Moab
Page 8
Tables, chairs and a few strollers are over-turned with numerous bodies heaped here and there. A few of the victims are still alive and are slowly bleeding to death. There is the wet whistling and gurgling from someone’s sucking chest wound. It is a futile attempt to breathe. Spilt food, shattered plates, and spent brass shell casings are scattered about with the pooling blood that is darkening the carpet. Adding to the ambiance, there a whiff of grilled steak, cordite, southern barbecue, urine and shit.
The killing started twenty minutes ago, when Troy entered the restaurant on a packed Saturday night and started firing away. He knew many the patrons and all the staff. For over a year, he worked in the back as a dish-washer. Betty from his church, continues to be seated on her electric scooter. There is a buzzing and bumping sound as it is stuck in reverse and keeps running into the rail at the dessert station. Her red curry wig is missing and her head is misshapen after taking 5.56 to the occipital lobe. Slumped forward a bit, the back of her sweatshirt is tattered with four more bullet holes. Betty still has on her lobster bib.
The first responder to the scene is also dead near the cashier’s counter. Troy shot the auxiliary cop as soon as the man rushed into the lobby.
“It is almost over.” Troy robotically says to himself. His Bushmaster AR jammed after rapidly emptying eleven, 30 round, magazines. He did not discard the weapon. It is still slung on his back. There is no more ammo left for his 40. cal. XD pistol either. There will be no cheesy self-inflicted, coup-de-grace to the temple. Troy can hear the approaching sirens. “I will wait.” he mumbles. The empty pistol is still held tight in his grasp.
Some during the massacre attempted to fight back. Troy is not unscathed. A few gun-toting, life-long, big-mouths, froze during the moment of truth and never drew their open-carry weapons. They were shot dead where they sat and crapped themselves. Others fought valiantly. A sixty-five-year-old grandma brandished her 25. caliber mouse gun and winged Troy twice in the shoulder. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to stop Troy from spinning around mowing her down along with her two granddaughters. Another old-timer was able a pop a few rounds off with his compact Kimber. One of the 45’s did a number on Troy’s left ass cheek with a through-and-through. In return, the old man was paid back with a tight grouping to the belly. One desperate mother threw her plate of lima beans and meatloaf at the active-shooter. She got two rounds in the tits.
Many tried to hide under the tables. Some tried to run. There was a lot of screaming. Troy had methodically kept aiming, squeezing the trigger, tossing mags and reloading. All the pleading and begging for mercy was a vague, distant garbling in his ears. The body count was 34 so far.
At this moment, the sound of sirens is loud. Then they stop. Oscillating, flashing red and blue lights shine from the parking lot and through the windows of the restaurant. A tense silence envelops outside the building like rapidly turning down a volume knob. Troy has an odd observation. After firing over three hundred rounds, miraculously none of the bullets managed to hit the lobster tank in the middle of the dining room. The bubbling sound from the water pump appears to be strangely soothing.
Next, there comes the terrified, little whimper of a soccer-mom. She feels herself slipping into oblivion as she bleeds out from a punctured femoral artery. Her husband and kids lay dead around her. They are all near the salad bar.
“Why? Why?” she gently cries to herself. Her skin is ashen and sweaty.
Troy is abruptly jousted from his cold detachment. He is suddenly mindful of the woman’s sobs.
“You want to know why?” Troy says with a sense of immediate panic and intensity. “I’ll tell you, why. I did it because I drank from the Jordan River and Molly is pregnant with Pastor Jeffrey’s baby.”
In the next second, a perfectly placed shot from a SWAT team sniper hits Troy in the upper lip, right below his nose. The 308. rifle bullet drills through Troy’s upper palette and exits out the back of his skull, transecting his brain-stem. The velocity causes the target’s head to turn inside out. Fatty pink brain tissue and bone fragments take to the air in a misty shower of blood. Troy collapses like a marionette that suddenly got all its strings cut.
A tiny bit of Troy’s frontal cortex goes sailing then arcs down toward the top of the lobster tank. The piece of brain tissue passes right through one of the small holes on the grate. It plops into the briny water. There are twelve, two-pound lobsters stoically waiting for death at the bottom of the tank. They were all captured from the sea off the coast of Castle Rock, Maine. For days, the lobsters have been enduring the children tapping on the glass. The lobsters have seen their brethren lifted out of the water and whisked away, disappearing through double swinging doors to the kitchen, only to reemerge on a plate, boiled to a steamy red-pink.
Starvation is additional torment for the lobsters. It is against restaurant protocol to feed the crustaceans. The cook does not want the lobsters defecating and polluting the water in the tank. Sanitary precautions are always a concern with seafood. Their claws are wrapped with elastic bands so they don’t attack and eat each other in their state of desperate hunger.
When the tidbit of human brain sinks to the bottom of the tank, the nearest lobster uses its front untethered pereopods to quickly snatch it up. Maxillipeds and mandibles gather the morsel and it is eaten. The essence of Gulla now hides in the lobster’s double gut. Gulla thinks, this reminds me of being in the body of the scorpion.
EPILOGUE
Six days later
Creeland, North Carolina, USA
Lunch Time
THE COMMOTION TO SECURE THE CRIME SCENE and do the investigation was hindered at times by the horde of encamped media outlets. All the bodies had been removed from the restaurant and there had been a hasty clean-up. Gulla was the preverbal fly on the wall. In the drama of the past days, the lobsters were neglected and allowed to remain in the tank. The dining room is ground zero for the massacre at Lloyd’s Famous Steak & Lobster Family Buffet.
Gulla thinks, I don’t like being in this salt water fish tank. I hate salt. I am waiting, again. Let’s hurry this up.
In the next moment, a hand reaches into the tank. The lobster that is possessed with the essence of Gulla is chosen. Both elastic bands are missing from its claws. Unknown to the chef, the other lobsters are dead. They are hollow shells. An unnatural force vaguely animates their antennas. All their internals have been eaten out of their cephalothoraxes and abdomens. Gulla had gotten hungry.
In the kitchen, there is a foaming hot pot of boiling water on the gas stove. The chef carries over the lobster to the caldron and drops it in. Gulla feels the rush of heat. For a moment, Gulla has a flashback of being incinerated in the city of Sodom.
15 minutes pass.
Out in the dining room of the restaurant, a table has been set up with a white linen table cloth. Various news outlets are present. The room is packed. Cameras are rolling. Seated at the table, is the mayor of Creeland, North Carolina. He is wearing a blue business suit with an America flag pin.
He says, “Folks, this is not a news conference about this tragedy but rather a show of solidarity for our community and country. I’m going to have lunch here today, to demonstrate to the world that good people cannot be stopped by cowardly acts of violence. I want you all to come back to this restaurant with your family and have a nice meal. We cannot let evil win.”
On cue, the chef brings out a steaming red lobster on a plate. A teen-aged female waiter tags along with the hot butter carried on a tray. The mayor declines a plastic lobster bib and jokes, “I don’t need that thing. I don’t mind gettin’ dirty. You should see me eat crawfish!”
Many in the room chuckle. There are the flashes of cameras from the numerous press photographers. Next, a pronounced snapping sound can be heard as the mayor uses the shell-cracker on the big lobster claw. He then pries loose a piece of succulent lobster meat with the use of a small silver fork and dips it into the cup of hot butter.
One of the reporters calls out, “Ma
yor, is it true that you want to run for governor this year?”
The mayor raises his eyebrows with a mock show of surprise, then gestures back at the cameras with a broad smile and says, “This is not the time for politics. I am here to enjoy Lloyd’s tasty seafood.”
Another reporter asks, “Mayor is it true, that you are even thinking of running for president of the United States?”
Dropping his smile, the mayor puts on a serious face while raising the piece of lobster stuck on a fork, near his lips. “I will just say; we patriots have to be brave!” Impulsively, the mayor proceeds to eat the forkful of crustacean. He continues to talk and chew with his mouth full. “I am pro-American and anti-China, anti-middle-east, anti-foreigner, anti-environment, anti-government oversight. The list goes on! In fact, I’m even---,” The mayor bites his tongue while masticating the peculiar-tasting lobster meat. In mid-sentence, he curses, “Anti, OUCH! Christ!”
And just like that, Papa’s got a brand-new meat-bag, thinks Gulla.
The mayor’s smile returns, grows and spreads like a stain across his face as the blood and tainted lobster juice race each other down.
When the drops stain his shirt, he looks down at it. He then glances out across the crowd, and shrugs his shoulders and resumes his speech, with a smile.
The show must go on, thinks Gulla.
end
IN HIS YOUTH, Robert Cervo took soil home from Dudleytown, Connecticut and was scolded by Mrs. Lorraine Warren. Recently, Mr. Cervo was told by clairvoyant mediums that he is being infected by a hoard of raging entities dwelling in his dirt cellar. He does not know if this is true, but it would answer a few questions …
MORBIDBOOKS IS A GROTESQUE BIZARRO BALLET Where The Most Profane Things Occur. An Impious And Perverse Dwelling Of Dark Revulsion. A Cozy Cottage Where Torture Porn And Brutal Bible Tales Are Devised. A Quiet Place To Relax And Spin Tales Of Depravity And Wickedness. A Halfway House For The Disturbed Where Rules No Longer Apply. A Safe Haven For Deviant Serial Killers To Hatch Their Wretched Schemes. Bring Your Pets. The Tasty Ones Are Always Welcome.
Also, available from ~MorbidbookS~
In Print & Kindle Editions. Available at Amazon.com, WWW.MORBIDBOOKS.WORDPRESS.COM
and Barnes&Noble online:
~click on following cover images for HYPERLINK~
~CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE MORBIDBOOKS ON KINDLE~