by Adam Cesare
I made a big show of looking around the deserted street and told him that business was not booming. “They’ll be okay for a few minutes. They’re big girls.” Some of them really were big girls.
I clapped my arm around his back and started him walking. I even jostled his hair, to put on a good buddy-buddy show. Once around the corner, I shoved him into the first alley we came to, onto his face.
“Take me to the girl. Right now.”
He was already sniffling and crying. By the looks of it, I had broken his nose, again. “Come on, Jack. I don’t know nothing.”
“We both know that isn’t true. Try again or I’m taking off those ears of yours.” I put on my best snarl.
“I need these. They’re therapeutic.” His whining was so pathetic it could almost make you feel bad for a guy who beats and sells women—almost.
I pulled on one of his fake ears, but it didn’t budge. Instead, Snatch screamed like I was murdering his children. The loony prick must have glued them to his skin.
“I’ll take you. I’ll take you. Just don’t tell the cops, all right?”
“Tell the cops about what?”
Snatch brought me to a condemned apartment building.
“She’s inside. Apartment three,” he said. His tears and blood were just beginning to dry when it started raining again.
“You’re coming with me.” There was no door on the frame, so entry wasn’t the problem. I just wanted Snatch within punching distance if I didn’t like what I found.
It didn’t seem possible, but the building looked worse inside than it did from the street. Every inch of wood was rotted, and the staircase leading to the upper apartments had only about four stairs left. It was a good thing that the floor was tile and that apartment three was on the ground level.
Inside the bathroom of three, things got even worse. I took one look in the bathtub and lost it.
“I thought she overdosed, okay? I thought she was dead,” Snatch said, backing toward the exit. He tried putting his hands up, but I knocked his block off before he could offer even the mildest resistance.
I kept hitting him until he was unconscious, and then I scooped up the shivering naked girl from the bathtub and walked out into the night.
The son of a bitch had left her to die, naked and covered in her own sick. Her body looked like a war zone. There were track marks and bruises, but most unsettling was the large pink scar on her hip. I was intrigued and revolted, and then I realized that the poor girl was shivering while I was gawking at her goods. I wrapped my jacket around her and tried to find us shelter from the rain.
Her breathing was shallow and she mumbled like somebody having a nightmare. I guess we all kind of were.
“Hey, kid. You’re going to be okay, I’m gonna bring you to your sister.”
She kept on with her pained whispering; it sounded like pleading. She could barely open her eyes.
It was then I finally looked her in the face—she was definitely the dame’s sister. Emaciated and strung-out, but she still looked just like her. When she was showered and fed, she would be beautiful.
“Don’t worry, honey. Your sister will be taking care of you soon,” I said, but she couldn’t hear me. All she kept saying was “No.”
When I carried her into the Algonquin—one of the few “classy” hotels left in the state—I could not have given less of a shit about the man at the front desk’s protestations that I leave.
I pushed him aside and walked right into the elevator. I extended one finger and jabbed floor three. Outside 303, I could hear the dame. Not her voice but her retching. She was vomiting somewhere inside the room. I thought to myself that some chicks will do anything to stay skinny.
Her sister was asleep in my arms and I had to set her down to knock on the door. In a couple of moments, the girl from the bar appeared at the door. She wore a silk bathrobe, the same color of the dress she had been wearing at Pete’s. She frowned when she saw that her sister wasn’t standing next to me and then looked down to see her piled at her doorstep.
“My god. What happened?”
I picked the girl up and brought her inside. I laid her on one of the room’s two fancy couches.
“Is she…” Her voice broke before she could say it.
“No,” I said quickly. “She’s just beat-up and strung-out real bad. She should get better with some considerable nursing.”
“She’ll get it,” she said.
I looked at the girl on the couch. It was breaking my heart to be in the same room with her. I felt like an ass for wanting to leave so badly, but I’d saved the day—what more can you ask? “About my payment …,” I said, letting my words trail off.
“Really, Mr. Jacoby? Tact is not your strong suit,” she said while still attending to her sister. “My purse is on the dresser. There’s money in it. Take it all. I’m going to take care of my sister, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry, go ahead.” I shrugged and went to the dresser. I dumped out her small clutch and grabbed for the roll of bills, but something else from the contents caught my eye. It was the other half of the photo—only, it was the same girl. It all rushed into my head so fast I thought I was going to pass out.
Identical twins.
Not just that. The scar.
They were conjoined twins.
The bitch from the bar, she was sick.
She needed to find her sister badly because she needs her …
I whirled around just in time to see one of the room’s fine decorative lamps slam into my face. As I went down, the world splashed into a pool of black.
I woke up to a bloody nose and an empty room. The twins were gone. So was the money. I thought about the poor girl in the tub, and how she was probably better off there, where she at least had all of her internal organs.
Sometimes I think I’m really not good for anything. Those are the times that I’m right.
Border Jumper
Patch hit the burlap sack with the butt of his gun. The creature let out a pained cry. It sounded almost like a human child.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Hernandez. The Mexican tried to stand tall and fearless, but was keeping a much farther distance from the bag than the old man was.
Patch looked across the ranch, squinted at the last bit of sun as it slid behind the mountains, and then lightly tapped the bag with the tip of his boot. The creature screamed again and Patch laughed uneasily, the wrinkles in his leathery skin multiplying exponentially as he started to talk.
“Well, what we got here is obviously special. I mean, look what it done to that one.” He pointed to the dead cow with his elbow, keeping the shotgun over his shoulder. The cow was partially flayed, the skin of its flank peeled back to reveal gnawed bone and tendon. Its tongue had been ripped from its head, and a steady stream of crimson ran from its mouth and onto the cracked Texas ground. “Hard to believe something this small did that,” the old man concluded.
“Maybe it didn’t, maybe a coyote or big cat got to it first,” the farmhand said. There was a hesitant tremor in his voice, and if Patch were listening, he would have sensed a gentle pleading as well. “You should let it go, that is what I think.”
“You crazy, boy? Tú loco,” the farmer asked, knocking on the side of his head. Even after the decade that Hernandez had known him, the old man still only spoke a handful of Spanish words. He was not a racist or a slave driver, he was just trying to raise the younger man’s ire by poking fun at his language. “This fuckin’ thing here is money in the bank. You help me get it in the truck, we bring it down to Lawson’s, and he’ll put it in that pit of his. Comprende?” He winked and the crow’s-feet that appeared at the corners of his eyes could have swallowed a golf ball.
“But sir…”
Patch put up his hand.
The Mexican lowered his head and started mumbling things Patch did not fully understand.
Hernandez had trouble getting the sack into the bed
of the pickup. A claw poked through the fabric, and it took some maneuvering to stay away from it while he tossed the bag over the side of the truck. The thing was only about the size of a large cat, but its nails were not to be trifled with.
He went around to the passenger-side door.
“What you think you’re doing? You gotta sit back there and make sure that thing doesn’t get loose,” Patch said.
“You should do it. I’m the one who risked his cojones to put it back there.” Right away Hernandez regretted it. He liked to joke with the old man sometimes, but he constantly had to remind himself that he was still in the country illegally and that Patch was his boss. The old man couldn’t sit on the side of the pickup. Hernandez was not a kid anymore, but at least all his limbs were still in working order. Patch’s body was so arthritic he could barely make a fist. Hernandez waved his hand at the back window to say never mind, and hopped into the back.
The ride to Lawson’s was bumpy and dusty. The bar was only around a mile from the end of Patch’s property, but the pair had to make their way through some rough terrain. The road they used wasn’t paved, and Hernandez held on to the side of the truck as he watched jackrabbits dive for their holes when the truck crashed into the mounds of dirt and tall grass that had accumulated since the last time Patch brought the truck out this way. When they finally pulled up to the bar, Hernandez could hear the twang of the gringos’ cowboy music. No matter how good his English got or how many hamburgers he ate, he could never get used to the music.
Hernandez waited with the truck. He had to watch the animal and didn’t feel like withstanding the patrons’ loud racist mouths tonight. Patch banged on the door and a small window opened; he said nothing and then the door swung open. The old man exchanged some friendly curse words with the doorman and then walked in.
As he waited, Hernandez wondered if what they had in the bag was the same thing his grandmother used to warn him about. The Chupacabra, his grandmother had said, likes to eat goats and other animals, but it’s especially partial to bad little boys who don’t do their chores and are terrible to their sisters. It has big red ojos and skin like dry, rotten meat. Hernandez recalled the story with nostalgic fondness, but he remembered shivering on the porch of his grandmother’s hacienda at the time she told it. She had offered him some of her blanket and a seat next to her, but did not stop telling her tale. The worst thing, she continued, the thing that really keeps the ninos in line, is the Chupacabra’s big sharp teeth. It has rows and rows of them. Using his teeth is his favorite thing, but they are no good for chewing, you see, so it must drink its victims and then move on to the next one. But, mi amor, you don’t have to worry about the Chupacabra. For you are a good little boy, am I right? Hernandez could still feel his pulse quickening as he nodded, silently swearing to return to the general store and pay for the sweets he had stolen the week before. Good—the old lady smiled warmly—now let’s go get some of that tres leches before your sisters eat it all.
The thing in the bag seemed way too small to be the monster that had stalked his dreams as a child. He had not gotten that great a look at it before Patch stuffed it in the bag. He told himself it was probably just some mangy dog.
Patch and Lawson came out of the building. The two men were polar opposites: Patch was bald, pale, and doubled over from age, while Lawson was tall, sunburned, muscular, and covered in a fine sheet of hair. He reminded Hernandez of a monster he had once seen as a child in a Mexican comic book.
“Hey, Paco, open the bag.” Lawson pointed a thick wooly finger at the sack. Lawson knew Hernandez’s name but refused to call any Mexican anything other than Paco.
Patch rolled his eyes in order to distance himself from the big man and nodded to Hernandez. The younger man bent over the side of the truck to undo the knot. The creature growled and hissed as soon as he got close.
“Eh, why don’t I take your word for it, Patch, and we’ll just throw the whole bag in the pit? I’ll split the take with you fifty-fifty,” Lawson said.
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Gentlemen and ladies of fine moral standing,” Lawson said into his bullhorn, to sparse laughter from the audience. The patrons of the bar were there for the booze and the blood, not the comedy stylings of Buck Lawson. “Tonight we have a special treat. Tonight’s fight will not be one of canine versus canine, but of dog versus monster!”
Patch kind of tuned the man out after that; he was too busy watching Hernandez climb down the small ladder into the dog-fighting pit.
“Careful now,” he said. He could not tell whether he meant to protect the young Mexican or the investment he dangled. Maybe it was both.
Hernandez held the bag out as far as he could from his body and tried to descend the ladder with his free hand. He could hear the dogs in their cages barking. They were much louder than usual; maybe whatever was in the bag was driving them crazy.
There was a pounding on the front door and Patch looked up. Lawson had noticed too and looked over at the doorman, who shook his head and grabbed for the shotgun propped up against the door frame. “Some asshole. Don’t worry, Buck, I’ll straighten him out.”
Patch turned back to the ring. Hernandez had both feet on the ground now and was waiting for Lawson’s signal to open the bag. Suddenly there was the blast of the shotgun from the door. The doorman screamed and then was silent.
The silence continued for a remarkable amount of time before the screaming began. There, standing in the doorway, was a larger version of the creature in the bag. It had splotchy black skin dotted with tufts of short blonde hair. There were sharp black wire-like spikes shooting from the back of its arms, legs, and head. The black-green skin of its face was shriveled in some places but drawn tight around its cheeks and bulbous eyes. It opened and closed its mouth as it breathed. Its mouth was lined with a circle of sharp, pointed teeth that looked so delicate they appeared almost crystalline.
The monster was using its large double-jointed arms to pry the doorman’s head from his body. The beast had already snapped the bouncer’s shooting arm in two, and his hand bounced uselessly against his elbow as he flailed his arms. His head was wrestled off with a thick, dark ribbon of blood. The entire bar sat frozen; it was only when the stench of his voided waste filled the air that there was a panic.
The screams weren’t just from the women. Men too were crying to Jesus as the monster dropped the man’s body and ran farther into the bar, hissing and taking swipes at anything unlucky enough to get caught in its way.
The speed with which it worked was incredible. It bounded from person to person with strong legs that looked a bit like a kangaroo’s. The absurdity of the creature did not diminish how intimidating it was.
Patch fell with a lightning bolt of pain onto his backside as the monster leapt onto the blonde girl next to him. She screamed as she hit the floor and the creature tangled its front claws in her long hair. Frustrated by her high-pitched squeals, it smashed her mouth into the wood floor. When she would not stop, it bashed her face down harder, three times in rapid succession, until on the third time the piece of her scalp it was gripping tore off in its claw. It looked at the bloody flap of skin and hair and let her broken face flop to the floor. She was silent when it dug its oval mouth into her and bit down.
Patch offered up a prayer for the girl and hoped his death would not be as painful. His knees had been aching all day, and now they flared up as if on fire. Running wasn’t an option—he was ready to go.
There was an explosion and buckshot peppered the creature’s flank and the girl’s corpse and splintered the floorboards in front of Patch’s boots. Lawson had a gun and was raving at the beast.
“My bar, fuckin’ thing in my bar! No fucking dog-meat bastards in here. Get off her.” The barman’s face was red with blood and tears. Patch had seen boys lose it in the wars, and that was exactly the look Lawson wore now. The bear of a man fired again, but the shot went wide, clipping a man who was trying to scram
ble out of a window. The animal growled deep in its throat and launched itself at the big man. As it dug its forked hands into his chest, Patch could see that Lawson’s first shot had barely wounded it. Small pea-sized holes oozed black blood, but the thing did not indicate that it cared.
It pried Lawson’s ribs back like it were opening a toolbox. The man dropped his gun but kept raving until he was dead.
Patch watched the chaos unfold around him.
Hernandez heard the violence but could not see anything from down in the pit. Holding his hand to his mouth, he tried to keep from being heard. He smelled the carnage and could only imagine the bloodshed above him. When Patch’s body was thrown into the pit, he could not help himself. He screamed.
Hernandez had seen dead bodies before. Growing up in Mexico, he saw death everywhere: grisly photos of car accidents on the covers of the newspapers, open-casket funerals that lasted for days, and even a holiday for it. When his grandmother went, the funeral had started a day before she was dead. The priest came in and talked to her for a while, and then she passed. For a day, Hernandez, the only man of the house, had to sit alone in her room until the men from the town came to take the body. At ten years old, he only once got up the courage to leave his seat and peek under his grandmother’s shroud.
Patch’s death was nothing like that.
When the dust cleared from around the farmer’s body, Hernandez could see that his head was on backward. He had known the old man could not live forever, but seeing the pitiful withered and broken thing in front of him changed something. Looking into the dusted-over eyes of his friend, he could not help but vomit.