Uschi! (10 page)

This time it started small, softly and repeatedly knocking his fist against his forehead as he sat on the commode. It escalated at a frightful clip. Soon it started to seem like he was pretending his fist was a hammer and there was an invisible nail waiting on his forehead to be driven into his frontal lobe. The other fist became active, working in tandem to pound his sinus area. He whimpered and grunted with equal shares of effort and hurting, eyes closed and lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarl. His feet he stomped against the floor tile over and over again the same as a spoiled child in the midst of a horrible tantrum.

Uschi allowed this for only a brief period. “That’s enough,” she informed him in a voice even and sharp as a razor. Calmly she reached out and took hold of both his arms, stopping the beating. Denny could now see why Uschi was able to manhandle the parking lot bubba Count Yorga so efficiently—the grip she clamped down on his wrists was something to make a silverback gorilla think twice on. This was like comic book superhero strength. Her grip on him focused his attention; he went still and stared into her face as she knelt down before him.

“We need to have us a talk about this,” said Uschi. She steered his unresisting hands down and rested them on his lap. Her grip loosened enough to allow the blood flow to resume to his fingers. “This is going to stop, I mean it. No more hitting on yourself, no more talking hateful about yourself, no more saying you’re sorry for the smallest thing. I will not have it.”

Denny was red in the face and a small whitish gob of spit was trapped in one corner of his set tight mouth. His eyes were watery, as if he were close to tears. His voice was harsh and disgusted with himself. “But I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t. Please don’t think like that. You are so much better than this. This stops right now. You are a wonderful man. Smart, funny, creative, loving. So much better than you seem willing to give yourself credit for. There is no need to be afraid of whom you are. Somewhere buried deep under all this insecure and introverted crap, there is your pride and your warrior’s heart. You got one of those, you know—a warrior’s heart. I can feel it in you. We saw a spark of it tonight, when you for a great few minutes forgot your hang ups and became a tire iron samurai and went racing into battle to save the day and beat up on some villain. You swing a pretty mean car antenna, too. I saw you make that creep a cyclops.”

She paused to study Denny’s face to the point it turned uncomfortable for him. He got squirmy in his seat. It was like she was looking inside his brain, so intense her stare.

“I’m taking a personal oath right this second. A mission I’m determined to see through and triumph at. Come hell or high water I am going to help you bring that warrior’s heart and pride in yourself up to the surface where it belongs and will stay. Not all too sure how I will exactly go about this task yet. But I got an idea or two simmering in my head. I love you, best thing to ever happen to me. And together we’re going to make a man—a true man, a man that fears nothing, goes where he wants, does what he wants, and don’t give two shits and a chili dog fart what people might think about him—out of you. Today you fear the world; tomorrow the world gonna fear you. Now, and don’t be afraid to be honest, how does that take hold of you?”

Denny once again looked her in the face and saw that she was smiling at him. It was a beautiful smile, innocent and absent of any hint of condescension. He knew that for certain this was the type of smile a woman reserved exclusively for the man she loved.

“Gonna make a true man outta a slug-boy like me, huh? I think you may be biting off more than you can chew, sugar cube.”

Uschi laughed. One of her hands snaked up between his legs and went at his crotch, playfully pinching him on the head of his dick. This produced a nice little goosed jump out of Denny and a touch of a grin. “Best thing, I assure you anything I want to I can fit into my mouth just fine. And that’s the last time you ever call yourself slug-boy. Let’s go to bed. The time has come for you to be introduced to the joys of eating out my pussy. And don’t fret any, I’ll let you keep all your teeth and what you might want to do with my honeyhole juices will be entirely your prerogative.”

Chapter Four

I
n the age of the original theatrical release of
Smokey and the Bandit
,
Frampton Comes Alive
the vinyl album everybody in America under the age of thirty-five seemed compelled to own, and pert near every teenage boy was jacking off to the Farrah Fawcett Majors’s big hair, bigger teeth and biggest perky nipples poster, there was this lazy and piss-poor excuse for a sweet potato farmer from Texarkana sitting on his front porch swing and miserable because the power company won’t accept sincere promises in place of a check that don’t bounce and was missing out on his air-conditioning and his favorite Saturday night television programming.

When out of the darkness came a little girl child who appeared no older than six and was dressed in a torn and dirtied small dress. She had the palest complexion you could ever imagine finding on a young one. She told the sweet potato farmer in a voice warbling with barely held back tears a heartbreaking tale of being lost and desperate to find her Momma and Daddy.

A decent enough fellow, the sweet potato farmer was immediately touched by the poor child’s sorrowful plight and offered to let her come on inside his house and they would get hold of the police right quick. Thank God the Ma Bell payment was only twice past due at this point and still operational. “Don’t cry, child, we’ll get everything sorted out and you reunited with your folks.”

She was worn out and rough looking, so he came down off the porch and picked her up in his arms and carried her inside. Her skin was cold enough to chill a carton of milk. Before the screen door could finish slamming shut behind them she had her mouth to his neck and was hanging on to him like a tick on a dog. The attack on him so sudden and ungodly fierce there was no chance at defending himself. Girl drank him like he was a Dr Pepper on a hot day.

The very next evening the sweet potato farmer awoke, still a shitload deceased but now ready to confront the world with a new get up and get things done the way he wanted them done attitude and a positively feral hunger to keep satisfied.

Li’l Bocephus was working hard at the Home Depot, helping himself to another foot or more of duct tape, the ugly sound of it tearing off the roll reverberating through the aisle. He used his needle teeth to cut it free and awkwardly swathed the tape around his belly along with the other pieces already bandaging him. He’d been preoccupied at this task for a stretch of time now, this taping himself back together, the floor space close to his feet littered with dozens of bare cardboard rolls and ripped away cellophane wrapping. The country boy undead was entirely mummified between groin and man tits. His fingers were sticky and filthy.

He had stopped the drizzle of eye jelly by corking his eye socket with a clod of steel wool. From duct tape and an asphalt roof shingle, he fashioned a
Phantom of the Opera
style half mask to cover the mauled part of his face.

He right then smelled powerfully like diseased livestock and excited flies swarmed him. He kept his lower lip Copenhagen loaded and used any ol’ spot he might fancy of the floor as his cuspidor, small brown spit puddles all about.

Nothing would stay where he goddamn wanted it to stay. Every time he would manage to bundle his unspooled organs and such up into his arms and cram them once again inside his abdominal cavern, Li’l Bocephus would be treated to maybe a full two minutes of peace before the rip in his belly oozed back open and it all came messily plopping back out.

Well, even the most ignorant Yankee knows dependable duct tape can fix anything. Wasn’t the prettiest repair job, but it did so far keep him intact.

The blood splatter decorating him was long dried and turned rust on iron brown in coloring and was flaking off of him in some spots. Caked on clods of gore were in his scarlet hair like the dirt clumps clinging to the root system of an uprooted onion. The part down the center of his scalp remained visible, skin grub worm pale and slippery looking. The freckles along his face and the top of his shoulders had blackened as if they were cigarette burns on a leather sofa’s cushion.

Being on the receiving end of an uninvited barehanded vivisection can relieve an individual of a fair amount of their piss and vinegar. Not since Li’l Bocephus was that lazy sweet potato farmer from Texarkana had he felt so poorly.

It sucks donkey balls getting the shit stomped out of him by some girl. True, she was a particularly fierce cunt of unusual origin, but acknowledging that still didn’t make it any better. Goddamn humongous titties zombie woman. Where did that retard boyfriend of hers dig up a
Famous Monsters of Filmland
looking thing like her? Li’l Bocephus had no idea. Maybe at some toxic waste dump or a voodoo witch doctor was having a garage sale or something even crazier. That don’t really matter none. What was important was that she was there and eager to defend her man. Eat shit and chase rabbits, that dead and rotting bitch thoroughly had her way with him. He was zombie mangled. Tore him open like a bag of Doritos and started eating on him. Goddamnit. That’s a something that requires rather a strong mental effort to get your mind to accept and overcome.

After a something such as that he was never able to really get his feet under him and give her a fight. She fucked him up too good for that. They never saw Li’l Bocephus at a hundred percent. But he weren’t going to fret on that anymore. That groovy ghoulie and her boy were going to get coming to them what they deserved a lot sooner than later. Li’l Bocephus don’t forget and he sure as fuck don’t ever think for a second about any forgive. Pretty damn quick he would drop a hundred percent of Li’l Bocephus badassness down on their miserable heads. Payback was coming, cocksuckers. He’ll take care of all the business. Bet on it.

Another roll of tape was finished off and the empty roll discarded to the floor. That ought to be enough.

What the duct tape was holding within him was turned feisty and unsettled. All of it was eagerly moving and worming about. The undulating tape groaned and creaked under the strain of holding the active internals back. He assumed it was a sign he was on the road to a full recovery. Where his own sense was stupid when it came to internal anatomy, the spilled and chewed on parts themselves apparently knew more. A supernatural instinct bred into the cells of each organ and rope of intestine had a sort of homing pigeon sense to return to where they properly belonged. Everything was hard at work rearranging itself back to its proper location.

That’s right, don’t the world worry none about Li’l Bocephus. He was going to come through this and wind up at the end on top and smelling like a rose. By tomorrow night he’d be ten-fingered and belly sealed and looking at the world through two eyes and again enjoying depth perception.

When he raised his head he discovered he wasn’t alone on the aisle anymore.

There was this woman with deep purple eyeshadow and plastic pineapple earrings and pinned to her Home Depot employees orange apron that she wore untied at the waist and hanging off her neck like a Halloween costume superhero’s cape put on backwards was a nametag that identified her as RAINBOW.

Rainbow was standing at the end of the aisle. How long she had been there there was no way Li’l Bocephus could tell. He’d been so distracted working with the duct tape he lost all interest in keeping any attention on his surroundings. The Home Depot was less than an hour away from closing for the night; business was sparse and this was the first sight of anybody he had since he got here.

For this long minute Rainbow looked at Li’l Bocephus. Li’l Bocephus looked at Rainbow.

The missing flap of top lip saw to it he continuously drooled, spittle running down the inside of the roof shingle taped to his face and unattractively dripping off a corner edge. This disfigurement, however, did nothing to contribute to any sort of speech impediment. He was perfectly understandable when his excessively pointed fangs shined in the light and he said to her, “They working you real hard here?”

The clipboard and pen dropped from her slack hands, made a brittle
clack!
on contact with the concrete floor. Store policy was the only thing Rainbow could think to say. “Sir, we prefer our customers pay for the products before they take them out of the packaging.”

She had been over on the next aisle, inventorying the caulk tubes, and heard the screech of tape coming off the roll and felt compelled to investigate. She never suspected for a heartbeat anything sinister would be transpiring.

“I heard that,” Li’l Bocephus said. “Good thing I wasn’t planning on paying for any of this shit.”

He was coming toward her; all puffed up with Texas swagger, his boots as loud as a leaf falling from a tree as they tread the concrete. His one eye was trained on her face and never blinked. It was a stare that blazed with a cruel bliss and made Rainbow feel puny and without importance.

“I’m just about done here,” he told her. “Getting myself together correct and proper. All I need take care of now is finding me something to eat. Hey, ah, I believe you can help me out in that department. My, you gone and got yourself one real pretty throat. Anybody ever tell you that before? They should have. Probably the finest feature you have, seeing as how the rest of you is as fairly homely as a monkey’s shaved ass. That was rude of me, reminding you you’re not an attractive girl. I am sorry. The words slipped out of me before my brain could advise my mouth to maybe keep what I really was thinking to myself. Anyway, let’s wander back on over to the positive point of view. Indeed, that is a pretty throat. Ever wonder what it might look like a hair gnawed on? I’m curious. Let us find out. If you try to run from me, I swear to God I’ll chase you down lickety-split and hurt you a thousand and more times worse than I will if you stay sweet and passive and cooperate with me.”