by Brian Hodge
“Uh…no, asshole, but shooting him before was shooting a prowler. Shooting him now makes it murder. Screw that.”
“Well, we can’t take him to the hospital,” Casey said, pulling his cap down over his head tightly. “Someone will see us and then find out that you shot him. So where does that leave us?”
“We’ll have to take him home and hope we can make him better.”
“Oh man. I should have gone over my girlfriend’s house tonight. This night is fucked.”
They tied the trunk closed as best they could, but it was definitely weaker as they had destroyed some string while untying it. Renny started the car and headed back into the opposite direction. The mood had darkened as both of them were a little nervous as to what they were going to do.
“Stop here again,” Casey said as they passed the 7-11.
“What the hell for!” Renny shouted, his patience running out.
“I need some coffee, man. You don’t have any at home.”
Renny tried not to scream and pulled back into the parking lot, slamming on the brakes at the front of the store. “Hurry the hell up!”
Casey opened the car door. “Okay, okay. Jeez. Take a chill pill, man.”
Renny watched as Casey ran into the store and rubbed his temples in a vain effort to rid himself of his massive headache. He gasped as the trunk lid shot up in his rearview mirror. In his side mirror, he watched in horror as Santa climbed out of the trunk and started to walk drunkenly towards the road.
“Uh…uh…uh,” Renny muttered, struggling to find the proper word.
Casey walked out of the 7-11, the cup of coffee to his lips. He froze when he saw the portly man staggering out to the road. “What the hell?” he mouthed at Renny.
Renny opened the car door and jumped out. “Shit, shit, shit. Help me get him!”
“Just let him go,” he said turning around and looking inside the building nervously. “Someone is going to see us.”
“We can’t just let him go, fucknut!” Renny shouted, taking off after the old man who by now had made it to the main road where he was crossing tipsily. “I shot him! He saw our faces! He heard us talking from the trunk! If this shit gets back to the cops, I’m going right back to prison! He knows where I live, man!”
Casey watched as his chubby partner ran through the snow-covered parking lot. He sighed, threw his coffee down onto the ground, and took off after his friend.
Renny tackled Santa just as he reached the other side of the road. They went down in an explosion of wet snow, wrestling around madly.
Santa managed to get his boots into the center of Renny’s chest and launched him airborne.
Renny went squealing into the road, sliding through the snow, his mouth wide open. Casey jumped up just in time as his howling friend went sailing past and he turned to watch almost curiously.
“Get him!” Renny shrieked, still sliding backward.
Casey shouted out a war cry and launched himself on Santa, his face filled with macho anger. Two seconds later, he was trying to crawl away from the plump man, screaming in pain, his eyes wide as snowballs. Santa bit down ferociously onto his calf and he screamed.
The rabid Santa pulled Casey back as he struggled to crawl away, his fingers making lines in the snow as he went backward.
“FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME, MAN, HE’S—” Casey screamed, abruptly cut off as the old man launched a fist into his face.
Renny got up from the road and ran full force towards the fighting men. He tripped at the curb and fell clumsily into them, shrieking as he hit.
Santa kicked and bit savagely.
Finally, in a move that was more luck than skill, Renny managed to slam the chubby head into the curb, knocking him back into unconsciousness.
The squad car from earlier in the evening pulled up next to the curb. The cop rolled the window down. “Evening, fellas.”
“Evening, officer,” Renny and Casey said in unison. They were lying on top of the unconscious Santa, big fake smiles plastered on their faces. Casey dabbed his sleeve on his bloody lip.
“Ah, Christmas,” the cop said, staring at them with a crooked smile. “This looks like a picture right out of Currier and Ives. Always lay an assbeat into Santa on Christmas, do ya’s?”
“It’s my girlfriend’s father,” Renny said. “He’s drunk. We were taking him home to sleep it off when he leapt from the car. We had to stop him or he would have froze to death, officer.”
“Uh huh,” the cop said. “You know, I’m almost inclined to believe this story, as I find it hard to believe anyone would have the audacity to beat Santa’s ass on Christmas. Need any help getting him back to the car?”
“Nah,” Renny said. “We’ll be okay. Thanks anyways.”
“Okay,” the cop said, rolling his window back up. “Oh, and fellas…”
“Yes, officer?” they said again simultaneously, practically holding their breath.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas!”
“Get that poor drunk bastard home before he freezes to death,” the cop said and pulled away.
Renny watched the squad car drive leisurely down the street. “Shoot me. Shoot me now.”
Casey got to his feet, rubbing his bleeding lip. “Let’s get this fat fuck back into the car.”
After lots of struggling, they managed to get Santa back inside. This time they threw him into the back seat. The ride home was uneventful.
With great effort, they dragged the old man into the house and placed him on the couch. They sat down heavily on the floor, exhaling big sighs of relief at being back in the warmth.
Casey lay backwards all the way, sprawling himself. “I can’t believe we got our asses beat by Santa Claus.”
Renny laughed, his sore body shaking. Seconds later, they were both in hysterics.
“Oh man,” Renny said between giggles. “Imagine how funny we must have looked to that cop.”
After they had rested a bit, they decided to see if they could help the old man. They managed to get the top of the Santa suit off.
To their astonishment, the wound was gone.
“What…the…fuck,” Renny whispered. “He was bleeding all over the floor.” He picked up the Santa suit. There was a huge hole where the shell of the shotgun had ripped through. Blood still caked the hole. “How in the hell did he heal himself?”
“I don’t even want to think about the implications of this,” Casey said, his face turning white as he studied the Santa’s huge belly. The old man was breathing quite normally. “I only have one suggestion in a situation like this.”
Renny turned to his friend. “What’s that?”
“You pull one of those blunts out of your pocket and we get so high that cannabis smoke drifts out of our ass.”
Renny smiled, pulling one of the joints from his pocket. “Oh…how high they got, pa rum-pum pum pum.”
Casey snickered, lighting the end of the joint for his friend. Renny inhaled of the smoke deeply and passed it back to his partner.
Ten minutes later, they were completely stoned. They sat back on the floor and studied the sleeping Santa.
“So,” Renny said, blowing a ring of smoke into the air. “Do you think it’s really Santa Claus?”
“Well, if it is, it’s a good thing we didn’t leave him out in the snow like that. That would have been just wrong.”
Renny dug deep into his pocket. “I have two more, want to smoke them?”
Casey fell back, exhausted. “Nah, save them for tomorrow.”
When Renny awoke the next morning, Santa was no longer on the couch. There were two neatly wrapped presents in his place. He shook Casey awake and pointed at the lavishly decorated boxes.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Casey said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Renny picked up the presents cautiously. He threw one to Casey and shook the other before putting it up to his ear for a listen.
“You go first,
” Casey said, swallowing nervously.
Renny tore upon the box as carefully as if he were opening up a ticking bomb. He gently ripped off the top, peered inside and then closed his eyes, a wide smile on his face. He tried to hold it back, but he started to giggle. When he held the open box up to Casey’s face, he too started to laugh.
Inside was a big lump of coal.
Casey’s box held the same thing. What had happened last night now seemed surreal and dream-like in the morning.
“Merry Christmas, man,” Casey said, holding his coal up at his friend.
Renny picked his own lump out of the box and held it up. They knocked the coal together like wineglasses. “Lord knows we deserve it, man. Merry Christmas, my friend.” He put his hands in his pocket and then frowned. “Oh, that jolly, fat thieving fuck.”
“What?” Casey asked, rubbing his coal with a big smile.
“My last two blunts are gone.”
The Sterility of Earthly Rage
by Weston Ochse
The angry explosion died — disparate sounds of violence sliding softly to the ground along with the mottled pieces of flesh, leaving the scene silent and lonely. There was no blood. There never was. Only the way the body had fallen, arms and legs slightly askew as if it had merely tripped and fallen backwards, reminded Greta of its former humanity. The 12-gauge hole in the stomach reminded her of its current deadness.
Greta worked the pump hard and the quick snick of the ejected shell was followed by its small, hollow bounces along the wet asphalt of the alley. She aimed from the hip at the still form and cautiously approached, stepping over white pumps, a flowered handbag and the few surviving beads of the white faux-pearl necklace that had disintegrated in the blast. Wary of hands reaching out and gripping her ankles, she pinned a wrist to the earth with a booted foot and stared into the wound.
The movement was imperceptible at first, and she would have missed it had she not been staring so intently. What could have been mistaken for tiny pieces of exploded flesh began moving. At first minutely, they picked up speed until faster and faster the maggots became an undulating mass of writhing bodies as they tasted the purer air of the alley. They rubbed and slithered in an intertwining knot of protection around and against each other as if they knew her intentions.
The bile rose in her throat and threatened to add the Technicolor ingredients of a pepperoni-and-cheese pizza across the length of the dead body. She fought it back, determined to stay long enough to finish her work. Greta curled her nose at the putrid stench. She gritted hard, keeping her meal in and the taste of deadness out, and invaded the mass of maggots with the still smoking end of the barrel. Its touch sizzled the sightless beasts and sent them pushing away until what lay beneath was revealed in all its bleak, ugly truth — an unborn, disfigured fetus staring at her with wide, intelligent eyes.
The hellish creation reached up with tiny clawed fists as if it knew her next intention, begging, pleading for her not to do what her conscience insisted. It opened its mouth revealing needle-sharp teeth and emitted a tiny peal of terror. Its scream went unheard as she blasted it apart.
Greta jerked a tin of turpentine from the cargo pocket of her pants and doused both the host and the thing she’d never think of as a baby, concentrating the toxic liquid into the wound. She tossed aside the empty container, lit a wooden safety match, dropped it and stepped back. With a whoosh, the body caught fire and thick oily smoke poured into the clean mountain air. The cheap dress caught quickly, flames racing along the nylon seams.
Greta stepped around the inferno and, with the toe of her boot, flipped the blonde wig that had fallen off into the greedy flames. Resting the barrel on her shoulder, she strode down the alley in search of more prey.
She couldn’t help but feel the irony of the situation. She’d seen specialists in several different states and each, in their own condescending way, had told her that she’d never be able to conceive, yet this was the third pregnant man she’d killed this week.
The world was certainly on its ass. Greta had first noticed them about a month ago. The first indication was the general absence of men in the town. Then the businesses along Main Street had started closing their doors for good.
Tellico Plains had never been a bustling metropolis of financial activity, but it had its share of tourists. As the last stop before the Tellico, Citico and Hiawasee Rivers, the small town afforded fisherman their last chance for food, beer and the necessary bait before they attempted to conquer the diminishing population of Tennessee trout. No one was getting rich, but as long as the rivers survived, there’d always be decent business.
Posy, the bartender over at the Silly Goose, said the town was dying because of the new highway they’d put in over by Sweetwater. Still, the Tellico River ran through Tellico Plains, so folks still had to travel through.
No, Greta had a different theory.
A few weeks back she’d been making a midnight run to the Golden Gallon for a pint of ice cream and a twelve-pack of beer when her headlights had illuminated a figure staggering drunkenly along the side of the road. She’d figured it was just another drunk redneck, but as she’d passed, she’d noticed the dress and the plump pregnant stomach of a woman in the third trimester.
She’d pulled over, stopping some twenty yards in front of the woman. She’s grabbed a blanket from behind the seat, the flashlight from under the dash and then hurried from the pick-up back towards the woman. She’d hoped all the television doctors and medical documentaries she’d watched had prepared her for the impending delivery.
But when the beam of the flashlight had shone on the woman, they’d both stopped. She’d noticed the bloody stockinged feet, the hopelessly out-of-style flower-print dress, broad shoulders and a week’s growth of beard on the square jaw. The long, red wig hung askew, revealing a graying crew cut beneath.
They’d stared at each other for some thirty seconds. Then the man had shrieked and bolted, disappearing into the darkness of the kudzu-covered trees, arms wrapped carefully around his pregnancy.
Then leaving the town’s lone fast-food restaurant a week later, she’d accidentally bumped into another pregnant woman, almost knocking the poor lady ass-over-teakettle. Greta had kept her from falling and stood aside to let her in. It wasn’t until Greta had pulled into traffic, eating a handful of curly fries, that she’d realized the excuse me she’d heard had been deeper than her father’s.
Then in the doctor’s office a few days ago, everything had clicked into place. She’d just put her jacket back on and was leaving with her prescription of allergy medicine, when she’d passed by the door to the other examination room. Greta wasn’t nosy by nature, but her eyes had found their own way and the image of the man stopped her cold. He sat in support hose held up by lacy black garters. The blue veins of his pregnant stomach were stark against his pale skin. He held a wig in his hands as the doctor peeked into his ears.
She’d stayed, riveted on the anachronism, until she’d heard the sharp cough of a nurse behind her. Unwilling to confront the strangeness, Greta had lowered her head and left as fast as she could.
Chaotic thoughts of Jerry Springer, Oprah, Geraldo, the front page of the Enquirer, N.A.S.A., and the Center for Disease Control had spun through her mind. There was no mistaking what she’d seen. No way was the man’s pregnancy any kind of special effects. It had definitely been the real thing.
Worst of all, the pregnant man had been Henry Jenkins —lifetime friend of her father and Tellico Plains’ Chief of Police.
The only person she felt safe enough to talk about it with was her father, but it had been his death that had brought her back home two months ago. She’d come for the funeral and to clear up some loose ends. She’d only planned on staying a week, but the amount of loose ends surprised her.
She’d tried to sell the old house, yet in the recessive market no one was buying any edifice whose primary color was tarpaper black. He also had many debts and, faithful to her upbringing, Greta
had been determined to pay them off. It wasn’t like she’d anything better to do. After leaving the army two years ago, she’d worked at a series of meaningless minimum wage jobs and hadn’t been looking forward to working her way up to the esteemed position of Senior Fry Chef.
The funeral had been a closed casket affair. Not the way she’d wanted it, but the coroner had thought it best due to the condition of the body. The Chief of Police had told her on the phone that her father had been found by fisherman, his body burned almost beyond recognition. “He’d been camping,” they said. And like he was a whale-bellied tourist from Yankee Land, they said he must have rolled into the campfire in his sleep, his nylon sleeping bag going up like a match.
Her father would have never been so stupid.
To make matters sadder, even with all the friends he’d had, only three other people had attended the funeral. In retrospect, it was probably because the rest were having a Mary Kay party.
When the funeral ended, she’d finally some time to think. With all the weirdness in Tellico Plains and seeing Henry in garters and ready to pop, a nagging feeling grew within her.
The feeling started at midnight two days ago when she’d finally confirmed her fears with a shovel and a lantern. Not a single burn marred her father’s body. With trembling fingers, she’d unbuttoned his suit and shirt, revealing a long ragged incision the length of his stomach. It was nothing that any skilled doctor would make. Even a veterinarian could have done a better job.
It was as if her father had made the cut himself — a self-made abortion.
And her perplexity had turned to rage.
The hunter had become the prey.
Greta had just left Leroy’s Bait and Ammo, a bag of assorted ammunition gripped in her arms, when she’d noticed her stalkers. At first she’d chuckled. She could pick them out of a crowd, now. She knew what to look for. And the three men dressed in 1950s women’s clothes, criss-crossing the street behind her like poorly trained spies, fit her mental profile perfectly.
But it was daylight and she missed the comfortable feeling of the Mossberg shotgun that had become her nighttime companion. Under her leather jacket hung the .357 colt python, snug in a quick-draw shoulder holster, but that only held six rounds. Granted, they were six rounds that could turn a rampaging bear on crack and intent on tasting her long juicy legs into upholstery, but it wasn’t her Mossberg.