Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (8 page)

“
Now you boys listen here. I want you
to take these two upstairs and tie ‘em real good, you understand? I
don’t want no repeat of that time last summer, you
hear?”

Both brothers nodded their heads but remained
silent.

“
After that, the pair of ya go find
that there car of theirs. Reckon they couln’t got too far before
you boys found ‘em. You take the chain and you . . . .”

“
Shit, Mama, it’s fuckin’ freezin’ out
there.”

Mary stormed across the room with her first
two fingers spread into a V. The wrinkles on her face pulled into a
tight scowl and she clenched her teeth together as if she were
attempting to shatter them.

“
Earl Gruber, don’t you sass me, young
man!”

Clutching Earl’s shirt with her free hand,
she thrust up with the other. The extended fingers drove into
Earl’s nostrils so deeply that his nose seemed to swell with the
presence of the sudden invaders. The large man’s knees gave out for
a fraction of a second as his eyes watered and blood trickled
around the old woman’s fingers. But he didn’t try to pull away or
defend himself; he simply stood there with his eyes clinched shut
as his mother leaned in so closely that spittle peppered his
face.

“
I don’t care if Hell’s done froze
over, you’re gonna do what I say, when I say to do it. You hear me,
boy?
You hear me
?”

Earl nodded his head almost imperceptibly to
keep his mother’s fingers from plunging even further into his
sinuses than what they already were. But this seemed to satisfy the
old woman, for she yanked them out and released the tide that had
built up behind them. As her son pinched his nostrils and tilted
his head back, she licked the blood from her fingernails so slowly
that it almost seemed as if she were inspecting them for chips and
cracks with the tip of her tongue.

“
Good.” She finally said. “I’d expect
that kind of thing from your no-good brother, but not from you,
young man. You’ve always been such a good boy.”

The rage that had gripped her dissipated as
quickly as it had descended. She stroked Earl’s hair gently now and
he leaned into it like a cat which hoped a scratch behind the ears
was soon to follow.

“
Always such a loving son . . .
.”

Placing the palm of her hand against his
cheek, Mary spoke softly and slowly as her fingertips smeared fresh
blood across his upper lip.

“
You make your Mama proud, you hear?
You take that little whelp and you hide that car where ain’t nobody
never gonna find it.. Then you high tail it back here.”

She turned her head and studied Matt and Mona
for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of their chests
while their arms hung by their sides like strands of overcooked
spaghetti.

“
Then once the two of you are back all
safe and sound, we’ll all show our new guests a little
hospitality
.”

Even Daryl couldn’t suppress the grin that
the words coaxed from his pale face.

“
If’n you do a good enough job, I might
even let ya have a go at the woman before she’s all cut up and
bleedin’ like a stuck pig. You’d like that, wouldn’t ya, boy? All
fresh and new and tidy?”

Earl remained silent, but the gleam in his
eyes was answer enough. Before the night was over, fresh blood
would be spilled in a house that had come to crave it and screams
for mercy would fall flat on a dark and uncaring forest. There
would be pain and suffering and it would be sipped like water from
a cup.

SCENE SIX

Mona drifted as if she were nothing more than
a piece of wood in a sea of darkness. She floated on the black
waters and bobbed on the crests of undulating waves while empty
space yawned above her. There were no pinprick holes of light in
the dome of the sky, no wisps of gray cloud, or even the hint of a
rising moon brightening the distant horizon. Above, below,
surrounding her on all sides: nothing but a darkness so complete
that the heavens and sea were indistinguishable from one another.
Up was down, left was right, and she spiraled in eddies that
threatened to suck her into the undertow before spitting her back
to the surface again.

The lightless ocean also made a sound that
somehow reminded Mona of the flub and swish of an ultrasound. She
could almost feel the cold jelly smeared onto her stomach, the
slight pressure of the paddles as they slid across her skin. In the
distance, something soft and warm began to flicker in the darkness;
it pulsed in time with the rhythm of the noises around her, its
aura growing stronger with each muffled sluice of unseen fluid.
Something that looked like a blurry cashew began to form in the
center of the light and as Mona watched she saw bluish veins spread
like stain across a translucent onionskin. Two perfectly round and
perfectly dark eyes formed on either side of what was now obviously
a head as paddle like hands waved as slowly as seaweed on the ocean
floor. The fetus seemed to absorb the light it had formed from so
that the radiance came from somewhere within: the luminance acted
almost like an x-ray, silhouetting the tiny heart and network of
arteries against the honey-colored glow.

The fetus swiveled its head like an owl and,
even from such a great distance, Mona could clearly see her own
reflection in the black mirrors of its eyes. Her heartbeat and
breathing seemed to synchronize with the pulse of the creature’s
effulgence and she wanted to pull this delicate thing somewhere
inside her, to keep it safe and warm and hidden far from those
who’d do it harm. She’d be able to push away the anger that would
gnaw at the back of her mind whenever she’d look at the familiar
features that would form on its face; shame and guilt would be
swallowed and left to simmer in the furthest recesses of her
psyche: she could love this small life if she simply tried hard
enough. She was sure of that.

Mona tried to stretch her arms so that they’d
reach this ethereal baby . . . but something changed. The warm,
golden glow diminished like an ember burning out and the creature’s
skin morphed into something that was as brown and wrinkled as a
dried leaf. Cracks spread across the dark eyes and seemed to pull
their luster into the advancing fissures, leaving them as dull and
lifeless as two dusty marbles. At the same time, Mona heard the
whoosh and whine of air: it was a sound almost like a vacuum
cleaner sucking liquid from the bottom of a pool, so loud that she
could feel the pull of its force in her gut. In response, chunks of
the fetus separated from the body, though they did not go without a
fight: they struggled to maintain solidarity with the whole,
hanging on with thin strands of tissue that stretched and ripped
like rubber bands pulled their breaking point. In the end, however,
the power exerted upon them was just too great; these jagged pieces
of flesh were wrenched free and drifted into the darkness until
there was nothing left but that hollow, empty void.

A voice slurred through the emptiness left
behind, echoing like the words of a drunken god. Each syllable
thudded in her chest and made her knees tremble at the judgment
being passed.

“
You little fucking whore . . .
.”

Tears stung Mona’s eyes as a cocktail of
emotion was shaken within her: anger surged with the quickness of a
knife, only to be washed away with a nauseous blend of fear and
misplaced guilt. But then hatred flared like the tip of a match,
igniting the entire concoction in a mushroom cloud of flame before
sputtering out within the winds of panic.

“
Lying, worthless tramp!”

Someone walked across the expanse of darkness
toward Mona, their steps as light and calculated as a boy tiptoeing
carefully across a bedroom floor. The moving shadow seemed to
quiver with nervous excitement, glancing over its shoulder every
few steps as if to ensure that some larger shadow wasn’t creeping
up behind it.

A different voice in the darkness now. A
voice that cracked and broke beneath the strain of raging
hormones.

“
Drink this . . . it’s good. Drink it
all, okay?”

The shadow advanced in a series of abrupt
jerks, almost as if it were passing through a strobe light as dark
as the surroundings. One second it was ten feet away . . . the
next, six. Then three. Two. One . . . .

A pockmarked face that looked like a
masculine version of her own floated so close that Mona could feel
the sharp gasps of air warm her cheek. Then sensations burst
through like rapid fire gunshots in the night: the smell of sweat
and garlic, hands fumbling and touching, pain exploding somewhere
between her legs before the numbing cloud washed over her again,
pulling her into a darkness much like the one she floated in
now.

“
He’s a fucking gridiron hero, for
Christ’s sake! He could bang any cheerleader he wants? And you
really expect me to believe that a dirty piece of trash like your .
. . .”

Mona felt as if she were collapsing into
herself, as if all of her molecules were being compressed into a
little ball of ice so dense that a black hole formed within her
soul. She kept expecting the sting from the back of his hand and
the black olive taste of blood trickling from her split and
throbbing lip. Coat hangers straightened into slender rods, the
studded belt wrapped snugly around a beefy fist, bottles of Mad Dog
that shattered like a cheap tiara, leaving her wondering how much
of the sticky liquid drenching her hair was blood and how much was
wine: these were expected, these were the norm, and no one gave a
damn about this quiet little girl who flinched at every loud noise
or sudden movement.

Her father staggered in front of the creeping
shadow like a washed up actor who’d somehow stumbled into the glare
of a spotlight. His bloodshot eyes blazed over top a bulbous nose
webbed with thin, blue veins and his jowls flapped like a rabid
bulldog as the torrent of abuse flew like froth from his mouth.

“
She’s just jealous, Dad. She’s makin’
shit up to try and get me in trouble. Why the hell would I drug my
own dawn sister? Who does that?”

Mona wanted to scream at the top of her
lungs:
I never said I was drugged! How did
you know I was drugged, Timmy? If you’re so fucking innocent, how
the hell did you know I was drugged
? But all that came
from her throat was a whimper so soft that it may have come from a
puppy wavering between life and death.

“
None of the boys will touch her ‘cause
she smells like pee. Fifteen years old and still wetting the bed
like a little fucking baby. She wakes up early to do the laundry so
you won’t know, Dad. I’ve seen her do it.”

A chorus of voices swirled in the darkness
around her, each one jabbing with the cruelty only adolescence can
foster.

“
Outta my way, Urinal Cake!”

“
Oh hell . . . here comes Pissin’ Mona
. . . .”

‘
S’up, Outhouse?”

A school desk flashed into existence like a
brief crack of lightning, leaving the image of a plastic bag of
diapers perched atop her textbooks seared onto her retinas as
dozens of voices thundered with laughter.

“
You lying sack of shit . . . is that
it? You trying to get your brother in trouble? Trying to make sure
he doesn’t get that scholarship because you’re so damn retarded.
Well, missy, maybe you need to be shown what it
really
feels like.”

A pressure had built up somewhere within
Mona’s abdomen. It was almost as if her bladder were expanding like
a balloon; she could feel it swelling with warm liquid, the walls
stretching thin as it continued to grow. Only not quite. Something
was different this time. Almost as if the scream that had been
trapped inside her for so many years was submerged somewhere down
there: it burned like an ingot, the fierce heat boiling the liquid
and causing pressure to further billow into the nooks and crannies
of her body. The pressure surged into her chest and lungs, made her
throat feel as if layers of flesh had been burned away, and then
spewed from a mouth that could no longer contain the force that had
simply simmered for so long.

Instead of a scream, a stream of fire shot
past her lips. It crackled and hissed through the air like a
serpent of flame before coiling around her dad and brother. Red and
orange tongues hungrily licked away flesh and muscle, rendered fat
into bubbling puddles of steam, and eventually turned on themselves
until nothing was left but skeletons and ash. The bones held
together for a moment, frozen in their final poses; it was almost
as if they hadn’t realized yet that even cartilage had been
consumed in the blaze. But then they dissolved into a fine dust
that scattered on the wind and silence returned to Mona’s dark
void.

Only it wasn’t silent. Not really. There was
a lull coming from somewhere, almost like a distant buzzing in her
ears that grew louder the more she tried to identify its source.
Close by, she spotted what appeared to be veils of gossamer fabric.
Each fiber was illuminated from within; it was as if soft, pastel
light had somehow been woven into the strands and they rippled and
shifted like well-dressed spirits dancing in the breeze.

The buzzing merged into a hum and the colors
formed patchwork blocks, the tint bleeding seamlessly as they
formed a blurry mosaic. The sound filled her entire head now and
Mona realized that words were interspersed within the rise and fall
of the drone; as more and more words asserted themselves, texture
and depth emerged as hue melted into detail.