Chaingang

22

NORTH QUARRY BAYOU

The beast crosses an open field of wild pastureland, keeping close by the protective thicket that divides the piece of ground, a dense border of interwoven bushes, thorn-studded trees, and commingled vines. Moves in the direction of swampy bayou, dark glade, secret hollows made for hiding, killing, and burying.

From the distance you see a huge waddling clown man, fatso bear, limping a bit—if you look closely—favoring the tired right ankle that supports its share of the quarter ton, but begins weakening when the beast grows tired.

If you have the bad luck to view him from closer range, you will see he is not the grinning simpleton the stereotype suggests. Mean, hard, unforgiving intelligence flashes in the strange, doughy face. Eyes as cold as graveyard stones flicker constantly, registering every sign and movement of life. His breath mists in the cold air as his sensors scan for the presence of humanity.

Should he see your footprints or your recent tire tracks amid the Hereford cattle and water moccasin sign, he will lock on to your heartbeat and find you. His present mood gives new meaning to “obsessed.” Killing and torture have become a relentless and insistent need.

Last night he slept in a frigid box of a cramped automobile, and tonight he will spend it in a warm house—if he has to leave Mommy, Daddy, Bubba, and Sissy with RIPPED ABDOMENS, TORN KIDNEYS, BLEEDING HEARTS, AND PILES OF STEAMING DOG SHIT to do it. He sleeps inside tonight.

As he scans he thinks of BELLY BILE, GUT JUICE, VENTRICLES, VISCERA, OFFAL, FAT, SMILE, BLOOD, GUTS, GORE, GRUE, GOOP, CHITLINS, SHIT TUBES, RIPPED RENDERED DEAD FUCKING MONKEY PEOPLE.

The field is crossed and he is in dark woods. It is colder here. Cow flop. Snakeskins. Wet, green clumps of shadowed moss thriving in the rankness of deep, canopied murk. His sensors pick up his own sewer-main stench, the fragrance of pastureland manure, compost, humus rich with a mulch that he imagines as decomposed flesh—what a superior burial site!

Out of the cold shadows now he tops a ditch bank over a bayou. A viscous green scum lies across the surface of the water. He leaves his deep 15EEEEE indentations along the top of the bank. Follows a cattle path. Skirts the bayou. Reaches the edge of the world.

Chaingang peers over the side of the cliff. He is looking down into what appears to be a bottomless pit, an old marble quarry, fathomless, deep beyond measure, going down beyond visibility into the darkest, blackest core of the earth. He throws a rock in and listens, but does not hear it strike bottom.

No stairs or steps or paths lead down into the quarry. How has the rock been retrieved? He idly speculates on this oddity, initiating a query about the queer quarry, smiling broadly at the potential of this gaping, grand invitation. What a mass monkey grave this would make!

By nightfall he is on the other side of the black hole, snug and warm in Frank and Lucille Stahly's farmhouse. He has the heat cranked up, a big bowl of chips and Mrs. West's Party Dip in his lap, and his muddy boots rest on Lucille's coffee table, waiting for them to return home.

He'd slipped the cheap lock in about eight seconds, found the small farmhouse empty, dirty dishes in the sink and on the breakfast table, and the bed unmade. Within a half hour or so he knew what there was to know about the people who lived here, and was waiting patiently for the party to get under way.

Darkness had fallen early and he'd enjoyed his quiet vigil, eating the entire contents of the Stahly's fridge, drinking some wine he'd found, and resting his bones. He amused himself reading, in his mind, “Eating One's Dead: Susu and the Southern Massim."

It was nearly seven-thirty when he heard the pickup truck crunch along the gravel driveway. He was on his feet, moving through the darkened house, standing against the wall behind the kitchen door and away from the windows, frozen motionless, willing his vital signs to a halt, his killing chain dangling from his right hand. Waiting silently.

“They pulled three truckloads out when melons were going for nine cents, and then, see, the early winter set ‘em back—and so they started givin’ ‘em away by the truckful, and trying to wholesale ‘em out to these roadside vendors."

“If everybody had knowed about it, they would have come out and got some. They shoulda’ told the folks in town.” A woman's loud voice.

“John said he was (something) that'd been shipped too early to turn sweet."

“That's right."

The sound of the door unlocking.

“He asked me if we wanted a bag of broccoli. They had about ten bags that was damaged coming off a truck from Mem—” He took the man down with the first chain-snap, catching him across the left temple and forehead, killing him instantly, reluctantly almost. He could listen to monkey talk for hours sometimes, fascinated as he was by the extremely prosaic nature of their endless blabbing about melons and broccoli and damaged veggies. He hated them for their ways but was intrigued by their mundane, weak lives and superficial thought patterns, because, deep down, he was one of them.

The man was ordinary in appearance. The woman, ample-bosomed and rather big-boned, was an attractive lady in her fifties. She immediately began to fight him, and he was surprised and amused, a barking cough of laughter escaping as he subdued her as gently as he could, opting to knock her out with his frying-pan-size fist.

“Stop!” the woman screamed, regaining consciousness, feeling great weight on her, the nakedness and stench of her attacker adding to the blind horror. A stocking bit into her mouth.

“Now, now, Lucille,” a deep basso profundo rumbled hotly in her ear, “it's going to be all right.” She felt as if her back were breaking. The monster was in her and she almost passed out trying to fight him. Her wrists and ankles were bound to objects she could not see, blindfolded as she was and spread on the living room floor, tethered to the stove and other pieces of heavy furniture.

The heaviest furniture of all was on top of her, on her back, one hand cupping her breast, another squeezing her right hip, stabbing into her from behind.

“Oh, Lucille,” he rumbled, as she gagged with nausea and fear, “You're a live one."