Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  Sometimes he’d do that when they were alone, feel up her ass and squeeze until it hurt or touch her face and give it a good swat. Then he’d shudder like he was cold. It took her years to figure out that the old man was shooting his load into his boxer shorts every time he touched her and hurt her.

  Dear old dad had eased back in the big leather chair that farted whenever anyone settled into it, happily pulling on a slow-to-harden wang that looked like pale taffy as she slowly approached him. She’d hovered over his old man’s dick, it looked like a weary albino lizard, and then lowered her head and blew on it.

  That was it. That was all. But it was enough. It was like his life was a candle flame and she blew it out. She exhaled. The albino lizard twitched. She remembered that he cried, “Glax!” She didn’t know what the fuck it meant. His right arm grabbed his left. His tongue shot out of his mouth like a bizarre party favor, and just like that he was dead.

  She helped herself to some of the surplus cash in his safe. Poor dumb as dirt pseudo-mom would clean up on the insurance and that was good, because pseudo-dad always kept her in the dark about how much cash he had stashed away. He’d kept his wife in the dark about a lot of other things too, like how he wanted to fuck the girl he’d raised as his own since before she could remember. Then again, maybe pseudo-mom did know what was going on and that was why she drank so much.

  Christ, Betsy had thought then, if she could kill a guy with one breath, what could she accomplish by actually screwing a guy?

  Not that she’d ever let any man fuck her ... well, no one she’d met so far, anyway. She had a strong sexual urge, but it seemed there wasn’t anyone alive who would be right for her, man or woman. She would die before she’d let anyone squirm between her legs and open her up. Besides, she had a good imagination and dexterous fingers. That was enough for now.

  In the dimness of the alley in Vegas with the fat fuck wheezing along in her wake she had positioned herself in a narrow shaft of light from the street that lit up her skin like she’d dusted herself with phosphorescent powder. She had let her fingers play with the buttons of her shirt, thinking of the fat fuck’s big Road Star, thinking of the day when she’d finally kill the bitch-mother she’d been seeking for so long, and the thrill of the thought made her nipples hard.

  She had started unbuttoning her shirt, asking the fat fuck to take off his pants. At nineteen she had as much of a woman’s body as she would ever have and she knew that her figure was irresistible, especially to a fat sweaty fuck that probably hadn’t been laid in decades. Letting the shirt hang open, she’d started unzipping her jeans and slipping them down an inch or two, making the kind of inane little cooing noise fat fucks liked to hear. The fat fuck had stared at the half-exposed arcs of her pert breasts, his eyes trailing across the slight swell of her belly and the white contours of flesh from her waist to her rounded hips. When the fat fuck saw the first coils of inky black pubic hair against her soft white skin he grunted like a hog and nearly tore his pants off, shoving them down around his ankles.

  “Lift that gut and let me get a look at a real man,” she said in a breathless trill, holding back laughter when the fat fuck gripped his sagging stomach with both hands and hefted its pallid doughy mass to reveal a dangling pair of nuts sorely in need of a truss and a cock that looked like a discolored peanut.

  Betsy approached the fat fuck and said, “Do you know what écrasé means?” The fat fuck grinned and mumbled something about funny foreign words for sex. She raised a dainty foot, said, “It’s French for squashed,” and delivered a kick that could shatter a cinderblock.

  Her foot slammed into his scrotum. The fat fuck made a noise, “Puahhh!” and Betsy stepped aside as he bent at the waist, spewing a couple of six-packs onto the ground. She pulled his keys out of his pocket just as he slumped forward and rolled into the shallow pool of vomit, cupping testicles that had actually burst apart.

  “Bye-bye fatso,” she sang, buttoning her shirt as she walked back to the convenience store and the Road Star.

  That had been three days ago. After getting her new ride she had checked out a big Vegas revue based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. She’d seen a thing about it on TV, an interview with a choreographer who was pissing and moaning about how he was going to great lengths to find dancers who looked like Marilyn for his extravaganza. Betsy had checked out all the women backstage on the first night of the casino’s big show. Nothing.

  Yesterday she had been in Bakersfield, watching a mall opening ceremony. The ribbon was cut by Bogart and Monroe look-alikes. Another bust.

  Betsy read entertainment trade papers for any news of celebrity impersonators, and freely accessed the fan pages of internet chat rooms and bulletin boards thanks to the public library system. She was constantly revising and updating lists of people and places worth investigating.

  Now she had two choices; Flagstaff, the home of a retired porn star who once went by the awful stage name of Marilyn Moreblow, or Scottsdale, the home of a woman who modeled lingerie online and looked like an older Marilyn, at least as far as Betsy could tell from the low resolution pictures. Both were long shots and the end of her list. Then again, weren’t all of them long shots? She decided to head to Flagstaff on the I-40. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that a woman who would abandon a beautiful, helpless baby would later make a living sucking cock.

  The bike carried her down the road. She was glad that the heat of the day was passing. A cool twilight ride would be nice. But first she’d have to stop for a soda and a pee. Soon enough she saw a diner up ahead. It had a fancy signpost. “Here I come, In the Shade,” she said, pulling off the road.

  Betsy killed the bike behind the diner, hiding it from the road in case it had been reported stolen. She opened the large storage case behind the seat. Inside were shirts and underwear, some make-up, tampons, a bottle of vitamin C, and a few knives. She selected a Smith & Wesson Badge Knife with a short curved blade that could tear flesh like the claw of a big cat. With a quick flick of the wrist she slid it into a rip in her jeans high on her right thigh, feeling the warm blade fit snugly into a hidden leather sheath.

  Betsy walked to the front of the diner and paused when she saw the shattered picture window. She stepped inside and paused again when she saw bullet holes in the walls, bloodstains, and bodies. This was some seriously freaky, fucked-up shit. Should she stay or go? She stood still, listening. No sirens. No noise at all except for the ticking of a clock and a bird moving on the roof.

  She shrugged and removed her shades. The place was quiet. What blood she could see was congealing. There was probably no one here. And she really had to pee. She went right to the ladies room, whispering “Sweet Jesus!” when she was finally able to squat and ease the impossible to ignore pressure in her bladder.

  When she was done in the bathroom she got a Dr. Pepper from a cold case. After the first sip her stomach rumbled. She went behind the counter into the kitchen, found some rye bread, roast beef and mustard. On the big steel table in the center of the kitchen was a woman’s nude body. Sensible clothes were scattered on the floor. The woman had been undressed, because the clothes weren’t torn or cut. Whoever had cut the cheeks from the woman’s ass with the flawless even strokes of a very sharp knife had been precise. She tried not to look at what was left of the woman as she made her sandwich, and she thanked her mother once again for abandoning her in such a royally fucked up world.

  Betsy chewed her sandwich as she did a circuit of the diner. She must have missed out on a lot of action. She went back into the kitchen sipping her Dr. Pepper. When she finished her sandwich she washed a dab of mustard off her hands at the big sink, idly looking at the pictures and postcards tacked to the wall. Boring little nobody of a dishwasher, she thought, probably mailed the postcards to himself.

  There were pictures of a big family, a bunch of girls and one small guy, and individual faded Polaroids of Mom and Dad, or in this case Madre and Padre. A postcard from Lake Havasu. One from San Francisco.
A slightly faded photo of the little boy in the family pictures who was about Betsy’s age now, looking like a wannabe tough guy in cook’s whites and a cocked paper hat. His arms were crossed and his face showed a mixture of shock and hilarity as a pretty dark-haired woman with an arm around his shoulder stuck her tongue in his ear.

  The Dr. Pepper bottle slipped through Betsy’s fingers and exploded on the tile floor. A thick sliver of glass cut her ankle, and she brushed it away without a thought. She stared at the photo and carefully removed the push pin holding it on the wall. The woman in the picture had dark hair like Betsy. She also had Betsy’s face and figure.

  Betsy tore the picture in two. She dropped Carlos on the floor and held Jeannie in one trembling hand.

  “Bitch-mother,” she whispered.

  A Page from the Past

  Westwood, Los Angeles, California March 15 & 16, 1980

  “Push again, much harder now!” Eicher was sitting on a wooden stool at the end of the bed, leaning between Jeannie’s legs and screaming at her, his normally muted German accent now strong with emotion.

  She pushed and strained, wishing she was dead even as some hidden part of her pushed again, filling her with horrible pain.

  “Push, you little bitch! Do it!”

  It had taken Jeannie two months to regain her strength and awareness. Eicher was thrilled when she was finally up and around, pawing at her belly and dancing around like a spastic puppet whenever he rambled on about the glory of the coming birth, often saying he felt like God.

  Jeannie rarely spoke at all. She never looked Eicher in the eye. She had searched her small bedroom over and over for some means of escape.

  From time to time Eicher would unlock her door and tell her to take off her clothes. Usually he would force himself on her, stripping her when she was too slow to undress, slapping her and telling her to stop fighting him, which she rarely did. On a good night, when he was too drunk to get an erection without angrily flogging his penis, she could get him to go away by saying he might hurt the baby. He was a doctor and he was well aware of what he could and could not do to her, but that was one way for him to save face when he was enraged and flaccid with too much blood in his face and none in his prick. When he came down the basement stairs sober and aroused, naked and bearing nothing but the key to the room in one hand and his erection in the other, she rarely resisted but promised him again and again that she would find some way to kill herself, even though her room was outfitted like a prison, with plastic utensils for eating, crayons for writing, steel mirrors, and bolts holding every fixture to the floor, including the bed.

  She did not know that Eicher had stopped photographing and videotaping her, jealously guarding the secret knowledge of her pregnancy.

  “Push!” Eicher screamed. “In Gottes Namen! You are so good at pushing me out when I come to you and now you cannot force this child into the world? Push!”

  Jeannie pushed again, feeling something give a little.

  Eicher had left the door to her room open, the door at the top of the stairs that opened on the kitchen, in case he needed to run for anything he might need for her or the baby. Aware that she might try to attack him, perhaps throttle him even in the throes of labor, he had left the key to the room on the first step of the stairs. Her right hand was handcuffed to the high brass frame of her bed. Sometimes Eicher handcuffed her before forcing himself on her.

  She pushed again, fiercely, and felt it this time, finally, the baby’s mass about to slide free of her, but she tightened herself on the child at the last moment.

  “I can see the head!” Eicher hissed. “One more big push!”

  Jeannie caught Eicher’s eye and said, “Sweat ... please ...” Beads of perspiration had been running down her face during the last two hours of her labor and Eicher had been wiping her forehead with a folded cloth that now lay in a basin of cool water on her bedside table. He nodded and reached for the cloth.

  As he moved Jeannie leaned forward and pushed the baby completely out of her, using her free hand to grab its tiny head even as its blood-slicked little body settled onto the plastic bed sheet under her. Eicher’s head turned and he froze. He said, “No,” like a little boy.

  Jeannie’s free hand went around the baby’s neck. Don’t think. Don’t look. Just do it. One squeeze will snap that little neck. It’ll be quick. If I’m lucky Eicher will kill me for doing it. She tightened her grip on the baby’s neck, looking away, as Eicher make a fearful, enraged noise beside her.

  The baby choked, a soft gurgle. Knowing that she shouldn’t do it, Jeannie couldn’t help but look down. The baby appeared to be staring right at her, its little fists waving in the air. The strength went out of her hand. She let the baby settle onto the sheet and began to cry. She felt as if she were drifting away, drifting back into the dark haze she’d been in for months now.

  Eicher held the baby with reverence. “A girl!” he said. “A girl! Now I have two girls!”

  Jeannie closed her eyes.

  Eicher spent that Saturday evening cleansing and inoculating the child to the best of his abilities. It was quite late when he placed the child in Jeannie’s arms. She was fast asleep, but she still managed to hold the baby against her. Eicher washed Jeannie as well, disposing of the expelled placenta, sponging Jeannie’s skin free of sweat and blood, and changing the sheets under her. He set the baby against Jeannie’s breast and watched the infant begin to suck, something Eicher wanted to avoid. He would let the baby take her fill from the teat tonight, but that would be all. He had purchased a breast pump and plenty of nutritionally balanced formula. Jeannie would be able rid herself of the milk her body was creating in abundance before it caused any problems, the baby could have just as much milk or formula as it wanted, and Jeannie’s breasts would not be sucked and drained and left looking deflated and old.

  Eicher could not sleep, and on Sunday, after Jeannie had awakened and taken a little food, he removed her handcuff and left the baby with her. He sat in his study watching a video monitor.

  The camera and microphone were mounted above the basement stairs and gave a clear view of the entire room.

  Throughout that morning and afternoon Jeannie frequently smiled up at the camera. It was a tired but beautiful smile. Later in the day Eicher felt a lump in his throat when Jeannie and the baby faced the camera and she held up one of the child’s tiny hands, saying, “Wave to daddy, baby. Wave to daddy.” Her voice was weary and breathless, and she sounded a little like her überwhore progenitor. A ripple of unreasonable excitement passed through Eicher when he heard that voice coming from that mouth. And she had called him the baby’s daddy, as if truly acknowledging him.

  Eicher went to his room. He had a shower and changed into fresh clothes. Then he went to the kitchen. He prepared a salad, since Jeannie had always had an aversion to eating flesh, and placed it on a tray with a bottle of spring water and a slice of apple pie from a local bakery that did not hire drooling mulattos or illegal immigrants too ignorant to wash their hands.

  Awkwardly balancing the tray on one palm for a moment, he grabbed the key dangling from a chain around his neck and opened the basement door. He eased onto the top step, locked the door behind him, and then went down the stairs.

  Jeannie was wearing a white terrycloth robe and sitting on the edge of the bed, breast-feeding the baby. As Eicher stepped off the last stair he wished he could see the baby sucking at her nipple, but the thickness of her robe hid the infant from view.

  Eicher approached the table and chair where Jeannie took most of her meals. His wariness was fading. Jeannie seemed subdued now that she had birthed the child. She looked at him with a dreamy smile on her face. He was about to set down the tray when she stood and threw the swaddled bundle toward him across the room.

  Letting loose a hoarse cry, Eicher let the tray fall and made a mad grab for the baby. The bundle landed squarely in his opened arms. Just as his mind told him there was no baby, that all he was holding was a blanket wrappe
d around a down pillow, he saw Jeannie lunge at him and swing something over her head. A sock?

  For months now, as Eicher slept, Jeannie had spent many late hours working at the dozens of bolts that held her furniture and fixtures to the concrete floor of the cellar. She knew that Eicher watched her via the video camera. He had no way of knowing she could track his movements by the creaking of the floorboards overhead, and that she had realized he was watching the feed from the camera only when he was seated in his den. When he was in the kitchen or his bedroom or bathroom she could move about freely. When he was asleep in his bedroom directly overhead his snoring was so loud she was able to hear it as a faint buzz if she was very quiet. Jeannie listened for that buzzing and knew when it was safe to work.

  She didn’t care if she came away with an iron leg from the bed or a length of pipe from the plumbing. All she needed was a weapon. She soon discovered that the metal joints in the frame of the bed had been welded together, and all of the plumbing fixtures big enough to use as a club were made of strong but lightweight plastic. All she had to show for her troubles were torn fingernails, which Eicher assumed she had chewed at nervously, and a minuscule pile of concrete chips created as she tried to shake the metal legs of the bed free of their moorings. Portions of the floor and walls had flaked a little, but not enough to free the bolts driven into them, and Jeannie had no way of knowing that all of the anchoring bolts Eicher had used were many inches long and held fast. Not wanting Eicher to see the results of her work, Jeannie had collected the rubble in a sock, which was half full. It wasn’t until a few hours ago that she had realized the sock filled with concrete chips and dust would make a heavy and effective cudgel.

  As Eicher stood and stared at the bundle in his arms, Jeannie swung the sock up and over and brought it down on Eicher’s head with furious strength.