by Tony Ungawa
Nothing special about them, just a man and a woman. Both pretty fairly ugly and dressed by Wal-Mart. The man was balding and fat, his belly hanging low over his belt like raw biscuit dough seeping through the split in a ruptured Pillsbury tube. He looked like the type with no education after high school and was trapped working long and hard at a job that didn’t pay well enough to keep his family afloat on his one paycheck. The woman was frizzy-haired and short and squat and had an Alfred Hitchcock double chin flabby wattle. Denny figured her for a school cafeteria lunch lady.
They behaved like a couple that had been together for a good while now. They were relaxed and enjoying one another’s company, talking and laughing and holding each other close. She had her hand behind him and tucked in snug into one of the seat pockets of his blue jeans, cupping an ass cheek.
They were in love. It was obvious to see.
Every once in a while Denny would run across something like this. People in love. He’d see it between a man and a woman when he’d go alone to the movies or was pushing a shopping cart while shopping for his groceries. Did they know how lucky they were? Really, were they ever truly aware of how blessed the pair of them was that in this entire cruel and cold world they were able to connect with an actual fellow human being who didn’t find them utterly horrible and disgusting? Did they have any idea how horse piss in your lemonade terrible it was to have to go through life always alone? Probably not, no. The fucking world was overrunning with lucky assholes. Most folks weren’t as miserable and as big a failure as Denny was.
Whenever he would see love in action it would start an envious Denny to wondering what would it be like to be one of them, in love and that love reciprocated?
His hand went out and blindly found his Uschi’s leg. He began to affectionately stroke her thigh.
Actually, he didn’t have to wonder anymore. Here it was. True love with his idea of the ultimate example of femininity. There was no need any longer for jealousy or searing heartache or only hollow fantasies of going out on a date or shame that out of everyone on Earth only he was unable to find somebody. The real deal was sitting beside him. It was finally okay to put his worries and fears of being condemned to a life forever all to himself aside.
The couple had crossed the parking lot and were now arriving at their pickup truck—an old but dependable Dodge Ranger XLT with a rusted over hood and a collection of proud to be an American bumper stickers. They separated, him making his way to the driver’s side door and her remaining by the tailgate and waiting for him to climb inside the cab and unlock the passenger side door for her.
Denny couldn’t help but smile. All of a sudden the envy and anger he’d typically hold for a pair like this was washed away, and he seemed to instead develop a feeling of kinship with them. It felt nice seeing a fellow pair of lovers. He was now at last a member of the club.
Eyes keeping on the couple, he had one last question he cared to ask Uschi. “You really do love me, yes?”
Her cheeseburger and roadkill eaten, Uschi looked up from her onion rings seasoned with rancid armadillo scraps. First she used a wad of paper napkins to clean her hands as best she could manage, chewed her mouthful of food, swallowed, then ran her dead fingers through the hairs along the back of Denny’s neck. This provoked Denny to turn his face towards her. Uschi stared unblinkingly into his eyes, and her soured milk white glazed over cadaver eyes pierced his great big dull baby blues. She spoke with a clear, authoritative tone that was confident it would be understood to the very last detail.
“Forever and ever I will love you with all that I got, Denny. That’s a guaranteed promise from me to you.”
She truly meant that. Ninja killing cool. A splendidly warm, comforted sensation went through Denny, and he felt the compulsion to say something in response to such a powerful statement. He didn’t put any thought into his words, instead just made it up as he went along, allowing it all to originate straight from his heart. “When I die my soul is going to go straight to hell, where it will burn and be tormented for all of eternity. That’s concrete, a fact that can not be changed. But I don’t care. I honestly don’t. It’s a price I’m more than happy to pay for the chance to love a glorious woman like you, Uschi. Thank you. Thank you for coming into my world and making it for the first time ever worthwhile.”
They kissed. Their mouths joined together perfectly.
After Uschi returned to enjoying her onion rings, Denny was curious to check in with the parking lot lovebirds. He turned his head and looked to them again. The man was now behind the steering wheel, door still open and cab’s light on, leaning over the seat and fingers reaching for the passenger door’s lock knob. The woman continued to hold her ground back by the tailgate.
And then came the attack.
The attacker moved unnaturally fast. Fast enough to fool the naked eyeball. He was only this dark figure, an indistinct man-shape blur, coming out of the shadows between the parked cars at seemingly the speed of a bullet exiting the barrel of a .22 rifle. One second there was nothing but a frizzy-haired fat gal standing by her lonesome at the rear of a pickup, and in the very next instant there was this man who materialized from out of the night itself and was taking a mean-spirited hold of her by the shoulders.
With a whip-like fluidness to his motions, he swung a leg out and tripped her legs out from under her, dropping her with equal parts neat and brutal efficiency to her ass. Too stunned by the unexpected suddenness of it to cry out or react in any fashion in these few initial moments of the assault, the woman was wholeheartedly his to do with as he wished.
Denny’s mouth fell agape and he was jolted where he sat. What, did he just actually see that? “Fucked by a Trekkie at a Babylon 5 convention …”
Her man in the pickup truck was on the ball. He saw what was going down and was quick to respond. In a New York minute he was unhesitatingly coming to save her. He charged the man mistreating his lady, the fatty parts on him jiggling as he was in action, the look to his pie round red face a mixed expression of worry, concern and rage, and when reaching the attacker he was assaulted with a straight-arm chop. The arm lashed out as if it was spring-loaded and the knife-edge side of the hand went under the chin and struck hard against the windpipe. Denny saw it as almost a John Saxon as Roper in Enter the Dragon quality karate man move.
There was a chicken’s neck getting wrung crunchy-crack of a report that reverberated throughout the DQ parking lot. This was a larynx crusher of a hit that made oxygen to the lungs a luxury never more to be indulged in and dropped the man down ass over tits. He clutched at his throat and fought a loosing battle for breath, feeble, convulsing and helpless. He died in agony.
That’s the way to do it. An orderly, clean, hassle-free murder.
That business accomplished, the attacker returned his attention full on once again to her. He wanted something to do with her throat. He forced her head back, leaving the neck exposed and vulnerable, and bent at the knees to put his face in close to her throat. His movements carried the same lethal smooth characteristics of a born predator readying to deliver the killing stroke to its defenseless prey.
Denny watched on in wide-eyed astonishment. Holy Zontar shit. Those were people in love. How dare that quick on the move dickhead think he could spoil their happiness. Those two out there, they were Denny’s people. People just like him and Uschi. Don’t fuck with his people.
Adrenaline kicked in high gear and adopted a plan to take no prisoners. Denny’s eyes narrowed to a hateful squint as he could feel the rushing blood fill his face. He commenced to snorting through his nostrils like an aggravated bull. The muscles through his chest, shoulders and neck swelled and bunched to the best of their puny limits. Denny’s natural instinct for cowardice was forgotten in the face of such an atrocity to romance.
A decision was made.
A hero was needed.
He was about to get his ass in gear and do what he thought he would never do.
“Son of a bitch must pay!
”
Get a weapon.
He reached between his legs and under the seat and got hold of the tire iron kept down there. Its touch was cold and unfamiliar on his soft and uncallused palm.
Get over there and teach that cum stain on the bedsheets of life that love and romance don’t have to tolerate any shitty behavior like that. Hurry! Hustle! Move like the motherfucking wind!
He shoved his door open and bolted at his top speed, breaking into a run when clear of the El Camino. The tire iron was a reassuring heft in his fist. The attack was taking place more or less at the center of the lot, a few more than a dozen parking spaces down form where his El Camino was parked. This was the greatest distance Denny had run since sixth grade PE. He was laboring for air and sweating like a whore in church before he was even halfway to his destination.
The attacker remained ignorant of Denny’s approach. Still hunched far over the woman, paying attention only to her throat. Strange since the noise of Denny’s Converse All Stars pounding the asphalt and his huffing and puffing for the sake of his burning lungs was as loud as firecrackers going off in a tin soup can. Something about that throat must really be the end all interesting.
Thought was now absent from Denny Gleeth’s head. A blinding neon red rage was all that was going on behind his eyes. He felt macho and testosterone-fueled powerful. A true man.
He came in from behind, raising his arm back across his chest and the tire iron going over his shoulder, and then swinging at the attacker in a backhanded motion. Tire iron loving connected full on across the rear half of the skull, directly behind an ear. The sound of the hit was satisfying and dense, like a hammer coming down hard on a big slab of granite. The impact vibration that passed through the tire iron and traveled up his arm left Denny grinning from ear to ear and feeling like he was The Man for once in his existence.
Hot damn, he did something good.
The attacker made this brief grunt of a cry at the moment he was struck—more like reluctantly acknowledging a mild annoyance rather than a legitimate reaction to any severe head trauma. He wobbled there for a second, all hunched forward over the woman, putting a little effort and repositioning of his weight to work to keep his balance. Then he lazily stood up straight and tall, turned to confront Denny.
“Well, hello to you, too, sunshine,” he said matter-of-I-shit-you-not-factly. He had the type of slow and drawling cadence to his voice that made a person think of an unhealthy appreciation for that fine American John Wayne, a love for music with a shitload too much steel guitar twang to it, tattoos of the Confederate flag on his hairy and farmer’s tanned hide, shotgun shells rolling free on the floorboard of a pickup truck, yelling out “Whoa, bitch!” each time he went down on the brake pedal to his truck when coming to a red light or stop sign, and one of the more vocal Texans demanding Ozzy Osbourne be strung up by his nuts and let the birds peck out his eyes after learning he had gone and taken a big ol’ steaming piss on the side of the Alamo. Outlaw peckerwood country boy bubba and proud as fuck about it.
Denny was not The Man. The neon red rage in his brain went dark. His grin died as quick as an ant crawling along a tabletop and content in its own little world getting crushed to smelly mush under a descending thumb.
“What are you, boy, one of them short bus riding retards they let wash dishes here at this dump?” he asked Denny. “I bet they pay you in all the french fries you can fish out of the trash and gum you can find stuck under the tables. Goddamn. Is that you? That what you are, boy?”
The attacker was this goat roper cowboy. Tall and rail thin drink of water. Got straight red hair oiled and parted down the center of his scalp like the way Larry Storch wore his on the old TV show F-Troop. Freckle-faced, his complexion was as pale as a blood and other juices long settled to the bottom cadaver resting on a morgue table. Eyes were simmering with a cocky mean disposition that promised bad times ahead for any one or thing who should happen to find themselves on this good ol’ boy’s shit list. He was dressed in a pearl snap buttons western cut shirt with the sleeves raggedly torn away and showing off girlishly slender broomstick narrow arms, tight fitting blue jeans that told the world which side his dong was partial to lean to (the left), and the belt buckle he had on him was fancy enough to suit a rodeo star and as big around as a hotel’s ashtray. His can of Copenhagen snuff kept in his jean’s seat pocket had left a permanent ring imprint in the denim. The boots on him looked brand new, a pair of oily clean Tony Lama snakeskins. On the outside of his right forearm was this tattoo that stated in clean, simple font ROY ROGERS FUCKED MY MOMMA.
Call him Li’l Bocephus.
The large and goofy from ear to ear smile Li’l Bocephus gave Denny could only be described as inbred bright. This here was the sort of car wash built on a dirt road swift thinking bubba who would find substituting shit rag for toilet paper when writing out his weekend grocery shopping list the height of sophisticated wit. He licked at his lips, a feral act in the fashion he went about it, and absently scratched his balls. His lips had a purplish, drinking too much grape soda pop tint to them. There was a distinct Eddie Munster lupine pointed tip to his ears and a fine, full pelt of reddish-brown fur covering them. His mouth was open wide and beyond those discolored lips were all so many fangs. Yes, fangs—narrow and ending in needle points, stained first piss of the morning yellow; they jutted crookedly out of the blue gums and were cobwebby between many of them with fat and glistening yarns of gooey spit. A long tongue, black and warts spotted, was sighted slithering around in there.
Denny next managed to notice the woman, down on her butt and head remaining cocked back. She was in some serious deep-fried bad shit. Her throat having been savaged, deeply bitten into, the multiple fang punctures like the honeycomb holes along the surface of a yellowjackets’ nest. The carotid artery was compromised and a Shogun Assassin hose spray of an enormous volume of dark arterial blood spewed out as much as two feet into the air. It splattered the truck’s bumper and tailgate and collected in puddles on the parking lot; the sounds of the violent release a high-pitched gurgling squeal. More blood gushed and caused a lobster bib cascade down the front of her. She bled out toot-sweet quick, the red fountain that was her neck soon diminishing to a steady trickle, then a few spurts, followed by a weak dribble, and finally ending on a collection of bubbly wet fart disturbances before the tap was completely dry.
The light in her eyes Denny watched grow ever more dim. When it vanished completely he knew for sure the life in her was depleted. The lifeless body then leaned over and fell awkwardly onto its side, slapped the gore painted blacktop with a bit of a splash.
Denny had devoted a lifetime to watching horror motion pictures and knew instantly what this bullshit was all about. The redneck with all the teeth was coming straight from Chris Lee and Frank Langella country. Vampire.
Li’l Bocephus spat a brown stream of tobacco juice, loud and wet like a small breed of dog struggling with diaherra trouble. “What you got there in your hand, a tire iron?” The shitkicker bravado to his voice was as loveable as third degree burns covering ninety percent of the body.
High overhead one of those massive 747 jets out of D/FW Airport rumbled as it flew above Vestron, off to parts unknown and loaded with folks having a far better time with their lives right then than what Denny currently had going on way, way down here. Crickets were chirping somewhere off in the darkness.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.” Denny visibly trembled where he stood. He could feel the cheeseburger and onion rings in his belly turn sour and acidic. He tried to swallow but was unable to, his dry throat feeling as if it were filled with thumbtacks.
“Wrong, retard, that ain’t any tire iron. What you got there is a butt plug. The world’s finest butt plug, in fact. This is a butt plug of great and terrible infamy. Here, let me demonstrate on you and your kind to volunteer for me ass just what makes this here butt plug so special.”
Li’l Bocephus’s hand shot out and snatched the tire iron
away from Denny. It was just that simple a feat for him to accomplish. His quickness and strength too much for Denny to counter. Denny was left feeling like a small child having his favorite toy abruptly taken from him by an adult.
“Now, don’t go and panic none on me—this is only going to hurt you like a vengeful motherfucker for the short remainder of your life.”
The blood-dripping tailgate to the parking lot lovers’ pickup truck was dropped with a noisome metallic thunk. Denny was grabbed by the scruff of his neck and bent over it. His face was pressed against the rough and dirty metal.
Unbuckling his belt and opening his jeans was never bothered with. Li’l Bocephus simply took hold along one belt loop at the hip area and continued yanking until they were down past Denny’s buttocks. The revealed ass was hopelessly Caucasian, flat and lacking any definition, as white as an uncooked flour tortilla. The medical odor of hemorrhoid cream was released and obvious. Li’l Bocephus permitted the tip of the tire iron to drag over one cheek, drawing a stinging red welt into the skin. So cold and unforgivingly hard.
It seemed like being the victim was bred into Denny Gleeth’s bones. He never protested, never struggled or tried to fight back. He was too scared to do anything. It was high school all over again, and the tough, bigger kids in his third period remedial math class had him cornered behind the gymnasium with nothing to hide behind but his digital Return of the Jedi wristwatch and a copy of an Alan Dean Foster sci-fi paperback.
The vampire leaned in close to Denny’s ear. “Look at you, retard. I know your kind.” His cold as a November morning breath was an absolute abomination, like the stench produced from a backed up septic tank inside a charnel house, and it went over the side of Denny’s face thick as wet paint and seemingly clogging the pores. “Got yourself full of piss and vinegar and puffed up with a sense of courage you never really had to begin with and thinking you can make a difference in the world. Come to save the poor little lady. Ignorant shitball. You’ve been reading too many Batman funny books. All you succeeded in doing was interrupting my supper. And why you wanna do something like that? Don’t you think I have as much right to eat as the next guy, huh? You ain’t got the common sense the Good Lord took the time and effort to give to some dog that spends all day licking its hairy black balls. You must be eager to die, the way you came running up and took a shot on my noggin. Hey now, you in luck—you done come upon the one super tough hombre of the night more than happy to oblige a fuck up such as yourself. I am gonna kill you, bug-eyes retardo. But before I go to work on that voodoo I do so well, I’m going to make sure you’re good and properly vicious nasty humiliated before you get to leave this world. I’m gonna break your spirit like it was made of Legos. Get ready for a pain biblically severe.”