Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (25 page)

“You know how in the movies, there’s always those scenes where a guy’s about to get executed, shot right in the head, and that’s the moment they use to show you what he’s really like? He either blubbers and begs and dies all snotty and pathetic, or finally just spits at them and says, ‘Fuck you.’” Laticia looked down at her hands, the purple polish on her nails chipped from all the holes she dug. “I feel like I just said, ‘Fuck you.’”

Ben sighed deep. “I’ll get the camera.”

When he stepped through the porch door, color drained from his face and one hand went involuntarily to his holster.

The dog’s teeth appeared.

“Don’t,” Laticia cooed, and stroked the bloody head, its fur tacky. She squatted next to it. “If you were him would you trust a man? Don’t talk. Just turn the flash off and take the pictures. I can’t tell what’s blood because he’s so dark. But here, his back leg, and his tail—well, the nub—get all that. It’s just bone.” Her hands were staining pink as she petted, but she didn’t care. “It’s okay,” she told it. “Get the ears, too. Can you imagine what he looked like before Doug got hold of him?” She took the beast’s face in her hands. “You’ll be fine. Then we’ll set you loose, and you can go be scary again, okay?”

An hour later Ben was still at the kitchen table. “Karen’s on her way. She usually just does cattle and horses, but I can’t see hauling that thing across town. And it’ll be quieter this way. We good?”

“Perfect.” Laticia was dressed, barefoot with her hair in a knot on the back of her head. She pointed to his mug but he shook his head. “Can’t you stay ‘til Karen gets here?”

“Afraid to be alone with that thing?”

“No. Afraid to be alone if Cellar figures me out.”

“Not much chance of that.”

“Can’t you stay just because?” She rubbed her palms together.

Slowly, Ben leaned forward and turned the poodle salt and pepper shakers to face each other, gilt nose to gilt nose.

Karen’s big dually rumbled up, stopping the conversation before it started.

One peek at the animal, and Karen said she wasn’t touching the goddamned thing until it was sedated. They crushed up the tranquilizers and stirred the powder into a can of SpaghettiOs. Karen watched over Laticia’s shoulder as the dog lapped up the orange slop, rolling its eyes to follow their movements but offering no objections. Laticia’s hands only shook afterward as she poured them all coffee in the kitchen. When the animal was unconscious, Karen looked it over and said, “Tailypo.”

“What?”

“Tailypo,” Karen folded herself cross-legged next to her tackle box of gear, holding suture needles up in the light. “Just an old story Pa used to tell when we camped out. Man traps a dog or a monster in the woods, steals its tail—sells it, eats it, depends who tells the story. Monster comes back the next few nights, tears up the man’s dogs, house, eventually him, looking for the tail.”

She stitched him up the best she could, cleaned and treated the parts she couldn’t. “I don’t know how long it’ll be out, to be honest, but it’ll live. I’ll leave you some dog food, but it probably won’t eat it. In a day or two I say drive as far as you can in any direction and turn it loose in the woods. He’s no domestic, that’s for sure.”

“What is he?”

“Hell if I know. Some sorta crossbreed—probably mostly wolf. It’s good, what you did, but get it out of here as soon as you can.”

Laticia dug through her purse at the table. “What do I owe you?”

Karen shook her head, steam coming off her hands under the faucet. “Douglas Cellar is a piece of shit. His little boy . . . ” she rubbed her hands on a dish towel and pressed her lips together. “My Michael is in the same class as Irving Cellar. Last night Mikey said Irving cried in class, and his grandma picked him up early. And Mikey, bless him, said Irving must be having nightmares because he drew pictures of the Big Bad Wolf all week.”

Ben cleared his throat.

“Only Big Bad Wolf in that child’s life is his father, and I can’t think of anyone else that would do somethin’ like this. But no one will hear a word from me. Y’all just be careful. And another two cents that ain’t mine to give: glad to see you back together. I knew it was just a matter of time.” Karen poked a clean finger into the front of Ben’s uniform, and smiled at Laticia. “I was a chaperone at your Junior Prom, betcha didn’t remember that. And you two looked like you stepped out of a fairy tale. Anyway.”

Karen was down the steps and climbing into her truck before the flush was all the way up Laticia’s cheeks, thrust halfway into the past. She blinked.

“You were my first,” Ben said, “for what it’s worth.” His eyes were naked, face red. She heard him take a deep breath, and her fingers went numb.

Ben’s belt crackled to life. Of course it did.

He was down the steps before Karen’s truck was out of sight; Laticia looked out the door and saw him lean in his cruiser, talking into the radio. Head down, he returned.

“What?”

“I need my hat.”

“What’s going on?”

“Domestic call from Miss Annabelle across the street from the Cellars’. Doug’s in the backyard with an axe, busting up his kennels. His hounds are all dead.”

“Where’s Irving?”

“With Miss Annabelle. My hat, Laticia.”

She hung on when he reached for it.

“I gotta go.”

Another engine rumbled up the hill. Chrissy’s Neon.

“Shit.”

Chrissy cranked down her window, lit a cigarette and waved, smiling. “Morning, Deputy Miller. Am I interrupting anything?” She was in last night’s clothes, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

Ben stood between Laticia and the car, eyes on neither. “Not a thing. If you’ll excuse me, I gotta get going. Just got a call your friend Doug butchered all his dogs and seems bent on a funeral pyre.”

“He didn’t kill them dogs,” Chrissy called, as Ben passed her without a glance. “This what you been up to, then, Tish?”

Ben looked back, hazel eyes steady. “Take care of yourself, Laticia.” He climbed in his cruiser and pointed it down the hill, disappearing without ceremony in a puff of dust.

They watched him go, then Chrissy asked again, “Seriously though, you fucking that pig?”

She shook her head.

“I would.” Chrissy pushed the door open and hauled herself out like an old woman with glass bones.

“Tell Will I’m done with him. You think it’ll help, tell him Ben was here. Shit, Chrissy. Don’t you get tired? I’m tired,” Laticia said. “And I’m bored.” She shrugged and sat down on the top step.

Flicking her cigarette into the gravel and leaning against the car, Chrissy said, “I got no quarrel with you, Laticia. But Will’s my cousin. He’s still up, they’re both still up—Logan spent the rent on another eight ball and some speed, said ‘Go see if Tish really went home.’ This daylight is killing me.” She lit another cigarette. “Little Irving slept in our bed, snuck off and fell asleep sometime. Doug carried him out this morning in his arms like a baby.” With the sun on her face and her guard down, Chrissy looked almost like a real person, like a human. “Yeah, Laticia. Yeah, I’m tired.”

“He shouldn’a been there.”

“He’s seen worse. So have I, so have you. And we turned out just fine.” Chrissy smiled at the lie, and Laticia matched it.

The late morning sun suspended time; in the yellow light pressing into the hill, Laticia unfolded two ratty lawn chairs, and Chrissy sat down in the one next to her.

“You remember in the old cartoons when the sheepdogs and wolves would go on lunchbreak or change shifts, and there was that break, where they’d stop being like they had to be and just . . . ” Laticia waved her arm.

Chrissy hhmphed. “I remember.”

“This feels like that. A lotta this morning has felt like a movie, or TV, or a dream. So much talk, my head’s spinning. It’s like trying to swim after not doing it for years. I don’t think I’ve had any sorta real talking to people in—well, probably since Mom died.”

Bachelor’s buttons and daisies winked blue and white at them on the slope below.

“I never figured you’d stay.”

“Forgot to leave.”

“Me, too!” Chrissy grinned, and they both laughed.

Monet painted the light on the haystacks, didn’t he?
Laticia didn’t say it out loud, but the light reminded her of those paintings. Somewhere a milkweed pod burst and exhaled; wishes blew past them and over the hill in a snow globe gust. “Make a wish,” she told Chrissy.

“Can’t. I gotta clock back in.” Chrissy pushed herself up from the chair. “My wolves need mindin.”

Laticia checked the dog; still unconscious. Kneeling beside it, she laid both hands flat on its ribcage, feeling it breathe. “I would keep you,” she whispered. “If you weren’t a feral, chopped-up Tailypo too sick to remember you probably want to kill everything, I think we’d be friends.”

Laticia stretched out on the couch with the front door locked and the door between kitchen and porch propped open. She drifted off, watching the ocean-like patterns her mother’s embroidered sheer curtains made on the shag carpet and dreamed into the past, if the past were a kaleidoscope, and the moments fell random and overlapped, vivid chaos.

Laticia Deal, she signed the visitor’s log and saw her name a few lines up, from the morning before, and a few lines up from that. Took her place in the cold plastic chair to stare at the IV bag and rolled the bottle of Darvocet-pink polish between her hands. Closed her eyes, opened them, saw her hands buckling the straps on her silver heels. “It’s not love,” she told her reflection, and painted her lips. “He’s here!” her mother called. Then from the doorway, “Tish, hurry, quick. He’s dropped everything, it’s adorable. Just peek, I won’t go to the door ‘til he gets himself straightened out.” Laticia turned, but her mother wasn’t in the doorway, instead it was Irving Cellar. He told her, “Daddy said I could tame him, and he’d be mine. I never had no dog before. Daddy had hounds, but them wasn’t for playin’ with, Daddy said.” The little boy looked her up and down. “You look just like Cinderella.” She put both hands over her face to hide him, and when she removed them she was back in the plastic chair, and the monitor beeped steady, ensuring visitors never reached REM sleep. Behind her were noises she could only describe as
wet,
and a tearing like fabric. Looking back, she saw the beast, the wolf, whole. Ears pointed and laid back, tail long and curved. Its coat was black, sleek, more like a raven’s feathers than fur. “So that’s what you look like.” The animal perked up at the sound of her voice. It was beautiful, standing there on the room’s other bed. White teeth shining, the tick, tick, tick of blood dripping onto the tile floor. “No, don’t mind me, finish him,” Laticia made a shooing motion with her hand, and the animal nosed back into its work, Douglas Cellar’s trunk laid open wide, the beast straddling him, pulling the intestines free. Doug groaned, and Laticia put a finger to her lips, scowling. “Sshhh, you’ll wake my mother.” He nodded, eyes round as saucers, blood seeping from between his lips. The heart rate monitor began to buzz wildly and she flailed her arms, searching for the call button. Laticia’s hand came up with her cellphone, and she stared. “Oh.”

She’d found the phone by touch, and opened her eyes on the living room with a deep intake of breath, as if surfacing from deep underwater. Shaking, she pushed the button and said hello.

“Tish?”

“Ben? What time is it?”

“I don’t know—noon, maybe? Tish, I’m at the bottom of the hill.”

Her legs tingled pins and needles as she ran through the house to the porch. The quilt was blood-soaked and empty.

“You don’t have to come down, but I thought you’d at least want to know—”

“I’ll walk down. I’m on my way.”

The sun was gone. She drowned the knot in her throat at the kitchen sink with a can of Coke, watching the storm clouds roll in. They softened everything, there was mercy in the dark.

One blue flip-flop and one purple was all she could come up with in a hurry. She pulled the door shut behind her and watched her legs carry her through the gravel dust more than felt them. Past Ben’s house, past two others and she made the turn in the road carved into the hill; it made the shape of a less-than sign.

Ambulance lights flashed; Laticia stopped in her tracks.

Past the five houses to her left, a knot of neighbors tightened and loosened, and past them were cruisers, Ben with a roll of yellow tape, EMTs talking but not doing, and Douglas Cellar’s red Jimmy crumpled around the telephone pole.

She broke into a run and Ben spotted her—he handed off the tape and caught her elbow before she made the crowd.

“Tish, you don’t have to—”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.” Ben folded one arm around her and when she let out a joyous squawk, he clapped a hand over her mouth.

She pawed it away. “Irving?”

“Laticia.”

“What about Irving?”

“Yes.”

The word rolled through her body, stole her breath. Through the people, the lights, she saw a black mound at the edge of the road. “My dog?” she whispered.

“That was not your dog.”

She smacked his hands away and pushed through the spectators, ducked the tape and stood before the SUV’s bloody windshield.

“Miss Deal, it’s a crime scene.”

Laticia ignored him, ignored his official-sounding voice.

Between the vehicle and the dog, litter had rained from the open windows. She stepped on fast food wrappers, beer cans, and was almost to the ditch when she saw the paper stuck to her purple flip-flop. Laticia stopped to pull it free and Ben grabbed her by the elbow, dragging her away, back under the tape and through the people that paid her no mind. The EMTs were unloading the stretchers. The crowd collectively drew breath, hungry for the sight of blood.

Laticia dropped to her knees at the edge of the road, flattening the paper on her thighs. Tears dripped, or rain, and she rubbed them into the picture.

“He’s ruined his last beautiful thing,” she said, to herself more than Ben.

Ben knelt next to her and took her hand. She let him, which counted for something. “I’ll walk you back home. Come on.”

“I’m keeping this.”

“Then hide it.”

She folded the white paper carefully, concealing the Big Bad Wolf drawn in black crayon and the little boy with sky blue eyes, crescent moon for a smile.