by Billy Wells
The combination of the two businesses seemed bizarre. Also, Blood had a nine-month backlog of business with little or no advertising. Why would someone with undeniable business savvy not have a web page on the Internet? And, why would the owner of the multimillion-dollar children’s park personally waste his time on a rinky-dink taxidermy business? He smiled and decided it takes all kinds of people to make a world.
To add to the puzzlement, when he rounded the bend in the road, his mouth dropped open when he saw a sprawling colonial estate surrounded by palatial gardens. “This couldn't be the place,” he thought. Then, Louie saw the long, rectangular building and a sign with the single word “BLOOD’” in the window. The scarlet letters printed on a pure white background in an eerie font suited for a horror movie billboard caused him to remove his sunglasses and sit dumbfounded. “This weirdo, Blood, must have a warped sense of humor to go with his graveyard voice.”
Despite his continued apprehension about this place, Louie knew the ice was melting in the bed of his truck, and he had nowhere else to go. His vehicle was the only one in the expansive parking lot so he pulled right up to the front door. Turning off the engine, he climbed out of the truck.
Immediately, a blast of hot air almost buckled his knees as he crossed the sidewalk and approached the entrance to the shop. This had to be a record heat wave for this time of year. The tacky Pepsi Cola thermometer on the wall read “97 DEGREES,” and yet, he felt an icy tremor of apprehension creep up his spine as he looked at the darkness behind the taxidermist’s glass entrance. The sky even seemed to cloud over as he approached, and a voice inside himself he had never heard before whispered, “Get the fuck out of here.”
When he timidly pushed through the revolving doors, he heard an eerie “bong” somewhere in the back of the store. On the walls behind a long glass display case, the eyes of various animals seemed to follow him as he approached the counter. This made his already nervous stomach heave with an even more disquieting feeling.
The room seemed peculiarly dark for a showroom. Subdued spotlights fixed on each animal provided the only light. Several of the larger displays were so startling; Louie hesitated to turn away for fear the foreboding beast would leap from its perch on the wall upon him. He had seen mounts at the Moose and Elks Lodges, but he had never seen any so realistic it produced the creepy sensation that the beast was actually alive.
The illuminated display case contained rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and small mounted specimens so real, Louie stood a comfortable distance back from the glass.
“Are you Mr. Shafer?” A deep, bass voice boomed from behind him.
Louie felt as if he had jumped a foot off the ground when the reverberating Lurch-like voice seemed to rattle the windowpanes. Like a phantom from out of nowhere, a giant of a man at least a foot and a half taller than he stood shrouded in the shadows behind the display case.
“Jeepers,” Louie said, turning to face the ominous man dressed in black. “I didn’t hear you come into the room. I’m sorry, I…” His voice trailed off and he was suddenly paralyzed with fear as his eyes fixed on Blood’s animalistic face emerging into the light. He thought of running for the door, but couldn’t get his legs to move. He stood like a statue, staring at the monstrosity before him.
The taxidermist’s head was much too big for the rest of his body. His face and particularly his enormous ears had ugly patches of stiff bristles that only something like a hedge clipper could remove. He had miniature tusks for his lower incisors that extended in sharp points above his upper lip. Instead of a nose, he had a snout brimming with a yellow mucous that oozed into his mouthful of jagged, discolored teeth.
Blood finally broke the prolonged silence with a nervous chuckle, “I apologize, I forgot to forewarn you about my appearance on the phone. I got distracted and forgot to put on my George Bush mask I wear to meet customers. This always breaks the ice with a laugh. I can’t believe I blundered into the showroom without it.”
Louie’s face reddened with embarrassment as he stammered, “I’m frightfully sorry for my initial reaction in seeing your unfortunate malady. I hope you can forgive me.“
“It’s all right, Mr. Shafer. You are the only customer who has ever seen me this way, and I can imagine how much of a shock it must have been. I am the unfortunate victim of a rare birth defect. A wild boar bit my poor mother during her pregnancy, and I ended up with some of its DNA. I hope this does not interfere with our doing business.”
Louie turned his gaze back to the mounts on the wall and wished to God Blood would put on his George Bush mask. Even after hearing the medical explanation, he still couldn’t get himself to look at the taxidermist’s face no matter how hard he tried. After an uncomfortable silence, he finally muttered, “From what I’ve seen at the local Moose and Elk Lodges and on the Internet, your work is unbelievable.”
“I hope in a good way,” Blood said with a crooked smile.
“Absolutely, beyond compare.”
“In talking with you on the phone, you struck me as someone who doesn’t have a lot of hunting experience.” Blood said as he surveyed Louie from head to toe with a mental tape measure.
Louie did not understand why he made that assumption, and replied, “That’s actually not the case, Mr. Blood. My father started taking me hunting when I was only ten years old, and I’ve been an avid hunter ever since. I’m simply not versed in the particulars of mounting since I’ve never bagged a deer worthy of putting on display. However, I’m proud to say the buck I shot with my crossbow this morning without any doubt deserves to be a fixture on my rec room wall.”
“So you’ve successfully hunted deer for many years?”
“Absolutely,” Louie beamed. “I hate to brag, but I would estimate I’ve had over fifty kills.”
Blood looked at Louie with an odd expression and continued delving into his history as a hunter, “Do you hunt for food or just for the sport?”
“I hate to admit it, but I detest venison. It gave me the runs the few times my father made me eat some. I have no desire to eat the meat from the animals I kill, I’d much rather have a juicy beefsteak, a Big Mac, or a Whopper. I simply love to set the sights of my crossbow on a wild thing and pull the trigger.”
Blood face turned ashen at this remark and recoiling backwards a step, he said, “I’ve talked with a lot of hunters in my time, but I’ve never heard anyone describe the killing of an animal like that before.”
“The rush I get is almost orgasmic,” Louie ranted, out of control. “To have the power of a living thing’s life or death in your sights is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Once in a blue moon, you can’t plan it, when I don’t get off a perfect shot… and I find I have only wounded my prey, I get an extra rush of adrenalin when I feel the warm blood gushing through my fingers after I slit its throat. To feel the intensity of its heartbeat… To see the fear in its eyes… Christ! I’m almost getting a woodie just thinking about it. And then to witness its body shutting down as it breathes its final breath, it’s mind-blowing. It makes you feel like you’re some kind of God.”
Blood’s tusk-like front teeth seemed to quiver as he listened with obvious disdain to Louie’s tirade, but held his tongue, if he had one.
Louie returned from his momentary journey into blissful exhilaration and asked, “Can you help me with the carcass? The sun is blistering hot, and the ice in the pickup is melting.”
“Of course. Let me get a cart,” Blood said as he proceeded through a door behind the display case. A moment later, he returned wheeling a flatbed across the room, and Louie followed him out a side door to the parking lot.
When Louie unlatched the tailgate, he was immediately drenched with a splash of water from the melted ice that accumulated in the truck bed.
Blood expected what was coming and stepped away in time to avoid the ice bath. Unable to control his laughter, he scoffed, “I guess that was like diving into a swimming pool on a hot summer day.”
Louie did not fin
d the remark funny, but said nothing. Then, removing the tarp, they lifted the head and shoulders of the deer on to the cart and rolled it inside the shop to a refrigerated room.
When Louie entered the cold storage area, he saw nine rectangular metal tables each with a bloody sheet covering an elongated lump of something underneath.
“I see you’re a man of your word, Mr. Blood. You do have nine mounts scheduled before mine.” Almost immediately, Louie’s wet clothes started to freeze on his frame as he groaned with teeth chattering, “For God sakes, Blood, what temperature do you keep it in here?”
The taxidermist smiled his weird hog-like smile and replied, “After I apply my special preservatives, I find ten degrees below zero best for storing the bodies for more than six months.”
After they transferred the carcass from the cart on to the metal table and covered it with a sheet, Blood noticed Louie’s wet shoes were sticking to the freezing cement floor. With no warning, he lunged toward Louie and placed a handcuff on his wrist that was attached to a chain tied in to a heavy steel ring on the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Louie screamed as he watched Blood make a beeline for the entrance to the shop. He heard the whoosh of the heavy freezer door closing and saw Blood’s face morph into something not human through the insulated glass panel. He saw his cruel, savage eyes bulging with insane delight.
Louie shrieked at the top of his lungs and twisted at the handcuff like a madman in a futile attempt to escape. The unforgiving, freezing blast of cold air falling from the ceiling engulfed him. In a few minutes, he could feel his whole body stiffening. Ice sickles formed in the snot dangling from his nostrils from his all out struggle to escape the unbearable, biting cold. The blood from his ravaged wrist had partially frozen in a pool at his feet. The thermometer on the wall read ten degrees below zero as he grimaced at the hopelessness of his situation,
Moving almost in slow motion to the closest table he could reach with the length of chain, Louie raised the frozen bloody sheet draped over something on the table and glared in horror at the head and shoulders of a hunter he had shot the shit with at Maggie’s Diner only a few weeks ago.
One of the glass eyes of the mount staring up at him was cockeyed, and the blue lips of the work in progress sported a large artificial red apple clinched between his teeth.
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Jeremy White frowned at the annoying task that lay before him of shoveling his sidewalk and driveway. He was fifty-seven years old, and snow removal was not on his list of favorite things to do.
It snowed about a foot after he went to bed, and the weatherman said the temperature would plummet into the teens by the afternoon. He wanted to complete the shoveling before it got icy.
He put on his overcoat, boots, gloves, and hat, and looking like someone on his way to the North Pole, he went to the garage and grabbed the dreaded snow shovel.
When he opened the garage door, he winced when he saw the snow had drifted into a huge pile on that side of the house. More than two feet had accumulated in his driveway, at least a foot more than the actual snowfall reported by the weatherman.
And so he began, and in no time, he was huffing and puffing. White was totally out of shape and tipped the scales at a blubbery 250 pounds. Every time he picked up a shovelful of snow, he regretted not hiring Bob Smith’s son, Billy, to do the job. The little weasel shoveled all the driveways in the neighborhood except for his. For God sakes, he was a marketing analyst at Wallyworld. Why did he shovel his own snow? He didn’t do windows. Was it the money or was it because he could not stand that sneaky, red-haired, freckled face twerp? He suspected Billy as the one who soaped his windows and toilet papered his trees and shrubs on Halloween. He also suspected he’d battered his mailbox and put weed killer on his prized azaleas.
About halfway down the driveway, he paused to catch his breath and surveyed the front yard. It was like an untouched winter wonderland except… His mouth dropped open when he noticed footprints leading from his front door around the left side of his house.
“What the hell,“ he muttered. This didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t gone out the front door that morning. How could there be footsteps? Had someone broken into his house during the night? He hadn’t noticed anything peculiar when he came down for breakfast.
He jammed the shovel into a snow pile and slogged across the lawn to the sidewalk. Sure enough. There they were. Footprints leading from the front porch to the back of the house. The scary part was there were no footprints coming to the porch, only going. Someone from inside the house must have made them.
White placed his right foot into one of the prints and discovered the intruder had a shoe size much smaller than his own. Immediately, his face turned red with rage as he pictured Billy Smith sneaking around his property like a thief in the night.
He felt a sudden puff of wind on his cheek and saw a few new flakes falling to the ground. He hoped they had come off a nearby tree, but no, it was actually snowing again. His first thought was to search the house to see what was missing, but now he decided it was more important to see where the footprints led. He didn’t want the new snow to cover the tracks. Blind with fury, he really wanted to nail Billy Smith this time.
Quickly, he raced around the corner of the house into the backyard. Following the path that led into the woods bordering the development, he felt like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and the prey was afoot, as Conan Doyle always said.
The skeletons of barren trees stood like sentries in the woods behind his house. The area was much bigger than he thought, but the tracks were easy to follow since they stayed on a path the neighbors had apparently created over many years. After a short walk, the trees thinned out, and he found himself at the edge of a large clearing.
What was this place that had no trees and foliage? Was this an old baseball field or part of a farm from long ago? He lived nearby, but since he had just moved in nine months before and spent much of his time on the road, he wasn't familiar with this parcel of land.
The snow fell harder now, and the footprints had become less distinct than before. He quickened his pace.
Suddenly, he heard a loud crack under his feet and just up ahead; he saw a dark discoloration in the snow where the footprints veered sharply to the left. Immediately, he understood what this place without trees really was. In his haste to catch the redheaded weasel, he had wandered out upon the ice of a small lake covered over by the snow.
Mortal fear swept over him as he realized the ice where he stood was not frozen solid. Tossed on the ground beside him lay a bag of salt exactly like the brand he used to melt the ice on his sidewalk. On the discolored section surrounding him, he saw handfuls of white particles spread across the path he had followed and beyond. Someone had purposely scattered most of a bag of salt right where the footprints had led him. The annoying smirk of Billy Smith rocketed into his thoughts as he looked up and peered across the expanse of the lake. In the distance, he saw a diminutive figure watching him from the tree line a few hundred feet away,
White’s whole body began to shake with unbridled fear as he inched slowly backwards like a man walking on eggshells. The insidious, little bastard had obviously found the spare key he’d hidden under a rock to unlock the side door and sneaked into his house during the night while the snow was still coming down in sheets. The creep knew the footprints leading away from the house would lead him to the place the place the lake had not frozen solid. He even stole the bag of salt he’d just purchased at Home Depot to help melt the ice. How could he have been so stupid not to realize this was a body of water, not a farm or athletic field?
White couldn’t see the cracks forming beneath him as he tiptoed like an obese ballet dancer ever closer to safety. With each step, the ominous squeaking of the ice splintering below grated on his raw nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. He wanted to cry out but dared not put any added thrust on the ice such an action would demand. Billy Smith wanted him dead for some
ridiculous reason, and White knew he wouldn’t lift a finger to help him.
Suddenly, the path darkened as a huge section of snow sagged below the surface. Incapable of enduring the suspense any longer, White bolted for solid ground. His gallant try of deception to get a jump on the ice before it broke apart was short-lived. In the flash of an eye, he fell headlong into the freezing, breath-sucking water. His arms flailed for purchase as every pore of his body cried out for mercy from the biting agony of the unbearable ice bath.
He screamed, and the water swept into his mouth. His head went further under, and in seconds, he thought his lungs would burst. As he struggled for breath and groped for something to grab hold of that could save him, he wondered if he would be nominated for this year’s Darwin award for his stupidity.
In a matter of seconds, he couldn't fight the inevitable any longer. He simply gave up and let the Grim Reaper take him. His last thought on earth was he hoped he would get his hands on Billy Smith if they met in the afterlife.
After the momentary burst of commotion White made to save himself, a deathly stillness fell over the lake. The wind moaned in the trees, and the snow began to fall harder.
In the distance, Billy Smith beamed with accomplishment. His nemesis, Mr. White had taken the bait completely, just as he thought he would. It had taken a lot of courage for him to use the spare key and sneak into his house in the dark. He couldn’t believe his good fortune when he discovered the bag of salt pellets in the laundry room. He figured the fat fuck would fall through the ice anyway since he probably weighed three times as much as he did, but the salt put the final nail in his coffin. Billy prided himself on the patience it took to sit in the garage all night, worrying he might be discovered. But going into the house and leaving by the front door really took balls he didn’t even know he had. His heart had been beating like a jackhammer the whole time.