by Bryn Roar
“God save us,” said his date, Shayna O’Hara.
*******
“One more,” said Bud, spotting Josie on the weight bench. Her arms shook as she pressed the weights up to the full extent of her reach. “That’s ten,” he said, helping her settle the bar safely onto the rack. “Um…good job, Red.”
She lay there on the padded bench, looking up at Bud, breathing hard. The big doofus had that gleam in his eyes again. What the hell? she thought, tracking his eyes to her heaving chest. He was fixated on the front of her sweaty T-shirt, his mouth open, practically drooling. Josie realized she’d have to start wearing a bra when working out. Either that or risk getting mauled. She snapped her fingers in front of her boobs. “Earth to Bud! Earth to Bud!” She sat up on the bench and pulled the wet shirt away from her chest, laughing at the disappointed look on Bud’s face. “Are we done here yet, studly?”
As if coming out of a daze, Bud blinked and shook his head. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”
He sat down beside her, his sweaty thigh pressing into hers. She didn’t recoil away from it, like she did in the past. Love means never being grossed out by your boyfriend’s excretions. Josie giggled.
“I can hit the heavy bag later on. How ‘bout we get Rusty and Tubby and get some target practice in? I bet ol’ Tubby would like that!”
Josie groaned and fell back onto the weight bench. “Jaysus pleezus! No more target practice! I already shoot better than feckin’ Dirty Harry. And it’s sooo boring!”
A lecherous smile stretched across Bud’s face. “Did you have something else in mind, my little chickadee?”
It was the worst W.C. Fields imitation Josie had ever heard. His hand dropped onto her thigh, just inside the ragged hem of her cut offs. Josie swatted it away, only to watch it alight on her knee like a stubborn fly.
She laughed. “Shoo fly! Shoo!” She grabbed his hand and held it still. “How ‘bout a swim first, aye? I could really use a dip.” Josie pinched her nostrils shut. “And by the noxious fumes steaming off your bod so could you!”
Bud sniffed his armpit. “Whew! You’re right! But we can’t go to the lake, remember? The Pines have been banned by everybody but the Pope and his mama.”
Josie clucked her tongue. “Poor Jethro. Such a big, beautiful bod, and yet so hopelessly stupid.”
Bud wrestled her to the floor, tickling her until Josie shrieked. “NO, BUDDY BOY! NO! STOP THAT! STOP! HA! HA! HA! HA! Bud, I’m begging ya! STOP!”
Bud complied, but only after the slap-and-tickle noticeably aroused him. Josie saw the cause of his embarrassment as he stood up and scurried away.
“HAH!” she crowed vindictively. “Serves you right for tickling me! You know how much I hate that shite! I hope you get the worst case of blue balls ever!”
“Fat chance of that!” Bud retorted over his shoulder. “You showed me how to take care of that last night.” His hand dropped into his shorts and began rearranging the furniture.
Josie gasped in outrage, and Bud took off snickering, his tented shorts leading the way. Josie looked for something to throw at him. “Yeah? Like I showed you! I bet you do that a dozen times a day, you skeevy perv!”
“A dozen times! Ha! You wish!”
Josie skidded to a stop. She stood there looking at him, her hands planted on her hips. “Now why on earth would I wish that you beat off twelve times a day?”
Bud burst out laughing and soon Josie was joining him. They fell to the floor in a hysterical pile, with Josie somehow ending up in Bud’s arms.
The laughing stopped at once, replaced with heavy breathing. Bud stared into the depths of Josie’s green eyes.
“No, Bud, I’m all sweaty,” she said, pushing him away. Despite her feeble protests, Bud recognized the quivering need in her voice. The same need currently driving him mad. She halfheartedly pushed him away, and Bud pulled her right back into his arms. His hands crept inside her shirt and roamed around to her smooth back, gently caressing, finger-painting in the slick perspiration. Josie sat up a little and scootched up on Bud’s lap. He groaned in pain, or was that pleasure? Josie couldn’t tell which. She was facing him now, their noses touching, her legs wrapped around his waist, their eyes locked together. She felt his rock hard member underneath her arse and squirmed around on it playfully, stopping only when she saw him shudder. Their eyes probed into one another, delving deeper and deeper into the emerald and aqua depths, until their souls seemed to reach out and touch. An electrical discharge briefly and forever uniting them.
The moment passed, and all that remained was their driving needs. Their lips fell together and they seemed to feed off one another, their tongues entwining like copulating snakes. Bud’s hands found their way to her breasts and he took pleasure from their glorious bounty.
Like a little boy with a brand new toy, he is, Josie thought bemusedly. She leaned back with her hands on the polished concrete floor, allowing him to lift up her shirt. Taking pleasure in his pleasure.
“Damn, girl,” he grinned in awe. “I mean, damn!”
Josie stood up and pulled her shirt back down.
Bud sat there, crestfallen. “Awww, Joe! What’d you do that for?”
“Take me swimming and I’ll let you play with them all you want.”
“Really?” he said, jumping up, no longer embarrassed by the tent pole in his shorts. “No fooling?”
Josie had often wondered if God was a Man or a Woman. Now she knew. God was most definitely of the female persuasion. Because that hilarious thing poking up between Mans’ legs had to be some sort of cosmic prank. The Heavenly equivalent to a whoopee cushion. It was funny as a flatulent deaf man, oblivious to the rooty-toot-toots burping from his backside. And when it came to their precious pee-pees, men were just as oblivious. Hell, proud, even! It was all Josie could do to keep from laughing.
“No fooling, Bud. Now how ‘bout tucking that pistol away before it goes off? I keep thinking it’s gonna spout one of those cartoon flags that say “Bang!”
*******
Lester Noonan looked up from the bloody wreckage that was once his father, to see an impossible mirage standing right outside his room.“Josie?” the guttural voice asked from far, far away.“Josie O’Hara?”
He blinked in surprise at the strange new sound croaking out of his mouth. He stood up, glaring at the girl who’d spurned him time and again. As if this was somehow all her fault. This change, this inner turmoil, this clamor inside his pounding head. Maybe if he passed on the sickness he’d be free of this unrelenting torture...
His hand reached down to his swollen cock, rubbing it through his befouled trousers. His skin felt prickly hot all over, and the desire to rid himself of the ridiculous costume covering his body became all consuming. He tore at them as he moved towards his prey. Shedding the last of his humanity, the way a snake sheds its skin…
*******
Shayna O’Hara ran into Andy Noonan in a bar ironically named The Last Call. She was down to her last two dollars, not even enough to pay her fare for the ferry ride home, and was getting up to leave for her sister’s, who lived nearby in town, when Andy stumbled in, already three sheets to the wind. She checked her hair and makeup with a compact from her purse, applied more lipstick, and strutted over to the bar where Andy had taken a stool.
It didn’t occur to Shayna that Andy Noonan was beneath her. The two of them used to be as far apart on the social strata as Elle McPherson and the Elephant Man. The playing field had been somewhat leveled since. Shayna had fallen a long way from the days when she was the sexiest Thang on Moon, sought after by many of the finest young studs in Beaufort County. Shayna wasn’t interested then, and she sure as hell wasn’t interested now. For her heart and soul belonged to a dead man. Stoking the fires of her grief and bitterness had become her sole reasons for living these days. Moving on, finding love again, these were simply distractions to her neverending pity party, causes long since abandoned by her shattered heart. It was too late to redeem herself, and Shay
na knew it. Life for her now was the bottle and the bed—whether sleeping one off or shacking up with some asshole she had met in a bar. Paying for her drinks in the only way left to her: Cruising, boozing, and losing. For a time she had tried to be a good mother to Josie and Joel (or so she told herself), but the big nigger had turned her babies against her. She still cared for them in a distracted sort of way, she supposed. If nothing else, they kept the house from becoming haunted. Truth was, Shayna had become so bitter that she’d lost sight of what was most important in her life. And how she had failed the two of them. Andy Noonan was the biggest loser on Moon! Hell, maybe in all of Beaufort County. But beggars and boozers can’t afford to be choosers, as Andy Noonan had so wisely pointed out to her that very night.
Shayna was broke, her next welfare check not due for another week. She could manage on the food Josie brought into the house, but not without some liquid comfort to dull away the pain. Prostituting herself for booze or money had long ago ceased to shame her. So when Shayna slid onto the stool next to Andy Noonan, she gave his social status nary a thought.
Ignoring the contemptuous looks from the bartender, they’d worked out an arrangement. For a case of Andy’s discount vodka, she’d spend a day with him, doing whatever he pleased. Clean his toilet, cook his supper, suck his cock. What was the difference? She didn’t care if he pawed at her tits, pumped his stale seed into her various orifices. She was dead in all those places, anyway. Her only caveat was that he at least take a shower. If Andy Noonan had been a cartoon, he would have had stink lines radiating from his body, and flies encircling his head.
They’d slept on the nine a.m. Sunday ferry coming home. From the harbor, they’d hiked to Andy’s singlewide down at the end of Cemetery Road. Andy had lost his driver’s license after multiple DUI’s, and Shayna had long ago sold her wheels for the same sad reason. Andy’s old Chevy Impala now roosted atop several cinder blocks in his weed-choked lot, its parts cannibalized for drinking dough. A creaky Dodge Duster stood parked beside it.
Having been inside the Noonan trailer twice before, Shayna hadn’t been too surprised at the mess. The stench, however, was so bad it nearly slapped her sober. What she witnessed in Lester's bedroom dashed what little buzz remained into stone cold sobriety.
She’d wandered over when she heard Andy beating up the poor kid, her objections snatched from her lips by the satanic cast in Lester’s shining eyes. She’d watched, too shocked to move, as Lester leapt for Andy’s throat. Afterwards, the boy had supped at the terrible wound. Like an infant monstrosity suckling at the teat of some unspeakable nursemaid. The look on Lester’s face as the blood pumped into his mouth wasn’t unlike the one on her babies’ faces when feeding at her own milk-engorged breast. One of contentment, of satiate pleasure.
While he drank his fill, Lester’s fingers tenderly opened and closed against his father’s slack face. The rasping sound his dirty fingernails made, scratching against his father’s stubbled cheek, nearly drove Shayna mad.
By the time she realized what she was seeing was real, and not some alcohol-induced vision of impending insanity, the boy finally noticed her standing there in his open doorway. Blood dripped like a biblical plague from his mouth and hands. His lips twitched spasmodically, lifting away from his bared teeth in strange undulating waves. Saliva foamed continually at the corners of his mouth, giving Lester the appearance of a rabid dog. A ragged piece of Andy’s flesh still clung to Lester’s gnashing teeth, reminding Shayna of that movie Jaws, when the shark’s fangs rippled with the torn flesh of the fisherman, Quint. It was a scene, sure enough, straight from one of her daughter’s horror books.
“Josie?”
The croaking voice was full of angry desire…wet, rough and knowing. The gargle/speak penetrated through Shayna’s selfish exterior and throttled her subconscious awake. The following epiphany was as cruel as the monster’s crimson eyes. Josie! This thing wants my Josie! Oh, my babies! MY BABIES! What have I done to you! What furious Hell have my iniquities wrought?
It was sad it took a moment like this for Shayna to realize she still loved her children—enough even to die for them. They would never know that now. For the first time since that chill October night, Shayna lifted up a prayer to God. An earnest entreaty that this thing would never find her daughter. Oh, God, please!
“Josie O’Hara?”
“That’s right, sugar britches,” Shayna cooed sweetly. “Come to Mama.” Having no hope of escaping, she urged the monster closer. Her only chance was in somehow satisfying its dark needs. Maybe then this rough beast would forget all about her baby girl. Her back came up against a wall and Shayna made no further move to retreat. The boy was yanking away at his pud like some manic monkey. Maybe Lester’ll shoot his wad before he can rape me. If he does, will he kill me outright, or leave me alone? Lord, please hear my prayer…
He crossed over the threshold of his bedroom, his shadow falling on her, his teeth chattering a cold lament. Shayna barely noticed. She couldn’t look away from those shining red eyes. It was like looking into the fires of Hell, those eyes. To a hungry place she was destined to attend…
*******
Bud made a left at Town Hall Lane and drove the Jeep right over the curb at the completion of the dead-end road. Bouncing right onto the sands of the South Side Beach. It was low tide so there was more shore to choose from than usual. Because it sat lower than the rest of the island, and was more prone to erosion, the south side of Moon was largely undeveloped. Just a few tourist cottages further up the shore, and usually empty this time of year. There wasn’t much in the way of vegetation, either. A scruffy collection of scrub pines, palmetto trees, saw grass and the wheat-like sea oats, barely subsisting on a wildly undulating landscape of fine white sugar sand. The stunted trees leaned forever sideways, buffeted nonstop as they were by the crosswinds.
At least on the South Side you didn’t have to contend with the sand burrs. They’d inexplicably spared most of the island’s southern exposure.
Because of its isolation much of the year, the South Side Beach was a popular hangout among the older kids. They could play their music loud, drink their ill-gotten beer and wine, maybe smoke some weed if they were lucky enough to have scored any. And fuck like randy little rabbits in the sand dunes. Rupert Henderson let them be for the most part. Rousting them was too much work anyway for the always sleepy sheriff. Besides, at least out here they weren’t bothering anyone. It being Sunday, a school night, the beach was deserted. Not so much as a sea gull in sight.
“See?” Josie said, smirking. “I told you we’d have the shore to ourselves.”
Bud was about to remark that he didn’t recall arguing the point, then realized Josie wasn’t the kind of girl who lost many arguments. “Yes, dear,” he said, smiling to himself. He pointed ahead at the Circle Jerk, coming up on their left. “No one’s hanging out there, either. Look. Their fire from last night is still smoldering.” A large ring of blackened stones designated the spot at the high-tide mark, where most weekend parties took place. The charred husks within the fire ring were still smoking. “They must’ve been out here all night.”
Not for the first time he wondered what kind of parent lets their kids’ party all night long. In his opinion, that kind of so-called Freedom was just a parents’ way of saying: “Do what you want. I don’t give a shit.”The only reason his dad and Rusty’s folks gave them so much slack was because they never abused it. Never gave them a reason to restrict their liberties. In Josie’s case, she just had a damn good head on her shoulders. Otherwise, with her boozy mother, she could’ve easily ended up like Tansy Wilky. Besides, theCreeps had never even been to one of these late night debaucheries! They’d heard the stories, though. The booze, drugs, and supposedly wild sex.
Three years ago, Debra Washowski drowned on her own puke out here. Her friends, thinking she was sleeping one off, partied around her as if she was part of the scenery. Laughing and carrying on, they covered her prostrate body with a pyramid o
f beer cans—not realizing anything was amiss until several hours later, when the tottering pile of aluminum empties still stood there undisturbed. Six months ago, Henry Carnicky knocked up 15-year-old Lily Bascomb, while his girlfriend, and Lily’s best friend, Tasha Teese lay passed out beside them in the sand dunes.