The Brothers Crunk (11 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

ONWARD

Reynold saddles up and strings a fishing rod, dangling a strip of Pete’s meat in front of his ostrich. The rig works masterfully. If he wants the ostrich to turn, he simply moves the fishing rod in any direction he wants to go. Sure, it’s simple, but he imagines Divey would have been proud.

He digs into his pocket and removes a small orb. Milky-white smoke swirls inside it; a spirit trapped in glass.

Before they had parted ways, Krebb removed the orb from Vandenboom’s chest and placed it in Reynold’s palm. He said to him,
‘The body may be gone, but the soul is eternal.’
Krebb’s words will forever be stitched into his brain.
The soul is eternal.
Eternal.

Reynold looks out across the great expanse of the desert before him. His future will be determined by this one choice: East or West.
His future, his destiny, his fate.

HIS FATE.

East or West.

He fumbles through his pockets and pulls out his lucky coin. Heads it’s East, tails it’s West. He rubs the coin between his palms and kisses it for luck, before resting the coin flat on top of his fist. He flicks his thumb and the coin goes flipping through the air. The sunlight glitters off it, nearly blinding him, as the coin comes hurdling back down. It slaps against his palm and bounces off onto the hot sand below.

“
Gripes!” he shouts as he hops down off his ostrich. His bandaged foot gets caught up in the stirrups and he loses his balance, tripping and falling face-first into the sand. The small glass orb wriggles loose from his grasp and rolls away, leaving behind a faint trail in the sand. Reynold picks up the coin and scrambles to his feet, frantically searching for the orb.

“
Where the fack . . .?” he mumbles to himself, following the faint snake-like trail with his eye. The trail ends with no orb in sight, but standing directly above, perky and almost smiling, is the ostrich. He gulps and Reynold can see the bulge in his throat traveling south as he swallows the orb whole.

“
Goddamn it! Tell me this isn’t happening!” he yells, grabbing the bird’s long neck and choking him with both hands.

“
Fack—” the bird manages to say while gasping for air. Reynold loosens his grip.

“
Did you just curse at me?!”

“
You were choking me! What else was I supposed to do? I don’t have any facking arms!” yells the ostrich. Reynold gasps and stumbles backwards, falling onto the sand.

“
My god . . .
Divey?
”

“
Who else would it be, you turd? Ziggy facking Stardust?”

Reynold’s eye nearly bulges from its socket. “Oh my god, Divey! It’s really you!” He jumps up and runs over to his brother, taking his breath with the squeeze of a giant bear hug.

“
Alright, alright . . .” Divey says. He’s just as happy to be reunited with his brother, but was never much on all that touchy-feely stuff. “So, where do we go from ’ere?”

“
Shit . . . anywhere, Div . . .” Reynold says, wiping the tears away from his eye, “we don’t have nowheres in particular to go.”

“
It’s not about that, Rey, it’s about fate. Where is
fate
taking us? Where do we go from ’ere?”

Reynold unfolds his hand. The coin is resting on his palm tails-side up. “We go West.”

Divey bobs his head and smiles from behind his beak. “West it is then, brother!”

Reynold smiles and climbs up on the saddle on Divey’s back.

“
One thing, though—could you stop waving that bag of meat in front of my face and feed me already! I’m facking half-starved ’ere!”

Reynold laughs and pulls out a dried slice of meat for each of them.

“
Oh, that reminds me, Div . . . I came up with this facking brilliant idea while you were away.”

“
Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“
How’s about instead of brackfas burritos, we sell brackfas jerky? It’s easier to manage and best of all, we wouldn’t have
any
competition.”

Divey thinks for a second and nods his head. “Yeah, Rey . . . that really could work!”

The sun begins to duck down behind the horizon, painting the sky a brilliant shade of hot pink, just before total darkness.

Where one day ends, another begins.

● ● ●

The Damned Dirt Devils huddle around a mound of freshly dug earth, silently paying their respects to their fallen leader. They stand there in the hot desert for hours, saying nothing, just staring their sad, lonely eyes at the grave. Only when the sun begins to set, do they walk away, each in their own separate directions.

Krebb is the last to leave. He picks up a bucket of paint and marks the grave with a splash of purple. He raises two fingers up to his brow, salutes his leader one final time before walking away. He doesn’t know where he is going. None of them do. It is the first time any of them have truly been free.

Ten feet away, half buried beneath the cool desert sand, the eyes of a mutilated cyborg carcass begin to glow a sinister red.

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William Pauley III
has spent the majority of his life looking for his car keys. When he isn’t wandering around mindlessly, he usually writes . . . mindlessly. He writes for a local newspaper and is the author of the books
Doom Magnetic!
,
Demolition
Ya-Ya
,
Mr. Malin and the Night
, and
If You Don’t Sleep, You Don’t Dream
. He can be found walking the hills of Kentucky. If found, please return him to his wife and two children. No reward.

He would like to thank you for reading his book.

For all things III, visit:

www.breaksaidsilence.com

Megan Hansen
was born and raised in California. She has been working as an illustrator since 2008 and has worked on both adult and children’s books. To see more of her work, or buy her creations visit her at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/meganhansenshop