Stone Shadow

The Ozarks

The tar-paper shanty stands on an unfarmable piece of ground called Deadman's Cut. Inside two little boys, eyes tearing, noses running, filthy, hear Mah-maw scream again and one reaches out to take the other's hand and they wait behind the feed sacks. They know he will come soon. It is only a matter of time.

The woman, their biological mother, is at the end of her third trimester. It is bad this time.

“CLETUS,” she shrieks again.

The two children shudder and wait. They are just little boys. Extraordinary, to be sure. But nevertheless little boys like any other. Yet in this brutal and depraved environment, in this primitive and evil world of horror, they are treated as freaks.

Because they are identical. Eyes, nose, mouth, even ears. Perfectly formed from the convexities to the concavities, twins so startlingly, shockingly alike their appearance staggers the viewer. But they are just little children. Molested. Tortured. Abused. Their twin lives an unending nightmare of depravity. They wait silently, waiting for the next pain or degradation or moment of terror.

In a world like this, where endogamy is the norm, these twin children are a trick played by the dark forces of nature, a unique gift with endless possibilities for the cruel and perverted mind to explore.

The little boys jump as they hear the familiar slam of the door. It is the sound that means the man has shut the door of his mud-encrusted pickup and soon he will come in the shanty.

The screen door bangs like a gunshot as he stomps in bellowing “Sister—"

“Eh?” A young, heavyset woman sits sprawled on a rump-sprung, worn sofa.

“Git over here, you-uns,” he says, roughly pulling his sister by the hair, and she yelps in pain, making him bark out a laugh as he pushes the shoulder straps of his filthy overalls off, letting it drop around his ankles as he pulls her mouth on to him.

The woman begins to suck on the huge penis that her brother has jammed into her mouth but a paroxysm of pain stabs her swollen belly and she jerks away with a scream of anguish.

“What ‘n Hades wrong with ya now, ya’ bitch sow?"

“UUUhhhhh,” she moans, “it's a comin', Cletus. Do sump'n. AAAAAHHHHHHH!"

“Ah'll do somp’ by dog-swallers,” he says and kicks her viciously in the abdomen. She screams and he laughs raucously, yanking her back on him and ejaculating into her screaming mouth and across her face.

The sister/wife writhes on the floor. It is a size-14 Ozark Workboot abortion. The fetus will be fed to the dogs outside as the twins watch. They will be nurtured in this hellish caldron of incest, madness, and murder.