by David M
I began to find my truck in very strange places and often sporting battle damage I didn’t remember inflicting. There were often notes under the wiper blade telling me to move the truck or it will be towed. I even found it a few blocks away in a cemetery one morning. This time the note said, “Move your truck or it will be buried.”
The most frightening morning was when I found the truck across the street from the police station. It was perfectly straight in the parking spot and there were no beer cans on the street. I thought I was in the clear. But as I approached the truck I could hear a distinct rattle and hum. The truck was still running.
I reached in the truck’s open window and snatched the keys out of the ignition. I quickly walked the short distance back to my apartment and closed the door. I knew I needed to sober up before I tried to move the truck again. The police had to know the truck belonged to the town drunk. I felt like they were watching me. I became paranoid, so I didn’t move the truck for several days. I was sure that as soon as I put the key in the ignition I would be arrested.
I began to take notice of how much I had been drinking and it worried me. I began trying to control how much, and how often I drank but with little result. The only time I could go without a drink for any length of time was when I had my kids, and that was only one day every other weekend.
I started to think that I drank as much as I did because I had nothing substantial in my life to focus on. When I was working I seemed to keep my drinking at a reasonable level, sort of. When I was married I only drank at night, sort of. Maybe I just needed a girlfriend.
Chapter fourteen:
The first girl I met seemed a little odd. She said she had an on again, off again relationship with her boyfriend. She only lived a few doors from me, so I kept a safe distance for a while. Eventually though, we began our own on again, off again relationship. It was a great distraction.
I suspected the relationship with her other boyfriend was on again when he was home from work, and off again when he worked the night shift. I knew this would lead to trouble, but she was a lot of fun. Soon though, I needed a distraction from my distraction.
It wasn’t long before the stripper and the girl from the gas station came along. The gas station girl was nice. She was separated from her husband and had a house full of children. She had a job and seemed to be doing alright. She seemed to be normal in every way. I knew I had to keep this one at arm’s length until I could figure out what was wrong with her. She was a mystery.
There was no mystery with the stripper. She was scary in every sense of the word. We met at an end-of-the-road strip joint in a town that had died many years ago. This was the place young crack whores picked up clients and old strippers went to die.
I showed up one night a few minutes before they opened and was let in by the bartender. She was a retired stripper but still looked pretty good. Unfortunately, she was also the owner’s girlfriend so I mentally crossed her off my list of options.
The place was BYOB, so I walked in and sat at the bar with a bottle of whiskey. The bartender laughed and said most people bring a six-pack. I responded with a smile that most bartenders serve more than just soda. We had a few drinks and chatted while we waited for the dancers to straggle in.
I told her I had bad luck in places like this. I confessed that I was an easy target, and usually spent all of my money on the girl no one else wanted. I was just too nice a guy to tell the homely girls to go away. I asked her to make sure this didn’t happen to me tonight and she agreed. In return, I promised her a nice tip.
The first two or three girls to hit the stage were fun to look at, but I was enjoying my bottle more than the show. The next girl up caught my attention, but for all the wrong reasons. She was short, round and her hair had been bleached to the breaking point. She had a giant face that looked as though she had pressed it against a bakery window for far too long. She bore a striking resemblance to Miss Piggy.
I tried to look away, but it was like trying to look away from a train wreck. Sure enough, when the song ended she came straight for me with a big clown smile on her face. She waddled past the empty tables surrounding the stage with her arms slightly extended for balance.
Her massive ass swung back and forth knocking tables and chairs out of alignment. She didn’t stop until she was pressed firmly against me with her face only inches from mine. So this was what Pennywise looked like without all the clown makeup.
I was just about to appeal to my friend behind the bar for help when she called to the creature. Though she looked somewhat disappointed, the bulbous burlesque girl wobbled to the other end of the bar to see what her boss wanted. I quickly turned my attention back to my empty glass. In one swift motion it was filled, emptied and filled again.
Suddenly, I heard a commotion from the other end of the bar. I looked down to find Miss Piggy blubbering all over herself, surrounded by half naked women attempting to console her. I looked to the bartender, but she had her back to the menagerie, washing clean glasses as though nothing was out of sorts.
When I looked back to the huddle, I noticed one of the girls was coming my way. She had her fists clenched and fire shooting from her eyes. The sound of spiked heels grew louder until she was standing right in front of me. She had her hands on her hips, wearing only spiked heels and a black thong. I started at her feet and let my eyes slowly travel up her long legs and perfect body to her long, curly, strawberry-blond hair.
She was about to launch into what I’m sure would have been a world-class ass chewing, but I cut her off before she had the chance.
“Jesus Christ, you’re fucking beautiful,” I said.
She flinched as though she had been slapped across the face. Apparently she had not expected the conversation to start off this way, and now she was off her game. She stood there for a moment collecting her thoughts, but now I had the upper hand and I wasn’t letting it go.
“You look angry,” I said. “Is there something wrong? And what’s going on with your friend over there? She looks upset; is there anything I can do?”
“You know damn well what’s wrong with her,” she replied. “You told the bartender to keep her away from you. Now she thinks she’s ugly.”
I looked to the sobbing girl at the other end of the bar and tried to consider my response carefully. Regrettably, the whiskey responded for me.
“Well, just between us,” I said, “she is pretty hideous, but I never asked the bartender to keep her away from me. And I certainly didn’t say anything that would have offended her. She walked away before I could even say hello.”
“How can you sit there and call her hideous, and not expect her to be offended,” she asked.
“That’s simple,” I said. “She didn’t hear me say it. Besides, you go both ways. Do you find her attractive?”
“What the hell makes you think I go both ways,” she yelled, but quickly reconsidered. “Okay, so I go both ways. But it’s not my fault she’s sitting over there crying.”
“Look,” I replied, “I don’t see how I could possibly be at fault here, but I can’t stand to see the poor thing over there drowning in her own tears. What can I do to make her feel better?”
She considered the question for a moment, and then smiled. She sat down on my lap and put an arm around me. She gave me a devious look and asked, “Would you let her give you a lap dance?”
I summoned every bit of poker face I could manage, smiled back at her and said, “Send her over.”
She kissed me on the cheek and slid off of my lap. When she reached the gaggle that was still surrounding the tubby little mess, the mood went from morbid to giddy. Suddenly everyone had a makeup bag in their hand. It looked like they were dressing a Thanksgiving turkey for prom.
By the time the little freak show bumbled her way back across the bar in my direction, she was in full clown regalia. She looked more like Pennywise now than ever. Damn it, I thought; why does this always happen to me.
She grabbed my hand and
drug me across the room to a private booth, and within seconds I was being beat to death by a pair of overstuffed breasts. I had managed to hold onto my whiskey bottle but was unable to fend the overzealous stripper off long enough to take a drink. Silently, my strawberry-blond angel slipped in and stole the bottle away for safe keeping. She pulled up a chair a few feet away and sat back, enjoying the show.
When the song was finally over I handed the girl twenty dollars and tried to slip out from under her, but she asked if I’d like another dance. I looked to my angel for help, but she just gave an ominous nod.
“How could I resist,” I said as I handed her another twenty.
When the song was over I was finally rescued. My redhead came and led me away by the hand. The butterball was about to protest when my rescuer explained to her that it was only fair for her to share the wealth. Piggy gave me a big hug and left to work the room with her new-found confidence. She was the bell of the ball, and in no time she was guilting the rest of the patrons out of their money.
I was suddenly popular again with the other dancers, and one at a time they came over to give me a hug and kiss, and tell me what a nice thing I had done for their friend. The redhead never left my side.
Eventually I looked down to the other end of the bar. The bartender gave me a sly wink and a smile. She had orchestrated the entire evening. This woman was a genius. But there was something else in her eyes that I could feel in my spine. It was a warning.
It was clear to everyone by now that I would be going home with my new angel, but because of stripper protocol we couldn’t leave the bar together. We made plans to meet at an all-night diner, but we never went inside. I followed her to a house in a bad section of the city, and that’s when things got weird.
Chapter fifteen:
Her house stood alone, with row homes on either side. It was as though the houses had all been attached at one time, but the others had moved away out of fear. The houses on this street were all in various stages of disrepair, and it was hard to tell if they were abandoned or just neglected. Hers was by far the worst.
She parked her car in front of the house and I pulled down the street a few car-lengths in front of her incase I needed to make a quick getaway. There were no streetlights and the only other signs of inhabitation were a few cars scattered on the block. Otherwise, the street was lifeless.
I had momentarily lost sight of her in the darkness when I caught a glimpse of her standing in a postage-stamp sized front yard. As I approached, I was stunned, and not just a little fascinated, to see her undressing. First her blouse, then her bra, skirt and black thong silently fell to the ground. She stepped out of her shoes and walked to me wearing nothing but moonlight and a smile.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned in as though she was going to kiss me, but at the last second she turned her head. She slid her cheek along mine and whispered into my ear.
“I’ve got to let the dogs know we have company so they don’t kill you when you walk in the door,” she said. “Wait right here.”
She turned and sauntered the short distance to her front steps, ascended to the porch and through the front door. I noticed that she didn’t pause to unlock the door, and thought it strange that she was so trusting in this neighborhood.
I looked up and down the street and for the first time saw signs of life. Several curtains had been pulled back to watch the spectacle. Now that she was out of sight they were falling back into place. Apparently, her neighbors had seen this show before.
She appeared in the doorway a few moments later, still wearing nothing and perfectly silhouetted by the light coming from inside.
“It’s safe to come in now,” she said.
As I entered the house I was immediately overwhelmed by the worst stench I had ever experienced. The miasma was so thick it burned my throat all the way to my lungs. There was an obvious odor of large dogs, but there was something even more overwhelming than that. It smelled like death.
I slowly looked around the dimly lit room. The furniture was old and everything was covered in thick matted dog hair. There were piles of clothing everywhere, but it was impossible to tell what was clean or dirty. I doubted if anything in this house would ever be clean again.
That’s when I saw them. Sitting in the far corner of the room were two of the largest German shepherds I had ever seen in my life. I have always loved dogs, and they have always seemed to like me. Under normal circumstances I would have made two new friends almost instantly, but these were not normal circumstances and I knew instantly that these were not normal dogs. They were killers.
Most dogs will only maintain eye contact for a few seconds before looking away. The rule of thumb is that the first one to look away is subordinate to the other. For the first time in my life; I dropped my gaze first. I knew I would never have any control over these shepherds. I was a guest in their house, but I was not welcomed.
“Smart boy,” said the redhead as though she had been reading my every thought. “Let me show you the rest of the house, and give you some basic rules.”
“Rules,” I asked.
“Oh yes, there are rules. Not my rules, their rules,” she said.
She picked up a box of incense and lit a half-dozen sticks. That’s when I noticed the shrine. My first thought was Voodoo, but I didn’t see any images of The Virgin Mary or other saints, so my thoughts turned to Santeria. I simply couldn’t be sure. My own religious beliefs were quite a bit outside the box, so I didn’t give it much thought.
As she placed the burning incense on the alter she began to explain the rules.
“If you do anything the dogs don’t like they will warn you. Just stop what you’re doing and ask me what you’ve done wrong. If the dogs think you are hurting me they will attack. If they think you are upsetting me, they will warn you; then they’ll attack. The last thing,” she said as we walked up the stairs to the bedroom; “don’t ever close a door. If the dogs can’t see you at all times they will go crazy.”
We stopped at the top of the stairs and she pointed to a gaping hole in her bedroom door large enough to slide a television through.
“What the hell happened there,” I asked.
“Somebody broke the rules,” she replied.
“What happened to him,” I nervously inquired.
“You don’t want to know,” she said. “But it didn’t end well. Just follow the rules and you’ll be fine. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the dogs will follow us everywhere. ”
I turned around and sure enough, there they were. I really needed a fucking drink at this point, and she could tell. She threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and once again took my hand.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s beer in the refrigerator and whiskey in the cabinet. Later on, I have a surprise for you. Have you ever had absinth?”
It was already after 4 am and I was rapidly losing steam. The stench in the house had not died down, and I had not grown accustom to it. How could anyone live like this? Besides, my date had started out the evening naked and was now fully dressed. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
I didn’t think I could have sex in this house anyway. The mess everywhere, the dogs, the smell, the piles of clothing…that’s when I noticed, not all of the clothing belonged to a woman. I spotted a pair of boots in the corner. They were covered in concrete and had to be a size thirteen. Whoever owned those boots had at least eighty to a hundred pounds on me.
She saw me look at the boots and said they were her husband’s. He was in jail for murder. This just kept getting more and more bizarre. I quickly finished her whiskey and went to the kitchen for beer. I carried three cans back into the dining room and sat at the table. Her husband was a killer, her dogs were killers; what was she, Susie fucking homemaker. I didn’t think so. I felt like I was in a Rob Zombie movie, and at any moment Sherry Moon Zombie across the table was going to burry a meat cleaver in my face.
She vanished into the kitchen and returned a
few seconds later with, what looked like, a very old bottle. For all I knew she had picked it up at the liquor store yesterday and it just looked ancient because it had spent a night in her house of horrors. Is this what I would look like in the morning?
I had never witnessed the ritual which apparently goes with drinking absinth. It went far beyond just mixing a drink. There were crystal glasses and silver spoons involved, and sugar cubes. I don’t think I could repeat the process now if I had to. By now it was after five in the morning and I was drifting into a drunken haze.
She turned her chair to face mine and leaned over to kiss me. It had the desired effect, and I was conscious once again. She slid a crystal champagne flute in front of me. Then she flipped the top open on a large ring she had on her left hand and dumped two pills onto the table. Without saying a word she placed one pill on her tong and the other on mine.
I didn’t ask what it was. I didn’t care. Maybe it was something to keep me awake. Maybe it would send me down the rabbit hole for good. It was even possible that I was taking part in a murder suicide. I really didn’t care. This entire evening had been a perfect metaphor for the last twenty years of my life, and as always a drink and a pill seemed to be my only way out. She sipped her absinth and swallowed her pill. I drank mine like a shot, chasing the pill with it. Then I went to the kitchen for three more beers.
Chapter sixteen:
I woke up on a couch by the front door. I was fully dressed but covered in dirt from head to toe. There was light blazing through the window and I felt sicker than I ever had in my life. My head was pounding and my stomach was in absolute agony. I laid there for a moment trying to recall the night before, but nothing was coming to me. I had to get out of here.
I swung my legs off of the couch and gingerly sat up. That’s when I heard a voice from across the room.