A sound wakes her.
Somewhere, in the house, something is breathing hard. The breaths are hectic, animalistic. Fear flows through her veins.
She stands, but doesn’t know where to step. Not even safe in your own FUCKING house!
Inching toward who-knows-what, she makes sure no air is inhaled or exhaled. She simply listens; someone is rummaging through things in her kitchen. The plastic wrapper of a Twinkie or Ding Dong is rustling. A ceramic coffee cup slides across the counter. There! The spoon to the sugar jar clanged against something.
All thoughts pertaining to not getting a PhD, not going to the rich-but-not-rich elementary school . . . all those things are pushed out of her head as she thinks: Whoever’s in here is probably going to kill and/or rape me, so I better be prepared to act . . .
And when she’s in the kitchen and sees that a man covered in blood, with bits of gore-chunk matted in his shaggy hair, is digging his dirty mitts through her kitchen stuff, she stops thinking and resorts to instinct.
Natural instinct tells her to say this: “Who are you?!” She does so in as shaky a voice as possible.
The guy’s head snaps towards her. “Hey . . . whuh . . . hey! It’s, uh, not what it looks like. You see, I am but a theater student at the local university. You know, unemployed actors have to eat too . . . when they’re not working at the slaughterhouse.”
“I’m calling the fucking cops!”
She starts to call the cops on her cell, but the blood-drenched guy smacks her phone away. It crashes to the floor, its smart screen spiderwebs.
“Now listen! It . . . uh . . . it isn’t what it looks like! Okay, yeah, sure, I was stealing some food, but don’t you have enough food to go around? I mean, yeah, sure you do . . . ”
In no time, Vogel has a butcher knife pulled from the drawer, and she’s stabbing him repeatedly in the shoulder.
“Ow! Lady! Stop! Please stop! I give up! I give up!”
He falls down, covered in his blood as well as someone . . . or something . . . else’s. He’s holding his hands in front of him, trying to fend her off, but it’s not working.
The knife’s blade goes through one of his shielding hands, and his scream goes higher, and more desperate, in pitch. “Call the cops! Call the cops! Please! Stop . . . stop . . . ” and his pleas drop off into sobbing.
Vogel stands there, knife in hand, staring the man down. Theater student? He doesn’t look like a damn theater student. He looks like a fucking hobo/serial killer.
The man is beyond crying now; his sobs are dry. “I was just tryin’ to eat! I need to eat!”
“Can’t you go to a soup kitchen?”
“Yeah, but . . . I don’t know!”
“Yeah. I don’t either.”
“Please! Help me! I’m just a theater student!”
Vogel stops conversing. She picks her phone back up, checks that it still works (despite the screen being cracked), and dials 9-1-1.
For whatever reason, the man screams: “My name is Jeremy! I work at the ole slaughterhouse! Please! Be lenient on me! Don’t get me put in the slammer . . . or stab me anymore!”
Vogel pays him no mind. When the operator asks her for the nature of her emergency, she says, “There’s a crazy dude in my house. I stabbed him.”
CHAPTER 9
Truck Goop
It’s the middle of the second half of the work day.
“You know what that means, buddy,” says Aldert to himself. “That truck’s unguarded!”
Aldert exits his office without alerting Stan, who he’s stopped pursuing for information (even if Stan knew something, he’d present it in such a way that the whole case would instantly become BORING as fuck). He also bypasses the factory floor.
Truth be known, he’s starting to feel intimidated by those people.
Crazy as it sounds, it’s true. They make him feel unworthy, unmanly.
They make him feel like a pansy.
But he can’t think in that direction.
Outside, there it is: the truck in all its rusty, redneck glory. Aldert rubs his hands together in devilish delight at the prospect of sleuthing. Without any hesitation, he walks up to it and peers in the back. Sure enough, slime. No deranged doggies, but slime. Perhaps it was all dripped from the snout of a gooey pup. Perhaps it was vomited out.
He stops thinking about it. He removes a Q-tip and a clear, plastic baggie from his jeans pocket. Stealthily, he does the swab, puts it in the bag, then returns everything to his pocket. He turns from the truck, imagining himself being known as a hero: The Man Who Uncovered the Most Bizarre 21st Century Crime (involving dogs, rednecks, and radiation).
Before he knows it, a German Sheppard appears (damn thing was probably under the truck the whole time) and gives his forearm a fierce jowl-snap. Teeth sink in, bringing blood and pain. Aldert smacks against the truck hard enough to budge it. Then the dog is jumping into the truck’s bed, yanking fiercely on Aldert’s arm. The only way to avoid having it ripped and torn further is to avoid pulling against the teeth. And so he does the unthinkable: he climbs into the back of the truck with the impossibly strong dog, hoping to beat it off his mangled arm.
He punches the snout ten times when he realizes his only hope of getting the dog to release its super-pooch grip from his forearm is to gouge out its eyes. Thus, fingers poke in hard . . . merciless . . . an eyeball is popped from the domesticated beast amid a pitiful whine-yelp.
The animal lets go of his forearm, but not before yanking him one last time . . . pulling him into the bit of green goop not in the plastic baggie.
The sludge gets everywhere.
Most notably, right in the bite marks.
CHAPTER 8
Continued . . .
Here we are, in this beautiful little place, just you and I, together, fully prepared to die. Fully prepared to cast away these images, sounds, and feelings that have constituted what we call our lives. Yep, throw it all away and indulge in a big sleep devoid of dreams. Devoid of pain. Devoid of happiness. Devoid of the urge to jerk it (or, if you’re a gal, finger it).
It’s all going by the wayside, it is; down down down ’til splat.
Right in the vat of blood. Icky, gory blood with little clumps of hair, mucus, gums-and-teeth, ears, snouts, pig heels (skin or hoof?), testicles, clits, boobs, nips, scrotums, labia, elbows, hips.
Wake up. Feel the cool. The blood is all sticky.
And you’re all icky.
***
Vogel is still standing over him with the knife when the cops come. They look down at the blood-covered man and say, “Is all that his blood?”
“No. He was covered in the stuff when I caught him.”
“You said you were originally sleeping on the couch? Then you heard a sound and found him snooping around your kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“When will your husband be home, ma’am?”
“Any second now. I haven’t told him anything.”
“He’ll be in for quite a shock. Well, I guess we better call an ambulance. This guy probably needs some help.”
CHAPTER 9
Continued . . .
It’s well past time to go home, yet Aldert is sitting in his office, elbows on his desk, massaging his temples. A feeling is in his head. A feeling of dizziness, as well as the need for power. The spot where the dog bit his arm is doing the throb/sting, but it’s all strangely numbed. To look at it is enough to make you throw up. Green froth is emitting itself, along with milky blood.
“Oh, god . . . ” He’s aware of the fact that he needs medical attention, yet he doesn’t want to tell anyone, because he doubts people would believe him. Super powerful dogs? Radioactive sludge-stuff? Yeah, good luck getting anyone to believe that shit.
“I just . . . I need to go home,” says Aldert. He stands quickly, his chair thrown behind him. It crashes into the wall, leaving a big hole. “Well I’ll be dipped in butter and baked into a pretzel.”
He doesn’t know where that
came from. Just that it came.
***
His driving is comfortable because, when he gripped his steering wheel, his fingers indented themselves into nice, finger-sized slots. Same thing with everything else he’s touched; his grip is too strong for its own good. “Better be careful next time I jerk off,” he jokingly muses.
He imagines grabbing his member with super strength. He grips it so hard the head shoots off like a bullet and lodges itself in the ceiling. “Well, damn,” is probably what he’d say.
When he pulls into the nice, secluded driveway, his blood races because he sees both an ambulance and a cop car.
“Damn!” He steps on the brake, pushes the gear-shift into park, then rushes to the house (not knowing the gear-shift is still in his right hand). He throws the front door open so hard it flies straight off the hinges and into an unseen deputy. It smacks the cop into the wall directly behind him.
“Ow,” says the cop, before falling face-forward, unconscious.
Aldert pays no mind and runs through the house. In the kitchen, he finds Vogel standing unscathed. At her feet is a blood-drenched man and an emergency medical technician. “He’s alive,” says the EMT, who’s got his fingers pressed to the bloodied man’s jugular.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” is all Aldert can say before Vogel tackles him and gives him a bear hug.
“This man was in our kitchen stealing food! I stabbed him!”
“Damn! Um . . . I better go check on that cop . . . ”
***
The cop sits in the old recliner, shaking, nursing a cup of hot tea with fresh-squeezed lemon and honey. “That was some hard door,” says he.
Aldert nods his sympathies. “Yep. When I saw your car out there, mister, I couldn’t help it. I assumed the worst and wasn’t gonna waste no time getting in here to see if my baby was safe.” He gives Vogel’s leg a squeeze.
“I don’t blame ya for that. I take it you . . . you’re a bit stronger than ya look, ain’t cha?”
“I reckon that’s possible.”
“Sure it is. Men carry muscle in weird places.” The cop is now silent. He sips his tea and keeps with the shaking, although it’s lessened a bit.
Vogel pipes in with: “So, what do you make of that man, officer? Why did he break in here? Is he on drugs?”
The officer daintily takes another sip of tea before regaining his manly composure and saying, “Well, that’s part of the reason I wanted to come in here and sit down with you folks . . . the other reason being, of course, the hard knock to my head keepin’ me from movin’ too much. Anyways, that man, he currently lives in a house full of thieves. Every single one of ’em, thieves. There’s about six or seven altogether, and they all split the rent. From what I gather, they go to the school in the other county. They’re art students or somethin’ like that. Well, I take it they’re dirt poor, between payin’ for college and lookin’ towards shitty job prospects after graduation, so they’ve been stealin’ odds and ends all over the place. Most of ’em have been in jail a couple times. But it’s no use; minute they get out’s the minute they get back to stealin’.”
“Should we expect more trouble from ’em?” asks Aldert.
“I shouldn’t suspect so. They’re not dumb enough to get caught stealin’ from the same place twice . . . they are college students, after all . . . plus, I’d be willin’ to bet they’d be weary of comin’ back, seein’ as how you all are likely to be on edge, if ya know what I’m saying.” As the officer says this, he fake-pumps an air shotgun.
Inside Aldert’s mind is joy; he’d be glad if they came back.
Underneath his shirt, his new muscles flex.
CHAPTER 10
Jeremy
Down. Down. Down. Down.
He fell into the vat of blood, he did. He wouldn’t have minded it, had he been ready to kick the bucket and fade away. Problem is, he found a new passion, and that passion is what made him decide to do better. Much, much better.
Much better than this shitty slaughterhouse job he’s been working. Hearing screams and death all day is no way to spend living, especially as an artist attending a community college. But rent must be paid and drugs must be consumed, for, if drugs aren’t consumed, what is the reason to live? Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. Yeah, motherfucker.
And so he’s been working here after classes, doing homework at night, and doing drugs all day (all while checking with people who know when drug tests are scheduled). Things have been going bad. He’s living with people he doesn’t hate but, honestly, he’s not sure what he likes. Therefore, these people are fine as any, and they all love doing drugs and goofing off.
Problem is, things seem dulled out. The world has no spark. It’s colorless. The blood never seems to be pumping anymore.
Yesterday he did a bad thing. He’d been standing there, minding his own business, whistling the tune of some band that one of his housemates had been blasting during their latest bong session, when all of a sudden he’s splashing into a vat of blood and chunks. The taste isn’t sweet, it’s irony. It goes down his throat, enters his stomach, and rests in his abdomen (a day later, it’s still resting).
The reason for his mighty plummet? For starts, he antagonized a fellow employee. Called him names. Said he was one of those people from the nineteen-fifties who believe in segregation and capitalism and whatnot. The man proudly replied: “I vote Democrat, mister.”
Jeremy had said: “Well, you’re no art student, you’re a slaughterhouse worker who can barely take care of his family.”
“You’re a slaughterhouse worker, too,” is what the man had said before going off on his own.
Later the man had returned and pushed Jeremy. “That’s for sayin’ I don’t know how to take care of my family, Mr. I’ve-Never-Had-a-Family-or-Any-Responsibility-For-That-Matter.” The man had then turned and left. But Jeremy, something within him changed.
He saw that, no matter what, no one was going to view his new, blood-drenched appearance as an alteration in his normal dress. Simply put, everyone saw him as a complete bottom-dweller, and it’s not unusual for a bottom-dweller to be dirty and/or have the stank.
He saw that this event from his childhood wouldn’t repeat itself:
Jeremy, he’s running around the swamps behind his Alabama house. It’s like a jungle out there, jungle meets Deep South forest. There’s moss in the trees. The sun is setting. The sound of bugs and birds nudges the mind to relaxation and dreaminess. Jeremy is playing out movies in his mind. Monster movies. He got to see some on VHS. His brother had them in his room. Jeremy is pretending he’s the mummy. Then, SPLASH. Ooey-gooey ick slide. Gurgle. Jeremy rises from the standing water he just fell in. A lily pad rests atop his crown. He walks home, ready to partake in some serious washing. Then his mother sees him and wags her finger and yells: “JEREMY! You’re filthy! Good boys aren’t supposed to be filthy! Presentable boys aren’t supposed to be filthy! Quick! Get in the shower and wash off before supper! I NEVER! UGH!” Despite being greatly annoyed at the level of bitchery, Jeremy was pleased; his mom cared about him, she expected more of him, she believed in him.
Now, no one’s there to make sure he’s clean, to make sure he’s presentable. No one sees him as a good boy who has standards he must follow, a good boy who is worthy enough to command self-respect.
Is he a good boy?
If only he knew . . .
The only thing to do now, since the world got turned topsy-turvy and is now icky and bloody, is to act on impulse.
“Food. Me need food. Hahahahahahahaha.”
CHAPTER 11
Sleep-fighting
Aldert just gotthe bang-fuck of a lifetime from his hot little wife with a sweet little ass. This is the first time (the FIRST time) they tried anal. It wasn’t too gross, because they used a condom. However, upon exiting, the condom did reek. But that didn’t matter.
Now he’s lying next to her, propped up against the headboard, arms behind his neck, wishing he had a gl
ass of whiskey and a big ole cigar. Vogel, on the other hand, is lying on her side, complaining at seemingly fixed intervals of a pressure behind the walls of her anus.
Aldert is lost in fantasies:
Aldert is a man of intrigue, a man of global espionage. He’s fucked many willing women on his exploits. He’s also killed many a well-dressed thief. They’ve all buckled and screamed under his know-how; he knows how to use a gun, he knows how to throw a blade, he knows how to kick throats so hard the Adam’s apple flies backward and knocks loose the vertebrae of the neck-spine.
He’s forced back to reality when Vogel screams: “My ass hurts!”
He looks down and sees ten fingerprint-shaped bruises caressing her butt cheeks. “They’ll heal, darling,” he says, before returning to his spy-man fantasies.
***
It’s the middle of the night, and Vogel is sound asleep (all rock-like and whatnot). Aldert, however, he’s not even partway tired. It’s troubling, really. Inside his head there are screams, there are mechanizations, there is death destroying itself and transitioning into something new. A part of him that was away is now back from the void, and it’s giving the house new rules.
BE MORE STAND-OFFISH.
FUCK THOSE PEOPLE YOU DON’T LIKE, FUCK ’EM IN THE EARS AND WATCH CUM ROLL DOWN THEIR NECKS; LAUGH ALONG WITH THE WIND’S HOWLING.
He goes to the kitchen and starts eating more than what’s sensible. He shoves bread, deli meat, and cheese into his mouth, then squirts in the mustard. “Nom nom,” he says, before he gets to the milk, then it’s: “Gulp gulp.”
He rips his shirt from his body and sees muscles. Sure, there were muscles before, but now they’re all veiny and kind of bulgy. How to explain this to Vogel?
Inside his mind: there’s a redneck standing there with a dog on a leash, that dog is dripping green slime; it’s one of the ones that killed his (Aldert’s) puppers. “Fuck you, man,” says Aldert, right before he kicks the man in the gut. The dude’s spine breaks with his lower back jutting out like a V.
“Fuck! I broke the sink!”
Soothing the Savage Swamp Beast Page 5