Eat'em (7 page)

Chapter 14

Cooper Street lay shrouded in moisture – fog so thick I couldn’t see my hand unless I held it a couple inches in front of my face. The midday humidity tasted grimy. Arlington disappeared in a looming cloud of grey and not even a blazing Texas sun could penetrate the palpable air.

Yet even with visibility near zero, traffic soared by at suicidal speeds. Early commuters refused to slow regardless of climate. An accident in this fog would easily result in an unstoppable pile up. Wailing sirens broke through the blinding mist, providing ample evidence in my theory of an inevitable collision.

A horn blasted as a set of headlights sliced through the fog and disappeared immediately – no taillights followed suit. The doomsday conditions consumed the car without second thought, allowing the driver to barrel down the road to tempt fate with reckless abandon.

Eat’em and I had walked a couple miles before the fog really set in. I considered backtracking to Val’s apartment, but the low visibility might be to my benefit.

I knew where the old man lived.

Assuming the address on his identification was current, I would be there shortly. What I didn’t know is whether or not the Deftone’s fan would be there. Or if he was even still alive.

He lived on a cul-de-sac at the northern end of Cooper.

Eat’em and I rounded the corner toward Parsons’s and searched for the one-story house through a wall of grey. I crossed a yard, tripped on a Texas shaped stepping-stone, and stumbled onto a wooden porch, almost toppling past a brick pillar and into an uncared for flowerbed.

The house number came into view over a doorbell panel with frayed wires snaking out from the hole where a button had once been. We’d come to the right place.

“My feet are tired, yes,” Eat’em moaned. He yawned and stretched his legs from my shoulder, grasping onto the hair above my ear to keep from falling. “I want to traverse home.”

“I know being shuttled around on my back all day is Hell on your feet, buddy,” I approached the door, the porch creaking as I slowly stepped forward. “Maybe next time, you’ll carry me, huh?”

“Huh?” Eat’em scoffed. “Indubitably, as always, your disregard for physics astounds me. You are a giant, yes… but your brain is sooooo tiny.”

For a moment I considered knocking. Perhaps someone else would answer the door, a stranger, and I’d find out the old man never lived there. The heavy ball of mass pressing in my gut told me that wouldn’t be the case. It was definitely the old man’s house. I knew he lived there. I knew he was single and without kids. What eluded me was whether he still lived there. Had he crawled away after I presumed he died?

I rubbed my hand across condensation built up on one of the windows framing the front door. A small living room and formal dining room made up the front entrance. A bathroom or closet was to the left. And an open doorway led to a hallway lined with framed photos that were mostly black and white.

I checked the doorknob. Unlocked.

My legs trembled as I stepped into the empty living room. Breaking and entering took more guts than I normally had. We broke into an empty home, though. Louise Parsons was dead. I killed him. Now I just needed to find out how a dead man got up, changed clothes, and seemingly walked away.

The house barely looked lived in. A bookshelf stood in a corner with neatly stacked books all alphabetized. Beside a beige recliner sat a magazine rack. An old television with a built in VCR was by a fireplace. A cold shutter crawled up my spine as my eye caught the crude fireplace poker hanging above the open chimney.

I crept into the kitchen. It had a small island in the center equipped with hanging pots and pans. Above the sink, a window looked out to the vast grayness.

Eat’em ran to the fridge and pressed his face against it. He sniffed the air. “There’s something in there!”

Two picture magnets were on the otherwise undecorated refrigerator. One picture was of a man crawling across the tops of an electrical wire meters above a thick canopy of trees. A helicopter hovered in the foreground. The other picture was of an old man and a mastiff. The dog wore a Civil War General outfit. The man wrapping his massive arm around the dog was definitely Louise Parsons. I was in the right house.

“Jacob,” Eat’em tugged at my pants, “please open this, yes.”

I reached for the handle and froze.

Behind me, reflected in the chrome freezer door, stood a lumbering figure.

I spun around just in time to brace myself for the rampaging Parsons.

Chapter 15

My face blistered above the scarlet stovetop. A bead of sweat rolled across my brow, down my bronzed cheek, and clung to my clinched jaw. It hung for a moment, too stubborn to let go. It fell and crackled as it splashed against the coils.

The large hand, which prevented my escape, belonged to the same beast of a man I encountered at the planetarium. His face, pocked with scars, was adorned with a brick jaw that looked more akin to Lou Ferrigno’s than the former Louise Parsons’s. His gnawed fingernails tore into my scalp as he wrestled my face ever closer to having a spiraled scar and one less ear.

My fiery eyes stared back at me in the reflection from the freezer chrome, decorated with the giant dopey-looking mastiff and a younger, less brutal version of the retired lineman.

Large veins wound up my forehead from the bridge of my nose. My teeth grinded and my cheek swelled. The first thing that would go would be my left ear, shriveling into my skull like a melted candle, leaving a charred black stub. Then my eye would dry out. Burst in its socket. My lip would curl away from my teeth; my skin would tighten, wrinkle, and flake away. I would need a graft.

So… that would suck.

“Welcome to my home.” Lou turned up the heat with one hand as he held my head ever closer to the brightening coils. “Enter freely, won’t you?”

My body flopped uselessly under his immense strength until my hand landed on an open drawer. I fumbled through the scattered contents. My fingertips, slick with sweat, searched for a weapon and my palm pressed hard to the bottom of the drawer to keep my face from turning to hamburger meat.

I found the hilt of a two-pronged skewer. My chin rebounded off the hot stove steaming with my boiling sweat and I drove the skewer into the soft tissue under Lou’s brick jaw.

He let me go and I collapsed to the floor, momentarily relieved from the sizzle of cooked skin. I crawled around the island in the center of the small kitchen, creating what distance I could between myself and the very large, very angry, very alive sociopath.

“A close one, yes!” a small shrill voice cried out from atop the island. Eat’em dangled over the granite countertop, his tail wrapped around a hanging wok for balance. His red face burned with concern. He blinked his large triangular eyes and pressed an open palm to his tiny, puffed chest. “Jacob is off to a rocky start. Not Rocky Balboa or Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Rocky, yes. Rather he’s looking horribly outmatched by the horrifically ugly Lou Parsons, whom may have eaten both Rockies before the match.”

“Thanks for the help,” the words escaped breathlessly. I had a severe case of cottonmouth and one helluva dry throat.

“Anything to motivate you,” Eat’em held his arm up and sliced it through the air. “Ding! Ding! Ding! And now round two is underway. Can Jacob make up for such an embarrassing performance in round one? My money is on no!”

“Not now, Eat’em,” I said.

“Who are you talking to, Jacob?” Lou rounded the island as he ripped the skewer from his lower jaw and tossed it skittering to the floor.

Again the beast said my name. This time I was certain. It rang, bitterly through my skull, which still felt a bit like hardboiled eggs.

He grappled me from the floor and lifted me above his head, ignoring an entourage of mule kicks and my slaphappy arm swings.

“It looks like Jacob is using the ol’ Swing your appendages like a lunatic strategy,” Eat’em held a ladel like a microphone. We really needed to stop watching so much television. “Will it work out for him?”

A wild elbow collided into one of Lou’s droopy ears. He let out a guttural scream and threw me as if I were merely a large insect that had landed on his neck.

I tumbled across the kitchen, my body failing to defend itself from the harsh effects of gravity. I crashed onto a small mahogany table and slid into one of the miniature breakfast nook’s three windows. The inside pane broke around me, showering me with flakes of jagged glass.

“Oohh,” Eat’em leapt from the counter and crossed his arms at my side. “That’s going to look brutal on the replay!”

Lou grabbed me by a leg. My other foot cracked into his jaw and I scrambled to my feet. He smiled at me and jumped forward as I sidestepped, grabbing a cast iron pot from above the island and bringing it down on the back of the big man’s head.

“I did not see that coming,” Eat’em said, hopping after us. “A pot to the skull? It’s unconventional. It’s against the rules. It’s brilliant!”

I stomped hard against the lumbering Lou’s kneecap. He stumbled face first colliding with a microwave built into the wraparound cabinets.

“It’s unbelievable, but round two might go to Jacob!” Eat’em said. “Yes, I think he had a surprise round and I think everyone is in a bit of shock. Especially fat ugly Lou with his big dumb face, yes. But I don’t think anyone is down for the count just yet.”

I went for another go with the pot, just as Lou spun and grabbed my wrists. He lifted me, his nails digging into my skin. I dropped the pot. I kicked both feet into Lou’s abdomen. He loosened his grip enough that my feet dropped back to the ground and I brought a knee hard and fast into his groin.

“Low blow,” Eat’em bellowed. “Is it poor sportsmanship or thoughtful strategy?”

Lou shoved me.

Granite bore into my side. I did my best impression of Jet Li and flung myself over the island, knocking pots, pans, a napkin holder, and a robust set of knives to the ground with me.

I tossed kitchen supplies hopelessly. My pitch wouldn’t have driven back a rodent at that point, let alone a feverishly angry muscle-bound jock, who somehow managed to be even stronger than he already looked. But I threw pots at him anyway, as Eat’em delivered a play-by-play for each toss. I crab-walked backward through the kitchen, hurling what I could find and keeping my feet between myself and the China Shop Bull, my hand searching blindly for something substantial to defend myself with.

The warm grip of a blade found its way into my hand. It was the damned bloody skewer. Still, I held onto it like I’d just pulled a sword from a stone.

I prepared for the raging lunatic, my hands behind my back, bracing for impact. He grabbed my collarbone, his thumb burrowing into the deep scar tissue on my shoulder. He lifted me from the floor. I swallowed back acidy bile that filled my throat and drove the skewer right between his eyes. The handle protruded from his dome, but he didn’t relent.

“Inconceivable,” Eat’em shouted into the ladle he whipped around with his tail as he dodged the action. “Impossible. An act of God, ladies and gentlemen. Just when we thought this match had it all, we get a moment like this that truly shines. Jacob has created a unicorn out of the monster… A Lounicorn!”

At that, I laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” Lou pulled the skewer from his head and dropped it. “Is this funny to you, Jacob?”

“No,” I caught a hold of myself and the fight continued.

“Weird intermission, that, yes,” Eat’em followed us through the living room and into the hallway. “But the fight continues… Round three. And everything seems to be all tied up. This is anybody’s fight. I, for one, am going to root for the underdog, yes. Because you should always chant for home team. Let’s go Lou… Let’s go!”

Eat’em trailed behind, cheerleading for the wrong guy. Again the demon fails to see what is at stake. We slammed into shelves, scattered books, body slammed a large empty kennel, and splashed a replica painting of a dog dressed like William B. Travis with blood and spit as either my head or his knocked the frame loose from the wall.

All of the black and white pictures lining the hallway were various historical figures portrayed by dogs. Travis as a Heeler, FDR as a German shepherd, some civil war general as a French poodle, and more politicians as pooches decorated the wall. I grabbed Abe “beagle” Lincoln and smashed it across Lou’s face, which still carried the scars from our previous fight. Week-old scars that looked like they’d been put there years ago. Even the two holes from the prong seemed faded.

Wood and glass confetti from Beagleham Lincoln rained down the hallway as I hit Lou until I had a fistful of splinters.

I dragged myself along the carpet. The cleanliness was immaculate – freshly vacuumed and steam-cleaned floors, perfect for bleeding out on. Still, the house had this musty smell the farther into it I crawled. Like someone hired a maid. Then died.

Bloody handprints followed me into a bedroom as I crawled on hands and knees, Lou slowly walking behind me.

“And this fight is almost over, people,” Eat’em said from the hall, “Ugly Lounicorn is going in for the knockout.”

I reached a king-size bed, which took up most of the room and halted at the floral bed skirt. Beneath the massive frame sat one of the most beautiful sights I could ever imagine… a glossy 9mm Smith and Wesson. Just within arm’s reach, the beacon of hope renewed my love for the Lone Star State. I’d never been happier than I was seeing that pistol.

I grabbed the gun and rolled to my back.

“Whoa!” Lou’s hands flew up in defense, “Jacob, you don’t want to…”

My fingers wrapped tight around the cold grip. I squeezed the trigger. The resounding blast reverberated off my eardrums. I fired off three more rounds.

Eat’em rounded the corner. He might have cursed. He definitely yelled cheater.

Lou dropped.