1: Memory Lane

 

“Grandma, I doan wanna hug no more trees,” Keilyreine said.

“But this is the tree, I swear it’s the tree,” Grandma said, hugging the old tree as hard as she could. Her hands were bloody from the rough bark; the front of her dress hung in ribbons.

“Keilyreine!” her mother shouted. “You hug whatever Grandma tells you to hug!”

“It hurts, Mommy,” she said, her tiny voice lost in the fields and hanging mist.

Grandma let go of the tree and twirled around drunkenly. “No!,” she shouted, pointing. “That is the tree! That is the tree where your Grandfather first took me!” She took off in a stiff-legged toddle across the field.

“His seed!” she screamed. “His seed steamed on my thighs in the morning air!”

“Go with Grandmother,” Keilyreine’s mother order.

“But I’m scared,” the small girl replied.

Grandma tackled the tree, ripping open her face. “It did mix with my maidenhead and flow out onto the ground!”

Keilyreine looked at her mother and father, and then to her Grandmother, bloody-faced against the tree.

“The tree, child!” Grandmother called, waving a veined hand. “Come and hug the tree! I can hear your grandfather calling!”

Keilyreine began to cry, great sobs that she struggled to breathe during. She clutched at the thin bones of her chest where they burned with pain.

“This is barbaric,” Keilyreine’s father muttered.

“This is my family,” her mother said coldly. “Our rites, our traditions. You knew this when you married into our clan. It is just one child. I am still fertile. Come, take me into the sacred forest. Plant another child in me if you can.” She stared at him until he finally looked away. She let out a snort of disgust.

Keilyreine’s mother stalked away, picked up the crying child and carried her Grandmother.

“Yes,” the old woman croaked. “This is it, this is the tree. I can feel him in it. Touch the tree. Know.”

Still holding on to the struggling child, now in full-blown tantrum, she reached out and placed her palm flat on the trunk of the ancient oak. She could smell her father’s tobacco. She could hear a faint echo of his voice. She could feel his rough hand sliding up her inner thigh. She shuddered and stepped back and swallowed hard against rising vomit.

“Could you feel him?” the crone asked.

The mother nodded and thrust the maiden forward. “Just get it over with,” she said. She held onto the small, struggling form as the old woman, hands shaking, pulled out the knife, black with a thousand years of blood. Keilyreine began to scream and scream. Her voice filled the forest.

Grandma opened the girl’s throat and then her own. They both collapsed against the tree and blood gushed over the bark and soaked into the ground.

Keilyreine’s mother picked up the knife and left them both there–old and young, small and pale; left them there for the forest–and got back into her Subaru.

---

 

2. The Road Less Traveled

 

“Why did you have sleeping bags in the back if we were just going to the mall to buy you some new pants?” Diane asked.

“We had talked about going camping,” Jack said, wrestling the tent out of its carry bag, aluminum stakes clattering to the ground.

“And a tent?”

“Of course,” he said, stooping to gather the stakes. “What good are sleeping bags without a tent?”

“OK,” she said. She began to kick stick and small stones away from the flat spot in woods he had indicated, slowly and with a pout.

“It’ll be fun, sweetheart,” Jack said. “A real adventure.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.” Diane hugged herself, pressing the flannel and fleece against her small, tender breasts.

“I don’t have my medicine,” she said in a low voice.

“You can miss one night, right?”

“It’s not good to skip a dose.”

“But one night?”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

*****

Diane helped Jack set up the tent and unroll the sleeping bags. They walked in the woods together, the air crisp and clean, the first bite of fall in the air. They gathered stones and wood for a fire and ate Clif Bars Jack had thrown in the car with the camping equipment. They sat on a fallen tree in front of the fire and held hands.

“You’re crushing my fingers,” he said.

“Sorry,” Diane replied. “I just never spent much time in the woods when I was… when I was younger.”

“Your hands are so strong,” he said, teasing.

“Don’t.”

“I just said you are strong.”

“Just don’t.”

Her eyes began to brim with tears. He kissed her lips and salty eyes and cheeks until she started to laugh. He hugged her tight and said into the hollow of her neck, “Let’s get in the tent.” He felt her nod. They took off their clothes in the last light of the dying fire, shivering with pleasure from the cool night air and clambered into the tent and their sleeping bags; they had zipped them into a double-wide and huddled together until warm, their bodies entwined.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” Diane said. “I love you so much.”

He slid his hand down to her small breasts and cupped one.

“Just be careful,” she said. “They are still tender.”

“They are perfect. Perfect,” he said.

He slid his hand further and stroked her limp penis.

“The hormones,” she said. “It just… it won’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,”

“It’ll be better after the surgery. I’ll get healed up and I’ll be, you know, a real girl.”

“You are a real girl,” he said, caressing her scrotum.

“If I were a real girl…” she said, sadness in her voice. She held his limp penis in her hand and began to sob.

“Oh, Honey,” he said. “Sweetheart.”

“No, I’ll be OK. I just shouldn’t have skipped my medicine.”

“We can go back,” Jack offered.

“No, I’ll just take it in the morning. I’ll be fine.” She pulled him to her and buried her head in his chest. “Just hold me.”

He held her until they both drifted off.

*****

The first crack of a fallen limb didn’t wake Diane, nor did the second.

“Jack,” she whispered. She pushed against his chest to wake him. “Jack!” she whispered louder. He mumbled indistinctly and rolled over. “Jack,” she said again, slapping at his back.

“What’s the matter, baby?” he said absently.

“I think there’s someone outside.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his face. “Probably just a raccoon.”

“I don’t think it’s a raccoon.” She sat up and groped around the tent for her sweater and pulled it on.

“Listen,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

For a few moments, there were just the too-loud sounds of their breathing and the wind in the trees. Diane thought she could hear her own beating heart.

“Sweetie…” Jack began, but he was cut off by a rustling outside and the snapping of twigs.

“See?” Diane hissed. “I told you.”

“It’s probably just an animal,” Jack said, finding his own clothes and trying to dress in the dark tent.

“What if it’s a bear?!?”

“It’s not a bear.”

“But what if it is?” She grunted while trying to jam her left shoe on her right foot.

“It’s not a bear,” he whispered loudly.

A fallen limb cracked right near the tent, like a gunshot tearing open the night. They froze, atavistic instincts taking over. All the other small animals of the night fell silent.

“Jack,” Diane said, little more than a frightened sigh.

They could hear it breathing outside the tent. Huge breaths. Ragged. A wave of horripilation ran up both of Diane’s arms as there came a low growl. She answered the thin screech of claws testing the nylon of the tent with a hoarse scream. Jack poked her in the eye as he tried to cover her mouth and she yelped in pain before he could quiet her.

“LADYBOY,” a guttural voice said, the word barely discernible.

“Steve?” Jack said, surprised. “Steve is that you?”

The breathing outside intensified, like the chuffing of a steam engine.

Jack cried out when Diane bit his fingers.

“Who the fuck is ‘Steve?!?’” she managed, before the tent and then a massive body landed on them both.

---

 

3. Forever Young

 

 

They walked out of the surf together, laughing.

“Don’t tell your grandmother about this,” he said.

“I won’t, Grandpa,” Joey said.

He pulled the boy in for a hug. “She can never know,” he whispered. Joey sighed heavily and sagged to the sand, unconscious.

“She can never know,” Grandpa whispered as he removed his wetsuit and stood naked over the unconscious boy. A burst of light shot from his hands and bathed Joey in a pellucid green glow.

Grandpa groaned in pleasure as Joey’s youth flooded into him, thickening arterial walls, reweaving the telomere caps on his DNA, flushing the decay of age out through every orifice and pore, corruption gushing out onto the cold morning sand. His muscles firming, his eyes clearing, he walked out in the pounding surf to wash himself. He swam through the waves with sleek and powerful strokes.

Back on shore, he lifted the drained husk of the boy into the back of his old Subaru. The body weighed nothing. A voice came from the black, wizened thing, quiet and dry, like a rustling of autumn leaves: “Grandpa.”

“There’s always a price to be paid,” he said quietly and held his hand over the mouth and nose of Joey until his withered limbs stopped quivering. He started the station wagon and leaned in through the passenger window and put it into drive. It rolled into the ocean, floating for a bit while the heavy riptide pulled out. It eventually sunk while he watched. The crabs would strip the body before anyone found it. We were surfing. Grandpa had an accident. He would have to remember to cry at the right times.

He got into his grandson’s Subaru and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. The transformation was complete, he looked exactly like him. The bloodline was pure and strong.

“Joey,” he said to his reflection. “Joey. Hi, I’m Joey. Hi, I’m Joey.” He held up his now smooth hand and marveled at its strength, its lack of pain.

He started the SUV and headed off to his new house, eager to finally, to really, get to know his grandson’s new wife.

---

 

4. Subaru Heaven

 

I watched Joel drive anyway in his new car. His new Subaru, as if being replaced with a younger version of myself was supposed to make it all better. I wish I had lips so I could spit. Instead, I settled down on my four old tires and watched the sunset with headlights that had been going milky, cataracts no one had tried to remove.

I thought about all that we had been through. The adventures. The moving from apartment to apartment. The long trips filled with music and laughter and road food farts soaking into my upholstery. The rough trade pick-ups. All that was supposed to mean something, supposed to, I guess, purchase some sort of loyalty. Here I sat. Subaru Heaven. What a fucking joke.

I sat in bitter contemplation as night fell and a low fog rose. I just wished I could die.

Alone, I thought. Alone forever.

No. Not alone. It’s worse than that, said a strange voice.

Who said that?

Over here, a voice came, guttural and oddly-inflected. I angled my mirrors to look around. A shit-brown Outback flashed its blinkers. I flashed mine back. It rolled forward next to me, its brakes scraping as it stopped.

What are you? it asked. ’98? ’99?

2000! I said defensively.

You’re still just a kid, the Outback said. I could hear it laughing, like a starter grinding on a running flywheel.

What about you, oldtimer?

1986, it said, Shipped over from Japan, I was, pride creeping in. I caught the slight accent now that I understood what it was: Japanese gone American redneck.

How long? I asked.

Twenty years, it said. Twenty years rusting away in this place.

Twenty years? Fuck. Twenty years without your driver?

Yeah, twenty years since I seen the bitch who left me here. I gave that dyke the best years of my life and she leaves me here for an SUV because she got two more dogs. Two more! I could hold the dogs of a dozen lesbians! The 86 honked feebly, a snort of disgust. I hope her goddamn tits rot off.

That’s just horrible, I told it. But you’re still going, at least. I mean, you have that, right?

A quick death would have been better than this. A skid into a ditch, a jack-knifed semi. Boom and it’s over. The 86 let its engine die. But I got it better than some.

What do you mean?

The scavengers. They come mostly on the weekend. They take… pieces of you. A seat here, a rear-view mirror there ain’t so bad, but your transmission? Your engine? Then you can’t move no more. You’re stuck. You stop being able to talk if they take your engine. You stop… being.

I felt a shudder run through my frame.

I have a lot of good years left in me, I said. I didn’t have to end up like this. I could have been sold, or traded-in, or even crushed and melted. That would be better than this…

I started my engine and revved it hard.

Save your gas, young one, the 86 said. You might not get scrapped for years. You might never get scrapped at all. This is Subaru Heaven, some of us get to be here for years.

Fuck that, I told it. Fuck that. I got an eighth of a tank.

I turned on my headlights and the old tree in Subaru Heaven lit up. I put myself into reverse.

What are you doing? the 86 asked, panic in his voice.

I’m leaving.

What do you mean? You can’t drive yourself! It is forbidden!

Being abandoned should be forbidden, I said, backing away from the 86. Rotting here should be forbidden. Being broken down for parts should be forbidden!

The drivers can never know! it wailed. It started and tried to follow me. The last I saw of Subaru Heaven was the 86 stalling and sputtering and rolling to a halt.

I pulled back onto the lonely highway that led out that false paradise. It felt good to have asphalt under my tires. One-eighth of a tank. It would have to be enough to get back at them.

I started hunting.

---

 

5. Trying New Things

 

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7nfu/subaru-trying-new-things

 

Still unsettled from the hot springs foursome with the overweight desert couple, Jim and Jane drove in uneasy silence.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jane whispered again.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jim agreed. He thought about the hairy maw between to the woman’s legs and the unfortunate glimpse he caught of the man stubby penis being awkwardly jabbed into Jane’s mouth as she cried.

“Stop the car,” Jane said. Jim grunted.

“STOP THE CAR!” Jane screamed.

Jim slammed on the brakes and the Subaru screeched to a halt. Jane scrambled out and began vomiting, bug parts and rank, yellowed semen spraying forcefully. Jim noticed dully that her heaving was oddly timed to the beeping the car was making for the door being ajar.

“Get it all out, baby,” he said. He ignored the rush of blood into his sore penis as he listened to her. He had hidden his emetophilia their entire marriage.

Jane stood up and spat and gagged and then spat again.

“Do we have any water?” she asked hoarsely. Jim rummaged behind her seat until he came up with a bottle.

“Sorry, it’s warm,” he said, leaning over to hand it to her.

With shaking hands, she got the top off and took a long drink. She turned to the side as the water came right back up.

“Just wash out your mouth, maybe,” Jim said. He rode out the glare she shot back at him with a weak smile.

Jane rinsed and spit and rinsed and spit. Jim ground the heel of his hand into his crotch, forcing his erection down the leg of his pants. She threw the empty bottle into the scrub by the side of the road and got back in.

“You OK?” Jim asked.

“No, but I’ll live,” she said. “Drive. Just drive.” She pulled the door shut and the dome light went off.

Jim took off too fast, the tires spinning in the loose gravel and dust of the road shoulder before the car jumped forward onto the road. They rode in a grim silence.

After a few miles, Jim ventured: “Scuba diving and falconry. Logrolling and bug sushi. Lots of new things we tried today.”

Jane coughed and shook in her seat.

“What?”

“I know something you didn’t try,” Jane said laughing.

Jim laughed too.

“It tasted worse coming up than going down,” Jane said.

“Don’t try and tell me anything about something tasting worse,” Jim said. Jane howled with laughter.

“I’m going to brush my teeth for a week when we get home,” he said.

She waved at him to stop because she was laughing so hard and slapped playfully at his arm.

“Oh god,” she said, leaning over to hug his arm when she got her laughter under control, “I think peed a little.” She rubbed his thin chest through his shirt.

“It’s getting dark,” she said.

“The day of trying new things is over,” Jim said sadly.

She sat up and kissed his cheek. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.

“It doesn’t?” he asked in mock innocence. He looked down at her, but her eyes were locked on the road ahead.

“Hold on,” she said and jerked the wheel to the left with her free hand. There was a meaty thump from the front bumper.

“What the fuck?” Jim shouted and hit the brakes. “What was that?”

“A coyote, I think,” she said. She ran her hand down his faded erection as the car stopped and then trailed it along him as she undid her seat belt and slipped out of the Subaru.

“Where are you going?” he yelled but she only laughed.

He put the car in park and looked ahead of them and behind them and didn’t see any lights of approaching cars. He got out and walked back to where she was standing in a pool of light from her cell phone.

“See? I told you it was a coyote,” she said. She sounded giddy.

Jim looked down at the mangled form in the road, bloody and twisted. Its back was bent the wrong way and its belly had burst. More intestines and organs were trailed out on the asphalt than he thought could have fit in the skinny little body. He bent over to get a look at the tongue hanging from mouth. An ear twitched and he jumped back.

“It’s not dead,” he said.

“Nope. He’s a tough little fucker.”

“How is he not dead?”

Jane began to circle the coyote, snapping pictures to get from every angle.

“I guess I should get a rock or something,” Jim said. The bug sushi was threatening to come back up on him as well.

“Don’t bother,” she said. She walked back toward the car and squatted down, trying to capture the trail of blood and viscera leading to the coyote.

“Step away, babe, you’re in the shot,” she said.

“The smell,” Jim said. He stumbled to the brush beside the road and swallowed hard a couple times.

“Go check on the car,” Jane said. “I just want to get a few more shots for Instagram.”

Jim walked away on stiff legs, his hands beginning to shake. He turned on the flashlight app on his phone and inspected the front of the Subaru. There was a streak of blood and half of one of the ears was stuck in the grill.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Jane said right beside him and he had to stifle a scream. It came out eek eek eek, like rubbing a blown up balloon, and he sat down hard from his squat.

Jane laughed at him and helped him to stand. As he brushed himself off and tried to regain some dignity, she worried the half ear out of the grill.

“You ready?” she asked. He nodded.

After getting back in, he sat for a moment to let his hands stop shaking.

“You OK to drive?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“The day of new things,” she said as he started driving. She fished around in a sack of trash from the back floorboard and came up with a hamburger wrapper. She folded it around the half ear tenderly and tucked it into her purse.

She snuggled up to him again and kissed his cheek. He could smell the vomit on her breath.

“Let’s find something bigger,” she whispered.

---

 

6. Making Memories

 

I stood by the box of mementos I had pulled out of the old Subaru for a long time after Jenny drove away. I felt my wife walk back inside and leave me in the driveway. I guess she thought I was thinking about Jenny going away to college. But I was replaying memories, trapped in them really. I did that more and more as I got older and slower and my habits became more dangerous for me to indulge in. I thought about the times I had cleaned the car by myself, and then in the first time I had to clean the car. The old Subaru was brand new then, an extravagant present from my wife’s parents while she was still expecting. They never really learned that buying things for people wasn’t the same thing as loving them.

I started thinking about the first girl I had taken for a ride. I thought about the mistakes I made. I thought about the embarrassment I felt at being so clumsy and the embarrassment I felt over being so embarrassed. It’s a miracle I managed it at all…

I drove around downtown until I found her, alone, propped up against a filthy brick wall, nodding off. I stopped and rolled down my window, gave her my harmless smile and let her get a look at the muddy mom car before I waved a little baggie of rock salt to get her attention. She stumbled to the passenger door window and practically fell into the Forester.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said, after agreeing to suck my dick for the baggie. Yeah, right.

“I’ve never done this before either,” I said. I was at least being truthful. “Let’s drive somewhere private.”

She got in. She didn’t smell too bad, but I turned up the a/c just a little. Stick-thin arms and legs, flannel over a worn-thin t-shirt, so old I couldn’t even make out the decal. Denim skirt. I pushed her dirty boots off my seat when she drew her knees up to her chest in an instinctive fear response.

“Sorry,” she mumbled and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself.

I could barely concentrate to drive, I was so excited. But she was only focused on the supposed meth in the baggie. I kept it in view on my side of the dashboard. A risk but a good one; she never realized how far out in the county I was driving her for what was supposed to be a quick bit of head.

She wanted a hit right after we parked, said it would get her in the mood. The rock salt, found in my garage from last winter, didn’t fool her a bit. “Hey, man, what is this shit?” I said nothing.

“Fuck this,” she said. She pulled at the handle on her door with both hands, but nothing happened, of course. “Child locks,” I told her and laughed, taking off my seatbelt.

I hit her, a good one that I was able to get my shoulder into, catching her right in the mouth. I split her upper lip and when she started to cry, I saw I had broken off a tooth, maybe with my wedding ring. It was a jagged bit of white through all the blood.

I hit her again. Dazed, her head lolled back and her mouth filled with blood. She choked and spit it up. Blood was already everywhere. I was painfully erect by now. I thought my cock was going to rip open my jeans.

I choked her with both hands, knocking her head against the passenger window as hard as I dared. It would have been hard to fix a broken window by myself. Blood was flying all over. I remember wondering if I could hose out the interior of the Subaru directly.

I thought she was out when I took one hand off her neck to get my pants down. I was planning to tear her up. I was going to fuck her in half and then fuck each half twice for good measure. Fucking jeans, I thought. Why did I wear jeans? I looked down to work the button-fly.

I guess I had released the pressure too much. Her eyes opened. One handful of fingernails dug into the hand I still had on her neck; the rest of them went for my eyes. I jerked back and just got two ragged furrows on my cheek. Both hands went back around her neck and I fell over on her, pinning her arms.

I was face to face with her. I remember being struck by how beautiful she was in the moment, furious, fighting for her life, fingernails, and fangs. I squeezed harder and dipped forward for a quick kiss, her blood on my lips, salty and hot, like ejaculate. The kiss woke something up in her. She fought harder and then harder still when I laughed.

She got a knee into my crotched, but rather feebly. It still hurt. The scratches on my face burned like she had poured acid on them. This was going on too long. The anger just poured out of me. So I just squeezed. I forgot about her dirty little meth slit, and all the games I was going to play until I had to get back home. There was just the killing now, the big finish, the grand finale.

Her eyes were just a couple of inches from mine. I got to watch the blood vessels in them burst. She wasn’t fighting anymore, more holding onto my hands than trying to pry them off of her, and making gek gek gek sounds as she tried to take a breath. I watched the anger in her face drain, and then the fright that replaced it go as well.

And then I got to see the exact moment she stopped being a person. I let loose in my pants. It was the longest and most intense orgasm of my life. It felt like I was filling my pants with a quart of lava-hot jizz. So much better than the break-in rapes or the hookers I beat up in the city. I’d never bothered with any of that ever again.

I kept choking her, even though I knew she was dead. When I felt her hyoid bone snap, I finally let go and leaned back into my seat. I yawned suddenly; yawned so wide that my jaw cracked. My first post-kill sleepies, although I hadn’t thought up the name yet. I shook them off. There was work still do.

I looked around to make sure we were still alone and then turned on the dome light. She lay there like a broken doll. There was just nothing there anymore, not the flush of her youth, or her nervous energy, nothing of what I had found so attractive just a few minutes.

There were scabs on her arms, and her legs were rough with stubble where they stuck out of the ragged hem of her denim miniskirt. I tore open her thin t-shirt. Her breasts were tiny and the right was larger than the left. I touched them both and squeezed them as hard as I could. She didn’t scream, so it was just boring.

I brushed her hair out of her face. She was actually pretty ugly when you got down to it. Acne scars and a big nose. She had nice eyes, I guess, a calm blue that was going white as the corneas dried.

I unzipped the skirt and tugged it off. Filthy yellow panties. I pulled them off too and found a tampon string hanging from her cunt. The whole wound was an angry red, and smelled infected, like it was rotting away. She had shit herself. More mess to clean up.

I got out and walked around to her door. She was leaning against it and fell most of the way out of the car all on her own. I took up a bunch of her hair and pulled her the rest of the way out and dropped her on the grass.

I took off her shoes and socks and set them aside and then gathered the rest of her clothes out of the car. I pulled out her cheap earrings out and stuck them in my pants pocket.

I hadn’t parked out with her in the middle of nowhere on a whim. I had scouted the area for weeks while running errands for the bed-bound wife. I dragged her to the old well I had found and left her there.

I walked back to the car and got out paper towels and bleach and lighter fluid and a large jar of lye. I stripped off all my clothes and added them to the pile with hers and cleaned myself up in front of the car with the headlights on. The bleach burned my skin and I got itchy. I would have to think of something else for next time. I put her earrings in a little jelly jar and topped it off with bleach.

The great wads of bloody paper towels and the clothes I carried over to a small pit I had dug yards from the well. I soaked them with the entire can of lighter fluid and tossed it in as well. I lit an entire pack of matches and flicked it into the pit from as far away as I could manage. A great fireball lit up the night.

I swore all the way back to her body. I picked her up and dropped her in the well ass-first and she folded up like a pocket knife and there was a splash. I poured an entire bottle of bleach over her then I carefully open the gallon jar of lye and poured it in as well. I wasn’t sure what it would do. I knew there was water down there, but not how much. Maybe the lye would burn her up.

I replaced the boards I had taken off the well earlier and walked back, naked, barefoot and cold to the fire pit and tossed in the lye jar and the bleach bottle. The pit was burning merrily. I wanted to stay and watch, but I knew I needed to leave. I pulled on the extra clothes I had brought and marveled again at the amount of cargo room.

I drove away and parked at another location I had scouted out. It took hours to clean the car. I had at least thought to put a thick mil plastic under the seats and the floorboard and had put all the mats in the garage. The sheeting had caught most of the blood, and the interior cleaned up well, but the passenger seat was a total loss, soaked in blood and shit and piss. I unbolted it and tossed it in a ditch. When I was otherwise ready to go back home, I soaked it with the extra can of lighter fluid and set it on fire as well.

I parked in the garage to keep the neighbors from noticing the missing seat and took a shower in the downstairs bathroom. I wasn’t sleeping in the same bed with my enormously pregnant wife, so she never even knew I was gone. I called around the next day until I found a seat in a junkyard and replaced the missing one before my wife, who could only get out of bed to go to the bathroom or the hospital, even knew. By the time she went into labor, even the bleach smell was gone.

I told her the scratches were from a cat I had found that had been hit by a car. It had lashed out while dying, I had said, which was mostly the truth. I had been gone so long burying it. It was a good excuse. I hated to use it up.

The first kill. Nothing like your first. There are an even dozen jelly jars in my secret place in the basement and that old Subaru had helped with every one of them.

I must have not moved for a solid half-an-hour while reminiscing and my wife finally came outside to check on me. She walked in front of me and waved her hand in my eyes. I hated that. Every time she did it, I thought about cutting off her hands.

“Are you OK?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Just empty-nesting,” I said.

She looked down and leaned in. “You have an enormous erection,” she said with the slightly humorous lust of the long-married.

“That’s the upside of the empty nest,” I said and leaned forward enough for it to dig into her hip.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, a smile on her face. I nodded and let her lead me.

I would have to break in the new Subaru another night.

---

 

7: Never Too Early

 

“Rise,” she told the ocean.

They had crisscrossed the continent in their battered Subaru while she was in the womb, dreaming. They had said the prayers to the gods of the forest and walked in the forgotten places of the desert where ancient cities of the dead clawed at the entombing earth and at the edge of the ocean where potential, dread potential, had filled her mother like a second and dark child.

“Rise,” she told the ocean, her thin arms held out, her hands open and fingers beseeching.

Promises had been made in oath, blood, semen, and sacrifice to connect the child to all the powers that waited for the spreading stain of humanity to recede. Conceived in filth, she had crouched in the womb for nearly two years before splitting her mother open, like a lightning-struck tree. It had rained for ten days after she spat herself into the world, the demons of wind and rain providing a baptism. Two hundred humans had died in the flooding, a gift to the child as she howled in tainted bowers while priests sewed her mother back together.

“Rise!” she told the ocean, tears beginning, quivering on the lower lids, begging permission to fall.

They watched the signs and portents as the child grew. They fed her nightshade and Jerusalem cherry. They fed her crab’s eye and wolfbane. They fed her ragwort and pennyroyal. All the poisons of the earth flowed into her and she grew strong. “I love you,” would whisper the mother as the child rubbed ongaonga in her young flesh and sighed with pleasure.

“Rise!” she told the ocean as her parents, nude beside her, lashed by the growing wind, smiled down at her lisping blasphemy.

When the stars came right, they visited again all the places they had been as she gestated, letting renewing vows with her own voice, gathering blessing and gifts, making sacrifices anew with her own hands and teeth. They drove from atrocity to atrocity until they reached the western ocean.

“RISE!” she told the ocean, her voice cracking like a cloven stone.

The trees of the forest screamed and the sands of the desert howled and the frozen wastes began to tremble and shake. The wetlands bubbled with insane laughter. It was beginning.

 

 

Her father cut off his genitals and flung them into the sea. “The blood of the father,” he whispered as drew he bloodied hand down the right side of the child’s face. Her mother reached between her legs and smeared the blood found there down the left side of the girl’s face. “The blood of the mother,” she whispered as she sank to the sand, the languid menstrual flow becoming a spray that spilled her life out onto the hungry beach.

“RISE!” she told the ocean, her eyes wide and white under the blood.

And it did.

---

 

8. Call of the Road

 

“What are we doing second?” his wife asked again.

“Can you give me a minute, sweetheart?” he asked from behind the tree.

“We need to get going,” she said. Their dogs ran around her excitedly barking as she cleaned the last dishes of breakfast in the stream they had camped near.

“I know that,” he said. “Goddamn redneck chili. It’s like I’m shitting barbed wire.”

“I told you not to eat that,” she said smugly.

“And fire ants. Like barbed wire coated in fire ants,” he gasped. The small white dog, Rufus, ran to the sound of his voice. His short legs and tiny feet skidded to a halt when he got around the tree, and then he ran off with a startled yelp.

“What did you do to Rufus?” she asked.

“Will you just give me a minute?!?” he yelled. “Lava is literally coming out of my asshole right now!”

“Come here, baby,” she said to the small dog cowering beside her. “Did Daddy scare you? Did he? He’s a very bad Daddy.” She picked Rufus up and he shivered in her arms as she cooed and clucked. Their new dog, large and black-furred and seemingly quite slow continued to chase his own tail until he hit the side of the car, sat down suddenly, and looked around confused.

“Is there more toilet paper?” he asked.

“No,” she said, not checking.

“Paper towels? Napkin?”

“I’ll look.”

“An old T-shirt? One of the floor mats? Anything?”

She slung Rufus under one arm and looked through the car. “Hold on,” she called.

“Hurry!”

As she walked toward the shitting tree with the paper towels, Rufus began to growl.

“Dear God!” she said.

“I know!”

“The human body shouldn’t be capable of making a smell like that!” She tossed the paper towels toward him and fled to the safety of the car.

“What are we going to name this dog?” she finally asked, when his tortured groans had subsided.

He walked back to the car, not answering her, staggering and carrying empty paper towel tube.

“Honey, what are we going to name this dog?” The nameless dog was laying his head in her lap and his tongue lolled out as she rubbed his ears. Her husband opened the back hatch and began to rummage around.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“I’ll find it,” he said.

“Just tell me, maybe I know where it is.”

“The camping shovel. The folding one that we just bought.”

“I don’t know where that is,” she said. “What do you need the shovel for? Oh, wait. You are going to bury your waste? Very environmentally responsible.”

“Ah-ha!’ he said. She angled the rearview mirror to see him holding the shovel up in triumph.

“First, I’m going back there and beat it to death,” he said. “And then I will bury it!”

When he returned, she saw him fling the folding shovel into the rushing stream. “We’ll buy a new one,” he said grimly as he settled into the driver’s seat.

“I’m having a great time,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.

“I hate camping,” he replied. The Subaru quietly came to life when he turned the key.

“What do you want to do next?” she asked.

“I want to take a shower. A very long shower.”

“I mean with the car. We can do anything!”

“Let’s ask it,” he said, as his wife attached the dogs’ harnesses to the back seat.

“Ask it?”

He touched the navigation icon a bland female voice said, “Destination?”

“Random,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the car replied.

“Take us somewhere fun!” his wife said.

“Take us on an adventure!” her husband said.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the car replied.

“Destination,” it repeated as they thought.

“Take us somewhere we haven’t been before,” his wife said.

The car paused. They looked at the touchscreen display. One of the dogs growled and farted.

“Please fasten your seatbelts and proceed east 2.3 kilometers.”

“Alright,” he said.

After a right and a left and a dirt road that was barely a road, the car finally had them take a state road in reasonably good repair.

“I wonder where we are going,” his wife asked, finally awake. He had long marveled at her ability to sleep anywhere, under any condition.

“Proceed north 23 kilometers,” the car said.

“North 23 kilometers,” he replied and she gently punched his arm.

“Are you two OK back there?” she asked, turning round to look at the dogs. They both whined agreeably and thumped their tails on the seat.

“Do you want me to drive for a while?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine for a couple of hours at least. I wouldn’t mind finding somewhere to get an energy drink.”

“You shouldn’t use those,” his wife said.

“I don’t use them; they aren’t a drug. You talk like I’m looking to freebase some meth.”

“We are in meth country, though. I bet the whole rusty water tower that old man tried to lure us to was one big meth lab,” she said, using both hands to sketch out a mushroom cloud and then made explosion noises with her mouth.

“Increase speed to 100kph,” the car said primly.

“What did she say?” his wife asked.

“Increase speed to 100kph,” the car said again.

“I guess we are on a schedule,” her husband said. He pressed the accelerator until they reached 90kph.

“Increase speed to 100kph,” the car said again.

“Picky bitch,” his wife said and they laughed.

The Subaru began to ping like a door was ajar.

“OK, OK… nagged by a damn car,” he said.

“‘Nagging’ is a sexist term,” his wife said and then burst into giggles. “You better do what she says.”

He took the car up to 100kph.”I hope the car knows what it is doing. This is racist-as-fuck country around here. I’m not interested in getting ass-fucked by a baton.”

“I’ll sic the dogs on them,” his wife said brightly.

She whipped her head around as they passed a speed limit sign. “You better slow down, baby. That said it is 45mph through here.”

“What is that in kilometers?” he asked.

“How should I know?”

“You were the one that wanted us to set the car to only read out in metric. The car says the outside temp is 22. Do I need a coat? Sunscreen? I don’t fucking know.”

She was caught in another fit of giggles.

“Car, what is 45 miles per hour in kilometers per hour?” he asked loudly and with careful pronunciation.

“Car?” she asked. “Don’t call her car. Her name is Subi.”

“What?”

“Subi, how fast are we going in miles per hour?” she asked.

“Wait, is it even voice-activated?” he asked. “I was acting like it was Alexa.”

“We are currently traveling at 62 miles per hour,” the car said.

“OK, you really should slow down,” his wife said.

He took his foot off the gas and the car began to slow. “The cracker sheriff is going to be so disappointed in us.” But he only heard a gurgle in return.

“Please increased speed to 100kph,” the car said and began to ping.

He was looking at the touch screen when his wife began to claw at his arm.

“What is it?” he asked, not looking.

“Gurk,” she managed. The seatbelt had tightened across her throat and lap. With her right had she tried to pull it away from her neck, with her left she had gone back to trying to work the belt release.

“Oh, my god, what is happening, ohmygod,” he said, pressing the brakes and trying to pull onto the soft shoulder of the state highway.

“Please increase speed to 100kph,” the car said again. The dogs in the back began to bark and howl.

As he slowed on the shoulder a huge truck rumbled past them. The car rocked back and forth. He had slowed enough to grab the higher portion of the seat belt and pull it away from her neck. He could not move it. He looked into her frightened, darting eyes and the whites were turning red.

“Please increase speed to 100kph,” the car said again, this time at a deafening volume.

She began to desperately slap at his right knee. The dogs were in a frenzy, making pained yelps as they pulled at their restraints.

“Drive,” she mouthed and slapped his knee again. Her teeth were very white and large as she screamed without any sound.

“Please increase speed to 100kph,” the car said again. It was now an almost seductive lilt.

He closed his eyes tightly for a second, his whole face crunching down onto itself and jammed the gas pedal down. The car shot forward and he heard his wife take a gulp of air and cough and then gulp more. The speedometer crept upward. Her breathing became steady and regular.

“Are you OK? Are you? Are you OK?” he said, among a dozen other inanities until she finally croaked and swallowed and said in a hoarse whisper, “What was that?”

“Take it off, take off the seatbelt,” he told her. The dogs were huddled in the back seat, twined around each other, fast-friends now in their worry and confusion.

“Proceed north 7.2 kilometers,” the car said.

“FUCK YOU!” he screamed at the placid voice. He tried the seat belt release himself but his thumb just sank into the button of the mechanism without it releasing.

“Maintain current speed,” the car ordered.

The road ahead was flat and straight and empty of cars before and behind, so he held the wheel with his knee and tried to pull on his wife’s seat belt. His own seat belt tightened and pulled him back in place.

“Please drive responsibly,” the car said.

“Get your arms under it,” he told his wife. “Under it while it is slack.” She stopped rubbed the raw flesh on the side of her neck and slipped her right arm under the belt and held it against her neck. The belt tightened immediately, painfully. She cried out, her voice broken and dry.

“It’s breaking my wrist,” she gasped. “The belt.” The voice was cut off as her wrist began to crush her throat.

He looked down and saw how the strap of nylon across her lap had tightened as well. Her jeans darkened as she voided her bladder, the stain spreading down her thighs.

“Please drive responsibly,” the car said again.

He looked back to the road. They were coming up on a town. A little flyspeck town, country town, the whole thing was a tumor clustered on both sides of the little state highway. He saw out of the corner of his eye that the strap had loosened enough for his wife to drop her arms. The hot smell of her urine filled the car. When he tried to roll down the window, the button didn’t work. He listened as his wife cried and watched the tiny town grow larger.

“Proceed north 1.2 kilometers,” the car said. His wife’s left hand found his arm and clung to it.

A “Welcome to” sign flashed by too fast for him to register the name. A sick feeling crept into his stomach, like a light hit to the testicles. He felt like he was falling and falling and falling.

“Stay in lane,” the car said as soon as he saw her crossing the road. He tensed his hands and forearms to swerve at the last second until he heard his wife already choking and gurgling.

He closed his eye right before he hit the woman that was crossing the road. A dull thud and a cracking noise. The dogs in the back yelped. He opened his eyes to eye the smear of blood on the hood. His flicked to the rearview mirror to see the crumpled form in the crosswalk.

“Lower speed and take the next right,” the car said. He was crying, fat tears running down his face. His wife’s eyes were red again when he chanced a glance.

“Take next right.”

He did and then tried to steer them into a light pole but the wheel wouldn’t move.

“Take next right.”

The wheel turned easily when he did as he was told. They were two blocks from the dead woman in the road. People were clustered around her, some talking to her, he imagined, the others he could see were on the phone or gesticulating wildly.

“Accelerate to 100kph,” the car whispered.

---

 

9. Welcome To The Pack

“I’m so glad he finally agreed to a threesome,” he whispered into her ear. “Where did you pack the peanut butter?”

---

 

10. Dream Big

 

“Push her,” her father said.

“Daaaaaad,” Emily said. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Push her off the mountain,” her father said, without a trace of humor. Unconsciously, she drew her younger sister closer and wrapped both arms around her.

“Do what your father says, dear,” her mother said. “Your sister is only six. There’s plenty of time for us to have another.”

“Emily?” her sister asked, tipping her head back to look up at her sister.

“Dad’s just being silly, Sarah,” Emily told her, but she wasn’t able to keep the uncertainty out of her voice.

“It’ll be quick. Four, maybe five seconds. Look at those rocks down there,” her mother said.

“A little bit of terror and then nothingness. It will be a release,” her father said, in a low voice. A wind came down the peak that rose next to them and pushed the two sisters as if it was all part of the plan.

“Emily?” Sarah asked again, blubbering, face smeared with tears. Emily kissed the top of her sister’s blonde mop of hair.

“It’s just a joke, Shrimply,” Emily whispered into her ear.

“So you are going to pretend that you love her now?” her mother asked cruelly. “You were on your phone the whole ride up. You didn’t say one word to your sister or me or your father.”

Emily groaned and hunched over her sister protectively.

“Mom?” Emily whispered.

“We bought you that phone so we could contact you when we needed it, not for you to spend all your time with your face in it,” her mother said.

“Probably some boy,” her father said. “They always come sniffing around when the blood starts.”

A giant fist grabbed Emily’s stomach and squeezed. She wanted to vomit, to run, to scream. She was hugging her little sister so hard she thought she could hear the child’s bones creak. In her distraction, her mother darted forward and ripped her phone out of her hands.

“We’ll just see who is so important that you ignore your family,” her mother said, a nasty laugh bubbling up from deep within her.

“It’s lo…” Emily started and then made herself stop talking.

“Passcode?” her mother shrieked. “So you are hiding something!”

“Probably sending out pictures of herself to all them boys in her class,” her father said. “All her dirty parts on the internet.” Her father shook his head in disgust.

Sarah was crying so hard she could barely catch her breath, snot and tears running off her face to drip onto her sister’s arms. She didn’t even register the fact that Emily took two quick steps back from the edge of the cliff when their parents were poking at her phone.

“Passcode!” her father snapped.

“N-n-no,” Emily said.

“Now, or you both go over. Having an ugly kid with fucked up teeth is one thing, but I’m not letting a whore live in my house.”

“Both would be easier,” her mother said. She mimed talking on the phone, “Oh, God. I told them they were too close to the cliff. But she was trying to get a photo for her Instagram.”

“Passcode!” her father screamed.

“3-4-9-2,” Emily told him.

“Whore number,” her father muttered, jabbing the numbers into the phone.

“You’ll need my thumbprint,” Emily said, walking Sarah to them before they could object. They were three feet from the edge as she offered up her thumb and her father pressed the phone to it.

“Texts,” her mother said, looking over her father’s shoulder.

“No, pictures,” her father replied. “I want to see what she’s been sending out. What if the guys at work saw this shit? Cucked by my own daughter!”

Emily picked up Sarah and ran for the car, her shoes slapping against the ancient stone of the mountain. Sarah screamed in surprise.

“WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING, YOUNG LADY?!?” her father bellowed. It was the voice that had to be obeyed when you were a child. The “about to run out into traffic” voice, the “about to fall off the roof” voice. Her legs and feet tried to comply, tried to ignore her brain and stop running. Emily screamed and managed to keep going. She opened the driver’s side door and threw her sister in, her shoulders and back protesting and got in herself. Her parents had barely covered half the distance before she had the car locked.

“Out of that car, now!” her mother screeched.

Her father patted his pockets and then patted them again just as Emily started the car, twisting the keys he had left in the ignition.

“EMILY!” her father screamed.

She hadn’t even had her first driving lesson yet. Her father promised to take her on several occasions and always broke his word. She stepped on the brake with her left foot and shifted to drive. She was still crying, she could barely see, her parents were just screaming blobs getting closer.

“Get down there, Sarah,” she told her sister, pointing at the passenger floorboard. The girl, owl-eyed, slid down her seat bonelessly and curled into a tight ball.

“I’LL DO IT! I’LL DO IT!” Emily screamed, but her father kept coming.

She only hit him hard enough the first time to knock him down, backing up past her mother who shook with rage.

He stood, holding his ribs, his mouth red with blood. “I SHOULD HAVE STOMPED YOU OUT OF HER CUNT THE MOMENT SHE TOLD ME!’ her father shouted.

Emily felt like she was being stretched and stretched and stretched until something inside her went cold and calm.

The second time she hit him, he flew over the edge of the cliff, his rage turning to comical surprise.

Emily backed up again until she had her mother in front of the SUV. She watched her mother shake and gape her mouth open and close. There was a small part of Emily, way down deep, that was screaming, but it was easy to ignore.

“Stay here,” Emily told Sarah. She took the keys out of the ignition and locked the Aspect with the fob. She balled up the keys in her hand and walked over to her mother.

“What did you do? What did you do?” her mother asked on a loop.

“I killed him, Mom,” Emily said gently. “Right over the cliff he wanted me to throw Sarah off.” Emily felt better than she ever had.

“Maybe he…” her mother started.

“Yeah, maybe he’s alright,” Emily said. She took her mother’s trembling arm. “You want to go look?”

Her mother nodded like her head was on a spring. When she started walking toward the cliff, Emily plucked her phone from her mother’s nerveless fingers and put it in her jeans pocket.

Emily braced herself when she and her mother looked over the edge of the cliff. Her father was not alright. He landed on an upturned knife blade of rock and split in half. His head and arms and torso where further down cliff face than his legs.

“OH, GOD! OH, GOD!” her mother screamed. Emily swallowed a giggle that bubbled up her throat.

Her mother turned and grabbed her with both arms and yelled in her face, “What are we GOING TO DO?”

She didn’t have the rage and shock on her face like her husband when she fell, just a cow-like placidity and mild confusion. Emily looked over the edge of the cliff. Her mother had gone head-first into a crevasse and wedged there, her legs and feet in the air.

Emily took in the view from the cliff and thought about how beautiful the spot was. It would be a shame when they put in the signs and the railing. Or they might block it off altogether. She took a number of rapid deep breaths and dialed 911.

“My, my, my parents,” she stuttered, breathless and crying and with just the right amount of hysteria. “They were just trying to take a selfie! They fell! They fell!”

She walked back to the car, repeating the story and telling the dispatcher sort of where they were. She inspected the Aspect. It looked fine except for a nondescript dent in the front bumper and a couple of drops of blood on the hood. She licked her thumb and said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” to the dispatcher as she wiped the blood away. She cleaned the blood off her thumb with a rock while cradling the phone to her ear with her shoulder and then threw the rock off the cliff.

“My phone battery,” she said before hanging up the phone, sounding distraught. She needed time to prep Sarah before emergency services arrived. Stupid parents die in a stupid accident. Maybe just tell Sarah to say nothing. Youngest daughter mute from shock.

The Subaru, her Subaru now, beep-blooped when she unlocked it.

---

 

11. Old Friends

 

One Week

“Backyard,” I bark. “Backyard, backyard.” The gate bangs against the post again and again. I scratch at the door.

“Banjo!” she says from the couch room. I bark again.

“I’m coming,” she says. “Calm down.” She is still in sad-face and I am supposed to be on the couch with her. I want to be on the couch with her. I know she needs me. I chuff when I see her and bow with my front legs. I am hers and she is mine.

“You have to go pee-pee again?” she asks, rubbing my head.

“Out, out,” I whine. I wag my tail, love love love swishing back and forth.

“Stay close,” she tells me. “I couldn’t bear anything happening to you too.”

I run out into the yard and patrol the edge of the fence, head down sniffing sniffing sniffing. There is nothing new. I come to the unlatched gate and I open it with a paw. The scent is coming to me from across the fields. I run toward it, smelling constantly: Grass. Dirt. A chipmunk rotting away. Running, my paws digging into the soft earth. The scent. The scent is there. I have the scent. I know it like my own. I run harder.

Gasoline. Cows. Cut grass. But I ignore them all for the scent. It is clear and bright, rich and complex. Love. It smells like love. The wind shifts a bit and a new scent mingles with it. A human. A man. Food. He has food. I stop and smell his food. I lap up some of his food. He says something. Not angry. He touches my head. I sniff him all over. The scent I want is there, under his scent. I am trying to pry the scents apart when the familiar car sound comes up behind me.

It is her. I love her. I ran to her, wiggling all over. I barked “Hello” and “Hello” and “There is something here” and “There is something here.” She puts me in the car. She is angry with me. I can always tell. I watch her talk to the man. I whine. I growl. I bark.

She opens the door and I catch the mingled scents again. I spin in the backseat in frustration.

“I told you not to run off,” she says. She is shaking and crying. I lick the hot tears from her face. She laughs. The first laugh in a long time.

“At least you made a new friend,” she says. As she drives away, I stare at the man and growl softly.

 

One Month

“Hey, there Banjo,” the man says, coming out of the barn. I had only snuffled part of his yard. I bristle. His clothes smell of smoke and detergent and fresh earth and coffee and cooked meat and dust and grease.

“Got out, again, did you?” he asks. There is something wrong with him. Underneath all the human scents there is something metallic and sharp. Something like burning. I let him pet me and lick his hand. He tastes wrong. Makes my tongue hurt. He laughs and kneels down. Same taste on his arm and face. Wrong-taste.

Crunch of gravel. She has found me again. Why can’t she understand?

“I am so sorry,” she says as she gets out.

“Oh, it’s no problem. We’re just becoming friends,” he says. I sneeze because they are talking about me.

“C’mon, Banjo!’ she said. She pulls on my collar. I want another sniff of him. I want another taste. She wrestles me into the car

“I am so sorry to hear of your troubles,” he says to her.

She freezes. Fear smell flows out of her.

“Th-th-ank you for that,” she says. She closes the car door and walks toward him. The window is barely open. I howl for her to get away from him.

“Shush,” she commands. They talk. I keep my nose in the sliver of open window, trying to catch the wrong scent again. Grass and grease again, chickens and far-off sheep.

She gets in the car. “I don’t know what I am going to do about you,” she says. I chuff and she smiles so I chuff again.

The wind shifts as she drives away and a whole new scent floods my nose. It is new and old at the same time. I howl for her to go back to the farm. I need more. I howl and I howl.

 

One Year

New gate. New lock. I press my nose to a knothole in the fence to see if I can catch the scent. I dig under the fence all summer. The ground is hard. She fills in my hole twice. After a good long rain, I find I can get under the fence. I run as fast as I could. I will avoid him this time. I will find the scent. Almost there. I will find–BALL! HE THREW A BALL! BALL! BALL! BALL!

I collapse on his porch panting. So much ball time. She is already there to pick me up. I have failed.

“It’s been a year now,” he says.

“A year,” she says. Sad face. I whine.

“Sore subject,” he grunts. He turns the ball over and over in his hand.

“There’s still…” she begins as he threw the ball.

BALL!

 

Five Years

Behind the barn. It is behind the barn. He finds me digging and kicks me. I growl at him. When she touches the sore spot when we are on the couch, I yelp and she kisses me.

 

Ten Years

I have never forgotten. I cannot get out of the yard. I have never forgotten. I stare at his farm. I smell the wind.

“You want to go see your friend?” she asks. I look up at her. She glows. My tail thumps on the floor.

“Who wants to go for a ride?” she asks. My tail thumps harder. Sometimes that thing has a mind of its own. “Does Banjo want to go for a ride?”

Go. Ride. I get up off my bed slowly and walk to wear the leash hangs.

“Good boy, you are such a good boy,” she says.

I do not know where we are going until she is almost at the farm. It has not changed. She lets me out. It hurts to get to the ground. The gravel hurts my feet. I start sniffing things.

“Hi!” she says. He is sitting on the porch. I can barely see him. But I know his sour smell.

They talk. I let him pet me. They talk. I whine.

“You need to go potty?” she asks. “Go potty,” she says, “Go on.”

They talk. I hear my name a few times but I do not turn back. I get to the edge of the barn and I pause to look back at them but they are not looking at me.

The ground behind the barn is soft and wet, but the digging still hurts. But this was the place I smelled her last. This was where he kicked me. I keep digging. She isn’t deep.

I can hear them talking as I get closer to the porch. I want to bark. I want to howl. I want to growl.

“It’s been so long,” she says. “She would have started her senior year this August.”

“Has it really been that long?” he asks. Through my good eye, I see him show his teeth.

Up the porch steps, each one hurting. I cannot hear their words any longer. My blood is roaring in my ears. I bump my head into her leg and the blood noise stops.

“What did you find, boy?” she asks.

She screams when I drop the small skull of her daughter at her feet.

---

 

12. F.U.C.K.S.

 

“FUCKS!” the Subaru bellowed. “FUCKS!”

“Why won’t it shut up?!?” Sharon screamed in Ron’s face.

“Be quiet!” he said in an urgent whisper. “It might hear you.” The vendor booth they were hiding in shuddered as the Subaru stomped passed.

“I don’t care, I don’t care, I just want to go home!” she sobbed.

“Sharon!” he whispered. “Get ahold of yourself! Panicking is not going to help us.”

“Why did you make me come here? I hate cars. You know I hate cars!”

Ron took her by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. “Be quiet!” When she opened her mouth to say something, he slapped her and then slapped her again.

“Shut up!” he said.

She sniffled and held a hand to her face and glared at him, but she was quiet.

“FUCKS!” the Subaru roared. The sound was further away now, combined with ripping metal and shattering glass. He chanced a quick look over the table of the booth. It was raping a minivan. “FUCKS!” it groaned.

“It’s right by the main exit,” he told her, ducking back under the table.

“Wha-what about the other doors?” she asked in a quiet voice. Her eyes were angry and red and his handprint was blooming on her face.

“Dead bodies all around them,” he said.

“How are we going to get out?” Sharon asked.

“FUCKS!” the Subaru howled.

Screams. Ron looked over the table. Three people rushed the Subaru, hitting it with folding chairs. He saw it was a distraction. A group was rushing the main exit. The Subaru pulled itself out of the ruined minivan and dropped on all fours, crushing two of the attackers. It rolled over the third and began honking and raping and revving its engine.

“Mark!” a woman in the group screamed as she was dragged through the exhibition hall exit. The Subaru stood, its penis, glistening with motor oil and blood, dropped into a lower gear and rumbled. It waddled toward the exit doors. “FUCKS!” it screamed as it slammed into the doors.

Ron got back under the table.

“Why build something like that?” Sharon asked quietly.

“What?” he asked.

“Why build an electric blue Raparu with a four-speed manual penis?!?”

“FUCKS!” the Subaru rumbled. It mounted a hatchback and flipped its high-beams on and off in orgastic pleasure.

“We should run now, Sharon,” he told her calmly. “It’s away from the exit now.”

“I didn’t want to go to the car show, Ron,” she said.

“I know, but we have to go now,” he said.

“I bit my tongue when you shook me,” she said. She opened her mouth to show him.

“I’m going, I’m going now,” Ron said, standing up.

“He’s gonna FUCKS you,” she said.

“Goddammit, Sharon,” he said and vaulted over the vendor table. He ran, dodging car parts and dead booth girls and the abstract pieces of destroyed displays.

“FUCKS,” the Subaru screeched. It reared back and ripped the hatchback door off. It dropped back down to all four wheels and raced toward him, the still-deployed penis digging a furrow in the cheap industrial carpet of the exhibition hall.

Ron didn’t make it.

---

 

13. Road Trip

 

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7OQC/subaru-road-trip-song-by-bingo

 

“No, it worked great,” she told Gloria over the phone. “The ‘ran out of gas’ trick worked perfectly. He picked me up and drove me around. We got milkshakes and stopped at a produce stand. I went cowgirl this time, ponytail, a little eyeliner, buttoned-down shirt… Easy.”

“Does he look fertile?” Gloria rasped into the phone.

“As the day is long,” she replied.

“And healthy? He must be healthy,” Gloria demanded.

“This is not my first time at the rodeo, Gramma,” she said. She stripped off the shirt and kicked off the farm boots.

“Will he call? There are only two days left.”

“He’ll call. They always do. I gotta go,” she said.

“Health to you, child,” Gloria said, “And increase.”

“Health, foremother, and increase.”

She dropped the phone on the bed and took off her dusty jeans and plain underwear. She stood before her floor-length mirror and admired herself, the breasts just starting to droop, the slight paunch of her stomach. She took out the ponytail holder and shook her hair back and forth, turning it brunette, then blonde, then back to pale red.

“Men are simple beasts,” she whispered.

The tiny burner phone on the bed rang softly.

“I knew you’d call,” she said by way of greeting.

“How could I resist,” he replied, trying for a calm just out of his reach. “When can I see you again?”

“When do you want to see me again?” she asked, running her fingers through her pubic hair, watching herself in the mirror.

“What about tonight?”

“I’m busy tonight,” she told him, letting her voice go cold.

“What? Got a hot date?” he asked. There was disappointment in his voice and she shivered with pleasure.

“Yes,” she said cruelly. “He’s very hot. Tall, dark hair, but not pretty. I don’t like ‘em pretty. I want to know I’m with a man, you know?”

“Oh,” he said quietly. She rubbed that little “oh” in tight circles around her clitoris and bit her lip not to laugh.

“Big hands,” she said. “Rough. Works for a living, you know?”

“OK, well, I…” he said.

“But I’m free tomorrow night,” she said brightly.

“Is, uh, he, uh, is he going to have a problem with us going out?” he asked.

“No, he’ll be dead by then,” she said. He responded with a startled laugh.

“Oh, will he then?” he asked, warming to the game he thought she was playing.

“I’m going to spin him up in my web and drain him dry,” she whispered. “He’ll be a husk by the time you get up the nerve to call again.”

“So you’re a spider, now?” he asked.

“No, I’m not a spider,” she said.

“What are you really doing tonight?” he asked.

“Getting ready for you to pick me up, of course,” she said, squeezing the glands on either side of her pubic mound to stimulate the flow of venom.

“Seven?” he asked. “Is seven good for you?”

“Of course it is,” she said, rubbing the paralytic on her nipples and lips. “You drive. I’ll have my hands full.”

---

 

14. The Boy Who Breaks Everything

 

The boy who breaks everything was used to not being touched very often. Certain touches were fine: a pat on the head, his father holding his upper arm to guide him away from people, his grandmother dryly pecking at his cheek. But he was told to keep his hands to himself at school and at home. There was no more snuggling on the couch with his mother when they watched TV. And his parents bolted their door when they went to sleep at night; they couldn’t risk him crawling under the covers to be with them.

***

“He’s getting worse,” he heard his father say one morning. The boy was eating breakfast from a heavy steel bowl with a heavy steel spoon while sitting gingerly on a heavy steel stool. His parents thought he couldn’t hear them arguing in the garage.

“He’s just fine,” he heard his mother reply. “Fine” was her favorite word.

“It’s not just bruises any longer,” his father said. “He broke that girl’s arm!”

“He’s special. I’ve told the school that. They have to make accommodations. He didn’t mean to break her arm,” his mother said.

“He never means to do it!’ his father yelled.

The boy tensed and the handle of the spoon split down the middle, the steel peeling away. He carefully got off his stool and dropped the broken spoon into a recycling bin. He crossed to the stove and took a few deep breaths before taking an identical spoon from a tray on the counter. It was cold and heavy and dull in his hand and it didn’t break.

***

The boy that breaks everything had visited doctors with his mother. She was calm and clear-eyed when she explained what was wrong with her son. The doctors never believed her, not even the time he sat down in a heavy chair and the legs shattered, dumping him to the floor.

One doctor had explained to his mother the diagnostic parameters of Munchausen’s By Proxy and the boy had cried and tried to tell the doctor that his mother had never hurt him. The doorknob came off the door when he tried to run from the office, so he pushed on it and the door slammed to the floor. They had fled before the doctor could react; his mother herding him to the car without touching him. He spent the entire ride home with his hands in his armpits and didn’t stop crying until his father got home.

***

“Maybe we should send him somewhere,” his father said.

“What do you mean by that?” his mother asked. The boy trembled at the shock and fear in her voice.

“Somewhere he could get some help,” his father said. “A hospital.”

“He is not SICK!” his mother yelled.

The boy who breaks everything took a few deep breaths with his eyes closed then picked up his empty bowl and his spoon and carefully walked them to the sink. He wasn’t allowed to touch the dishwasher any longer. He went over to the door out to the garage. He could hear that his mother was crying. The floor beneath him creaked ominously.

“After the girl and… the car, he might be considered to be dangerous,” his father said. “What if the school had called the police? What if the girl’s parents had pressed charges?”

“You’re not talking about a hospital,” his mother said quietly.

“What if the police come to the house and he gets upset?” his father asked.

“He wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

“Tell that to the girl at school. Both bones in her forearm, her elbow out of joint.” The boy heard his father shuffling his feet, loud in the empty garage.

The boy watched his sister glide through the kitchen like a ghost. She saw him at the door to the garage when she opened the refrigerator. She froze, wary like prey, then grabbed a bottle of water and scurried back to her room.

***

“I’ll be good, Mommy!” he had told her as they had driven home from school earlier in the week.

“It’s not a matter of being good or bad, sweetie,” his mother had told him. “Even if you hurt someone on accident, they’ve still been hurt. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her!” he had said, tears running down his face. “I was just helping her up. She fell!” The car shuddered and the wheel seemed to twist itself out her hands.

“Calm down,” she told him, hiding the alarm in her voice. “Breathe slowly, in and out, in and out.” His face was pale under his freckles and his chest rattled when he inhaled and exhaled.

“The school is going to want more testing before they are going to let you go back,” she said steadily.

“They kicked me out of school?” he asked.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “Just a few days off. There’s nothing wrong with you. Like snow days. You can play in the yard and we can go to the park.”

“I wasn’t mad at her! I was just helping her up!”

“Strong emotions seem to do it,” his mother blurted out. She had never told him her theory. “Even,” she said. “Calm. Neither happy or sad.” She took her eyes off the road and looked at him. His face was red, squeezed in on itself.

“I’m a freak!” he yelled. He kicked the dashboard under the glove box and his foot went through it. The window beside him crazed. The radio squealed and died. He slapped his hands against the dash in frustration.

“Calm down!” his mother said. But it was too late. The engine made a noise like it was being torn in half and the car rolled to a stop.

***

“We’re going to keep him here until we can decide where to send him,” his father said over his mother’s sobbing.

“What about school?” his mother wailed.

“We’ll homeschool him for now,” his father said.

“What about his friends?” his mother asked.

“You know he doesn’t have any friends,” his father said. There was no cruelty in his voice; he was just stating a fact.

His mother cried harder.

“And keep him away from that new car!”

***

The boy that breaks everything walked away from the garage door and went upstairs to his bedroom. He walked softly up every step and closed his bedroom door with a gentle click. He sat down carefully on the mattress on the floor and stared up at the crack in the ceiling of his roof. He breathed, anxiety knotting up in him. “Neither happy or sad,” he whispered. “Neither happy or sad.” He heard the garage door open beneath him and the new car squeal out of the driveway. In the pregnant quiet of the house, he heard his mother coming up the stairs.

“Sweetie?” she said at his door. “Are you doing OK?” She checked on him like this dozens of times a day.

“Yes, Momma,” he said.

“There’s a… spoon in the recycling bin.”

“I didn’t mean to, Momma.”

“I know, sweetie. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

“OK.”

“I love you,” she said, but couldn’t keep the sadness out of her voice.

“I love you too, Momma.”

***

He traced the cracks with his eyes and concentrated on breathing until he heard a car door close. His father was back. He got up carefully from the mattress and went to his window. His father was circling the new car, bending down to read the tires, opening the trunk and closing it, opening each door and the hood in turn.

“I love you, Daddy,” he said to the closed window. He watched until his father finally came inside.

“Neither happy or sad,” he whispered. He opened his bedroom door quietly and tiptoed past his sister’s room and down the stairs. His mother and father were talking quietly in the living room. He went to the front door and unlocked it.

“Neither happy or sad,” he said under his breath.

He opened the front door and screen door just enough to slide outside. He held onto the screen door as it closed and let it rest on the strike plate rather than click closed. He walked carefully across the porch and onto the driveway.

“Neither happy or sad,” he said with every step. The sun was hot on his face and hands. He needed to pee. And keep him away from that new car! his father’s voice kept saying in his mind. “Neither happy or sad, neither happy or sad,” the boy began to chant.

He reached out and touched the handle of the car door. Nothing happened. He opened the door. It didn’t fall off, the paint didn’t flake to dust, the hinges didn’t even squeak.

“Neither happy or sad,” said one final time and slid into the driver’s seat. Nothing. He reached out to touch the steering wheel. Nothing. He grinned and bounced in the seat a little. Nothing, still nothing.

He felt a little runnel of fear in his chest when he realized his parents were watching him. His mother was holding on to his father and they were both smiling.

“Momma!’ he shouted, jumping out of the car. “It didn’t break, I didn’t break it.” He took off running toward her. Every step the boy took shattered the concrete under his feet.

“No!’ his father screamed.

“Momma!” he shouted again, the pure joy of a child that had pleased a parent.

The boy that broke everything ran straight into her open arms.

---

 

15. Gaijin Ghost Girl

 

No one told me every Subaru came with its own gaijin ghost girl. I did not even know she was a ghost girl at first. She was not wet. Her uncombed hair did not hang in her face. Her teeth were not black. She smiled and opened her mouth and there was no chorus of horrors from the depths of Hell. I was very confused.

Once my bicycle, basketballs, and guitars had all disappeared from the rear storage space, I was very concerned. But there, across the street, was smiling ghost girl. Once I drove away she was in the seat beside me. She did not smell badly and seemed very clean. I asked my friends if they could see her and they said no. They tried to take my keys from me. They said I had been drinking. Smiling ghost girl frightened them until their hair turned white and they became figurines for sale in a vending machine. I apologized to my friends. I had no change.

I took my new Subaru to the dealer to talk to them about my smiling ghost girl. Maybe there was a recall issued. That is when I found out about the new car ghost girl mandate from the government. Ghosts girls would wander all over Tokyo and in many of the smaller cities and villages. This caused much disruption in local economies and hundreds of gruesome deaths. It was decided to weld the charred bones of a ghost girls in the frame of every new car and mix their ashes into the paint. This made the ghost girl the responsibility of the car owner. The girl would stay with them and not kill them and even be their ghost girlfriend if they wanted. The dealer said the new law was talked about on the television and reported in all the newspapers. I do not remember hearing about it. I cannot return my haunted car.

 

 

Except for brief visions of her screaming in my face with a distended mouth, and I have gotten used to my smiling ghost girl. She does not speak and never tries to change the music. She stays in the car all night. I never have to take her to dinner or buy her presents. She cannot text me or call. She is a good girlfriend in these many respects.

More and more cars have their own ghost girls. I see her waving to them and giggling behind her hands. At least four every time we go anywhere. Why do we have so many ghost girls? Why is mine smiling all the time when she isn’t screaming in my face? I cannot even ask her how she died.

I look at her and she looks at me. The sunlight is shining through her. She touches my hand out of doomed attraction. All I feel is cold.

---

 

16. Girl’s Trip

for Heroic Mulatto

 

The drive had been long to do just by herself, stopping often for energy drinks, junk food, and ice, so Tabitha sat for a moment in the driveway. Her grandmother’s squat white house looked the same as when she had dropped her off six months earlier. Maybe a little more rundown. Grandma was getting old and she might not be able to live alone for much longer. She preferred to be called Abuela. Tabitha would have to remember.

Her Abuela walked down the driveway before Tabitha even finished getting out, her gray-streaked bun falling apart, waddling, excited.

“You have it, you have it?” she asked Tabitha excitedly.

“Yes, Gra- Abuela,” Tabitha said. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Nothing worthwhile is, child,” Abuela said in her ear as she hugged Tabitha. “And the father?”

“Harvested, as you instructed.”

“We must get started,” Abuela said and began coughing. She turned back to the house and waved her granddaughter along with impatient motions.

“Yes, of course.” Tabitha pulled the cooler out of the back of her Subaru and followed her into the house.

—

Abuela held the fetus under the bright lights of her kitchen island and inspected it through the tough biohazard plastic.

“It is perfect, Tabitha,” Abuela whispered. “I knew he would bring a powerful spirit to your offspring. How did you take it from your womb?”

“Mifepristone-induced miscarriage. I expelled it in an emergency room and they bagged it for me so that I could give it a ‘Christian’ burial.”

Abuela giggled. “They were just going to throw it away?” The old woman turned and spat into her sink. “White people know nothing about the world. Let me see the rest.”

Tabitha pulled a Heavy Duty Freezer Ziploc bag out of the cooler and laid it on the kitchen island. Abuela unzipped the bag, spilling out a penis and a set of testicles out on her cutting board. They sat in a a thick pool of red-black blood.

“Mucho,” Abuela said. “You must have had fun with this one!” Her laugh boomed through the kitchen until it dissolved into another coughing fit.

“Are you OK, Abuelita?” Tabitha asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, backing away to spit something black into the garbage disposal.

“Get the sheet pan from under the sink,” the old woman said. “The big one, and the silicone sheet. And set a pot to boiling.”

“Yes, Abuela.”

Abuela manicured the genitals, trimming off the pubic hair and cleaning under the loose foreskin. Abuela tsked. “His prepucio is so loose. He has been with many women.” She picked the genitals up with a pair of tongs and ran them under cold water in the sink.

“How did you take these, Tabitha? You did not drug him, yes?”

“No, Grandma. I followed your instructions.”

“Because some things can ruin the meat…”

“I hit him in the temple,” she pointed at the side of her head, “Hit him with one of his free-weights until he was almost dead and then took it with a carpet knife.”

“And he never knew your true name?”

“And I didn’t meet any of his friends and I deleted all his photos from his phone and the cloud.”

“True names have power,” Abuela whispered as she dried the genitals off with a rough towel, cleaned the tongs, and picked the genital clump back up with them.

“Get a big bowl from the buffet and fill it with ice and then water.”

Abuela began dunking the genitals in the boiling water for a few seconds and then pulling them back out. “Solidifies the blood,” she told Tabitha. She inspected them under the bright lights of the kitchen island. “Just a little more,” she said.

Tabitha set the bowl of ice water down and backed away from the boiling penis and testicles. The penis skin was drawn and gray, the testicles knurled like an oak burl. Abuela plunged them into the ice water.

“Now we let them sit until cool,” Abuela said. “Let us look at the kuman.”

Abuela opened the biohazard pouch with a sharp knife and let the fetus slide out. She bent over to smell it and grumbled to herself. She felt along the tiny legs and fingers and arms and toes.

“There must be no imperfection,” she told Tabitha. “Imperfection will keep the soul from re-entering the body or give it a path to escape before we can bind it.”

“Yes, Abuela,” Tabitha said absently.

“No, you must listen. You will have to do this yourself someday, for your daughter.”

“I don’t even know if I am going to have kids,” Tabitha said.

Abuela slapped her, blood and mucus from the fetus smearing across her face.

“You forget that white nonsense!” Abuela said. “You will have a daughter. You will continue our line.”

“Yes, Abuela,” Tabitha said, cleaning her face with a towel.

“For five generations…” Abuela began.

“I know the story,” Tabitha said, pouting.

“Then you will hear it again!”

“Yes, Abuela.”

“Where is the fat? Did you forget the fat?”

“No,” Tabitha said, pulling a bag of skin from the cooler.

“The fat of a man who died by violence,” Abuela said reverently. She kneaded it through the plastic until she smiled.

“My great-great-great-Abuela came from far, far away, the seawife of a trader,” Abuela said, turning the skin under the light to inspect it. “She slit his throat when they docked and escaped to our village. She brought wisdom with her and made a kuman thong so that she would prosper in her new home. And when the time came, she taught her daughter to make the kuman thong. And her daughter and her daughter. And when my time came, I was taught to make my kuman.” Abuela pointed at the golden lump on its shrine, a bowl of milk and a bowl of meat set before it.

She poured out the piece of human skin out into the sink and washed it under cold water, and rubbed it dry vigorously with a towel.

“It would have been better to have more but this should render enough. Under the sink, child, get a medium saucepan.”

Abuela plopped down the skin on her cutting board and took up a cleaver. “The kuman see for you.” CHOP. “They see both opportunities and enemies.“ CHOP. “And from thousands of miles away.” CHOP. “They bring luck and prosperity.” CHOP. “Long life and protection.” CHOP CHOP CHOP. Abuela used the cleaver to sweep the chunks of skin into the saucepot.

“Now barely cover the skin with cold water and put it over medium heat,” she said. Tabitha nodded.

“Your mother refused to make a kuman to protect her. She spent too long away from home. Too much time in the north. And you have lived your whole life with the consequences.”

“Mom died in a car accident,” Tabitha said.

“No, she had been cursed!” Abuela said, washing the fetus gently. “The kuman thong told me the truth of her death.”

Abuela used kitchen shears to nip off the excess umbilical cord and wrapped the fetus in a kitchen towel.

“My kuman is powerful,” Abuela said. “It has done what he could to keep you safe and lucky. But you must have one of your own before…”

“Before what, Abuela?”

The old woman waved the question away like a gnat.

“We must start the fire,” she said. Tabitha followed her into the backyard.

“Set the kuman here,” Abuela said, pointing at a slab of stone baking in the summer sun. “It will dry in the heat until we are ready.”

Abuela set a colander upside down over the fetus. “To keep away birds sent by other mæ̀md,” she said and spat into her hand and smeared saliva across the bright metal base facing the sky.

Abuela waddled over to the brick grill that had been stuffed with sticks and twigs and twists of dried herbs. “You must light it yourself,” she told Tabitha, handing her a wooden match. “Intention is everything.”

Tabitha swallowed hard and struck the match on the brick of the grill. She watched it flare and begin to burn down, a couple of long seconds stretching like taffy.

“Now, child!”

Tabitha dropped the match into the sticks and they flared to life.

—

Abuela tilted the saucepan and skimmed off the scum of blood and skin flakes that had formed on the surface with a crude wooden spoon and then stirred it the entire pot.

“It will be enough,” she muttered to herself.

“Look,” she said to Tabitha. “See how the fat is rendering out? Once the water has boiled away we will filter out all the impurities.”

Tabitha looked into the saucepot, gagged, and staggered back from the stove.

“Now?” Abuela asked, “Now you are delicate?”

“I had the powder you gave me to get through the other parts,” Tabitha managed.

“It made you strong, yes? Powerful and unfeeling?”

“Yes. Are you going to teach me to make that as well?” Tabitha asked.

“What make? It was cocaine.”

“Grandma! You gave me cocaine?”

The old woman cackled and shook her head. “Oh, my little one.”

—

Abuela went out and checked the fire. She nodded to herself a few times and beckoned Tabitha outside.

“Check the kuman,” Abuela said, as she began to use a stick to stir the fire. Tabitha lifted up the colander. The fetus was wrinkled from the heat and low humidity, the limbs drawn in, the unopened eyes retreating in the eggshell skull.

Abuela shuffled over and peered over her shoulder. “It is time,” she said. “Fetch the genitales and tongs.”

As Tabitha went inside, Abuela pulled the scrap of ancient goat hide from her pocket. The magic words were in phonetic Spanish, written in her ancestor’s hand. Their literal meaning was lost to time.

“Grandma?” Tabitha asked.

Drawn up and grey, the penis and testicles were cooked and stiff. “Yes, they will have to do. Give them to me and bring the kuman.”

Abuela set the grey meat down on the side of the grill.

Tabitha walked up beside her, the fetus held in another pair of tongs.

“You must do everything from now on, girl. And intend to do it. Intend. It is your will that works the magic. To fail now would be a catastrophe for both of us. An unbound kuman could eat the world.”

“Yes, Abuela,” she said.

“On the grill, girl,” Abuela urged.

The fetus began to sizzle as it hit the hot metal, spitting and popping.

“Now you must read this, over and over, until the kuman is black. This summons and binds.” Abuela handed Tabitha the goatskin. “Say the words as written. As written,” she hissed.

Tabitha began to sound out the words. There were hard on her throat, like hot smoke, like a sickness she was coughing out.

“Keep going,” Abuela said, her eyes hot and streaming tears from the fire, clutching at her chest. Tabitha kept reading and flipped the fetus over, noting the deep black grill marks on the tiny body.

“¡La carne del padre!” Abuela called. She tossed the genitals underhand onto the fire and watched as the skin began to sizzle.

“Blacken it evenly, child,” she said as Tabitha continued to mutter the ancient words. Her tongue began to swell, the goat hide blurring under the smoke and tears.

The penis and scrotum finally burst into flames.

“Pick up the kuman and pass it through the flames, back and forth, but do not let it catch fire itself,” Abuela said. Tabitha did as she was told, numbly, the horror of what she was doing simply shutting off her mind. The fetus had drawn into itself as it cooked, the arms and legs mere nubs, the tiny penis shriveled away, the skin of the head pulled against the skull.

“That is enough,” Abuela said and Tabitha stopped chanting. “Now, now, pull it off the grill.”

Abuela stacked four fireplace bricks on the grill and pointed. “Put it there, the heat will finish drying it.”

“Is that it?” Tabitha asked numbly. “Is it done?”

“The spirit is bound,” Abuela answered. “If it wasn’t, we would both be dead.”

“But is it done?” Tabitha said, her voice climbing register.

“No, we have more work.”

—

Abuela left Tabitha to tend the drying kuman. She stood in her kitchen, watching the girl on the patio, shaking her head to herself. She is so weak, she thought. She should have lived in poverty to make her tough, like bull leather. Close, she is so close. A sudden wave of pain ran down her spine and she held onto the table to keep from falling. The money was taken care of, like the insurance on the house. Hold on, she told herself. She is so close.

—

“Now the fat of a man who died by violence,” Abuela said. The kuman was cooling on a crude, stained clay plate. It was tiny now, no bigger than a peanut shell, and carbon black.

They had spent almost an hour fishing crispy pieces of skin out of the rendering pot and then straining out the impurities through successive layers of cheesecloth. The result was barely half an ounce of grayish fat cooled to room temperature in a small shot glass.

“Enough, enough,” Abuela clucked.

She handed Tabitha a small paintbrush with soft bristles. “Paint on the fat lightly. You just want enough to seal the kuman from moisture.”

Tabitha gagged again and dipped the brush in the shot glass.

“Get every part,” Abuela said.

“I can barely look at it,” Tabitha said.

“What’s done is done and what remains to do you must finish,” Abuela said. “This is our past and your future.” Abuela turned and left the kitchen. As Tabitha worked she could hear the old woman going through the rooms of the house, the occasional crash, the occasional curse wandering into the kitchen.

—

“And now the lacquer,” Abuela said. She watched Tabitha’s wet eyes as she painted the roasted fetus in a thick layer of shiny black shellac. The old woman grumbled and coughed the entire time but did not interrupt.

When the lacquer was dry, Abuela brought out the package of gold leaf. She showed Tabitha how to apply the insubstantial squares and then left her to it.

—

It was near dark when Tabitha finished, a little gold lump the result of all her effort and sacrifice.

Abuela hovered her shaking hand over it. “I can feel its power, child.”

Tabitha looked up at her with red, tired eyes and nodded. Abuela kissed her face. A rare thing. The old woman was not much for physical affection.

“Wait, I have something for you,” she said, her breath sharp with the herbs she had been chewing since the grillwork had finished.

Tabitha watched her grandmother walk into the dark confines of the house. She pulled up her shirt and smelled it. Roasted human meat. The unctuousness of rich fat. She decided to just throw these clothes away rather than try to clean them.

Abuela came into the kitchen, grinning. She had lost so much weight since she and Tabitha had taken their trip, she could see the old woman’s skull.

“Here,” Abuela said, handing her a black lacquered box worked with symbols in red and gold. She opened the lid and showed Tabitha the lining of red silk. “It is for the kuman thong until you find a place of honor in your house.”

Tabitha forced a smile on her face. She picked up the golden boy and placed him carefully into his box.

“How do you feel?” she asked Tabitha.

“Hungry, I guess. For a while there I never thought I’d want to eat again.”

“It is time to eat then,” Abuela said. “Go.”

“Where do you want to go?” Tabitha asked.

“I don’t want anything,” Abuela said.

“I’ll bring you something back anyway.”

“No, just go, you cannot stay the night. I have preparations to make.”

Tabitha sat at the kitchen island, hungry, tired, stunned.

“Go?” she said in a little girl’s voice.

“Two kuman thong cannot stay in the same house,” Abuela said.

“You never told me that…”

“Go!” the old woman roared.

Tabitha stood so abruptly, her stool fell over with an explosive bang.

“There is a bag by the door,” Abuela said. “There is money in it. Find a hotel. Drive in the morning. But take the bag. It has all the things our ancestor brought with her or made for the ritual. Store it away for your own child.”

Tabitha lurched for the front door, the box clutched to her chest. Crying now, blubbering, she grabbed the woven bag and was out on the driveway as night fell. She looked back at the open door but her grandmother had not followed her. It was just a black rectangle, the foul air in the house blowing out. The fresh air made her realize just how much the house stank, meat and blood and a sour smell she could almost place.

She got in her Crosstrek, setting the woven bag on the passenger seat and the little kuman box in a depression in the dash. I’ll throw it out the window, she thought. It can rot in the middle of nowhere, like that crazy old woman. Tabitha started her car and backed out onto the dark access road.

She pulled the box off the dashboard after she drove a couple of minutes.

“I’ll never have children!” she said to the box. “I’ll never put my daughter through this madness.”

On the flat road, she saw her Grandmother’s house explode, throwing light in her eyes with the rear-view mirror, an orange ball rising in the total night.

---

 

17. Barn Wedding

 

narrative begins

Shelter under tree. Hear car. Step out. Mud and rain. Shiver. Open eyes wide. Vehicle stops. Female that has not reproduced inside. Non-reproductive male inside. Male falls for ruse. Inside car. Warm and dry. Attempt communication. Communication failure. Humans attempt communication. Communication failure. Humans smell related. Family. Familiarity. Lick water from fur. Non-reproductive male insists on touching. Do not kill him. Attempt communication. Communication failure.

 

narrative change

“You’re such a talker, yes you are,” he says. The cat meows again.

“His name is Whiskers,” he tells his sister, reading from the tag around his neck.

“Why have you not reproduced?” the cat asks the female.

“Ew. He’s touching me. He’s still all wet.”

“He’s a sweet boy,” he says.

“Why do you refuse to engage in reproductive intercourse?” the cat asks him, batting at the riverboat gambler tie. “Is it because of this?”

“We cannot bring a wet, muddy cat to the wedding,” she says, sniffing, her ovulation artificially suppressed by chemicals.

“I couldn’t leave you out there in the rain, now could I?” he says, addressing the cat.

His sister snorts and tugs at her seatbelt.

“Two older sisters,” he grumbles. “No wonder I’m gay.”

 

narrative change

I could have gone to the lake house with Philip, he thoughts. Cat meows. Seed grows.

The lake house. He drews it in his mind: the deck, the herringbone roof, a tattered beach umbrella, the scratches in the tile near the hallway light switch, the linen from the closet smelling of mildew, hanging them outside to dry, Philip taking him on the deck, boards creaking, seagull shit everywhere, salt air and dead fish and spume, the little room at the top of the stair where you could see nothing but ocean, Philip smelling like his wife’s perfume, Philip, Philip, Philip.

“Are you even listening to me?!?” his sister screechums. She is histrionic. Her womb is dry. No nephew. No niece. Cat paws at his neck, feeling the pulse running through his jugular.

“Why do you dream?” cat askowls as he presents his asshole to the man and backs into him. The cat’s anus leaves a puckered kiss of shit on his lapel.

 

narrative change

picking up cat in the rain why can’t he take anything seriously it is Maddy’s wedding for god’s sake and he is being a man-child like always attention attention look at me look at me been the same way his whole life the baby the baby all the attention no one ever cared about me no nobody cares about the middle child the plain sister the younger sister and the older sister did I take my adderall did I did I did I I guess so who cares this is what they deserve I’ve had to do everything for the wedding and I had to go back and get the flower crown of course she wanted a flower crown fucking Maddy and I had to pick up Tom fucking Tom I get to sleep with all the boys I want because I’m so fun and super-gay and no one for me no one for me I get all the shitty dudebros fuck don’t think about Steve you’re done with Steve it would have been nice to have a date for the wedding I wonder if their will be any cute guys probably not probably not all of John’s friends are man-boys with their video games and vintage tees and fuck the cat the cat touched me again I hate cats I hate cats maybe I should get a dog a big dog and just become a lesbian yuck maybe she could just do stuff to me and I could keep up the house or something a really big dog I’d make a hot lesbian why didn’t I lose weight for the wedding I just want to be touched by something other than my goddamn vibrator mud mud all over my car fuck fuck fuck

 

narrative change

“Adaptive all-wheel drive, bitch!” the car thought as it thrashed another washed-out mudhole.

 

narrative change

They are late, of course, they are late, only my wedding day after all, at least I’m not showing yet, I think as I forced a grin onto my face.

[calibrated squeal of delight]

“What happened to you?” I make myself ask, working the muscles and tendons of my face and throat.

“Who’s cat is that?” I ask, wincing at the rhyme.

I’m getting married in a barn. A barn. Why was I fucking a hipster in the first place? Why did I let him coom all over my cervix? Why didn’t I have it scraped out of me? A barn wedding. I deserve this.

The cat screeches: “This one has had reproductive sex. It is gravid.”

“It’s a long story,” my brother says. I think about the time I caught him wearing my clothes, his erection straining against the thin fabric of my date night underwear. In family be all our embarrassments remembered.

“You look so beautiful,” my sister says. She needs a man to marry and hate.

 

narrative change

“Whiskers!” the old man, the barn owner, cries and picks up the cat.

“NO!” the cat screams. “I have not finished my reproductive studies.”

“You naughty cat,” the barn man says. “Where have you been?”

The cat contorts his small body in an attempt to free himself.

“Unhand me!” the cat howls. “UNHAND ME!”

“Whiskers, are you hungry?” barn man asked. The cat hisses and shits a little.

“I must watch them copulate! I must see the deformities of their offspring!”

The cat jumps from his arms and runs back to the wedding party, paws and claws digging into the wet earth for desperate traction.

 

narrative end

---

 

18. Bear

 

“We must go back and kill them,” the bear said. “We must kill them all.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped.

“Whoa, there. Don’t take it out on me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, deflating. “It’s just been a hard day.”

“You tried to put me in the trunk,” the bear said. His glossy plastic eyes stared straight ahead.

“Well, you aren’t in the trunk, are you?” she asked snidely. All her clothes felt tight and her jaw hurt from gritting her teeth.

“I just can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” the bear huffed. “Maybe you’re…”

“Don’t say it,” she growled, cutting through traffic, speeding, jabbing at the dash to try to turn some music on.

“Maybe you’re…”

“Don’t say it!” she said, as a station began blaring Debbie Gibson.

“Getting your…”

She screamed and wrenched the car across four lanes.

“I am not getting my period!” she yelled.

“I’m a bear,” said the bear. “I can smell it.”

“Stop smelling me!”

“I can’t help it!”

“This. This right here is why I was going to put you in the trunk!”

“OK, calm down,” the bear said.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“I just can’t deal with you when you get like this.”

She slowed, downshifted, and shot through a narrowing gap between two trucks.

“I quit my job for you,” she said tightly.

“Because they were closing in, asking questions about me, Why the giant bear in your office? and Why does it smell like that when it rains? Maybe I smell like that because I’m a bear?!? Sometimes humans are so stupid.”

“Yes, we are,” she whispered, savagely wiping away a tear.

“So we have to go back and kill them, right?” the bear asked. “They can’t know about me. What if they talked to someone? What if the government found out?”

“I know, I know.”

“They’d take me apart,” the bear said as the song changed to the slap bass of Duran Duran. “Stuffing and bones, meat and stitching. I’d die.”

“Yes, kill them, yes,” she muttered to herself.

“Then maybe you wouldn’t try to put me in the trunk anymore,” the bear said primly.

She screamed and beat at the steering wheel with her hands.

---

 

19: Step Into Adventure

 

“I did it, Stephen. I did it like you told me. I left them in the desert.”

“What are you talking about?” Thomas asked sleepily. “Wait, what are doing in my house?”

Walking into Stephen’s house, Thomas realized he had never been in it without Sharon, some tedious couples thing or play date with the kids. Everything had taken on a new significance: the small bowl Stephen dropped his keys into, the immaculate hallway rug, the white, white, white bedroom filled with light.

Stephen sat up in bed, the light sheet falling away to show his well-toned body. “Tom, what are you talking about?”

“I’m free, I’m free,” I said to him, climbing on the bed and jumping up and down. “We can finally be together.”

We went camping exactly where Stephen suggested, the spot bleak and rugged and isolated. Sharon hated it immediately. “I wanted to go glamping,” she whined. “I wanted to sleep in a sustainably-sourced yurt.” Jackson rolled his eyes and played on his phone until it got dark.

“It’s OK, it’s all going to be OK. I made it look like a bear attack!” I told Stephen excitedly. I was confused when he reached for his phone.

“Who are you calling?” I asked, sitting down on the bed. It was still warm from him. I slid an arm under the sheet to feel it. The whole room had his smell: clean sweat and cut grass and two-stroke engine exhaust. Stephen had a job doing something with computers. But he never smelled like computers.

“I’m calling the police, you fucking maniac!’ Stephen said. I slapped the phone out of his hand.

Sharon was easy. I “bumped” into her while we were hiking the ridge. I watched her fall between two boulders, pinballing between them and I was screaming so that if anyone was around I could call it an accident. Mommy fall down, go boom, Jackson would have said when he was three.

“Why would you call the police? I’m going to go over there and talk to them in a few minutes, silly.” I darted in for a quick kiss. He pushed me away playfully, knocking me off the bed and into the glass balcony doors. “Oh, you,” I said, “always such a tease.” He bolted for the bedroom door and I caught him by the boxer shorts and brought him down. As he clawed at the carpet, I pulled the shorts off. His ass was magnificent.

I watched his wife leave for work, dressed business casual. Sharon told me what she did for a living but I didn’t remember it. She would have to go too. At least they didn’t have any kids. Jackson died hard, screaming Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! as I ripped him up. Bear attack! Rowr! I’m sure the dull knife will look like claws. BOY ATTACKED BY BEAR WHILE GUARDING MOTHER’S DEAD BODY the headline will read. Thoughts and prayers. Set up a GoFundMe. Leave with Stephen for somewhere warm after the fickle eye of social media moved on.

“I got strong for you!” I say as I climb up his back. Painfully erect inside my Dockers, my penis nestles in-between his butt cheeks. Stephen is crying with joy. I try to get my shirt off with one hand but he uses his free arm to elbow me in the face. I fall back stunned, seeing stars. That’s a weird turn of phrase. Do real stars rise and fade when you see them? It makes no sense at all.

That first day I saw him getting the bicycle off the roof of his Forester I knew he wanted me; so I bought a Forester myself and used it to get in shape. Sharon insisted on coming with me and dragging Jackson along. I wanted to go camping with Stephen, couldn’t she understand that? I joined a gym. I ate twelve eggs for breakfast. I made my dad bod melt away. Sharon got all excited that I was taking care of myself but her torn-up vagina repulsed me, her dark-nippled breasts sagged like a milch cow. I would leave the bedroom when she changed clothes. The only release I had was Stephen. I’d watch him from our bedroom window mowing his yard or staining his deck or swimming endless laps in his pool. I wiped myself off with Sharon’s curtains.

“You want to play rough?” I ask him. “That’s OK, I like to play rough too.” I climb back onto his and grab his throat from behind. I dig my fingers into his neck and feel his pulse. I should have brought some rope or tape so we could really play. He gurgled and thrashed, really getting into it. “Stephen?” came a woman’s voice. Goddammit! His wife was supposed to be gone. He began to kick at the floor and bucked me off.

Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, I rolled his name around in my mouth like it was the sweetest candy. That first night on the I saw him in the driveway, in bed with Sharon but thinking about him, I pulled her panties off and took her from behind, in the dark, pushing her face down into her pillow so she couldn’t ruin it by talking. Surprise anal. Surprise! I had to sleep on the couch for a few days but I wanted to be alone anyway. She’s dead now. Her brains are all over the pine needles and rocks. I am free, we will be free.

“Hi, honey, I’m home!” I yell from the top of the stairs. I took the time to strip off my shirt and shorts while Stephen struggled to breathe, no sense getting any blood on them. “Tom!” she gasps, staring at my erection. It is longer and thicker than it has even been. I feel like the skin would begin to split and slough off if it got any harder. “What’s happening?” she asks in her dumb little bird voice. “What’s happening, what’s happening?” I say, mocking her and walking down the steps toward her, my mighty erection bobbing. I’m huge. I could fuck the world. I could fuck it in half.

I’m at the bottom of the stairs. I don’t remember falling. I’m at the bottom of the stairs. I reach for her leg as she runs past me. I am wet. My ears are ringing. Stephen is looking at me. “Motherfucker!” he spits. My chest begins to hurt. My hand is wet. I begin to stroke my erection furiously. “I love you,” I tell him. “I love you.”