by Strand, Jeff
"I think I'm gonna puke."
"Don't do it on my lawn. We don't want your DNA seeping into the dirt. Anyway, Mitch confessed that he was eating a nineteen-year-old while her husband was working the weekend shift, so he had to die."
"You're only twenty-two," I said. "It's not that big of an age difference."
"I know how old I am."
"So...what did you think I was going to do when you told me about all this?"
"What did I think you'd do? I thought you'd understand! If we had an open relationship based on full disclosure, you'd be angry if I got eaten behind your back, right?"
"I suppose so."
"So help me get rid of the body."
"I've got one more question."
Gail sighed. "What?"
"Why is he in a Bigfoot costume?"
"You can't really be that dumb, Gus."
"It's an honest question!"
She rolled her eyes as if speaking to the biggest idiot in a hundred-mile radius. "It was a fetish. He could only get hard if he wore the costume. What the hell did you think it was?"
"You banged him while he was dressed like this?"
"Didn't I just say that? If you want to roll him over, you'll see that the costume ain't got a crotch."
I threw up.
"Oh, for goodness sake," said Gail. "I thought you were more of a man than this. I should've asked Clyde to help instead."
"Clyde? Who's Clyde?"
"Just a friend. He watched us from the closet the first time we did it."
"What?"
"You didn't hear him jostling hangers and panting all heavy? You are not an observant man, Gus. I even called out to ask if he was okay in there."
"I thought you were talking to me! I thought 'Are you okay in there?' was about whether my penis was okay in your vagina! I thought it was dirty talk!"
"I'm way better at dirty talk than that and you damn well know it."
I threw up again. This was the worst day I'd ever had in my life, and that includes the time I got my lower lip caught in a can opener. My eyes started to well up with tears.
"You gonna bawl on me?" asked Gail.
"No."
"If I get caught, so help me God I will tell everybody in the courtroom that you were crying. The judge will send you to jail for being a pussy."
"I said I wasn't gonna bawl, goddamn it! Let's just move the body and get it over with!"
"It's about time. You take the legs and I'll take the arms, and we'll carry him into my bedroom."
I stared at Gail for a good long moment.
"Why is he going in your bedroom?" I asked.
"Not again! How much ignorance can one man have in his head? Ain't you ever heard of necrophilia? You think I should just waste a perfectly good body that doesn't even stink yet? For such an old guy, you sure don't seem to know much about how the world works."
"You...you...you screw dead guys?"
"No, Gus! Of course I don't! When would I have an opportunity like that? I don't work in no damn morgue. That's why I have to take advantage of this dead body."
"I'm not going to help you drag a corpse into your bedroom to be deviant with!"
"Fine. Don't help. I don't care." She yanked the butcher knife out of Mitch's back. "I'll just have myself a two-dead-guy threesome."
Gail got this crazed look in her eyes, like she'd gone completely feral, and lunged at me with the knife. I think she was aiming for my throat, so I was kind of relieved when she hit my shoulder instead.
Oh, don't get me wrong, it hurt when the blade sunk a couple of inches deep into my tender shoulder flesh. I hollered like nobody's business. I'm just saying that it was better than if she'd slashed open my jugular vein, causing blood to jettison all over the place. That's all.
I would never hit a woman, but I did give her a shove. You can't fault me for that. The knife popped out of my shoulder, and I was unhappy to see that Gail was still holding it.
She growled like a rabid elk, then charged at me.
As far as I know, she was aiming for my neck again, but she got me in the other shoulder. You'd think that this one would've hurt less, since I'd grown accustomed to the experience, but nope, it stung like hell.
Neither of my arms were working well enough to shove her away again, so I gave her a head-butt. I heard a really nasty-sounding crunch and Gail fell to the ground.
Her face was looking pretty rough. "You broke my nose!" she wailed, although she was hard to understand, what with the broken nose and everything.
I apologized.
Then Gail let out this angry, insane shriek that made me feel relieved that I hadn't asked her to marry me, because she was clearly not right in the head. And then she started stabbing herself with the butcher knife, right in the chest.
"Is this another fetish?" I asked.
"Ain't no fetish!" Gail stabbed herself, again and again, until she flopped over. I hurried over there and tried to keep pressure on the wounds, but there were about thirty of them, and pretty soon she was dead.
I figured this story was going to be difficult to explain to the police, so I buried the bodies.
As I'm writing this, it's occurred to me that a fun twist ending would be if I suddenly got all perverted and dragged the bodies into Gail's bedroom for some fun. But that's not what happened. The whole idea is distasteful to me. However, if you want to make up an ending where that kind of depravity took place, be my guest. I don't control your sick imagination.
Don't go too far with it, though. I mean, leave me some dignity.
Anyway, I buried the bodies, and of course I got caught, and just as I'd predicted they didn't believe my story. So I figured, hey, I've got nothing better to do in prison, might as well write a book.
And I'm done. It's not a very long book, but I'm proud of it, and I may even write another one if I have any other wacky experiences, so make room on your bookshelf.
GROSS-OUT: THE RETURN
Author's Note: In my first collection Gleefully Macabre Tales, I included two vile stories that I read out loud as part of the World Horror Convention Gross-Out Contest. None were included in my second collection, Dead Clown Barbecue, because I retired from that wretched nonsense.
But at the 2016 World Horror Convention, I was drawn back into the repugnant fold. Immoral author Brian Keene was running it, and he asked me to participate. I choked back some bile and agreed.
I came in second place.
I'm including a transcript here for its historical significance, although that doesn't mean you have to read this shit. The "Cullen" and "Wrath" references are to the disgusting Cullen Bunn and the appalling Wrath James White, two masters of the craft who placed higher than me every time we competed against each other.
I do not apologize for the following tale. The decision to read it is your own.
* * *
I thought I had a pubic hair stuck in my teeth, but it was actually a piece of vulva. I looked up at my new girlfriend. She was so moist she was foaming.
"Yeah, baby, you're so wet I'd slurp you with a straw." I took a straw out of my pocket and shoved it in. I sucked in a mouthful of her arousal. "Damn, baby, you're so thick and delicious that you should have balls of tapioca at the bottom." I swished her burning desire between my teeth. "A bit chunky tonight, baby, what've you been eating?"
The door opened. Dad walked in. "Aloysius Percival Huntington III, what are you doing?"
"Nothin'," I said.
"Step away from that calf!"
"C'mon, Dad!"
"It was born three hours ago! Hell's the matter with you?"
"I dunno. Just trying to bring it to heights of ecstasy. And I was good at it! Look! Look! She's a squirter!"
"That's blood, dipshit. It doesn't count."
"Well, Dad, if it's wrong to go down on a newborn calf with such exuberance that you end up chewing through its lady parts, then I don't want to be right."
I've always had a problem with authority, so I ignored Dad
and resumed my lapping, being even more thorough than before.
"Remove your tongue from that anus immediately!" Dad commanded.
"Ith sthuck."
"Your behavior is deplorable! What if others learn of your depraved ways? Can you imagine the controversy?"
"Did somebody say controversy?" asked Brian Keene, stepping into the barn. "How can I best insert myself into the center of it?"
Keene noticed what I was doing and looked troubled by the sight. He quietly backed out of the barn, forever haunted.
I pulled my tongue free of the sphincter with a "pop." Something floated into the air. "Look, Dad!" I said, pointing. "A brown bubble!"
"Your juvenile behavior disgusts me," said Dad. "You disgusted me on the day you were born, when you emerged from your mother's vagina pretending to whack off with your umbilical cord."
"I thought of that joke six weeks after conception," I said, proudly. "That's why abortion is wrong."
I realized that I was ignoring my girlfriend. I couldn't remember, was it two in the pink and one in the stink? Three in the pink and two in the stink? How many went in the stink? Oh why, oh why, hadn't I paid attention in math class...when my teacher fingered a student?
"Dad, you've messed up the mood. When you came in here she was spurting but now it's just a trickle. Thanks a lot."
"Sorry, son, but you're an abomination on humanity. And the only way I know to deal with an abomination on humanity is to burn him or her alive."
Note to self: Throw lit matches into the audience.
[Author's note: I read that part out loud. But I didn't actually throw lit matches into the audience, since that would have been irresponsible. Instead, I pretended to check for matches, then said "Oh well."]
"Aaaaahhhhh!" I remarked. "This is so inappropriate! My blackened charring flesh is horrifically painful but technically not all that gross. I'm dying for nothing! No, wait, this blister is pretty gross, right? I'm popping it now. Ew, ew, ew, pus! Uhhh, uhhh...my boogers are aflame!"
"I'll see you in hell," said Dad. "Tell Cullen and Wrath I said hi."
DEFORMED SON
"Just so you know, we keep our deformed son chained in the basement," the farmer said. "So when you hear rattling and wailing in the middle of the night, that'll be him."
"Ah," said the traveling salesman. "That's interesting, I guess."
"Now, you may get it into your head that you want to go down the stairs and investigate, but I assure you, when you gaze upon his horrific visage you'll wish you'd done nothing of the sort. He is absolutely disgusting. I mean, simply vile. My stomach hurts a little just thinking about him."
"Not to be rude," said the traveling salesman, "but that's an unusual attitude for a parent to take."
The farmer nodded. "I get what you're saying. And if he were maybe twenty percent less deformed, I'd agree with you. But this kid...let me tell you, when he popped out of his momma, I said 'Shove him back in, he's not done yet.' Normally that would be the kind of thing I'd say out loud and immediately wish I'd kept in my head, but everybody in the delivery room, my beloved wife included, agreed with me."
"Wow."
"We didn't shove it back in, though. That would've been impractical."
The traveling salesman had already wished he hadn't run out of gas on the desolate road in the middle of the night, but this conversation made him wish even more that he hadn't ignored the sign that said "Last Chance Gas Station." He'd figured it was a deceptive marketing campaign.
"Here's your room," said the farmer, opening the door to a small but tidy guest room. "If you value retaining whatever food you've eaten today, I'd advise you not to leave it. Do not enter any other room under any circumstances."
"What's in the other rooms?"
"Nothing."
"Do you have a daughter?"
"Don't make me regret my hospitality."
"All right. I promise I won't leave the room."
"The obvious exception is the bathroom. You're welcome to leave your room and go into that room if the need arises. I wouldn't deny you that. But otherwise, stay in your room."
The traveling salesman thanked the farmer and went to bed, where he dreamt of a nubile young woman eating a hoagie. Around two in the morning he awoke with the need to empty his bladder. He crossed the hallway and quickly used the toilet.
After he flushed, he heard rattling and wailing from below.
Did the farmer really keep his deformed son locked in the basement, or was this something even more curious?
What kind of traveling salesman would he be if he didn't investigate? He was supposed to be a man of the world, and here was a part of the world he'd never experienced. If he didn't go down into the basement, he'd forever wonder if the farmer had been telling the truth.
As he stepped out of the bathroom, he stood in the hallway for a few minutes, listening for any sign that the farmer might be awake, such as footsteps or muttering. Aside from the wailing and chains rattling, the house was silent.
The traveling salesman decided that he needed to go down there. What was the farmer going to do, stab him through the face with a pitchfork?
He very slowly walked down the stairs to the first floor. Then he crossed through the living room and through the kitchen, until he reached the basement door.
He took a deep breath. Maybe this wasn't a great idea. What if the deformed son was so hideous that the image was permanently burned onto his eyeballs? What if in the future the traveling salesman were about to enjoy a perfectly good hamburger, but instead of the top of the sesame seed bun he saw only the face of the deformed boy? That would ruin his hamburger.
He should turn back.
He turned around. The farmer stood just outside of the kitchen, looking most unhappy with him.
"I told you to stay in your room," said the farmer.
"Ah, yes," said the traveling salesman. "I do specifically remember us having that particular conversation. What happened is that I woke up, as I often do, confused about my surroundings. I suffer from insomnia and often take a sleeping pill to aid with my unconsciousness, particularly when I'm on the road. So I wandered around the house, trying to remember where I was, until the sight of you just now brought everything back. I suppose I'll head back upstairs now and return to the bed that you so generously provided."
"I don't have a daughter," the farmer said.
"I never suggested that you did."
"That's what you're looking for, right? A sixteen-year-old daughter to ravish?"
"What? Goodness, no."
"You traveling salesmen are all alike. Always looking to score with a farmer's underage daughter."
"No, no, no, sir. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if she were of the legal age of consent, I would not be creeping around your home in hopes of spending time in her company. That would be disrespectful. It was the sleeping pill. Entirely the sleeping pill."
"Would you be willing to show me the bottle from which the sleeping pill came?"
"That would not be my preference."
"If you're not trying to find my beautiful willing daughter, then the only other explanation is that you wish to gape at my deformed son, which is the behavior of a mentally unstable person. I've said quite clearly how unpleasant he is to the eye. He will turn your dreams into a maelstrom of nightmare images that will forever haunt you. Is that what you want?"
"No, sir."
"Then return to bed, and forget that you ever came down here."
"Yes, sir."
* * *
The next morning, the traveling salesman awoke, packed his suitcase, and walked downstairs. "Thank you for your hospitality," he said. "If I might ask one last favor, now that it's daylight, would you drive me to the nearest gas station?"
The farmer took a sip of his cup of coffee and shook his head. "I don't own a car."
"But there's a car in your driveway."
"That hasn't worked in twenty years."
"What about a trac
tor?"
"Tractor doesn't work, either."
"How do you sustain a farm without a car or tractor?"
"Government subsidies."
"So you have no way of giving me a ride?"
"Nope."
"Is there anything from which I could syphon some gas?"
"Nope."
"How far away is the nearest gas station?"
"About thirty miles."
"That's problematic. I guess I'll have to call a tow truck or something."
The traveling salesman called every auto-related business in the area, and none of them could send a tow truck until the next morning. He was extremely disappointed by this, because every day he wasn't on the road was a day he wasn't selling blenders. The farmer offered to let him stay in his home for another night, and the traveling salesman had no choice but to accept.
"Let me repeat what I said before: do not leave your room. I cannot emphasize strongly enough just now much you would not enjoy the sight of my deformed son. He's got a decent enough personality, but personality can only take you so far, and even the least superficial human being in the country would gag. They might do it discretely, but they'd still gag. Stay in your damn room."
But when the traveling salesman woke up at two in the morning again, he needed to see what was down there, wailing and rattling the chains. What if it was something really cool? He had to know. And though the farmer had been upset with him when he caught him in the kitchen, there was still no reason to believe that it would lead in a pitchfork-through-the-face direction.
What was the worst that could happen?
He very carefully snuck down the stairs, through the living room, and through the kitchen. He placed his hand upon the knob to the door to the basement and ever so slowly, he turned it.
The door was locked.
But it was locked from this side, so he unlocked it.
Ever so slowly, he turned the knob.
He pushed open the door.