by Lee, Edward
Case Piece, finally, stepped into the horrific back room.
Paulie cackled as he plunged Highball’s margarine-slathered head in and out of Melda’s cave-sized vagina. The comely prostitute convulsed, her bare heels, indeed, thumping against the floor. She was nude, of course, her tremendous body flushed, tense, gleaming in sweat. Her hands had been tied behind her back. Then came that great slopping sound as Paulie pulled Highball’s head back out of the monstrous orifice.
“Ya like that, bitch? Huh?” Paulie gruffed, madman-like as he leaned over to watch her convulsions. Highball’s cheeks expanded, her mouth taped. Air whistled in and out of her dilated nostrils.
“Paulie? Shit, man. What up?” Case Piece babbled. “Highball, what? She mouth off to you again?”
Paulie, still hunching, shot a glance backward. “Those fuckin’ guys! You know what they did?” He was delirious. Highball’s convulsions accelerated when Paulie yanked her back up and—
SHHHHHHHHLUCK!
—sunk her head back into Melda’s vaginal barrel.
“Paulie! Come on, man! You’ll kill her! What happened?”
“What happened?” he growled. “Oh, I’ll show ya what happened!” and suddenly he strode back to the forward room, abandoning Highball. When Melda saw that her boss had left, she relaxed her vaginal muscles and expelled Highball’s head like someone disgorging, say, a meatball from their mouth. The prostitute thunked to the floor only moments before she’d have suffocated.
Case Piece ran to the living area where Paulie manically fiddled with a laptop computer. “Those redneck mother fuckers emailed this to us!” the don exploded. “Watch!”
Case Piece stared at the bright laptop screen, and a crude, glaring image stared back: the rear compartment of, apparently, a large step van, and a metal table. A thin man in a tacky jacket, whose head remained out of frame, was now tearing the nightshirt off of a pudgy teenaged girl with frightfully pink hair. The girl shuddered where she lay, her baby fat jiggling, screeching ineffectually through a gag her mouth. The man tied her to the table.
“Paulie?” Case Piece droned. “What the…what the hell…is this?”
Paulie’s rage turned his face nearly as pink as the girl’s hair. “Just watch!”
Case Piece watched.
On the screen, a gruff redneck voice said, “Here, son. Hold the camera while I’se show ya how ta cut the hole,” and then the image jig-jagged and suddenly a larger man in a tacky jacket stepped into the frame.
He held a power drill, and locked into the drill’s chuck was a 3-inch hole-saw blade.
“Watch careful now, boys…so’s ya know how ta do it.”
The screech of the drill was bad enough but worse—far worse—was the sound of the next process, when the large man pressed down on the girl’s face with his hand and applied the high-rpm hole-saw to the center of the top of her skull. Eventually, the circle of bone and scalp was removed, revealing a clean-cut hole, and the hole itself now revealed a circle of raw, whitish-pink brain.
“Now,” the faceless big man said, “we gots ta cut a slit fer our dicks,” and then he produced a formidable knife and inserted it into the aforementioned hole. This event caused the gagged girl to reflexively twitch.
“Yessir! See, when ya do it right—like I just done—she don’t die right off. It’s always best they still be alive when ya first put’cher bone in.”
“Hot dog, Unc!” celebrated another off-screen voice. “She is! She is still alive!”
I’ll’se go first’n show you boys how it’s done,” the voice said next. “Son? Here. Point the camera down…”
The camera-angle deflected to the man’s crotch, where he’d already extracted his quite uncircumcised penis. He masturbated dexterously until an erection was achieved, and it was then that he…
Well, the dutiful reader can guess.
What Case Piece watched on that screen for the next series of minutes was something he could never have fathomed in a million years. Amid this redneck perverto circus came caterwauls of the most robust sort, a dialect-riot of hoots, Rebel yells, and exclamations such as, “Now hump that head, boy! I say hump it!” and “”Yeah! Yeaaaaaaah! Ain’t no better feelin’ than that’a yer dick stuck all the way inta a gal’s brain,” and “There it is, there it is! How’s that feel, baby? You like all’a my nut squirtin’ in yer white-trash head?” and “Holy shit, Paw! That there might be the best nut’a my life!” etc, etc.
When the film ended, Case Piece simply stared.
“See!” Paulie yelled. “See what those rednecks did!” He banged his fist so hard on the utility desk, the laptop jumped. “That fat kid was my step-daughter!”
“Your-your…”
“Yeah! They cut a hole in a 16-year-old’s skull and fucked her brain!”
Case Piece’s jaw vibrated. “That-that some hardcore jack-down, Paulie, some super-groaty gross-out shit, man…”
“You’re tellin’ me!”
Case Piece stood slightly dizzied from what he’d just seen. “That shit they do? That’s even grosser than you guys stickin’ people’s heads in that fat woman’s giant cunt. Them dudes? They is tough.”
“And—fuck!—the worst part is, we’re the kings of hardcore snuff! Me and my guys! And these hillbillies just beat us at our own game!” Paulie kicked the wall and bellowed. “And did you see that resolution? Goddamn! Even their fuckin’ camera is better than ours!” and at the peak of this next tirade, Paulie lurched back into Melda’s room, enfrenzied. He picked Highball up again and sunk her head back into Melda’s agape vagina.
“Paulie! Man!” Case Piece exclaimed. “Why you goin’ ape-shit on Highball? She didn’t do nothin’!”
“I know,” the don cracked. He cupped his hands under the prostitute’s armpits and pushed hard. Highball twitched as if being electrocuted. “I’m mad! When I get mad, I gotta-I gotta vent my frustrations!”
“Come on, Paulie. That ain’t right. She our ‘ho. She got the toppest trick-time bod on the street. Can’t kill her just ’cos you’re mad.” Case Piece dared put his hand on Paulie’s shoulder. “Listen, bro. Fuck this. Let’s go inside so’s you can cool off. Then we’ll think of a way fer you ta get back at these dudes…”
Paulie let the consideration sink in, and, just as Highball was re-entering death throes, he let her head fall out. “Yeah, yeah. I…guess you’re right.”
Highball shuddered on the floor, eyes fit to pop out. When Case Piece pulled the duct tape off her mouth, she lurched, arched her back, screamed, then passed out.
“Come on, Paulie. Let’s get in the crib,” the black man urged. “Get you chilled.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Paulie said desperately, running his fingers back through his hair.
“‘Bye, Case Piece!” Melda said.
Case Piece took one aghast glance at the morbid woman—whose fat-bulged face grinned ludicrously. Drooling, she flapped a fat, dirty hand.
“Uh…yeah,” Case Piece said and ushered Paulie out.
In the warehouse “day room,” Paulie sat on the bedraggled couch, wringing his hands. Argi, Cristo, and Dr. Prouty stood in nervous silence. Case Piece grabbed a soda from the battered fridge and gave it to Paulie. “Here, blood. Have a grape drink. It’ll make ya feel top.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the don replied.
“Sung,” Case Piece directed next. “Turn on some tunes. Let’s jam awhile.”
“Oh, shewer, Clase Preece!” and then the Asian turned on the boom box, which immediately blared, “It’s duh ‘hos and duh bitches, my dick-bag itches, here come Dr. Dre, with the Tangeray and duh motherfuck, duh motherfuck, duh motherfuckin’ AK!”
“Turn that shit off!” Paulie, Argi, and Cristo all yelled at the same time.
Sung turned it off.
“Shit, Paulie,” Case Piece said. “Just trine ta get you mellow. But them redneck dudes? We gotta think of a way for you ta break some bad on ’em.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Paulie sputtered.
&nbs
p; “We ain’t been hit that hard in..in, well, ever,” Argi observed.
“Burns me up,” Paulie blistered. “We gotta do somethin’ back to them that makes what they did to ‘Becca look like babies blowing spit-bubbles.”
“Dudes lay disrespezzy on you like that? Just you say the word,” Case Piece offered, “and me’n my dawgs? We help you pop hard trunk on the motherfuckers.”
Paulie winced. “What?”
Argi’s eyes thinned. “Means, I think, he and his guys’ll help us fuck the rednecks over.”
“Oh. Well, no, see,” Paulie explained. “We’re Italian. It’s just the way it is. Whatever piece of work we do, it’s gotta be us that does it.”
“But what are we gonna do?” Cristo pondered.
Paulie rubbed his eyes. “Shit, man. I don’t know. We don’t know anything about these guys.” He looked to Prouty. “Doc. You’re the smart one. How can we get these guys back?”
Dr. Prouty gulped. “Ah, well, sir, let me give the query some consideration—hmm. Well, one possibility, I suppose, is thus: we’ll simply venture to their abode. You may recall, the youngster you remunerated money to in exchange for him delivering the DVD player to this man Helton Tuckton. He did give us what seemed to be serviceable directions to the domicile.”
“Yeah, you’re right! That little redneck kid!”
“And though he implied that the Winnebago was likely too large and cumbersome to safely navigate the road to Mr. Tuckton’s house, did he not declare that it was only a mile’s distance?”
“Yeah!”
Dr. Prouty nodded. “Then we’ll merely dispatch ourselves to the Tuckton residence. If Mr. Tuckton and/or his kin are home, then…” Prouty’s brow shot up.
Paulie grinned through grinding teeth. “We’ll do an action on ’em that’d make the Devil shit his pants!”
“And in the event that no one is present at the time of our arrival”—Prouty shrugged—“then we could, say, set fire to their abode, film it while it’s burning, then email the video file to them.”
Paulie clapped. “Perfect! You’re a genius, Doc!”
“Great thinkin’,” Argi said.
Cristo seemed giddy. “And, man, I love burnin’ houses down. And if any of ’em are there, we can even burn the house with them in it!”
“Yeah!” Paulie’s grim mood swing had reversed. “All right, it’s set. Are we ready? Oh, and Doc? Looks like you get to be camera man again.”
“I’m…exuberant with the opportunity,” Prouty said
Paulie chugged some grape soda. “Aw, yeah! I feel much better now, guys!”
All of the others breathed a sigh of relief.
The prospect now of revenge thrilled Paulie.
“You guys skyin’ up now?”
Paulie winced. “What?”
Argi made a contemplation. “Think he means are we goin’ to do the job tonight, boss.”
“Oh. Well, fuck yeah,” the don confirmed. “Why not? The sooner the better, right?”
“Sure, boss.” Cristo said.
Paulie looked around. “Where’s the other guy, the pepper-belly? Shit, he’s never here.”
Case Piece and Sung exchanged a quick glance. “Oh, my dawg Menduez? He out gettin’ blunky with the monkey, you know, doin’ the dop. You hip to that hop? Walkin’ the scag-man bop’n watchin’ junkies cop. He’s mizzlin’ and Mcdizzlin’ and slingin’ and blingin’ and thrillin’ and spillin’n flippity, frippity frop.”
Paulie spat out a mouthful of grape drink. “What?”
“Don’t’cha know? He’s our toppest slinger, blood. He on the grooves’n bustin’ moves. He’s jackin’ down ’cos he’s top as a crown.”
Argi sighed. “Shit, boss, I think he means the guy’s out takin’ care of business.”
“Right,” Case Piece said.
Paulie shook his head. “You sell any of that smack yet?”
Case Piece cocked a glance. “Fo’ shizzle, my mizzle!”
Paulie spat out more grape drink. “What?”
Argi rubbed his face. “Means, I think, yeah, boss, they sold some smack.”
Case Piece forked his ‘fro. “Shit, Paulie. We slung two keys in two motherfuckin’ days. First key we couldn’t kick out the door fast enough. Mid-bags from Radford, Roanoke, shit, all over, they come’n take it off our hands faster than it take Sung to come.”
“Aw, fruck you, Clase!” Sung laughed.
“Second key we peddled ourselves right here. All’s a sudden the junkies are out. Maybe my man Obama got more’a them stimulus checks mailed ’cos, fuck, last week we couldn’t sell shit’n this week we got more hypes with green in their hands than Florida’s got old people.”
“Well, fuck, that’s great,” Paulie said, but his distraction was evident. He seemed to beam through some inner joy. “Keep sellin’ that smack. Keep, uh, rizzlin’ and McFizzlin’ or whatever the fuck.” He snapped his fingers. “Ready, guys?”
Paulie’s men were.
“Then let’s split, or…sky up, or whatever the fuck. Oh, and tell your whore I’m sorry I stuck her head back in Melda’s cunt.”
“Fo’ shizzl”—but then Case Piece let it slide. “I’ll tell her, man.”
Paulie and his men made their exit into the night. All of them, save for Dr. Prouty, were rubbing their crotches for no apparent reason.
— | — | —
Chapter 9
(I)
Veronica awoke at daybreak, frowning at her recollection of the most hideous nightmare. Abducted by rednecks, she thought with a shudder but then she looked around to find herself in a reeking sleeping bag with one wrist handcuffed to a metal table in the back compartment of a large truck. The sound inside was akin to that of a bear cave, her three “hosts” snoring like machines. Micky-Mack and Dumar each lay on the floor in their own sleeping bags while Helton slept sitting upright in the corner.
Veronica choked back tears upon the eventual recognition that none of this was a nightmare. It was all real.
Just a few days before Christmas…and here I am…
Dim morning light flowed from the front windshield through the shower curtain.
The snoring went on an on.
Oh, for goodness sake! her thoughts shrilled. She had to urinate. Her nose crinkled at the sleeping bag’s stink as she clumsily crawled out. She took the empty bean can, frowned hard at it, then, with great awkwardness, pulled her pants and panties down, squatted, then began to void in the can. Her nose crinkled again, for her urine smelled like Veggie Chips.
The nearly musical chime of the stream hitting the can woke the others at once.
“Well, hey there, Veronnerka,” Helton greeted and stretched his great arms. “Havin’ yerself a pee, huh? I’se’ll tell ya. First pee’a the day’s a saturs-fyin’ thing indeed, ain’t it?”
Veronica couldn’t fathom a response.
Dumar shrugged out of his bag. “‘Mornin’ Veronnerka! And hows are you doin’ today?”
Veronica, still in the awkward squat, glared. “I’m peeing!”
“Ya sleep well, I’se hope?”
How could I possibly have slept WELL?
Micky-Mack was awake too, and looked right at her with eyes abloom. “Hot dang! I’se love seein’ a gal with a purdy pussy takin’ a pee!” He was obviously rubbing his crotch. “Puts some lead in my pencil, yessir!”
Veronica finished, frustrated to tears, and pulled her pants back up. When she tried to sit down—
clang!
“Oh NO!”
—the awkward movement caused her to knock the bean can over with her elbow, and all that warm urine flowed right beneath her.
The men all laughed.
“It’s NOT FUNNY!” she screamed. “My pants are DRENCHED!”
“Ain’t nothin’ but a li’l pee,” Dumar said.
Helton chuckled. “Gals shore do get bitchy ’bout the littlest things.”
Micky-Mack was grinning, sniffing the air. “Ya know? There’s sumpthin
’ ’bout the smell of a purdy gal’s pee gits my dick dribblin’.”
Helton and Dumar nodded in assent.
Madness, madness, madness! Veronica thought as her pants soaked up the urine. She began to blubber. “Helton! Would you please let me go!”
“Don’t be all cryin’ and such, hon. See, the way feuds work is, see, they ain’t over till the fella yer feudin’ with up’n cries uncle. Ya know? He’s gotta give up, and, well”—Helton shook his head—“when Paulie calt last night after seein’ our movin’ picture, it didn’t sound like he were gonna do that.”