Freezer Burn

by Joe R. Lansdale

  She was wearing a man’s white strap T-shirt and her round breasts swung inside it like two sweet melons in a cotton sack. She had a puzzled look on her face as she examined him.

  “I think Conrad’s right,” she said. “I think he’s one of them. I betcha too, way he’s all hunched up there, he’s playin’ with his pecker.”

  Bill let go of his dick and carefully slid his hand down by his side. The girl stood up and Bill rolled his head slightly. His eyes came to rest on her belly. The T-shirt did not extend that far, and her little belly button, which he noted was an outtie, not an innie, was exposed, as if inviting him to suck it. It had a ring through it and on the ring was a little jewel the color of blood.

  She had on faded blue jean shorts with very little jean or shorts to them. Her legs, like the rest of her body, were smooth and tanned. She was not very tall, but at least two thirds of her appeared to be legs. The shorts fit her tight in the crotch and her pussy looked as if it might be working the zipper from the inside.

  Hair fanned out from the top of the shorts, which were unbuttoned and curled open and held in place by the zipper alone. The hair thinned as it crawled up her belly and into the belly button. The hair that escaped from the shorts was darker than the hair of her head, reddish, as if formerly blond but dyed with blood, or perhaps a hint of rust.

  “Just another one of your strays,” said the girl.

  The white-haired man looked at the woman and frowned. He turned his attention back to Bill, said, “It’s all right, son, don’t pay her no mind.”

  Bill managed to weakly shake his head.

  The old man said, “I had to dispose of your clothes. They were quite soiled. But we have some that will fit you. Right now, you need rest.”

  “You’re nothing but a sucker, Frost,” Bill heard the girl’s voice say.

  “Yes,” he answered, “I lack your Darwinistic view, I suppose.”

  “Hah!” the girl said.

  Bill tried to speak again, but still couldn’t. His tongue was like a dry sponge. The old man smiled at him and made a kind of face that told him everything was okay.

  Bill stared into the white-haired man’s face for a long moment, then turned in search of the blonde’s belly button, and found it. He kept sight of it and the red jewel in it as long as was possible, then closed his eyes.

  He fell asleep almost immediately. He didn’t dream of a fuse this time. He didn’t dream of the deputy with the blown-away jaw. He didn’t dream of an isle in a swamp or water moccasins either.

  He dreamed of laying the blonde on her back and licking her belly button, lathering up the hair below it, pulling down that zipper. From there the dream really got good.

  Eight

  When he awoke it was dark in the room except for one light that was by the door, and it was a weak light. It made a pool on the floor like dirty melted cheese.

  Bill sat up in bed and pulled the sheet down. He was completely naked. He looked around for his clothes, but he couldn’t see that well, as the light didn’t extend that far.

  He pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around himself and wandered over to the light and discovered a chair on the other side of the door by a desk. He sat down in the chair and felt very ill. He was still hungry.

  “Ah, you’re better.”

  Bill jumped.

  A shape glided into the room, a switch was flicked, and there was full light. The white-haired man was standing over him, and he leaned forward and touched Bill’s forehead, then touched Bill’s eyelid with his thumb, peeled it wide and looked into Bill’s eye. He switched to the other eye and did the same. When he was finished he made a kind of huffing sound, said, “You look much better, son.”

  “Thank you,” Bill said, discovering his tongue to be working.

  “You can speak,” said the white-haired man. “Capital. My name is Frost. John Frost. Some people call me Jack Frost but most just call me Frost. A little joke, you see. You’ve heard of Jack Frost, haven’t you?”

  “Nips your nose, or something,” Bill said.

  “There you are. And your name?”

  “Bill.”

  “Good. Bill. That’s easy to remember. Hungry, Bill?”

  “I’ll say.”

  Frost disappeared from the room and down a short hallway and into what served as the motor home’s dining area. Bill leaned forward in his chair and watched him move around in there by the stove. Bill stood up and securely fastened the sheet about himself and went after him.

  When Frost saw him, he smiled. “I have some chicken broth here. Quite good for what ails you. And I have some thick bread and cheese. I hope that will be adequate.”

  “Right now I could eat the ass out of a menstruatin’ mule,” Bill said.

  Frost reddened, making him look a bit like a beardless Santa Claus. “Well,” Frost said. “Well. Certainly. A mule. Yes.”

  Frost poured the broth from a steaming pan into a large cup and sat it in front of Bill, who had taken a seat at the dining table. He brought plates to the table, then the bread and cheese. He poured Bill and himself a glass of milk.

  “Eat, boy, eat,” Frost said.

  Bill ate. He tried to go about it nicely, but he was too starved. His lips were so swollen from the mosquito bites he found it was difficult to stick the food into his mouth, so he drank all the soup and ate a little of the cheese and bread. Frost gave him more soup. Bill soaked the bread and cheese in it and slurped it down noisily and drank another glass of milk.

  Frost said, “I have some clothes you can wear. I’m a little heftier than you, but they should fit you all right. Loose is the fashion, they say.”

  “Thanks,” Bill said. He studied the man carefully as he sipped his second glass of milk. He seemed genuinely kind and gentle. One of those souls you read about or see in movies, but seldom encounter. A true Good Samaritan. Bill thought this could really work out. The blonde was right. Frost was a prime sucker. Bill began to figure the angles, but soon gave it up. After all he had been through, angles were a little hard to come by.

  “What you got here?” Bill asked.

  “How’s that?”

  “This a freak show?”

  “Why yes.”

  “I seen that dog fella. What exactly happened to him?”

  “Conrad. Why, nothing happened to him, son. He was born that way. His parents abandoned him and he was raised in an orphanage and finally he ended up with me. My right-hand man, actually.”

  “He ain’t really part dog, is he?”

  “Oh, goodness no. His show name is Rex the Wonder Dog. A bit of his humor, you see. But certainly not. He’s as human as you or me.”

  “I wonder, a guy like that, he ever get any pussy?”

  Frost moved his mouth about for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know as I can say . . . He likes the bearded lady, but . . . Well, I just don’t know . . . Had enough?”

  “You got any more?”

  “Sure do.” Frost poured Bill another cup of soup and sat down again. “You . . . go to high school?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t do so good, though. I think they passed me to get rid of me.”

  “What’s your line of work?”

  “Haven’t really got one right now.”

  “Hard to get a job?”

  “I guess.”

  “You know, you could be at the right place.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I think I should be straight with you, Bill. This is, as you said, a freak show, and you have . . . some peculiarities.”

  “Peculiarities?”

  Frost reached across the table and touched a hand to Bill’s face.

  Bill reached up and touched himself. His face was strange to his fingers. He went down the hall, found the bathroom, went in there, and turned on the light and looked in the mirror.

  A monster was looking back.

  Nine

  At first he thought perhaps he had been snake-bitten, but it made no sense.
He felt okay except for being wasted, and if he had been bitten he felt he’d have known it.

  Bill leaned closer to the mirror. His eyelids were huge, and his nose was knotted up, along with his forehead, which had a series of angry red welts across it like a bridge built of heated stone. Every inch of flesh on his cheeks was bloated and inflamed and itched. His lips were blowed up like inner tubes. They had rolled back on one side of his mouth to reveal his teeth.

  Mosquito bites, only much worse than he had assumed. He had lain down amongst thousands of mosquitoes, and while he slept, they’d had their way with him. His face had hurt bad for a while, but now the real hurt was past and there was only the swelling and the itching, a bit of heat behind the skin. He thought he must be allergic to them.

  That’s what the dog-man had been talking about. One of us. One of us. He’d assumed Bill was a freak.

  Wow, thought Bill, I’m disguised.

  When Bill returned to the table, Frost said, “I must ask. How did you arrive here?”

  “I was hitchhiking. The driver had a little accident. I banged my head, and when I awoke, well, here I was.”

  “Was the driver hurt?”

  “I can’t say. He was gone. I guess he put me out beside the road. I wandered in the woods after that.”

  Frost thought about that for a while. Bill couldn’t tell if he was convinced by the story or not. Frost changed tactics, asked, “Your face, that isn’t how you were born, is it?”

  “Mosquitoes.”

  “What?”

  “My face is swollen, that’s all. Mosquito bites.”

  Frost let out with a whoop. “I’ll be darned. Fooled even me. I’ve seen many a freak, and you fooled even me. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe in the daylight I would have known. I thought it was some kind of industrial accident. An explosion of some kind. Mosquitoes. Now that’s the ticket. I’ve never known anyone to be bitten that bad before.”

  Bill smiled, and he knew a smile on his face must look strange and hideous. Then he quit smiling. He said: “I suppose it’ll go away. Probably I’m allergic.”

  “Well, now, mosquito bites. I reckon it will. I suppose.”

  “But you’re not certain?”

  “It’s hard to be certain of anything,” Frost said.

  “How do you . . . Why do you hang around all these freaks? Doesn’t it . . . depress you?”

  Frost smiled. “Freaks are only mistakes of nature, but they have hearts and minds like everyone else. Some, like the pinheads and the balloon heads, do not have good minds, but they have feelings just the same. Suppose your face stayed that way?”

  “I’d have an operation. I’d kill myself. I wouldn’t live like this.”

  “Oh, you might. Freaks live among freaks here. We accept one another.”

  “But you’re not a freak.”

  Frost smiled. “No?”

  Frost stood and unbuttoned his shirt and pointed to his chest. On his left breast was a tiny gray hand, the wrist growing from the location of his heart, or at least the location one imagined for the heart. The hand poked into the air with slightly bent fingertips; the hand looked like a crustacean or prehistoric spider that had been partially boiled. The gray flesh was lined with dark, thin veins that throbbed with blood.

  “There was a whole child here once,” Frost said, tapping the hand. “We were both living, but I was freed of him and he was . . . destroyed. I know no other way to say it. This is all that remains. This hand. The wrist is connected to vital organs. They could not cut him all the way clear. The hand is a part of me. It beats with my pulse, with my blood. It is me, and him.”

  “Good God!”

  “That’s not all.” Frost unbuttoned his pants and lowered them and scooped at his underwear and peeled them down over his ample right hip and showed a massive red scar that ran all the way up his right side. “And here was the third. Triplets. By operation and the choice of my parents, I lived, and they died. They were misshapen. I was the easiest to save. I am one of three and I am all three. Sometimes, late at night, I can almost feel the hand at my chest, squeezing, trying to drive its fingers through my chest, angry I survived, wanting to mash the life from me. And the scar on my hip. It heats up, pains me. When it’s cold especially. Other nights, the scar and the hand are companions.”

  “You were Siamese triplets?”

  “Incorrect term, but as I said, I was one of three. I am still one of three. You can not create one by destroying two. Had my parents chosen for them to survive, they would have been my brothers.”

  “You couldn’t have lived a normal life.”

  Frost readjusted his clothes. “True. But there’s very little normal about wearing the wounds and remains of your brothers. To know I survived because I was in the middle, easier to save because my heart was stronger and my appearance normal, it has its burden.”

  “They didn’t look right?”

  “They were misshapen. Prunish is the word used to describe them. Shriveled up like little mummies. They wouldn’t have grown very large, either of them, but I would have grown to the size I am now, carrying them with me. One clutched to my chest like a nursing baby, the other hanging to my hip like a pet monkey.”

  “Shit, you’re lucky,” Bill said. “You’re alive and they’re dead. That’s no burden.”

  Frost’s face took on a sardonic air. “You think so?”

  “Take it from someone who doesn’t have any luck. You’re lucky.”

  “I suppose it’s all in the way you look at things. Do you have more to tell me about why you’re wandering about in the woods, hungry, worn out, and mosquito-bit?”

  “I don’t guess so,” Bill said.

  Frost studied him. “Well, I trust my instincts. You don’t look like a murderer.”

  Bill thought: No, I look like someone with a million mosquito bites.

  “I suppose you have your secrets and your reasons. You’re welcome here. You may sleep in my place tonight. Tomorrow night, you wish to stay, we must find you another bed. When you feel stronger, you may leave.”

  “I’m much obliged, Mr. Frost.”

  “That’s all right, Bill. That’s quite all right. I’m always glad to help a man that’s down. Especially one I can see needs the help. If there is one thing I believe, it is this. Man is meant to help man get along in life, and that is our singular purpose on this earth.”

  “Thanks,” Bill said, and thought: Boy are you a dumb shit.

  Ten

  “We got to sleep on the couch while a guy with a fucked-up face we don’t even know sleeps in our bed?”

  “Just for tonight. Must you curse?”

  “Must I? No. But I want to.”

  Bill could hear them talking at the other end of the trailer. They were trying to be quiet, or at least Frost was, but their voices carried clearly into the bedroom.

  Bill lay there listening to them because he couldn’t sleep. He had slept too much already. He thought that was sort of funny. Just a short time before he couldn’t get enough sleep, now he was wide awake with his hands behind his head looking at the ceiling, listening to the beautiful blonde tell Frost she wanted her bed back.

  Bill was considering all this, pretty amazed. How in the world had this hot blonde hooked up with that freak, Frost? Frost was a nice enough guy, but that hand on his chest, that scar on his side, it gave Bill the willies.

  After listening to them awhile, Bill showered and the warm shower helped him become sleepy again. He went back to bed and fell asleep right off, but he didn’t stay that way. He awoke to the door opening. He turned his head and saw framed in the moonlight the blonde. He could not really see her face, but he knew it was her because he could smell her. That wonderful smell of wet pussy and men’s cologne.

  Her hair lay tight against her head, and there in the shadows, except for the moonlight on her face, her shape seemed inhuman. When she turned to look in his direction he could not see her eyes, and the shadows gathered about her in such a way
as to make her appear tentacled, like a great squid wearing a cap of white gold. The tentacles roiled and writhed and she shifted and the moonlight brightened as it lost a wreath of clouds and came more clearly through the windows. Suddenly she was clearly outlined in the doorway and her smell came to him more strongly than before.

  She stood there for some time. He could not tell if she could see him looking at her or not. Finally she turned and gently closed the door.

  Once again, Bill heard them speak. Frost called her to bed, and she said, “You done what you’re supposed to do?”

  “It’s not necessary,” said Frost.

  “It is to me.”

  “Just this once we do different?”

  “No.”

  “I can do it afterwards.”

  “There isn’t going to be any afterwards, you don’t do what I want.”

  “Very well.”

  A moment of long silence, then Frost again. “Now come to bed,” and Bill heard movement in there, the sound of clothes dropping to the floor, a body climbing onto springs and cushions, and Bill thought: Jumpin’ Jesus. She’s gonna screw the freak, then he heard muted breathing, a grunt and a groan, a squeak and a cry, then all was silent and the night passed on, deep and dark and still, passed on gently into a gray morning with muted sunlight and the sound of a gentle but persistent rain tapping on the trailer.

  As he lay there, wide awake in the morning, he heard movement again in the other room and he knew from the sounds that they were at it again, and Bill wondered if it was the hand on Frost’s chest that turned her on, wondered if while Frost screwed her with his heavy body she would reach up and touch the little amputated hand, run her fingers over the smooth gray fingers and over the throbbing veins, and perhaps with her other hand she was reaching out to hold the scar ridge on Frost’s hip.