I woke up butt-naked and hanging by my wrists from a pair of handcuffs. The handcuffs were suspended from the ceiling by a chain that went up to a thick wooden beam, but I couldn’t see how it fastened up there. The cuffs had just enough slack in them to let me stand on tiptoes, but I couldn’t get much relief from the pressure on my shoulders. As my vision cleared, I realized that unlike every other time I’d woken up naked swinging by handcuffs in my life, this time wasn’t a dream. And there were no Playmates anywhere. I was a little disappointed, then downright disconsolate when I looked around enough to see that I was hanging naked in a room with two other guys.
“Ranger Jerry, I suppose?” I asked the one hanging closest to me.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” He observed the talking at urinals section of The Guy Code and looked only at my face.
“I’m Bubba. I been looking for you. And I reckon the rest of these guys, too.”
“Yeah, they’re all here. I don’t know what she’s going to do to us . . .”
“But it probably won’t be near as much fun as what I had planned, Jerry old pal.” I grinned, and he chuckled. I heard a weak laugh from behind me and spun around to look at the other guy. He was hanging the same way I was and looked a lot worse off than me. I recognized him as Aaron Kennedy from the pictures Skeeter’d sent me, and figured that I’d found some of the folks I was supposed to rescue, now I just had to get on with the rescuing.
Suddenly the floor lurched and I lost my footing, putting all my weight on my wrists and shoulder sockets. I tried to reach up to the chain to take some of the strain off my wrists, but couldn’t get twisted right, so I just hung there in agony as the floor rocked back and forth, like we were suddenly on a boat in the middle of a storm.
“What the hell is that?” I asked Jerry.
“I don’t know. I just got here this morning,” he said.
Aaron didn’t have anything useful to add, and after a few minutes, the ride stopped and I managed to get my feet under me. My shoulders gave a sigh of relief, and I took another look around the room. In one corner was a big sturdy table, with enough knives and saws hanging over it to make a dozen Ginsu knife commercials. Dark brown stains covered the surface of the wood, and my stomach did a little flip-flop.
“Hey, Jerry. Did she say anything to you about coming to dinner?”
“Yeah, she did. She mentioned dinner just before she drugged my tea.”
“What about you, Aaron?” I raised my voice. He answered in the affirmative. That sinking feeling in my gut came back, stronger than ever. We’d been invited to dinner, but not as guests. We were the entrees.
I looked up at the cuffs and the chain again, mentally measuring the strength of the average set of police-issue handcuffs against my own sense of self-preservation. I figured most days it was about fifty-fifty. I jumped as much as I could off my tiptoes and grabbed the chain, then started to pull myself up hand over hand.
“This might be uncomfortable, Jerry,” I told the ranger as I started to swing my feet back and forth. The more I swung, the closer I came to Jerry. He started to pull back from the giant naked redneck swinging at him from handcuffs, but I wrapped my legs around his torso, using his body to take some of the strain off my arms for a second.
“Don’t get any ideas, pal. I’m really not interested. But I gotta get us out of here before she decides who she wants to be the appetizer. I managed to wriggle around until my ankles were on Jerry’s shoulders, and pulled myself up until I could at least see the end of the chain. I heard a choir of angels singing in my head when I saw the tiny shackle holding the chain wrapped around the beam. Obviously Grissy hadn’t expected anybody to be crazy enough to get to the beam, so she just used a normal screw-pin shackle to hold the chain together. If I could get my hands up there, I could unscrew the pin and be free.
But that meant that I had to get my big ass up there, and even pulling myself up the chain and getting my feet onto Jerry’s shoulders, I was still a good four feet under the beam.
“Crap. This is gonna suck,” I muttered under my breath.
“Well it ain’t exactly peaches and cream from here,” Jerry muttered right back, keeping his eyes squeezed shut against the sight of my dangly bits hanging right in front of his nose.
I pulled myself up a little more on the chain, then reached up with one foot as far as I could without losing my grip or my footing. Imagine a Sasquatch doing one of those aerialist acts with the bands of silk, only bare-ass naked, and you get a little idea of how bizarre that whole thing must have looked. I got my foot high enough to loop one big toe over the edge of the beam, then I pulled the other foot up. I managed to get my whole right foot hooked over the beam, then pulled my left over and locked my ankles together.
I let out a huge sigh and relaxed my grip, swinging upside-down from my crossed ankles and almost bumping into Jerry’s face. He jerked back, a look of horror on his face.
“Don’t worry,” I said, grinning at him. “I don’t kiss on the first date.” I took a deep breath and swung up to the beam using my abs and the chain to pull myself up. I got my left hand on the beam and set to unscrewing the shackle pin with my right. A few seconds later, I dropped down from the beam to land on both feet in front of Jerry. I was still cuffed and still had six feet of chain hanging from the cuffs, but I wasn’t dangling in midair anymore.
And of course that’s when the door opened and Grissy walked in holding a cleaver and a carving knife that could have doubled as a short sword.
“You are a very naughty entree,” she said, with a grin spreading over her face that said, “I am batshit, paste-eating, carve my initials in your butt cheeks crazy.” She walked toward me, her pace slow and deliberate, her path cutting off any chance of escape, weapons flicking out side to side like she knew exactly how to use those toys to carve up a whole side of redneck du jour. I backed away, always keeping one hanging dude between me and Grissy, until my butt hit the table.
“Nowhere to go, Bubba. What are you going to do now? There’s nowhere to run, no place to hide, no way out. What do you do?”
“Like Rowdy Roddy said, I chew bubble gum and kick ass. Only I ain’t got no bubble gum.” I butchered the quote, but I spun around and grabbed a couple knives of my own and charged Grissy with a lot more bravado than most folks expect from a naked dude.
The key to a knife fight isn’t in not getting cut. It’s in understanding that you’re gonna get cut. You just try not to get anything cut off that you care too much about, and you try to cut more bits off the other guy than they cut off you. I had a serious reach advantage over Grissy, but she was a lot faster than me, and she didn’t have her hands cuffed together.
She dodged my first charge without any real effort, but she got a little too close to one of the dangling men, who put a knee in the small of her back for her troubles. She winced and turned to him, then remembered that she was fighting me and spun back around. I was almost on her then, and she ducked aside again. Again she danced too close to one of her captives and got a kick in the side as a reminder. We kept dancing that way for a long minute or two, me charging, her dodging, the other guys kicking. It was starting to wear on Grissy when suddenly her eyes gleamed with an evil idea and she ducked behind the nearest hanging dude and threw the cleaver at me.
I knocked it to the ground with my chain, not willing to let it fly past and maybe kill somebody, then I froze as I saw her plan. She was using the hanging guy as a shield, hiding behind him so I couldn’t get at her, and she had her hand wrapped around his pride and joy with the edge of her knife pressed against it.
“One more step and I geld this stallion.” She giggled at her cleverness, and the guy whimpered. Aaron Kennedy, missing climber, was about to be missing a piton unless I thought fast. Too bad for him thinking fast ain’t what they hire me for.
“Go ahead,” I said and took one step closer.
“I mean it!” Grissy screeched.
“Dude, stop!” Aaron Kennedy was looking
very concerned, and I didn’t really blame him.
“I don’t care, lady. Cut it off. You want to chop us all up and serve us in a stew, so go ahead and start with the shrimp cocktail.” Sometimes I amaze myself with my wit.
“What? What kind of hero are you?” She looked baffled. I get that look from women a lot. Especially when they’re looking at me naked.
“I’m no hero, lady. I’m a hunter. I’m here to find out what happened to these dudes and kill whatever was making it happen. I found out there’s a psycho hosebeast out in the woods that wants to chop dudes up into Hamburger Helper, so now it’s time for Part 2—the killing part. Now you do what you gotta do to Aaron there, but I’m gonna rip your head off regardless.”
She looked at me for a long time, like she was trying to see if I was serious. I was, by the way. I’m sure Aaron Kennedy is a nice dude, but I didn’t really care if he got to keep his pecker or not. I was hired to kill the bad guy, or girl in this case, and I was gonna do that no matter what happened to him. After a minute that probably felt like a year to the guy with a butcher knife on his junk, she burst into tears and fell to her knees. The knife clattered to the floor and Aaron let out a huge breath.
“But I don’t WANT to get old!” she wailed, pounding on the floor with her fists. I looked around, but none of the dudes hanging like sides of beef had anything to contribute. I stepped forward, picked up the knife, and snatched Grissy up by the hair and dragged her over to the table. I threw her face-up on the table and pressed my knife to her throat.
“What the hell are you squalling about?”
“I have to eat the stew to stay young. It’s the flesh of men that keeps the change from happening.”
“I repeat—what the hell are you talking about?” She curled up in a little ball on the table, sobbing uncontrollably. I wasn’t getting anything useful out of her until she got her crap together, so I frisked her. For the keys, not just for fun. The keys were in her pocket, so I unlocked my cuffs and used them to chain her to the table. Then I let the other guys loose and sent Ranger Jerry off to look for our clothes.
He made it almost to the door when he froze. “Uh, Bubba? We’ve got company.”
I turned to the door and there stood Esme and Minerva. Grissy’s older and way, way older sister, and they looked pretty irritated.
“Hey y’all. How’s it going? I hope you weren’t expecting dude stew for dinner ‘cause there’s been a little change in the menu.” I motioned to Grissy, tied to the table, and the roomful of naked men.
“That’s how she was doing it,” Esme said, as if I’d unlocked some great secret.
“Of course, how could we be so stupid?” Minerva replied.
I was confused, but that’s pretty much my normal state around women, so I waved Ranger Jerry on to go find clothes. “I’m not gonna have to fight y’all too, am I? ‘Cause I really feel like I’ve hit my quota on beating up crazy women for the day.”
“No, Bubba, you won’t have to fight us. Why don’t you come into the den and we’ll explain everything.” Minerva turned and walked away, Esme following. I shrugged and started after her. Then I paused and handed the knife to Aaron.
“If she tries anything, stab her. A lot.” He grinned a little and stood over Grissy with the knife. I decided that she really didn’t want to move right then.
Minerva and Esme were on the couch when I made it back into the den. Ranger Jerry came out of the bedroom dressed in his uniform and carrying a pile of clothes. I held up a finger to the ladies in a “just a sec” gesture and retrieved my pants from Jerry. I pulled on my jeans and t-shirt, then strapped on Bertha and sat down in a chair facing the sisters.
“Would you mind telling me exactly what the hell is going on here?” I asked.
“Where to begin?” Minerva asked.
“Try the beginning, dear,” Esme chimed in.
Minerva glared at her, then went on. “Have you ever heard of the Baba Yaga, Bubba?”
“Yeah, I think so. Flies around in a mortar and pestle, house with chicken legs, that Baba Yaga?”
“That’s the one,” Minerva replied. “Except there isn’t just one of us. We are all the Baba Yaga.”
“Wait, like you’re all three the Baba Yaga? Like, all of you?” Then it hit me. Shit. The Crone, the Mother, and the Maiden. The Furies. Double shit. I just chained one of the Furies to a butcher’s table and left her with a bunch of pissed-off naked dudes. This might be bad.
“Are you sure I’m not going to have to fight you two now? I did just beat up your sister, after all.”
“Not only are you not going to have to fight us, you have done us a great service. Griselda has held the form of the Maiden for longer than is natural, using her manflesh stew to prevent the rotation from taking place,” Minerva explained calmly.
“It’s my turn to be young and beautiful, and that bitch has held on too long!” Esme spat.
“So what, y’all take turns being . . .” I wasn’t even sure what I was trying to say, so I shut up and waved at Minerva.
“Yes, exactly. We alternate which aspect we represent. We change with the solstice, the holy days.”
“But the summer solstice was like a month ago.” Then it all fell into place. “And she’s been making dinner for y’all ever since, making some excuse as to why you weren’t changing. And I bet it was stew every time.”
“Once it was meatloaf,” Esme said. I felt like puking, but I kept it together.
“So you’ve been eating the men that went missing in the forest, and that’s what has kept you from changing into your other forms.” I stood up and loosened Bertha in her holster.
“Where are you going?” Minerva asked.
“I’m going to shoot your sister in the face.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Would you like to watch? Because I’m pretty sure I not only can, but I’m going to. You see, that’s how the whole monster hunter thing works. I find monsters, I shoot monsters. Crazy witch-hotties that eat dudes definitely qualify as monsters. So I’m going to go shoot the crazy witch-hottie.”
“It won’t matter. It won’t kill her. We’re immortal.”
“Let’s test that theory. I’ve got white phosphorous rounds for the fire-haters, blessed rounds dipped in holy water for the demonic, cold iron rounds for the Fae, silver rounds for the lycanthropic, and hollow points for every damn thing else. I bet I can find something that she doesn’t like.”
“I never said she’d like it, I just said it wouldn’t kill her. She’d just heal, and then she’d hunt you down forever. And with the flying mortar and the house, there’s nowhere she can’t go.”
That created a problem. I thought for a minute, then offered Minerva a deal. She and Esme talked about it for a long time, then finally agreed. They packed up their crazy-ass sister and toted her off into the woods, her shrieking the whole time about revenge.
Ranger Jerry and I went outside, turn the mortar over and set it up to be the enormous stewpot I’d originally mistaken it for, and used the furniture from the cabin to build a roaring fire. Then we did the only thing you can do to disable a magical walking house on giant chicken legs. We cooked the legs into chicken stew. Let me tell you, magical-house chicken legs really do taste like chicken.
Howl
A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
I was already pissed off when the phone rang, so I went ahead and answered it. “What?” I growled into the little speaker. I knew it was Skeeter on account of his face showing up on the screen and also on account of him being the only human being brave enough to call me on a Saturday afternoon in September. It was the first game of the season, and my Georgia Bulldogs had just finished losing, and worse than that, losing to the Clemson Tigers. It’s one thing to lose a football game, that’s bad enough, but to lose to a team from the ACC, that just didn’t feel natural.
“Bubba, you gotta get over here right now!” Skeeter’s voice was higher
than usual, which was not only a little frightening, it was also just barely on the edge of human hearing. I was pretty sure if he got any more excited, any dogs within a hundred yards were gonna start going nuts.
“What’s wrong, Skeeter? Your internet go out in the middle of Edward Penishands again? You know how the story ends, just reset the router and watch something else for a minute.”
“This ain’t no joke, Bubba! I’m in the panic room. Get over here and bring Bertha!”
I sobered up instantly. Of course I was going to take Bertha, I didn’t take a piss without my .50 Desert Eagle slung under my arm, but for Skeeter to hole up in his panic room meant some serious shit was going down. I switched off the TV and reached for my boots.
“I’m on the way. Are you in the basement, or all the way in the closet?” I slammed my feet into my steel-toed boots and headed for the door. I stopped just before I hit the porch and grabbed my heavy-duty jacket, the one with plates of body armor sewn into the lining. I’m a big dude, but the last time Skeeter had gone into his panic room, I ended up with three feet of steel poking through my gut. If a twenty-pound leather and ceramic plate jacket could keep that from happening again, it was worth breaking a sweat.
“I’m downstairs. It ain’t got through the front door yet, so I don’t see any need to get into the safe room. And don’t call it a closet, that’s offensive.” Skeeter gets touchy about any kind of closet references. I don’t understand it, but I didn’t grow up the only gay kid in three counties, either.
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 10
