“You bet!”
“And that’s . . . a good thing?”
“The best. I asked for it. Wanna see what I looked like before?”
“That’s okay.”
But she already had her phone out, scrolling through photos until she came to one pre-beating.
She held the phone over to me.
“I’m driving right now,” I said.
She leaned over farther and held it up a little behind the steering wheel.
It looked like an old school photo and not at all like the girl sitting next to me. The girl in the photo was bright-eyed and innocent looking. Healthy looking. And beautiful. Flawlessly beautiful.
I almost said, “Wow, you were really pretty,” just to say something, but stopped myself.
“I was really pretty, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, and added, “You’re still pretty.”
“Stop tryin to make me feel good. I know I’m not pretty. I don’t wanna be pretty. That was sorta the whole point. Bein pretty is confusing for a young girl. Everyone’s nice to you. Mostly because they want to fuck you—guys especially—but partly cause it just makes em feel good to have a pretty person pay attention to em. A girl that looks like that doesn’t even know what it’s like to want somethin. Didn’t help that Daddy’s so rich and spoiled me rotten with, like, material things? So it’s okay if you think I’m a monster cause you know what?”
“What?”
“Even though you think I’m hideous you’re still out here spendin time with me but now I know it’s cause you like me, not cause you want to fuck me. I mean, you might fuck me if you wanted to fuck somethin bad enough but it’s not the first thing on your mind.”
I was probably only spending time with her to pick her brain about Dawn but didn’t really feel like I needed to tell her that. She probably already knew anyway.
“So,” I said, “you figured out what it was you wanted?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And?”
“Dawn. I wanted Dawn the first time I saw her. Same as you.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“She’s my master. You can’t really have Dawn. She ain’t never gonna be nobody’s girlfriend. You can only serve her but, yeah, I guess we do some stuff together.”
“Look, I know Dawn’s married to Sheriff Bando. He’s not her fucking dad.”
“You must be like a detective or somethin.”
“Well, I mean, that kinda sounds like Bando has Dawn, if he’s married to her.”
“They don’t do nothin.”
“What, like, they don’t sleep together?”
“Dawn’s never been with a man.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I swear. She can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I ain’t too comfortable talkin about Dawn’s private matters.”
I flashed back to going down on Dawn, combing my memory for any anatomical abnormalities. I’d been up close and personal with a few vaginas in my life and everything seemed normal with hers so I thought maybe when Barcie had said she couldn’t be with a man it had to be more of a mental thing.
“Fine,” I said.
“Just know this,” Barcie said. “Dawn ain’t like me or you. She’s special. She’s gonna to do big things. She’s doin big things. She’s got real callin.”
“She seems kind of like a teenage psychopath.”
“Well maybe that’s exactly what she wants you to think.”
I pulled down the gravel access road to the field behind Travis’s house.
“Where we at?” Barcie said.
“A friend’s house. We’re gonna mow this field.”
She squealed. “I almost forgot all about our lawn and garden party!”
“It’s starting really soon.”
Barcie suddenly remembered the beer she’d brought along. She bent down to dig one out of the case, pop the top, and chug it down.
I stopped the truck and we got out. Barcie had opened another beer and lit up a cigarette.
“Want some coke?” She held out a little plastic baggie.
“No thanks.”
“Help yourself to the beer.”
“Maybe later.”
“Don’t worry about it. If you get stopped on the way home I’ll just give the cop a blowjob.”
“You know the world isn’t run on blowjobs, right?”
“So says you.”
I slid the slats down out of the truck and brought the lawnmower down.
Barcie stood drinking her beer and smoking her cigarette and twitching with her weird energy. It might have just been the coke.
“You gonna show me how to use that?”
“Sure. But I need to ask you about something first.”
“I’m finished talkin bout Dawn.”
“It’s not about Dawn. Follow me.”
I walked across the field to Travis’s presumably mock grave.
“Oooh, creepy,” Barcie said. “Is someone buried there?”
I grabbed my head in frustration and said through clenched teeth. “That’s what you’re supposed to tell me.”
“Why? I don’t know nothin bout that.”
“I know Dawn is fucking with me. And I’m pretty sure you helped so just . . . tell me what happened to Travis.”
“Who?”
I pointed at the crude wooden cross.
“That says Tarvis,” she said.
“Fuck me.”
“Now?”
“No.” I rolled my eyes. “Not ever.”
“We’ll see.”
“If you’re not going to tell me that you and Dawn created that grave to fuck with me then you’re going to help me dig it up.”
“I ain’t helpin you dig until you show me how to run that lawnmower.”
I could have continued arguing with her but I already felt like it was one of the stupidest arguments I’d ever had.
Resigned, I walked over to the lawnmower and climbed in the seat.
“Come on,” I said.
“Let me get another beer.”
She got another beer and came over to the lawnmower and sat in my lap.
“This ain’t so bad,” she said.
I flipped on the headlights. I’d always wondered why riding mowers had headlights since I didn’t really know anyone who mowed his grass at night but, then again, here we were doing exactly that.
I fired the engine up, briefly explained the throttle and the clutch, and told her she didn’t ever really need to be out of first gear. Then I showed her how to engage the blade and rode with her on a lap around the field.
I stopped it and told her I was getting off the mower.
“Sure you don’t wanna mess around for a bit. You’re kinda hard. I can feel it.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. Besides, I’ve got a body to exhume. Maybe if I knew there wasn’t a body in there I’d have time to mess around with you.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, that was just me and Dawn fucking with you. There’s nobody in there.”
I again squeezed my head in frustration.
“Ah! Now I don’t believe you.”
“Does it really matter?” she said.
It probably didn’t, but I felt like I needed to know.
She hopped off my lap to go back to the truck and get the rest of the beer and I went to the truck to grab a shovel.
I stuck the shovel in the dirt of the grave and took a picture. I sent it to Dawn and said: “I’m opening Schrodinger’s box.”
I got to digging. I hoped, if it really was a grave, whoever dug it was as lazy as I was. I was well aware of the ‘six feet deep’ thing but if I ever had to bury a dead body, there was no way in hell I was going that deep.
I found this small field peaceful when it hummed with the sound of insects. Now, unfortunately, the constant roar of the mower made me feel frenzied and frustrated. I glanced up to see Barcie mowing in no discernible pattern whatsoever. She’d taken her top o
ff and was manipulating the steering wheel with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She disregarded my advice of keeping it in first gear and raced around with it on its highest possible setting.
I went back to digging.
I stopped to check my phone. Dawn hadn’t texted me back.
I dug quickly. I wasn’t really trying to exhume the potential body. I just wanted to dig down far enough to see if there was one in there.
Sweat rolled down my face, my scant hair plastered to my scalp, my shirt stuck to my back.
I glanced up and spotted Barcie. She was still on the lawnmower but it had stopped. She’d removed her shorts and had her legs spread on either side of the steering wheel, her phone focused on her crotch.
A couple of seconds later my phone vibrated.
I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it.
It was a photo of Barcie’s vagina. Well, the right half of Barcie’s vagina.
The accompanying text said: “My pussy got swetty.”
I didn’t glance back at her, instead redoubling my efforts on the grave.
After she was finished fucking around on her phone, Barcie shut the lawnmower off and stumbled over to me.
“I’m bored. Can we fuck now?”
“I’m not going to fuck you. Go get a shovel out of the truck.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Help me dig and I’ll fuck you.”
“Nuh uh. Yer lyin.”
“Only one way to find out.”
She huffed and turned around, her pale body skeletal in the moonlight. She got a couple of steps away before a car pulled up the access road. I felt a moment of panic and thought about dropping my shovel and darting off into the woods.
It was a cop car.
My moment of panic was replaced with one of hope. Maybe it was Dawn.
The driver’s side door opened and Barcie began waving frantically.
I realized it could look like I was possibly digging the grave of a person who’d been missing for the last few days and part of Dawn’s fucking with me was really just a moderately elaborate frame job.
I dropped the shovel and approached Barcie from behind as Sheriff Bando approached her from the front.
“Hey, Barse,” he said. “Whatcha doin out here?”
“Hi, Sheriff,” she cooed.
“Why aren’t ya wearin any clothes?”
“I got all hot and sweaty doin chores.”
“All right. Well, I just came out cause the owners called. This is private property.”
“We was doin em a favor. Mowin their grass! Brad here was showin me how.”
He pulled out his flashlight and shone it on my face.
“Why don’t you come over here, son.”
I approached and stood next to Barcie.
He flicked the flashlight over his shoulder toward the truck.
“You work for Billups?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s a good guy. He know you use his truck for extracurriculars?”
“Um . . . probably not.”
“Hmm, yeah, maybe he might like to know that. You know this girl here’s under twenty-one?”
“I have no idea how old she is, sir.”
“She’s under twenty-one. She’s a good friend of my wife’s. And she seems quite drunk.” He shone the flashlight around the field. “And I see quite a few beer cans scattered around the field. You know it’s illegal to buy beer for underage girls?”
“I didn’t buy anything for her.”
“Well, a judge might see it differently.”
“Other than trespassing, I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. Besides, I know the people who own this place. I’d be happy to explain—”
“Just shut the fuck up. What were you doin back there?”
“Nothing.”
“Want to show me this nothin?”
Again I debated taking off running.
“Okay. This might be of concern to you.”
“Just shut the fuck up and show me.”
We all walked back to the grave and stood around it.
Bando waved the beam over the grave and the discarded shovel, letting it come to rest on the marker.
“Diggin a little grave, huh?”
“No. I found it. I was trying to see if there’s anyone in it.”
“Who’s Tarvis Stanely?”
“I think it’s supposed to say Travis Stanley. He lives here. He’s a friend. I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”
I wanted to tell him to ask his wife who Travis was, since she seemed to have his phone.
“I see.”
“You could . . . probably investigate it.”
“Or I could just arrest you for trespassing, stealing company equipment, providing alcohol to an underage girl, murder, and probably even rape.”
“Rape?”
He shone the flashlight between Barcie’s legs.
“You ain’t gonna take Brad in, are you?”
“I don’t have much to do but I’m not really looking forward to the paperwork. Maybe you wanna come back to the cruiser with me and we can talk about it?”
“Sure.” Barcie beamed.
They went off toward his cop car.
I thought about digging but felt like turning up any bones or body parts would only further incriminate me. Besides, I’d dug down about three feet. The soil had even stopped feeling like it had been freshly turned. I was reasonably satisfied there wasn’t a body in the grave. I grabbed the shovel and took it back to the truck. I put the lawnmower in the back of the truck and headed back home.
A couple hours later, a pounding on my door awoke me and I was terrified it would be the entirety of the Gethsemane Police Department ready to arrest me for murder and rape.
I opened the door to find Barcie standing there, red blotches and shit stains painting her naked skin. She smelled atrocious.
“What?” she said. “I still got some gag drool on my chin?”
She did, actually.
“I’m stayin here tonight.”
“Okay, but you have to take a shower.”
“That sucks.”
“You’re covered in shit.”
“So?”
“I’m not letting you in unless you agree to take a shower.”
“Fine, but if I take a shower I get to sleep in your bed.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
She came in and I shut the door and locked it behind her. I showed her where the bathroom was and handed her a towel and washcloth.
I got back into bed and pretended to fall asleep. She got in the bed, smelling mostly fresh and clean, excepting the reek of beer and cigarette smoke wafting from her mouth. Sometime during the night she reached down and gave me a handjob.
I pretended to remain asleep, thought about Dawn, and came within a few minutes.
I was pretty sure I heard her licking the come from her hand but didn’t want to open my eyes to find out.
I thought I would be too exhausted to dream but when I drifted back off I had a dream about Barcie.
Dawn was in the dream. Living in my apartment.
We both wore Billups’ Interior and Exterior shirts and I had the vague sense we worked together although she could have just been borrowing my shirt for some reason. She seemed more like an average young woman, lacking the edge of dark menace.
We sat at the kitchen table watching a young girl in a bathing suit scrub a pale, doughy fat man. He was nude and lying on a plastic tarp over what was presumably a bed. He had an erection that seemed tiny compared to the girth of his body. Dawn sipped her coffee and smiled, carefree.
The apartment was filled with sunlight and it felt like morning.
There was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
I crossed my small apartment and opened the door. It didn’t have a peephole and I wondered what had happened to it.
Barcie stood in the hallway.
Sh
e was naked and covered in neon green pustules. They wriggled as if they had a life of their own. It was alarming but she didn’t seem panicked or distressed.
“You . . . have a condition,” I said.
“I’ve been to the beast farm. They were cutting hay. I got a nosebleed and had to leave.”
She pointed between her legs. A trickle of blood ran down her inner thigh.
I was confused by what she said.
“Come in,” I offered, stepping aside.
Dawn stood near the entrance to the kitchen area.
The two girls moved toward one another.
I had a sense of foreboding for Dawn. I wanted to tell her to be careful, as though she couldn’t see the writhing green pustules on Barcie, but I couldn’t force myself to talk. I just stood there by the open door as if frozen in place.
“Oh, Barcie,” Dawn said. “You look beautiful.”
“You know how it goes at the dangle. I’ve got fun patches.”
Dawn moved closer to her. She reached out and began stroking the protuberances.
“They’re coming in so nicely,” she said.
“It was forty-six degrees and half the universe was in darkness. The headline people were fake.”
Dawn leaned forward and took one of the protuberances in her mouth, gently suckling it.
I became both disgusted and aroused.
She sucked on it until it grew so large it made her gag.
Then she moved on to the next one.
I woke up with a painful erection and the fuzzy thought that if Barcie were still here, I would fuck her. I didn’t care.
But she was gone and by the time I shook the dream away my brain felt clearer than it had since meeting Dawn. Probably clearer than it had in a long time. I realized the clarity I thought I’d felt when going down on Dawn was not clarity at all. It was a false clarity. Like your first cigarette or first beer or first joint or first trip. And I wondered if that was exactly like what it was and it had taken this long for that hit to wear off.
I pulled back the curtain from the window and looked toward the street.
Billups’ truck was still there.
I checked my phone.
No messages.
I went to the kitchen and started some coffee, taking a hot shower while it brewed.
While drinking my coffee, I opened my laptop and did a Google search for ‘humiliation’ and ‘blackmail.’
Thinking that wasn’t specific enough, I searched for the terms and added ‘gethsemane ohio’.
This Town Needs a Monster Page 14