Freezer Burn

PART TWO
Frost
Six

There was a huge pasture and the grass was cut way short and summer-burned to the color of a saltine cracker, and Bill knew if he stepped on it the grass would crackle like corn flakes. Parked on the pasture were a number of caravan-style trucks and silver trailers with brightly painted sides hooked up to semi-cabs, and there was an old station wagon and a motor home.

The trailers had pictures of weird people, wild animals, and snakes painted on them, and blazed across one in red paint was

ODDITIES OF THE WORLD.

There was one shiny silver trailer off to the right, away from the others, as if placed there on special assignment. Painted on its side in black and blue was a stocky, bearded wild man encased in a block of ice. The man was blue-skinned with black hair and the ice block was a lighter blue. Above this were the words ICE MAN written out as if in icicles.

There were a handful of people moving amongst the trailers and trucks, and even from a distance Bill could tell they were not normal folk. One was a tall lean pinheaded man in overalls and another was a woman with a beard and a green dress with some kind of dark pattern on it.

There were a number of others that Bill could not see well, and could only think of as being in various states of ugly. One actually ran on all fours, and had a spine bent like a horseshoe. A midget in a porkpie hat stood next to the bearded lady, as if ready to crawl under her dress and hide.

Bill settled down in the creek bed and looked at the dead deputy and wondered what he should do. He was surprised at how tired he was. The creek bed was cool and there was an indentation in it and the dirt was soft and damp, and without really realizing it, Bill made himself comfortable, and soon was asleep.

When Bill awoke he was famished and thirsty and none of it had been a dream. It was growing late and the sunlight had lessened, though it would be light until nine o’clock or so. Bill wondered what time it was. He went over to the deputy and checked to see if the deputy had a watch. He did.

Bill picked up the deputy’s arm and pulled it out of the water and looked at the watch on the corpse’s wrist. The watch was obviously waterproof. The second hand ticked away, and the time read seven forty-six.

Well I’ll be screwed and tattooed, thought Bill, I’ve slept for hours.

Bill dropped the deputy’s wrist, waded upstream away from the flow of blood from the deputy’s head – which had stopped, but the idea of it still bothered him – and dipped his hand in the water and scooped out a drink. The water felt good and tasted sweet at first, but soon it made his stomach hurt.

He decided he had to find food, no matter what. It was just the sort of thing that would make him fuck up, being this hungry. He had to have something to eat, even if he had to show himself to a bunch of freaks.

Bill came out of the creek and climbed over the bank and walked toward the caravan. There weren’t as many freaks as before, but he could see the guy who ran on all fours, and two that he had not seen earlier. They both appeared to have heads about the size and shape, if not the color, of jack-o’-lanterns. They were tossing a Frisbee back and forth, and the dog-man was running between them, leaping up, trying to grab the thing in his mouth. The meat heads laughed and the dog-man made a crude noise and kept at it.

Bill staggered in their direction. It was slightly warmer away from the riverbank, and Bill could see the late evening sun hanging low in the sky like a cracked fertile egg, leaking gold and yellow and blood-red chicken all over the horizon, seeping through the trees.

Scissortails darted across the sky in search of bugs, and Bill could hear cars out on the highway beyond, buzzing happily along with no concerns for lost heist money, wet Roman candles, dead deputies, or melting mothers in black plastic bags.

As Bill neared the trailers the meat heads ceased their game, paused to look at him. The dog-man didn’t seem to notice, and when one of the freaks lowered the Frisbee to his side, the dog-man snatched it from his hand with his mouth, ran in a circle and leaped and came down and saw Bill walking toward him. The Frisbee dropped from the dog-man’s mouth and he pushed his head in Bill’s direction, as if trying to recognize someone familiar. Bill got the impression the man might even be sniffing the air, but he was too far away to be certain.

As he grew nearer, the dog-man began to hop up and down like a mechanical pup, then bounded away in the direction of one of the trailers.

Bill didn’t realize it right off, but as he neared the freaks, he discovered he had both of his hands extended, palm up, beggar position. He was so hungry and so tired, so in need of anything and everything, he couldn’t help himself. He fell down twice, and pretty soon the freaks with the big heads had him under each arm and were half carrying, half dragging him toward the trailers.

Perhaps, he thought, I am an alien abductee, and a moment from now they’ll have me on a cold table with salad tongs spreading my butt cheeks and a cold wet alien finger up my ass. You hear about alien abductions, the asshole is always a prime target. And they liked to jack people off for sperm. He thought he could handle that part better than the finger up the ass. It might even be kind of restful.

When they were a few feet from the trailers, the dog-man and a large fiftyish man with thick snow white hair and eyebrows housing a couple of renegade black hairs appeared.

The man wore a nice white suit, a white and yellow checkered vest, a pearl white shirt, and a bow tie that was checked to match the vest. He had on shiny white shoes and thin white socks which were visible because the pants were a smidgen too short. Little white hairs poked through the thin socks. He looked at Bill in a quizzical manner, turning his head this way and that.

The dog-man was still bouncing, and now that he was close up, Bill could see that he was wearing gray coveralls. He had a dark elongated face that looked all the world like a dog snout, and beneath the snout there was a well-tended pencil-thin mustache. His ears had hair growing out of them, and his back legs ended in pithy nubs encased in leather bags drawn tight around his ankles. His hands were flat against the ground, and around the palm area he had wrapped some sort of padding.

The dog-man sat back on his haunches and kept repeating something over and over that Bill couldn’t quite make out because the dog-man spoke as if he might have a biscuit lodged in his throat.

Weak from hunger, Bill felt himself collapsing between the arms of the bulb heads, and pretty soon he lay on his back and the sky whirled blue and gray with orange at the fringes. The bulb heads bent over him.

He heard someone say, “Give him air,” and the bulb heads moved away. The face of the snow-headed man moved into his line of sight, and the man bent over him, and he felt the man’s hands at his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. He began to breathe better. He rolled his head to the side and smelled the drying grass, and from that angle he could see the last of the sunlight hanging between the trees, as if a giant with an inflamed hemorrhoid was mooning him.

The dog-man was repeating himself over and over, and finally Bill realized what it was he was saying.

“One of us. One of us. One of us.”