Uschi!

by Tony Ungawa

  The tire iron’s tip then altered direction, now directly headed for the asshole.

  “Get ready to beg me for the sweet relief of death. Never gone and killed me a retard before. Ooo, it’s got me all excited and such. Goddamn, it is opportunities such as this that truly make America the greatest country in the world.”

  Denny scrunched his eyes shut and whimpered. The tire iron commenced to invade the cleft of his buttocks. Penetration was now only a second away.

  Not twice in one night.

  The fist came out of seemingly nowhere and smashed into the side of Li’l Bocephus. It was low on his midsection, between the bottom rib and hip joint and behind the stomach. A sucker punch operating on rocket fuel.

  “Sumbitch,” a stunned Li’l Bocephus wheezed as the might of the blow folded him over and sent him off balance and stumbling backwards away from the truck on the heels of his cowboy boots. His hand loosened and fingers uncoiled; the tire iron, glowing in a greasy sheen made from the harsh glare of the sodium vapor lighting, fell to the parking lot with an off-tune heavy clang. Li’l Bocephus bounced off the bumper of a Ford Taurus located three spaces away from the handicap parking Dairy Queen provided for the physically unfortunate and landed less than gracefully in a shallow puddle of oily rainwater. He settled there like something newly dead.

  “I don’t appreciate you putting your hands on my boyfriend,” said Uschi. She puckered her lips around the straw in her Dr Pepper and sucked in a mouthful. “Hey, best thing, you think maybe next time I could try a Sprite? I got me a feeling that may be more my kind of drink.”

  She saved me, Denny thought. She came over here and actually helped me. Nobody’s ever done that for me before.

  “Baby, you can have whatever the fuck your heart desires.”

  Li’l Bocephus sat up, water running off his face and messed all to fuck hair down over his eyes. “Sheep shit and cherry seeds,” he grimly commented. “I ain’t been turd walloped like that in a coon’s age.” His attention went to the gal who’d given him the mother of all body shots, watching her standing there at the pickup’s tailgate protectively close to the little retardo with the big, buggy eyeballs, all sassy and full of herself.

  Basic heterosexual male instinct drove his eyes first and foremost to her knockers. My God Almighty, they were certainly a pair taken to heroic proportions. They were pert near bigger than the house Li’l Bocephus grew up in. He imagined if he were to pick one of them up waterbugs would come crawling out from under it. He next noted she weren’t wearing any panties. That was nice of her. He couldn’t ignore the perfect view he was being treated to of her pussy. Funny thing. Why did she have David Letterman’s goofy face carved into her pubes? Man, that’s ignorant. Her skin pigment was as green as a fresh picked booger from a nostril and barbed wire kept her held together like she was some kind of fleshy quilt. Her face was as repulsive as tattoos on a fat chick.

  Li’l Bocephus had in his time watched and appreciated enough ’70s and ’80s movies on late night cable TV to know what he was being confronted with here. Titty bitch done been zombiefied.

  He said to her, “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say your unique looking ass ain’t originally from around these parts.”

  Stupid thing to say. Stupid to waste a single word or ounce of communicative effort on this buttaface walking dead abomination. Sometimes that motor connected to Li’l Bocephus’s mouth just didn’t seem to come with an OFF switch. The annoyingly lingering traces of humanity inside him were responsible for this foolish act. It compelled him to say something, say anything. A human being was forever eager and hopeful to resolve a hostile predicament with wordplay. The realization he had just done such an asshole thing—had fallen back like that on a disgusting pussy-ass weak human natural reaction—left Li’l Bocephus angry and ashamed with himself. When was he going to outgrow such bad habits? He was not a man. He was a thing. A monster. A killer of men. Act that way, you little bitch.

  Uschi held out her sucker punching hand and proudly showed Li’l Bocephus what she held in it. The object was dog turd brown, smaller than a tennis ball, shaped similar to a teardrop, and glistening wet. For some disturbing reason the sight of it set of the warning bells between Li’l Bocephus’s ears.

  Around about then was when he also happened to finally put some attention on the fact he was feeling particularly off there where she had hit him. Didn’t feel like anything he would normally associate with a routine beating. A swelling concern moving through him, he looked down at himself to investigate.

  Ah shit, bitch ruined his lucky official Larry Mahan shirt. She’d gone and put a heartbreakingly decent-sized tear in it; somehow had managed to bloody him up real fine, too.

  Wait a minute. Hello? That blood should seriously not be there. He didn’t even come close to spilling a drop of the ol’ red stuff when he was working on the fat girl. Li’l Bocephus may be many things—murderer, borderline illiterate, despoiler of female virtue, bigot, hater of cats and dogs, crier like a baby the day he learned CBS had canceled Gunsmoke—but a sloppy eater was not one of them. And it appeared the dead woman with the roomful of bazooms didn’t have any gore on her she could’ve smeared over him. Well then where the fuck was it coming from, huh? He raised his shirt, lower lip chewing with worry at what he might discover.

  She’d gotten him real good, no trying to deny that. There was on his pale as fresh sour cream freckled belly a jagged and deep tear a number of inches away from his navel. A hole in him size sufficient enough for a videocassette tape to be inserted through. The bleeding was vigorous and bubbly, leaving a foamy head over half his lap. The interior meat exposed was raw pork pink and the thin sheet of fat bathtub rubber ducky yellow. Again he looked to the homemade zombie girlfriend. How could she have done such a thing to him? It weren’t natural, no.

  “I’m fairly confident,” Uschi all rainbows and unicorns cheerfully informed, “it’s your gallbladder.” She began to lift the organ toward her mouth.

  Denny was working at getting his britches back where they belonged. He was an individual who assumed he knew enough about anatomy from repeat viewings of classic Herschel Gordon Lewis splatter movies to voice an opinion. “Yeah. You’ve got the gallbladder there.”

  She popped the whole thing in her mouth and hungry big dog chewed. Noxious fluids moistened her lips. She spat the gravel-like gallstones out as if they were watermelon seeds. Swallowed it all in one impressive gulp. Followed it with the last of her Dr Pepper, and then tossed the cup aside. “Mmm, not halfass bad. Almost go far enough to label it ninja killing cool tasty. Think I’ll try a bit more.”

  Chesty Morgan from beyond the grave moved, coming at Li’l Bocephus with the self-confident sashaying of a stripper taking to the stage to the pounding beat of a Nashville Pussy tune and satisfied only with hundred dollar bills stuffed in her G-string. She energetically clacked her teeth together in anticipation of more.

  Li’l Bocephus told himself to remember what the movies had taught him. The brain. The only way to kill a zombie was to destroy the brain. That totally sounded like a chore he could accomplish. Get with it.

  Lunging up off the parking lot with all the inhuman force he had to spare, Li’l Bocephus went at the organ thieving zombie female with arms spread wide and lips skinned back from his creepy Zuni fetish doll freak teeth. His mouth was a gusher, instantly and quite profusely salivating yarns of stout drool that were wind-tossed as he was in motion to thrash and wave about the lower portion of his face like the tentacles of some animated jellyfish. His eyes were bloodlust blazing. Fast as ever, he got her down with a linebacker’s tackle before being challenged by even so much as a molecule of any resistance from her.

  Moist wash rag limp, Uschi was laid out toes up over the asphalt, and Li’l Bocephus perched himself atop her. He pinned her arms to her sides by planting his knees into her bicep muscles and parked his bony ass on her buoyant breasts, which audibly sloshed as he wiggled and situated himslef into the most comf
ortable position he could find. Sitting there as if he were on a bean bag chair, high and mighty and lording himself over her, he clamped a hand over her mouth, putting a stop to all that obscene teeth chattering, while his other hand obliged itself to a right large fistful of hair located just in front of her head’s crown.

  That bantam rooster cockiness in him refused to keep its attitude in place. “Yeah, how ’bout that?” he said. Li’l Bocephus laughed like a southern sheriff in a ’70s era blaxplotation movie, condescending and unkind. “I got you with the greatest of fucking ease. Ain’t I pure motherfucking spectacular?”

  The grip that Uschi was a prisoner of was superhuman, clearly beyond any normal physical limits. She imagined these hands could with minor exertion rend through sheet metal like a sharp knife making easy work of rotten cloth. His fingernails were uncared for, the dirt under them as dark as the ink from a defensive octopus. They were long and chipped to the point they were serrated like a hacksaw’s blade, tough as the bark on a pine tree and yellow from a mature fungus infection thriving deep beneath.

  He raised her head, set his hold as firm as he could make it. The plan here was to take the zombie titty bitch’s head and just bash it against the parking lot until he came upon the promised land and split her skull wide open and brains spilled out like an overturned supper bowl of soupy baked red beans. He figured half a dozen admirable hits at most should get things done.

  A wise plan. A sound plan. Sinfully easy, wickedly productive, decadently doable.

  Shame Li’l Bocephus never got to find out whether or not it would’ve worked.

  Uschi’s mouth snapped open, defying Li’l Bocephus’s hand, and a pair of his fingers dropped inside. They dragged over her tongue, tasting of the dirt and disease under the nails. She bit down, and then all she could taste was a peculiarly spicy flesh type she found difficult not to immediately fall head over heels in love for.

  Yum-yum, eatum up. This shit is quality.

  Yelping, Li’l Bocephus yanked his hand back and learned his ring and pinkie fingers were MIA. “Shit, fuck, damn, Democrat.” She’d bitten them off right above the knuckles. Blood pumped from the raw and juicy stumps like transmission fluid from a punctured hose. Li’l Bocephus brought the pitiful three-fingered hand closer to his face. A muscle in his jaw spasmed, his cheek rolling and undulating as if there were nightcrawlers squirming under his face. The wet sounds of Uschi’s eating echoed in his ears.

  He gave her a mean-eyed stare. “Well, at least you had the common decency to spare the pussy finger.”

  Legs together, Uschi moved as if she were down on the living room floor in front of the television set working on her abdominal muscles to a Jane Fonda work out video, springing her knees up in a pistons motion and driving them mercilessly hard against the center space of Li’l Bocephus’s spine. The brutality of the impact made his head snap backwards in classic whiplash fashion, fangs making a skeletal clack when jaws slammed together, and it was a damn miracle none of his warted tongue was snipped off. He released his hold on her head of hair and was thrown off of her mammarian carriage and sent tumbling away.

  Keeping it meek and really eager to get on home, a sweaty and ashen-faced Denny stood at the side of the pickup. He watched his walking dead honey rise to her feet. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “Don’t think so.” Uschi took the time to give Denny a winning smile and a saucy wink of the eye. Then she was whirling around in a pirouette, the fuzzy pink cuffed hem of her nightie billowing out like a blossoming buttercup flower, turning to face Li’l Bocephus. “I got this Barnabas Collins of the rodeo circuit right where I want him. Appreciate your thinking of me, though.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Denny became aware that by now this ruckus in the parking lot had attracted the attention of everyone inside the Dairy Queen. Faces of employee and customer alike were pressed to the dining area’s plate glass windows, watching, thoroughly bumfuzzled at what they were witnessing.

  Zombie vs. vampire. Was this a Fangoria moment or what?

  Li’l Bocephus managed to stand. “Aw man, this night ain’t treating me right at all.”

  Uschi came in on Li’l Bocephus with an animal’s swiftness that totally belied her decaying walking dead statehood and shoved him back between a new model Cadillac and a late ‘70s Ford Maverick. He slammed against the driver’s side of the Mav, collision fracturing the window’s glass. Its shocks were shot and the auto rocked back and forth like a small raft afloat on a choppy lake, creaking and squeaking during the whole thing. Uschi tore his shirt open and revealed a hairless and Karen Carpenter skinny torso; the ribs under his skin stood out like the ridges on a Ruffles potato chip. Never missing a single beat, she unhesitatingly put both hands inside that nifty gallbladder wound she earlier delivered upon him.

  She looked into his face, her tone of voice nefariously teasing, “Excuse me while I pig out.”

  Oh momma, that sounded way too unpleasant to be comfortable with.

  “No … Don’t …” Li’l Bocephus spoke as if he were gargling with warm road tar, “… please …”

  She ripped him open—tissue, tough muscle and abdominal vault so easy for her zombie hands to rend asunder. A wet horizontal opening that ran in a jagged path from one end of Li’l Bocephus’s abdomen to the other. His belly button was literally torn in two. The bleeding was an absolute insane monsoon of vital fluids that went everywhere, drenching the two of them entirely under its spray and painting both the hoods of the Caddy and Maverick the shade of gore. Freed viscera spilled out and poured into Uschi’s waiting arms. Her laughter was rapturous as it all went over her. The spillage was too much for her to carry it all, and quite a bit of slimy and colorful entrails overflow splattered to the ground.

  She buried her face in the armfuls and feasted. Her supper grunts and groans loud and excited and her head kept continuously twisting from side to side like an anxious dog worrying a tasty bone.

  A wild howling like it was gravely past feeding time at the zoo’s monkey house erupted from Li’l Bocephus. “You get the fuck away from me! AWAY FROM MEEEEEEE!”

  And he took hold of her in his arms and lifted her 44-22-36 racy physique above his head and tossed her toward the Dairy Queen, her arms emptying as she sailed off and all those delicious eats splattering wet and messy down to earth.

  The Satanic homemade zombie girlfriend traveled a healthy thirty yards, bulleting through the air at a spooky clip of speed above car rooftops, her trajectory holding steady and never faltering. A swift thinking individual inside the DQ yelled “Incoming!” and people scattered like frightened squirrels as Uschi hit one of the plate glass windows. The chiming of a multitude of glass shards falling to the floor carried a surprisingly musical cacophony. She cleared the whole length of the dining area, a big-boobed flesh eater missile that entered customer service air space above the main counter area and smashed into the electric menu board suspended from the ceiling.

  She next dropped to the coutertop, limp as an old tube sock, landed very near the spot where earlier Denny had paid for their cheeseburgers, and crushed under her body a pair of steak finger baskets waiting to be collected and eaten here. Side of her head connected with a corner edge of a cash register, causing the little bell inside to make a brief jing sound that shivered through the atmosphere. Hissing sparks and glass fragments from the damaged and swinging menu board showered down on Uschi’s motionless form.

  Somebody took a bite from their burger and commented around the mouthful, “Goddamn. I got to tell y’all goddamn.”

  “Yeah,” said Li’l Bocephus, “that ought to calm your freak ass down a fair share.”

  He looked down at the pile his unspooled internals made at his feet. As a boy growing up on a working farm, Li’l Bocephus had watched a cow give birth, and the load of rank and gooey afterbirth ol’ Bessie passed along with her calf were Miss America handsome in comparison to this nastiness from within himself. Sure was a lot of it, too. He must now be hollow
inside. Trash was already mixed in—he spotted a straw impaled lid from a small Coke caught in the coils of a loop of large intestine, a few crushed cigarette butts trapped here and there in the snotty slime that coated his liver, a crusty ketchup packet stuck to what he assumed was supposed to be his spleen.

  “Ain’t this the shits?” Li’l Bocephus told the world and himself. He next bent forward and put his hands to work in trying to shovel himself back inside. It was like wrestling with dead eels in taffy—the shit was delighted to go everywhere but where it was supposed to go. But he managed some progress: the bowels were returned home, maybe not back in their original position inside him, but beggars can’t be choosers, they were back in there and that was good enough for the time being.

  Again Denny Gleeth went against his typical nature and was compelled to become courageous.

  No one manhandles my lady like that and goes unpunished.

  The Maverick’s car antenna snapped off in Denny’s hand shockingly easy. There was a tacky little plastic Dallas Cowboys football helmet mounted on the end of it. Denny got rid of that. The antenna screamed like an upset white woman when he sliced at the air with it. Denny reached the ways across the hood and whipped it into Li’l Bocephus’s face, the balled tip striking the left eye. Pop! The eyeball exploded like a pinpricked balloon and sent eye jelly gunk the color of fresh pus from a lanced boil oozing down half of his face. The eyelid collapsed and puckered like a cat’s sphincter.