Header 3

by Edward Lee

  Augie bucked on the table like a steer felled on the floor of the abattoir with a sledge hammer. His back arched off the table, but Loger and Horace had the head locked in place. Augie’s scream cut off as the grinding sound of carved bone gave way to something softer and far less resistant. It reminded Brice of sexual intercourse, the wet sounds of engorged flesh sliding across slick membranes. His brother’s mouth gaped open in a silent scream which slackened as his body went limp against the table. The bovine terror in his eyes lost its focus, became something horribly passive.

  Brice screamed, feeling places inside him tear apart.

  Tucker withdrew the saw and set it aside. The ambient sound of the room seemed deafening in the absence of the grinding. Augie’s nerves continued to fire, his fists and heels rapidly pounding the table with a ferocity vacant in his face. He could have been a frog hooked up to a car battery.

  Eamon pointed to Gut. “Make the slit.”

  Gut produced a knife from the table where Loger grabbed Babba’s picture book and Tucker set down the saw. He worked the blade into the head and twisted, molding the desired shape like somebody carving a jagged grin into a jack-o-lantern. Blood and spinal fluid spattered in the growing puddle of bodily emissions under the table.

  Brice’s stomach turned, pulled in every direction. He stared open-mouthed, eyes burning. The most awful thing was seeing Augie’s chest heaving through all of this, still alive. His body shivered on the table, his face expressionless and unchanging like a photograph. Pale and bloodless, essentially lobotomized. Even if by some miracle he survived tonight, Augie as Brice had known him was gone forever. The blade worked through the circumference of bone. Tucker gritted his teeth as he worked, his muscles bulging. The repulsive sound of reshaping bone screeched in Brice’s ears.

  “Okay, city boy, here’s the deal,” Eamon said. “We’se gonna let you go.”

  That last little bit was probably the only thing that could have reached Brice through the fog of his terror. His mouth snapped shut and he managed to tear himself away from Augie to direct his attention to the mayor.

  “But there’s one condition,” Eamon continued.

  “What…what is it?” Brice asked, his voice strained into something he wouldn’t have recognized if someone played it back for him. He did not feel in control of his own body.

  Eamon’s deadpan expression never changed as he pointed over to Augie on the table. He said nothing.

  “What do you…?” Brice trailed off, bewildered, thinking the trauma of the evening must have impaired his ability to comprehend something patently obvious to everyone else. He could only think of one explanation, and surely that couldn’t be it, that was insane-

  Clyde chuckled behind him and began to steer Brice to the table. He instinctively planted a foot to stop the progress, but Clyde pushed him along effortlessly as if Brice was hoisted up by wires and not touching the ground at all. He hauled him past Clark and inexorably toward the newly created ingress in his brother’s head.

  “You can’t…you can’t be serious,” Brice heard himself say. To his own ears, his voice sounded like it came from another room; another dimension.

  Sarah May followed around the table, a lascivious grin on her face as she fumbled with his belt buckle. The zipper came next, and gravity did the rest. “Come on, baby. You’ll like it.”

  “Yeah,” Gut assured. “Feels better’n any pussy you ever got yer dog in.”

  “That’s right, son,” Eamon said. “We’ll let’cha go…but you gotta fuck yer brother in the head first.” For the first time, he managed an easy smile.

  Brice gulped. On the table, Augie continued to shiver. His lower lip trembled. Perhaps it was a trick of the upside down angle, but his eyes seemed to look right back at Brice’s, imploring him. His mouth opened, shut, opened again, as though trying to form words.

  “This is insane!” he cried.

  “Naw.” Eamon shook his head. “Rapin’ a retarded gal is insane, son.”

  “But I didn’t do it! I wasn’t there!”

  “Yeah, but you knew about it. Way I see it? We’re bein’ mighty generous, givin’ you a pass on that. So get to it. We ain’t never seen no fella fuck his own brother’s head. I like that idea.”

  Brice had to wake up from this. He’d feel like the world’s luckiest man to open his eyes in his own bed now, or even on the Petri dish of the Due Drop In fold-out. Failing that, something had to stop it from happening, some sort of universal failsafe against such reason-defying aberrancy. It struck him that at a given moment, someone could usually find solace in the idea that there were millions of people going through the same thing somewhere in the world at that exact moment. There was no such comfort for Brice now unless Stoody was still on a header marathon out in the woods, and he probably hadn’t found his brother anywhere in that grave.

  The world swam out of focus and threatened to fade altogether. If Clyde hadn’t twisted at his arms right at that moment, he might have followed the chance of unconsciousness to its sweet oblivion. The sudden pain jerked him back to the horror show, where words from one of the Larkins filled his head as though someone twisted a volume knob.

  “—you’ll all but give up the splittail after ya’ve dipped yer wick in one of these,” Horace informed him, flicking Augie on the side of the head. A blink was the extent of his reaction.

  “But if’n ya refuse…” Loger let the threat hang there.

  “It’ll be yer head gets humped tomorrow,” Tucker finished.

  Clyde clapped Brice on the shoulder. “That’s right, city bitch. We’ll have a blammed block party with you!”

  Oh God, this isn’t real, Brice thought. If he hadn’t already puked in the woods after running out on Stoody, they’d need a mop for more than spinal fluid, semen, and blood back here.

  “I couldn’t…” Brice protested. “I couldn’t possibly…”

  “Now, you’d be surprised what the human body’ll do ta stay alive,” Eamon lectured. “Hell, look at your brother there, boy. I’d say he cain’t remember his own name or even what planet he’s on, but he’s hangin’ on anyway.”

  Augie’s head peered at him with its partially excavated third eye, the clumps of hair around it sticky with blood. It made him think of JFK autopsy pictures.

  “An’ if you don’t want to take his place,” Eamon continued, “you’ll saddle on up and hump ya some family head hole. I’m sure Sarah May’d be happy to help ya rise to the occasion.”

  Sarah May leaned over again and tugged down Brice’s boxers. “That’s right, hon. Just let me give ya a helpin’ hand.”

  He would swear he was dead from the waist down, but the skin of his scrotum prickled and his shirt jutted out at the bottom inside of thirty seconds.

  “There ya go, sweetie! That shore didn’t take long!”

  “And we’se also gonna record the moment for prosterity,” Tucker informed. Brice shifted his gaze to find another eye upon him—that of the lens of the Galaxy Samsung held out in Tucker’s hand. “Case’n you get any ideas ’bout blabbin’ anything you seen tonight and maybe leavin’ out yer own percipitation.”

  “We’ll send’ye a copy,” Gut offered.

  Everyone had a good laugh over that, minus Eamon, who merely grunted, “Lights, cam’ra, action.”

  The room spun and the floor canted. It seemed to guide him toward the head of the table, though actually Clyde still had him chicken winged and had wrestled him there. His erection pointed the way, bobbing.

  “That’s it, baby,” Sarah May said. She took hold of him, resuming her role of fluffer before Brice’s vitality could flag. “Just slide it riiiiiiiiight in.”

  She had lifted up his shirt for better gripping, and he watched in disbelief as his member closed the distance, throbbing in Sarah May’s hot fingers, as majestic as a space docking sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  “I shore do envy you, Brice,” she said, her breath quicker now. “What I wouldn’t give ta do what yer about to.�
��

  Yeah, that’s me, just a lucky guy all around.

  All he could do was watch as his dick vanished inch by inch within the makeshift orifice in the top of Augie’s skull. Tucker had hollowed out a perfectly symmetrical orifice with the assistance of his hole-saw and knife. Augie’s entire body tensed, and he emitted a sharp gasp. His eyes blinked rapidly several times. He slackened as his head accepted the entirety of Brice’s girth. Brice expected some kind of obstruction, a poke of jagged bone into his member, but the only thing that stopped his advance was the push of his pelvis against his brother’s hair. Brice pulled back as if he feared the hole was some kind of interstice that could suck him in, and Clyde powered him forward for his first true—if assisted—thrust. His mouth popped open in comical surprise, like a boy astonished his bike had stayed upright without the training wheels. Sarah May lowered her hand to cup his balls.

  “Hump it,” Eamon commanded.

  “Fuck ‘at boy’s head hard!” Gut encouraged.

  “Eeeeeeeeee-YA!” Loger whooped.

  There was a glory hole sensibility to the entrance with the hard opening encased in smooth rounded bone, but deeper in, the organ itself welcomed him with its slick and rubbery surface. It was alien but, he had to admit, not entirely unpleasant. At least not until he noticed that Augie’s right foot kicked every time he sank all the way to the hilt.

  “I said hump it, boy!” Eamon shouted.

  “Hump ‘at head like a head never been humped!” Gut improvised.

  Tucker clapped his hands one time. “Just you blow a king-sized nut right up in yer brother’s noggin!”

  “Fuck that head!” Sarah May said in Brice’s ear. She bounced her palm under his balls like she was jingling coins. “Fuck it! Fuck it!”

  It was overwhelming for Brice to stand here now and think My cock is pushing into my brother’s brain right this minute. He wanted this to end; needed it to before he lost his mind completely. He suspected it might be too late for that already. Augie’s foot kicked again. Brice closed his eyes. He could still hear it, but it wasn’t as bad as seeing it. He drove his pelvis forward without Clyde’s influence, immersing himself as deep as he could into Augie’s skull. Again. Again. He pounded into the drilled crevice, eyes shutting out the horror, trying to think only of Marcie, of Sarah May’s hands massaging him, shutting out the glee club of hayseeds doing their damnedest to remind him exactly of what it was he was doing and the phone immortalizing this nadir of his life.

  “Rock that skull, son, split it in twain!”

  “You’se plumb fuckin’ that head like a right pro, buh!”

  “Yeah, city boy! Hose your brother down! It’s goan be the nut of your blammed life!”

  Brice rocked his hips back and forth, a jackrabbit rhythm. The strokes began to feel undeniably, disturbingly good, although a voice in the recesses of mind whispered its assurance that he was merely acting, and not falling under the spell of this godforsaken debauchery. His scrotum tightened up as the waves of pleasure began to evacuate. He became aware of that telltale sound of proper header rhythm now in his ears: PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! It seemed to mercifully drown out the rest of the world, to narrow his existence to only performance and sensation. Circumstance was a meaningless, unknowable concept.

  “Now that, boys—that!—is what’cha call a header!” Eamon proclaimed from another world, something which barely registered even subliminally.

  The crevice accepted Brice with the tight fit of a glove, seemed to ignite every nerve ending along the course of his shaft. He felt himself swelling up for that final intense release, like the head would explode around his inflated organ, and then mercifully, triumphantly, he detonated his orgasm like atomic fission. Gallons seemed to unload from the soft coals lovingly cupped in Sarah May’s hand, as if they’d gone a lifetime without release.

  He did not know if his accompanying scream expressed the apex of his horror or the highest form of pleasure he had ever known.

  ««—»»

  Brice drove. The sunless sky seemed fitting for his departure from Luntville, bled dry of color like the face of someone who had gone into shock. He initially had to keep his attention on the task at hand as he drove out of town. A paranoid part of him thought Eamon’s guarantee was a charade, something to get his hopes up before someone dragged him back to town to finish what they started. (Maybe false hope made for a better header.) He kept his eyes glued to the rearview as much as the road ahead, and he tensed up taut as piano wire the few times that another car shared the road with him. Most of the streets were two lanes, and it was understandable for someone to linger behind him, not wanting to pass, but he was convinced it was someone who meant to stop him. One time it was an elderly couple in a car that had probably drag raced a Model T about a hundred years ago, but Brice didn’t relax until it turned off on a dirt road. He continued to watch for it in the rearview until another car came along, and then the paranoia cycle repeated all over again.

  Eventually he made his way to more populated areas and busier roads, which felt eons from Luntville even if they were merely a matter of miles. The scenic beauty that had transfixed him on the way a lifetime ago failed to register now. Once he got back to civilization, his exhausted mind receded and seemed to float away from the demands of driving. It was a showcase of the perseverance of muscle memory as barely any conscious thought went into it after that point. He maintained total silence in the car. No satellite radio, just the hum of the tires on asphalt and the rising whine of the motor when he accelerated. It triggered a sound byte of the hole-saw and the whole thing would play out again in his mind. He caught rain halfway home and the SWISH-SWISH-SWISH of the wiper blades became PAP! PAP! PAP! His head became a vacuum of thought. No commentary, remorse, terror, grief…just a loop of that night at Crossroads or the white noise of pressure in his ears as he drove along the interstate past far saner towns and cities.

  He took only his own belongings from the Due Drop In. The official story was he left Clark and Augie at Crossroads and they never came back to the room, which was of course the truth, minus the part where he’d claim they were still alive instead of oozing sperm and gray matter from saw wounds burrowed into their skulls. Anything could have happened to them. Drug-dealing scum from out of town tried to ply their trade in Luntville sometimes. Clark and Augie might have run afoul of them. They may have had a misadventure in Backtown. No one would be surprised when the case dead-ended in some Podunk town where state police couldn’t find their asses with both hands and GPS. Eamon assured him what Stoody had said was true, that the affiliates of law enforcement preferred to keep their distance and wouldn’t dig too deep. No one back home would question the obvious toll it had taken on Brice. There were several more gray hairs on his scalp than he’d had a week ago, with deeper lines etched in his face like chisel work on a sculpture. He had the thousand-yard stare, as if he’d spent a year in a war zone.

  After a couple of hours on the highway, he at last picked up the interstate. It wasn’t long before he had to stop to fuel up the BMW. He nearly ran out of gas before a dashboard light flickered a warning, and somehow his body knew what to do with the information without disturbing the morbid reverie playing through his mind. Muscle memory took him through this process as well with the swipe of his credit card and the selection of premium. It finally jolted him somewhere in the maze of his mind when he guided the nozzle into the tank. It was like a needle skipping over a record, an instant bump in the flashbacks to Brice in mid-header. He found himself achingly hard, tears stinging his eyes.

  There was an old lady on the other side of the pump island, seventy years old if she were a day, with glasses so thick they could have been ashtrays. They magnified her eyes, which got even bigger when she happened to look down at the tent pole Brice had sprung in his pants. She gasped, fell back against her door, and fumbled at the latch, watching him over her shoulder with that laughable expression of fear. She finally managed to open it, and poured herself into
the driver’s seat with an admirable display of spryness for someone of her disposition. He heard a muted mechanized click from within. She had locked the door.

  Brice gave her a disarming wave and turned his erection back toward the Beamer. The thoughts came unbidden.

  Can osteoporosis weaken the skull just like the rest of the bones? Bet it wouldn’t be a biggie at all to dig into your melon, granny. Better hope you’re not missing any of your calcium supplements, because I’ve got the perfect match for your groove if we open some daylight on your lid.

  He shook his head to dislodge these corrupt thoughts. Of course he didn’t really mean that. Lingering shock, that was all. Who could blame him, after what he went through? The guys who survived the Donner Party probably sized people up after their whole unfortunate cannibal affair, thinking what great traveling companions the meatier ones would make in the event of starvation. Or those rugby players in the Andes. It was a natural response, probably healthy in a fashion.

  The erection hadn’t gone away by the time he filled up the tank. The old lady continued to watch him from the safety of her car. In the natural picture frame of her window, he could only see her head. He moaned desperately.

  What would her huge eyes do behind those Coke bottle glasses with a cock in the old cabeza? Would they spin around real fast like a slot machine and come up cherries and bananas? What do you say we find out, grandma?

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” Brice said. He clumsily hooked the gas nozzle back to the pump, dripping a trail across the concrete, and clambered into his car. Granny watched him go with suspicious fright. The silly goose probably thought he wanted to get in her girdle.

  She’d probably drop dead on the spot if she knew what I was thinking.

  He sped away from the lot, cutting off someone and hitting the merge ramp to the interstate at warp speed.

  I’ll be myself when I get back home. I better be… I can’t say a word about this to anyone, much less some therapist. A head shrinker… Man, what a waste of a good head that would be—