A lucky hunch, perhaps, or the LSD had made her precognitive, but as Sheree turned, she caught Carol about to erupt laughter. Only a single chirp escaped, however, before Sheree clamped her hand over her friend’s mouth.
“Shhhh!” she whispered. “He’ll hear you!”
They slipped their faces back to the window, and Sheree thought again, Oh, man…
It was bad enough to see a hairless, mole-spotted 300-pound man masturbate with his knees pulled back and his shit-smeared ass-crack showing. It was bad enough, too, to see his masturbate with worms and worse yet to see him force a worm down his piss-slit.
But then Esau came.
Sheree felt like a zombie staring as she watched Esau release the tip of his dick. Several spurts of semen pumped out and landed on his belly. Along with the worm.
Then Esau plucked up the worm and ate it. Yes sir. He just dropped it into his mouth, chewed, shallowed. Licked his fingers, too.
Sheree and Carol both blanched. They sat down against the shack under the window. Sheree leaned forward to—
“Don’t throw up!” Carol ordered in a whisper. “He’ll hear it and come out here!”
Sheree choked it back, light-headed. The acid only made it worse.
A door slammed.
Sheree and Carol sat rigid, hugging each other. What if he had heard them? What would he do?
Oh, God, oh God—
The moon shown down like a spotlight. Esau, now re-attired in his overalls, had exited the shack. He stood with his back to them. If he turned…
“Ooo-eee! What a beautiful night,” Esau said, looking up at the moon. He reached back, dug his fingers deep into the ass of the overalls, scratching. “Guess I better go check on Grandpa Ab’s breakfast.”
Then he walked away into the woods, whistling.
Sheree and Carol both let out long breaths. “Christ, I almost pissed myself,” Carol said.
“I—” Sheree frowned, at once noticing the damp warmth soaking her cutoffs.
“Come on!” Carol got up, rushed forward.
“Where are you going?” Sheree followed her around. Carol was going into the shack!
“Are you nuts?” By the time she caught up, Carol was already inside. As might be expected, the shack stunk. No running water, and the bathroom was simply a seatless chair set over a hole in the floor. Sheree glanced inadvertently at the can of worms by the mattress, then felt her stomach convulse. “We can’t come in here! He could come back!”
“You heard him. He said he was going to see his grandfather or something.”
That’s right, Sheree remembered. Esau had mentioned a grandfather. Grandpa Ab? “But didn’t he also say something…about breakfast?”
««—»»
“Hey, Skinny?” Esau greeted, holding up an oil lantern. Mavis remained on her hook, in shock. When Esau bit down hard on one of her nearly breastless nipples, she flinched.
“Good gal. Yer still alive. Cain’t have ya dyin’ just yet.” He patted her stapled vagina. “Gonna let that fish in there cook just right.” Menstrual blood dripped slowly from the gaps in the staples, crusted the pubic hair. “Oh, and thanks fer the cobbler fillin’. Grandpa Ab loved it. He done et six cobblers in one sittin’.”
Just for the hell of it, then, he bit her again, on the side of the ribs this time. She flinched once more and peeped out a scratch of a scream.
“Spunky little dickens! I like that in a gal! Hail, if’n it weren’t fer yer pussy bein’ stapled shut, I’se might give ya the high, hard one!”
He turned around, then leaned over the giant metal drum sitting over the fire pit. The coals glowed bright-orange, tinting Esau’s grinning face. He sniffed at the trace steam leaking from the drum’s rim. “Ummmm-MM that smells good! We’ll let Fattie cook in their till tomorrah, let all that blubber melt down into a nice rich stock. Then the meat just falls off the bone!”
Next, Esau walked over to the canoe, and touched the head sticking out of it. The head just lolled there. “Dang, ya finally died, fella. Looks like it’s pate on toast fer Grandpa’s breakfast. Cain’t wait ta see that liver on ya, bet it’s huge.”
Esau set the oil lamp on a table, then grabbed a hammer and with its claw began to pull out the roofing nails which he’d used to tack the tin sheets over the canoe. “Dang!” he remarked when he’d pried off all the tin. The canoe was full up with corn-flecked diarrhea. The stench rose like the miasma over an open sewer but this did not afflict Esau in the least; to him, the stench was just another culinary aroma. The body simply lay there, submerged in shit save for the oval of its face. Esau used his knife to cut the nylon twine lashing the boy’s wrists to the front seat prop. Then he pulled the boy out on to the ground.
“Hot damn!” Esau excitedly exclaimed. The boy’s belly looked pregnant. This internal protuberance would be the liver, swollen to four or five times its normal size from weeks of force-feeding. A delicacy. Most would be used for pate, while the ends he would grill over soaked cherrywood. The trimmings would make a delectable wurst.
The boy’s body dripped liquefied shit as Esau hoisted him up and placed him on the cutting table; Esau’s arms came away slick brown. He next cut the ankle lashes. All manner of bugs and worms churned over the boy’s excrement-shellacked skin, but that was no matter. The skin would all be trimmed off. The thighs, of course, would serve as roasts; the belly, bacon; the rest rough-chopped for bouillabaisse. But first…
“Let’s get that big, sweet liver out’cha,” Esau said to himself. He went to the counter, for a paring knife. Cutting out the liver required some finesse. “Grandpa Ab’s gonna shit!”
But when Esau turned back toward the table, the boy was sitting upright.
“Well don’t that beat all? The dead kid ain’t dead!”
The boy’s wild face looked at Esau and said: “Nab-bluh-glab-noob-plap!”
Esau burst laughter.
“Flup-loopsie-groo-moobuh-lops!”
“I hear ya, buddy,” Esau guffawed at the boy’s insane babble. “Life’s a bitch, huh? Well, take my word fer it, it’s ’bout ta git worse.” After four weeks in the canoe, certainly the boy would not be a threat. Weak, insane. Esau would simply cut his throat and bleed him out, then get to work but before he could—
In a feeble gesture, the boy swung his arm as if to strike a blow. “Floop!” he shrieked. Esau honked laughter but only for a moment. Even though the blow had missed, the motion sent a splat of ammonia-rich diarrhea sailing through the air, and this splat landed directly across Esau’s eyes.
“Aw, good GAWD!” At once, Esau dropped the knife, fell to his knees. His eyes burned like tear gas. He tried rubbing them, tried blinking the shit out of them, but that just made it worse. He was helpless, blind.
Meanwhile, Darren—the nineteen-year-old boy who’d been sitting in his own shit for the last month—continued to babble insanely and got up from the table. His skinny legs wobbled but he was still able to walk. He began to walk toward the door.
“Help me PLEASE!” a shriek ripped through the shack. It was Mavis, surfaced from her shock and flopping intently on the hook. “Help me please I’m BEGGING you!”
Darren looked at her. “Gar-hoob-lee?”
“Please don’t leave me here!”
Darren, even in his quite understandable clinical psychosis, must have summoned tiny remaining speck of coherence. His shit-covered feet carried him over to the stall, and then he wrapped his arms around the girl’s hips and with considerable difficulty was able to raise her up the necessary several inches for her to lift the lash between her wrists off the hook.