by Black, D. S.
Then she was homeless. Not a penny to her name, people throwing rocks at her. Calling her names; She started to cry, then made herself stop. “Gonna show you some pain now!” She turned, and in a revengeful fit, raised her foot high and kicked Andrew hard in the temple. A shiny white shimmer glowed in his mind, and he heard a high pitch ringing. Then the dragging commenced this time in silence.
12
Wildlife croaked from the dark trees. Rain was falling hard now, and his head pounded with nauseating pain. His throat felt like sandpaper, and the green around him blurred in a haze of dizziness; he shut them tightly. He transported his mind back to a moment in time when hot sparks flew against his face mask. He was helping Tommy Tyler—who owned Tommy Tyler’s Auto Mart and Mechanics.
Tommy stood over him rubbing his double chin. A white t-shirt clung over his big fat belly, overshadowing his crotch. His arms were thin rails, and his head shined a dingy brown under the car garage’s florescent lights. “Looking good, Drew! Just like new.”
“Always happy to help,” Andrew said as he pulled the mask up, and rested against a ‘98 blue Dodge Ram. Andrew had on a faded gray Hanes t-shirt with a front chest pocket. He reached in his front pocket, and removed a pack of Marlboros—the shorts, and grabbed a Bic lighter he’d stuffed in the plastic, covering the cardboard box that housed the cancer. He lit it, and took a long drag and blew out a hot cloud of smoke, each one a perfect ring. Above the florescent lights flickered. He’d taken up smoking not long after Sally had left; not long after that he’d found his broken heart felt better dipped in a bottle of Jim Bean, and of course he still enjoyed Randy's doo doo weed. Which he had desperately wanted to get to right away. He had hated these trips to Tommy’s garage, Tommy was a crook; the worst kind of crook. The kind that sold you a shitty car, knowing full well that it would leave you high and dry the moment the one-week warranty ran out.
He’d recently lost his job at the Swamp Pipe Company, and was forced to draw unemployment. A week before he’d lost his job, he'd seen the headline in the Palmetto Times: HORRY COUNTY’S OWN SALLY FIGHEART HEADED TO THE OLYMPICS; by the time she'd won the gold, he'd found him a new job at Iron Caster's Welding, INC. He was happy for her (of course). He had to be happy for her, but why did she have to just up and leave him like that?
Tommy the Crook was still standing over him, and his cigarette had burned down to the filter. Tommy was almost shouting with his eyes focused on the ceiling. His abnormally long chin moved up and down, up and down. “The mother fucker calls me screaming, says he wants his money back. His money back! Can you fucking believe that? I told him to go straight to fucking hell. The bastard then threatens me with a lawsuit, I told him to go ahead and waste his fucking money. Look at the goddamn warranty, asshole! That’s what I told him. Exactly what I fucking told him.”
Andrew had sat and nodded, remembering the image of Barry Blackwood’s palm on the back of Sally’s head. He’d followed them over a mile, and finally watched as they parked in front of Barry’s parent’s ten-thousand-square-foot house. He watched in horror, and a strange delight as Sally’s brunette head went up and down. He agreed with himself that this was more than just a wee bit creepy to follow them around, and after masturbating, sitting right there watching that patch of brown go up and down, he knew he probably should seek help. The only help he ever found was in the bottle of his new best friend, Jimmy Bean, and games of beer pong at Randy's home while his mom and dad were gone out of town; he developed a keen skill for a winning beer pong.
But he pushed on, day in and day out, always telling himself: “It's okay. Everything is going to be okay.” It became his slogan. His only way of holding onto his sanity, while he showered. “It's okay. Everything is going to be okay,” while he used the toilet in the morning, “It's okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
Back then, sitting on the floor of Tommy’s greasy garage, he said softly in his mind, it's okay. Everything is going to be okay. Then Tommy was gone, and so was the garage, the fluorescent lights, and the cold concrete floor. Now the crackle of lightening, mad thunder, and hard rain poured over his body. The old woman was still silent, except for the occasional grunt as she jerked him along down what now felt like a well-beaten path. Her dark shadow crept along the trees. “Almost there, boy. Oh yeah. Almost there.”
Andrew suddenly realized everything's not gonna be all right.
13
Andrew forced himself to turn onto his back, then pushed his chin against his chest, and looked at his strapped-down body. The ties were nylon, and clicked tightly around him with metal buckles. The sled itself was red. He wiggled a little, then his heart started to pump. His mind cleared completely, and for the first time since this woman entered his life, he was fully aware that she intended to kill him. Not just kill him, but make him scream and suffer. Sweat pushed out of his forehead in large droplets. Sally was dead, Tommy was dead; Barry Blackwood’s huge cock was dead, and he was about to be dead too if he didn’t find a way out of this. He forced himself to breathe slowly, one long breath at a time, then said in a low whisper: “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
Where had she come from? How did this happen? His mind was leaping from one end to the other, trying to figure out how in god’s name this was happening. Where was Candy? Where was Jack? Where in Christ’s name was this woman taking him? The questions spilled over into desperate tears. He cried like a helpless child. Sally was in those tears somewhere, dripping down to the earth; so was Papa and the girls. Jack, Jody, every person he’d ever loved and cared about flowed out of his eyes now. His last gift to the world was a tearful plea: “Let ‘em be okay. All of them. Let ‘em be okay. Papa, Candy, Jack, Jody. Oh, and you Sally; I miss you!” He burst into pathetic sobs, causing snot to drip from his nose. “Oh, Sally I loved you! I love you, my queen!”
The old woman stopped for a moment, and let out a thrilled cackle of laughter and then started pulling again, laughing hard and coughing up something deep inside her. Andrew bounced up and down as she pulled him up brick steps, then dragged him into an old shack. Inside it, stank of dead meat and bones. Hooks hung from the ceiling, and chains on the walls.
Oh Mary, mother of God! His mind was screaming. He was laid out in the middle of the floor. She stepped outside, and flung coals on a grill and lit it up. She then laid a cold iron onto the grill; the grill sat under an umbrella, and the rain coursed off in all directions. “Let fires rumble! Baby here comes the meat!” She walked back into the shack, and stood over him.
Andrew stared up at her with huge bug eyes. “You don’t have to do this. You are better than this. Come on! Put that down!” A sharp blade cuts into his leg. He screamed; writhing pain shot through his body. The hot blade sliced off his leg with ease. He watched in screaming terror as she raised it up and ran her nose down the length of his now detached blood dripping limb. Her eyes gleamed as she stared at his severed leg, then her dark eyes looked down at him, “Hunny, we all’s just meat.”
Andrew’s face was white. Blood oozed out of his leg, his pulse slowed down. He watched helplessly as she walked out, and then came back with a red hot iron. She pressed it hard against the wound. “Don’t worry boy. You ain't gonna die yet.”
His screams filled the shack and permeated into the surrounding swamp land. Not a creature nearby didn’t hear his hair-raising shrieks, then he just laid there, a dying piece of meat. He didn’t see Sally; he didn’t see much of anything. His body fell into the arms of pain induced shock.
The old woman walked over to a small cabinet nailed to the wall, she opened it. The inside was stocked with baby food—one on top of the other. She took one out, opened it, grabbed a dirty spoon, and walked over to Andrew. “Gotta keep you alive, son.” She force fed him the baby food. “There you go now, that’s a good boy.” It dripped down his face. His eyes opened just for a moment, then closed; she picked up the severed leg and walked over to a small wooden bench, it was stained dark red. Andrew’s leg land
ed with a squishy flop. His boot was still on the foot.
She first cut the skin off, she peeled till the leg was clean of flesh. She flung the dead flesh into the woods. She then took the protein rich leg over to the charcoal grill; the charcoal was red hot. The meat sizzled as she laid it across the metal. She breathed in deeply as she kept her nose over the grill. The gray smoke flowed around her; she twirled, then twirled again.
After the meat was done, she returned to the shack, and sat down Indian style beside Andrew. She ate the human leg with bare hands. “We just meat,” she said.
She finished the leg, chewing it to the bone, then licking it for any residual protein. She flung it into a pile of bones on the floor, staring at the small mountain of white carbon. Each one represented a former life—someone that used to dream. Now they just turned slowly to bone dust.
She’d found the owner of those bones back when this first all went down, but back then the bones still moved inside the living flesh of the people they supported—the family was cooking when she walked silently to the edge of the tree line that surrounded the shack. She’d wandered out here after the Fever caused dead men to walk in the cities. Her belly had growled; her mind spun. In her right hand, she held an Army issue .45 she’d picked off a dead soldier. He didn’t need it, she had thought; he’s just meat now, meat for the roaming dead. She shot the family dead.
That memory faded. She still sat beside Andrew, staring blankly over his body. In her mind's eye, she saw fraternity boys surrounding her. They had pushed and pulled her, tore her clothes off. She'd screamed.
“Shut up! Fucking street rat!” They spit in her face while each one took a turn with her on a sticky beer stained carpet. After they used her, they tied her up and loaded her in a car trunk. Her mascara, which she so delicately put on before the party, was smeared all over her face like pen ink had exploded from her eyes. Tears created tributaries of pain in long squiggly lines that dripped down her chin. She’d been so excited, real college boys. They really liked her, she thought. Jackie Mason, so tall and stout had called her a real dazzler, said she was a fine woman. She smiled up at his big blue eyes and fell in love instantly, but Jackie was driving the Cadillac as she vibrated in the trunk; a rag tied in her mouth, her hands and ankles bound tightly. Heavy music blared as fear took hold of her soul. She laid there, begging a deity for help until the car came to a slow and creeping halt. The music stopped, then the doors opened and closed. The trunk latch unlocked; moonlight shimmered in; they stood above her with angry glares. She was jerked out with a harsh pull, her eyes burned with fear as they dragged her naked body into an old cemetery, throwing her hard against a headstone.
“Dumb bitch,” Jackie said as he removed his member and pissed yellow onto her face. The others followed, then left her there in the dark with their disgusting urine dripping from her. Tears fell as she laid in the dirt.
That morning, a gravedigger found her and she learned she’d been carried over to Sumter, SC; a little shit-hole of a backwoods hick town. The grave digger was a tall and thin black man with a few teeth missing. He was kind, he found her some old clothes to put on and drove her to the sheriff’s office.
She'd sat there staring at Sheriff Bass. His big belly protruded from his waistline, and flopped over his belt. A large cigar dangled from his mouth. White hair sat on his head, accented by an even whiter handlebar mustache. She’d just told him the tale. He gleamed at her with menacing eyes, like he’d heard this before, and resented it more every time. “It all sounds like a lot of horse shit to me, honey. You street girls get all liquored up, go out with these party boys, and then whine when you get what you knew was coming.”
She stared at the floor. It was gray carpet, recently vacuumed. She looked up, and saw a black and white clock ticking. Below it, and directly above the sheriff’s head was a confederate flag mixed with the palmetto flag.
“Listen. I’m not gonna lock you up this time. I’ll have one of my deputies drive you over to the homeless shelter. Don’t come in here with bullshit like this again, ya hear?”
The image of the sheriff faded into a past that was never forgotten. She looked at Andrew and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Them days over… them days over…they’s all dead.” She then took the hot iron outside, and laid it on the grill.
14
She reentered the shack, and shut the door. “Okay! One more to go!”
Andrew screamed as she dismembered his final leg. Tears gushed from his eyes, and he begged for death. “Kill me! Kill me! Just kill me!”
“Did I say you's gonna feel some pain? Oh, hell yeah I did!” She walked back outside, grabbed the iron, and walked back in.
She pressed the iron onto the bleeding nub. “Now who's the dummy? Who's in charge now, white boy?”
Andrew screamed a cry of deathly agony. His eyes were wide and fierce with pain. His veins pumped hard under his skin, and bulged through his neck like long purple worms. Never in his life did he think such pain existed.
After she finished, she pushed his body onto the floor causing him to whimper. She unstrapped him, he started crawling with his elbows. His legs were now blackened nubs. His vision was filled with strange black butterflies floating aimlessly.
“Gotta get rid of those now. I especially like that fat under the arms.” A long hook hung from the center of the ceiling. A chain pulley system was attached to it, the metal clanged as she pulled the sharp hook down; She wrapped her hands around the cold metal. She then stepped up to Andrew, and positioned the hook at the center of his back, she forced it in hard. He screamed, and the metal clanged as she lifted him into the air.
Suspended with the hook driven into his back, His knobbed legs moved like two short table legs. He prayed for death, begged whatever God existed; please! Oh please, end it now! Make this pain stop. What had he done to deserve this torture? He never hurt anybody, never cheated anyone. Oh god, please just make it sto—
The door swung open sharply, and knocked the old woman to the floor. Candy stood in the doorway and stared at her brother. She saw his blackened nub legs, saw the pale white horror in his face; the life had drained out of him. His eyes darkened like a storm cloud over black pupils, and a crooked smile spread across his face. “It’s okay, Candy…it’s okay.” His face grayed while his blue eyes closed. His chin fell against his chest, and his head dangled loosely to the side.
Candy fell to her knees. Pain cringed across her face, her little brother. Look what this world did to her little brother. Behind her, the old woman cackled loudly. “Let’s not allow that meat go to waste dearie. We all nothing but dead meat in the end.”
“Mama! Mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!” Candy stared at the ghostly images of her girls, then back at the old woman. Candy stood up, her eyes locked onto the old woman. A hatchet laid on a wooden bench to Candy’s right. It scraped against the wood as she picked it up.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” the girls screamed.
The old women’s face stopped laughing. She trembled. “We all just meat, honey!”
Candy looked at her girls. “Kill her?”
“Yes, mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Who you talking to, girl? We can work together you know?” said the old woman.
“For your daddy?”
“For daddy!”
“For your uncle?”
“We loved Uncle Andrew!”
“Who you see, girl? They ain’t nothing there! Don’t do it! Don’t!”
The hatchet rose high, and candy’s eyes shined with a mad glare as the blade came down fast and hard, split between the old woman’s skull, sinking between her eyes, and stopping above the bridge of the nose. The ragged old body tumbled over, and her blood pooled around Candy’s black Kevlar boots.
Behind Candy, a noise caught her attention; she turned. Andrew’s body jerked, jerked again, and then jerked fast, hard and violently. His eyes shot open; they scowled a hot white glare, a rumbling roar erupted from him; his neck careened, and his arms fl
ayed forward, his entire body jerked with wild and hungry passion.
“That’s not Uncle Andrew, Mama.”
“No, baby. It sure isn’t.” She removed her revolver, aimed at his head, fire erupted from the barrel and a bullet whizzed through the air, into her dead brother's brains.
Candy smiled as her translucent girls danced hand in hand in a circle around her. “Mama! Mama! Mama! Kill! Kill! Kill!” The old woman’s blood now streamed around Candy’s boots, spreading through the old shack’s blistered wooden floor. Bloody axes, hatchets and knives surrounded her. The smell of dead flesh stank the room. Humidity clung to the air, and bugs buzzed above body parts and bones. She exploded in laughter as she stared at the ceiling, and let tears run down her red speckled face. This room represented the New World she thought, as her mind courted insanity. The bones, the flesh, the bugs, the death, the pain, the hate—it’s all that’s' left. This is all that's left when the lights are gone, the cell phones are dead, the reality shows are canceled, the pop artists are out of business; this is what remains. Maybe this is all that’s ever being. All the glamor of the Old World was just a thin, lying veneer hiding the grim reality of man's primal need for the gore and mayhem of the New World. Maybe the Fever freed humanity from its self-imposed, civilized shackles.
Candy gathered herself, and walked out of the shack back into the New World, where she knew new horrors waited, ready and willing to show her that if she thought this was bad—she ain't seen nothing yet.
15
Candy moved back down the path heading to the pontoon boat. The rain had stopped, the sun had broken through. The day was heating up, the humidity already making a stellar comeback. She didn't feel much of anything in that moment. Her mind had stored the image of her brother hanging from a hook, surrounded by death, far back into the nether regions of her subconscious; a place that comes alive during dark nightmares; a region of traumatizing pain that waits for an opportune time to hit the play button, reeling the drama in the mind's eye like a digital projector.