Bury the Children in the Yard (14 page)

“Yeah. I guess I was just thinking about you. Can we talk about it later, maybe?”

“Sure. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

“Just family stuff.”

“I might not be able to empathize.”

She smiled and took a sip of his beer.

“How did you get in, anyway?”

“The window in the bathroom. I popped the screen out and the window was unlatched.”

“That window’s tiny.”

“I’m not very big myself.”

He still didn’t see how it was possible. But maybe the window had become smaller in his mind. He told her he had to pee and she asked if he didn’t believe her. He laughed and said of course not but, once in the bathroom, he did find himself studying the tiny window. He still didn’t see how it was possible but it would probably be rude to measure her.

Everything Was Made of Lead

A half hour later they sat at the small table in the kitchen, their dinners half eaten. They had made casual conversation. He’d asked her why she had dropped out of school and what she’d been up to and she gave him back a steady stream of what were probably lies. Then he asked her how long she’d really been staying here and she stammered and her eyes hardened somewhat. While he was in the bathroom, he’d noticed most of his supply of toilet paper was gone. So she’d either cleaned up well or not made much of a mess in the first place, but she’d definitely been here for more than a night.

“I never left.”

“What?” As happy as he was to have her in front of him, he couldn’t help but be a little angry with her.

“Yeah. That time this winter. I never left. I went for a walk and just kind of hid until I saw you leave.”

“But why?”

“I told you. Family stuff.”

“Fighting with your parents?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re going to have to stop being so cryptic.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Maybe I should punish you.”

“Oh. Are we still playing that game? I was going to humor you and let you play the husband and wife game but, to be honest, that was already getting a little boring.”

“Get into the bedroom.”

“But I’m not even finished eating.”

“Now.”

She stood up and made a mock pouting face.

“I really am mad at you, Ashley.”

She stomped off into the bedroom. He tried to stand up to follow her but it felt like everything was made of lead. He forced himself to stand and was distantly aware of his body hitting the floor and then he wasn’t aware of anything.

We Live Down Here Now

He dug the grave until it felt like every muscle had given out and he might fall down. He looked down at the grave and was pleased to see that it was as deep of one as any he’d remembered digging. The palms of his hands stung. He looked over his shoulder at the cabin. Expecting to see it darkened. But the lights were on and there were people inside. It was good that somebody still wanted it. He could hear distant laughter and music. See the silhouettes of people in the window.

He looked back at the grave. He couldn’t see the bottom of it. A voice called from the grave but he couldn’t see who it was coming from.

He got down on his hands and knees and then his stomach and leaned his head into the grave. It was Heidi, calling to him.

“What are you doing up there?”

“I had to dig the grave. We have to bury the children. What are you doing down there? How did you get down there?”

She laughed. “We live down here now. The kids are already down here. You should join us.”

He pulled himself with his arms, feeling the moist grass on his stomach, before sliding down the side of the grave. He was afraid he’d just fall in head first but it was angled more than he thought it was. Like a slide. He slid to the bottom. The grave was quite roomy. He looked around but didn’t see any sign of Heidi and the children. He stood up. The grave leveled off but continued into the distance. The narrow earthen corridor surrounded him as he walked deeper into it.

It curved to the right and when he made the turn he had to shield his eyes against the glow that met him. It was like a giant fire. He thought he could make out Heidi in the middle of the fire, a waist-high child to either side of her.

“I don’t want to go any farther,” he said.

“You have to. Your family’s here.”

He cautiously stepped toward them. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the light and he could begin to see the children as something other than black shapes. One was a girl and one was a boy. They looked happy and clear-eyed. Heidi wore her wedding veil. As he drew closer, he noticed her nipples had elongated and reached the mouth of each child.

Steve stopped.

“Come on,” Heidi said.

“No. I can’t.”

Steve took off running in the opposite direction but the corridor was gone and he found himself running into loose dirt, trying to move his arms and legs to kick out of it, but nothing was moving and he was suffocating.

Slit Rider

“Finally,” a male voice said.

Steve opened his eyes to see a hideously ugly guy taking his hand away from Steve’s mouth. The first thing Steve thought was that he’d been holding his nose closed to try and get him to wake up. The guy might have been a teenager, or recently a teenager, but there was something a lot older looking about him. He had a tattoo on the front of his neck that said SLIT RIDER in vaguely gothic lettering.

“Who the fuck are you?” Steve asked.

The man stood up and said, “I’m Slit Rider, fucker.”

Steve’s heart raced. He looked down at himself. He was tied to a chair. He wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“What the fuck is going on?” he asked. “Why are you in my house? Where’s Ashley?”

The man laughed. “Ashley’s dead, stooge. Ashley’s been dead a long time and something. Reborn as Sharon X. Now she’s here. Now she’s mine. Two hands. Two feet. Electric brain.”

Steve took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what was going on. The only thing he could think was that this was maybe Ashley’s boyfriend or something and he had apparently found out what he and Ashley had been doing and was upset. But Steve didn’t know how to defend himself against that. He wasn’t going to tell this jackass everything was Ashley’s doing.

“Look,” Steve said. “I don’t know who you are or what you want but if you untie me now and just leave, I won’t press any charges.”

The man (Steve had a hard time thinking of him as Slit Rider) leaned into Steve. He reeked of whiskey, smoke, and maybe something else. Some foul underlying odor. “That’s a good thought box, Steves. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that and everything else with the laughing. Horseplay.” Now behind Steve, the man tugged on a couple of the ropes. Then Steve felt his hands around his neck. The man squeezed until Steve blacked out.

Almost Everything in the Cabin Was on the Verge of Falling Apart

This time when he came to there wasn’t anyone in front of him. The room was dark. He heard loud music that sounded like clanging metal and a drum machine coming from the next room. It sounded like there were also a lot of people in there. Raucous shouts and laughter. Steve tried to rock the chair back and forth until he realized if he actually managed to tip it over he would probably still be tied to the chair, only on the floor and with the ropes quite possibly binding him in an even more uncomfortable position.

Unless he could get the chair to break. Almost everything in the cabin was on the verge of falling apart. If he could get the chair to break, it might create some slack in the rope and then he could get out through a window and go to one of the neighbors’ houses. He needed to call the police. The people in the other room were making so much noise he was kind of surprised one of the neighbors hadn’t called the police already.

He made a motion like standing up straight to see if he could weaken the chair at all. He heard it creak but it gave only fractionally. He might have been able to inflict more damage if he didn’t feel so weak. He assumed Ashley or Sharon X or whoever had slipped something into his beer. Maybe even the food. But probably the beer. It was Bud so it pretty much tasted like shit anyway. He wouldn’t have been able to tell.

He continued to slowly grind against the chair. Hoping it would give a little bit more before trying to drive himself into the ground with it. If he was going to do that, he wanted to be pretty sure it was going to break. He listened to the sounds coming from the other room. He was still trying to figure out why this was happening and was hoping they would be talking about it. Maybe give him some kind of clue that could become a psychological advantage.

The music
was
really loud and sounded intolerable. If they
were
having a party, he didn’t know who partied to this kind of music. The only words he could make out were what sounded like a woman talking about “shoulder pads” and “conquering the moon.” Not a lot of help. Those phrases were repeated over and over. There weren’t any other discernible words. Someone else just shouted “Wheee!” continuously like they were on the world’s longest slide or roller coaster or something. He guessed there were at least five or six people in the room. It was possible that Slit Rider and Ashley were the only people who knew he was in here. So he decided to see if he could go ahead and rock the chair onto the floor. If it broke then he’d be able to get out through the window. If it didn’t then he would shout for help. He highly doubted it but supposed it was possible that someone in the other room would help him. He thought about the gun he had hidden away in one of the kitchen cupboards. Wondered if they’d found it yet.

He didn’t know how much real danger he was in anyway. So far, other than drugging him and choking him to the point of unconsciousness, nobody had done anything to seriously hurt him. Maybe they didn’t
want
to hurt him. What kind of motive was there anyway? If Slit Rider really was Ashley’s jealous boyfriend or ex-boyfriend or whatever, he would have probably just beaten the hell out of Steve and called it a day. Maybe taken Ashley with him. Ashley had been using Steve for a place to stay and, he supposed, it was entirely possible Slit Rider had been staying here with her. So maybe they wanted money. Steve had plenty of money. He had no problems with giving them whatever they asked for. Of course he would go immediately to the police once he was able.

He heard something that sounded like a window breaking and wondered, once again, what the fuck they were doing in there.

He gritted his teeth and began rocking the chair back and forth, more and more violently, until he hit the ground and was ... lying on his side on the ground and tied to a chair.

Fuck.

It Seemed No One Heard Him Collapse

With all the commotion going on in the other room, it seemed no one heard him collapse. He thought once again about crying out but didn’t see how that would help anything. It would probably just serve to infuriate Slit Rider even further. If he had been furious before. Steve wasn’t really sure. It was kind of hard to gauge any type of feeling from the man. There was something off about him but Steve couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like he was missing something.

He continued to struggle against the chair and the rope.

At least an hour passed before anyone entered the room. Slit Rider was the first one in. He turned the lights on in the room.

“What the fucks!?” he shouted. He walked over to Steve and uprighted the chair. “You’re going to want to sees this. Take a magic looks, astronaut.”

Ashley was the next to enter the room, followed by two more men. One of them was missing an arm. The other one had an eyepatch. The one with the eyepatch said, “I am not ready yet.” Then he vomited on the floor and said, “Now I am ready.”

Ashley walked slowly toward Steve and sat on his lap. The three men stood in front of the bed, about a foot in front of Ashley, and began removing their clothes. Ashley was doing the same although in a much slower, more seductive manner.

“Ashley,” Steve tried to whisper in her ear. At that point, the room was so quiet while the men waited for her to take her clothes off that they probably heard him. Maybe there was a lot of blood pounding in their ears or something.

Halfway through unbuttoning her shirt, Ashley turned so that her face was barely an inch from Steve’s. “I am
not
Ashley. Not anymore. Ashley is dead. Now I am Sharon X. Slit Rider has baptized me and I was born again. Born from space, not a mother. Mothers are gross.”

Steve tried to find whatever it was he’d seen in Ashley’s eyes before. Maybe he hadn’t seen anything. Maybe he’d been so blinded by the prospect and the actual act of sex that it didn’t really matter what he’d seen in those eyes. Maybe she was really high on something.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re throwing your life away with these people.”

“At least I had one to throw away.”

That remark cut deeply. He felt like she’d listened to his story without any sympathy whatsoever. Listened to it for ammunition more than anything, possibly.

She stood up and turned fully in front of him. She finished unbuttoning her shirt and let it drop to the floor. She unbuttoned her jeans and peeled those down. She had an “X” tattooed on her bare pubis.

“Watch this if you doubt Slit Rider’s space magic.”

Steve had the feeling he was about ready to watch a whole lot of things he didn’t really want to see so wasn’t sure what Ashley was specifically talking about.

She lay on her back on the bed. Eyepatch and One Arm went to either side of the bed. Their cocks were large and erect. She took one in each hand. She spread her legs and Slit Rider lowered his head between them. He dived in like an animal, licking and slurping. Steve thought about the deposit he’d made there only a few hours ago and wasn’t sure if he was satisfied or nauseous. One Arm leaned into Ashley and she took his penis into her mouth.

“Ashley. Sharon X. Whatever. Why are you doing this?”