New Title 1

by Lee, Edward

  You hip to that hop?

  “Shit, that Russian ‘ho in there has tits top as a crown but I wonder why she all grimacin’ and shit. Look like she had a bad taste in her mouth.”

  “Shit, Clase Preece,” Sung complained, munching his Hess Burger. “I hate fruckin’ Russians.”

  Case Piece wore blue and white boxer shorts up to his waist; he pulled his jeans down lower till they were halfway down his ass. “Sung, my dawg! We don’t hate people just ‘cuzza where they from, man. Like I was sayin’, we gotta accept all dudes and ‘hos and their cultures’n shit. Ain’t hip to hate Russians, or anyone.”

  “Fruck Russia. They give jret pranes to evil North Ko-wee-ah during the Ko-wee-an Roar and twain their pirates to fry them! Dwop bombs on us, until Amar-wickens come and help us. God Bress Amar-wickah, and fruck Russia!”

  “Whatever, man.”

  The nighted downtown streets bustled with cars and Christmas shoppers. Strings and strings of Christmas lights glowed, swaying in a light breeze; at intersections, garlands of shimmering tinsel looped from phone pole to phone pole. Down the road, they heard, “You better not pout, you better not cry…”

  “Shit, tomorrow’s Christmas, man,” Case Piece realized. “Been so busy slingin’ skag, I forgot.”

  “Yeah, man, Kuh-wiss-muss! We need to gret some crandy cranes!”

  “Fuck, I guess Menduez don’t even celebrate Christmas.”

  “Rye you sray that?”

  “Well, shit, man. Can’t see a dude who cuts puppys’ heads off bein’ much into Christmas.”

  “Oh, yeah…”

  “And I guess he back in the warehouse now. I seen him bring in a puppy last night…”

  Case Piece and Sung said nothing for several grim minutes. They knew what was in store for that puppy…

  Case Piece slowed, eyes opened in a sudden supervening awareness, “Yo, yo, I feel a Rap comin’ on…”

  “You grow, Crase Pleece!”

  Case Piece strutted his stuff in the street, pointing his fingers down in the fashion of pistols. “We come in, then we leave, I got tricks up my sleeve, you better fuckin’ believe, this the best Christmas Eve! Diggy dick, doggie daw, I got some Browntown jaw, I live to bust the law, like none you ever saw, and I clip to your clop, clean the floor, with a mop, I sell drugs, then I shop, I’m the king of Hip Hop! I teach the pig a lesson with my fuckin’ Smith and Wesson, with you I be messin’, word that rhymes be confessin’! I’m the Vee-Eye-fuckin’-Pee, I’m the dude you wanna be, I drop a buck, I pick it up, I see my boyz, I say ‘Wuz up?’ I drink a beer, I take a pee, I shag some trim, oh my, oh me! I do a dime, I do the crime, I’m gettin’ laid like all the time, and without-out even trine, I think up shit that rhymes!”

  “Grawd damn, Clase! You Hip Hop jreen-nee-uss!”

  “My good blood, Menduez, he do whatever I sez, and Highball be our ‘ho, her gobble-game is super-pro. After a john, fill her with cum, she go get me, a Coke and rum! She got great tits, got great can, get on the mike, my man! This who we is, this who we be, we’re the NSG-3! We’re the thugz, there ain’t no finer, my dawg Sung, he from China!”

  “Aw, fruck, man!” Sung grimaced. “Ko-wee-ah, Ko-wee-ah!”

  “Shit, sorry, man. I keep forgettin’…”

  Just as they turned onto a residential road, they found themselves facing a smoky rumbling and two dim, misaligned headlights.

  “Who this?” Sung asked.

  “Junkies, I hope.”

  The vehicle was an overly large and very old dented black delivery truck.

  “How much skag we got, Sung?”

  “Froor bags.”

  “Runnin’ low. Maybe we get rid of it now…”

  Smoke chugged, then gears shifted and the truck rumbled forward.

  “Why, hey there, fellas!” cracked a decidedly redneck voice.

  “Shit, ‘necks, them rope-a-dope kind from the hills,” Case Piece muttered beneath his breath. “These dudes ain’t gonna cop no smack, man.”

  “Maybe they rill! Who knows?”

  A shaggy head leaned out the driver’s side window of the truck; a bushy beard consumed most of the face.

  “Hey, my dawg. I’m yo’ man on the scene, know what I mean? We’se bustin’ moves ‘cuz were phat on the grooves. You want some smack, jack?”

  The shaggy redneck looked cockeyed at him. “What’s that, fella?”

  “Fo’ shizzle, my mizzle. I got tizzle in my gizzle. This a drug ‘hood, man. If you coppin’ drugs, then we’se your thugs.”

  The redneck looked to his long-haired passenger. “Dumar, you got any idea what he up’n means?”

  “Shore don’t, Paw. Must be some new kind’a citified talk.”

  “It’s Browntown yaw-yaw, Paw, the jaw and the law. The talk of the street and we the dudes you need ta meet. If it’s dope you grope, then I’m your hope!”

  “You grow, Clase Preece!”

  The redneck looked frustrated. “Aw, well, fella, you’s can probably tell we ain’t from ’round here, and no offense but I ain’t got no idea what that was just come out’cher mouth. See, what we’se wonderin’ is, we’se hopin’ you can tell us if’n you seen a big white fancy motor-home drivin’ ’round here?”

  “Mrotor home?” Sung said very, very slowly.

  “That’s right, son, a big ‘un. City fella named Paulie drivin’ it.”

  “Sorry, Pop. We ain’t hip to your hop,” Case Piece lied with reasonable effect. “We don’t know no Paulie and ain’t seen no motor-home.”

  The redneck stroked his beard. “Aw, well, that there’s too bad, son, but thank ya fer yer time’n you’n yer friend have a happy holiday!”

  “Solid,” Case Piece said and watched the truck rumble away.

  Case Piece looked gravely to Sung. “Shit, man. You know who they is? They the dudes laying some serious big-top mezzy disrespezzy on Paulie and his crew.” Indeed, how could he forget that movie on Paulie’s laptop? They drilled a HOLE in that chick’s head, and then they, then they…. “Paulie said they was rednecks. How else rednecks like them be hip to Paulie?”

  “Shrit, man! We better crawl Prawlie up white now and tell him!”

  Case Piece reached halfway down his fuckin’ ass for his phone but, “Shit. My cell’s back at the crib. Let’s go!”

  They jogged through the cool night, blinking sneakers slapping pavement. When they turned past the warehouse front gate…

  They stopped.

  Just like the other night, the Winnebago sat before the warehouse, its tiny windows lit. Paulie’s two over-coated strong-armers stood outside, smoking cigarettes.

  A muffled scream seemed to explode from inside the motor-home.

  Highball! Case Piece realized. “Bros, man, what’s—”

  “Goin’ on?” Cristo said with a smirk.

  Argi looked stone-faced as he flicked an ash. “Them rednecks hit us again, harder than last time. Paulie ain’t happy.”

  “On a fuckin’ rampage again so he’s ventin’ his frustrations on your whore.”

  “Shit, man!” Case Piece dashed into the Winnebago, just in time to see a red-faced and insane-eyed Paulie stuffing Highball’s head once more into Melda’s vaginal morass.

  “Those fuckin’ guys! GodDAMN it, Doc! They piss me off SO MUCH!”

  Dr. Prouty sat hunched to the side before the open laptop. He raised his brows at Case Piece, as if to say, Things aren’t going so well today.

  Highball, as usual, had been stripped naked, and now, with her head completely swallowed, her bare legs flailed, her heels drumming the floor.

  “Paulie, holy shit, man! It ain’t right to keep stickin’ Highball’s head in there just ‘cuz you’re whilin’!”

  Melda giggled. She was eating Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies as Highball’s terrified head churned deep in her loins.

  “I’m afraid there’s no allaying Mr. Vinchetti’s rage,” Prouty said quietly. “He’s beyond consolation and reasoning…”

  “
What happened this time?”

  Paulie glanced maniacally over his shoulder as he shoved with all his might, hands hooked under the prostitute’s armpits so to insert her head as far as it could possibly go. “What happened? I’ll tell ya what happened! Those fuckin’ rednecks, you know what they did? They dug up my dead baby, cut off its head, drilled holes in it, and were all fuckin’ the head at the same time! That’s what happened!”

  Highball’s visible body shuddered like electrocution, her belly sucking in and out as she began to smother.

  “I gotta find those fuckin’ guys!”

  Case Piece rushed over. “Paulie, take Highball’s head out’a there! See, we just saw these dudes!”

  Paulie flinched. “What?”

  “Me and Sung. We just saw the rednecks down the street. They were askin’ about you, man! Couple rednecks in a big piece-of-shit black truck!”

  Paulie froze, staring. “When?”

  “Just now, man! Right down the street that goes to the Hess station! Paulie, you strap heat right now and go after ’em, you could catch the dudes doin’ all this head-fuckin’!”

  Paulie sprang up. “Doc! Start up the Winnie!” He turned to Case Piece who’d grabbed Highball’s ankles, pulled, and—PLOP!—disengaged her head from Melda’s netherworldly vaginal barrel. “Get the whore out of here and tell Argi and Cristo to come in,” the don directed.

  Paulie dragged Highball out of the Winnebago by her ankles. She convulsed; her bare buttocks slammed down the mini-steps and smacked the pavement. The instructions were communicated, and in moments, the big motor-home sped away.

  “Fuck, man,” Case Piece said. “Them dudes are psycho.”

  “Shrit, yeah, Crase!”

  They carried the convulsant Highball into the warehouse. Margarine and vaginal slime slicked her hair down over her face as though an octopus were sitting atop her head. One blazing wide eye stared unblinking between two wet tendrils. When she regained some facsimile of her senses, she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran madly down a rear hall.

  “She all fucked up,” Case Piece said. “Guess ya can only get your head stuck in a giant cunt so many times ‘fore ya go insane.”

  “Shrit, man! This sure some frucked up Kuh-wiss-muss Eve!”

  Case Piece got a grape drink from the fridge. He rubbed his crotch…

  For no apparent reason.

  “What ree do now, Clase?”

  “Fuck, don’t know. Shit just don’t feel right all of a sudden”—he flinched. “You feel that chill, man?”

  “Trill?”

  Case Piece gazed off. “Like what my grandma always told me back in South East. Someone just bop over my grave…”

  A door slammed, and flip-flops snapped aggressively down the hall. Wild-eyed, Highball stormed in, a plastic bag of her few belongings on one hand, hair wet from a much-needed shower. She buttoned up her overcoat. “Fuck this shit, man!”

  “Highball, what’re you—”

  “I’m out’a here. This fuckin’ place is a chamber of fuckin’ horrors!”

  “Chill, babe, chill. Here, have a grape drink—”

  “I don’t want no fuckin’ grape drink. I’m leaving!”

  Case Piece cocked a funky glance. “Leavin’? As in skyin’ up?”

  “Yeah!” and she yelled the response with such fervor that her magnificent breasts bounced behind the overcoat. “I’m skyin’ fuckin’ up, all right!”

  “Why you wanna do that?”

  Highball stared at him agog, thought back upon the evening’s entails, and screamed.

  She stormed toward out of the warehouse and slammed the door.

  Case Piece sat down on the busted couch. “There go the best piece’a trim thugs ever fuckin’ had, man.”

  “Shrit, Clase!”

  “Looks like we gotta baggie our skaggie ourselves now.”

  “Frucked up, but…cran’t say I brame her…”

  “Yeah…”

  The two loser drug-dealers foundered then, much like a pair of supplemental characters in a novel that the narrative no longer had use for.

  (IV)

  Mike gazed through the store’s plate glass window, marveling at the shimmering Christmas lights garlanding the parking lot lamps. It was 11:30 at night. Did he tap his foot as if awaiting something? Meanwhile, the Muzak speakers crooned, “Walkin’ in a winter wonderland…”

  Archie walked up to the main check-out. “Looks like Christmas rush is over.”

  The store stood empty now, but they’d done good business most of the day. Recession be damned! Mike nodded slowly.

  “Any word from Veronica?” Archie asked.

  Mike winced. “Who?” He kept staring out the window, seemingly distracted.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Honestly? The Greeter’s cooze. When I’m putting the blocks to her real fast, it makes a noise like a window squeegee.”

  Archie’s brow rose.

  “I don’t like going down on her though. She takes a lot of B-Complex and ginko. Tastes…weird. Chalky on the tongue.”

  “Terrific. Look, how about if I leave early?”

  “Look. How about…fuck no?” Mike scowled.

  “But the store’s empty!”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, we’re open till midnight,” Mike reminded. “We have to assume our responsibilities. This isn’t the federal government, man; it’s free-enterprise. Ever heard of loyalty for the place that employs you?” Mike looked at his watch, then spotted something beyond the glass. A small car was pulling up. He grabbed his coat. “Gotta go.”

  Archie sputtered, “Oh, that’s fair! Loyalty? You can leave early but I can’t?”

  “Right, ’cos I’m the boss. Sucks, doesn’t it? Besides, my ride’s here.”

  Archie smirked out the glass. It was the Greeter’s car.

  Mike jabbed him in the shoulder. “I’m gonna make it so my dick’s up her butt at the stroke of midnight. Cool, huh?”

  “Cool?”

  “It’s symbolic, you know? When Christmas Eve becomes Christmas Day..my dick’s in her butt.”

  “Yeah, that’s real symbolic.”

  “Have a merry Christmas, man, and if you close early even by one minute, you’re fuckin’ fired.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, too,” Archie hissed. When the doors sucked shut, he muttered, “That scumbag, egotistical, contradictory prick…” His frown encircled the empty store. I gotta stand here for another half-hour and I know fucking well no one’s coming in this late, but even before the thought finished, he looked up at a flash of lights and stout motor noise.

  A great big white Winnebago was parking in the lot.

  (V)

  The Winnebago had cruised Pulaski for hours in search of the mysterious black truck, all to no avail. This circumstance did not improve Paulie’s disposition, which only frayed the nerves of his confederates further. “This is fucked up!” the don yelled from the passenger seat. “How can we drive around all motherfucking night and miss a big piece-of-shit black truck!”

  “If they’re still in town, we’ll find ’em, boss,” Argi offered the consolation.

  “They dug up my kid and fucked it in the head!”

  “We’ll find ’em and make ’em pay.”

  “Yeah,” Cristo said. “Enough of this sendin’ movies back and forth. I want to get my hands on those guys now. I’ll cut ’em up like pork ends—”

  “Yeah,” Paulie added, “but only after we stump-grind ’em!”

  Cristo had taken over the driving responsibilities. He stopped at the traffic light deeper in the residential streets. The streetlamps had all been shot out, leaving the block dark save for periodic Christmas lights blinking in windows covered by bars.

  “When’s this damn light gonna change?” Cristo griped.

  “Yeah,” Paulie said. “We ain’t got till Christmas,” and then he paused and everyone laughed. As they did so, however, squealing tires could be heard, and a great rattling…

/>   “What the fuck is—”

  A large black piece-of-shit-looking delivery truck had pulled out behind them, lights off, then swerved around to cut in front of the motor-home. “Eeeeeee-Haa!” they heard, then—