by Billy Wells
Cecil screamed like a little girl, and Dominic farted several times he had to strain so hard to pull the first front tooth. Guido plugged in the drill and couldn’t wait to get started.
JOWLS
Like many of the affluent players in the Big Apple, John Broadback, founding partner of the law firm, Broadback, Hodgekiss, and Rangoon, spent the last two weeks of August at his retreat in the Adirondacks. In the circular complex of buildings, a large A-frame was the focal point of the property nestled deep in a beautiful forest.
Pouring his wife her second Grey Goose martini, John settled in his oversized hammock with his third Jack Daniels on the rocks. “Hodgekiss thought I was crazy when I told him this CD of mating calls would bring flocks of owls to our back porch.”
Taking a sip, Martha replied, “I wish I had a picture of his face when he saw them swooping in from all directions.”
After a good-natured chuckle, they immediately perceived a weird stillness creep over the landscape around the towering structure. Then from the underbrush, they heard a high-pitched howl that didn’t seem far away. Chills ran up their spines as the shrill, eerie cry grew louder and alarmingly closer.
“What on earth is that?” Martha stammered.
John rose from the hammock and peered into the woods. “I’ve never heard anything so creepy in my life.”
Their eyes flitted back and forth across the wooded landscape. Martha was the first to see the enormous black shape emerging from the undergrowth and bounding toward them with gigantic leaps. John struggled from the unsteady hammock to get to his feet as Martha dropped her martini and bolted toward the sliding glass doors shouting, “Get inside the house!”
John’s bulk hampered his attempt to reach the sliders before the enormous jaws of the beast clamped on his right ankle and snapped it in a single bite like a dry twig. The humongous doglike thing the size of a small pony went immediately for Broadback’s neck and ripped his throat out. Martha stood behind the glass but couldn’t bear to watch the savage attack on her beloved husband of thirty years. Pulling the curtains, she picked up the phone to call 911, but to her horror, she found the line was dead.
The enormous wolfhound’s ears pricked upwards when it heard a whistle too high for a human to discern and immediately bolted from the deck and returned to the woods. The mammoth beast that weighed over 200 pounds followed the beckoning sound to a white van parked about a quarter of a mile away from the Broadback retreat. It leapt inside the rear doors that stood open and settled on a large tarp covering the floor of the van and licked at the blood and gore matted on his thick coat of fur.
Alex Cooper, former vice president of the Broadback, Hodgekiss, and Rangoon law firm, flipped a switch on the dash, and the rear doors slid shut. There was no turning back. Phase 1 of his plan of revenge for his termination from the firm after thirty-one years of service had begun. The Partners had promised him a full partnership many times, but each year, they found a different excuse to postpone his promotion. The crowning blow came when he and his wife, Gail, were dining at the Rainbow Room and overheard the three of them discussing with fits of uncontrolled laughter how they had used him all those years. It was clear from their remarks; they had never planned on promoting him.
He had given his life to the firm, working sixteen hours a day for many years. He had hardly seen his son grow up because of the incredible sacrifice he had made to be Partner one day in such a prestigious firm. He had the uncontrollable urge to plunge his steak knife into all three of their black hearts, but the blade was too flexible to inflict any serious damage.
When his wife had seen the look on his face after Rangoon’s final humiliating remark, she grabbed his hand and said, “Don’t be a fool. Do you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars?”
“Those greedy bastards need to pay,” he muttered, his voice breaking with unbridled hatred and tears starting to flow. Grabbing a napkin, Alex left the table and headed for the men’s room. As he stared at his receding hairline and the beginnings of a turkey neck in the mirror, he decided he would spend the rest of his life if he had to, to make them pay for what they had done to him.
His mind returned to the present, and he found himself sitting in the white van. Looking in the rear view mirror, he couldn’t recognize the wild-eyed man staring back at him. The Partners had created a monster all right, and he was looking at him. He started to giggle as he thought about what Broadback must look like after meeting Jowls. He shuddered at the grisly thought.
He wondered if Martha had survived Jowls’ attack. He’d given him a whiff of one of John’s tennis shoes he’d stolen from his Manhattan fitness club and pointed him toward the Broadback vacation home. He had no idea how his trainer had created such a killing machine. The wolfhound had cost him a considerable amount of money, but he was worth every penny. He couldn’t believe how gentle and loving Jowls could be right after such a brutal mission. He could rip his prey apart one minute and cuddle with a baby the next. He’d also been trained to be silent or scary depending on his master’s vocal preference. Alex had used the howling destroyer mode on John. He wanted the bastard to feel the fear before it bit him in the ass.
He had a two-day window to deal with Martha. He’d cut off her landline service, blocked her cell and Internet connections, and slashed all four tires on her SUV. He also had placed surveillance cameras in various locations around the property to monitor any movements outside the house. If she found the courage to attempt to seek help on foot, he would unleash Jowls again to take care of it, but he hoped she would wait for their caretaker to arrive on Monday morning.
He couldn’t wait to see the replay of Jowls attack on his former boss. He had filmed the carnage in HD quality.
The next afternoon, David Hodgekiss and his wife, Grace, were dining under an enormous gazebo overlooking a small pond stocked with multi-colored fish. The elaborate picnic area was located about two hundred yards up a grassy knoll from their palatial retreat.
Hodgekiss had just opened an obscenely expensive bottle of wine when they both heard the gut-wrenching howl of Jowls closing in. Realizing immediately the impending danger, his second boss took his wife’s hand, and together they ran headlong toward the safety of their home.
Behind them, they heard something big thrashing through the woods toward them, and the menacing sound of a predator’s savage howl. Looking back, they saw the enormous shape emerge from the woods and couldn’t believe the size of it. The mad frenzy of the devil dog’s eyes took Hodgekiss’s breath away. It looked more like a horse than a dog, but its huge jaws and vicious, bared teeth left no doubt; it was on a mission to destroy.
Suddenly, Hodgekiss stopped and turned to face the oncoming monstrosity, “Run! Run for your life! Grace, get inside the house.”
His wife turned and shouted, “You’ll be killed!”
“No need for both of us to die. Run!”
Turning to resume her flight, she heard a stifled gurgling sound. Turning to look, she saw the hound from Hell ravaging her husband. Blood poured from the gaping hole in his throat as the beast thrashed his limp body around between its teeth through the terrain like a rag doll.
When Grace reached the safety of the sliders, she immediately tried to call 911. The line was dead. Running to the SUV in the circular drive, she found the engine wouldn’t start. Ignoring the consequences in a fit of rage and emotion, she started running down the driveway.
Alex saw Grace running away from the house in his array of monitors. He had no choice. When Jowls returned to the van, Alex gave him the scent of her moccasin, the command to take her out, and sent him on his way.
For some reason, having Jowls ravage Grace the same as her husband brought a pang of remorse to Alex’s conscience. He hoped he would not have to do the same to Martha Broadback, but he would if he had to.
Alex had rented Jowls for the weekend from a cloak and dagger operation recommended by a very unsavory gangbanger he’d had as a client for tax evasion. He’
d never dealt with scumbags like him before, but he’d been the only underworld contact he knew personally. Walking on the wild side of life frightened him, but the intense hatred and the unquenchable thirst for revenge on all three of his former bosses had driven him to it. The worst part in renting Jowls was meeting his trainer who reminded him of a muscle-bound Joe Mantegna in the movie Thinner, but a lot scarier.
It was too late to worry about the consequences now. He was way past the point of no return. Two down, and one to go. Last, but not least, Imad Rangoon would be Jowl’s victim for tomorrow. He was the one Alex blamed the most for his termination from the firm and his incessant assignments to the four corners of the earth for six month stints so many times. It was a miracle his wife, Gail, had stood by him through all the bitter years.
Rangoon had never married and flaunted his reputation as a consummate ladies man. He’d been caught by the receptionist twice having sex with a young paralegal on the table in the large conference room. Alex loathed him and considered him a disgusting waste of life. He didn’t know what bimbo would be with him this weekend, but after the last deadly deed was done, he would no longer care what happened to Martha Broadback and Imad’s sex toy after that.
Alex’s hands shook with anticipation as he extracted Rangoon’s shoe from a gym bag and let Jowl’s inhale his scent. Like before, he opened the rear doors of the van and pointed in the direction of Imad’s complex. The enormous slobbering wolfhound’s eyes widened with a ferocious anticipation as he leapt from the van like a race horse with his ass on fire and headed into the woods on his mission of death.
When Alex turned on the monitors to prepare for his viewing of Jowls’ attack on his most hated boss, he discovered his connection to the cameras had been lost. After all his meticulous planning, he would not be able to see the beast ripping Rangoon apart live. He hoped he wouldn’t lose the videotape he’d set up in an adjacent out building.
He decided to wait fifteen minutes before he recalled Jowls to the van. If the dog were bloody when he returned, he’d know the deed was done. He didn’t care what happened to the woman the miserable son of a bitch had brought with him for the weekend.
Back at Rangoon’s massive retreat, he and his paramour were going at it like rabbits in heat. They knocked over a pitcher of margaritas and a bowl of chips and salsa that crashed on the concrete patio.
Neither of the lovers saw Jowls approaching until it leapt upon the back of the middle-aged Casanova and started ripping him apart. The buxom brunette managed to slide out through the pool of warm blood on to the patio. Picking up a lawn chair, she struck the hound on the head and continued pummeling him as the beast ripped at Rangoon’s midsection and genitals with his gnashing teeth. Pausing to rid itself of the relentless distraction of the lawn chair, Jowls turned from Rangoon, clamped his jaws on the woman’s hand holding the chair, and wrenching it away, bit off three fingers on her left hand. She ran screaming to the house with blood gushing from the stumps of her fingers while the voracious beast resumed ravaging Rangoon’s lifeless corpse.
A minute later, the woman reappeared with one hand wrapped in a dishtowel and a small handgun in the other. Sprinting to her lover’s side, she planted six bullets into Jowls’ skull.
Alex heard the shots, and immediately blew his ultrasonic whistle to bring the dog back to the van. After a time, when Jowls did not respond to his call, he assumed Rangoon had reached a weapon before the canine had reached him.
He hadn’t planned on visiting the scene of the murders in delight, but this unexpected turn of events called for his immediate involvement. He had no choice but to take out Rangoon himself. He’d taken care of the phones and sabotaged his car during the night, but he couldn’t let the asshole contact the authorities. He could only imagine what Jowl’s owners would do to him if the murder trail led back to them. And if by some miracle he did survive, he would certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars when the police got involved.
He had to be very careful. Without the live camera feeds, he didn’t know what had happened at Rangoon’s place. He placed his revolver in his belt behind his back and drove the van to Rangoon’s complex.
Parking in the cover of the trees, he sneaked toward the main house through the woods. Making his way to the back of the A frame using several storage sheds for cover, Alex crept closer to the sprawling pool area. As soon as he peeked around the corner of the outbuilding, which was only sixty feet from the tiled patio, he spotted the bloody grass next to the pool. In plain view, he saw the hulking frame of the black beast spread-eagled on top of the splayed remains of a corpse he assumed was Rangoon. As he drew closer with wary apprehension, he saw the gaping hole in the top of the dog’s head. Underneath the shards of bone and teeth, his old boss’s face was barely recognizable.
The harrowing bloodlust of the scene sickened him and caused his head to spin. For some reason, he had forgotten about the bimbo and struggled to the patio. Taking a seat, he couldn’t believe where his maniacal lust for revenge had taken him. What would Jowls master do when he found the dog was dead? If anyone had told him he would be a cold-blooded murderer someday, he would have laughed in their face at the total impossibility. He wondered what his poor wife who had stood by him like a saint would say if she could see him now. He wanted to call her, but telling her about what he’d done on the phone would be insane. He thought about not telling her at all.
Then, he heard the sound of the sliding door behind him, followed by the sound of his wife’s familiar voice. Slowly turning, he saw Gail standing before him with a handgun pointed at his head. Blood splattered her pink swimsuit and the towel wrapped around her left hand.
“Well, Alex, you stupid son of a bitch, since Broadback and Hodgekiss didn’t show for breakfast this morning and didn’t call, I assume they are as dead as Imad. I guess you’ve finally succeeded in getting your revenge, but what you don’t know is I’ve been fucking your old boss behind your back for the past twenty years. It wasn’t the Partners that sent you on all those godforsaken assignments. I’m the reason you spent all those lonely nights in those far off places.”
Alex’s face reddened with rage as he contemplated making a play for the gun concealed under his shirt at his back. His hands trembled as the adrenalin raced through his veins.
“While you were humping camels in the Sahara, I was giving Imad blow jobs at his apartment on Park Avenue. When you called me every night to cheer me up, I was never in our pathetic shit hole in the Boonies your measly paycheck could afford. I only tolerated you because of our son. If Imad would have married me, I would’ve left you in a New York minute.”
Alex wanted to smash her face in with a hammer, blow her brains out with his gun, strangle the breath out of her with his bare hands, but all he could see was the muzzle of the Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum aimed directly at his nose. If he was going to make his move, he had to make it soon.
“You just killed the only man I ever loved. I hope you rot in Hell, you spineless, limp dick loser.”
She pulled the trigger six consecutive times at pointblank range, but the gun was empty.
BRIDE OF THE GORILLA
A piercing cry from the monkey cage startled me awake. The sun was hot, and I had apparently dozed off lounging on a plastic rock close to the entrance to Dizzyworld Amusement Park.
Opening my bleary eyes, everything around me seemed extremely peculiar. Just above the orangutan enclosure, the monorail sat motionless on the Serengeti platform. All the doors were open, but no one was getting on or off. In addition, no people were coming or going up the ramp. Looking down the concourse, I found it stranger not to see a single person perusing the animals in any direction at this time of day.
Closing time was 8 p.m., but the sun told me, it was no more than five or six o’clock. It got dark early this time of year, and the sun was just fading on the horizon while a picture perfect full moon was beginning to rise above the leopard cages.
As I moved away from the statio
n toward the front of the lion, panther, and tiger enclosures, I noticed not only the absence of people, but I also couldn’t see a single animal inside any of their usual habitats. Moving closer, I pressed my nose against the cold steel and peered into the shadowy interior to see if I could spot one of the animals hidden behind a bush or tree.
Suddenly, a man with a zookeeper hat emerged from behind a concrete barrier and glared at me with unmistakably bad intentions. The man’s attitude was so unnerving, I cowered further back from where I stood at the front of the cage. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the zookeeper’s face began to morph into something wolfen. Immediately his human body transformed into a hairy beast with beady eyes, massive claws, and long, ugly teeth. Taking one more giant step backward from the cage, and not a second too soon, a fistful of claws lunged through the bars and fanned the air in front of my face, missing my nose by a hair.
In a mad frenzy, the wooly beast pummeled the front of the cage with superhuman strength. The wall of steel bars creaked loudly in protest with each devastating blow. I struggled for breath and stood transfixed in a state of utter fear as the bottom section of bars shook in their casing, and one long screw popped out of its place. I was so frightened; I stood paralyzed in my tracks as the beast continued to pound on the bars like someone in need of a straight jacket. Finally, the wolf man howled mournfully, and realizing he could not get at me, he began to sniff the air for something easier to snack on.
Looking further down the concourse toward the rhino enclosure, I saw a mother pushing a stroller with a pink balloon tied to its frame. I could hear the baby crying from where I stood. Immediately, the hairy thing’s ears pricked up, and its nostrils flared as it bounded toward the woman and her baby. I watched in horror as the beast leapt into the air, pounced on all fours upon the screaming mother, and dragged her off with blood spewing in all directions. Long after the woman’s cries had ceased, I could still hear the baby crying.