A Spotted Owl peered down at her with liquid-crystal eyes.
As the group approached the shop, Bob took note of a red Nissan blazer parked before a well-pump. “What’s this…”
“Huh?” Ashton said.
Bob was peering at the vehicle’s hood. “That’s weird.”
“Huh?” Ashton repeated.
Bob scratched his bearded chin. “This is a brand-new Pathfinder. I bought one a few months ago. But…look at the paint.”
Ashton gave the vehicle a glance. Wide brush-strokes could clearly be detected in the pale-red paint. “Pretty lousy paint job for a brand-new truck.”
“It looks like housepaint,” Bob accentuated.
“Uh-oh!” Ashton exclaimed. “Better get Mako!” He patted his brother on the back. “You’re right, Bobby, the paint on the Nissan’s fucked up. But you know what? Who CARES? It’s time for us to—”
“PAAAR-TEE!” Bob rejoined, raising a fist into the air. Then they both brayed laughter.
“Can you believe this pair of dolts?” Carol whispered to Sheree.
“They’re like that mint commercial,” Sheree whispered. “Two, two, two fat dicks in one.”
They followed Bob and Ashton into the bait shop. “Nice place,” Carol joked. “Just like the Club Med at St. Bart’s.”
Sheree’s nose crinkled at trace odors. “Smells like a meat market in Chinatown.”
“Come on, girls,” Ashton interjected on their sarcasm. “We’re out in the boondocks now. It’s a different life out here.”
Yeah, and a stinkier one, Sheree thought.
“In these parts, men live off the land. No luxuries, no frills.”
Right, Tubby. No frills…just satellite tv.
The bait shop looked like Jed Clampett’s shack in the leader for The Beverly Hillbillies. Bare, stained wood floors and walls, a couple of hand-made chairs, a throw rug that looked rotten. A pair of ancient white-enamel refrigerators occupied one side of the room, the other a long plywood counter and manual cash register that must’ve been fifty years old. A small display of lead weights, spools of trilene fishing line, and rigs and hooks hung off another wall. Magic-Markered signs tacked behind the counter informed: SLUGS, BLOOD WORMS, NIGHTCRAWLERS: ONLY A BUCK A PIECE!
“A dollar for a worm? Carol complained in spite of her complete disinterest.
Bob winked. “Out here’s what we call an isolated market.” Then he whipped out his wad of cash. “But don’t worry, Snuggles. We got it covered.”
“Hey!” Ashton bellowed. “How about some service! You got customers out here!”
Dust shook from the bait shop’s walls at the shout. But then further dust seemed to sift out at a series of slow, heavy thuds. Sheree’s heart jigged when a shadow spilled across the floor—a big shadow. And with the shadow came a…smell.
From an adjoining room, out stepped a massive figure in grimy overalls and giant workboots. Between the full, chest-level beard and the explosion of fuzzed hair, the only actual skin that could be observed were the areas just under the eyes and a frighteningly broad forehead.
But worse than the smell of the man, and his appearance, was the fact that, in one hand, he held a knife.
Sheree, Carol, Ashton, and Bob just stared, unblinking.
Then the overalled man, in a weirdly keening voice, pointed the knife right at Ashton and said, “I know you…”
««—»»
When he awoke, Darren felt as though he lay in a puddle of living muck. Each blink of his eyes brought the recollection back closer. How long he’d been here he couldn’t remember. He knew that he hadn’t been a particularly good person in his life, but he supposed he hadn’t been that bad, either.
Or maybe he was wrong about that last part.
Maybe he’d died, and if so, what other place could this be but hell?
Flowing streams of something like a dream unreeled in his head. He saw himself walking down a highway at night. It was teeming rain, and his car had apparently blown a head gasket. Bright light flashed in his eyes as he trod backward in the sheets of rain with his thumb out.
A red blazer-type truck stopped and picked him up. Thank God! Darren thought. But this exclamation of gratitude was a bit premature. It was a big bulky hairy Northwest redneck who’d picked him up. “Where ya headed, son?” he asked in a soft, kindly voice.
“Port Angeles,” Darren said.
“Aw, well, see, that’s not exactly the same place I’m headed,” the man said.
“Oh?” Darren said. “Well, it’s just a few more miles down 101.”
“Yeah, but, see, we ain’t goin’ there,” he was told. “See, where I’m headed is right down the Hershey Highway,” and that was all that remained of the friendly discourse. A hand the size of a dinner plate choked Darren into prompt unconsciousness. When he came to sometime later, he lay nude and belly-down in the back of the truck and felt as though several pallets of mason blocks sat on his back and legs. The truck wasn’t moving anymore. There was only darkness around him, but he could hear the rain ticking on the truck’s roof and the windshield wipers thunking back and forth.
With each thunk one way, something that felt like several gourds sunk deep into his rectum, and with each thunk back, the gourds pulled out.
“I ain’t much for cunt, fella,” the hot voice grated behind him. “It smells kind’a pissy, ya know? I’d rather have shit on my dick after I come than a bunch’a pissy-smelling cunt juice. When yer done fuckin’ a gal, yer dick looks like it’s got shellac or somethin’ on it, ya know?”
Actually Darren didn’t know. At nineteen, he was a virgin and he never would have guessed that his first sexual experience would be…this.
“But boy-cunt?” the voice continued. “I’ll take it any day. Shit wipes off. But that pissy pussy stink? Haunts ya fer days.”
Each further plunge into Darren’s excretory orifice seemed to squeeze out more of his consciousness. Just as his aggressor was ejaculating into his bowel, Darren passed out again…
…and woke up with his head sticking out of…a canoe.
A canoe covered with sheets of tin. When Darren moved, he felt his body slog in warm sludge which could only be his own excrement. Twine lashed his ankles to a mooring slug while his hands had been tied tightly to the canoe’s seat props. Vague snatches of memory whispered to him like tiny devils, and he remembered some looming, reeking figure sticking a nozzle of some sort into his mouth and pumping warm mush into his stomach. The mush tasted kind of like creamed corn.
I’m tied up in a canoe full of my own shit, the repellent reality came to him, and some redneck’s been pumping mush into my stomach.
All he could think, rather reasonably, was: Why?
And to make matters worse—if they could be worse—Darren was catching a cold, a fact his abductors seemed to revel in when they forced him to blow his nose into their mouths.
Again: Why?
No answer was forthcoming.
Darren could feel worms squirming within the bubble bath of diarrhea in which he lay, and some of the worms, he could feel, were wriggling up into his anus and down his urethra. Little Shit Bugs were crawling all over him.
Darren had always been an inquisitive, calculating person. And even in this fairly hopeless circumstance, his mind, however sluggish now, tried to comprehend these simple if not obvious questions: Why would men force him to blow his nose into their mouths?