Shut The Fuck Up And Die!

by William Todd Rose

  “You ain’t right, boy. There’s somethin’ about you . . . .”

  Her voice was so low that it seemed as if she were talking more to herself than her prisoner.

  “You got that same look in your eye ‘ole Smoky got that time he was bit by that rabid coon.”

  Mary glanced at Mona and then back to Matt again. For the first time, she seemed uncertain of herself: her movements were less fluid now and the halting manner in which she approached Matt seemed to suggest indecision.

  “You’re a dangerous one . . . . You’d really die for that little piece of tail, wouldn’t ya? Lotsa folks say they would . . . but when it comes right down to it, all they really care ‘bout is their own hide. But not you. You’d really do it, boy.”

  The last sentence was not a question.

  After a moment of silence, Mary nodded her head as if in agreement to some argument only she could hear.

  “Don’t have no real use for you, anyhows. ‘Cept for just plain fun.”

  She circled around the chair Matt was tied to like a predator closing in on prey that had been brought down, but not incapacitated. Standing directly behind him, she looked at her own reflection in the blade of the knife and nodded once again.

  She bent her arm so that it was angled around Matt’s neck and pressed the blade of the paring knife against the bulging vein in his throat.

  “I reckon I should put you down just like I did ‘ole Smokey.”

  Mona tried to scream, but her voice got stuck in a hard little knot somewhere behind her vocal chords. It was as if she were still in the clutches of whatever drug Mary had used on them: paralyzed by the thought of losing the only person she had ever truly given a damn about, Mona could only sit and watch as her new husband’s blood trickled slowly from the wound.

  SCENE SEVEN

  By the time Earl and Daryl had finished tying the unconscious bodies to the chairs, the snow was falling so heavily that the windshield of the truck had already been buried beneath several inches of accumulation. It fell from the sky in wet clumps that seemed too large to be considered flakes and made the pine forest surrounding the old farm house look like a snow globe that had been vigorously shaken by God. Daryl had taken an old broom and whisked away enough slush that the wipers would be able to do their job; but even on the highest setting, Earl still had to lean forward and peer through the streaks of moisture on the windshield as the truck rumbled along the road. The headlights cut through the darkness and illuminated the white specks racing toward them, but only his familiarity with the snow-covered road kept the vehicle from easing off the buried asphalt and onto the graveled shoulder.

  “You know what it puts me in mind of, Earl?” Daryl asked. “Star Wars. Right when the Millennium Falcon jumps into light speed. Don’t it you?”

  “I’ll knock you into light speed if ya don’t stop flappin’ those gums.”

  Daryl slumped in his seat and folded his arms across his chest like a reprimanded child. He watched the snow tunneling toward the truck from beneath a heavily furrowed brow and stole quick glances at his brother. Earl clutched the steering wheel like it was the grip on the Strength-O-Meter down at The Crow Bar; his knuckles were so white that it almost seemed as if the bone were attempting to burst through them and he ground his teeth together with each slight correction of the wheel.

  “Don’t see why you got to be so mean.” Daryl finally mumbled. “Just tryin’ to pass the time and all.”

  Earl took a breath through his nose and held it for a moment. He was too tired to argue with his brother: the exertion of the day had already made his eyes feel as if pieces of grit had been blown into them and his back throbbed from sitting in the truck for so long. All he wanted was to take care of the job at hand, go back home, and climb into his nice, warm bed. He sighed deeply and shook his head in an attempt to clear away some of the fatigue that clung like cobwebs in his mind.

  “Just don’t let Mama hear you talkin’ stuff like that. You know she don’t like it. You’ll end up down in the cellar again, you mark my words.”

  Daryl straightened with a smile, almost as if he’d just received some sort of praise. Rubbing his eyes with his fists, he decided not to press the matter any further.

  “How you reckon we’ll be able to find that car? I ain’t seen it come down like this since the blizzard of ’91.”

  “I got a pretty good idea ‘bout where it’s at. When you was talkin’ to those folks, it sounded like they wrecked right around the same place you and me saw that bear that time. Hard part’s gonna be figurin’ out what to do with the damn thing. I reckon Sunderson Pond is about froze over. We can try and sink it, but it might not even break the ice.”

  Daryl pinched his bottom lip as he listened to the windshield wipers slap out their frantic rhythm.

  “What about the old Crouse place?” he finally said.

  “What about it?”

  “Ain’t no one lived there goin’ on seven years now. Remember how they had all them old cars out in the barn? We could just tow it out there and set the dang place on fire. By the time anybody showed up, they’d think it was just another one of them old cars all burned up and shit.”

  Earl arched his eyebrows and nodded at Daryl.

  “Ya know, little brother, sometimes you ain’t half bad.”

  Daryl’s jaw dropped and he struggled to find words; but they seemed to get lodged in the lump that bobbed in his throat. His eyes stung with tears and he quickly looked past his own reflection in the passenger window and watched the snow-covered world scroll by. After a moment, he simply decided to say nothing: Earl’s words were literally the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him . . . and he didn’t want to give his brother any reason to take the compliment back.

  Forty minutes later, they finally spotted the wrecked car. They’d driven by this same spot nearly five times; but on this pass, the high beams had caught the tail lights of the Honda and made them glow like the eyes of a deer in a spotlight.

  Earl steered the truck carefully over the embankment and made minute adjustments as the wheels slipped and slid in a mixture of snow and mud. Within minutes, he’d backed the truck so close to the car that the bumpers were nearly touching. Before Earl had even shifted into park, Daryl already had the flashlight in his hands. It’s beam glared off the windshield and he took a deep breath as he prepared to step into the darkness. As long as he had the Mag Lite, however, everything would be fine: though he’d never admit it to Earl (and certainly not to Mama) he liked to pretend that the beam was a lightsaber. With such a powerful weapon in his hands, darkness would be held at bay. True, he sometimes felt silly when these little fantasies took over his imagination . . . but, as he knew so well, there were far worse things than feeling like a grown man playing childish games.

  “Let’s get ‘er done.” Earl grumbled.

  He opened the door and frigid air gusted into the cab as if it had been pressed against the other side and awaiting an opportunity to pounce. The sudden drop in temperature tingled Daryl’s neck with a shiver as he clutched the flashlight to the point that his gloved knuckles throbbed; taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on the cool air that ballooned his chest. He could do this: he had his Mag Lite, the truck’s headlights were still on, and his brother would be close by. All he had to do was step out of the truck.

  “You comin’ or what?”

  Earl’s voice was muffled by distance and snow. It sounded so soft that it was almost overpowered by the grating of the chain against the bed liner as the man pulled the frosted links of metal to him. There was a slight clinking, a sound like a moan as the wind passed through the trees that clustered around the road, the ticking of the engine as it cooled . . . there was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing out there was going to hurt him.

  After all, he was the one with the power wasn’t he? He was the one who caused grown men to openly weep as their knees trembled and pleas for mercy gurgled from their mouths. He was the one who
caused women to shiver as he approached and who sparked dilated eyes with glints of terror. He was the giver of life or death, whichever he saw fit . . . and there was nothing in the darkness that could possibly take that away.

  Opening his eyes, Daryl slid out of the truck. The darkness seemed to close in around him like the coils of a constricting serpent, squeezing tighter and tighter with each step he took. He could feel a tremor in the pit of his stomach and his mouth was so dry that it felt as if he hadn’t had a drink of water for days; but still he forced himself to exhale slowly. His breath formed a plume of vapor that conjured images in his mind of a fierce and powerful fire-breathing dragon and he tried to cling to this picture like a drowning man grasping at a life preserver.

  There was nothing to fear.

  He was like a god, really.

  His feet crunched through the snow and he could hear Earl cursing under his breath as his brother tried to loop the chain around the frame of the little car. Metal rasped against metal and there was a series of dull thuds.

  He could do this.

  “Foreign piece of shit. I swear t’ God, they deserve to die just for buying . . . .”

  Daryl played the beam of the flashlight over the hatchback of the car, watching the way shadows seemed to flee across the accumulated snow from the sweeping shaft of light. Earl was lying on his back beneath the car and Daryl took care not to trip over the man’s beefy legs as he stepped forward. With a swipe of his arm, he cleared a swath of snow from the smooth glass and shone the light inside the darkened car. The beam splayed across suitcases and duffel bags that looked as though they’d been thrown up in the air and allowed to fall into patterns of disarray.

  ‘Fuckin’ cock-knockin’ son of a bitch . . . .”

  The vehicle rocked slightly and the suspension creaked as Earl struggled to secure the chain beneath. This slight movement almost made it seem as if the pools of darkness and shadow were leaping away from the light like cloaked vampires fleeing from the sun. Slipping one hand into his hip pocket, Daryl heard a slight jingle and remembered the keys they had taken from the unconscious man .

  “Oughtta make your skinny ass get down here and do this shit.”

  Fishing the keys from his pocket, Daryl allowed them to dangle in his hands for a moment, enjoying the way the beam of the flashlight gleamed on the shiny metal. But then his eyes returned to the car again, taking in the scattered pieces of luggage tucked safely away in the hatch.

  He slid one of the keys into the keyhole and heard a soft click as he turned. The pneumatics sighed as the hatchback lifted ever so slightly and Daryl glanced over his shoulder as if half-expecting someone to be standing just behind him. But there was only the darkness waiting just beyond their little island of light, waiting for the moment that it could rush in and . . . .

  You just stop that right this minute you hear? Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt ya out here. Nothin’ at all. Besides, look at the sky. It’s almost morning. Fifteen, twenty minutes more and the sun will be up.

  He lifted the hatchback until it was fully open and leaned so far forward that it almost looked as if he were about to crawl into the back of the car.

  “What in tarnation are you doin’ up there anyways?”

  “Goin’ through their shit.” Daryl answered. “Might have somethin’ good. Be a shame to burn something that might be worth a lot.”

  He flicked open the latches on the suitcase and, with his free hand, began pulling clothes from its confines like a magician with a never-ending scarf. Bras, panties, jeans, sweatshirts: all were strewn about the interior of the car in a blizzard of cloth. But, by the time the satin lined bottom of the case had been revealed, there was nothing to show for the flurry of activity other than a mess that looked like a wardrobe had thrown up. Undaunted, Daryl pulled a pink duffel bag to him and tried to get a grip on its zipper with fingers made bulky by his gloves.

  “About fuckin’ time. I got the damn thing, little brother.”

  He could hear Earl wiggling through the snow as the zipper finally came undone. At first, it seemed as if the bag simply contained more of the same. The top was stuffed with piles of underwear, some loose tampons that rattled in their plastic wrappers, a sheer nightie that smelled lightly of some exotic perfume . . . .

  But then Daryl saw it. It looked to be a photo album, or maybe one of those scrapbooks Mama was always putting together. The brown, leather cover was faded and scuffed along the edges as if it had been opened and thumbed through so many times that erosion had finally taken its toll. But what really caught Daryl’s attention was the note card set in the center of a brass frame attached to the cover of the album. In flowing, feminine script were the words Mona’s Secret Delights.

  Thoughts of the darkness were pushed from Daryl’s mind as he imagined what lay hidden within those pages: there would be naughty pictures of the dark-haired woman with her boobs hanging out, snapshots of her legs spread wide, maybe even her soft lips wrapped around the base of . . . .

  His hands trembled as he flipped the cover open and, despite the stinging bite of the wind, his face somehow felt so warm that it almost made him lightheaded. A grin spread across his face at the thought of uncovering this most private and intimate collection and he felt just like he had that time he’d found those magazines tucked under Earl’s mattress when they were kids.

  The grin, however, faded as quickly as snow on a warm windshield. At first, Daryl’s brow was knitted in confusion. He held the book at different angles as if a new perspective might help clarify exactly what he was seeing; but within seconds even this expression disappeared as the color drained from his face.

  “What the fuck you lookin’ at, retard?”

  Daryl stood as motionless as the dark trees surrounding them as snowflakes swirled in the beam of the flashlight.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Daryl gulped hard as he spun around to face his brother.

  “We gotta get home.” He blurted. “We gotta get home now.”

  Daryl’s mouth hung open as he struggled to find more words, but somehow they just wouldn’t come. His stomach felt as something had just squeezed it in an icy grip and every breath seemed to take an act of will; but even then his mind still rebelled against what he was seeing. Surely it couldn’t be . . . no, it had to be something else . . . he had to be mistaken . . . .

  But part of him knew he wasn’t. And it was the same part that whispered in the depths of his mind that something was horribly, horribly wrong . . . .

  SCENE EIGHT

  The rising sun cast a warm glow upon the room and glinted off the blade held at Matt’s throat. Mary had pressed it into the skin deeply enough the trickles of blood streamed down his neck and her eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. Her right arm tensed as she prepared to pull the knife across the flesh, severing tendons and arteries in its wake.

  “Bleed for Mary, boy . . . .”

  At that moment, however, there was a sound from somewhere within the house that caused Mary to freeze. At first, Mona couldn’t quite place what it was: it sounded hollow and insistent, almost like a woodpecker tapping through the bark of a tree. But that was silly . . . there wouldn’t be a woodpecker in the house, would there? No, it had to be something else. And it was familiar, damn it . . . something that, if not for the haze of confusion still roiling through her brain from the drug the old woman had knocked them out with, would have been immediately recognizable.

  Mary, on the other hand, apparently had no trouble identifying the staccato repetitions. Rather than slashing her knife across Matt’s throat, she pulled it away and slid it into the pocket of her dress so quickly that her hand was nothing more than a blur. There were a few seconds of silence as she shuffled across the room and then the noise repeated again. Opening the drawer on a desk piled with reams of multicolored card stock, glue, and what looked to be albums and photographs, Mary rummaged around until her hand came out holding two red balls. On either side of each ball was a black
strap and she hurried back to the bound newlyweds, continually glancing over her shoulder as the sounds from downstairs grew louder. And Mona was sure it was downstairs, now. Things were slowly coming together, her rational mind reasserting dominance over the dazed puzzlement she’d been mired in.

  The old woman tried to shove one of the red balls into Mona’s mouth but the younger woman thrashed her head to the side like a dog shaking an injured rabbit. Mona’s lips were closed so tightly that her mouth was nothing more than a thin, hard line.

  “Get . . . the fuck . . . away . . . from her.”

  In normal situations, Matt’s voice would have boomed out like God issuing proclamations from the Mount. However, his words were still thick and slurred. Rather than resounding through the small room with the force of a thunderclap, they were nearly lost beneath the continued noise from downstairs.

  Undaunted by his order, Mary pinched Mona’s nostrils between her fingers and waited. Within the span of a minute, Mona’s mouth gasped open as she sucked in a lungful of air; and, at that moment, Mary plunged the ball into her mouth so forcefully that it almost seemed as if the old woman were trying to cram it down her throat. Her wrinkled fingers fed the straps through a series of buckles and she yanked hard as the taste of rubber flooded Mona’s mouth. Pleased with her handiwork, the old woman walked to Matt and repeated the same process with him.

  “Mary!”

  The voice was muffled and filled one of the silences between the series of rapping sounds.

  “Mary Gruber!”

  “Keep your britches on.” Mary yelled. “I’m a’comin’.”

  With those words, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Knocking. The sound had been someone pounding on the front door.

  “Now, you two don’t go nowhere . . . I’ll be back quicker than a duck on a Junebug.”