by Carl Hose
A commotion in the barn caught Mabel’s attention. It was obvious Floyd had gone and got himself into another mess. Something tumbled and crashed. Now the pigs were squealing and the chickens were squawking.
Mabel was about to go check on Floyd when he came lurching from the barn. He was a touch disorientated at first, but he finally righted his course and began to make his way toward her.
Mabel watched him come and thought how he was in desperate need of a little patchwork. She sure hoped those hoodlums from town came through for her. She needed materials. Without materials, Floyd would keep right on rotting. She’d already sewn his nose back on this morning, and last night, just before she finally got him to turn in, she’d had to wire his jaw. His shin bones were exposed and tatters of wasted flesh were all that remained on his fingers. There was barely enough meat to keep him together these days.
Despite his poor shape, Floyd was a hard-working man. A tad clumsy now, but a hard worker just the same, leastways as best as he could manage.
Mabel stood as Floyd reached the porch. She took him by the hand and lifted his limp arm, doing her best to steady him as he tried to raise a foot to the first step. He was too heavy for Mabel, that much was certain. Too dang heavy for her to lift, so the best she could do was help him balance.
“Come on, old man,” Mabel said.
He set his foot down too early, right on the edge of the step, which caused him to slip and tumble forward. Try as she might, Mabel couldn’t keep him from falling face down and cracking his head on the third step. It made a sickening wet thud, sort of like a watermelon being dropped, and Mabel knew she was going to have a tough time fixing that mess.
“Blame it, now, Floyd, how many times have we been over this?” she said, frustrated with him. “You’ve got to be real careful in your condition.”
She stuck her hands under his armpits and hauled him to his feet, gasping and panting as she did. He was so dang heavy. Nothing but dead weight. She examined his head and saw that there was a deep dent running along the parchment-like skin of his forehead. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d suspected, though, and once she filled it in, he’d look as good as a dead man could look.
She slung one of his arms around her neck and hauled him up, grunting and breathing hard the whole way. When she got him into the house, she plopped him in a chair in the living room.
“I’ll fix you a bite to eat, then you need to finish those chores,” she said. “What’s it gonna be, pig brains or beef heart?”
Floyd stared straight ahead, a thick blackish-green strand of saliva dribbling down his chin. Mabel dabbed at it with her apron. “Pig brains it is,” she said, tottering off to the kitchen to fetch his breakfast.
* * *
The sun had set half an hour ago. Floyd was sitting in his favorite chair. Mabel had propped his legs on a footstool. She went to the window and peeked out. No sign of any headlights.
She paced some, stopping now and again to see that Floyd was okay. He was like a special person now. He didn’t grasp much of what was going on around him. He still liked his routine, though. That was one thing about him dead that was the same as before he kicked the bucket. He treasured his routine. Always had, and would until the day he . . . well, that didn’t really apply no more, now did it?
She checked her watch. Those boys were usually on time. This was their regular day. She was worried they’d forgotten her. She couldn’t have that. Floyd wouldn’t last much longer without parts. The more he rotted, the harder it would be to fix him.
“It’s so hard to find reliable help these days,” she said, fluffing the pillow she’d placed behind her dead husband’s head. “They all get eager in the beginning, tell you anything you want to hear just so you’ll hire ’em, and then they slack off.”
Floyd’s lower jaw dropped half an inch. He turned his head to look up at Mabel like a child who’s just made a boo boo. A thick string of brown stuff rolled from the corner of his mouth. Mabel shook her head and chuckled.
“Just look at you,” she said, dabbing the nasty saliva away with a hanky. “Surely you’re one of the messiest people I know.” She pushed his lower jaw up and wiggled it in place as best as she could, then she gave him a kiss on his thin, cracked lips. “I love you just the same, though,”
Headlights swept by the window and Mabel could hear the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway. She hobbled over to the window, one hand held against her lower back, which was hurting from the strain of helping Floyd into the house earlier in the day.
She looked out the window and saw a car backing out of the drive. Her heart sank. She’d thought for sure it would be those two hoodlums, but it was some blame fool who’d managed to get lost. This wasn’t the first time a strange car had used her driveway to turn around. People drove way out here all the time, only to realize they were off the beaten path, and Mable and Floyd’s driveway had acted as a welcome turnaround for many.
“Don’t look like they’re going to make it tonight,” Mabel said.
She kissed the rotten flesh of Floyd’s forehead, turned off the TV and lights, then went to bed, locking the bedroom door behind her. Floyd would never intentionally hurt her, but the state he was in these days, he was as likely to take a bite out of her while she was asleep as not. No sense taking chances was the way Mabel had it figured.
She lay awake for a long time, thinking about Floyd and how he’d come back to her after his heart gave out. She wasn’t real sure about the mechanics of his reanimation, except that she believed it was God’s way of letting her know she and Floyd belonged together, that not even death could lay waste to a love so pure and true.
Sleep finally claimed her.
Sometime later Floyd bumped into the bedroom door, but Mabel slept right through the ruckus.
* * *
“Take it easy, will ya?” Bubba said, keeping his can of beer held away from him so it didn’t spill.
“Ain’t my fault the road sucks,” Pete shot back, maneuvering the beat-up red pickup truck down a narrow stretch in Vineland Cemetery. “Besides, since when have you ever cared about smellin’ like a brewery? You always stink.”
“I ain’t in the mood to traipse around no graveyard lookin’ like I peed my pants,” Bubba said. “And you’re givin’ me whiplash to boot.”
They were heading into the deepest part of the cemetery. A half moon hung in the sky, providing a comforting pale light.
“Place creeps me out,” Bubba said.
“Quit complainin,’” Pete shot back. “We come out here to do a job. You should be used to it by now.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t,” Bubba said. “I don’t like dead things.”
Pete turned onto a smaller road, this one made of dirt and gravel. He stopped the truck and cut the engine, leaving the headlights on. “Let’s get to it,” he said.
The two men got out of the truck. Pete paused at the back of the truck to light a cigarette, then dropped the tailgate and hauled out two shovels and a pickaxe.
“I scoped this one out the other day,” he said, settling down beside a headstone. “Roy Flemming,” he read from the headstone. “Geezer was seventy-two when he kicked the bucket. Ain’t been dead more than two weeks. The old lady should appreciate it.”
He leaned off to one side of the grave and spit, then he stood up and pulled his jeans from between his ass cheeks. “Let’s dig the ol’ boy up.”
They started digging. It took nearly three hours of sweaty labor before they finally uncovered the coffin. Pete used the pickaxe to pry it open. The corpse inside was relatively fresh. The old dead guy looked peaceful. His hands were folded neatly across his chest and his eyes closed. He was dressed in his Sunday best.
“Give me a hand,” Pete said, raising the corpse from the coffin.
Bubba grabbed one side of the old man, Pete took the other, and together they managed to hoist the corpse out of the grave. They loaded it in the back of the pickup truck, covered it with a tarp, an
d filled the grave in again, making it look undisturbed.
“Let’s deliver this stinkin’ thing and get us some pancakes,” Pete said.
Bubba couldn’t have agreed more. This whole ugly business had him just about as freaked out as he could get. The sooner the corpse was gone and they had their money, the happier he’d be. If he had his way, this was the last trip he’d ever make to a graveyard.
* * *
Frantic pounding on the front door snapped Mabel out of her night’s rest. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. Her knees almost gave out. She grabbed hold of the bedpost to steady herself. The pounding continued, growing louder by the second, and now she could hear male voices she recognized as belonging to the hoodlums.
She grabbed the baseball bat she kept beside the bed, opened the bedroom door, and moved into the darkened hallway. She made her way down the stairs as fast as she could, which wasn’t half fast by a long shot, and certainly not fast enough for the thugs banging on her door.
“Come on, old woman,” one of them called.
She turned the latch and threw the bolt, groaning with the effort.
“’Bout time, old lady,” Pete said.
“I expected the two of you a while ago,” Mabel said, resting the bat against the wall next to the door. “I gave up and went to bed.”
“We said we’d be here, didn’t we?” Pete replied. “You got the money?”
“I always do,” Mabel told him, shooting him a look of disapproval. “Question is, do you have what I asked for?”
“Yeah, we got it,” Pete said. He sniffed the air. “It stinks in here.”
Mabel admonished him with a look that reminded him of how his grandma used to look when she caught him stealing her fresh-baked cookies.
Bubba shifted his weight from one foot to the other, nervous and in a hurry to leave. “Where is he?” he asked, his eyes darting around the room.
“Don’t be frettin’ none,” Mabel said. “You just mind the business you came to do. My Floyd’s harmless most of the time.”
“Yeah, it’s the rest of the time I’m worried about,” Bubba said.
“Let’s get on with it,” Pete said. “The stiff’s in the truck. Where do you want us to put it?”
“In the storm cellar will do,” Mabel answered. “Take it the back way. There’s a metal table. Put the body there, then come collect your money.”
She waited until the hoodlums had gone outside before she took the money from a wall safe hidden behind an old family photograph. Banks were simply out of the question. Legal thievery, that’s all banking institutions amounted to. Mabel would watch her own money, thank you.
She counted one thousand dollars—the agreed upon amount—and stuffed the money into one of her nightgown pockets, then she went off to find Floyd before he found the two hoodlums.
* * *
“I’m stickin’ with breakin’ and entering after tonight,” Bubba said. “This ain’t no way to earn a livin.’”
They were in the storm cellar, and even with the overhead bulb, the room was dark and full of shadows where things slithered and crawled. The corpse was on the metal table now. They were just about to leave when Pete took an interest in the array of tools hanging on the wall.
“This old lady’s whacked,” he said, examining scalpels, bone saws, and several long knives. “These are morgue tools. I worked in a morgue. I know all about this stuff.” He took one of the saws from the hook. “This here is for cutting through bone. It’ll go right through a skull.”
“Aw, come on, man, put it down,” Bubba said.
“What, you scared?”
“I ain’t scared, it’s just freaky, that’s all. Stop playin’ a—”
Something shuffled behind them. They turned quickly, both nearly at the same time, and saw Floyd standing in the cellar doorway, his head tilted slightly to one side, a gaping wound in his neck. Half his forehead was missing. His ribcage was exposed and alive with maggots.
Bubba fainted.
Floyd shuffled forward, one leg twisted at an odd angle and dragging along behind him. Pete backed away. Floyd tripped over Bubba and decided to start eating him. Pete was slow to react. He didn’t want to let the thing eat Bubba, but he wasn’t going to make a move thinking it through.
He snatched a hammer from the wall and lunged at Floyd, swinging the hammer in a wide, powerful arc. His aim was off and he caught Floyd’s ear, sending it bouncing across the cold concrete floor.
Cursing his lousy aim, he drew back again, this time getting the hammer in a two-fisted grip and making sure his aim was dead on . . .
. . . and then he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head.
His world went dark. . . .
* * *
“This will do nicely,” Mabel said. “Fresher skin lasts longer, you know.”
Floyd was on the metal table. Mabel leaned over him, working a needle and thread as she sewed his ear back on. Her arthritis was acting up, but she ignored the pain and kept at it.
A little pain was a small price to pay for her Floyd. She loved the man—had loved him since they were spring chickens. She couldn’t picture life without him. She’d do what it took to keep him with her, even if it meant patching him up once or twice a week.
She’d have to find new hoodlums to keep her supplied with materials now. She couldn’t be digging up graves on her own, that was a fact of life.
Speaking of hoodlums, one of them was coming around. He groaned. Mabel turned his way. She’d strapped him to a gurney, one strap across his neck, one across his fat belly, and another over his legs. He wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
“What the hell . . . ?” Pete tried to sit up. “Get me offa this thing.”
“I swing a pretty mean baseball bat for an old woman,” Mabel said, rather proud of herself. “I surely am sorry it turned out this way, but I couldn’t have you hurting Floyd.”
Her eyes moved past Pete, over to the other gurney. Pete followed the old woman’s eyes to see what had drawn her attention. He wasn’t sure if he screamed or if he only wanted to scream. What he did know was that he should’ve taken Bubba’s advice about forgetting this whole grave-digging business, but it was too late for a career change now.
Bubba’s face had been peeled off his skull, there were big pieces of flesh cut away from his arms and legs, and a large portion of his stomach had been sliced away to expose raw, bloody tissue.
“Don’t fret,” Mabel said to Pete. “I won’t be needing you for some time. I’ll see that you’re comfortable until then.”
She turned back to Floyd. “Come on, you old coot,” she said. “Best be gettin’ to your chores, and when you’re finished, I’ll make you some of that sun tea you favor so.”
Floyd swung his legs over the edge of the table and stood up. He was a bit wobbly, but he looked better all patched up with fresh skin. Bubba’s face had been sewn over what was left of Floyd’s decayed features, creating a mangled, mismatched caricature of a human being.
“I’ll look in on you from time to time,” Mabel promised him.
She took her husband’s hand and led him from the cellar, closing the door behind her, leaving Pete to scream in the cold, damp darkness while he contemplated his future. . . .
Unholy Matrimony
“Goddamn, there’s hardly a mark on this one,” Elroy said. “She’s one good-lookin’ bitch.” He was standing in a freshly dug grave, staring down into the open coffin. A big grin spread across his pock-marked face as he admired the blonde female corpse inside. “Beats any girlfriend I ever had,” he added, scratching the back of his head.
“She’s pro’bly a whole lot livelier too,” Cracker said.
Cracker’s real name was Jimmy, but most everybody called him Cracker because of the annoying habit he had of cracking his knuckles.
“Fuck you,” Elroy said. “When’s the last time you had a date with anybody ’cept your hand?”
Cracker was squatting at the rim
of the open grave, licking his dry lips as he stared down at the dead beauty. “Wanna fuck ’er?” he asked, reaching down to squeeze the bulge in his pants. “Hell, ain’t nobody gonna know the difference. ’Specially her.”
Elroy couldn’t have agreed more. There she was, looking pretty damn fine for a dead girl, and he was feeling a little frisky. He chewed his lower lip, giving it some thought, then said, “I get first shot.”
“Suit yourself,” Cracker said. “She ain’t goin’ nowhere, and I don’t mind sloppy seconds.”
Elroy unzipped his pants and climbed into the coffin. It wasn’t long before he was grunting and thrusting his way to heaven. Cracker watched, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, eyes squinted against a rising curl of smoke. When it was his turn, he cracked his knuckles and climbed on top of the corpse. He spent even less time with her than Elroy. When they were finished, they went back to completing the job they’d been hired to do.
“Sick fucks, you ask me,” Elroy said, raising the dead girl into a sitting position.
“It’s money,” Cracker said. “A man’s got money, he thinks he can do any damn thing he pleases. Turns a man ’centric, havin’ all that money.”
“Yeah, well, whatever you call it—get her legs, will ya—sick is what it is.”
They hoisted the corpse out of the grave.
“Five hundred bucks a corpse, I’ll dig ’em ’til I’m one myself,” Cracker said. “I don’t care what they do with ’em.”
“I’m with ya, bro,” Elroy said. “Grab her feet, let’s get her to the truck.”
They lifted the corpse and headed for the beat-up blue truck parked a few hundred yards away. The tailgate was down. They loaded the corpse into the truck with two they’d dug up earlier.
Cracker reached for the tarp.
Elroy stopped him. “Almost missed this little goodie,” he said, slipping a wedding ring from the dead girl’s finger. “Can’t have her spendin’ eternity with another man while she’s wearin’ this.” He pocketed the ring. “A man wants to get married, he oughta do it ’fore he’s dead. “Me, I ain’t gettin’ married, dead or alive.”