by Tony Ungawa
On the night table next to his side of the bed, along with about a hundred pages into it Edward Lee paperback novel and a WWF Jake “the Snake” Roberts wrestling action figure, was a digital alarm clock. It produced enough of a glow to stand in well enough for a nightlight. Denny stayed still on his back and watched how the shadows settled over the horror movie posters and pictures hanging on his bedroom walls. He was acutely aware that there was a difference to his bed tonight. It was alien territory, this having another body lying next to him.
Do zombies sleep? Uschi did. She was snuggled up close to Denny, joining him under the sheets. One of her arms was draped over his chest and holding him to her. She smelled nice: Ivory soap and hair shampoo and exhumed body putrescence. Strands of her clean and luxurious platinum hair were tossed onto his face, clingy and filmy on his skin as if he had walked into a spider’s web.
She snored in an adorable unladylike way. He raised his head off his pillow and watched her decaying face. Her big lips were slightly parted and for the first time he noticed she had an overbite. Her implants sandbagged chest rose and fell in steady respiration. Her dark nipples were relaxed and smooth.
The taste of her pussy was still plentiful in Denny’s mouth. It was a fantastic taste. It was official—cunnilingus rocked. He had treated that fish taco to the licking and loving it so rightfully deserved. Until tonight Denny had been a virgin when it came to the giving half of oral sex. Uschi, patient and knowledgeable, guided him brilliantly through the operation. She came twice with Denny kissing her deep between her fetid thighs. Uschi had squirmed in wicked delight on the Darth Vader decorated bedsheets, her legs draped over Denny’s shoulders and toes curled while hips rolled and pushed herself more into his mouth.
The night felt different, and not only because of the bed partner and new experiences in pussy eating. The world was feeling to Denny mute and frozen in place. The trailer’s air-conditioning had finished its blowing cycle and the place was now quiet. Way quiet. It was unnatural for the Big Kahuna Trailer Park Oasis to be so silent, so still. No Black Sabbath or Garth Brooks playing at top volume, chained pit bull dogs not barking their heads off as they so commonly do all hours, any of the more profound white trashy couples fighting over unemployment checks or who drank the last Pabst Blue Ribbon. That doesn’t seem normal. Like God all of a sudden needed a bathroom break and so He got hold of the remote control and hit the PAUSE button.
And speaking of needing to take a pause for the cause, Denny Gleeth himself was starting to feel the urge to go. He careful as could be slowly and quietly extracted himself out of bed. Uschi rolled onto her back, continued uninterrupted in her snoring and farted once potent enough to ruffle the sheets as she resituated her position on her pillow. In the bathroom, he aimed his urine stream to the side of the commode’s bowl, hoping to curb the loud and far carrying watery noise and not disturb her sleep. He passed on flushing, but did think ahead and put the seat down in case she should need a visit.
He stopped to examine himself in the mirror.
Well, hello, handsome. He scratched at his butthole, making a skid mark in the seat of his underwear that was big and dirty and proud to be there and attracting the attention.
Whole hell of a lot of things going on in his little life right now to be worried and fearful over. Standing there in the bathroom, hand still planted on his shitty ass, this awful weight of depression and panic wanted to come down over him, suck him into an unavoidable and quite familiar pitch-black tunnel of despair and self-pity that had no bottom. But he refused to give in to any of that, resisted with this reserve of will power Denny was surprised to find he kept in stock. He reasoned there was plenty of time for feeling sorry about himself later. Right now enjoy what you’ve got for as long as it may last and be happy. Try and be happy.
He went back to bed. Uschi sensed his return and rolled over to spoon him. She wrapped a leg around his waist and her boobs mashed hard into the back of his ribs. They were this jellied bulk pressing against him that made him feel as if he were being prison yard shived with a Stretch Armstrong doll. That was good stuff. Denny felt safe and protected and loved.
Uschi feared nothing. Uschi was always going to be there for Denny. The love they shared would see them through any obstacle or hardship. Whatever she wanted to do, he’d be there right beside her. Fuck yeah. Believe it.
Denny soon enough eased into a dreamless and undisturbed sleep.
Chapter Six
Uschi stepped outside the trailer home and confronted the new day. On her spoiled cadaver green face was a bright and cheerful smile. She wore camel toe alert tight cut-off jeans offering a major majority of ass cheeks hanging out of the frayed backside and Mork from Ork fashion rainbow suspenders strategically arranged to cover her twin oil stains on a garage floor dark nipples. The side boobage she had on display was positively massive. On her feet were plastic flip-flops. Earlier she had found pushed to the back of a kitchen cabinet shelf an old and forgotten table center piece that belonged to the people that rented the trailer before Denny. She broke off one of its plastic flowers, washed it clean of dust bunnies and mouse turds and now was wearing it behind her ear. The skill and expertness of her makeup’s application was suitable of earning Uschi employment at the cosmetics counter at any Wal-Mart in America. The hornet and wasp killer spray she liberally doused herself with before stepping out gave her a heavy chemical miasma.
Let’s see what sort of mischief I can get myself fucked up in.
And she set off, strutting her stuff through the Big Kahuna Trailer Park Oasis.
The hum of thriving in the August morning heat cicadas in the trees throughout the trailer park was coming in all directions. Only the rumble of numerous hard working air-conditioning compressors was louder. Kids were running around unsupervised and behaving apeshit crazy in their playing, laughing and screaming, enjoying these precious last few days of summer before the new school season got under way. This good music-appreciating dude was not too far off in his driveway washing his cherry ‘69 Dodge Charger and had his boombox turned up and sharing with everyone The Cramps performing “Cornfed Dames.” Uschi quickly found her step in rhythm with the song’s sweet and decadent psychobilly beat.
In one yard a pair of Mexican boys, grossly fat and the juvenile diabetes practically oozing from their pores, were going around barefoot and busy pestering a fireant mound with sticks. They stopped still and stared in wide-eyed amazement at the king-size maracas packing walking dead that came shaking her ass by.
“Hey, booger-eaters,” she said to them in a neighborly tone of voice and not giving a damn whether they knew a word of the English or not. “Y’all keep your shit straight and mind your parents.”
They didn’t come out of their dumbfuzzled daze until the fireants started stinging their feet and legs. Screaming in pain, they hustled and got their fat little asses inside. It’d be quite the period of time before either one of them felt the urge to be playing outdoors again.
Pets, sensing her Satanic origins, cowered and retreated at her approach and were none better in disposition after she moved on. She waved to a senior citizen dressed in boxer shorts and a wife beater T-shirt sitting on his patio porch and enjoying his first pack of cigarettes of the day. The old timer had eyes milky and blurred from a pronounced cataracts condition and was already feeling a fair share loose thanks to the healthy amount of vodka he’d mixed together with his breakfast of instant Sanka coffee and Pop Tarts. He waved back at the fuzzy image of the polite lady.
A housewife hanging clothes to dry on a line and whose own teenage daughter recently started to rebel and had turned herself into some kind of freaky walking and talking horror movie monster Goth thing caught sight of Uschi coming down the path and couldn’t hold her opinion inside.
Momma took the clothespins from her mouth and wagged a condemning finger and told it as she saw it. “I happen to have it on very good authority baby Jesus don’t have much patience for young women who dress too
trashy and weird.”
Uschi shot right back at her, “Why don’t you use a dog turd for a tampon and shut the fuck up, bitch.” And she kept on keeping on, never pausing for a moment.
Her destination was a trailer house that had in its driveway an early ’80s Chevrolet Impala up on cinderblocks. There were busted bottles and all varieties of trash scattered through the yard’s high grass and weeds. Halloween and Christmas decorations hung all year round off the place.
She walked up to the door, took a moment to check her hair in her reflection in the screen door’s streaked and spotted glass, then knocked. Standing there, waiting, she bounced on the balls of her feet as anxious as a Girl Scout only a few boxes of thin mint sells short from setting a new troop record and winning herself a brand new Schwinn ten speed bicycle. Meeting new people sure was exciting.
The door was answered by the man of the house, Hondo. Hondo looked like the forgotten Allman Brother, chestnut hair past the shoulders long and broom straw straight and parted down the center of his head, with an uncontrolled bushy Jesus beard holding in it dried and crusty portions of last night’s chicken enchiladas dinner. His body odor was all soured dirty laundry and high testosterone.
Leaking from the trailer home were the sounds of a TV set playing noisy cartoons and Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty doing a duet on “Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man” from a radio tuned to a classic country station.
Hondo stood with the screen door between Uschi and him. He kept his hand inside a bathrobe pocket, gripping a S&W .38. He drank in the image of her, allowing all that watermelon mega boobage and running wild putrescence to be processed through his brain. Got us something new here, don’t we? Hondo was an old pro at the dope peddling trade. Crack, heroin, meth, pills, ‘shrooms—he had it all and was happy to provide any of it to anyone for the right price. Hondo’s life was intense and constantly running head-on into the unexpected. A bitch done up like some scary movie dead shit was nothing to loose his cool over.
“Well howdy, Moonshine McJuggs, can I be of help to you and your bigass funbags somehow?”
Uschi twirled a lock of her hair between her fingers. “I sure hope so. I have it on good authority you’re the one in these parts to come and see when you’re looking to buy weed.”
Some soft, snotty laughter came from Hondo. New business, no matter their peculiarities, was always welcomed. He unlocked the screen door and shoved it open enough for Uschi to grab and pull open the rest of the way. “C’mon in here, we’ll get you done right.”
Chapter Seven
Denny was just awake and still in bed, morning wood stretching the front of his underwear out. He kicked the sheets off of him and looked over at the clock. There was another hour to go before he would need to be at his Blockbuster job. Then he happened to remember his sleeping alone days were over.
Uschi!
He put his hand on her side of the bed. The spot where she had lain last night was empty and cold and ripped in spots where her barbed wiring had caught in the bedsheets.
The smell of fresh-brewed coffee was on the air. Might be that was where she he’d gotten to. He got up, went into the bathroom and did what needed to be done in there, and then made his way to the kitchen.
Sure enough, there Uschi was. She had this morning’s edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram spread open on the counter space she was standing at and intensely studying its contents. She was enjoying a cup of coffee along with a dead and maggots-ridden squirrel she was dunking into her cup as if it were a donut. She bit chunks out of the deceased critter and chewed well before swallowing. The curtains above the sink were parted and sharp, bright morning sunlight streamed inside. Dust motes as thick as a swarm of creek bed gnats were visible in the light; Denny watched them lazily waft in the air around her blonde head.
She turned away from the paper and aimed herself his way. “Morning, best thing. Sleep okay?”
He cupped his balls and readjusted himself. “Pretty good.” He was grinning at the sight of her cutoffs and rainbow suspenders ensemble. It was wonderful to be living with a woman with such a bold and outré fashion sense. “How about you? Did you have a good night?”
“I had a great night.”
Denny saw that there was a live maggot trapped between her two front teeth, squirming and struggling to escape. Politely as he could he pointed this out to Uschi, and she used a fingernail tip to work the worm free. It dropped on her tongue and she promptly swallowed it whole as if it were nothing less than a morning vitamin pill.
“Where’d the newspaper come from?” he asked as he was at the coffee maker and filling his cup.
“Oh, same place where I got the squirrel—stole it out of one of our neighbor’s front yards.”
A touch of a concerned shrill screech worked its way into Denny’s voice. “You were outside?”
“There was this errand I had to run.”
“People saw you?”
“Sure. I met some folks. Did some talking with a few. What can I say? I’m a people person. I have a friendly nature about myself.”
“Oh jack me off with salad tongs. And how did people seem to react when they saw you?”
“Pretty cool. Oh sure a few assholes stared and one Bible belt cunt with a face that if ugly knew the way of the samurai hers would qualify as deadly as a Shogun’s personal decapitator tried to shame me in how I was dressed. But other than that nobody seemed to be too upset about me being on the scene. I know where you’re going with this.”
“You do?”
Uschi finished the last of her squirrel and chased it down with a sip of coffee. Her eyes were half-lidded as her lips touched the cup and the rising steam from the hot beverage washed over her cemetery’s best face. The muscles in her throat were rippling just beneath the flesh as she swallowed. The lipstick imprint she left behind on the cup’s brim as juicy red as a wound after the scab’s been peeled back.
“I don’t look like what passes for normal,” she said, “and you’re worried I’ll frighten the community and make them panic and cause problems for yourself. You’d rather try and avoid any modern day pitchfork and torches Frankenstein confrontations with the townsfolk. I get you. It’s a valid concern, I’ll grant you. But I wouldn’t get too worked up over it. I’m really not as far out of the norm as you fear. Seriously, slow down, let your common sense get into gear and put some thought to it. Do I really seem that much more different than the last orange hair and dog collar wearing punk rock teen in the ‘Who Farted?’ T-shirt you saw with their mom and dad at The Olive Garden? The freaky, the offensive, and the generally fucked up blend surprisingly well with the American culture of today. I’m just another contribution to that great melting pot. The worst we’ll ever get from people is impolite stares and a sizeable distance kept between us and them.”
A charcoal black liquid substance that the human body surely did not typically produce began to drizzle from her nose. Denny watched the fluid drip off her upper lip and assumed it was the result of the hot steam from the coffee floating up into her nasal passageways and loosening something up in there.
She might be reaching with that blending in with the other weirdoes theory of hers. But he loved her, so he decided to play it charitable. “Okay. You might be on to something. What exactly kind of errand did you have to run?”
“Aw, I needed to go and get us some marijuana.”
From a back pocket Uschi produced a plastic baggie full of pot. She tossed it down on the counter. Denny recoiled from the sight of it as if it were a deadly scorpion. A child of the ’80s, he had always obeyed First Lady Nancy Reagan. He just said no.
“I assure you, best thing; I purchased it only for pure medicinal reasons. That shit will do you a world of good. That’ll relax you and your adorable ass in ways you thought you could never be relaxed.”
Denny stared at the bag of dope like it was cat vomit smeared on top of a graham cracker. “Where did you get that?”
“Over at Hondo’s place.�
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Hondo. Oh yeah, Denny knew about him and what went on at his place. He always made sure to avoid Hondo and the people that were always coming and going from that trailer house.
“Honey,” he told her levelly, “that’s a crack house. You went crack house visiting. Sweet monkey motherfuckers.”
“Sure, it is a crack house, but that don’t stop it from being a lovely home full of nothing but wonderful individuals. Take Margo, Hondo’s wife, a charming dear only another month away from earning her trade school diploma in air-conditioning repair. I thought that was a pretty impressive achievement, especially considering how she’s a hardcore crystal meth tweaker. You would like her, best thing. She has a tattoo of Thundarr the Barbarian on her arm and Ookla the Mok high on her inner thigh. Thundarr’s her favorite Saturday morning cartoon hero. I asked her about Princess Ariel, and Margo told me she didn’t give a fuck about that bitch. How can you not like a woman like that?”
“I like Princess Ariel.” He mumbled that into his cup of coffee the second before he took a drink.
“And Hondo’s prices were quite reasonable.”
“Speaking of that, where’d you get the money for this?”
“I helped myself to what you had stashed away in the old Popsicle box up there in the freezer.”
“Oh. You know about that. Did you spend all of it?”
“The fair majority.”
Denny’s voice fell flat and the words were delivered with the same get up and go cheerleader spirit as an impulsive decision to do the colored clothes before the whites on laundry day. “Damn. And I was saving that money to buy a DVD player. Now I’ll never get to hear John Carpenter and Kurt Russell’s commentary track for Big Trouble in Little China.”
Uschi washed her cup out under the tap and left it to air dry in the dish rack. “And you’ve quit your job.”
“Man, this morning just keeps getting better and better. No more Blockbuster gig, huh? And how did you manage that to come about?”