by Fawn Bonning
People would have pointed fingers, would have snickered behind his back, ostracized his children, all because she was a selfish, butcher-bopping slut.
What had she seen in that guy, anyway? Hell, he was missing half his hair already, not to mention two fingers on his left hand due to a little slip of the meat cleaver. Wasn’t anything great to look at. Some might even say he was downright ugly.
“I sure as hell would,” he grumbled, gripping the steering wheel.
But, none of that mattered anymore. She wouldn’t be spreading those long lovely legs for any more butchers, or bakers, or candlestick makers, for that matter. No more bankers or propane gas deliverymen or mailmen or…hell, she was even doing ole Daniels, the friendly town sheriff, though Miss Innocent had the nerve to deny that one too.
That’s the part that really got his gall. Like he was ignorant or something. Like he couldn’t see how they looked at her with those beady bugged-out bugging bug eyes, undressing her right on down to her birthday suit even though he was standing right there beside her. It was humiliating, degrading, not to mention downright rude.
And the way they looked at him was even worse, with their ill-concealed amused smirks. He knew perfectly well what those smirks were saying.
Hey buddy, I tenderized them loins fer ya. Pounded em reeeal good till they was juicy and tender. Yeeeah, buddy!
That’s just what those smirks were saying. He heard it plain as day.
Yeah, buddy, that ain’t no flank steak, neither. That there’s filet mignons, Ray the butcher said without uttering a single syllable. Lip smackin’ good, buddy, he said as he handed over the pork-chops, cut extra thin.
And then there was the mailman.
That feisty little number likes to nip, bucko, he said as he handed him the mail one Saturday morning. Goes nuts when I slip my deliveries in the slot, just growlin’ and a’howlin’. Deliver a personal package ev’ry Wednesday at noon, like clockwork. Yes sir, special delivery, bucko, he said. And then he wished him a good morning and headed back down the walk while sifting through a stack of letters and whistling a merry little tune.
Yep, they all thought he was ignorant. Either that or blind as a bat with cataracts. So what if he was only a lousy small-town bug man now. They were forgetting one very important factor. He’d been raised in the big city. He knew the ropes and he knew how to take care of business when business needed taken care of. Eddie Ciello could hold his own against these tobacco-spitting, small-minded hicks any damned day of the week. Eddie Ciello wasn’t ignorant and Eddie Ciello didn’t have cataracts. There was no pulling the wool over Eddie Ciello’s eyeballs. Eddie Ciello knew everything. Eddie Ciello saw everything. And Eddie Ciello could only put up with so much shit for so long. Every man, even an easygoing, laidback, happy-go-lucky fellow, like himself, had his breaking—
His heartbeat quickened. Movement ahead… eyes… more than one set. “Jackpot,” he whispered as he picked up speed. Raccoons…a whole family taking a little stroll on the yellow line.
He stood on the accelerator, his breath caught high in his chest, the blur of trees whizzing by. His surroundings faded away as he zeroed in on the targets ahead. “Oh, yeah, come to papa,” he breathed as four startled figures loomed large in the blinding headlights. At the last second, they tried to scurry away. One of them made it across—Mama raccoon, the selfish bitch—but there were several satisfying thumps as he mowed down dear ole dad and one or two of their nasty offspring.
“YES! YES!” he bellowed, pounding the steering wheel. “BULL’S-EYE! Bull’s-eye exterminating at your service, ma’am! What d’ya think of papa now, you bugging bitch!”
His excitement quickly petered at the rustling from the back.
Shit! If it was a snake, he was going to have to pull over and try to flush it out, and the thought of pulling over at midnight on this dead-ass road without one goddamned street light in sight was not a very appealing notion in the least.
He pressed the accelerator petal, bringing his speed up to sixty miles per hour, not such a great idea on the curvy-ass roads. He needed to get to town. Lemm’s was open all night, so the attendant could help him fish out whatever was slithering around back there.
Not that he would bug out, or anything, if he had to handle the job himself.
Probably just a mouse munching out on stale cheese doodles or something. Or maybe some half-eaten candy bar or something else one of those brainless kids had thrown back there. Yeah, that’s what it was. Or maybe—
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, the prickling running down the length of his arms. That was no mouse. Hell, that wasn’t even a snake. Not unless it was a freaking anaconda.
Goose bumps popped up clear down to his toes, aggravating the rash on his legs. The skunk smell suddenly intensified. Except it wasn’t really skunky. More like something dead. And there was an underlying odor that was familiar… earthy… like dirt… like moist soil. Yeah, like how Terri used to smell after she’d been working in her vegetable garden all bugging damn day.
Take a little looksie in the back there, bucko. Come on, it’s your stinking vehicle, you pansy-assed sissy! Come on, dare ya, double dare ya, triple dare ya. Quadruple. Quintuple. Sextuple. Seventuple… eighttuple… ninetuple. Ten bugging tuples!
Craning his neck over his shoulder, he attempted to see over the back seat to the storage compartment in the rear.
“Shit!”
He jerked the wheels back onto the road, narrowly missing a sign warning of an impending curve up ahead.
“NO SHIT!” he bellowed at the retreating sign in the rearview. “The whole stinking road is one big stinking curve, you bugholes!”
“Morons,” he muttered, bringing a hand up to scratch at his chest.
The rash was worse than usual. Of course, it’d been getting progressively worse for almost ten years. None of the expensive creams those crackpot doctors prescribed did a damned thing to relieve it, either. But then, when one soaked in a gallon of insecticide every day for ten years, one had to expect a few side effects. But he had to make a living, right? Had to keep the kids fed, a decent roof over their heads. Not like they appreciated the sacrifices he made every single stinking day of his life. Did he have any other alternative though, really?
“Me thinks not.”
Keeping an eye on the back of the van via the rearview, he strained his ears for any further movement, pushing the van to seventy-five miles an hour. A fine sheet of perspiration had broken out over his entire body, making his rash burn like wildfire.
“Jesus, Ed, quit being such a pussy,” he muttered, wiping his face on his sleeve.
If the hands squeezed any tighter, his eyeballs were gonna pop right out of his head. He fumbled for another cigarette, but the pack had slid to the floor, out of reach.
Terri and her precious garden. She humped that guy at Ataco Farm Market too, where she went every spring to get her cucumber and tomato plants. Herb, his name had been. What a dweeb with those stupid John Lennon glasses and that long greasy hair. A hippie! Hippie, for God’s sake, in the nineties! “Hello, anybody home up there,” he shouted, knocking himself on the head.
Sure, she’d denied that one too, but that didn’t surprise him any. Whores were like that. Bat their eyelashes and try to look all innocent when they knew good and goddamned well they were guilty as sin. He went with her one Saturday just to make sure his hunch was right and, sure enough, there was that pert little smirk lifting the corners of Hippie Herbie’s mouth as he instructed her how to mix the fertilizer correctly.
“Only one tablespoon per gallon,” he’d droned in his dopey pot-head voice, stressing the importance of this as if genuinely concerned she might burn up her precious tomato plants. But Eddie could hear between the lines. He knew what he was really saying.
Planted my seeds deep, man, he said, the glint unmistakable in his magnified eyes. Fertilized that juicy tomato right there in the garden between the squash and the cucumbers, and man did she di
g it. Squirmed like a wiggly worm. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it, man. Little mama couldn’t get enough. When I was done, had to grab me a crispy cuke to finish her off!
Growling in frustration, he slammed himself on the side of his throbbing head with his fist.
Treena worked just as hard in that stupid garden as Terri had, he mused bitterly, reaching under his shirt to scratch, shredding the raw flesh. Tilling, hoeing, planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding. He couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. Wouldn’t it be easier just to buy the bugging veggies at the market? But no. The dummies had to go break their damned backs just so they could snap a few pea pods. Yippee! Just a bunch of endless hours wasted doing something totally useless, as far as he was concerned.
‘It’s relaxing’, Terri used to say.
Bugshit! Lounging in front of the T.V. with a cold brew in your hand and your feet propped up on the ottoman, that was relaxing. He could buy that.
Laughing bitterly, he banged loudly on the steering wheel, temporarily forgetting the stench that surrounded him.
If only Treena knew what was buried six feet under all those precious pea and tomato vines and lettuce heads and carrots and bugging cucumbers.
That night had been bugging amazing, the night Terri finally came clean and confessed everything, screaming that he was right, that she’d screwed them, that she’d ‘bugged ‘em all’. And then she’d burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.
Her confession had truly touched him. That’s why he put his arms around her. That’s why he pulled her hands away from her face to kiss her tears away. And then he’d spread those long lovely legs for the last time. He remembered her beautiful blonde hair spread out like a gilded fan on the expensive down pillow, and her breaths coming in short excited gasps. And he remembered grinning as he picked up the matching pillow by her head and placed it over her face. Eddie was his name, bugging extermination his game, and the lowlife beneath him was a filthy stinkin’ cockaroachie!
“Hell of a fighter, though,” he snickered, scratching his chest like mad, oblivious to the bloody welts opening up beneath his nails.
Terri was strong, and Terri had a strong will to live. But Terri had betrayed him. Terri had fallen from grace, fallen to the darkest pits where the very lowest of life forms squirmed around in the stinking muck. And so, he’d leaned his weight in, and with naked bodies pressed together, he’d experienced a most sensational struggle, inside and out, one for life itself. Extraordinary. So valiant. So futile. And unbelievably erotic. And as the last traces of life left her body, there came a galactic explosion, freaking fireworks, freaking Fourth of July at Disney World. And it was right. It was just. Justice had been served. The gavel had sounded, judgment handed down. Guilty as charged.
“Thank you, your honor.”
Night, night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bugs bite.
Had she given him any other choice, really?
He looked longingly to the pack of cigarettes on the floor.
And then he’d fetched his heavy-duty shovel from the tool shed, the one that cost forty bucks at Hal’s Hardware—what a rip…you’d think a guy who was nailing your wife−I nailed that hoe. Hammered her home−would give you some kind of bugging break—and dug a hole right between the tomatoes and cucumbers. He even threw in a few of the fattest cukes.
“In case you get lonely, hoe.”
Wiping the perspiration from his brow, he peered up at the mirror. Something was back there. He couldn’t see it. But he could smell it. And he could feel it. God, how he could feel it!
He raked his bloody chest with renewed fervor.
He’d gotten away with it. A guy like him, with big city smarts, was far too clever to get nailed by a couple of inept, tiny-minded detectives straight out of Booneyville. Even Terri’s kid sister couldn’t crack him and she was a bigwig hot-shot lawyer. She thought he would crumble when she got in his face, firing questions at him and accusing him of shit. She thought she was a bad ass, but she was nothing but a stinking bug.
“What’s wrong, Kate? Miss Stone Mountain, Miss Knocked-Up Out Of Wedlock, Miss Tramp Just Like Your Sister! Did you forget who you were bugging with! This is Eddie Ciello’s courtroom. Eddie Ciello is the man in charge here!”
He told her exactly what he told the others and he kept it short and sweet.
“Nothing fancy. Keep it simple.”
That was his motto. That way you were less likely to screw your story up when they started asking questions. She went out to get some Butter Brickle, Sheriff Daniels, and never came home. So sorry, Sheriff Daniels. Guess you’re gonna have to go back to bugging your pasty-faced, tobacco-spitting, slob of a wife, ain’t that right, Sheriff Daniels?
Yeah, he’d gotten away with it.
“It’s our belief she may have met up with some undesirables on her ice cream run, Mr. Ciello. Someone pretending to be broken down, more than likely,” a downtrodden Sheriff Daniels had drawled.
But Eddie knew what he was really saying.
Gonna miss that naughty little villain. Lord a mercy! Never seen nobody could handle my pistol like that. Loaded, by the way, and safety off, and that ain’t no pea shooter—
“What the…”
He attempted to swallow down the bitter bile rising in his throat as the nauseating stench of rotting flesh intensified. He stomped on the accelerator when he reached the straightaway, pushing the old Chevy to ninety miles an hour, a speed he was certain she’d never experienced before. She creaked and groaned in protest, and the front bumper began to rattle like it was about to fall off. It’d been loose ever since he’d plowed down that bugging big-ass black dog near Hog’s Creek, the motherbugger!
His fingers were like talons on the steering wheel. “Almost there! Another mile.”
Another mile and he wouldn’t be alone. One more mile and there would be help. He didn’t want to see It! Didn’t want to!
“IT WASN’T MY FAULT, DAMMIT!”
What was he supposed to do? Just let people walk all over him? You let them do that, before you knew it, they were grinding your face in the stinking dirt, pissing all over you. Goddammit, Eddie Ciello wasn’t some bugging pushover! You didn’t bug with Eddie Ciello. Eddie Ciello knew how to take care of bugging business when business needed taken care of. When things got bugging messy, just dip your bugging hands right on in there, goddammit, clear up to the elbows if you had to! You could always wash them later. To hell with that Macbeth wimp, or whatever his name was. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. If your hands didn’t come clean with soap and water, use scouring powder if you had to. Hell, use bugging battery acid!
“Oh God, please,” he whimpered, and immediately hammered himself on the side of the head for the minor lapse in masculinity. “The slut deserved it! She deserved it, dammit! Doing that to me. Making me look the fool! Making the children look like little bugsturds!”
And maybe they were! Neither of them really looked like him. And if he was having, well…unfatherly thoughts about Janet, well, dammit, that was Terri’s fault too! A man had needs! Janet had the same long blond hair as her mother, the same long legs, and now that she was almost thirteen, he was starting to see Terri’s same shapely body coming on. And he could see the way men were starting to look at her. She was going to be a whore! Just like her mother! A filthy, dirty, little—
There!
This time it was closer!
Goddammit, Eddie had street smarts! Eddie could read between the bugging lines! These inbred, backwoods hillbillies couldn’t pull the shitty sheep-wool over his eyes! They were forgetting where he came from! He was raised up in the big city where you had to watch your back at all times! Eddie Ciello had eyes in the back of his bugging head! If they thought they could pull one over on Eddie Ciello, they had another thing coming! He knew what they were, what they were hiding! Goddamned freaks of nature didn’t know who the bug they were dealing with! He was gonna exterminate every last one of those big fat stinking cockaro
achies! Eddie Ciello was his name, exterminating big fat motherbugging cockaroachies was his game! Judgment day was coming, goddammit! This was Eddie’s bugging courtroom! Eddie Ciello held the gavel now and he was gonna smash it down on every stinking one till their guts spilled!
His eyes popped up to the rearview mirror. “BUG OFF!” he yelled, the spittle flying. “EDDIE CIELLO DOESN’T TAKE ANY SHIT! YOU DON’T WANNA BUG WITH ME!”
He was finding it hard to breathe, and not just because of the stench. An elephant had its ass planted dead center of his chest. He gasped, gulping in mouthfuls of putrescence. Sweat was trickling down his temples and along his cheeks and it took him a few minutes to realize part of it was tears. He was crying. Crying like a baby, blubbering like an imbecile.
“You’re a pathetic joke, you bugging crybaby!”
The needle was hovering at ninety-five when Eddie heard it… the gravelly chuckle. And it was coming from directly beneath him, like something had slithered under his seat.
The urge to yank his feet up onto the seat was strong. Instead, he stood on the accelerator, trying to press it through the floor. He could see the lights of Lemm’s up ahead, a warm welcoming glow like a beacon in the dark deadly night.
He couldn’t stop giggling, even with the tears streaming
“I made it! Made it, goddammit! “Bug you, Treena! Bug you, witch!” he screamed, slamming the steering wheel.
Something brushed against his calf and, against his better judgment, he glanced down.
It slithered out from under his seat, forcing out an undignified high-pitched squeal.