Squid Pulp Blues (12 page)

Jake was pale and mumbling.

“The bullet barely hit you, Jake. Come on, you’re alright. You’ll be fine. We
gotta
go NOW!”

With a cough, Jake motioned for him to get closer. Once Tommy was in earshot, he started talking in a gargled voice. “You know, my dad was in the war. He wasn’t supposed to have another tour of duty but he wanted to go. He was patriotic, you know?”

“I didn’t know that, Jake.” Tommy didn’t like where this was headed. Besides, they didn’t have the time to go into all of this.

“He came back alive. Mom and I were happy he didn’t come back a longhead, you know, but the thing is, he just wasn’t the same. He didn’t have that spark that we loved, didn’t care so much about life, about living things. It was like he became an inanimate object during his tour or something.” He coughed up blood and wiped his mouth.

“Oh shit, Jake, shit, man
..”
Tommy whispered, using his own jacket to wipe away the blood. Tears gathered in his eyes. “Fuck, man, let’s go.” He couldn’t hold it in any longer; he started crying.

Jake smiled. “After three months, dad died. Doctors told me and mom they didn’t really know why. Said he just gave up. Never heard of that before, you know, someone just giving up and their body listens. My dad didn’t believe in heaven even though he went to church every week. I was there when he died and know what he told me? Know what his last words were?”

Tommy thought it was a rhetorical question but Jake stared straight at him as if expecting an answer.

“I don’t know, Jake, what were they?”

“He said to me ‘Son, none of this is real. Not a goddamn thing. We’re all the fucking same. All just ants waiting to be burnt by the sun.’ That was it and then he closed his eyes like he was going to sleep but there was no snoring, no fidgeting. He was just gone.”

Tommy turned his head and sobbed into his hands. He’d heard many stories about Jake’s father but never this one. He knew Jake’s father was a dependable, loving father who always provided for his family. Even though he was disappointed in Jake’s criminal path in life, he had never turned his back on his son.

Jake’s head fell back. Tommy could see that the life was slowly leaking out of his body. He bent down and gave Jake a long, soft kiss on the lips that tasted like copper and salt. “I love you,” Tommy said, “Don’t go.”

A barely audible bubble of speech escaped from Jake. “I love you, too.” He coughed. “Thanks for the laughs.” And then, like a snowflake on a stove, he was gone

.

Chapter 11

Aaron Jeffords stood in his office looking out the window at the pink, snow filled sky. He shook his head when he saw the image of Barbara
Stanwyck
appear and noticed that her breasts were much larger than they were in her films. Her cleavage was a long, deep black lightning bolt across the sky. Aaron longed to smother himself in it, lapping up the breast-sweat. He imagined her drooling down her chest causing him to drown in her abundant saliva.

He leaned back, picked up his phone, and dialed his attorney.

“Hey, Bill, Aaron Jeffords here.
Yes, remember what we were talking about earlier today?”

“Yes, of course I do. What about it?”

“Is everything in order?”

“Uh, yeah, Aaron, why?
What’s the matter? Aaron!” Bill shouted.

Aaron hung up the phone. He opened up a desk drawer and took out a gun. He turned to face Barbara, mentally sinking in between her massive, fiery breasts. The sky behind her became a mixture of pink and black swirls. She lifted a foot and Aaron could see her wrinkled soles that were as large as a mountain. In an instant he could smell her foot stench through the windowpane.
 
Aaron sniffed up as much of the smell as possible and then put the gun to his head.

Lord, I’m on my way.

He pulled the trigger with no hesitation. Blood spurted and pieces of brain fell like dice onto his desk. His skull, however, stayed connected to his body in one piece albeit a bit disfigured. He now resembled a longhead. The gun dropped to the floor, smashing a spider that had come out to witness the sight of Barbara
Stanwyck
outside. Aaron’s body fell forward and was held up against the window by his misshapen forehead.

Chapter 12

Pete and Randy dragged their sleds up the hill, laughing the whole way up. They were quite grateful that this early snowfall had come. School would surely be cancelled the following day and that would mean more sledding and more snowball fights.

When they reached the top, Pete saw something that nearly made him faint. A dead donkey, stiff yet bubbling from corpse-gas, was lying in the snow.

“Holy shit!
A pony!” Pete yelled.

“It’s not a pony, jack-ass, it’s a donkey!” Randy was quick to correct his friend.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Duh, it’s dead.” Randy walked closer to it, still holding onto his sled. His eyes flickered with adolescent creativity. “Let’s put it on your sled and send him down the hill.”

“Why my sled?
Let’s use yours!”

“Mine’s brand new. Your sister gave you that piece of shit so who cares what happens to it?”

“Fine,” Pete gave in, knowing that arguing was futile when talking to Randy. He brought his sled over to the donkey and the two of them held their breaths and heaved the donkey onto it. “We’re
gonna
get in so much trouble. Man, I don’t want to be grounded on a snow day.”

“Oh, don’t be such a pussy. No one will find out. Trust me.”

They positioned the sled so that the donkey would be sent down flying down a path that ended just to the left of
Main Street
.

Randy took a deep breath. “On three, okay?
One..two
…”

Chapter 13

Even with his kneecap blow off, Peachy was able to stagger down the street toward Tommy.
I hit one of them, I know I did.
He saw the two of them run away and felt his self-esteem lower just a bit.
I used to have better aim.

From around the corner, Tommy stuck his gun out and sent three shots in
Peachy’s
direction. Two of the bullets missed but one hit him in the other kneecap, sending him to his shredded knees. With the diaper on, it made Peachy resemble an ugly infant playing in the snow. He dropped his gun.

Tommy looked at Jake one last time and then came out onto
Main Street
. He aimed his gun and was ready to finish Peachy off when he heard a ruckus down the street. Through the thick snowflakes he saw a small army of longheads stomping up the street, shooting the guns that Red Henry had sold them. One by one, they slaughtered the citizens of Thompson in a macabre parade.

After seeing this, he knew that Peachy was the least of his worries. Then he saw the bastard pick up his gun. Before Tommy could react with his own firearm, a brown and red blur sped past him and into smashed into Peachy, slicing him in two.

“What the fuck…” Tommy questioned as he now realized that the blur that had turned Peachy into a quivering mess of flesh and diaper was a dead donkey on a sled.
You
gotta
be
fuckin
’ kidding me.

Tommy took another look toward the oncoming assault of the longheads and decided his best bet was to go over the hill into
Fisherville
. He would have liked to take Jake’s body with him but knew that he didn’t have the time. Besides, he knew that whatever consciousness or soul that had been Jake was now far away from his corpse.

As he raced upwards, slipping and sliding in six inches of snow, he looked up and saw the shimmering image of Barbara
Stanwyck
in the sky above. Tommy froze. His testicles retracted and his heart skipped a beat. Barbara winked and jiggled her breasts which appeared to be three sizes to large for her body. Her nipples were dots of pink fire and her teeth were glistening bubbles of starlight.

He continued running and when he reached the top of the hill, Tommy fell down to his knees. He chuckled, realizing that this was exactly the position Peachy was in when a speeding donkey on a sled killed him. This thought made him cut short his rest and sent him down the other side of the hill.
I hope Joe Gurney still has that shack in the clay pits,
he thought
.
His friend Joe used the shack for bootlegging and it would be, in Tommy’s opinion, a great place to hide out for a while.

Thinking back to his childhood, Tommy decided on a better way to go down the hill.
 
He ran a few feet and then jumped onto his belly, sliding down the rest of the way. The freezing cold seeped through his jacket and shirt. He smiled and thought that Jake would have found all of this extremely hilarious.

Chapter 14

Inside
Laruso’s
Italian Eatery, the killer in black gloves sat at a table, his magic marker sitting beside a bowl of pasta. His mind was divided between the pleasurable taste of the food and the fracas outside on the street. Also in his mind, in a small corner that had always been reserved for obsession, was the remembrance of the musky stench of Sweetie Martini’s armpit sweat as he tore off her clothes.

The man eating pasta stared out the window, watching as a group of longheads came to the door of the restaurant. He shouted to Dan, the owner and cook. “You better leave now,” he said. Dan nodded and went to hide.

A group of four longheads came through the door. The one standing in front was dressed in a wrinkled military uniform. He walked up to the table where the man was eating pasta.

Instead of the frenzied manner in which they attacked outside, the longheads calmly took the man to the floor and proceeded to beat his arms and legs to a pulp with the butts of their guns. The man did not fight, did not say a word.

A living torso with crushed bones and flesh for appendages, he flapped around a little bit and then stared at the ceiling remembering his years spent in the military.

“General
Entwistle
, you awake?” one of the longheads asked. He looked around and saw his attackers gathered around him. His mind flashed jagged slivers of light and memory.

Now, General
Entwistle
remembered everything. He had brought the troops to the city and ordered them to attack. Meanwhile, he stayed back, out of harm’s way, with his good friends Sgt. Aaron Jeffords and Sgt. Dario Martino. They played cards and ate pasta while their men fought a fierce battle.

Many hours later, the troops came back. The walked their own trail of tears, gnashing their teeth and dragging snapping turtles that had attached themselves to the soldiers’ hands and feet.

The turtles were the least of their
problems,
however, for the men came back with freakish elongated skulls which made them resemble pale clones of Frankenstein’s monster. It was as if the soldiers were crystal clear reflections of a funhouse mirror.

General
Entwistle
scolded the men for not winning the battle and forced them into the worst hospital tents he could find. There they sat for weeks, being fed stale rations and being shown the same three Barbara
Stanwyck
films over and over. The men requested new movies, ones that were current but General
Entwistle
reserved those for himself. After viewing the same films for weeks, all of the longheads had memorized the dialogue. They chanted it like scripture, reworking it into their own stories of existential revelations and horrific revenge.

So now, he found himself on the floor, unable to move, finally facing the cruel, elongated arm of fate. One of the longheads took out a bizarre contraption and strapped his head into it.

General
Entwistle
felt a strap and a buckle being closed around his skull and felt metal rods being forced against his temples. He stared at a painting on the wall of the restaurant: a vibrant mural of modern Venice. He wanted so much to visit there. Even without arms and legs, he thought, it would be rather pleasant. I could hire someone to carry me around.
Maybe a nice big, Amazonian woman with huge tits. I can sit on top of them and she can walk me around the city.

The longheads cranked the contraption that they had attached to the general’s head. It took five whole minutes of vigorous cranking until finally they had made him into something even more grotesque than themselves.

Entwistle
spent the last fifteen minutes of his life thinking about snapping turtles and how nice it would have been to be able to visit
Venice
with his good friends Aaron and Dario. A minute before he died, the face of Barbara
Stanwyck
appeared over the wall and he watched her swim in the canals of Venice while her breasts bobbed in the water like oversized cantaloupes.

The longheads watched as General
Entwistle
expired and when it was all over, they started to convulse. The veins on their heads bulged like raging underground rivers which then exploded in a spurting display of biological
apokalypsis
. Floating rivers of blood shot through the air like ketchup angrily squeezed from bottles. The longheads dropped dead on the floor.

Dan
Laruso
came out of the kitchen closet where he had been hiding and took a look at the scene in his restaurant.

“This is
gonna
be a real pain in the ass to clean up,” he said, grabbing the mop and bucket.

Chapter 15

The donkey corpse still lay on the sled,
Peachy’s
entrails dragging close behind. The falling snow had covered it with a thick layer of glistening whiteness that reflected the streetlights.

A wet bubbling sound erupted from the donkey’s stomach along with a rip that echoed down the street, tickling the ears of each and every longhead. Out of the corpse of the hairy sled-rider came a baby donkey, half-dead with fright but with a resolve that was above and beyond that of any trauma victim.