Mason passed Billy Bob, walked over to the cooler, and grabbed himself a beer. When he noticed that Rolly was beerless, he snagged him one as well and yelled “Pull!” like they were shooting clay pigeons.
Rolly expertly caught the beer and cracked it open, forgetting about his dog for the moment. He took a long sip and grimaced. “I think what I really need is a woman. That would set me up just right.”
Mason shook his head and finished up his cigarette, flicking it into the fire. He often wondered how he had found himself in the company of men like this. He owned and operated a used car lot back in town, made a decent living, but nothing spectacular. The kicker was that he had a master’s degree in literature. That and a dollar bought him coffee every morning. He really hadn’t done much with it other than scribble in one of his growing pile of notebooks every day. Maybe one day he would be a bestselling novelist.
Mason met Rolly and the rest of the crew at The Fish Pond, a local bar he started going to after his divorce. They had hit it off right away. Rolly may not have any college experience, or even high school for that matter, but he was smarter than a whip. Rolly was entirely self taught, reading any book that you handed him. Any book. Mason remembered the stern shut up and never talk about this look he got when he was helping Rolly clean out his garage and a box fell over, emptying a sprawl of romance paperbacks. To this day, Mason had respected the friendship enough to never mention it. Still, Rolly knew a little bit about everything, an aspect of his personality that was often masked by his redneck persona. Yes, Rolly was a redneck, but he was an educated redneck. The worst kind, thought Mason with a smile.
Weasel listed off to the side of the campfire like a boat that had tacked into a strong wind and began to piss into the grass, fighting balance, gravity and the complication of the process. Mason and Rolly watched that with amusement until Weasel did one final jig, bounced off a tree and zipped up.
“You know something, Mason?” Rolly said after taking a particularly long sip of his beer. “I got my eye on Sheela. I think I’m fixin’ to make her mine.”
Sheela was a waitress down at the Barbecue Pit, a favorite local restaurant, with a decidedly unoriginal name. “Shit, Rolly,” Billy Bob said from where he sat perched like Humpty Dumpty on a log, thumbs caught in his rainbow suspenders. “Sheela is John Reynold’s girl. John will whup your ass but good, you even so much as wink at her.”
Rolly winced like he had been stabbed and looked over at Mason with a pained expression. “Why can’t you shut your ass the hell up, Billy Bob? I wasn’t even talkin’ to you. Besides, I whipped Reynolds’s ass twice already.”
Billy Bob snorted. “Yeah, when we was twelve years old at fuckin’ summer camp.” He broke out into his trademark guffaws. “As I recall Rolly, John had his arm in a cast when you ‘whipped his ass’.” He started laughing again, this time joined by Weasel.
“You know something? I got something to say to you, Billy Bob,” Rolly said, his face turning sober. “And you too, Weasel.”
Billy Bob shook his head and smirked. “What’s that, Rolly?”
“Fuck you,” Rolly said nonchalantly and then shot daggers at Weasel. “And fuck you too. Fuck all of you. John Reynolds will have his ass back in a cast if he even comes near me.”
Everyone started laughing, simply because Rolly had managed to keep a straight face through the whole thing. A stranger watching the conversation would probably think that a fight was about to occur. When they saw the deer, everyone suddenly stopped.
It glided from out of the trees and into the clearing, its eyes angry black slits. It snorted through its nose, a ball of red and white fur in its teeth. A huge rack of blood encrusted antlers shook with each plod of the cloven hooves. All the men stared, entranced by the deer’s demeanor, their guns forgotten at their sides.
It approached the campfire and spat something into the dirt with a damp thud. A round, sticky mass of red and white hair lay on the ground. Mason thought he could see Get’s teeth sticking out of the wet, furry ball.
The deer stood glaring at them in defiance as it slowly made eye contact with every one of them. Mason felt cold uncertainty slide through his veins as he stared back into the penetrating eyes.
“Ixtli!” the deer shrieked and they all jumped. Billy Bob leapt up from where he sat, turned to run into the woods screaming, and ran full speed into a low branch. He sagged to the ground in a heap. Mason had a fleeting thought that his terrified friend might think the animal had come to extract some unique punishment for killing and mounting so many of its cousins.
The deer gave one final snort of apparent disgust and darted off into the darkness. Mason and Rolly glanced at each other, their eyes wide over open mouths. Billy Bob lay on the side of the log where he had passed out, his belly threatening to burst the buttons on his plaid shirt. Weasel’s mouth was opening and closing rapidly as if he had something to say, but couldn’t quite bring himself to tell it.
“What in Jesus H. Christ was that?” Rolly whispered, his face ashen. He looked like he had just been punched. “I’d like to say that somebody spiked the fruit punch, Mason, but judgin’ by the look on your face I’d say you just saw the same thing that I saw.”
Mason looked tired. “I think that this is the first time in my life that I’m speechless. I pretty much thought it was impossible to do that to me anymore.”
Rolly stood up slowly and began scanning the woods for any signs of trouble. “What in the hell did he say, Mason? It sounded like ‘Ixlee.’ What the fuck does ‘Ixlee’ mean? More importantly, what the fuck is a deer doin’ sayin’ it to me…us.”
Mason was shaking his head back and forth, his eyes scanning the surrounding darkness. A deer had just walked…no, not walked…strutted. A deer had just strutted out of the woods, spoke to them, dropped a dead dog at their feet and paused to give them the evil eye. Things weren’t good. With that thought, he immediately grabbed his shotgun and began stuffing shells into it.
Rolly, knowing a good idea when he saw it, did the same. Weasel was too busy watching Billy Bob’s belly, mesmerized by the rise and fall of the massive plaid mound, to worry himself with anything simple and sane like self-protection. His body leaned forward with Billy Bob’s every breath as if he was about to be sucked into the silver dollar-sized belly button.
“What in the hell should we do, Mason?” Rolly whined. “You’re the one with the college degree.”
Mason grimaced and brought the gun up, sighting into the trees nervously. “Rolly, you’d think something would tell you that I wasn’t taught in school what to do when Bambi turns into a fucking psycho lunatic.”
Weasel started giggling insanely and fell off his log. His chortles could be heard from the weeds like a madman in some forgotten asylum.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Mason, Bambi’s one dead deer. That motherfucker killed my goddamn dog!” He looked down at the dog’s corpse. “Oh, Get, what in the hell did he do to you?”
Billy Bob suddenly awoke and sat up. One hand went to the bulging knot that sat in the middle of his head like a third eye and the other reached for the thirty ought six.
“Man,” he said chuckling to himself. “I just had the weirdest dream. There was this deer you see,” he said levering himself back onto the log and grabbing a beer. “There was this deer and he spoke to me. He said, ‘You asshole. We are tired of this shit. Prepare to die.” Billy Bob chuckled again until his eyes rested on the battered corpse of Get.
He noticed Mason and Rolly alternately staring at the darkness between the trees and him, aiming down the lengths of their guns. He studied the ground and saw the prints. He squatted and ran a hand lightly over the powdery ridges, his knuckles around the gun tightening until they were white. Suddenly, he stood. He grabbed his pack full of shells and slung it over his back, then gripped the rifle at port arms.
“Hey guys, I am just gonna run back to the truck and check somethin,” he said, his steps getting quicker and quicker. As he hit the forest
edge, he broke into a run, leaving Rolly and Mason gaping at his departure.
It was a few seconds before Rolly broke the silence with a question. “What did he mean the deer said, ‘Prepare to die?’ All I heard was ‘Ixtli’ or what-the fuck.”
Mason turned to answer, but they both froze as Billy Bob’s screams pierced the air from far off to their left. It was silenced by a roar.
“Oh fuck, Mason, that was a goddamn bear!” Rolly shouted, his gun shaking as his eyes roamed around the dark trees, trying to penetrate the blackness. He glanced hurriedly up and noticed Mason’s ass shimmying up a tree. “Where in the hell you goin’, Mason? You ain’t goin’ to get very far hidin’ up in a damn tree.”
“You got a better idea?” Mason asked, not bothering to turn around as he struggled to hold onto his gun and climb up at the same time.
Rolly had to acknowledge that he didn’t, and began to follow his friend. Weasel, who had sat up when they weren’t looking, watched them like a little kid fascinated with monkeys at the zoo.
Rolly and Mason both managed to find a good-sized branch to perch themselves upon and began to study the ground below. Each snap and rustle made their hearts leap in their chests.
“What about him?” Mason asked, indicating Weasel, who had found the marshmallows and was toasting several over the fire, oblivious to reason and common sense.
“What about him?” Rolly replied rhetorically, checking his gun to make sure the safety was off. “If he don’t have enough sense to defend himself, he ain’t our problem. If we want to get out of this, we’re going to have to worry about ourselves.”
It’s like that weird comic strip, Mason thought as he studied the ground below for signs of attack. What in the hell was that called? The Far Side. The one where the animals were always talking like humans.
“You know something, Mason?” Rolly asked, a crooked smile on his face. “One can’t help but recognize the irony in this situation, us being hunters and all.”
Mason laughed aloud and Weasel looked up at them curiously. “That’s why I like you, Rolly. No matter how bad things get, you never lose your sense of humor. You lost two wives—your brother was killed last year in that motorcycle accident, Get’s dead. Your mama—”
“Uh, Mason, just now might not be a good time to bring up Mama, may she rest in peace.”
“Sorry, Rolly, I—” he looked down, and bit his tongue. He ignored the pain and the rivulet of blood that seeped down his chin.
A spiked buck and a black bear strolled into the clearing like two friends out for a romp, the bear walking on its two hind legs like a human. Weasel began to chuckle, clapping his hands with glee. He placed a hotdog upon a stick and held it out to his new ‘friends.’
“Bambi want some pig?” he asked, giggling.
The deer leaned down and smelled the proffered gift, recoiling in almost human disgust. It glanced at the bear, who, with a quick swipe of its paw, removed Weasel’s hand, sending it slapping sickeningly into the trunk of the tree that Mason and Rolly were hiding in. Weasel screamed once and then stopped as his throat was removed an instant later. The wet fountain of blood hissed red into the campfire as Weasel, a split second later, joined it, his hair crackling as his skull caught fire.
“Ixtli!” shouted the deer. “Ixtli trat!”
“So what’s ‘trat’ mean?” asked Rolly giving their position away.
“I bet it means Die redneck,” replied Mason, switching aim back and forth from one target to another, unable to decide which to kill first. Rolly solved the problem.
The bear looked up at them and roared, falling over, its head exploding in a spray of red mist.
“Take that you Yogi Bear motherfucker!” Rolly shouted from his branch. “You and Boo Boo ain’t gonna be stealin’ the picnic baskets around Yellowstone anymore, are ya!”
“Ixtli!” the deer shrieked and vanished back into the woods. Mason eyed Rolly, studying his friend. That last line about Yogi Bear was a bit much, even considering the situation.
Rolly glared back at Mason with wild eyes and a huge shit-eating grin. “Hey, Hey, Boo Boo!” He shouted out hysterically. Suddenly, he stopped, his face serious once again. “I just figured out something, Mason.”
“What’s that?” Mason asked, staring at his friend cautiously.
“Bears can climb trees.”
“The bear’s dead, Rolly,” said Mason, his worry over his friend’s sanity escalating.
“Ever read Goldilocks? Everyone knows there’s three bears. We got one earlier. I just killed me one, now. That leaves one more,” Rolly began giggling, sounding eerily like Weasel. “And I bet we taste just fucking right. Human porridge. That’s what we are Mason. Human fuckin’ porridge.”
Mason nodded gravely at his funny farm bound friend. He looked down and patted his shotgun. “Well, he’s not going to be climbing this tree, I can tell you that.”
“Shhh!” Rolly hissed. “Here they come again.”
What looked like the same spiked buck walked into the clearing, this time followed by three others and two bears. As the animals began to talk amongst themselves in that strange language, Rolly elbowed Mason. “See,” he whispered too loudly. “I told you there was three.” His smile was too wide, too happy, too insane.
“Don’t shoot at them,” Mason suggested with a whisper as Rolly nodded. “Maybe they’ll go away after awhile. They may not know we’re here.”
Suddenly, Rolly, who had been shifting position, fell to the ground with a shriek and a loud whooompf.
The animal’s conversation suddenly stopped as each turned and regarded Rolly, sprawled in a lump of arms and legs. There was a few seconds of complete silence before the animals looked over at him and began to cackle, their bodies shaking with mysterious hilarity. It was the scariest sound that Mason had ever heard.
The bear was on Rolly in a second, a mass of fur, swinging claws and blood sprays. It was then that he finally screamed; a thin whine that went up and up until it was replaced by the wet sounds of the bears feeding on flesh. Mason watched as Rolly’s head, still wearing the John Deere hat, rolled against the broken body of Get, a look of utter surprise still on the unmarred face.
The deer watched, like an audience at a ball game, every once in awhile speaking to each other and breaking out into laughter that sounded like a mixture of a human and a cat. Mason, who had been almost invisible among the leaves and kudzu, leaned down on the branch to relieve the ache in his arm and then watched with queasy fascination as his cigarette lighter fell to the ground below, hitting with an audible thud.
The animals all stopped moving at once. In an almost slow motion maneuver they all looked up, piercing Mason with their hate. He felt the urine run into his jeans with a hot rush, soaking and warming his crotch. He opened fire with his shotgun, getting two deer and a bear before he ran out of ammunition.
“Jesus wept,” Mason whispered, dropping his empty gun to the ground below. “Now what?”
The animals were pouring into the clearing. A pack of wolves, several slim red foxes, a dozen or so squirrels, three white rabbits, a trio of chipmunks and a huge white possum that appeared to swagger with each step. They began to circle the campfire in a strange dance, bumping and grinding, playful bites mixed with nips and barks of glee.
“I’m fucked.”
Mason watched, wishing he had written that great novel, or a book of short stories. Hell, he would have settled on being the best graffiti artist in town; ‘cause he saw that one of the bears had reached into the campfire and was now holding a flaming brand before him, the flames licking promisingly into the air.
“Smoky and his buddies have just discovered fire,” Mason said to his dead friends. He couldn’t help but smile, despite the situation.
“People don’t start forest fires. Animals do,” Mason growled madly in his best Smoky the Bear impression. It was the last thing he said.
About Weston Ochse
Weston Ochse (pronounced 'Oaks) (1965 - P
resent) lives in Southern Arizona with his wife, and fellow author, Yvonne Navarro, and Great Danes, Pester Ghost Palm Eater, Goblin Monster Dog and Mad Dog Ghoulie Sonar Brain. For entertainment he races tarantula wasps, wrestles rattlesnakes, and bakes in the noonday sun. His work has won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, been finalists for Bram Stoker Awards for Long Fiction and Short Fiction, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for short fiction. His work has also appeared in anthologies, magazines and professional writing guides. His novels include Scarecrow Gods, Empire of Salt and Blaze of Glory. He thinks it's damn cool that he's had stories in comic books.
Weston holds Bachelor's Degrees in American Literature and Chinese Studies from Excelsior College. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University. Weston is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and current intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been to more than fifty countries and speaks Chinese with questionable authority. Weston is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a purple belt in Ryu Kempo Jujitsu and a green belt in the Hawaiian martial art of Kuai Lua.
Visit Weston online
www.westonochse.com
About David Whitman
David Whitman is the author of the novel Harlan (a darkly comic tale of teenage suicide). He is also the co-author of the new collection Appalachian Galapagos: A Scary Rednecks Collection. Other works include his critically acclaimed novella DeadFellas (soon to be made into a major motion picture).
Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors Page 23