“This is hell,” says Chrissy The Sissy, looking at the fire like it did something bad to him. What a drama queen. I don’t feel so bad about what I gotta do. “This whole world is turning into a living hell.”
“You’re not listening to me, Christian,” I say, and he turns to look at me again. I ain’t givin’ his ass any more shots. I need to save the rest of this fancy-boy booze for myself now.
“I don’t follow,” he starts to say, but he slurs a bit so it’s hard to make out what he’s saying. Who the hell gets drunk this fast? Jesus H. Christ, he should be ashamed of himself.
“I’m saying that it’s gonna happen real soon,” I say, and I watch as his eyes shift and he’s looking down at my knife, which I got pressing up against his throat as quick as grease lightnin’. Suddenly, the dumb shit gets what I been saying to him. He’s catching on.
“Please,” he says, tears welling in his eyes, “please don’t.”
“This is it, Chris. This is that moment I was just talkin’ about. So what you gonna do? Your boy’s sleepin’ upstairs. Crazy feller down here, got a knife to your throat. What you gonna do, poppa?”
“I—,” he starts to say, but he’s sobbing now. It makes my eyes hurt to see a man like this, all pathetic and squishy like a piece of gum on a hot sidewalk. Fuckin’ disgrace.
“Whatcha gonna do? Defend your home? Defend your supplies? Defend your family? What you gonna do?”
I’m a man that wears cowboy boots, lest you forgot.
Chrissy boy closes his eyes, and I set to doin’ what I do best.
He doesn’t even put up his hands, doesn’t make a fight, doesn’t even make a sound. He always wanted to be a cowboy, just like me. Thought he could be a stallion, but here I am, layin’ it out in front of him, asking him what he’ll do to take what’s his and he’s got no spine. It musta fell out his asshole when he was born.
If I had asked, I think he might have handed me his soul, wrapped up nice with a bow.
He’s pretty wasted, so he doesn’t really feel the things I do to him. He doesn’t feel the hatred that I drive into him. Lucky for him. I work away at him for a good while, sort of enjoying myself as I cut deeper and deeper into them hard neck muscles, and I can’t help thinking about the kid in bed upstairs. And his pretty Mommy (I swear I can see a nipple in that family photo!). I pause in my work, wanderin’ over to the bathroom, stopping to kiss Mommy on the lips, wondering what she looks like when she wakes up in the morning. Wondering what she sounds like when she moans. Wondering how I got to be such a lucky man—a family man, really.
Look at me Jesus. Look at me. For fuck’s sake, I’m proud of myself. Can’t remember ever feelin’ so much dang pride—not from pussy, not from booze, not from killin’, not from anything.
I’m a family man now.
Before I tuck myself away to sleep for the night, I leave my boots by the foot of Paulie’s bed. He’s all tucked away like a little fuckin’ mummy, so I don’t bother none with wakin’ him. I got me more important things to do tonight.
The kid’s gonna be surprised as all shit when he wakes up, like it’s Christmas morn’ or something like that. I don’t need them boots no longer. No need to wander. Family men gotta take care of their kids and stick close by the roost. Give them what they call family air-loons. My boy gon’ remember me. He gonna remember his pop as a good man. A caring man. A man that wouldn’t take no shit from anybody.
Wish my pop had left me some boots. All he left behind when he snuck out (fuckin’ shit heel, that’s what he was) on me was a bad attitude and a tiny dick. Self-zing. But not really. I’m just playing with ya’, it’s plenty good sized. My new old lady is gon’ love it when I show it to her. Oh boy oh boy this is what bein’ a family man is all about. Getting’ love and givin’ it back.
Talk about settlin’ in and settling’ up… I’m one hundred percent family man and it feels damn fine, yessirreebob.
Part IV- ANNIE
The keys.
Of all the bone-headed moves she could have pulled…Annie had forgotten the keys.
It had taken nearly twenty minutes to wade through forty yards worth of snow banks, feeling a silent, icy death clenching at her lower half. When she finally managed to toss her body’s weight on to the handlebars of the snowmobile, she nearly cried in happiness, wiping away as much snow as she could, her breathing slower from the raspy wheeze that had overtaken her.
Her initial fear was that the vehicle would be ruined by the weather, but at the same time, she was confident that they were designed specifically for such conditions. The Midget Man (not to mention his band of perverts) returned to The Purple Cat late the evening before, but even still the snow had accumulated more than three additional feet, nearly covering the snowmobile completely, with bits and pieces barely visible in the drifts.
When she had it mostly excavated—clawing at the snow around the snowmobile like a dog trying to bury a bone—a nasty feeling inched into her chest, one that she’d seriously miscalculated something in her escape plan.
She looked at the steely cold ignition, wondering how she could have been such a dolt.
Because she hadn’t known that Midget Man had a snowmobile. The knee-jerk reaction was to run away from the lodge, to get as far away as she could. She hadn’t thought about keys, or anything of the sort, only to remove herself from the dead man’s presence, as she would have done near any dead man.
They were probably tucked away in his pocket.
Why hadn’t she searched him? At least to pull his identification so she could know the real name of the man she’d killed, of the man who had raped her. Something to bring to the authorities. None of that, though, had gone through her head. “Dummy,” Annie said to herself, breathing with a shaky wheeze, looking back at the front door of The Purple Cat. It was only about half the distance of a football field from her, but it had taken every inch of strength to travel that distance once, let alone there and back again. The ever-deepening snow was an exhausting bugger. Suddenly, she missed the luxury of Tony’s sled, which was nowhere to be found (most likely buried much deeper than the Midget Man’s snowmobile).
Summoning her strength, she trudged ahead, pausing every few steps to catch her breath.
One step, two step, three step, four. Five step, six step, raped like a whore.
Not funny, thought the other side of Annie’s brain. Not funny at all. She was right. It wasn’t funny, but still she snickered madly, as though she’d never properly laughed previous to that moment.
She kept her ears attuned to the sound of approaching snowmobiles (for when the other monsters were done with whatever terrible thing they were doing to the man they called Pepper), but still she laughed, louder than the whipping wind, louder than the all the screaming children (all of whom sounded just like Paulie) inside of her head.
Chapter One
No keys. No keys. No keys. No-fucking-keys!
She could feel her body warming again and something deep inside her told her ravaged body to stay put, hunker down, and to fight back against her tormentors when they returned and show them the bloody hell that they had unknowingly released. Running away would only make things worse, because they would surely find her. If she ran away, they would treat it like a game. Wolves don’t know how to act like anything but wolves. There is a modicum of pride in the hunt of an innocent jackrabbit.