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Monkey
Brains by Kenneth James Crist It rained the day we buried Freddy Tyrone. It
was a cold, windy time, especially for Atlanta. I had driven twelve hundred miles to attend
the funeral of the big black soldier whom I had called my brother. He would have done no
less for me. In fact, we had both done the same for Couch, Hollywood and Sandoval. We were
six men when we started, sharing a bond that only those who have survived combat can know.
After Freddy, we were only two. It was a military funeral, with all the pomp and
ceremony due a warrior who had served his country so gallantly. After all the bullshit
from the government over Agent Orange and its related diseases, it was good to see that
they could at least bury him well. After Taps had blown and the rifle squad had fired
the salute, the officer presented Freddy’s widow with his ceremonial flag and it
was over. I stayed around to try and say a few words to her, not that I could really offer
much in the way of comfort, for I know my time is coming, too. But
then, when everyone had left the grave site, she did an amazing thing.
She stepped up to the grave and threw his flag in with him and walked away clean. Whether
this was a form of protest or a way of ending something so that she could begin anew, I
never found out. As I was leaving the cemetery, I heard a familiar,
low trilling whistle that instantly yanked me backwards through a tunnel of time into Southeast
Asia of twenty-five years ago. As I turned, I felt my skin crawl at the thought of
other days of rain in the triple canopy jungle. Then I saw Chessie standing next to a faded
blue Monte Carlo. I hardly recognized him, he was so thin and gaunt. The bones in his already
lean face stood out, giving him a death’s-head look that was startling and more than
a little scary. The eyes were the same though. They still held mockery and still showed
his condescending attitude. “Hey, you
fuckin’ REMF,” he croaked. His disease was affecting his vocal
cords, I supposed. We shook hands as we drew close together, then found that a handshake
wasn’t enough. Not by half. We hugged each other in the rain like a couple schoolgirls,
then finally we moved apart and he said, “Just us two now, huh, Cage?” He had
always called me that, “cage” being a diminutive of my first two initials,
K. J. “Yeah,” I said nervously, “just
us two.” “Hey, got time for a drink? I saw a nice
little tavern on the way out…” I wasn’t planning to leave for home until
next morning, so I said, “Yeah. Hell yes. Why not?” “Okay,” he said, then he had a fit of coughing and when
it had run its course, he smiled that Halloween, jack-o’-lantern smile at me and
said, “Well, don’t just stand there, troop, go get yer car. I’ll wait
on ya.” I followed him several miles to what we used to
call a roadhouse. Clapboard frame structure painted at least three colors, gravel parking
lot, pink neon sign. “Cocktails”, with the little tipping stemware glass. We sat away from the other six or so customers
and as far from the juke as we could get. Bad enough to be drinking in the early afternoon
on a rainy day in Georgia without listening to trucker shit on a Wurlitzer. We hadn’t been there ten minutes before Chessie asked me, “Hey
Cage, do you remember the monkey brains?” It
was a subject I had been afraid he would bring up. How could I forget? I think the worst thing about
the jungle was the smell. Everything dies and everything
decomposes, but in the jungle the heat and humidity make it happen much more quickly. Often
it was like the air was a solid rather than a mixture of gases, that had to be forcibly
dragged into the lungs, and the oxygen wrenched from it. It would be so still that one
of the guys could fart, way back at the end of the line and somebody up front would giggle.
The humidity was a constant cloying drip of moisture that promoted fungal growth
and all its related discomforts. And there were the bugs. Things that whined and chewed,
flew and stung, scuttled and bit. And some that just sat and looked stupid. Snakes and “fuck-you” lizards. Even the occasional tiger,
so they say, not that I ever saw one. If you see one, you’re probably meat. You kind
of get used to all of it, in a tight-assed, on-edge sort of way. You walk on the balls
of your feet and you learn to always look for cover, so that when you start taking
rounds you have somewhere to jump. Long-range recon was a bitch. We couldn’t
wear our own uniforms, so we made shit up. I had German boots and a French pack. No I.D.
at all. They called it recon. Actually, we
just went out after Charlie and the NVA, in the jungle, on their terms. We got to know
our way around almost like the natives. And we met the Montagnards. The people of the mountains.
They were as different from the other Vietnamese as they could possibly be. Primitive.
Uncivilized, according to the Viets of the cities and the farms. They had resisted the occupation of the French and the Chinese and the
Catholic Church, and God only knows who else. Largely they had been left alone to practice
their own culture of strangeness back in the very depth of the dripping dark closet that
was Vietnam and Laos. Theirs was a stone-age culture in a turbo-jet world, surviving through
isolation and superstition and plain toughness. We
spent a lot of time stoned. I offer that not as an excuse but as a reason
why we did some of the things we did. Like taking the ears of the soldiers we killed. We
should have known better, but we were kids and most of the time we were scared shitless.
The ears were a form of bravado, I guess. Showing everyone, ourselves mostly, how tough
and cold we were. What a bunch of stone killers we had become. We strung the ears and wore
them as medallions. In the stink of the jungle, you could hardly smell them at all. Chessie’s real name was Charles Rogers. He came from Chesapeake
Bay and he was a hell of a soldier. He was on his second tour when I joined the company
and he had no use for REMFs or office pogues. Rear Echelon Mother-Fuckers. That took in
almost all officers, most of the Army and all of the Air Force. He would walk point as
much as everyone else, even though technically he was our leader and he didn't have to. Freddy Tyrone Jackson was the M-60 machine gunner when we were on regular
ops. He could hump that heavy gun all day like it was nothing and carry a shitload of other
stuff, too. When we went on long range ops, though, he carried a Chinese AK-47 like the
rest of us. We did things for the CIA, although they don’t admit it, and we never
carried American weapons when we did. Couch,
whose name was pronounced “cooch” was small, red-haired and
vicious. In a firefight, he had the coolest head and used the least ammo of any of us and
he still got his share of kills. Hollywood was James Vine. He came from California
and he had a thing for sunglasses. Must have owned thirty pairs. He was stoned a lot and
he supplied most of the company with weed. Sandoval was his buddy and they hung together
really tough, back to back against whatever came to us. It’s good, in those conditions,
to always know your back is covered. We were within a few miles of the Laotian border on one of our ops.
Trouble was, we weren’t real sure which side of the border we were on. There was
no reference point anyhow and Charlie didn’t care, so why should we? We weren’t
politicians. We had seen a lot of signs indicating Charlie
was in the area and we were being damned careful. One thing about being stoned on weed,
you can do it and still be alert and cautious. I found that when I smoked, the jungle colors
became more vivid and anything that didn’t belong stood out more. I think it also
augmented my hearing and maybe my sense of smell. I got to where I could smell Charlie
anyway. It was their diet, I think, all that hot shit they ate, sweating out of their pores. We had just waded a small stream when Chessie raised a hand and everybody
squatted and froze. There was a trail right there and we had almost stepped onto it, but
now he was holding us up. Behind me, I heard Freddy’s safety click off. Then, I saw Chessie slowly stand and lower his weapon and two Montagnards
stepped out of nowhere and into our midst. Their garb consisted of loincloths and cast-off
bits of uniform and gear. Soon we were joined by six more tribesmen and Chessie actually
began to converse with them, using signs, a few French words and some of their own strange
dialect, filled with clicking consonants and sounds I couldn’t hope to duplicate.
We were invited to come to their village and stay for supper. They said their hunting had
been good this day and there would be a feast. By the time we reached their village, it
was getting dark and there was little to see anyway, just a few primitive huts and
some cooking fires. Kids running around entirely naked and as comfortable in their nudity
as the pigs that were always rooting around and underfoot. We sat
with the village elder, or father and they passed around some of
their own liquor. It was potent shit and after we had already had a few swigs from the
old skin, Chessie told us they made it by chewing up leaves and spitting the result into
a bottle to ferment. Hollywood got out his stash and we passed around smokes until dinner
time. By the time we ate, everyone was pretty well in the bag and it wouldn’t have
mattered what they fed us. We ate off of
big dark green leaves that we laid across our laps. There
were no utensils, other than fingers. We had given them what rations we had, so there was
a strange mixture of things like tiny slices of pound cake alongside huge beetle shells
stuffed with a gruel made of rice and spices. Eventually, some roasted meat was added,
and Freddy Tyrone asked what it was. He knew they sometimes ate dogs, and he was being
distrustful. There was an animated conversation, then Chessie
told us the meat was monkey brains. Tyrone was going to set his aside, but Chessie quietly
warned us that what we had before us was several day’s worth of meat for these people
and to refuse it would be a dire insult. So, that night, we all cheerfully ate
monkey brains. I didn’t think it was too bad, really. A little undercooked, maybe. Late in the evening, I stepped away a few feet into the jungle to piss
and I saw the skulls of the monkeys, roasted and broken open to get at the brains,
then discarded. Pretty damn big monkeys, I thought, but then I was pretty well stoned and
not everything I saw that night really sunk in until later. We slept
there in the village that night and got up and moved out in the
first gray light of morning. The humidity was thick enough to see as a thin fog between
the trees. Also between the trees, a sight we hadn’t seen the night before. Seven
North Vietnamese bodies, hanging upside down, minus their heads. “I see those fucking Dink bodies in my dreams,
man.” Chessie said, deep into his third shot and beer. “I
think we should talk about something more pleasant.” I said. “Do you have the dreams?” “What dreams?” I wasn’t
admitting anything at that point. Chessie leaned
across the table, bringing his cigarette smoke closer and
staring into my eyes. “The dreams about the jungle and running from the Montagnards.” “No,” I lied, “I never have those.” “Yeah, bullshit. Freddy Tyrone had ‘em. Sandoval had ‘em.
They told me so.” “Freddy Tyrone had brain
cancer. Agent Orange got him.” “Yeah,
maybe. Maybe not.” “What’re you tryin’ to say,
Chessie? Spit it out, man. Don’t play with my dick.” He leaned back and huffed out a lungful of smoke, then glared at me.
“We ate their fuckin’ brains, man! Are you stupid, or what?” “Those were monkey brains. Nothing more.” “Then why are we all fuckin’ dyin’, man?” “I told ya. Agent Orange. Goddamn defoliant shit they sprayed
over us.” “Then why do I dream in Vietnamese, with
the Montagnards chasin’ me through the forest? Huh? You got an answer for that?” “I don’t know, Chessie. Nam was a traumatic time for all
of us—we were young, and away from home for the first time…” “Yeah, maybe it was your first time, ya fuckin’ REMF.”
He signalled the barmaid for another round. “I’m tellin’ ya, we got some
kinda curse or somethin’.” “Bullshit.”
It was all I could think of to say. The dreams have become more frequent now. You’d
think that the longer a guy was away from that place, the less he’d see it in his
dreams. It doesn’t work that way. Chessie
was right, I’m afraid, and for that reason, I didn’t go to his
funeral. I used the excuse that the pain was too bad for me to make the trip, but like
my opinion about the monkey brains, it was all bullshit. I knew what we really had for
supper when we dined at the pleasure of the Montagnards. I guess I knew it the morning
after we ate there. When I dream now, I’m a small, frightened
Viet Cong guerrilla and I’m always running. The Montagnards are back there, somewhere
in the jungle, stalking, chasing, whistling and calling in their soft voices, closing in,
always getting nearer. My terror is complete. I’ll just be glad when it’s all over.
And I most fervently hope the dreams can’t follow me to my grave.
The Dream Machine
Kenneth James
Crist
The hot wind of the desert
carried the stench of rotted meat, reminding Kara of the breath of some great
carnivore. Overhead, the sun glared
down, heavy and oppressive and totally without mercy.
Too hot, she
thought. The sun alone can't be this
hot. Not our sun, anyway. Sweat trickled down the backs of her thighs
and between her breasts. The heat was so
thick that she found just the act of breathing to be a chore.
Kara was blonde, as only those
of Nordic descent can be, with ice-blue eyes and a figure that had been
described as goddess-like. She suffered in the sun, turning quickly red and
burning terribly if not fully protected with sunscreen or shade. She had never
had anything like this happen to her in all her twenty-seven years. It was
surreal.
And there stood the reality of
the recurrent nightmare, that wherever she was, it was not the familiar sun of
Earth.
Silence prevailed, save for the
wind, but she did not need sound to tell her of the menace that was soon to
approach. She had been though this many
times before, but somehow she could never quite remember just what it was that
was coming. She felt the fear building within
her breast, even though up to this point there was nothing overt to be concerned
about.
Then she felt the slight tremor
in the ground and she knew. And
she began to run, gasping, tripping,
falling, scraping a knee, getting up again, pursued by nameless dread even as
she struggled to remember what it was that she feared. When she screamed, strong
arms enfolded her
and someone spoke, close to her ear.
"Kara! Kara!
Honey, it's okay. You're fine,
you're in bed. Shhh ... it's just a
nightmare."
In Jim's loving arms she
trembled and moaned. "God,
thirty-four nights now. Thirty-four
nights in a row. I can't sleep, I can't
eat ... oh, God, I can't even make love to you any more. Jim, I
need help."
Jim looked noncommittal as he
said, "It was only a nightmare. It can’t hurt you. You've sweat clean
through your nightgown, babe."
She slipped out of his embrace
and headed for the bath, where she peeled the damp, clingy gown off and stood
before the mirror. She didn't like what
she saw. In the last month, she'd
dropped at least twenty pounds and there were dark, puffy circles under her
eyes where the flesh looked almost bruised.
In contrast, her cool blue eyes burned like those of a junkie a few
minutes late for his fix.
She hugged herself in the chill
of the air conditioning and thought back to the heat of the nightmare. What
was it?
What thing, animal, or disaster came next? Jim woke her tonight, but
she had been
farther into it several times. Far
enough to know, but not to
remember. And where was she supposed to
be? Somehow, it all felt familiar, not
just because she went there every night, but from before, at some past point in
her life. Or, perhaps another life
... Then she shivered and turned on the shower. As she
stepped into the hot spray, she winced and looked down at her knee. It was
scraped raw in one spot just below the kneecap.
In twenty minutes, she was back
in bed with Jim. He had joined her in
the shower and then persuaded her to join him naked in the huge old four-poster
and, even though she only felt exhaustion, he soon had her aroused and they
made love, tenderly and not at all strenuously.
It seemed only moments later, she was falling asleep. Jim's attentions
were definitely therapeutic,
she thought, as she dozed off ..
and felt the heat of the glaring
sun on her skin. This time she was
naked. She had never been nude before in
this place and the sun was even more oppressive than she remembered. The stench
was stronger, too. Everything seemed to be tuned up a notch from
the times before, the wind stronger, the sand more abrasive and almost
immediately the ground tremors started.
Then she was again running and
this time the ground was heaving, being raised up behind her and whatever it
was, it was gaining on her as she sprinted through the silent heat. She ran
swiftly, desperately, aware of her
unfettered breasts bouncing painfully and the heat and the unevenness of the
baked, cracked ground. As she galloped along, feeling the earth rumbling
through the soles of her feet, even then she told herself, it's just a dream, it can't
hurt you, Jim said so. Don't you want to
know? A part of her mind urged her
to slow down, or even stop and find out what it was that she feared, but she
ran on, too frightened to manage it.
Soon, as she had before, she
felt the presence of the unknown rising up. She felt the ground cracking open
as it birthed some horror she dare not look at and at last, she felt the touch
of one claw on her shoulder and smelled its rotten breath inches from her neck.
She felt her bladder let go and the hot urine on her legs and suddenly she was awake
again and the bed was wet with her urine and Jim was sitting up, saying, “What
the fuck?”
“Oh, God, no!” she said, as she
bailed out of bed and bolted for the bathroom.
Behind the locked door she sat
on the throne and trembled and cried miserably while her husband of six years
changed their bedding. At last he tapped on the door and she let him in. He
held her for a while, then they shared another shower. It was four in the
morning and when they returned to bed, they didn’t make love this time.
Kara lay awake until the alarm
at seven, thinking about that single claw. Jim hadn’t noticed the mark, already
starting to fade, but it had been there. A single welt atop the shoulder where
the claw had struck, but not broken the skin. Whatever she was dreaming about,
Kara had now become convinced that it was real, at least in some skewed, tilted
reality, some somewhere, some somewhen.
Her job at the daycare center
had become as routine to her as taking care of kids could ever be. She swam
through as she always did now, in a daze from fear and lack of sleep. She had
been to the doctor. What a joke. He gave her sleeping pills. Told her they
would deepen her sleep and she wouldn’t dream. What a crock. They had deepened
her sleep, alright, and deepened her dream-state along with it, making it more
difficult for her to wake up. That had been at the beginning, when the desert
was just empty beneath the burning sun and there was nothing to threaten her.
It had almost been charming
then, spending all night in the desert. And even then, a part of the dream came
home with her. She had started getting very tan and Jim had asked her about it.
She had lied, saying she had joined a tanning salon on a trial basis. He had
told her it made her look prettier, but to be careful of skin damage.
Within a few days, however, the
danger began to present itself and as time went by it had become more menacing.
She thought of her dreams as a record on a turntable, being played over and
over, but always starting back a ways from where she left off, then going
through the parts she recognized and adding a few bars of the music on the end
each time. This music, she reflected, was ominous, indeed.
Kara curled up on her right side
and hugged the revolver close to her belly. To actually believe that it could
save her was ludicrous, of course, but somehow in its steely, impersonal
coldness it made her feel better. More in control. She had “borrowed” it from
Jim’s gun room, reasoning that he would never miss it from his vast collection.
Sometimes it seemed that he’d set out to collect one of every gun on the
planet, though, of course, that would be impossible.
Now, with him out of town on one
of his mysterious trips, she faced her nightmare alone. And ‘nightmare’ was the
correct term. Not ‘nightmares’. Nothing plural about it, for it was always the
same-the desert, the sun, the heat and…the beast.
It seemed she had no sooner
dropped off than it began. And the thing had gotten smarter. This time it was
waiting for her. She tried to run as she had so many times before, but it was
smarter and it trapped her against a sheer rock wall and as it came up out of
the ground, she saw it fully for the first time and realized the true extent of
her fear and loathing. A psychologist friend had told her the dream was a
reflection of the fears in her life and if she would just face them, it was a
way the mind had of dealing with those fears.
Well, she reflected grimly as
she faced the monster, if this was true, she must have some badass fucking
fears, ‘cause this cocksucker was truly fearsome. She gazed in frozen wonder as
the black creature, the epitome of children’s bad dreams, rose to its full
height. She took in the six spider-like eyes across the black dome of its skull
and the leering, fang-infested mouth that spewed breath like a sewer. Its front
four legs reached toward her, claws open and greedy to rend her flesh. Then she
remembered the gun.
Funny thing about the gun. She
glanced down at her hands and realized she couldn’t see it, but she could still
feel it, as solid as the monster
before her. She had just a split second to decide how she would die and she
made the best decision she could, under the circumstances. She quickly placed
the gun under her chin and squeezed.
When “Jim” arrived home from his
trip, he called out into the silent house, then walked through to the master
bedroom. He viewed Kara’s remains and the mess on the bed coldly. No problem
here. The coroner would be able to establish time of death and he had been
miles away, at his meeting. He picked up the phone and dialed 911.
The creature that cloaked as
“Jim” slid the dream machine out from its hiding place under the bed. In the
six years he had been married to Kara, he had grown tired of her and he had
recently decided it was time to find a new mate. Of course, Earth mates weren’t
as satisfying as those from his own world. For one thing, they could only bond
on one level. All the tedious sex with no other outlet for his libido merely
sharpened his need for his mate from the home planet.
As he tuned the dream machine
from the setting that matched Kara’s brain waves to the settings of his own, he
thought about the quaint human saying, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’.
Well, he could only stand so much. His assignment required him to be here for
several human lifetimes, tracking their progress and making sure they posed no
threat to the rest of the galaxy, but he didn’t have to suffer. He would take a
break and visit home this very evening. The dream machine made that as easy as
going to sleep.
Just as he was reaching for the
keypad to input the destination sequence for the home planet, the doorbell
rang. Damn! He quickly cloaked himself, so the feeble-minded humans could not
see his real form, and hurried to the door.
A few minutes later he was back.
Typical human cultural display. “Reaching out.” “Bonding.” “Sharing his grief.”
The neighborhood women had sent a covered dish. Something he couldn’t possibly
eat, of course.
Back in the bedroom, he
uncloaked and set the dream machine’s timer for eight hours. Then he curled up
on the bed, right next to the dried mess of his wife’s blood and brains, his
opossum-like nose inches from a bit of scalp tissue. He folded his hand-like
paws and closed his slightly goggled eyes as the dream machine kicked on. Soon,
the soft, furry body relaxed and his breathing became rhythmic.
The hot wind of the desert
carried the stench of rotted meat and “Jim” stared about stupidly in the
merciless glare of the sun. It was as alien to him as it had been to Kara, his
own world being a planet of perpetual twilight. As the ground tremors began,
signaling the arrival of Kara’s nightmare monster, he realized that the
interruption of the doorbell had caused him to forget to change the destination
on the dream machine and that he was therefore trapped here for eight hours.
When the black creature broke
from the ground and examined its prey, cowering in nearly the same spot Kara
had died in, it found this animal remarkably different in appearance from its
last kill, even though it soon realized appearances could be deceiving-they
seemed to taste just about the same.
Yellow Kenneth James Crist The
prisoner sat unmoving and incredulous, wallowing in his oversized
orange jumpsuit, handcuffed, leg shackled and in belly chains, staring at the judge as
sentence was passed. Guilty on all counts. Guilty of murder in the first degree. Guilty
of carjacking. Guilty of kidnapping. Sentenced to death by lethal injection. The prisoner
maintained his composure for quite a long period of time, considering. He didn't start
screaming until later that evening in his cell on death row. "Hey,
Sweets, how about some more a that Java?" Larry Fade held out his cup, rattled it against
the saucer as he looked down the counter to where Joyce, the pretty waitress, was pouring
for another customer. "Keep ya shirt on, okay? Ya ain't the only
customer in here, ya know." She moved languidly down
the counter, taking her time, rolling her generous hips and cracking her gum, finally reaching
Larry's position and pouring scalding coffee in the general direction of his cup, managing
to slop some on the hand nearest the cup. "Son of a bitch!" he hissed, yanking his
hand back. He thought he saw a momentary smile play at the corners of her mouth. Bitch. I oughta wait til you get off
and grab yer ass in the parkin' lot. Then we'd see how cute you are when I…but he never
finished the thought, as she spoke to him, her lips never moving, her even white teeth
slightly parted, her voice a muted, hissing whisper. "You fuckin'
bull haulers oughta broom y'selves off and learn some manners 'fore ya come in here. The
stink's makin' me nauseous." Unbelieving, he glanced up into her face and saw a subtle
shift there, as though something was under
her face, or behind it, as if her face,
the face that was showing, was only a mask. Then he glanced at her teeth, grinning from
behind shapely, shiny, slick lips. Did her
incisors look longer? Imagination. It's the goddamn
speed…Then he looked at her eyes, and knew the worst. Her eyes were yellow. He was sure they had been blue. He'd been coming here for six months,
ever since he got this route, and they were always blue. Almost violet. Now they were yellow.
Like a dog's eyes, almost a urine color. Piss-yellow, yeah, that was it. Inwardly he
shuddered. He
quickly rose and grabbed the check, headed for the register. Ten
minutes later he was four miles down the road, jamming gears, the live cattle in back milling
around, banging and raising hell. Larry was a misogynist, a hater of women, a user
of women, truly believing in his heart that they were good for only one thing, and many
of them not even good for that. He came by his attitude
honestly, at least. His own mother was nothing more than a worthless barfly, living on
welfare and moving listlessly from one man to another, always sleeping around and being
beaten and shit on by one drunken bum or another. Larry had no more idea whom his dad
might be than she did. His sisters? More drunken sluts, both pregnant before
they were sixteen, one dead now from drugs, the other in prison for setting her own kid
on fire while in a drunken, drugged out state. In point of fact, Larry had never known any woman he liked more than momentarily, usually while one of them was giving
him head or hip-smacking him to a quick orgasm, usually in the sleeper of his truck. Twice,
he'd been given little presents along with what he'd paid for. Clap. Gonorrhea. He'd been
lucky enough to avoid the syph and AIDS. The whores that worked the truck stops were known
as "Lot Lizards", and Larry thought that was an apt description. Cold-blooded and
scaly, there was seldom a pretty one, but a guy could usually get as rough as he wanted.
They were used to it. But this bitch Joyce…again he shuddered as he thought
about what he'd seen at the truck stop. Or thought
he'd seen. The directions his imagination wanted to take him were not places he wanted
to go…he resolutely refused to believe in such things as demons and shape-changers.
It had to be the drugs. After a while a guy just had to crash somewhere, get some sleep,
before he really crashed. He
made it almost a hundred miles before he turned in and
shut down at a small, seedy motel two miles off the Interstate. Mercifully, the motel night
manager was a man… A
hundred thousand miles a year. Hundreds of restaurant meals at
shitty little truck stops, snotty waitresses, some cute, some not so. The life of a trucker.
Larry had started out thinking it oh-so-glamorous. Now it was just a job, something to
keep the wolf from the door. It was almost a week before he saw her again. A different
truck stop, this one in Nebraska. It wasn't that it was the same woman. No way it
could have been. And yet, it was. Underneath.
Where it counted. He saw the shift. He saw the change. She covered it quickly,
but then smiled slyly at him. She knew he saw it and she didn't care. She'd asked
if he wanted pie after he'd finished his cheeseburger steak. He'd said something smart-assed
about getting too fat…unless she wanted to help him work it off…and she'd glanced
at him and it was there. Just for a moment.
But there was nothing subtle about it. Her eyes had glared as yellow as those of a lion
and he'd seen her teeth, sharp and shiny with her saliva, almost tasting him…then
it was gone as suddenly as it appeared and he'd felt his guts turn to water. How
do you prove something like that? She was small, a delicate
redhead not more than nineteen or so, but underneath…there was that same thing he'd
seen in New Jersey, that something that had sharp teeth and yellow eyes, that lived beneath
the surface, wearing the redhead like a costume. This time he held his cool a
little bit better. Even left her a tip, then got the hell out of there as quickly as he
could, hustling along on shaky legs across the lot and into the warmth of the Kenworth's
cab. He swore he could feel her cold, knowing stare upon the back of his neck for forty
miles. By
now, of course, he'd realized it was not the drugs. He'd even backed off the dosage
and started sleeping more. But even in sleep…well, there were nightmares, things
chasing him…but he never could quite remember what they were when he awoke. No,
something was going on and he was becoming more and more
convinced that only he could see it. It was either the same being or thing, or there were
several of them. Maybe a lot of them. Was
the world being invaded? Was what he was seeing some vanguard
force of aliens? Maybe what he'd seen on TV one night about UFOs was true-that aliens were being crossbred with humans to create a new
race, so they could take their place with other races who traveled the galaxies. Somehow
it just didn't fit, though. Weeks went by and Larry's sightings increased. He saw
her at almost every truck stop now, and sometimes he'd see her move from one woman to
another. Then came the day when he saw her-or perhaps it would be better-he'd
seen it move down a whole row of women who
were standing in line at a supermarket, almost a rippling effect. As each woman changed,
she would turn and look at him, then smile that knowing, sly, dangerous smile. Like, "I'm gonna get you, sucka!" That day he had run screaming from the store,
leaving the cart, leaving all the things he'd picked
out, just running, scrambling into the truck and highballing it away from there and into
the wild, high country of Wyoming. He had driven on and on, his route forgotten, his load
forgotten, rolling for days, stopping only to fuel on the company credit card and then
only when the station attendants were obviously men. His thought processes were stilted, his
deepest thoughts and fears running endlessly in his
head like a rat in its exercise wheel, always coming around to the same conclusion. They
were out to get him. They were out to get him.
Not anyone else. Just him. It was in Montana where the Highway Patrol Trooper stopped
him, a week after the grocery store incident. The cattle had perished in the trailer
for lack of feed and water and the stench was incredible, the weather being now quite warm.
His company had reported his absence and there had been an all points out on him and the
truck. The Montana Highway Patrol should
have been more careful, he thought, as he was escorted into his death row cell. They should never have worked a female Trooper alone out there. Even then,
it probably wouldn't have been a problem, he was so mentally and physically
exhausted when she stopped him. But when she had him out of the truck and was walking him
back past the trailer full of bloated, fly-blown carcasses, she'd glanced at him and he'd
seen it, moving back in there, behind her eyes.
It was here and they were miles from anywhere.
It would be able to do anything it wanted, and he could do nothing to keep it at bay. Once
he was trapped in the patrol car with her, with it,
he would be finished. Before he even had time to think, he'd snatched the sidearm
from her holster and just before he pulled the trigger, he'd seen at last what it really looked like. It had made the complete
change, right there along a Montana highway, the rippling giving way to something hideous,
something birthed from Hell itself and the overpowering stench that came off it made even
the truckload of rotting cattle smell sweet by comparison. Its eyes had been the same, its fangs numerous
and teeming in a mouth that nearly split the head in
half. Its body had been covered with both scales and hair, the uniform being only an illusion,
something it used to hide its true appearance. It had hissed
at him, its split tongue spraying noxious spit at him and he remembered screaming
like a child as he killed it. He'd pulled the trigger fifteen times and killed it dead
as a shitbug. He'd left in the Highway Patrol car and made it less than twenty miles
before they shot out his tires and pulled him from the wreck. The male Troopers had no
trouble with Larry at all. Meek as a lamb, one of them had said on camera to a CNN crew. Of course,
she'd changed back. That was why he was charged with
murder. If they could have seen what he saw…well, he reflected, they'd probably have
given him a medal. He had been examined by a court appointed male psychiatrist and determined
competent to stand trial and the rest, as they say, was history. Now,
of course, there would be the appeal process and all the legal
infighting before they could legally kill him. It would take years. And here he would sit,
day and night until it was over. But at least he had rid the world of that thing, whatever it was. He would be able to sleep and maybe even get his appetite
back. He had been sitting
on the bunk, looking down at the floor for ten minutes when the female corrections officer
came to his cell and called him "sweetie". He'd looked up and looked into her eyes and
she'd smiled at him. And that was when the screaming began.
Dominant Species Kenneth James Crist Rick Solomon awoke with a start, unsure for a few moments of his
surroundings or his situation. He cautiously raised his head, making no more movement than
necessary to take in the immediate area. One of the things they keyed on was movement.
He had long since learned that sometimes, on a lucky day, one could remain completely still
and they would go right on by. He saw the desolate,
filthy apartment, the gray light filtering in through
grimy windows and he noted that it was raining again. Good. The rain would hold down their
activities and keep his own scent from traveling so far. It would also mask the sounds
of his movements. With luck, he might get to live another day. He
slowly and silently opened the sleeping bag and crept to the windows to
look out upon the scene of absolute desolation. Though still largely intact, the city was
dead. No cabs cruised, no kids played at sailing boats in the gutters, no commuters hustled
to get in out of the rain. The only apparent movement was from the trees, which were just
beginning to leaf out on this early spring day. There were no lights in the buildings and
the traffic signals were dark. Without maintenance, these devices failed rather quickly.
The power had been out for seven months. Rick tried
to think back to the last person he had seen alive and found he
couldn't remember. Was it the woman who had beckoned to him from the second floor window,
her breasts so fetchingly revealed? She had seemed so alluring in her last moments, then
she had suddenly started screaming and even though Rick could barely hear her screams from
across the street, he could clearly see that she had suddenly grown a gray, furry skirt,
could see her flailing uselessly at herself and then she went down and soon her screams
stopped. Maybe it was the man he had seen staggering from
the subway kiosk, intentionally blinded, half his face chewed away, bleeding from thousands
of bites that had been inflicted, before he was left to stumble away and die. Rick shook himself, shaking off the horror like
a dog drying itself after a swim. He had been swimming in terror for so long now that it
shouldn't affect him, but it did. He was in an
abandoned apartment on the second floor of a brownstone, and
he was getting nearer to the river every day. Each day, he spent his time watching and
listening, moving and foraging, always moving towards the river and possible escape. He
had been lucky, he thought, and he had picked up some survival skills along the way. He
had learned, for instance, never to stay in a place more than two stories off the ground.
If they came through the walls or the door, trapping him, he would have to jump, and if
he was too high, he would be killed or injured in the fall. Injury meant the same thing
as death in this dead city. It just took a little longer. His
paratrooper experience had helped him some. He knew how to land and
roll, so a two-story jump was no problem for him. He also knew his weapons. He was carrying
a "street sweeper", a drum-fed shotgun, designed for law enforcement use. This one carried
twelve rounds of number four shot, and it had saved his ass twice. On his hip was a nine
millimeter Glock. He also carried a backpack for food, ammo and his other surprises. Other
than these items, he owned nothing. He was traveling light. He
had learned never to stay in the same place two nights in a row, and to
avoid their sweeps, as they searched for humans and other prey. He was a small man, with
dark features and a thick, dark beard. His size and coloring were to his advantage also.
Being small meant he had more places to hide. Being dark made him harder to see. Other than life itself, the things he longed for the most were a hot
bath and a shave, and another human to talk with. He would prefer a woman, but after
nearly a year, he wouldn't turn down a one-legged wino. From his vantage point above the
street, he watched and listened intently for any sign
of the enemy. As surely and ruthlessly as any invading army, these crossbred vermin had
taken the city. Their viciousness, their overwhelming numbers and the diseases they carried
made them difficult to deal with. Their immunity to nearly all poisons and their ability
to communicate with each other and to learn from their mistakes had made them the supreme
beings in first one borough (burrow?), then another, until they controlled all of New York
City. Lately they had been increasing their size as well as their numbers. Probably
because of the large food supply, Rick thought. Nine million people, that's a lotta chow,
and that didn't include cats and dogs. Rick hadn't heard a dog bark in several months,
and the last few...well, that hadn't really been barking. More like screaming, really.
He shook himself again, and with a last look up and down the street, he decided it was
time to get on with his job. His job had once
been as one of New York's Finest, working plainclothes in
one of the Manhattan "flying squads". Now his job was survival. He moved quietly to the
door and eased it open a crack, scanning the hallway, especially the shadows. He listened,
and he sniffed the air. Finally he flicked the safety off his shotgun and eased out the
door and down the hall to the stairs. Another day of adventure had begun. When Rick's ordeal began, he had assessed the
strengths and weaknesses of his adversaries. Their strengths included sheer numbers, climbing
abilities, the ability to survive on any food available, and to go almost anywhere unseen.
Their weaknesses included an inability to jump more than a few feet, vulnerability to weapons,
and a short lifespan. Even these new super rats lived only three or four years. Their high
numbers were ensured by the fact that they could have five litters of pups a year and as
many as twenty to a litter. They had sprung
from strong stock, the common Norway rat, which had been
selectively bred to albinos for lab use. Then a certain geneticist, Dr. William Gerber,
had started using them for genetic alteration experiments. He had perfected a smarter,
tougher rat, and some had escaped into the city, crossbreeding with their more common cousins. Norway rats usually reach a length of fifteen
inches, including the tail. Rattus Giganticus,
so named by the press, was often twelve to eighteen percent larger, and therefore that
much more vicious. Most of the deaths in New York were due to the Plague and other
diseases, which had ravaged the city for months. As each day passed and the human population
became weaker and fewer in number, the rats had become bolder and more prolific. Now they
were downright deadly, running in packs and stalking their prey. At first, they had feared
firearms and dogs and had shunned the daylight. They still preferred darkness, but they
no longer feared anything. Over a period of months, Rick
had worked out a system for his own survival. At first,
he had tried using vehicles to move around, but the number of serviceable cars and trucks
had quickly dwindled, as the rats chewed up the tires and wiring. Then, for a few days,
he had tried boldly walking right down the middle of the streets, depending on the rats'
hatred of daylight and his own proficiency with his weapons to keep him alive. Soon it
became apparent, though, that the rats hated him worse than they did the daylight. Lately,
he had come to realize that the rats knew
him, and that he was a marked man. He had decided he must get out of New York and his best
bet, he figured, was by boat. He needed to get all the way to South Brooklyn, to the docks,
and see what there was to steal. He had adopted a method of furtive movement from
doorway to stoop, from abandoned car to cellar steps, always alert for any movement other
than his own. On this day, he had made it less than a block, when he saw the first
flicker of gray in the shadow of a storm sewer opening on the opposite curb. He moved quickly
into a doorway and checked the door, to make sure it was unlocked. He looked back out and
saw something move, under a car, a half block back. He didn't wait any longer, knowing
to wait could be deadly. When they were in position, they would all come in a rush. He
had survived most of these attacks by anticipating them and moving out of the area, leaving
them no target. He went inside and started up the stairs, first having to step over the
desiccated remains of a child in the hallway, a child in a pink dress, clutching some old
dried flowers. He tried his best not to look at her, but went quickly on, pausing on the
first landing to set the first of his booby traps and moving quickly upward. By the time Rick reached the roof access door, he was nine stories off
the ground, just seven more than he liked. From far below, he heard a thump and
squeals, as a few specimens of Rattus Giganticus
died. The tinder-dry tenement building would go up in a hurry. He could only hope he'd
caught a few hundred of them inside. Out onto the roof now, looking across at the next
building. A span of maybe twelve feet. Rick looked around and spotted a plank laying on
the roof. He grabbed it and placed it with one end up on the roof combing. This would be
his launch pad. From below, more thumps and squeals, as his incendiary devices went off.
He took a deep breath and ran full-tilt at the ramp, running up and jumping out and up,
crossing the twelve feet of emptiness and landing, rolling on the roof of the next building.
He spent the rest of the day aloft, jumping, swinging, crawling and shinnying drainpipes,
working his way from building to building. By nightfall, he had made it almost four blocks.
He spent the night on the roof of yet another tenement, cold, wet and miserable, with the
access door barricaded, and the shotgun close at hand. Three days later, Rick Solomon was still alive
and he stood in a doorway, looking across at the access ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge. He
didn't like the thought of crossing that span. It would be too easy to get trapped out
in the middle of it, with a long drop to the water. But he hated the thought of the
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel even more. It would have no lights and therefore no survivability
factor at all. It was nearly noon. He wouldn't get any better daylight. The rains of a
few days ago had passed and the weather was clear, bright and blustery. Screwing up his
courage and checking his guns, he set out for Brooklyn. The tugboat was an old one and it appeared that
it had damn near sunk at the pier. There had been at least a thousand of these vessels
working New York harbor at one time, but as with many other businesses they had been somewhat
in decline, the last few years. The tug ran about sixty feet and had two husky
Cummins diesels and little else going for it. Rick looked at the stubby fantail and read,
"Bugaboo", and below the name, "Port of New
York". He climbed aboard and looked it over, taking in rust and scabrous, peeling paint,
faded, milky plating and bearded ropes. The batteries looked like they were completely
shot. He stepped up into the wheelhouse and looked the controls over. It was all at least
vaguely familiar. He had worked as a hand on the Harbor Pride for two years, owned
by one of his more worthless uncles. He turned
on the switches and watched the gauges reluctantly climb. It had
fuel and there was some juice left in the batteries, or the gauges wouldn't have worked
at all. He set the throttles to idle and cranked the port
engine. It turned exactly twice and gave up. He was going to need to charge the batteries.
He went below and looked around and came back topside with a small Honda
generator. It had about half a tank of gasoline. It wouldn't be very noisy, but he was
still worried. He hooked up the cables to the batteries and started the generator, letting
it sit and do its thing, while he watched the pier for company. After about twenty minutes, he decided to try to start up again. This
time, the engine cranked briskly, but gave no sign of wanting to run. He let the batteries
charge some more. Fifteen minutes later, he saw movement at the shore end of the pier,
nothing definite, just a moving shadow, but it was enough. Just then, the generator died. He hopped to the controls and again tried to start the diesel. It still
cranked, but wouldn't start. He looked off the starboard side and saw rats in the water.
They were excellent swimmers, something he was not and now they were coming down the pier,
too. With every passing second he was seeing more and more of them, sleek shapes in the
water, moving to board the tug and end his life. He switched to the starboard diesel and
cranked it. If anything it sounded worse than the other one, then without warning it coughed,
caught, and settled into a rough, hammering idle. Yes!
Thank you, Jesus! Rick thought, which was a mildly funny thing for a Jewish guy to
think. As he pulled away from the pier and started out
into the river, rats were climbing aboard by way of the bow netting and the old fenders
made of tires that hung over the sides. Rick lashed the wheel and ran the length of both
sides, shooting rats and cutting fenders loose, splattering furry bodies into gobbets of
flesh, cheerlessly blowing them into the water, which was littered with refuse and human
remains. That evening, Rick had navigated out past Sandy Hook Light, and he began
following the coastline south along the New Jersey shore. He worked on the second diesel
and finally managed to get it running. The tanks were more than half full and morning found
him passing Normandy Beach and Ocean Beach, small communities on Long Beach, which sits
off the main shore in a narrow strip of tourist havens. Through binoculars, he looked for
signs of human occupation, for moving traffic, sunbathers, aircraft, anything to indicate
safety. Once he saw clothes flapping on a clothesline and he thought he had passed the
danger point at last, but through the field glasses he saw that the clothes were old
and tattered and bleached out by the sun. He continued to sail a few hundred yards off shore
all day, watching for signs of human life and seeing none. Near dusk, his fuel supply low,
he put in at Ship Bottom and found a dock where the lights still worked and the diesel
pump had fuel. There was no one around and he started filling his tanks. He had taken on
about forty gallons when he saw them coming down the dock. They were so bold, so arrogant.
This was their dock and he was the invader.
He quickly cranked up and pulled out, leaving the fuel hose still pumping. Rick approached the dock warily, engine on dead
slow, as he looked the situation over. He had now been six days at sea and his port engine
had failed the day before and he was nearly out of fuel again. He had made the pass
through Oregon Inlet off the coast of North Carolina and he had by-passed Roanoke Island.
He was at a place called Stumpy Point. He was tired to the point of exhaustion and he was
distrustful. He had stopped for fuel several times and at each place he stopped he had
soon attracted the attention of the rats. He was beginning to think they had taken over
the entire world. The dock lights were on and as
he came nearer he could see moths circling the low-powered
globes. He could see fuel pumps and that was good, but he really needed food, this time.
He was down to a can of Spam and one canteen of water, and that was it. When the figure stood up from the lawn chair and moved into the light,
he was startled and he swung the shotgun automatically before it registered that
it was a teenaged girl, wearing cut off jeans and a tank top. She raised a hand in greeting
and deftly caught the rope he threw, snubbing it off to a cleat on the dock. Rick shut
down the engine for the first time in days and just looked at her. "What'll it be mister?" she said, and at the sound of the first
human voice he'd heard in months, Rick found himself crying, tasting bitter tears in his
mustache and he thought of all the wasted humanity back in New York. The friends he would
never see. He swallowed a lump in his throat and swiped angrily at his eyes with the back
of one hand. He remembered he had some money in his wallet and he stepped ashore. The girl
stepped back as she took in his appearance and he didn't blame her at all. "My name's Rick Solomon," he said, "and I came down from
New York." "Ain't nobody alive in New York. Least that's
what we heard." she said, in a soft, southern accent. "And
now, that's true." Rick said. In the engine spaces of the Bugaboo,
nestled near enough to the big diesels to feel their warmth, two female rats shared a nest
and suckled their pups. The human had been within three feet of them, but they had taken
no action, preferring to wait and guard their litters. With his inferior sense of smell,
he had been unable to smell them over the odors of diesel fuel and old grease. Now
the boat had stopped and they both knew that soon they would each be able to spend time
out foraging, while the other guarded both broods. Soon their pups would be large
enough to go out with them and then there would come a time when they would be able to
link up with the nearest tribe. Then they would establish and rule this, their new territory. Black Petals-Oct. 1999 Feature
Short story
Fucking Let Them Eat Cake
Kenneth James Crist Sometimes
Wichita is a shithole. Sometimes she’s the Peerless Princess of the Plains. Oh, please.
Give me a break. A lot of times, I wish I worked somewhere else. Doing what I do would
be easier in a lot of large urban places, say Chicago, where they have weekends
with sixty shootings. No police department anywhere would be able to pay much attention
to murders with that shit goin’ on all the time. Around here, the cops don’t
have enough to do, so whenever there’s a killing, they get right on it, like it was
a big deal or something. My
most recent assignment came as all assignments do, in a plain manila envelope with no return
address. Regular self-adhesive stamps. No one had ever licked the flap. The only prints
on it would be the postman’s and whomever else handled it en route to my humble abode. That be-it-ever-so-humble is room one hundred in the
Shady Way Motel, 1611 South Broadway. Skid row. 23 Skidoo, and fuck you too. The shower
was working that morning, so I took one. Tepid though it was, it got the smell of nasty
woman off my crotch and face, got me woke up from the coke and Wild Turkey. Got my
beard soft enough to hack at it with a semi-dull razor without too much blood loss. A few
million corpuscles down the drain won’t make that much difference in the timeline
of my life, such as it is. Took a few
antibiotics, just in case Janey might have given me a present. Neither of us like latex
all that well. We like our meat raw. Even bloody, on occasion. She woke up as I was headed
out. “Where ya goin’, Hun-nie?” Her whiny, sing-song voice made me cringe
like fingernails on chalkboard. “Gotta
go out. Gotta job ta do. Be back later. Maybe. Probably. Shut the door when ya leave.” “Wait! Wait!” She piled outta the love-sack
and ran wobbly over to me. Kissed me. Nasty-breath, ugh. “Be careful, K?” Her
eyes red and vacant. Hardly anybody home there. Hair a slovenly mess of tangled blonde.
Dark roots. Blue streak dyed down one side. Big tits thumping against me. Stretch marks
on ‘em. Nipples as big as my thumbs. “I
left a little somethin’ in the fridge for ya,” I say. About four lines of coke,
just to get her cranked up and runnin’. “Gawd,
I love you so much,” she says, and another nasty-tasting kiss and I flee. The
rusted old Crown Vic use-ta-be cop car cranks up on the first try and I figure if I look
in the newspaper in the horrorscope, I must be up for a five-star day. While the A/C is
cooling the interior, I check weapons. Colt 1911, loaded with pop-open hollow points, check.
Mossberg 12-Gauge pump, loaded with .00 Buckshot, check. Ruger Target Model .22 caliber
semi-auto with silencer attached, fully loaded, check. 750,000 volt Taser, check. Large
canister pepper spray, check. Brass knuckles, check. Five different knives, from folding
Tanto to large Uncle Buck skinner, check. I
turn on the 480-channel trunking police scanner and head off to find my target. The chatter
from the radio keeps me company and I find it soothing. Back when I was on the job, I could
sleep in the squad and be instantly awake when I heard my number. Now I don’t have
a number. Just a pension, which isn’t enough to keep Janey in Coke or me in pussy,
so I moonlight just a bit. I never know
why a person is given to me as a target. My knowledge is cut off from that and I have no
personal stake in whatever happens. Sometimes the line where “Method of death”
is filled in will be very specific. “Subject will be hung, drawn and quartered”,
or “Subject will be drowned in tub.” Sometimes, like this time, the method
is unspecified and in the dossier I have on the seat beside me, someone with a sense of
humor wrote, “Subject will run out of heartbeats.” Hyuk,
hyuk, hyuk. I head for the west side to see where this goober lives and plan my attack. I would imagine
by now, you’re wondering how in the world a retired cop becomes a killer for hire.
But if you’d spent an entire career in law enforcement in the country with the most
guaranteed freedoms and the fucking Bill of Rights and about two million slick defense
lawyers and another million black-robed pussies sitting on the bench…well, the level
of frustration in law enforcement in the good ol’ USA is just mind-boggling. When
you see killers and rapists and child predators going free because all the “T’s”
are not crossed and “I’s” dotted perfectly, you get to where you could
kill someone very easily. I just decided, when offered the chance, to take the money and
work off some frustration. My
hatred for the human race is infinite. Of course, since I too am human, that means there
is a certain amount of self-hatred involved, too. That just makes things easier for me,
because getting caught just means I’ll move to a place where the taxpayers can pay
for my meals, clothing, housing and healthcare. Won’t stop me from killing, though.
In fact, there are a number of fuck-wits in prison I’d love to be able to meet again… My target lives in Rolling Hills, an upper-class neighborhood,
eighty blocks west of my digs on Broadway. Neighborhood watch signs all over. Not worried,
though. My ride looks so much like an unmarked police car, they’re glad to see me.
Plain gray Crown Vic with no trim, black wheels, small hubcaps. No less than five antennas
on the rear trunk lid, only one of which is actually connected to something. Two yellow
lights in the back window. Two sardine cans in the front grille, one painted blue and the
other red. Not real lights. Nothing I can get in trouble for, but real-looking enough. I cruise by the house and I can see kids flying into
the air behind the back fence. Trampoline. What a good fucking daddy. He treats his own
kids good and molests the ones he teaches at school. He’s a soccer coach and history
teacher in middle school. The dossier doesn’t list specific crimes, but it doesn’t
have to. I’ve seen this shit enough to know. He’s sitting in a lawn chair in front of the three-car garage,
watching the world go by. I wave and he waves back. Tonight, fucker, you’re mine… I drive back
to the motel to see if Janey wants something in her mouth besides a dick. Bacon and eggs,
maybe. She’s cleaned up a bit while I was gone. Not the room. Fuck the room, it’s
her ass I want clean and she’s done a great job for a coked-out used-to-be South
Broadway whore. I arrested her several times while I was still on the job, then we eventually
worked something out. I liked having her blow me in the back of my cruiser better than
locking her in the slam. I
take her to breakfast at Don’s, where they can actually kill people with their biscuits
and gravy. True story. Old dude named Davey something had the ‘big one’ while
trying valiantly to get through a full order of their huge biscuits and sausage gravy.
Faced right into the plate, as the story goes. It was sad that nobody noticed for a while.
Until way too late, anyway. I put those
thoughts aside and concentrate on my One True Like, Janey. I make sure she eats all her
brekkie, coz if I don’t she’ll try to live on coke and tequila and the occasional
load of splooge and probably die on me. Can’t have that, now can we? Of course, Janey has no idea what I do and how much
I make doing it. I have stashes of cash all over town, because if ya put the money in the
bank, the IRS boys will wanna see taxes paid on it. I have a locker at the bus station
and another at the airport. I have safe deposit boxes, and I have an account in the
Caymans. I don’t intend to live like this forever. Janey will screw up and overdose
someday, most likely sooner, rather than later, and when I leave the Peerless Princess
to its own squalor, I’ll want some tail a little nicer than her, anyway. Back to our sweet little corner of friggin’ heaven
for some afternoon delight and a nap. Janey likes kinky shit and straddling me and parking
herself on my chin while she holds onto the headboard is right up there on the old hit
parade. She’s cleaned up nicely down there and I always enjoy a little pussy for
dessert. Since I have an Altoid in my mouth when I start on her, the uncommonly strong
mint, she gets an extra burn and she comes uncommonly hard, while grinding on me. Then
she backs up and mounts me and rides me like a cowgirl in a bad Western. I capture her
bouncing tits like I’m holding two ripe melons and rub them all over my face, kissing
and licking as I go. When she comes again, I go ahead and let myself go right along with
her, because I’m tired and need to sleep. I plan to be up a good part of the night. “Jesus, Baby, you’re so good to me,”
she murmurs, when we’re settled down and her head is tucked against my chest. “I like the way you take care of me, too…and
don’t call me Jesus.” She’s still giggling when I fall off the edge. *
* * I
start watching the target’s place again just after dark and about 8:30, I watch him
leave. I follow, more out of curiosity than anything. He drives to Skate West and gets
out of his SUV carrying roller skates. I figure this is just one more venue where he can
groom underage kids for whatever sex games he likes to play. I drive back to his neighborhood
and park a couple blocks away. I watch for a while and see nobody out and about. The target lives on the next to last lot on his street
and the corner lot is vacant and grown up in weeds. I work my way silently until I’m
behind his place and make my approach to the back door of the garage. It has a cheap lock
set that yields to my lock-picks in a matter of a minute or so. Inside the garage, I
quietly find a ladder and, donning gloves, I move it to reach the electric garage door
opener. I pull the plug on that convenience item and carefully put the ladder back. I step
back out and relock the back door and settle in to wait. It takes several hours, but I
don’t mind. It gives me time to think about things and to go over what I’ve
done so far. No footprints, because I’ve walked in grass and weeds only. No fingerprints,
because I’ve worn gloves and wiped the doorknob on the garage door. The target has
seen me once in passing, but he won’t be able to tell anyone anything. The old adage
that the hardest murder to solve is the ‘stranger murder’ is true. I continue
to wait. At
11:30, I hear the target’s SUV pull into the driveway. It sits for a minute, idling.
I can imagine him trying his garage door remote again and again. Insanity. Performing the
same actions over and over and expecting a different result. Finally, he gets it. The remote
isn’t going to let him into the garage. Car shuts off. Car door opens, then closes.
Footsteps on concrete, then grass. As he steps around the corner of the garage, on his
way to the back door, I raise the silenced Ruger. It’s inside a large Ziplock bag
and I doubt he even realizes it’s a gun until it’s too late. The bag keeps
gunshot residue off me and catches the expended brass as it’s ejected from the firing
chamber. Pop.
Pop. Pop. Two in the heart and one in the head. He’s all done and the kiddies are
now safe from the bad man. I stand perfectly still and listen. No dogs barking. No sirens.
No screams. Always a good deal. I never run from a scene. It does no good to run, especially
if there’s no threat. It only attracts attention. I walk back to my car. Take the
time to stash my equipment in the trunk, which has had the inside light removed. Get in
the car. No dome light, either. The Crown Vic fires up and I quietly drive away. On the
way home, I don’t feel like a scuzzy, murdering piece of shit. I feel like royalty.
I feel like all the kings and queens and princes and princesses rolled into one. My
peasant subjects have no bread. Fucking let them eat cake, then… Shady
Way Motel looks just as shady as ever and I park under the busted parking lot light and
unload all my weapons. Not a good idea to leave stuff in your car around here. I walk up
to number one hundred and for the first time ever, I notice the two zeros look like twin
shotgun barrels aimed right at me. My hands full, I fumble for the key, and at last get
the door open. The first thing I notice is Janey sitting in the room’s only chair
to my left. Her hair is freshly washed and styled. Her clothes are clean, right down to
a new pair of red shoes with three-inch heels. She looks better than she has in years.
Then I notice a suitcase by the bed, all packed and ready. On the bed is a plain
manila envelope with no return address. I switch my gaze back to Janey and her hand is
filled with a Beretta nine with a suppressor and it’s pointed at my face. “What’s the deal, Babe?” My hands
are full of guns, but in order to get one in a useable position would require some fumbling
around, and I have a feeling that would be a grave mistake. “You really think I don’t know what you do, Mike? It’s
time for it to stop, now.” “Oh,
okay. So you’ve appointed yourself judge, jury and executioner?” “No,
darlin’. I’ve been appointed by others…” “How
much are they paying you, Janey?” “I’d
rather not say, but it’s enough.” “One
piece of advice, Babe…” “Yeah,
what’s that?” “Don’t
forget to recover your expended brass.” The
muzzle flash is unbelievably bright, blinding and final…in my mouth, the peculiar
taste of cake…
The Playground Adventure by Kenneth James Crist I have been watching my neighbor. He got my attention because he’s a fucking
creep. I watch him hanging around the playground. Not hard to do, it’s right next
to my house. Whenever there are cute little girls there, that’s when he walks that
ratty little dog. Gets the kids to talk to him because of the dog. I know what he’s
doing. He’s made a selection. She’s a little towhead and she’s about
eight. Yesterday, he walked her partway home. Not all the way, no, that wouldn’t
do. Mummy or Daddy might realize something’s wrong. ##### This morning the police were over at
her house. In short order, a second cop car, then a third. Cops walking the park, walking
the neighborhood. Now, they have brought out the dogs. When they canvassed the neighborhood,
I didn’t answer the door. I will take care of this my own way, after the cops have
all left and moved on to the next call. Tonight, after it’s good and dark, my Glock
and I will take a walk. I doubt he’s killed her yet, he hasn’t had time to
enjoy her. I’m 81. What’s to lose?
Kenneth James Crist is Editor of Black
Petals Magazine and is on staff at Yellow Mama ezine. He has been a published writer
since 1998, having had almost two hundred short stories and poems in venues ranging
from Skin and Bones and The Edge-Tales of Suspense to Kudzu Monthly. He is particularly
fond of supernatural biker stories. He reads everything he can get his hands on, not
just in horror or sci-fi, but in mystery, hardboiled, biographies, westerns and
adventure tales. He retired from the Wichita, Kansas police department in 1992
and from the security department at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in 2016.
Now 80, he is an avid motorcyclist and handgun shooter. He is active in the
American Legion Riders and the Patriot Guard, helping to honor and look after
our military. He is the owner of Fossil Publications, a desktop publishing
venture that seems incapable of making any money at all. His zombie book, Groaning for
Burial, has been released by Hekate Publishing in Kindle format and paperback late this
year. On June the ninth, 2018, he did his first (and last) parachute jump and crossed
that shit off his bucket list.
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