Timothy 02: Tim2 (21 page)

I was happy for small favors. The door had nearly been sheared off its hinges from the force of the accident and subsequent somersaults. With a modicum of effort I was able to pry it open. I got lost in the symphony of screams as I bit down on the father’s arm. He was half-heartedly trying to push me away.

The boy in the back was crying for his momma – and so was the driver as a matter of fact. I paused for a moment, wondering if they were one in the same. We weren’t in the South, but stranger things have happened. I had ripped through most of the man’s left side when I heard the solid ‘thunking’ of the passenger as he was finally able to rid himself of his constraints. No measure of humanitarianism in him as he climbed through the passenger side window and hastily made his way towards the tree line. Forgetting to take a weapon as he drunkenly weaved away.

“Kids these days,” I told the father; he was convulsing.

Blood and a mixture of foamy bile were running freely from a mouth that had not and now would never close. The boy in the back seat was getting the glassy-eyed stare of one going deep into shock, plus, his damn eyes wouldn’t blink. It was sort of unsettling, although he was smiling grotesquely at me. I had to stand up and hold my gut when I started to laugh so hard. I realized he was upside down so, what I thought was a huge smile, was more – I guess – a gigantic sneer.

I finally undid the dad’s buckle and let him drop onto the
roof and then I violently yanked him out onto the pavement. “I’ve been telling people for years that seatbelts kill! Waste not, want not,” I said aloud.

The boy started wailing with the disappearance of his dear departed dad. “I’ll be back soon,” I told him. Jets of vomit began to spew from his mouth, almost hitting the windshield, which I thought was pretty impressive. It began to taper off and runnels of it flowed up his face, and across his eyes, and still he didn’t blink. “You’ve got talent, kid, I’ll give you that.”

I got back out and started tearing anew into his old man. I was shaking him back and forth like a rabid wolf. His body was continually coming up off the ground as I tore ragged strips from him, and then falling back to earth each time with a little less force as I consumed him.

“I had no idea how hungry I was. You’re up, kid,” I said as I tossed his dad into a ditch. What was left of him might keep a rat or two happy for a few minutes.

The kid was alive, but he was full-on catatonic. He was as rigid as a board in his folded up position. I had gotten a crick in my neck from eating his dad at a weird angle inside the truck, so this time, I unfastened him. He hit the roof head first and fell to the side, not even acknowledging it. I pulled him out and deposited him pretty much in the same bloody mess of his father’s remains. Seemed fitting; as they always say, like father like son.

His leg was indeed bent at an awkward angle. It looked like he would be in excruciating pain. “Here, let me help you with that,” I told him as I placed my foot on his chest and gripped his leg in both arms. He winced some, but he was deep down in whatever world he had retreated to as I yanked hard on his leg, bending it back and forth like one would with a piece of wire they are attempting to snap.

“Oh screw this.” I chewed through the skin and muscle to release his lower leg from the rest of his body. I held it up over my head and yelled a victorious war cry, my foot still on his chest.

“A nice cold beer right now and I’d be all set.”

I started to eat the leg like a tailgater with a turkey leg. I belched long and deep after I finished him off. I didn’t think I could eat another bite, that was, of course, until I looked up and son number one was staring blankly back at me from just before the line of trees. Maybe a hundred yards away.

“You’re about as stupid as your dad,” I told him as I started to lumber off toward him.

I’d only made it about a quarter of the way when his brain started working again and he figured that now would be a good time to run. I’d thought about letting him go along on his merry little way, knowing full well he was going to be hampered with the guilt of his actions for the rest of his life. But fuck it, he looked tasty.

“Hey…wait…hold up,” I yelled mockingly to him. “Well that’s very rude,” I told him as he vanished into the woods. “You should quit running, you’ll just die tired,” I said, thinking I was being witty, but in retrospect, I may have seen it on a t-shirt. I don’t have any recollection of how long it had taken to eat my would-be way layers, but the sun was nearing its descent and the woods were painted in a growing, dreary darkness. This had to be terrifying for the young man, and I was eating it up – bad pun intended.

Within ten minutes of being in the woods the sun had set. I felt no pang of remorse thinking that the man had seen his final day. Shouldn’t have been hanging out with his dad and he would have been fine. He was still a ways off, but I could hear him running blindly for his life. I could make out his occasional curse as he stumbled into a tree or maybe poked his eye out with a branch. I was aided greatly by a moonless night and a cloud cover to boot. Saint Lorenzo must be on my side tonight; patron saint of food eaters, I think. I could be wrong; I was usually too busy pulling on Cindy Lillie’s pigtails during catechism classes. Had more than one scar across my knuckles to attest to that fact.

After one particularly nasty shout out, my prey stopped completely. So…he had either knocked himself out, or he was packing it in for the night. I can’t say I blamed him the woods were a deep, dark, and dank place. Also, there were creatures out there that would rend you from your heart.

“Almost poetic, Tim,” I murmured. I had a general idea in the direction he had headed, but without his constant bumbling, this was going to get a lot more difficult.

“Nothing ventured nothing eaten.”

I trudged on. I was as quiet as I could be, but let’s face it; I’m half zombie, with a fused ankle and zero tracking or hunting skills coupled with the mentality of an offensive lineman. I figured the only thing that might be noisier than me in these woods would be that man’s heart as he heard me approaching his position. Now I was going to have to play the part of hunting dog and flush him out, otherwise there was a good chance I would pass him on by, and I still had a date with my two girlfriends at some point. I certainly didn’t want to disappoint them.

“Oops, I just burped, or your dad said hello,” I said not too loudly.

I had a feeling I was close, like a snake can detect a rabbit, it was kind of like that. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense him like an existence in the darkness that didn’t belong.

“I can almost hear your heart thrashing around. Do you have your hand over your mouth too? Like you want to scream from the insanity of this situation, but you can’t because your life depends on it? Fuck…that sounds scary when you say it aloud. I’m really thankful right now that I’m not you.”

I moved a few feet to my left, still nothing. I was wondering if maybe he had fainted. A flash of light so fast and dim I mistakenly figured it for a lighter. That was up until the point another followed.

“Storm’s coming, my friend. How about we get out of the approaching weather and seek some shelter together.” I was rewarded with a fat drop of rain hitting the top of my head. “This is going to be a good one!” I yelled over a distant rumble of thunder.

“If you come out now I promise to eat you fast. I don’t want to get wet either.”

Still nothing. Either I had missed him, or this guy was the living embodiment of a black hole. I seriously thought about leaving his worthless ass to the elements and then he chose that moment to move. A brilliant display of arcing lightning outlined him better than a spotlight as he was in mid-stride not more than twenty feet from me.

“Just got to have faith,” I told Hugh like it was he who was the one wanting to cut short our hunting party.

The kid was stumbling almost every step on the uneven terrain, I wasn’t even running, I felt like Jason of
Friday the 13th
fame, just slowly methodically slogging my way through the rain and dark. Meanwhile, the heroine – who in this case was male – tripped constantly. If he had spent less time looking over his shoulder at how close or not I was and kept watching where he was going, he would have completely avoided the wall of brambles he ran headlong into.

His cries were punctuated with brilliant iridescent flashes of lightning; his screams matched the crescendo of thunderclaps. It was a symphony all adding to the climax of the event.

“What do you want with me?” he begged, struggling to free himself from the inch long thorns. The smell of the blood as he tore his skin was heavenly. I reveled in it.

“Surely you cannot be so ignorant. I realize that the American school system is not what it once was, but they had to have taught you something, boy,” I said as I stepped up next to him. He was shaking so violently, the rainwater that was cascading down was having a difficult time adhering to him. A dog fresh from the tub didn’t shed that much water.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I told him as I dipped my finger into one of his many puncture wounds. I stuck the blood-dabbed finger into my mouth enjoying the sweet, metallic taste.

“You...you ate my brother and father.”

I looked off for a moment in sweet remembrance. “Yes...yes I did,” I told him, matching his cadence.

“Why?”

“Why? Because I was fucking hungry.”

He shirked back as far as the unyielding hedge would allow. I absently dipped my finger into a blood flow, swirling it around and getting as much to stick as possible before popping it in my mouth.

“Please, mister, just let me go.” His face soaked with tears and rain; it was so thick and heavy it almost looked like he was underwater.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked tenderly, although in physical years he looked a little older.

“Ned Ferguson,” he gulped out, maybe thinking that if we got personal it would be that much more difficult for me to murder him.

False hope I can assure you, but he grabbed at it anyway.

“Well, Ned,” I said, pinching his face and turning his neck slightly more than nature had intended. His eyes cinched shut, his mouth quivering. “Look at me, boy,” I said with authority. His eyes opened up, at first only wide enough to insert a dollar bill. I gripped his jaw harder, grinding his teeth together. “Wider,” I said menacingly. We were at coin slots now and I was tiring of the game. “Son, you’d best open your eyes wide or I’m just going to rip your jaw off,” I told him as I stuck my finger in his mouth and began to pull down. He gagged as he sampled the remains of his kin that had coated my entire hand and was nestled deep in the crevices of my chipped and broken finger nails.

“Good stuff, wouldn’t you agree?” I told him with a laugh. He looked like his body couldn’t decide what action to take: cry or puke. At least I finally got him to open his eyes all the way.

“Look at me,” I told him. This time I only needed to gently guide his chin in my direction. The lightning was flashing so brilliant and so often that it was the light that was interrupted by the night rather than the other way around. The thunder rolled in long continuous arching booms. Rain and wind were pelting our clothes, alternating between making them stick and lifting them from our bodies.

Ned had not yet resigned himself to his fate, but the storm alone should have been his omen. Tenderly I spoke, “Ned, does this look like the face of someone that is going to let you go?” He passed out.

The storm had passed by the time I had completely devoured him. Funny thing is, I don’t remember either Ned’s or the storm’s ephemeral wake. At some point during the tempestuous night, I had stripped naked, delighting in the feeling of the cold hard rain against my skin. I had marveled at the pain as I willing thrust myself into the large spurs, cutting myself dozens, hundreds of times. Even Hugh seemed to be caught up in it, the siren song of the power we wielded. Life and death…well…in all honesty, mainly death. We weren’t so much an amnesty group; we were most alive when we took the precious gift from others.

“That was amazing,” I said to Hugh as I pulled my pants up. From the sound of my voice and the actions I was performing, one might have mistakenly thought I had just concluded an incredible sex session but they’d be wrong. What I’d done last night had been infinitely better. I may have had a hard-on or two while I sucked the marrow from Ned’s bones, but it was the lust of living…not sex, that had spurred that reaction.

“Well, my sweet Scarlett and Yummy Yorley, if you guys can even half match the ecstasy I felt last night, we’re in for a ruckus!”

Getting out of the woods was not quite as easy venture as going in. Refer back to the part where I said I wasn’t a woodsman. Ned had gone a lot further and deeper than I thought he had. I was more turned around than a blonde watching a record player. My useless dad had once told me that if I ever got lost in the woods I used to play in, that the best thing to do would be to sit still and be quiet for a moment. Eventually you would begin to hear the noise pollution of people. At that point you just followed the sound.

“That advice isn’t so fucking good now, Dad.” I won’t lie; I had a slight moment of panic thinking about being lost in the woods.

Hugh was a champion eater. We could have cleaned house in those eating competitions that showcased our gluttony. Can you imagine what a starving kid in Zimbabwe – fuck Detroit even – would think if they saw some asshole eat twenty-seven hot dogs in eleven minutes? Kid was clinging to life by the slimmest of nutrient intakes and there were sports on television where people uncaringly shoved mountains of various offerings into their stretched out bellies for prizes and cash. I’m glad I wasn’t an alien looking down trying to figure out what we were all about.