Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors

by Ochse, Weston

  “Ask me what, Sir, I mean Jonston.” Edwin couldn’t help but think that if he had a jug, he could see who the old man was talking to.

  “Here, have some more tea,” said the old man, standing and refilling the glass. “My Henrietta says there were a bunch of boys you used to hang around with. What were their names? Let me see, there was Tom Hubbard, Bobby Burdette, Little Timmy Baugh, and Clay Archie. Ain’t that right?”

  Edwin began to feel uncomfortable as a long forgotten memory started filtering through the years of practiced forgetfulness and alcohol. He shifted and the chair squealed in protest.

  “I remember them. Haven’t seen them in twenty years, but yeah. We used to hang out together. What’s this have to do with the job?”

  “Ah hell, boy. Give an old man a chance to reminisce. After all,” he said, staring pointedly at the empty chair, “I had to be sure, now, didn’t I.”

  “Be sure of what?”

  “Be sure you were one of the bastards that killed my Henrietta. That’s what.”

  Edwin spat out the tea he’d been drinking as the memories of that night flew to the front of his mind, his actions, the actions of everyone, suddenly in perfect clarity. He stood quickly and took one step before his legs refused their commands. He fell heavily to the wooden porch, landing on his side, staring up into the face of the old man which was suddenly filled with an almost religious fury.

  “Don’t try to move, son. Your legs won’t work proper. And as soon as my mixture kicks in, you won’t be able to even blink. It’s an old recipe my granddaddy used in the Civil War when they needed to amputate. Part laudanum, part horse tranquilizer.”

  “But why?”

  “You have the gall to ask why?” spat the old man as he stood hovering over Edwin. “You boys left her in that ditch, bleeding and broken. She was alive, you know? At least one of you bastards could have called an ambulance. She was alive for a whole day, lying there as ants and beetles crawled over her—feeding on her blood.”

  Alive. She’d been alive?

  Horrific thoughts moved sluggishly through his mind. They were so sure she’d been dead. After Clay had gone wild and hit her with the tire iron over and over and over, they were sure she’d died.

  “Don’t you worry, boy. You don’t have to admit anything. Your friends all told me and Henrietta how you killed her. And we’ve had fifteen years to wait for you ever since I tracked down Tom Hubbard in Pikeville. Would you believe that they all blamed you? They said it was you that tore into her with a tire iron.”

  “No. No, it... ” The words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t feel his legs or his arms or his face and his tongue was thicker than a bread and butter pickle.

  “You won’t be able to talk, now, but don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to tell your side.”

  Edwin watched as the world went from horizontal to vertical as the old man lifted him up and swung a limp arm around a shoulder. Jonston levered the screen door opened with his booted foot and with grunts and a few damnations, carried and drug Edwin through the house and onto the back porch. The back yard was filled with the sounds of buzzing flies and chirping crickets. The corn Edwin had noticed earlier, was thick, allowing a half-circle of grass for a back yard. The tall stalks of corn grew right up to the eaves on each corner of the house and was better than any fence for privacy.

  Jonston turned and nodded to a large wicker chair, “Have a seat, my dear. This is the last one, so you best enjoy it.”

  Edwin watched the empty chair and saw how the cushion pressed as if someone had just sat down.

  “Now, take a look,” said the old man turning towards the back yard again. “Your friends have been waiting for you.”

  Edwin, unable to move his head or avert his eyes, saw that at the apex of the half-circle of lawn, were five scarecrows. Four really, because in the center, was an empty cross of wood, about man-sized and freshly planted.

  “I saved the position of honor for you, seeing as you were the one who was in charge of the killing. Yeah, they all told me all about how you planned it, so don’t go thinking I don’t know the truth.”

  The old man limped down the stairs and drug his captive across the lawn to the empty cross. Beside it, sat a wooden crate filled with sundry instruments. The old man leaned down and gripped a strand of rope, then, almost falling with his burden, pushed Edwin against the wood. With one hand, he wrapped the rope around the upper post and around Edwin’s neck, securing it with a granny knot. He stood back and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Now, that’ll hold you for a minute. Try and hold your breath, will you. Little Timmy over there strangled to death before I could finish and Henrietta wouldn’t let me live it down for the longest time.”

  Edwin tried to look where Jonston had indicated and felt his head roll slowly, until the scarecrow to his right was in view. The anesthetic was beginning to wear off and he could just feel his legs and the strangling rope around his throat. While the old man secured his hands to the cross-posts with rope, Edwin examined the scarecrow. It wore a straw hat, a flannel shirt and even older dungarees than the old man wore. Fresh straw had been stuffed in the sleeves and under the hat almost completely covering the sun-bleached bones of a skeleton. He looked closer and within the straw of the head, he could make out a brown skull and the ants that still crawled in and out of the eye sockets.

  Edwin turned his head and was confronted with the leering face of Jonston. He tried to scream, but only a rough sigh exited his still paralyzed mouth.

  “They’re still feeding aren’t they. I squeeze honey into the eye sockets about once a week. Henrietta tells me it makes the boys scream. Says it itches like crazy. Funny how you can itch when you’re dead, ain’t it.”

  Edwin cried in his mind. Sobbing internally as the truth finally set in.

  It had been the night before he left for basic training and the boys had thrown him a going away party. Between the shine and the whiskey and the beer, they’d all been wasted driving around in Archie’s old Mercury Cougar shouting their defiance to the stars. They’d found Henrietta on the side of the road with a flat tire and stopped to help. Bobby had been the one who threw her down and ripped off her dress. At least he was the first one. They all took turns, except for Edwin. He was in the bushes puking. After Clay beat her, it was Bobby who took her car and hid it in the woods. They’d made a pact never to talk about it and until this day, Edwin had never told a soul.

  “Pay attention, now, boy. This is important,” said the old man holding up a hammer and what looked like a silver ten-penny nail. “This here is made of silver and has been steeping in holy water for twenty years. Prepared special-like just for you. Why silver, do you ask?”

  Edwin shook his head, he’d paid for his sin. He’d paid for it for twenty years. He remembered how he’d wanted to. How he’d seen her naked and begging and felt himself throb, rubbing himself, a drunken need to fuck, to release his seed like a demon intent on conquer.

  But he hadn’t done anything. And it had cost him. Never a relationship, never a happy day. It was the bottle that had numbed him so he could make it to another day and another bottle. If he was guilty of anything, it was for doing nothing, not murder. He didn’t want to know what the nail was for. He didn’t even want to be here.

  The old man ignored him and continued, “These will not only hold you up, but they will bind you. Hell will have to wait for a little while longer, because after I’m done, you’ll be here until the wood rots away and the silver turns to dust. I hear they still find old silver coins from before the time of Jesus. Damn if that ain’t a long time.”

  Edwin was beginning to feel more and more of his body and he felt the impact of the hammering and the nail entering his left hand like a dull pain. The next nail was pounded through his tricep and he could feel this one even more. On the fourth, as the man hammered the nail happily through his right hand, it was as if all his feeling had returned and his scream pierced the air, sending crows flying from t
he corn and stilling the sounds of the thousand crickets. It was the last nail that sent his bowels gushing. His scream erupted from his soul, soaring beyond mortal hearing, making the angels flinch in their games and the demons pause in their laughter.

  “Feel that, did you? Well, don’t you worry, boy. There’s only one more to go and then you won’t feel nothing.”

  The last nail was twice as long as the others and was more like a railroad spike than a nail. Old Man Jonston placed it right over Edwin’s heart, and with a wry chuckle, hammered it home.

  “Hey. Eddie, Wake up.”

  “Yeah, Ed, get your ass awake. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  He didn’t know how long it had been, but he woke up, his body felt numb. His mind was fuzzy. He opened his eyes slowly and noticed that night had descended. The backyard was brightly lit by two spotlights, each affixed to a corner of the house, high under the eaves.

  “Eddie. Long time no see. How was the Army, man? Did you kill anybody?”

  Edwin shook his head to try and rid himself of the cobwebs, but it was to no avail. He was having trouble thinking straight.

  “I told them, Ed. We told them how you killed Henrietta. You know, you shouldn’t have done it.”

  “I was puking in the weeds. I didn’t do anything,” he answered automatically, turning his head to the left.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Clay grinning, “but they didn’t.”

  It was Clay Archie, just the way he remembered him, except now wearing a hat and shirt and dungarees. Straw poked out from the seams almost hiding his ghostly pale face.

  “Man. You got old.”

  Edwin spun his head to his right, and where he’d seen the skeletal remains of Little Timmy earlier, was now the painfully pale features of the little man, giggling happily. He turned and looked to the porch, twenty feet away. Old Man Jonston sat beside Henrietta, his hand resting atop hers upon the table. Like his friends, she was pale, a ghost, and he could make out her satisfied smile even at this distance.

  “Tell us a story. Old Man Jonston been following your career. He told us about them wars you was in. Tell us about Grenada. Tell us about Panama. Tell us about Saddam. Tell us about all them demons you conquered,” came the squeaky recognizable voice of Tom from the other side of Timmy. “Come on man, we gotta long time to kill.

  Wandering Minds

  by David Whitman

  Carl Levine looked out the window and saw Russ Wilson’s dog, Ka-pow, shitting on his front lawn.

  “That goddamn son of a bitch! It’s all over for that fucking dog!”

  The feud had been going on for the last two years. It had started when Russ had taken to parking in front of Carl’s house. You don’t own the damn street, Levine, Russ had said. From there, it had elevated into an all out war.

  Every day they could be seen shouting over the fence that separated their yards, each of them daring the other to come over and put a little action into those fighting words. Both men could often be seen sitting at the window, just waiting for the other to make the next move.

  As Ka-pow did his business, he seemed to be smiling at Carl. Here’s my gift to you, he seemed to say. The poodle didn’t even try to run when he saw Carl running toward him, hands outstretched. The dog finished its business, kicked his back legs twice in a kind of burying movement, and then escaped through a trench under the fence.

  Furious, Carl ran over to the wooden fence and peered over it, blue veins bulging across his bald head.

  Russ was sitting on a lawn chair, wearing his favorite food stained Hawaiian shirt, scribbling on a crossword puzzle. Ka-pow sauntered over, spun around twice, and sat down next to his master.

  “Goddam you, Wilson!” Carl yelled. “I told you about that damn dog! You’re not going to be happy until I kill the little son of a bitch!”

  Russ looked up from his crossword puzzle, as if he heard a fly buzzing somewhere within the vicinity of his ear, and scratched his beard lazily. “That you, Levine?” He looked over at Carl. “What’s the idea? I’m trying to sit here on this bench and enjoy my week off and now you’re harassing me. Go back in the house, you little man.”

  “I’m telling you, Wilson,” Carl said. “I’m going to kill that little bastard. I want you to get over here and clean up the mess he left.”

  Russ frowned. “What are you talking about, Levine? Ka-pow’s been sitting here by me for the last half-hour. If he had gone off to relieve himself, I would have seen him go. Now go away and leave me alone.”

  As if listening to his command, Carl disappeared.

  Russ patted the poodle gently on the head. “Good boy, Ka-pow. You’re always making your Poppa proud.” He loved making Levine’s life miserable. It provided entertainment to his boring life ever since his wife, Mary, had left him, the miserable bitch. “Now,” he said, scratching his long beard with the pencil, his concentration turning back to the puzzle. “What’s a six letter word for supplant?”

  Just as he started to write the answer down, a pile of dog shit landed in his lap with a disgusting plop. He looked up from his lawn chair, stunned.

  Carl was leaning over his fence waving at him with a shovel, an enormous grin on his face. “Eat shit, Wilson! Next time that dog comes over on my lawn, I’m gonna shoot the fucker!”

  Russ looked down into his shit buried lap, his mouth open in wide “O” of disbelief. That bastard has some balls after all, he thought, before his shock gave away to anger. He stood up from his chair, throwing his crossword puzzle book on top of Ka-pow, eyes bulging with rage. “Levine! I’m going to kill your crazy ass!”

  Carl smile widened, exposing his yellow teeth. “Why don’t you just come over and try it, you shit eater? I think it’s about time I put you in your place.”

  Russ ran over to the fence and began to climb, his pudgy body dancing precariously just at the top, before he slipped and fell into Carl’s lawn. He landed on his back solidly, feeling the air explode from his lungs, his Hawaiian shirt ripping open from where it had caught in the fence. His hairy belly stuck out like an obscene parody of pregnancy.

  Before Russ could get to his feet, Carl brought the shovel down on top of his head, gritting his teeth as it connected with a dense thud.

  The shovel wriggled in Carl’s hand before it came alive with a burst of painful electricity. He could feel pulses of energy blasting through the handle and into his body. As if he was holding a live power line, Carl danced up and down energetically, spittle flying out of his chattering teeth.

  The switch was sudden. Carl found himself inside Russ’ portly body.

  Russ let go of the shovel and looked down at himself, his mouth dropping open, bewildered to find himself in the thin and wiry frame of his hated enemy.

  Carl, his ass planted firmly on the ground, looked up to see himself standing in front of him with a shovel at his feet. Ka-pow was standing off to the overgrown grass, his head cocked to the side curiously, a small whimper escaping from his furry lips.

  Dazed, Carl got to his feet, rubbing his head dumbly. Something was wrong, he felt heavier somehow, and he was wearing Russ’ Hawaiian shirt. He looked over at himself. He felt like he was staring at his own reflection, only he didn’t have any control over what it did. In panic, he fled into his house. Russ, just as frightened, ran into his house as well.

  Ka-pow watched the both of them silently and began to whine.

  Mrs. Anderson, the elderly neighbor across the street, was wondering just what the hell was going on. She had just seen them fighting on the lawn and then she had seen Carl run into Russ’ house and vice versa.

  Carl was looking into the mirror of his bathroom and wondering what in the hell Russ Wilson’s reflection was doing in it. He ran his hands through Russ’ thick, curly hair, feeling for the first time in years what it felt like to actually not be bald. He began to finger his newly acquired beard inquisitively, pulling his hand away with disgust when he saw that it was dotted with food. He had never been able to grow one himself-i
t always came out looking vaguely like some kind of animal mange. The smell of Russ’ body odor wafted into his nostrils and he flinched, his eyes wincing at the ripeness of the scent. To say something weird had happened was an understatement. They had switched bodies. His brain was actually floating in the disgusting skull of his hated neighbor.

  He jumped when the phone rang, stumbling out to the living room, his mind still trying to get over the shock of what had happened.

  Vacantly, he picked up the receiver. “Uh, Hello.”

  “Levine, you bald asshole! Give me back my body!”

  “Wilson, what in the hell did you do?” Carl asked, his voice whiny and high.

  “ME!” Russ shrieked into his ear, causing him to flinch in pain. He still felt a dull ache from when he had apparently hit himself with a shovel. “ME! Levine, I think we’d better get some goddamn facts straight here! First, you throw a pile of dog shit into my lap! Second, you attack me with a shovel! And now, you’ve somehow stolen my body from me! I just looked into the mirror and saw your chrome dome shining at me, I damn near lost my eyesight from the glare!”

  Carl, finally getting his bearings, shouted into the receiver, “You big, fat, lumberjack-looking redneck prick! You think I’d want your out of shape, near death, pile-of-lard-of-a-body with egg yolk in the beard? Don’t you even wash this mountain of waste?”

  “So what are you trying to tell me, Levine?” Russ shot back. “You trying to say you have nothing to do with this?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. What do you think, Wilson, that I’m some kind of black-magic-practicing warlock? Obviously something weird happened. We’re going to have to try and switch them back somehow. Come back over, and I’ll smack you over the head with the shovel again.”

  “What, are you crazy? Has the sun been burning into your smooth plate of a head too long? I’m not going to let you hit me with a shovel again, even if I am in your body.” There was a pause and Carl heard a faint zipping sound. “Oh, and don’t it figure. Let me correct that last statement. I’m not going to let you hit me with a shovel again, even if I am in your body with the little, itty-bitty dick. Jesus, Levine, it looks like a baby’s broken pinky. No wonder you don’t have any kids.”