Hell's Titties

by Robert Bevan

  Zelda spoke up first, repeating the first two lines of the fucked up nursery rhyme Rainn had mentioned earlier. “Body dripping red and gold. Reawaken gods of old.”

  Mark and Thorin joined in. “Open flame contains the damned. Nourish host with seed of man.”

  Rainn helped them finish it off. “Secret potion from the East. Extinguish flame. Unleash the beast.”

  “Body dripping red and gold,” Bucky repeated to himself. He felt his neck. The bleeding had stopped, but it still stung when he touched it. “My blood and piss mixed in the toilet.”

  “All right, Bucky,” said Floyd. “I think that's enough now.”

  “Open flame.” Bucky's heartbeat quickened. “I lit a candle in there. What was the next part?”

  “Let's go, Bucky!” insisted Floyd.

  Zelda volunteered the information enthusiastically. “Nourish host with seed of man.”

  Bucky stroked his ‘stache. “The fuck does that mean?”

  “That was the only part people paid any attention to in high school,” said Mark. “The 'host' was the girl who volunteered to let the demon possess her body. The 'seed of man' was what the other participants in the ritual hosed her down with.”

  Bucky frowned. “I can't think of anything that...” He turned to Floyd.

  Floyd shook his head and looked pleadingly at Bucky, his eyes begging him to shut up.

  This was bigger than Floyd's pride. Bucky needed answers. “When you swept that roach into the toilet, did you... How do I put this delicately?”

  Judging by the looks on everyone's faces, the damage was already done.

  “Jesus, Bucky. Fine! I jerked off on a goddamn cockroach. Is everybody fuckin' happy now?”

  “I'm sorry to have to press you on this, Floyd,” said Bucky. “But the rhyme distinctly said the host needs to be nourished. Did you shoot a load in the roach's mouth?”

  “Not specifically! Some of it may have gotten in there.”

  “Enough!” said Rainn. “Just please stop talking. We're trying to eat here. Why the fuck would you two idiots come into my store to talk about jerking off onto a roach in a toilet while my friends and I are trying to eat dinner?”

  Zelda's eyes were wide and serious behind her glasses. “There's only one possible reason.”

  Mark nodded. “They summoned Zabor.”

  The two stared at each other with deadpan expressions until their faces cracked in simultaneous grins. They rushed from the table back into the shop. Thorin and Rainn exchanged an eye roll.

  “Fine,” Rainn said to no one in particular, then she stood and shuffled towards the door, lazily gesturing for Floyd and Bucky to follow.

  Chapter 10

  Sheriff Roger Farnsworth wasn’t so vain as to think he led a charmed life, but he had always been satisfied with his lot. He’d been a solid student in high-school, and a star athlete, and everybody agreed he had a bright future ahead of him. So many people, not least his parents, had been surprised when he’d forgone college in favor of taking a deputy position at the local sheriff’s department. Roger didn’t care what people thought about that, though. Crawford had been good to him, and he wanted to be good to it in return. He genuinely cared about his town, and people appreciated that. It didn’t take long for him to cement his reputation as a fair and even-handed man, and a hard-working one at that. So when old Sheriff Garland had submitted to his third heart attack, it didn’t take a lot of persuasion to elect Roger as Crawford’s youngest ever Sheriff. He’d held the position for three years now, and he tried to give everyone he met the benefit of the doubt. Even stoned teenagers who were, excuse his French, talking out of their a-holes.

  “It was kind of…big,” said Zeebass.

  “Real big,” agreed one of his friends. Roger thought his name was Pickle or something equally ridiculous. “Size of a bear, at least.”

  “Uh-huh,” Roger said, doodling in his notepad. “You said that. So. It was a big monster, and it took your-”

  “Cheezums.” Zeebass nodded.

  “And Cheezums are…?”

  “Delicious,” Possibly Pickle confirmed.

  Roger looked around at the deserted playground that the teenage potheads had chosen to claim as their own for the night, situated just across from the town’s only gas station, situated just across from the town’s only gas station. The headlights from his cruiser lit the scene and revealed a predictable lack of monsters. “So, let me get this straight. Ya’ll rang an emergency number and got me out here because you think a big monster stole your snacks?”

  “Hey, man, I pay my taxes!” said Zeebass.

  “That is categorically untrue, and even if it wasn’t, I could still charge you for wasting police time.”

  “Oh, man! We’re the victims here!”

  “Of theft? Of some Cheezums?”

  “Dude, we saw a monster! Shouldn’t that, like, concern you?”

  Roger sighed. “You gentlemen been smoking a little tonight?”

  Zeebass shifted his huge red eyes from left to right. “No.”

  Roger point at another one of the group. “That guy there is literally smoking drugs while I’m talking to you, so I’ll ask you again, is it possible you’ve been smoking a little tonight?”

  Zeebass nodded his head carefully, as though it might float away. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Roger said. “So, with that in mind, I want you to consider the possibility that monsters didn’t steal your Cheezums, and that maybe you’re just really, really high. Do you think that’s a possibility?”

  Zeebass stared thoughtfully at the sky for a while. “Yes. That is a possibility.”

  Roger nodded. “Okay, here’s what I want ya’ll to do. I want you to disperse. No, no don’t give me that. This is a kiddies play area and I don’t want them slipping on your used… slipping on whatever. I’m going to turn a blind eye to the weed tonight, but for God’s sake, fellas, will you go easy on that stuff?”

  The teenagers wandered off, each mumbling whatever their version of a witty retort was.

  Roger shook his head and returned to the cruiser. No sooner had he sat down than the radio crackled. He picked up the receiver. “Go ahead, Ethyll.”

  “We got a report from old Mr. Haydon down on tenth? Says he saw a monster in his garden?”

  Roger sighed. Mr. Hayden was a man so pickled in booze that locals were afraid to light a match near him, lest he explode. “Must be a full moon tonight,” he mumbled to himself. Into the receiver, he said, “I’m on my way.”

  He gunned the cruiser into the night, wondering if maybe he should have gone to college after all.

  Chapter 11

  The Occult & Spirituality section of Rainn E. Day books was surprisingly large, second only to the Self-Help section and the Japanese comic books that, as far as Bucky could tell, seemed to be about school girls wrestling with squids.

  Zelda was stretching to reach the top of the shelves, and Bucky, being a gentleman, stared only a little at the purple thong that escaped from her too-tight jeans as she did.

  “Here!” she said. She’d retrieved a book that was bound in black leather, a red pentagram on its front. The words “Rites of Man” were written across its spine in a serious, weighty font.

  Floyd frowned. “This looks like pretty much every album cover I owned when I was twelve.”

  Mark and Rainn looked on, Mark idly chomping on some egg fried rice, Rainn with her arms crossed and eyebrow raised in well-practiced cynicism.

  “You don’t honestly believe that Abbot and Costello here actually raised a demon, do you?” she said.

  Zelda shrugged. “You don’t see these guys for years and then they show up with some story about jerking off over a cockroach—”

  “It weren’t like that!” wailed Floyd.

  “—I mean, if this is an elaborate trick to get back into your panties, then these guys know less about women than they do about corporate casual. No offense.”

  Bucky self-consciously straight
ened his tie. “I’m telling you, there was a monster in our trailer, and it said its name was Zabor. If you guys have got a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.”

  At that moment, Thorin emerged from the back room. “Gas leak in your trailer, bad trip, group hysteria,” he said, counting off on his fingers. “You’re making up a story because you’re bored and your lives are meaningless…”

  Bucky raised a hand. “So help me, the only thing stopping me slapping your face right now is that I don’t want a tetanus shot.”

  Thorin held up his hands. “I’m just saying. I follow this kind of shit on the internet all the time. In almost every case of supposed paranormal activity, it’s just some asshole being an asshole.”

  “Almost?” Zelda waggled her eyebrows.

  Thorin frowned. “Hey, there’s always some things that go unexplained, but that doesn’t mean-”

  “Good enough for me.” Zelda slammed open the book on the countertop. “Here.” She pointed to a drawing of a woman laid across an altar, three cloaked men standing over her with vials. “There’s a whole section on Zabor and the summoning rites, see?”

  Floyd squinted down on it. “So those tiny jugs they’re holding are filled with—“

  “Blood, piss, and high fructose porn syrup.”

  “Yeesh.”

  Rainn’s perennially raised eyebrow raised even further. “Says the man that—”

  “Okay, okay. It was an accident, all right? I didn’t mean to—”

  Bucky slapped his hand on the countertop. “Can we focus here? I don’t see nothing in that picture about no monster bugs.”

  Zelda traced her finger along the text. “It says ‘vessel.’ It doesn’t say anything about that vessel being a woman, or even a human.”

  “For fuck’s sake, guys,” Rainn said. “Am I the only one here who thinks we’re all a little too old for this campfire story bullshit?”

  “You kind of own a shop filled with books about magic, Rainn,” Mark mumbled.

  Rainn’s pale face flushed two hot spots of pink at the cheeks. “That’s different, asshole, and you know it. I have an interest in the occult -lots of people do- but that doesn’t mean I believe in actual monsters.”

  Floyd cleared his throat. “I myself am a big believer in spirituality and ghosts n’ shit. You know, my grandmother was a psychic.”

  Bucky shook his head. “Your grandmother was a psychotic, Floyd, they’re two different things.”

  “She could tell the future! Remember when she predicted that town hall fire?”

  “She started that fire!”

  “Still predicted it, though!”

  Thorin held up his hands again and stormed off into the back room, shaking his head as he went. Bucky could have sworn he was mumbling something that sounded like ‘super retarded fuck heads’ but he couldn’t be sure.

  Rainn snapped her fingers repeatedly until everyone stopped talking. “Everyone’s missing the point. Even if this ritual did work, and demons do exist, then why now? Why not all the countless other times the ritual was tried?”

  Zelda shook her head, still scowling over the text. “This is mostly just the origins of the ritual. Gallic, apparently. Came over with the Irish, or so it says. As for the…uh…ingredients? It doesn’t really tell us anything that wasn’t already in that stupid rhyme.”

  “Exactly,” said Rainn. “And the rhyme itself is bullshit. Think about it— it’s just like One-Eyed-Willie’s map—”

  Floyd snickered.

  “—Why would something ancient and in a foreign language rhyme in contemporary English? And the 'Secret Potion from the East’ part is purposely ambiguous to perpetuate the myth.”

  “Yeah, we never did figure out what secret potion was,” said Mark. “Believe me, we tried everything. Soy sauce, wasabi, flavoring packets from a pack of ramen noodles. You name it."”

  “See? I’m calling it.” Rainn pointed her fingers above her head and then leveled them at Bucky and Floyd. “Ya’ll are full of shit.”

  Bucky felt irritation rise up. “God dammit, Roslin–”

  “Rainn!”

  “Goddammit, Rainn, can’t you see we need help here? Now, I thought you were the expert on this shit, and now somebody comes to you with a real life bonafide possible demon encounter, and your first instinct is to tell us to go screw ourselves?”

  Mark scraped diligently at the bottom of the fast food carton with his chopsticks. “Guy’s got a point, Rainn. We should at least go check it out. Could be fun.”

  Rainn rolled her eyes. “You didn’t know these guys in high school and see the dumb shit they got up too. You couldn’t believe a single word that came out of their mouths. Bucky here used to tell everyone that his daddy was Lou Ferrigno.”

  “You don’t know that he weren’t!”

  Floyd coughed again, still not quite meeting Rainn’s gaze. “Would you at least come and see our trailer, Rainn, for old times’ sake?”

  Zelda and Mark looked at Rainn expectantly. She shifted uncomfortably under the sudden scrutiny. “We’ve already got our night planned. We’re going to eat Chinese food, get high as fuck, and watch Twin Peaks.”

  Floyd’s face brightened. “Hey, I love Twin Peaks.”

  “Great, feel free to share that with the door on your way out.”

  Floyd’s gaze returned to the floor. He looked like a puppy that had pissed in the wrong place.

  “Well,” said Bucky hotly. “I didn’t come here to have my intelligence insulted—”

  “Where do you usually go?” Said Rainn.

  “If you guys won’t help us with our demon problem, Floyd and I will take care of it ourselves. More room on Oprah’s couch that way.”

  Rainn snickered. “Oprah?”

  “Damn right, Oprah. We raised a genuine god damned demon. This is going to scare the shit out of the scientific community. Hell, this is going to rock the whole fucking world. You think a giant talking magic cockroach won’t get us on Oprah? Well, I’ve got middle fingers for you, for you, and you. Hell, I’ve got middle fingers for everybody!” Bucky enthusiastically illustrated the availability of his middle fingers.

  Rainn rolled her eyes again. “Fine. Go seek fame and fortune. I’ll be sure to look out for you both on the cover of Time magazine.”

  “You just do that!”

  They stood in angry silence for a while before Thorin once again entered from the back room. “There’s only two egg rolls left, guys,” he said. “And I’m not sure how long I can hold off eating them.”

  Zelda put her arm around Rainn’s shoulder, a big grin on her face. “Think about it, Rainn. This could be our one shot at seeing a real demon. If there’s even a chance it’s true…”

  Mark put his arm around Rainn’s other shoulder. “Fucking Oprah, Rainn.”

  Rainn stood there, wilting under the force of her friends’ enthusiastic grins. Eventually, she snapped. “Okay, okay! Christ! We’ll go and check out the stupid trailer. Thorin? Wrap those egg rolls to go.”

  Chapter 12

  Bucky and Floyd led the way back to the trailer in the Continental. Rainn and her pack of weirdos followed in Zelda's black van.

  When they pulled off the main road, Bucky turned the radio down, not wanting to attract any more attention than he had to. It was a lot darker now than when they'd left, and a giant cockroach monster could be hiding anywhere. He scanned the treetops behind the trailer, peeked behind the termite infested woodpile, then glanced over at the rusted lawnmower, barely visible now beneath an overgrowth of vengeful vegetation. As far as he could tell, the property was clear of giant roach monsters.

  Whatever passed for music coming out of Zelda's van was loud as fuck. Some kind of German industrial shit.

  “Turn that shit off!” Bucky said when the van pulled up next to the Continental. “That sounds like exactly the sort of music a demon would be into.”

  Zelda rolled her eyes and cut off the engine.

  Bucky left his engine running and t
he lights on, high beams engulfing the entire trailer. Roaches thrive in the dark, he reasoned. It was best to have as much light as possible to help even the odds.

  The door was still open from when they'd left in a hurry earlier in the day. Bucky led the party inside.

  “This is where we parted ways. As you can see, Zabor exited here.” He gestured to the broken window.

  Rainn grimaced as she looked around the interior of the trailer. “This place is disgusting. How can you stand to live like this?”

  “I'm so sorry my home ain't good enough for you,” said Floyd. “Not all of us can afford to live in Glenhaven Estates.”

  Rainn raised her eyebrows at Floyd. “And how do you know where I live?”

  “Don't flatter yourself. It's a small town. People talk.”

  “I'm not even talking about the trailer,” said Rainn. “I think it's cool that you guys live out here in the woods. I was referring to all the trash and shit lying around.”

  “We didn't do this!” said Bucky. “I told you, it was Zabor.”

  Rainn sighed. “Of course it was.”

  Bucky glanced over at the sink with three days' worth of dirty dishes piled up. They were starting to grow something orange and hairy. “I mean, maybe we ain't Martha fuckin' Stewart level homemakers, but we don't just throw shit on the floor.” He picked up one of many Coca-Cola cans that had been torn open from the side, emptied, and discarded on the floor. “And we sure as shit don't drink pop from the side of the can.”

  “I'm starting to get weirded out,” said Thorin. “I came along for the ride because it sounded like fun to get drunk and run around in the woods, scaring ourselves while we pretended to look for demons. Now I'm in a dilapidated trailer in the middle of the woods that looks like a fucking crime scene. I vote we leave before we get raped by hillbillies.”

  Before Bucky could ask him who the fuck he was calling a hillbilly, Rainn shot him a glare that could have pierced an inch-thick wall of steel. “You watch yourself, Thorin. Bucky and Floyd and I go way back.”