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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

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BOOK: Rust On the Razor
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He let Dennis's head down gently so that his victim's nose faced in my direction. He entwined his fingers in Dennis's hair and gripped tightly. Jasper said, “The biggest zit is here.” He placed the knife next to a yellow-headed pimple in the middle of Dennis's chin. “And the next largest seems to be here.” Jasper sliced a bloody furrow from the chin to the side of Dennis's nose. Dennis screamed and tried to yank his head away. He was barely able to move his face a quarter-inch, but the rest of his body twisted and spasmed. The ropes held him to the shaking table. Blood flowed from the four-inch-long gouge in Dennis's face. The skin on either side of the cut flapped open. If Dennis lived, he would be scarred for life.
I went berserk. I began bellowing epithets at Jasper and
coiling myself backwards, attempting to leverage myself for some kind of spring at him.
Jasper grabbed a gun and aimed it at me.
Keeping Bob between us, Jasper edged to the aquarium, took the tongs, opened the glass lid, and plucked out another viper.
“Do you know how a person dies from the bite of a cottonmouth?” he asked. Jasper provided the answer I didn't want to hear. “It dissolves the tissue it comes in contact with, and the swelling spreads out from where a person gets bitten. It itches some, and pretty soon you'll want to scratch a whole whale of a lot. Then you sort of collapse and die. Course, sometimes this doesn't happen all at once. Can take ten minutes or a lot longer. Depends.”
He swung the snake in my direction. I became very quiet.
“Over here,” he ordered, pointing to the original spot I'd been in.
I moved slowly, my eyes never leaving the thing at the end of Jasper's tongs.
“This is Roy,” Jasper said. “I named all the snakes after the therapists I had as a kid. Bob and Roy were the first two counselors, and the first two cottonmouths I caught.” Once again he shoved the creature inches from my nose. Then he secured the rope-thing behind its head, placed the end of the cane onto the floor, and pinned it in place. Bob was still between me and the table with Dennis. Roy lurked on the other side of me. The only direction I could move now was backwards, maybe three feet to the aquarium, where more snakes were encaged.
On the table Dennis's body continued to jerk spasmodically. An acrid stench reached my nostrils. I understood why Jasper had placed the towel under Dennis's middle. Then for a while Dennis didn't move. I figured he'd passed out. The towel and drainer mat under his face caught the
blood that poured out. Almost lovingly Jasper cleaned Dennis's wound, once going to the sink and pouring water on a washcloth to rinse out the mess created on it. When he finished cleaning, he stood back a few feet to examine his work. He came within six inches of Bob, whose mouth gaped open as he lunged to the end of his tether. Jasper never even looked in the snake's direction. He did not deal with the towel under Dennis's middle.
I tried to think of a way to get free and save us, but nothing seemed likely. Jasper returned to the kitchen area and came back with a small vial. This he placed under Dennis's nose. Eventually Dennis came around. His eyes blinked at me. He began alternately crying, screaming, and begging. “God, it hurts! … I'm sorry! … Please, let me go! … I'm sorry! I'm sorry! … Please don't hurt me anymore!”
Jasper sat in his rocking chair and let Dennis babble on like this until the young reporter was hoarse with his pleading.
When Dennis was quiet, Jasper returned to his position six inches in back of Dennis's head.
“No!” Dennis screamed.
He fainted again. Jasper revived him and began the same type of preparations he'd done before the first cut. The preparation again seemed to take an eternity.
Jasper resumed speaking in his chatty whisper, as if his best friends had come to an intimate tea party. “Now, the sheriff was having intercourse with anything female that moved. Maybe an angry husband decided to do him in. Hard to tell.” All this while his eyes roved and his hands gently probed the skin on Dennis's face, in a pore-by-pore inspection.
I heard the radio playing softly, occasional thunder, Dennis's whimpers, Jasper's whispering or humming, Bob and Roy rustling, the whine of bugs and mosquitoes, and the continuous thud of rain hitting the roof. I could feel
several bugs biting. A few landed on Jasper, but he never brushed them off. If a mosquito landed, it got a meal and then flew off.
“Of course, it could have been Al Holcomb. Old Al thinks the world revolves around his penis and the Ku Klux Klan. I'm the only one besides the sheriff who knows Al has a black mistress deep in Thomas Jefferson woods.”
He took the knife and slashed a path between two pimples three inches apart on Dennis's forehead. Dennis screamed and passed out again. Jasper took his bottle of rubbing alcohol and several cotton swabs and cleaned the blood off of Dennis's face. When the bleeding stopped, Jasper took the towel, rinsed it thoroughly, and placed it back under Dennis's face. Jasper cleaned him up, revived him as often as necessary, and then began hunting for a new spot.
He picked up speaking exactly where he had left off, as if inflicting these ghastly wounds were as meaningless as knitting a shawl. “Having a black mistress is not considered good form among fellow Klan members. Still have trouble with interracial couples in this neck of the woods. Course, a black man with a white woman would still cause quite a stir. Sort of like faggots. If they kept quiet, they probably wouldn't be harassed on the street, but late at night, my the things you can do to scare people.”
I tested the handcuffs again. My hands weren't going anywhere. I could move my feet a few inches, but my ankles were absolutely not going to part without help from another appendage. I could maneuver my knees some. If the impetus for physical action was going to happen, it would be from them, which seemed kind of pointless. Leaping to one's knees to subdue an unencumbered opponent was on the stupendously stupid end of the spectrum of options.
“Listen, Jasper,” I said. “Please let him go. Don't hurt
him anymore. We really mean you no harm. Can't you just listen?” I continued speaking even past the point when I figured he wasn't paying the slightest attention. He simply kept humming and checking Dennis's head. Finally I let out a roar that must have come close to rupturing my vocal cords. “You listen to me, you son-of-a-fucking-bitch.” I gasped for air. He simply got up and walked carefully to the other end of Roy's cane/leash. He unhooked the end and moved it so Roy's gaping maw came to within three inches of my face. I shut up.
Jasper started another round of inspecting Dennis's head. By this time the young reporter's eyes were glazed. Jasper had him conscious, but only by a little.
“Now, Hiram Carpenter is a secretive fellow. I wouldn't trust that whole family. My daddy never liked them much. Always so high and mighty with their big-deal faggot son. Hiram's a thief. Always has been. Tried desperately as a kid to outshine his brother, but never could match him. He has this huge spread in the north part of the county. For a while I thought he grew drugs or maybe imported them, but old Hiram's a clever one. I'm not sure what he's up to. I think the sheriff was on to him about something. Course, each one is sneakier than the others. Got too much religion in that crowd. Thought Nathan was going to be a good Nazi for a while, but he chickened out. Got religion at a tent revival one year. Poor sap. Shannon Carpenter is sneaky. She's been up to something lately. I'm not sure what. Quitting her job unexpectedly. Leaving the house in the middle of the night for trysts with somebody. I'll find out who. Has to be illegal.”
Jasper placed the knife against a large zit in the middle of Dennis's cheek. “Nothing to connect this to,” Jasper said. He inserted the knife and twisted. This time Dennis's body nearly came off the table, which shuddered and moved several inches. If evil swamp creatures truly existed,
they would have fled at the sound of Dennis's howl of agony.
Agonizing minutes later, when Jasper got done cleaning and reviving, I could see a half-inch-diameter patch of white in the middle of Dennis's cheek. Jasper had cut through to the bone. It took quite some time for him to stanch the blood enough so that nothing covered the hole he had made.
Finally Jasper stood in front of Dennis again. He'd cleaned and washed out towels after each session; twice emptied the dish drainer of accumulated blood. Before he started, everything had to be neat and in place.
“Now then, you don't know about Preacher Hollis. He does not like you boys. Course, I don't either. The saintly little pudge gets up on Sundays and threatens his fellow sinners with hellfire and damnation. I enjoy his sermons. Try never to miss them. Reminds me of Jonathan Edwards and ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' I got hold of all of Jonathan's sermons that have survived. Memorized all of them. Bet that's a surprise to you, Dennis. Thought I was stupid in school. Wasn't stupid. Just never cared much for it.
“Well, our sheriff never did get much below the age of consent with his escapades with women, but I'm afraid our preacher has gone far below the legal age to satisfy his carnal desires. If I had a little girl, I wouldn't let her go on a field trip with the preacher.”
“The Preacher Hollis?” I asked. “The one who did so much to out Scott?” I didn't know whether to believe Jasper or not. If it was true, it gave us a powerful weapon.
Jasper didn't answer me. For a few minutes he chuckled to himself or hummed along with the music. Without warning he resumed: “I've actually got pictures of our holy preacher damaging the goods. Sheriff just found out.”
He sighed and looked at me. “You know the problem
with everything I've told you?” He didn't wait for my answer. “Unfortunately, I don't actually know who killed the sheriff. I also have to admit that while I'm good at sneaking around this county and getting information, some of this has come from inside the police department. You just can't trust anybody these days. However, the main problem is, you're both going to be dead, and you're never going to be able to use any of this information.”
I noted that Dennis seemed more conscious than he had been in a while. At least his eyes followed the movement of the knife carefully. As Jasper swung it back and drove it toward his face again, Dennis jerked back. The sudden movement caused Jasper to miss his aim, but not for the better. No matter where it was supposed to land, I saw the knife start above and to the left of Dennis's left eye and cut a furrow down and over the eye. Dennis's subsequent scream raised the hair on the back of my head.
The spasms of his body, whether voluntary or involuntary, as it tried to get away from this invasion, launched the table forward. Not far, but enough that it hit Jasper's midsection and caused him to lose his balance and tumble to the floor. Bob struck. I saw his jaws close on Jasper's tanned calf. The guns on the table clattered to the floor on the far side of the table.
Jasper whirled around and in seconds had his hands wrapped around the far end of Bob's tail. Jasper began twirling the snake over his head. He was screaming at the top of his lungs and not paying attention to me. I was glad to hear something more human than the incessant monotone whisper.
I could now move into the area no longer guarded by the snake on my right. I rolled to my side, tucked my legs under me, and leveraged myself to a crouching position. Jasper faced away from me as he swung the snake. I could maneuver my feet maybe three inches at a time. I moved
as silently and as quickly as I could. Jasper twirled suddenly and slammed the snake's head down on the tabletop. As best I could, I hurled myself at him. The weight of my body propelled him across the cabin. His back and head crashed into the side of the door. His head banged against a protruding hinge and he lay still.
All this took maybe five seconds.
I thought about the guns, but it wouldn't do much good for me to hold them in my manacled hands behind my back while trying to get myself free.
I turned to Dennis. His head was turned away from me. The snake's body lay on the floor. Its head was completely smashed. I hopped to Dennis and saw his face. The knife had fallen to the floor. The last cut bled profusely. The initial point of penetration looked deep, but the rest didn't look as bad. Dennis's eyelid was bleeding, but I wasn't sure if the eye itself had been cut. At least he was still breathing.
I hopped over to the knife, knelt down, and leaned backwards. Sweat poured down my body faster than the rain outside as my still-shackled hands reached down for the knife. It took several tries, and I thought I heard Jasper groan. Finally, I grabbed the knife handle. Fortunately for me, Jasper kept everything in prime condition. The knife was very sharp and quickly cut through my bonds. Unfortunately, Jasper was coming around and my hands were still cuffed and I had no idea where the key was.
My feet were free when Jasper shook his head groggily. I stepped quickly over, balanced myself carefully, and aimed a kick at his crotch with all the power I could muster. He shrieked nearly as loudly as Dennis. He groaned and arched his body in agony, then pulled himself into a fetal position. I needed him unconscious. Dead would not have bothered me. I aimed a kick at his kidneys, and he flopped onto his back with his hands in front of his running shorts. His head was close enough to the wall. I aimed a
kick at it. His skull thunked resoundingly against the wood, and his eyes closed in unconsciousness.
BOOK: Rust On the Razor
3.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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