“And he could have dead guys stashed all over the house that we don’t know about. What if he stitched ‘em together to create some kind of superman to guard the door if we ever came back?”
“Let’s break it,” Von said immediately. Sammy obviously couldn’t surgically create some kind of superhuman sentinel like Greg was worried about (at least Von didn’t think he could), but he would do something to make it more difficult for anybody to get in now that he knew someone was determined to see inside. It was now or never. Anything too crazy would need a little more than just a door to keep it in place, wouldn’t it? This had to be something too good to share.
They both reared back and kicked above the door knob the way the cops did on TV, managing to do so mostly in synch for the next few attempts. The door finally splintered and swung inward on the fifth try.
Von entered the attic first, feeling for a light switch in the total darkness. There were no windows and no hint of light anywhere. They stumbled in blindly, fully expecting to run into or fall over something. Von flinched when something touched his face, but a moment later he identified it as the chain from an overhead bulb. He yanked it and recoiled when something in the corner of the attic simultaneously shrank back from the light.
“Who are they?” a woman’s voice said.
“Who’s she talking to?” Greg asked, alarmed, looking around.
“She talks to them,” the woman explained.
“She is a few bullets shy of a clip,” Von noted.
She emerged from the darkened corner for a better look at them, squinting into the light like someone emerging from a mine shaft. She propelled herself with her arms, dragging her legs behind her like they were as useless as a mermaid’s fins on dry land.
“What happened to her legs?” Greg asked, as if Von had read her medical file.
“Looks like she was in a fire.”
Von was no doctor, however, so it was no surprise that he confused burn marks with tertiary syphilis. Perhaps there was a vague resemblance. There did appear to be several patches along her hips and thighs where a couple layers of flesh had been scorched away, and in some instances they looked to have decomposed to stages of adipocere. They resembled fatty deposits of custard which had crusted in mounds to her skin. Von suddenly found himself thinking of a cheese pizza he’d heated in an oven for way too long.
Her hair was stringy and wild, obviously unwashed for days; maybe months. She dragged a sizable belly along the floor with her, like a dachshund. Her sagging breasts had what Von liked to call Oscar Meyer nipples, so large he just wanted to lop them off with a cleaver and toss them between two slices of bread. Where there weren’t nipples, there were enough blue lines to chart the rivers in a map of Alaska.
“They aren’t supposed to be here,” she announced. “She’s not supposed to see them. She’s not for their eyes. She’s—”
“She’s about to get raped, son!” Greg supplied for her.
“Amen to that,” Von agreed. “I don’t care if she didn’t have better sense than to park her ass on a wood-stove . . . I’m gonna blast my load so far up that joyhole they’ll have to wring out her kidneys to get a sperm sample.”
“She’ll bite him,” she warned.
“Then she’ll have to be beaten unconscious first. You do the honors, Greg.”
Greg nodded, mistakenly thinking that Von would give him first crack at her box if he corralled her. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. She pounced on Greg without warning, and were Von not carrying one dandy of a hard-on in his jeans, he would have laughed. He was far more interested in tenderizing some bone dry beaver than seeing Greg embarrass himself yet again, though, so he was mostly just aggravated.
“Von, get her off me! She’s using her teeth! Please, Von, she might have AIDS! C’mon, let’s just bang her and get the hell out of here!”
“Keep her occupied!” Von then unleashed the beast and set its course for Gash City. He certainly didn’t prefer to feel the deformities on her posterior, but he didn’t have all night to question the aesthetics. Sammy wouldn’t stay occupied forever, and truthfully Von couldn’t care less if Greg got his turn at bat. It was too bad for him, though, because he was definitely missing out. The passage to pleasure wasn’t without some moisture, although not immediately. It was more like there were mild obstructions as Von thrust for maximum depth, but his friction managed to puncture them and drain whatever juices they contained. It was easier going soon enough . . . if he tried not to think about all those runny scab-like things he was sliding against. He couldn’t decide if the squishing sounds were from his entry or those burn wounds peeling away and oozing. As the woman thrashed violently to free herself from either Greg or Von, he decided he didn’t much care. Either way, she was going to have some extra grease on the skillet in about 2.2 seconds.
He exploded enough to fill a two-pint milk carton just seconds before Sammy’s determined footsteps reached the attic stairs. He reluctantly pulled out and hurriedly reassembled his pants, though it was hard not to be distracted by her legs—the algae-like manifestations were positively seeping now, the semen-like emissions spreading down to her heels.
Von was pulling up his zipper when Sammy burst in, none too happy.
“What are you doing with my mother?” he asked.
“Tell the man, Greg,” Von said, craftily implying an accusation.
“Sammy, just get her off me, please!”
“They meant to rape her!” Sammy’s mother proclaimed. “He already did!”
“I’d have thought you’d learn your lesson by now,” Sammy said to Greg.
“Me? But I—”
“Short of cutting off my own or Von’s—” Von flinched. “—I can’t rustle up another dick for you to chew on. Except yours, maybe.”
“But I—”
“But no, I wouldn’t do that. I understand the temptation all too well.” Sammy fondly cupped his mother’s breast. She smiled at him, and lasciviously licked her lips. “It’s been my burden to live with her this way four years now. Her excesses resulted in the premature germs of insanity . . . her vices sprang up fast and rank. I could never put her away, though, not when we’re so close.”
He slowly pulled her off Greg and gently set her down beside him. “I told you not to come up to the attic, though, for this very reason.”
“She bit me,” Greg complained, looking rather faint. He attempted to get up.
Sammy firmly planted a foot on his chest. “Look what you’ve done to her legs.”
“But I—”
“I’m a big believer in putting things back the way you found them, so I’m going to nicely ask that you lick her clean. Then all will be forgiven.”
“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” Von admonished. “Lock and load.”
Greg looked at the slick, crusty terrain with mortal terror. Somehow the thought of eating the aborted remnants from the refrigerator seemed preferable to this. He felt like pointing out that he wasn’t completely responsible for the damage, but one look at Sammy’s face revealed there would be no bargaining. Greg winced painfully, extended his tongue, and maneuvered his face over the mother’s heels. He closed his eyes and descended until his tongue met the skin. His taste buds seemed to wither on contact like time lapse photography, but he forced himself further up, bathing her like a cat. The flavor was hideous, damn near unspeakable. He thought of a carton of orange juice, where the final swallows are enriched by a multitude of dregs, only this taste was not of citrus but spoiled honey mustard . . . which it looked like, too.