Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors (37 page)

“Don’t you go getting all pissed off,” Russ said.
 
“I can hear everything you’re thinking.
 
I didn’t realize you hated me this much,
Baldo
.”

“Fuck you, Wilson.
 
I want you out of my body now.”

“Levine, do you think I’m here by my choice?
 
Are you forgetting that my beaten corpse is rotting on your kitchen floor?”

Carl tapped the fingers of his left hand on the table absently.
 
He could see his reflection in the mirror.
 
He was startled when he realized that his eyes were moving around in opposite directions, giving him the appearance of a cross-eyed cartoon character.
 
The glaring tattoo on his forehead only worsened the situation.
 
His right eye was looking down at the corpse on the floor, while the left was looking at himself in the mirror.
 
It was unsettling.
 
Was he going to have to spend the rest of his life trapped inside his own body with his enemy?

“We’re going to have to bury the body. I’m-” Carl said, coming to the inevitable solution.

“Bury it?” Russ asked, cutting his enemy off.
 
“Bury it where, you
ass
?
 
In the backyard like a goddamn pet!”

 
“Well, actually, yes.
 
Do you think the police are going to buy my story, you imbecile?
 
The body of my neighbor, a person whom I hate, is lying bludgeoned on the kitchen floor.
 
You’re the one who killed your body to begin with, in case you forgot, you
dumbfuck
fat ass.
 
Do you think the cops are going to believe that we switched brains and now we’re trapped in my body together?”

“I don’t care what they believe, Levine.
 
I’m not going to help my enemy bury my murdered body.”

“A murder in which you happened to commit, you borderline retard.”

Carl’s left hand lashed out and slapped him across the face.
 
“I’m not going to put up with your lip, Levine!
 
I’ve had it with you and your insults!”

The right hand whipped around in a fist and slammed into Carl/Russ’ face violently.
 
“You’ve had it?
 
You’ve had it?”

Carl/Russ didn’t stop the attack until they fell into unconsciousness.
 

 
“That cross-eyed loon in there killed his neighbor,” Kenny Joe Butler, the maintenance man said, pointing through the window of the padded room.

“So what’s so crazy about that?” the other worker asked.
 
“People do that shit all the time.”

They looked through the window at the straight-jacketed man with the ‘I Love Jesus!’ tattoo.
 
The man was having a rather heated argument with himself.

“That’s not all, bro.
 
He’s got multiple personality disorder, or something.
 
He claims the neighbor that he killed is inside him.
 
If you remove that straitjacket, he’ll beat himself into unconsciousness.”

“You don’t say,” he said as they continued down the corridor. “That’s got to be something to see.”

“Oh, it is. Every once in awhile we remove the jacket and watch him, uh, I mean them, go at it.”

 
“Would you shut the hell up already!” Carl/Russ yelled, wriggling around in the jacket, trying desperately to break free.

“Me!
 
Why in the hell should I shut up, Wilson!
 
You’re the one that’s always babbling!
 
This is my body you know!”

“Oh, here we go with that ‘my body’ shit again!
 
Oh man, Levine, you better hope that I don’t break out of this jacket.
 
God, will I fucking beat you, you bald bastard!”

“Please!
 
Just shut up!
 
I’m begging you!
 
I can’t take it!
 
Get out of me!”

Over the years, the arguments started to get pretty redundant.

by Weston
Ochse

M
y mother told me to be careful by the creek.
 
She made me promise never to swim there.
 
She made me promise that if I saw anything strange to come running home.
 
I thought she meant perverts or the homeless or crack addicts.
 
I was wrong.

It was Tuesday when we decided to go fishing.
 
The house was like
the pit of hell
as Dad always said.
 
I wasn’t allowed to use those words, but I knew what he meant and agreed.
 
Just sitting on the couch was making me sweat through my clothes.
 
David was with me and I was tired of kicking his butt on video games.
 
He wouldn’t give up, though.
 
He demanded to play again and again and again.
 
I even let him win once, but he knew it and got mad and insisted on playing yet one more time.
 
It wasn’t until Mom came in and turned it off that David finally gave in to my superior Nintendo muscles.

We were kicking around the garage, soaking up the coolness of the shaded concrete, when he spied the fishing poles.

“How about some
fishin
’?” he asked.

“
Naw
, even the fishes are hot.
 
Anyways, remember my Mom doesn’t like me playing down there.”

David scoffed, or at least I think he did.
 
I was never really sure what the word meant, but I had read it enough times to understand a little.
 
Nonetheless, I had never seen a real person snort and look surprised at the same time so I figured it must be scoffing.

“She told you never to go swimming there,” said David with his sly look that always meant trouble.
 
“So then don’t swim.
 
It doesn’t mean you can’t stick your feet in the water or wade in the shallows.
 
Ernie said he saw a
crawdaddy
as big as his hand down there, and I want to find it.
 
Besides,” he said smiling.
 
“It’s always cooler in the woods.
 
Maybe we won’t melt there.”

I laughed remembering yesterday when my Dad came home from work.
 
I was in the tree and I was sure he saw me.
 
He pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car.
 
He stopped at a puddle of water that ended up by the garage door, left there from when I’d gotten a drink from the hose.
 
I watched as he dropped his briefcase and knelt down beside it.
 
He hollered for Mom, who came running out.

“Jeffery.
 
Oh My God, Ann.
 
He melted.
 
Our son melted.”

My Mom smiled and so did I.
 
It was Dad trying to be funny again.
 
Mom would set him straight.

“Oh My God.
 
You’re right!
 
He was just out here,” said my Mom.
 
“I just checked on him.”
 

She fell to her knees beside my Dad and it looked like she’d started to cry.
 
It was going too far now.
 
I climbed down out of the tree and walked up to the puddle and stood on the other side.
 
I put my hands on my waist like Mom always does when I’ve done something wrong.
 

“What should we do, honey?” asked my Dad.
 
“We could get the
ShopVac
and suck him up.
 
Maybe those folks at the hospital can put him back together.”
 
He stared at the puddle and it was impossible for him not to see my reflection.

“I don’t think they can do that,” said my Mom, her voice low and sad.
 
“Hey.
 
We could save him until Christmas and build a
snowboy
out of him.
 
Like Frosty.
 
He could come to life.”

“That’s it,” said my Dad.
 
“We’ll move to Alaska then, where our little
snowboy
could live forever.”

“Dad,” I said.
 
“Frosty
ain’t
real.
 
That would never work, anyways.”

“We’ll have to pack up his things.
 
It’s sad all his toys will go to waste, maybe David would like his Super Nintendo,” said Mom.

“Mom!”
 
I yelled.
 
The joke had really gone too far, now.

“You know this wouldn’t have happened if we had an air conditioner,” said Dad.
 
He patted the water and said, “I’m sorry Jeffery.
 
I am so sorry.”

“Dad, Mom.
 
Stop this.
 
It isn’t even funny.”
 

I think it was because I started crying, but they suddenly stopped their joke.
 
It didn’t take long for us to laugh and hug, but the feeling I’d had when they pretended I wasn’t there was almost too scary to stand.
 

She slid beneath the surface, her body slithering around mossy rocks and under submerged branches, pondering the shimmering stillness above her.
 
It had been too long since she’d added to her loneliness, to her collection.
 
The fishes had long since lost their fear of her, generation upon generation growing and rotting as she patrolled her length of creek.
 
Still, they instinctively avoided her cavern: water-filled and deep, with only a thin shaft of light spearing through the narrow entrance, spot-lighting the head of her fifth victim in a translucent green halo.
 
The milky eyes stared, seeing but immobile, fixed in a body that was lost in a forever dream.

David skittered down the hill first, leaping through the tall ferns and yelping all the way down.
 
I followed slower, picking my way through the brush and with the back of my hand, pushing away the long green fronds that tickled my nose.
 
I hated walking where I couldn’t see what I was stepping on.
 

Grandpa used to tell me about the Little People before he went to heaven—stories about kingdoms within hills, toadstool houses and fairy rings.
 
The Little People used to be everywhere, he’d said.
 
The single greatest reason that no one ever saw the Little People anymore was because they kept getting squashed underfoot by ignorant humans.
 

I knew it was just my Grandpa’s way of telling me to be careful.
 
Anyways, I believed in the Little People like I believed in the Witch of
Cleghorn
Canyon.
 
There had been too many stories of missing children and black cats for us to not believe in her.
 
That is, since before we started fourth grade.
 
When I was a third grader I believed, but I wasn’t grown-up then.
 
David said it was just a way for parents to control us.
 
For once, I thought he was right.

“Come on, Jeffery!
 
We’re going to catch the mother of all fish, and make Derek’s look like a minnow.”

I smiled and sped up a little.
 
I wasn’t as competitive as David, but I would like nothing better than to show up Derek.
 
He’d beat me up at least once every year of school.
 
He was a fifth grader who had a new bike every year, lived in a big house with a TV in his room and caught the biggest fish ever found in Rapid Creek.
 
No one believed there were any two and a half-foot trout in the water.
 
Not, at least, until Derek hauled it up to the newspaper office and got his picture on the front page.
 
David swore since the flood had washed the hatchery out back in 1972 that there had to be even more bigger fish.

I reached the bottom of the hill and broke into a run.
 
Far ahead, David ran, holding the tip of his rod high in the air as he jumped and hooted over the pine needle-covered forest floor and fallen ponderosa pine.
 
By the time I caught up, he was already drifting a kernel of yellow corn along the slow-moving water.
 
Of course, he’d found the best spot.
 
I silently cursed him and made my way downstream to the
hole
.
 
It was where all the kids swam, but was deep enough to hide
lunkers
.
 
As I turned, I caught David’s smirk.
 
No one had ever caught any fish in the
hole
, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.