook for The Funeral of Chaz Wilson Chisholm, and she found herself thinking, Jizz Whizz Jizzum. Or Cheez Whiz… What were this poor kid’s fucking parents thinking?
She wanted to bitch-slap the pair of them.
Except they weren’t there. No one was there.
She defiantly signed the first place in the guest book.
Roseanne Sophia Bunny
She’d always hated that last name. Her great-grandfather had immigrated to the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. His last name was something like Bunnizakowski. Ellis Island ended all of that with a pencil and a sneeze.
Rosie walked into the chapel, seeing Chaz’s coffin before the altar. There was one pitiful wreath. She checked her watch with the placard. She was on time and this was the place.
She moved slowly, self-consciously down the aisle. There was no traditional roping off of seats reserved for grieving family, no ushers. She sat down in the first row on the left. If she needed to move, let someone (anyone?) come say so.
Season of the Witch Page 13
