They drive on. She keeps turning around to stare out the back window.
“We better get off the road for a bit. The cops are gonna be out on this soon. Probably,” she says.
“Yes. Do you know a good spot?” he asks.
She looks around for a second and snaps her fingers before punching his shoulder again in triumph.
“Well, yes I do! And there it is! Shit! Better to be lucky than smart, grandpa always said. Pull in up there.”
This time, it is a proper dirt road she has pointed out, up ahead. With a little Rural Route sign and everything. He slows right down to pull onto it nice and easy, so as not to leave skids in the gravel.
They are heading into a bit of forest now. The dirt road winds through it. The country might be thought of as pretty by someone who has never seen pretty country. Little acreages tucked away in the bush here and there, down overgrown dirt tracks. Hillbilly roulette heading into any one of them.
Again, like she is reading his mind, she says:
“A bunch of sly bitches from up in this hood.”
“Where did they get to now?” he asks.
“Here and there, I suppose. Who’s to say with sly bitches. Hard to pin down, them.”
“In more ways than one, I’ll bet,” he says.
“Oh, you know it! Okay, here we are. Up this lane, here,” she points.
A lane this is not. More an overgrown track into the bush. There was a mailbox at the road, once. Now it is just a moldering post, sticking up from the long grass like a middle finger. He pulls down the track, wincing as the encroaching bushes scratch at the car’s paint with little squeals and clicks.
The little house is just a short way back into the thicket.
“Pull around back there,” she says, pointing out the way.
He does. Behind the house is an old wooden shed, falling down into itself. The house is getting there too. Smashed windows. Back door off its hinges. Siding that was shitty when new hanging off the rotting particle board beneath.
He pulls around and reverses into the small backyard so he is ready to get the fuck out of this place. Shuts the car off.
In the overgrown backyard there is an old rusted swing set. Next to that is a small toddler’s playhouse made from colorful plastic forms that snap together like puzzle pieces. Some assembly required. Figure out how to piece your shitty little home together. Just like mom and dad. The roof is off the playhouse and there is a small tree growing out of the middle of it. He wonders if that tree feels any safer with those little plastic walls around it.
Fuck. Funny ideas still coming. That was some good weed.
She turns around in her seat and drags the big, brown paper shopping bag into the front. Puts it on the floor in front of her seat. Remembering that whole scene, he says:
“You were in there a while, getting that.”
She gives him a sideways look.
“Yeah? And what of it? The price of gas these days, huh? And this shit doesn’t come cheap neither.”
She pulls a whiskey bottle and a carton of smokes out of the bag. Smiles proudly as she hands him the whiskey and gets to work opening the smokes. They each sit and struggle with their own plastic puzzle getting through the packaging. The heat-shrunk plastic seal on the neck of the bottle does not want to let go of the cap. He struggles with it as she peels cellophane from first the carton and then a pack of cigarettes.
With another clink and scrape, Devil Betti Page lights up Jezebel’s smoke.
He finally gets into the whiskey and takes a good slug from the bottle. Hands it over to her.
“Give me one of those smokes,” he says.
She takes a sip of whiskey. Then a long drag off her cigarette. Only when she’s blown her lungful of smoke all over him does she answer:
“I thought you said you quit.”
“I did. I’m good at quitting smoking. I do it all the time.”
“Well, I got you something special. Here you go, baby,” she says, digging around in the shopping bag.
She hands him a pack of wine-dipped cigars. The kind with plastic tips.
“Try these. They’re aromatic,” she says.
He looks at the pack. The word AROMATIC is printed bold, right across it.
He laughs. “Saying they’re aromatic just means they stink. They’re just tarting it up.”
“Oh, fuck off. I like a man that smokes cigars.”
“Then why didn’t you buy me some? Give me a fuckin smoke.” He flicks the cigar pack up onto the dash and holds his hand out towards her.
She pulls another cigarette from the pack and uses hers to light it. Then she hands him the half-finished one.
He takes it. It is good. Nicotine on board now. Slipping and sliding through his blood. Playing with the weed and whiskey. The three of them getting busy together, digging into those dark corners within him. Corners that have been quiet for a while.
He realizes this lapse is going to become a full-blown relapse. Has the wild impulse to pull the ripcord. Reach for the bottle of meds in the glove compartment. Remembers that the bottle is empty. That she stole the pills out of it.
He panics.
Nothing new here, though. He is an old hand at this. He sits and deals with it. Heart racing, jaw clenched, eyes closed. Doing his best to ignore the reasons he is panicking.
Like a man.
“You okay, baby? You look a little fucked up,” she says.
“Headrush, is all. It’s been a while since I smoked tobacco.”
“Really? Well, don’t you go blaming me for your weakness.”
“I won’t. Now give me that whiskey back.”
“There ya go, soldier. That’s the way.”
She gives him the bottle. Then she lights him another cigarette. They sit for a while, smoking and passing the bottle.
“You hungry, baby?” she asks.
“What, you gonna cook me something, mommy?” he asks back.
“Oh, we’re going there already? You do like to move fast, don’t you? No. I aint one to cook. Not even for myself.”
She peeks down into the shopping bag again.
“We have… beef jerky, corn chips, and red licorice.”
“Red licorice isn’t licorice. Without licorice root in it, it’s just red candy in the shape of licorice,” he says.
“Oh, is that where we’re gonna pick a fight, is it? This is the hill you die on. Over candy nomenclature.”
“As good a place as any. If there’s gonna be a fight, you may as well get to it.”
“Who says we’re gonna fight, baby? We aint even fucked yet.”
“You have me there. So, you picked up smokes, whiskey, beef jerky, and candy. The four basic food groups,” he says.
“You forgot the corn chips.”
“That’s right, I did. Get them out, then.”
She does. When they have finished half the bag, she licks the dust off her fingers at him and goes back into the paper shopping bag again. This time she comes up with a small plastic bag that has been tied off. Inside, small heavy things click like beads. She tosses the bag into his lap. Picking it up, he knows what they are the second he feels them through the plastic.
Bullets.
She leans forward to poke the bullet hole in the dash again.
“That’s s a 38 did that, yeah?” she asks.
“No. But a 38 will work. Don’t have the gun, though,” he says.
She shrugs. “Oh well. Might come in handy later. You never know. Here, I’ll put them in the glove compartment.”
She opens the glove compartment and holds her hand out for the bag of loose bullets. His heart leaps and he almost loses it. Gets ahold of himself just in time. Hands her the bag. She chucks it in there and closes the door without even looking in. Doesn’t see that pill bottle.
He can breathe again.
“You wait here, baby. I got something I gotta get,” she says.
She gets out of the car and moves through the tall grass to the wreck of the shed. Comes back with an old army entrenching tool. It is an antique. Wooden handle with a wide, steel shovel head. Looks in good condition. The shovel’s edge almost has a gleam to it. Like it has been sharpened.
She crosses in front of the car with that tool in her hand. Smiles at him as she runs her thumb over one of its edges. The way she does it scares him so bad he damn near shits himself.
She goes out behind the playhouse and does a bit of digging. Comes back out with the tool in one hand and an old kids’ lunchbox in the other. Chucks the tool down on the ground next to the car with a clank and gets back in with the lunchbox.
She sits in her seat for a while. Legs crossed. The lunchbox in her lap. Stares at it like she is afraid of what is inside.
The lunchbox is plastic. Pink. The kind that came with a thermos bottle in the top half. Whatever sticker was on the front is long gone; scrubbed off in the dirt. My Little Pony it was, probably. Or Strawberry Shortcake. That is if her folk could afford the real deal. Judging by the property, though, the lunchbox was probably some off-brand shit. Sending Little One off to grade one with that in hand, like they’re saying to the world: “we’re doing the best we can.”
But it aint good enough.
It clearly wasn’t.
She pops the plastic latches on the lunchbox and opens it up in her lap. Starts going through it.
Childish treasures inside. A girl’s diary; moldy pages falling apart. Couple of hair elastics with bright plastic attachments. A happy meal toy: Miss Piggy driving a pink convertible. A war medal.
She puts Miss Piggy up on the dash. Flicks her towards him. Miss Piggy spins out and drives off the cliff. Bounces off the steering column on the way to the floormat. DOA, for sure, that wreck. Closed casket.
He picks Miss Piggy up and sets her back on the dash closer to the windshield. Wedges her in against the glass so she won’t roll around. She is grinning back at them in her pink convertible.
He stares at Piggy for a bit. Something about her, coming into his life as she just did, breaks his heart.
She has been thumbing through the diary. Flipping through its moldering pages. Then she kicks open her door. Reaches out for the entrenching tool and pulls it towards the car with a metallic scrape. Gets out the Zippo and lights the diary up. Sets it down in the shovel with the spine upwards like the peak of a roof. Sits and watches it burn.
When that’s all done, she goes back into the lunchbox one last time. Pulls out the war medal. Then she throws the lunchbox out the door into the grass.
She looks over at him. Holds up the war medal. Cheap, tarnished metal on a scrap of ribbon.
“This was grandpa’s,” she says. “I stole it from him. He blamed mom for it. Said she pawned it. Like anyone woulda given her shit for it. Took the belt to her real bad.”
He thinks about this for a bit.
“And you just let that happen to her?” he asks.
“Fuckin rights, I did. It aint like she ever lifted a finger to help me.”
“So he did that to you too, huh?”
“Did what?” she asks.
“Took the belt to you.”
“No, he never laid a finger on me. I was the apple of his eye.”
She looks down at the medal for a while. Holds it up to him again.
“Do you want it?” she asks.
“No thanks. I got enough dead people’s baggage.”
“No doubt.”
She flicks the medal out the car door, sending it the way of the pink lunchbox.
In the distance, thunder rolls.
“It’s gonna rain. That’s heading our way. Thunder to the north like that hits us every time,” she says.
“No shit. Give me another smoke,” he says.
She lights one for him. Then leans back out the open car door. Twists the handle of the entrenching tool to dump the charred remnants of the diary. She holds the tool up for him.
“How about this? You want it?” she asks.
He looks at it. It is very old. And in good shape. Nice patina. Gotta be worth something.
“Yeah. Sure. Throw it on the floor back there,” he gestures into the back seat.
“Good thinking,” she says with a smile as she drops it back there. “You can never go wrong with a good entrenching tool, grandpa always said. Good for digging. Or splitting a man’s skull.”
She shuts the door. Lights a smoke for herself.
More thunder rolls. It is closer.
His heart quickens with the tension in the air. Outside the car, the thunderstorm coming; the wind rising in the leaves. Inside the car, something else building. Just as powerful.
“That’s the real deal, that tool back there,” she says proudly. “Kraut. The Huns. From what they called the Great War. World War One. The war to end all wars.”
“Is that so?” he asks. Glances back at the tool. Definitely looks right.
“It is. See, when that war started, it was all horses and riflemen marching around like they were fighting a hundred years back. But them machineguns. And the artillery. That changed it all. Then it was all trenches and mud. Barbed wire and poison gas. And the soldiers, they were digging as much as they were fighting. And them Krauts, they figured it out. Those tools. They could dig. And they could kill. And they’d put squads together of big men. The best hand-to-hand fighters. And they’d storm the enemy trenches with them short shovels and bags of potato-masher grenades. And they called those men stormtroopers. And they killed a lot of men that way. Ugly.”
She pauses to light another smoke. Takes a moment with it before she continues:
“Yeah, imagine that, huh. The age of reason. Fully industrialized. The modern world. And there they are splitting each other open in the mud with steel like they’re back in the middle ages.”
“That’s fucked up,” he says.
“I dunno. I think it’s wonderful. I like throwbacks. It’s why I like you.”
He laughs at this.
“So, this tool was your grandpa’s, was it? Where did he get it?” he asks.
“In the war. Took it off one of them Kraut stormtroopers. Stabbed him in the face with his bayonet. Said the big man cried for his mommy as he died. But, ye know, he didn’t say mommy, on account of being a Kraut and all. He cried for his mutti. Imagine that, huh? A big Kraut killer like that, crying for his mutti.”
“Wait a minute. What? World War One? Your grandfather? Come on, tell me another one. How old was he?”
“I told you. He was in all the wars. A special breed, he was. Never seemed to get old.”
She stares at him defiantly. Daring him to contradict her.
He lets it go. No sense trifling with someone’s family lore. Especially not when they are gearing up to fuck you.
“So what happened to him, then?” he finally asks.
“He moved to the City. Left us behind. Got a job in the slaughterhouses. Then went to work for somebody doing that kinda thing but with, you know, people. I guess he always went back to that, one way or another. His time with us was just a bit of a breather. I guess.”
The wind is really blowing now. Hard gusts shoving the trees around, sending shit flying. A huge flash of lightning breaks, followed by the savage crack of thunder not a second later.
“Ohhh… this is gonna be a buster,” she says excitedly as they roll their windows up.
“The road outta here isn’t going to get too muddy, is it?”
“Nah, we’ll be fine. Snug as two bugs in a rug!”
They share another couple of smokes, one by one, passing them back and forth like a joint, sipping on whiskey as they do. Rain starts pelting the car. It gets noisy. There is ice in some of that rain. Coming down hard.
She cracks the window just enough to flick her cigarette butt out. Then she looks in the back seat. Jerks her thumb at the Bible sitting in it.
“Get that shit outta there,” she says.
This time he does not kick up a fuss about moving it. Because of course he doesn’t.
He reaches back to get it. Chucks it back up on the dash with Miss Piggy.
She crawls into the back seat. Curls up in the passenger side. Stares at him.
“Let’s make out,” she says.
He takes his time. Gets his boots off. Moves the passenger and driver seats forward, making more room back there. Then he squeezes through the gap between the seats to join her.
On top of her now. Forehead to forehead. Breathing each other’s breath. Cigarettes and whiskey and moist CO2. She’s stroking his arms. Lingering in the dips and grooves of his tensed muscles. Then she strokes the tattoo on his inner right forearm.
“I like your tattoo,” she says.
He is done talking to her. He tries to kiss her.
She tenses up and pushes him away. She is strong. And she is not done talking.
Roadblock up. Another tease. Or a test.
Either way, he has to take it.
“What?” he asks.
“I said I like your tattoo.”
“That’s a pretty stupid thing to like,” he says.
She gives him a look.
“Yeah. I’m learning,” he says.
“Good to know it’s possible. Does it mean anything?”
“What?”
“The tattoo. Does is mean something to you?” she asks.
“Yeah. But I’m over it.”
“You keep saying that. I don’t think you’d keep saying that if you really were.”
They fuck then.
She’s excited. As wet as the river. And probably as polluted.
The fucking is wild and fierce. She’s a real hellcat, as they say. Biting and scratching. Grinding up into him with violent intent.
It is dark now. Real dark. The rain still falling hard; a roar on the car’s roof.
Flashes of lightning light up her face beneath him. She is staring up at him, eyes wide and black as the night. Twin voids of space.
He screams in terror. A nightmare from his past floods him. An eyeless woman staring at him with black, empty, bleeding sockets.
She laughs and lunges up. Bites his neck. She is feeding on him.
Another flash of lightning. Her face now twisting as the bones beneath her skin move and grow. Devil horns rupture from her flesh, spraying him with blood. He feels the bones of her pelvis shifting and grinding under his.
He screams again as sharp teeth bite into his cock down below.
He rises up from her, trying to escape. She snarls and claws him back, keeping him inside her. Devouring him.
He grabs her throat with both hands. Choking her. And she laughs. With all his weight, he shoves down on her throat. It is like trying to strangle a log.
And still she laughs up at him. With her black eyes of the abyss.
The tool. He remembers that Kraut entrenching tool. It is right there. Suddenly in hand. He raises up above her again and with both hands drives the sharpened shovel blade down into her face. Everything he has, everything he ever was, straight down into her.
The tool cuts her face in half across the bridge of her nose. Damn near cuts the whole top of her head off.
Somehow, he gets out the driver’s door, out into the rain. Bare feet. Pants around his ankles, he trips and falls. Rolls over in the mud and stares back at the car.
Door is open. Another lightning flash, and he sees her legs splayed out in the back seat. Limp.
And, then, there she is. The eyeless women from his dreams, sitting up in that back seat. Staring at him with her empty sockets. Condemning him with her sightless gaze.
He screams and screams. Gets his pants up far enough as he scrambles through the mud to escape. Then he is running. Running through the rain and the night.
Running into the abyss.
Muse Vassal 