by TJ Park
It floated out of the dark, unafraid of confronting the harvester any longer. It appeared the spotlights were no longer a vexation to it. The familiar seemed not to mind a world lit up in red.
***
Doug never let go of the gun during the attack. Even when passed out briefly under the couch, its cool hard touch against his face had kept him from a full flailing panic while the flesh was taken out in chunks from his back. It kept him steady now, while he used it to bludgeon the dog on top of him.
The dog was tearing at his outthrust arm shielding his throat. Two solid blows with the gun butt made it let go. But it only swapped one arm for the other. Doug’s firm grip on the gun was made firmer by the crushing jaws that closed over it.
Someone let out a shrill woman’s scream. It was him. But he would not let go of the gun no matter how bad the pain. Then he made the mistake of taking a look at what had hold of it, and he did let go, as simple as that.
The dog backed off with its prize, solely concerned with the gun for the time being, shaking it savagely in its jaws.
Doug was so devastated by what he saw he remained motionless, lying on his back, his legs open, arms limp at his sides. He was an open passage for the dog to return and tear out his throat.
At first he thought it was a large hairless hound made up to be a travesty of a woman, its final humiliation being crowned with a wig. At first.
The dog took a brief gathering breath between growls, its wrinkled muzzle smoothing out around the gun, and Doug realised it was not a malformed dog at all, but a disfigured human being. He would never have believed worse could be done to the woman Cutter had raped and killed … but here was the proof.
Selena. She’d been … remade.
She was naked, except now her skin hung puckered where the normal muscle mass was missing, while other places were shiny and taut, like sausage casings, filled with muscle that didn’t normally belong. Her bones were remodelled to fit a rough canine shape; most obvious where her legs, broken below the knee, bent backward and reset into a dog’s hindquarters, and the ribcage pried open into a barrel chest.
Her fingers were gone, hacked into nubs to make paws. Her cheeks were split to the back molars to form a wider mouth, her lower jaw jutting like a bulldog’s, the front teeth filed to make fangs. Her ears hung in torn flaps. A tongue lolled out on a stretched rope of muscle.
Doug knew who’d done it. It was just another one of his nasty little jokes. Cutter had truly turned the woman into his bitch. And that was how Doug had to think of her now, too. To think of her as a woman would paralyse him. He’d be slaughtered.
He couldn’t believe there was much of Selena left inside there anyway, not judging by its behaviour. The familiar’s bitch shook the gun in her jaws again, the hair on her head whipping from side to side. Finally, she let go. The gun clattered to the floor at her feet, and she pounced on it and caught it between her jaws again, the torn flaps of her lips vibrating visibly as she growled. She released the gun again. When it stayed still this time, she left it alone.
Doug got the picture.
Not budging, he stayed right where he was, flat on his back, knees slightly bent, head raised, neck straining. It was awkward and worse than uncomfortable. His back was screaming from contact with the floor. But he dared not move. He would only risk his eyes – slowly – looking for anything nearby that could aid him.
The bitch was not satisfied with the fight the gun had put up, imparting short growls in its direction. She had forgotten Doug for the moment. Once he stopped moving, he did not exist to her any more. Cutter had flattened her skull above her eyes to create the right doggy brow. Evidently it also impaired her function as a guard dog.
From the corner of his eye Doug spied something that might be useful. His hand started to drift to his left side. The bitch caught the movement, bent her head and began to growl. He froze. The growl dropped a little, but her attention was on him now.
Without meeting her gaze directly, he watched her, almost expecting to see a rough bristle on her neck. He was appalled to catch a glimpse of a stunted tail. Cutter had seen fit to give her a nub, like a Doberman. Please don’t let it start wagging. He’d either laugh hysterically or vomit or do both. Any reaction would be the end of him.
“Selena!” the witch on the ceiling screamed.
She had been screaming the name the entire time Doug was attacked. It was just a droning accompaniment that hadn’t penetrated the ferocity of their struggle.
The new shout agitated the bitch. She sat down and began to rock back and forth on her haunches, still fully focused on Doug, seeming to blame him for the racket. The growl was replaced by a fretful whine. The whine began to spiral up and up.
“Selena!”
Doug flinched. The bitch or Mitch the witch. He didn’t know who was worse.
“Selena!” Soon she’d be screeching it.
The bitch responded awfully: she barked. It nearly undid Doug. She broke into a volley of short sharp barks, betraying her anxiety.
“Selena!”
“Shut up,” he muttered, doing the best ventriloquist’s trick he could manage, trying to throw his voice so it was nowhere near him. “You’re making it worse.”
The bitch shook with worsening tremors. He could tell she was wavering on whether to attack him again.
Mitch took heed and fell silent. The bitch settled onto her haunches, becalmed.
Doug lowered his left hand as gently as a feather. It ached from being kept in place so long. His chewed forearm and the holes in his back hurt worse, but none of it compared to his neck keeping his head up off the floor. He couldn’t do it for much longer. But what else could he do? He could only stay where he was, moving nothing, looking at nothing, while the bitch decided if he needed seeing to.
***
The familiar did not shy away from Janet now. It appeared to welcome her attention, staying in the open, dressed in the red of the oil-dimmed spotlights. It remained indifferent when she turned the harvester from its endless circle to bear down on it.
The monster trotted away, leading Janet on a slow chase, ranging back and forth in front of the harvester as she struggled to keep pace. She was torn between staying with her children or letting the monster lead her where it would – she chose to follow. If the familiar made a mistake, she’d take advantage of it.
Suddenly the beast turned and charged straight for the whirling, champing reel, running low as if to dive under it. It was doing exactly what she wanted, and that flummoxed her, made her react too slowly.
The monster leapt just before the spinning blades, its blood-drowned shape rapidly filling the windshield.
Janet barely had time to wish she had worn her seatbelt.
***
The witch on the ceiling. Doug on the floor. The bitch sitting guard over him. He had to find a way to break the stalemate. He needed a distraction.
His hand started slowly drifting again, reaching toward the lit candle at his side. The candle had been knocked over during the tussle, but was still burning.
The bitch jerked forward, threateningly. He quit moving, suspended.
“Selena!” the witch cried in despair. She twisted in place as if trying to pull free.
The growl returned. It began to spiral into a higher register.
“Selena!”
“Shut your fucking trap,” Doug said out of the side of his mouth.
The growl rose up and up.
Doug raised his right hand off the floor and began walking it away on two fingers. It was beyond absurd, born of sheer desperation, but as clumsy distractions go, it worked.
The bitch switched her attention to his prancing hand. Her growl dropped a few notches given the more obvious target to track.
While his right hand wavered in the middle of a high step, the left moved to take hold of the candle. It was tough to keep up without watching either hand. The questing fingers of his left drifted into the candle flame. He bit down on the pain and dre
w back. A fat tear ran from his eye. It was the only reaction he couldn’t control.
The prancing hand had reached its limit to his right and proceeded to do high kicks in place, dancing the cancan. God, how had it come to this?
His left hand brushed the candle stem. No quick movements that might startle. Every move like silk. He grasped the candle firmly, raising it slightly to keep the flame going. First step done. But the initial success got the better of him. Forgetting to keep both his hands moving, he turned his head millimetres to spy something he could burn.
The witch on the ceiling screamed.
He did not have to see it to know what was coming.
He dived for the nearest solid object, the jar with Cutter in it. He meant to shove the jar into her jaws, let her choke while he scrambled to his feet. But in his panic his arm had a mind of its own, hurling the jar at the bitch from his place on the floor.
Terror gave power to his arm, but not accuracy. He missed by a long way. The jar exploded against the ceiling. Glass and preservative rained down. He could taste it. It burned his eyes. Pure alcohol. He could have doused the bitch in it and set her alight. He was sorry how things had turned out for her, but not enough to be a dog’s dinner.
Then she was on him.
***
Janet was on the floor, jammed between the seat and console, the harvester still moving. She was pressed against the foot pedals, accelerator fighting brake, while above her, the steering wheel jerked on its own. Rank fumes blew through the gaping hole where the windshield used to be.
She climbed out of the footwell with a white-knuckled grip, scattering the cubes of broken window glass strewn everywhere. The harvester began coasting to a stop. The reel in front still turned vigorously, but now with a racket.
The familiar had struck the harvester so hard the machine had risen on its rear wheels before crashing down again. Some serious damage had been done on landing. Previously, a single harmonious rumble had filled the cabin. Now it rang with a mad orchestra of raps and knocks, and fixtures out of whack.
Janet brushed the glass off the seat and got the harvester going again. It was only luck that it had not collided with anything. She turned about hastily, narrowly missing the machinery shed before she could fix her bearings and make her way back toward the silo. The steering wheel skipped in her hands, fighting her.
A humped black shape began rising up through the smashed windscreen. Janet locked the scream inside her throat – it was only smoke, but so thick and oily it was almost a solid thing. The stink of overtaxed machinery accompanied it. Coughing, Janet pressed her mouth and nose into the crook of her arm. She discovered if she made the harvester go faster the smoke dissipated a little better.
Yet the greater speed was a mixed blessing. She could breathe, but the buckled header champed more frequently at the ground, throwing up dust, further obscuring the view. If not for the tallest station structures, it would have been impossible for her to know where she was headed.
She focused on steering, but caught something in the corner of her eye. Toward the rear of the cab, at the cracked side window … something like a bird, or a bat, fluttering there against the glass and then gone. The familiar’s efforts to enter the cab had made her responses quick. She spun to catch something pulse at the window again. Black and fleeting.
She was nearing the silo now. She could see its burnt-orange crown rearing out of the dark. The starless night opened up to reveal the curved wall. She slowed the harvester and the smoke settled on her again. And the thing at the side window too, seen clearly against the dirty smoke. A thick black whip, curling into a playful half loop.
It was no great mystery at all. It was a tail.
From its perch on the roof, the considerable head of the familiar lowered in front of the cab, peering at Janet upside down. The oil and dust briefly parted to reveal Lauren and Scott huddled at the foot of the silo, framed by the familiar’s grinning visage and the sullen-red snapping blades, inside the hollow fortress of barbed wire.
When she was a child, Janet bore witness to her mother’s grim efficiency if she caught one of the house cats playing with a mouse. As much as her mother loved cats, she could not abide their cruelty. She accepted they performed an important service in ridding the station of vermin; she only wished they did not relish the duty so much. Many times young Janet saw her mother shoo the family pet, putting a swift end to some small creature’s misery by crushing its skull with the end of a broom, or heel of her shoe. She told Janet the alternative for the mouse was much, much worse. But remembering back, Janet occasionally let the play go on too long, finding as much fascination as the cat did.
The familiar tilted its head, perhaps wondering why Janet’s expression suddenly looked so strange. It was simply that she knew now with certainty the familiar would play with its victims for as long as they would last, and be inventive in its torments.
Her children were blocked from sight as the monster began to climb down into the cab. Janet shook in outrage and despair.
“You’re not having them! You’re not!” she spat in its face as it closed in on her.
She pressed far back in her seat, locking both feet on the accelerator. The harvester bucked forward, heading straight for the silo and her children.
***
Doug was dragged across the floor on his back by the scruff of his neck, being taken to the bedroom. That seemed fitting. Perhaps the place had become her den.
All the fight was gone in him. And now the front of his shirt was on fire. The bitch hadn’t snuffed the candle he’d thrust in her face, and instead it caught the alcohol that had spilled. He tried raising his arms to pat out the fire; the left wouldn’t work.
Fussing at the small flames one-handed, he tapped the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket and thought why not? He reached in and managed to work a busted fag free. He straightened it as best he could, then put it to his lips. Leaning forward, he lit the end on the small flames licking at his chest.
He took a long puff. Heavenly.
He finished patting the fire out. He was a bit concerned it was yet to hurt.
The trip to the bedroom was slow going. He must have worn the bitch out. Her hot foul breath puffed down the left side of his face, making the cuts there sting. Jesus, it stank. The bitch was pulling him along by the left shoulder; it felt frozen, a dead lump, the arm below it numb. She’d growled around her clasping jaws as he fixed himself a cigarette, but really, what more could she do without letting go?
He pictured himself reaching back with his good arm and trying to beat her off, but saw no point. She’d only chew on that, too.
All in all, he was taking his imminent death rather well.
***
Partway into the cab, the familiar’s sigils flared, describing its great pleasure at meeting up with Janet again. But Janet ignored the monster. Leaning to keep from reach, she concentrated on pointing the harvester true, screaming through her clenched teeth for the tragedy she was going to bring about.
The familiar glanced over its shoulder, and turned back with a knowing gaze. It knew what she meant to do, and it would have none of it. A paw closed over the steering wheel and twisted it hard over. Janet howled, trying to pull the wheel back. The looming wall of the silo lurched into sight…
Impact.
The harvester shook like a jar of loose change.
Janet bounced off the steering wheel. She found herself again on the floor. Her sternum, having struck hardest, was searing. She fought for breath. She would have been a long time getting up, familiar or no, except she heard Lauren screaming.
She had not given her children a quick, merciful release. She had arranged it so they were dying in agony.
***
The witch on the ceiling was pleading with the bitch to no avail. The bitch was acting as any dog would when in possession of a treat, ignoring orders to drop it until it could be tucked out of reach and gulped down.
Doug found his vision fading
in and out. He couldn’t see the witch properly, but he knew the ceiling was wet with alcohol because it continued to drip down on him.
Either that or the witch was bawling.
He carefully removed the cigarette from his mouth.
“I’m sure as shit sorry,” he croaked. Not for all the things he’d done, though he meant that, too. He was apologising for the party trick that came next.
***
The familiar had been dislodged from the cab. The door was jammed tight, so Janet climbed out the smashed windscreen. The engine was still on, roaring like a jet engine. She had not thought to shut down the reel; no wonder it had seized in place. She saw why once she clambered out front.
The leading edge of the header had struck the silo before bouncing away again, the far end buckled in. But that was not what had stopped the blades. The familiar was sunk up to its waist, jammed in the gap between reel and auger, arresting their spin. As she gazed down upon it, the monster looked up at her. It grinned, appearing to think its predicament amusing. It wasn’t bothered at all.
She moaned, but there was no time for more futility. She must find her children.
It was a short search. Some of the barbed wire had been gathered up by the harvester, fetching Scott and Lauren close to the header. If Lauren screamed from pain, it was only because of the barbed wire caught against her.
The reel kept thudding against the monster, wanting to turn. The auger convulsed like an exposed heart. The stink of burning oil infused the filthy clouds pouring out of the horribly grinding engine, which could not last much longer.
***
Doug remembered fondly the sharpshooting trick he’d refined through years of incarceration. It had prompted some pretty outrageous wagers: Doug’s fleet of muscle cars against Mick’s twenty-bedroom mansion; a footy club against a South Pacific island. Now the stakes were higher. Perhaps prison was good for something after all.
Squinting one eye for better aim, he recalled how Mick once said he looked like Clint Eastwood getting a bead on his target, but Doug never thought it a compliment. He knew the old man reviled “that gangly ponce from Rawhide.” In his own mind, Doug was always the Duke about to take his shot; Mick was always a John Wayne man.