In Laymon's Terms

Michael McCarty & Mark McLaughlin

T WAS SATURDAY night and we were driving through the desert in my father’s campaign minivan, looking for some goddamn vampire cave. Let me introduce myself. My name is Tommy Wharton and I’m the mayor’s son. I’m “big-boned”—also known as overweight. But then, I come from a long line of obese politicians. My great-granddaddy was a chubby alderman, my grandpa was an overweight sheriff, and I’ve already told you about dad. I guess genetics has predetermined that I’m destined to become some public official who’s afraid to step on the scales. If that’s true, I’m going to side-step the local politico scene and become a fat-cat senator of this fair state of ours.

Of course, having a political dad and being so big-boned made me a sitting target for all the jocks. My underwear was constantly in wedgy mode. They taunted me constantly, calling me names like Tubby Wart-buns or Flabby Weigh-a-ton.

I’ve never had that many friends, so when a gorgeous, slinky, full-lipped Goth girl named Raven sat across from me in study hall, I was in shock. She surely hadn’t meant to sit at my table. Nobody ever sat at my table.

But there she was, actually making eye contact. She even spoke. “Hi. You’re the mayor’s kid, right? Rich kid like you, I bet you’ve got your own wheels.”

My heart almost stopped. I could hardly breathe. “Oh, sure!” I wheezed out the lie. “Lots of wheels.” Yeah, Dad was rich—but me? My allowance was beyond pathetic.

She nodded. “Cool. You afraid of vampires?”

“Uhh...what?”

“Vampires? The undead? Do they frighten you?”

I’d never really thought about it before. So I mulled over it for about fifteen seconds and finally said, “Nope. Guess not.”

“Good,” she said, licking her lips. “So you’d be cool with driving me and my friends out in the desert to find the vampire’s cave tomorrow night?”

The thought of being in the dark with Raven was too tempting to pass up, even though the possibility of finding the cave of a mythological being out of literature and cheesy horror movies was beyond ridiculous.

“Yeah, I’m down with that,” I said, trying to sound like some rap star with his name shaved into his hair, but only sounding like a nerdy fat white kid.

So that’s how I ended up being the designated driver for the doom-and-gloom gang. Let me introduce the rest of that downbeat motley crew.

They all were dressed as though they’d been invited to Bela Lugosi’s funeral.

First there was Raven, who looked like a cross between sexy low-budget horror-movie hostess Elvira and Britney Spears—except with real breasts. I never got to feel them, but hey, fake boobs cost big bucks, and Raven wasn’t exactly swimming in cash.

Next there was her best friend and rumored lover, Lady Katrina, who could never have passed through an airport metal detector without setting off the alarm. She had dozens of piercings—in her ears, nose, tongue, belly button and God-only-knows where else.

Then there was Rooster, a big beefy guy with a mohawk, and Shakes, a nerdy-looking chain-smoking girl with stringy red hair who had muscle spasms if she didn’t take her meds. Next in this lineup of the social elite was Bones, a short, lanky guy with a goatee and Buddy-Holly-style glasses who had his nose buried in some Poppy Z. Brite paperback for most of the trip.

Raven said she’d figured out that Dracula’s cave was in our neck of the woods—or rather, desert—after seeing some old drive-in movie from the seventies on cable at three a.m. That tipped me off that perhaps Raven wasn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee, but hey, I wasn’t about to inform her of her grand ignorance. Stupid people don’t want to hear that they’re stupid, just like fat boys like me aren’t crazy about being told that their underpants could be used as a boat cover.

Anyway. The film she mentioned was some el cheapo Western horror pic—B-movie? Try Y or Z—about some cowboy, Buffalo Bill or somebody like that, fighting to save a town from the evil Baron Draconi. Raven informed me that Baron Draconi had been played by horror great Belphagor LeMorte. This may just be my suspicious imagination working overtime, but I’m guessing he was some lame-ass Bela Lugosi wannabe.

Raven said she had a few paperbacks about old movies at her place, and she’d read that the screenwriter, Leon Prentiss, had stumbled across an actual vampire cave in the desert when he and some buds had gone camping—outside of our town—back in the ’60s. So he’d used the cave as the basis for the movie.

So for two fucking hours, I drove around in the desert, looking for a vampire cave and listening to the Goth crew argue about it.

“I’m telling you,” Rooster said, “Baron Draconi was from Transylvania. He never lived in America.”

“But like other Europeans, he left the religious persecution of his own country to come to the land of the free,” Raven stated.

“But they fear crosses—and that’s religious,” Lady Katrina said.

“Yeah, like holy water!” Bones shouted.

“It sounds like a lot of bullshit if you ask me,” Rooster said. I wanted to say that nobody had asked him, but well, I just didn’t want to get involved. Frankly, I wanted to stop the van and tell them all to get the hell out, but I just didn’t have the guts. Plus, I was already really nervous because I’d borrowed the van without asking my folks. Dad was out of town on a business trip (with his secretary, no big surprise there), and Mom was out getting drunk with Lorenzo the gardener (no surprise there either), but still, I didn’t have any parental permission, and that had me a little freaked out. “Please don’t fight,” Shakes said in a creepy, trembling whine. “It’s giving me a sore stomach.”

But nobody listened to Shakes, and the argument went on and on. After a while I stopped paying attention—probably because I had the rearview mirror adjusted so I could look up Raven’s short black-leather skirt to see her panties. Or rather, where her panties would have been if she’d been wearing them.

The sun was starting to set. I was beginning to think I’d passed this one big cactus about a million times. I was definitely wasting my time and my dad’s gasoline, which no doubt had been paid for by the good citizens of our fair city.

Then Rooster suddenly shouted, “Shit! Look over there! To the left, see it? Between that dead tree and that boulder!”

I had to squint. My eyes weren’t that good even with my glasses, but I could see what the big guy was talking about. It looked like some sort of opening in the side of a rocky hill. Hell, maybe it was the long-forgotten cave of Baron Draconi. Or more to the point, maybe I’d get to bump against Raven’s butt in the darkness. Or brush against her majestic gothic ta-tas.

I drove toward the hill, and the opening began to look more and more like the mouth of a mine, with two wooden beams on either side and one across the top.

Draconi’s mine? Was the vampire Baron also a prospector, looking for gold? The idea seemed more preposterous than ever—and it was ridiculous to start with.

I stopped the van.

“This is it,” Raven said, breathy with excitement.

“This isn’t a cave,” Rooster said. “I think it’s a...a...one of those tunnels you get gold out of.”

“Mine,” I said.

“It belongs to you?” Shakes said. “God, you rich kids get all the cool stuff. So if it’s yours, how come it took you so long to find the place?”

“No...” I shook my head. “It’s a mine, as in: let’s go dig in the mine.”

“A cave, a mine—it’s dark and cool. The perfect place for a vampire,” Raven whispered.

“It’s so mysteriously delicious,” Lady Katrina said in a low purring tone. I wouldn’t have minded rubbing against her in the dark, too—so long as I didn’t get gouged by any of her body piercings.

The Goth gang had brought some matches and candles. Long, white, delicately tapered dinner-table candles. Fortunately, I’d brought a flashlight and some extra batteries. So I became the self-appointed leader of the expedition, even though that meant I couldn’t bump or rub against Raven, Lady Katrina or even Shakes, since I was in front.

The mine was supported by beams for about fifty feet—and then it branched into a natural cave formation, which looked to be about fifteen feet high. The cave was dark, damp and chilly. I could even see my breath in the beam of the flashlight.

Thinking back, I’m guessing some miners had started digging a tunnel, and then had broken through into the cave. There were no tracks leading into the mine...In the movies, mines always have tracks for those little wheeled carts that carry stuff in and out. That meant that this mine had never actually been used as a mine.

If we’d figured that out at the time, that might have been a tip-off that things weren’t all hunky-dory in the underground...

Raven was on my left side and Bones was on my right. I guess he’d finished the Poppy novel. Rooster was behind me, clutching an unlit candle. I wasn’t quite sure why—maybe he found comfort in gripping that smooth shaft. Lady Katrina and Shakes were behind Rooster.

I could hear the constant dripping of water from the tips of the stalec...mites or tites, whatever you call the hangy ones. They kind of reminded me of my grandma’s boobs. At one point we all had to jump across a narrow stream swarming with small, ugly white fish. I heard somewhere that fish in caves are blind—it could be true, though these little suckers weren’t wearing dark glasses or being led around by even smaller fish.

I heard a growl.

I felt extremely embarrassed, thinking that the jumbo bag of potato chips I’d eaten all by myself was starting to turn my intestinal tract into a gastric wind tunnel.

Then the growling grew louder.

With relief, I realized it wasn’t coming from my belly. Rather, it was echoing down from the passage ahead of us.

Hanging upside down like bats from the roof of the cave were two bloated, seven-foot-long winged creatures with horns and pointed tails.

“Vampires!” Raven said. “Oh my God, real-life vampires!”

“They don’t look like vampires to me,” Bones said. “They’re not humanoid. They’re too...blobby.”

“Well, maybe some look blobby. You wouldn’t know. Have you ever met a vampire?” Raven asked.

“Ummmm, no,” Bones admitted. “But neither have you.”

“Well, I know a vampire when I see one,” Rooster said. He walked up to the closest creature, which started to growl again. “From the bowels of the Earth, they emerged...To feed their unholy thirst,” the Goth-boy intoned. “Hey, you. Vampire guy. Bite me. Please bite me.” He cocked his head to one side. “Bite me here.” He pointed to his throat.

The creature dropped down from the cave roof with a fleshy plop. Then it gathered itself up and stood in front of Rooster, dwarfing him.

The creature had coal-red eyes, a flat, catlike nose and huge pointed ears. It looked down at the Goth and shook its head.

“Oh. What about here?” Rooster pointed to his wrist.

The creature shook its head again.

“Well, where do you want to bite me?” Rooster asked.

The creature looked down toward his hips.

“Wow, the vampire wants to go oral. Anne Rice was right!” Rooster said, unbuckling his belt and lowering his pants. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. He was a big guy, but not in the crotch department. But hey, it was a cold cave.

The creature slumped down, leaned forward, spun him around with the claws on the ends of its wings—and began to suck on Rooster’s ass.

At first the Goth had a really scary look of bliss on his face. But then that expression of bliss changed to concern, terror and excruciating pain—in that order.

The creature sucked out all of his shit with a series of loud, sickening slurps. When there was no shit left, it sucked out the intestines, spooling them out of his backside like a greedy child sucking down spaghetti—except the plate doesn’t scream while the kid is having his meal. The bloated monster continued to suck, drawing out all of Rooster’s blood and organs, until he was just an empty carcass covered with a tight layer of skin.

I suppose we could have run away while it was doing all that. But hell, who’s going to run when there’s a show like that going on? A person has to watch—it can’t be helped.

Shakes fainted. Lady Katrina threw up.

“What type of vampires suck shit?” Raven said.

“News flash,” I said. “Those ain’t vampires.”

Bones nodded. “Fatso’s right. I think those are demons, like Beelzebub or Asmodeus.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Four-Eyes,” I said. “Hell, those damned freaks are Beelzebutt and Assmodeus. Now let’s stop blabbering and get the Hell out of here.”

Beelzebutt tossed away Rooster’s shriveled husk and began to move toward us. The creature’s puckered mouth stretched out into a gore-streaked, shit-eating grin. Meanwhile, Assmodeus flew over our heads and landed in the passage behind us.

We were surrounded.

Beelzebutt grabbed Bones in its claws and tore off his pants. Then it ripped away his old torn underwear, which were emblazoned with images of the Power Rangers, and started sucking out his ass next. I guess Rooster had simply been an appetizer.

Bones began screaming like a damned thing.

Assmodeus grabbed the unconscious Shakes by the ankle and dragged her to its side. Then the ravenous creature began to feed on her, using her backside like a big fleshy juicebox.

I turned toward Raven and Lady Katrina. “I don’t suppose either of you has a gun on you? A knife? A really big comb?”

Raven pointed toward the cave wall. “What about that thing over there?”

Leaning against the wall was a rusty pick-axe with a broken handle—a leftover from the days when the miners had visited the cave.

“Drive the point through the monster’s heart,” Lady Katrina said. “Maybe that’ll kill it.”

“It ain’t a vampire, okay?” I said. “I’ve got a better idea. I’ll give the fucker what it deserves.”

Beelzebutt was finishing up its meal of colon-sushi a la Bones. I aimed the flashlight at the demon’s ass, which happened to be turned in my direction, then grabbed the pick-axe in my free hand and rammed the rusty point into the monster’s poop chute as far as I could.

The demon didn’t go up in a puff of smoke or flake away into ashes, like all the vampires in old movies. No, this shit-eating demon exploded...

Exploded poop and blood and guts all over me.

It reminded me of some old movie about a blimp that had blown up back in the old days. That Beelzebutt was the batwinged Hindenburg of shit.

Unfortunately, the explosion had blown the pick-axe out of my hands. I turned and saw it had speared Lady Katrina right through the heart. Too bad she hadn’t been a vampire.

Shakes was little more than a sack of bones by that point, so at last I had Raven to myself.

Of course, there was still the matter of Assmodeus. And sure, the matter of me being fat and covered with blood and shit and guts—I wasn’t exactly a babe magnet at that moment. But then, Raven was also covered with crap, so she wasn’t looking too hot anyway.

“You dickwad!” Raven said. “My clothes are ruined! And you should have killed the other one first. That’s the one between us and the way out.”

I looked toward Assmodeus. He had backed off about twenty feet, no doubt frightened by my newfound ability to pop demons like shit-pimples.

“Oh, well pardon me all to Hell, Raven,” I said. “At least I killed one. How many have you killed? Zeee-ro! I’m doing all the work here, so you’d better just shut your mouth and hope I get a chance to kill the other one and save our asses—before that thing sucks the shit out of them!”

Goth-girl stared at me for a moment. Then she blinked. “Sorry. It is really cool you killed that demon-creature and all.”

I figured I might as well go for broke. “Will you go out with me if I kill the other one?”

“What a dumbass question! You are unbelievable!” she said. But then she smiled through the shit smeared all over her pretty face. “But it’s a good kind of unbelievable. Sure I’ll go out with you, you big goofy monster-slayer, you. Now kill the second one before I change my mind.”

“I’ll give it my best shot.” I pulled the pick-axe out of Lady Katrina and started waving it at Assmodeus.

The creature growled at me. Then it flew over us.

It started pissing in mid-flight.

And its piss burned like acid. It actually raised blisters on us. Its tail thwacked me on the side of the head as it zipped past.

The creature was probably relieving itself to make room for dessert—me and Raven.

Assmodeus flew down the passage for another thirty feet or so, then landed, turned quickly and flew back over us to give us another spritz.

At first I wanted to just run for the exit, but I realized that the demon could fly way faster than any human could run, and I sure as Hell didn’t want to turn my back on that thing.

So the second time it flew over, I grabbed its tail and pulled down—hard.

The creature squealed like a pig as it dropped to the cave floor. And lucky for us, it landed right on one of those stalec-thingies. The pointing-up kind.

The not-so-lucky part is, that ripped open the creature like a slaughterhouse pinata, splashing us with even more shit and guts. But then, we were already painted with filth anyway, so a second coat really didn’t matter.

So I survived. But then, you probably figured that out already, since I lived to write it all down.

I took Raven to my place, where we washed each other off with a garden hose and a whole bottle of antibacterial liquid soap in the backyard. Neither of my parents were home yet, thank God.

Then we went to the police station and had to explain it all there. We drove out with a couple officers to the cave, and the rookie threw up when he saw the freaky mess that was waiting there.

Two days have passed.

The newspapers are making a huge deal out of the whole thing, I’m becoming a local hero, and I bet my Dad is going to be reelected, what with his son being so brave. And tonight I’m having my big date with Raven. She says all her friends are soooo jealous.

They should be. After all, I’m Tommy Wharton, the Fearless Demon-Slayer.