“They’d already been through the hangin’ line. They was dead, Mister! Their throats already slit! I swear!”
“Hell, now. I’d seen the tape and I beg to differ. Them chickens hadn’t even made it to the line. They were squawkin’ in the coop when ya pulled ‘em out and did your business. Eye for an eye, remember?” He knelt, clamping his meaty thighs around Shit-Stain’s head to hold it still. Trench stuck a finger in each nostril, pulled the man’s nose up, and placed the blade underneath it. “Now, you hold still when I start cuttin’. I’m gonna be mighty pissed if I slice myself on your account.”
“NO! Wait! Wait! What you’re doing…how is it any different than what we did to those birds?”
Trench paused for a moment then let go of the man’s nose. “Hmmm. Ya know…this is wrong.”
Shit-Stain nodded; a glimmer of hope danced in his eyes that he might be set free, unharmed (at least physically).
“A chicken’s nose is really just two holes on top its beak,” Trench said, repositioning himself beside Shit-Stain’s right shoulder. “So their beaks would be the equivalent of our mouths. And it’d make more sense if…” Trench stabbed the knife into the dirt, freeing both hands to stick into Shit-Stain’s mouth.
The bound man screamed as one of the gloved hands hooked onto the roof of his mouth while the other clamped down on his jawbone.
The veins in Trench’s forearms bulged as he pulled apart with all his might. There was a sickening crack, a tearing sound, then gurgling.
With eyes rolled back in his head and tongue dangling practically to his chest, Shit-Stain floundered on the ground. His bladder and bowels released, coating him in a muddy mixture of shit, piss, and blood.
Trench stepped back and looked at the bloody mandible in his hand. “As for your comparison of me and you, I already told ya…I only kill what I plan on eatin’.” He gave the jawbone the once over. There was hardly any meat there but he’d find use for it somehow, having been raised to use all parts of the buffalo.
While Shit-Stain gasped and gargled out his dying breath, Trench turned around and took in the carnage coating the area.
He walked to the back of the van, climbed in, and slid one of the extra large (320 qt) polyurethane coolers to the edge of the open door, tossing the jawbone into it. He double-checked to make sure the cooler’s drain plug was firmly in place (or there would be one hell of a mess inside the vehicle) then removed the axe and snow shovel (perfect for scooping up the squishy bits) that were mounted on the van’s interior wall.
Trench checked his watch and smiled. Ahead of schedule.
He stepped from the vehicle to start gathering the meat for his next couple of meals.
AN HOUR LATER, THE cargo van plowed down the rural highway toward the rising sun. Trench sat behind the wheel with a cell phone raised to his ear.
“Gotcha. Yes, sir, I understand.”
A billboard blew by, announcing ANDERSON FUR FARM – NEXT RIGHT.
“Will do. Okay, I’m at the next one. And just to be clear, you’re fine with me keepin’ as many skins as I want, right?” Trench smiled and nodded. “Why yes, sir. You did promise lotsa perks with the job. Okay, sir. I’ll be checking-in to give ya an update when I’m through here and headin’ to the next one. Uh-huh, will do.”
Trench snapped his cell phone shut and tossed it into the passenger seat. It landed on top of the folded pouch that contained his skinning tools. Since the minks wouldn’t be harvested until next month, the amount of employees needed to run the farm would be next to none. Trench could only hope that there would still be enough working today to reupholster his leather couch. He estimated he’d need the skins of four or five normal-sized employees. Maybe less if some of them were big ol’ fat people.
Whether skinny or fat, they were cold, heartless monsters, deserving of the same fate as that of their victims.
Trench put on his blinker and began to slow for the upcoming exit.
It was time to go to work.
BY BIZARRE HANDS
by Joe R. Lansdale
When the traveling preacher heard about the Widow Case and her retarded girl, he set out in his black Dodge to get over there before Halloween night.
Preacher Judd, as he called himself—though his name was really Billy Fred Williams—had this thing for retarded girls, due to the fact that his sister had been simple-headed, and his mama always said it was a shame she was probably going to burn in hell like a pan of biscuits forgot in the oven, just on account of not having a fun set of brains.
This was a thing he had thought on considerable, and this considerable thinking made it so he couldn’t pass up the idea of baptizing and giving some God-training to female retards. It was something he wanted to do in the worst way, though he had to admit there wasn’t any burning desire in him to do the same for boys or men or women that were half-wits, but due to his sister having been one, he certainly had this thing for girl simples.
And he had this thing for Halloween, because that was the night the Lord took his sister to hell, and he might have taken her to glory had she had any Bible-learning or God-sense. But she didn’t have a drop, and it was partly his own fault, because he knew about God and could sing some hymns pretty good. But he’d never turned a word of benediction or gospel music in her direction. Not one word. Nor had his mama, and his papa wasn’t around to do squat.
The old man ran off with a buck-toothed laundry woman that used to go house to house taking in wash and bringing it back the next day, but when she took in their wash, she took in Papa too, and she never brought either of them back. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the laundry contained everything they had in the way of decent clothes, including a couple of pairs of nice dress pants and some pin-striped shirts like niggers wear to funerals. This left him with one old pair of faded overalls that he used to wear to slop the hogs before the critters killed and ate Granny and they had to get rid of them because they didn’t want to eat nothing that had eaten somebody they knew. So, it wasn’t bad enough Papa ran off with a beaver-toothed wash woman and his sister was a drooling retard, he now had only the one pair of ugly, old overalls to wear to school, and this gave the other kids three things to tease him about, and they never missed a chance to do it. Well, four things. He was kind of ugly too.
It got tiresome.
Preacher Judd could remember nights waking up with his sister crawled up in the bed alongside him, lying on her back, eyes wide open, her face bathed in cool moonlight, picking her nose and eating what she found, while he rested on one elbow and tried to figure why she was that way.
He finally gave up figuring, decided that she ought to have some fun, and he could have some fun too. Come Halloween, he got him a bar of soap for marking up windows and a few rocks for knocking out some, and he made his sister and himself ghost-suits out of old sheets in which he cut mouth and eye holes.
This was her fifteenth year and she had never been trick-or-treating. He had designs that she should go this time, and they did, and later after they’d done it, he walked her back home, and later yet, they found her out back of the house in her ghost suit, only the sheet had turned red because her head was bashed in with something and she had bled out like an ankle-hung hog. And someone had turned her trick-or-treat sack—the handle of which was still clutched in her fat grip—inside out and taken every bit of candy she’d gotten from the neighbors.
The sheriff came out, pulled up the sheet and saw that she was naked under it, and he looked her over and said that she looked raped to him, and that she had been killed by bizarre hands.