The abundant cascade roved across his forehead, his eyes, and then fell directly into his mouth.
James masturbated frenetically as he cried, “Piss on me, Mommy! Piss on me!”
««—»»
Bess, at the very least, had been half-right. She believed it was her destiny to come out here and die. But half-right also meant half wrong, didn’t it?
She’d die out here, all right, but not by her own hand. To girls like Bess, there was solace in suicide. No solace tonight, however. Not for Bess.
As her consciousness returned, she remembered a nightmare. In the nightmare she was drowning in crystal-clear water. Her huge limbs paddled frantically but she simply couldn’t keep her head above the water. Just as her lungs would dispel her final breath, though, someone was saving her. Someone had grabbed her by the hair and was pulling her up. She could breathe again! Was it Mavis who’d saved her? No, it couldn’t be; Mavis couldn’t swim either.
An angel, then. Yes! In the nightmare, it must’ve been an angel who’d saved her from drowning. Once ashore, however, she looked into the angel’s face and thought, Aw, fuck!
It was decidedly not an angel. Instead it was a huge, bearded hillbilly with rotten teeth.
Bess let her memory click back a few more notches.
Aw…fuck…
No, it was not and angel, and it was not a nightmare.
It was all real.
As real as the boat hook from which she hung naked by lashed hands. As real as this long dark barnlike building she now occupied. And as real as—
“Aw, fuck!” she shouted.
Unpleasant scents in the air seemed to meld with other scents that were absolutely savory. Bess heard a crackling: a fire somewhere. High tiny windows afforded the barn’s only light. Among the barn’s bizarre contents (some large metal drums, a large hole in the ground from which fire issued, bushel baskets full of fruit and vegetables, a fireplace bellows, a plastic bucket full of what appeared to be fish filets) was something more bizarre than anything Bess had seen in her life.
A canoe with a man’s head sticking out of it.
The canoe seemed to be covered over with something. Sheets of metal?
“Hey!” Bess shouted to the head. “You there, you…head. What’s going on here?”
The head moved, looked at with an insane glint, and began to babble. But then:
“Bub-buh-Bess?” a voice spoke, and it did not come from the head sticking out of the canoe.
“Mavis!” Bess shouted. “Is that you!”
“Yes!”
“I can’t see you!”
“I’m over here—he tied my hands together and I’m hanging from a hook!”
“Me too,” Bess said. “The redneck who dragged us out of the water.”
A silence ticked by, then, sniffling, she said, “Bess, you’re my best friend! I’m sorry I called you Jabba the Hut!”
“I’m sorry I called you an anorexic nerd,” Bess confessed. “And I’m sorry I said Duchovny sucks. He actually wasn’t bad in Playing God.”
“It’s all my fault! I feel so bad! We would’ve killed ourselves just like we planned if I hadn’t chickened out.”
“No, it’s my fault. If I hadn’t started fighting, we never would’ve fallen out of the damn raft.”
“What are we going to do!” Mavis shrieked. “Who was that man? And what is this place?”
Poor Mavis, Bess thought. The girl was so naive; she couldn’t think past David Duchovny and a fantasy world of alien invasions and government conspiracies. The real world, Bess knew, was full of perverts, rapists, and murderers, and she had a terrible feeling that all of the above applied to the bearded man who’d dragged them from the lake.
“What is this? A barn or something?”
“I think so,” Bess replied.
“And what are all those baskets and things? Apples and vegetables, it looks like. And what’s that fire for in the hole? What are those big metal drums?”
“I don’t know, Mavis. Get a hold of yourself. We have to think of a way to get out of here before that bearded guy with the rotten teeth comes back.”
As the afternoon had drawn on, the light from the high windows moved slowly toward the back of the barn or whatever this place was. Bess squinted, and in the most dolorous increments she noticed something familiar against the rear wall.
An old gas stove.
It was then that the most abhorrent realization occurred to her. This place was more than a barn and more than a psychopath’s den.
It’s a kitchen, she realized, and that’s when the door swung open.
««—»»
“—still cain’t believe it!” Esau enthused as he followed his big brother into the cookery. “Ashton Morrone, the world’s greatest chef! Fishin’ in our lake!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Enoch grumbled. “I hope you charged ’em fer parking and hookups n’ all.”
“Oh, shore! N’fact, Mr. Morrone hisself gave me a brand-new hunnert-dollar bill!”
That perked old Enoch up. Older and wiser, Enoch was bereft of his brother’s youthful enthusiasms. Money’s what they needed. Propane weren’t free, and neither was gas fer the trucks and that blammed server fee for the fancy satellite tv. And considering Grandpa Ab’s appetite, Enoch was drivin’ to town three times a week fer the things Esau needed for the viddles. Spices and flour and condiments, bottle after bottle of olive oil and canola oil and sesame oil, and every other kind of blammed friggin’ oil, couple pounds’a butter’a week, couple pounds’a lard—all on account’a ’cos Grandpa Ab liked Esau’s fancy cookin’. Sure, Grandpa Ab was worth it, and he deserved to have what he wanted. It’s just that it’d be a whole lot cheaper’n simpler if Grandpa could get by on canned store-brand spaghetti like Enoch and Esau generally did.
“Well that’s good about the hunnert, boy,” Enoch approved and closed the door behind him. Esau set down six stacked homemade pie crusts on one’a the tables, then turned on the propane tank fer the stove. He began to boil a large pot of water. “One’a the gals I hauled out’a the lake had a couple hunnert on her too,” Enoch continued. “But that city chef and his friends—just you make sure to squeeze as much cash out of ’em as you can. Fuck, we’se gotta make a livin’ too, ya know. Fancy big city chef, you’d guess he had money.”
“Oh, they’se richer’n shit. You should see the boat they got, and one’a them big Winnebago things like a house on wheels! Dang straight they’se rich. Wouldn’t expect the finest chef in the world ta be poor, now would ya?”
“What’s them there pie crusts for?” Enoch asked.
“It’s been a while since I fixed Grandpa Ab up some cobbler. It’s his favorite.”
“Hmm,” Enoch grunted.
“Gimme a sec,” Esau said, “whiles I pump another bellyful into our friend here.” He approached the canoe and the ludicrous insane head that seemed to sit atop it. The head babbled incoherently as Esau filled the bellows from the bucket of his spicy cornmash. “Shee-it, the fella’s got some spunk. This is his fourth week, ain’t?”
“Yeah,” Enoch grunted.
“Usually they up’n die after three. Bet his liver’s big as a basketball by now—it’ll make the best pate on toast points fer Grandpa Ab. See, Enoch, that’s how the Frenchys do it, they tie a farm-raised goose to a board’n just force-feed it cornmash fer weeks. Makes the liver real big’n sweet. I’se learnt about it on Ashton’s show!”
Enoch frowned. He was sick of listening to Esau’s fancy-cookin’ talk. “Just git on with it, will ya, boy?”