Deadside in Bug City Read online

  “Absolutely. But that damned bonging is getting on my nerves.”

  “Know what you mean,” she said. She raised an arm and pointed at the neon sign ahead of them. “There’s Bill’s. In a minute we’ll be inside with cold drinks and a blaring jukebox and that ol’ bell can go to hell.”

  “Amen, sister.”

  * * *

  The bell called him and he came out of the darkness and into the fogged light. He saw two men in suits standing over him, talking to Sergeant Fuller, the fat fuck. The bastard clubbed me, Todd Sarkanian remembered. He butt-fucked the perp with the broomstick and he clubbed me.

  “He’s coming around,” said one of the suits.

  “What goes around comes around,” Todd said—or thought he said—sitting up and unsnapping the leather strap securing his pistol in the holster.

  “Kid ain’t right in the head,” Fuller said. “He went fuckin’ nuts abusing the suspect and I had to put him down.”

  “Lying,” mumbled Todd, getting to his feet. The walls of the store were throbbing in and out of focus. The faces of the two detectives seemed distorted, grotesque, as if they were wearing demonic make-up. His head hurt, and each clang of the bell drove a spike of anger deeper into his brain.

  “Hey, he’s—”

  Todd drew his .38 and pointed it at Sergeant Fuller.

  “Sonofabitch,” Fuller blurted. He fumbled for his own pistol.

  Todd squeezed the trigger. The slug slammed into Fuller’s bulging gut. Todd fired again. The second shot tagged the fat fucker’s chest and knocked him on his ass. One of the suits grabbed Todd’s wrist and tried to wrestle the gun away from him. The pistol barked again. The suit’s eyes went wide and he reeled backward, holding his belly. Blood poured through his fingers.

  The other detective drew from his shoulder rig and fired three, four times point-blank at Todd’s chest. The breath went out of his lungs, but there wasn’t much pain. Getting shot wasn’t at all like he’d expected it to be. He grinned at the man who’d shot him, then his legs decided to quit holding him up and he dropped to the floor.

  The fog thickened. The bell called him back into darkness. Funny, Todd thought, how the ringing of the bell was everywhere, bridging this world with the next…

  * * *

  Daisy Winter was between worlds, living in a hazy limbo of her own making (or so she suspected, being what her son called “a control freak”), but what better place to be was there after you’d nearly killed your own mother with your bare hands? Daisy raised the bottle of vodka to her lips for another big pull. It burned good going down, burned even better when it got to where it was going, down there in the belly, close to a cunt that hadn’t had any decent action in months, she sadly lamented. That was how she had come to think of it: A cunt. Not her cunt, but a thing living almost apart from her, denying ownership and existing independently, a pariah, an outcast organ denied any semblance of pleasure. Daisy had been the Queen of Denial. She’d denied herself booze for six months. She’d turned down dates with local lounge lizards and had even denied herself the solitary pleasure of masturbation. But now her denial was over and done.

  Ignoring the pain of her scratched eyeball, she leaned back in the armchair, hiked one leg over the arm, slipped her hand into her panties and fingered herself. The queen is dead. Long live the queen. It was time to reclaim her cunt the way she had just reclaimed vodka as her drug of choice. Self-medication was the way to go when all else failed. And failed all else had.

  Blame it on the bell. Each time that iron bell rang she felt its sonic vibration between her legs. After almost choking her mother to death, she had run out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the cupboard where she’d stashed a fifth of vodka. She chug-a-lugged half the bottle right off the fucking bat. All the while, the bell kept ringing, tweaking her clitoris, making it throb erect. It wasn’t that she was denying what she’d done to the old lady. Not at all. She’d even gone back upstairs to check on the old bitch. Sure enough, old Dora was still breathing, if not kicking. Her eyes were fixed open but Daisy didn’t think she was seeing much of anything. Probably stroked out during the fight. Probably turned her brain into cauliflower. A fucking vegetable. Be better off dead. Then Daisy had picked up the pillow and put it over her mother’s face. After a few seconds, she pulled the pillow away. If she killed her, she’d have to call somebody to take the body away and the coroner would see the bruises on the old bitch’s throat and know foul play was involved. Better to keep her alive till the bruises faded, then give her the pillow trip to heaven—or hell. And in the meantime, Daisy Winter was going to enjoy life, live it to its fullest. That was what the music of the bell was about. Life was as transient as each chime of the iron bell and you had to wring all you could out of your life before you went to your fucking doom. It didn’t make too much sense when you tried to put it into words, but in its immaculate ringing, the bell was saying it all. Without words. The bell spoke directly to her soul. She was not going to be a stupid cunt and deny its mystical message. Her stupid-cunt days were over. She intended to live with cunning, with her revitalized cunt (the word cunt, she knew, had originated from the same root word as cunning, and only in recent history had come to have a negative connotation).

  She rubbed the moist button at the mouth of her cunt faster and faster, and cried out when the orgasm rang her like a flesh-and-blood bell.

  Then she drifted between worlds, floating on the iron bell’s celestial chiming.

  * * *

  James “Slim Jim” Winter nearly ran off the road to let the ambulance pass him, and he hooted as his tires kissed the edge of the gully running beside the blacktop. “Hooo-eeee! That was close.”

  “No shit,” said Josh. “I thought it was gonna hit us for sure. Where’d the asshole learn to drive?”

  “Ambulance school. I dunno. Did you catch my wheel man action? Just like Jeff Gordon.”

  “Who the fuck is that?”

  “You know, the race-car dude.”

  “I don’t watch that crap. Too boring.”

  “I don’t either, but my mom loves that shit. Dad used to take her to the track and they’d get tanked up on a cooler of beer and be at each other’s throat when they got home, but while they were there they had a hell of a good time. That’s what she says, anyway. Who knows. She’s pretty fucking weird lately.”

  “No shit,” said Josh.

  “Shit, is that all you can say?”

  “What? No shit?”

  “Yeah. No shit.”

  “Shit, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “No shit. Shit’s all you do know.”

  They laughed. James socked Josh on the shoulder. Josh socked him back, not as hard. James rolled his window down.

  “Whadja do that for? It’s hot out there,” said Josh. “You’re letting out all the cool air.”

  “So I can hear that bell.”

  “It’s just a fuckin’ bell. What’s the big deal?”

  “I dunno. I just wanna hear it. And find out who’s ringing it.”

  “And you think your old lady’s weird?” Josh reached for the volume button on the radio.

  James swatted his hand away.

  “Hey! What the fuck, man?”

  James said, “I told ya, I wanna hear the bell. Can’t hear it with the radio on.”

  “Jeez.” Josh crossed his arms over his chest and sulked against the passenger door.

  James turned right at the corner of Vinewood and Willow. A man, completely naked, was crossing the street in their headlights and James swerved to avoid hitting him.

  “Holy shit! Look at that crazy fucker,” said Josh, craning his head around.

  Both boys howled as they drove past the naked, balding man.

  “That’s one way to beat the heat,” James guffawed.

  “Yeah, but did you see who that was? That was Bony Berman, the math teacher. No shit, it really was.”

  “Nah. He wouldn’t walk down t
he street naked.”

  “It was him. I swear.”

  “Must’ve found a math problem he couldn’t solve and flipped his shit.”

  “I guess,” said Josh. “Jeez-oh-man, Bony Berman butt naked in the street. What’s the world coming to?”

  Before James could answer with a witty comeback, an ice cream truck with its headlights off came barreling toward them down the wrong side of the street. James’s Jeff Gordon moves deserted him. His hands froze on the steering wheel and he did nothing but wait for the head-on impact. Josh yelped and threw his hands over his face. The ice cream truck swerved sharply toward the lane it should’ve been in, but it was too late to avert the collision.

  In the final seconds before the crash, James heard the ice cream truck’s bell jangling wildly.

  * * *

  She was completely naked now, her piss-stained panties lying in a small pink heap near her feet. The man called Shades had pushed his dark glasses up on top of his shaved head, and his dark eyes seemed to smolder with a demented passion Candace didn’t want to think about. The sloppy-fat Woofer showed his teeth in what was probably supposed to be a grin, but looked more like the snarl of a feral animal, a hissing possum. He picked up her panties and sniffed them.

  “She pissed herself,” Woofer said with a mirthless chuckle.

  “Pregnant cunts can’t hold their pee,” said Shades as he pulled a bundle of black and white cloth from the burlap bag. “Here, put this on her.” He handed the bundle to Woofer, who unfolded it with his stubby fingers.

  When she saw what it was, Candace allowed herself a fleeting moment of hope, but that hope was quickly supplanted by hopeless despair as she remembered that they had referred to her as the unholy mother.

  Woofer lifted her head off the cellar floor and put the nun’s wimple on her, then smoothed out its folds. The headdress smelled of stale cigarette smoke, mildew and unburned incense—sandalwood.

  Candace wanted to plead for her captors to spare her the pain and mutilation of the insane crucifixion, but the duct tape prevented such pleading. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Okay, stretch her out,” said Shades. He had a spike in one hand and the hammer in the other. He bent close to her face and said, “If you fight, I’ll whack your head with the hammer. Got me?”

  She nodded. Then she shook her head as if to deny what they were about to do to her. She glanced down at the pale dome of her swollen belly and thought, I’m sorry, baby.

  Woofer spread her legs wide, then moved behind her and pinned her shoulders to the hardwood floor. Shades positioned the spike against the instep of her left foot and lined up the hammer for the first blow.

  Candace urgently shook her head and moaned against the duct tape.

  “Hold still, titty mama,” Woofer cooed close to her ear. “Don’t move your legs or we’ll go ahead and kill you and your baby.”

  She froze. Closed her eyes.

  The ringing bang of metal on metal accompanied devastating pain in her foot as the spike drove into flesh and bone. Before the second blow landed, she had passed out.

  * * *

  Suzie Shrimpton raised her frozen margarita from the table, tilted the frosty glass and said, “Cheers.”

  Joe Carr lifted his scotch-on-the-rocks and echoed her sardonic toast. “Cheers.”

  They sipped their drinks. Joe opened the pack of cigarettes he’d bought from the vending machine by the rest rooms in the rear of Bill’s Bar, shook one out for Suzie and one for himself, then lit them both with a match. The scent of sulfur mixed with tobacco smoke.

  “Ah, that’s good,” said Suzie, exhaling as she spoke. She propped her elbow on the tabletop and held the cigarette high between two fingers.

  Though he’d never been able to figure out why, the sight of an attractive woman holding a cigarette never failed to send a jolt of sexual excitement through him. “Yeah,” he agreed.

  The jukebox in the corner fell silent, and over the buzz of conversation in the bar they heard the faint tolling of the bell on Holy Cross Hill.

  “Is that damn thing gonna ring all night?” she asked with a weary sigh.

  Joe felt compelled to answer the rhetorical question. “Sure as hell seems like it.”

  “I’ll bet Gary’s head’s ringing like a bell from that punch you gave him,” she said with a tense laugh.

  “I hope I didn’t kill him.”

  “Nah, he’s tough. Bastard gets in a lot of fights. He usually comes out on top though.” She smiled at him with obvious admiration. “He’s not used to having his clock cleaned.”

  Joe shrugged self-consciously. The street door opened and a white-haired man in a seer-sucker suit entered the bar. He gave the bartender a casual salute as he climbed stiffly onto a barstool. “Hear that bell out there?” the old man asked.

  “Been hearing it all evening, seems like,” the bartender said, drawing a beer and setting it in front of the new arrival. “What you reckon it means, Godfrey?”

  The old man took a swallow of brew, giving himself a mustache of foam, and said, “Tell ya what I think. It’s an ill bell that bodes no good.”

  “How so?” The grinning bartender seemed to be egging the old man on as if this were their customary style of barroom banter.

  “Well, you know that old church has an unseemly history,” Godfrey said. “Way I hear it, that bell’s over two hundred years old. Forged in France before their revolution, it was. Used to hang in a monastery in—”

  The jukebox suddenly blared a raucous George Strait song, drowning the old man’s words.

  “Damn,” said Joe, “just when it was getting interesting.”

  “Huh?” Suzie looked at him with raised brows.

  “The old man.” Joe nodded in the direction of the bar. “I wanted to hear the rest of his story.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening,” she said. “Guess my mind was drifting.”

  “Oh.” Joe blew smoke toward the ceiling and took another sip of scotch.

  “I’m not usually like this,” she explained. “This spacey, I mean. I guess it’s this whole thing with Gary. And what happened in the convenience store.”

  “Understandable.”

  “You must think I’m a fool. For getting mixed up with such a jerk.”

  “No, I don’t. We all make mistakes, especially in affairs of the heart.”

  “Hah. With Gary and me it’s an affair without heart. Strictly physical, I’m ashamed to say. Lord, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You must think I’m awful.”

  “Far from it. I think you’re just a little mixed up right now. You’re young, trying to make it on your own and Gary comes along and takes advantage of you. Guys like him, that’s what they do. Don’t blame yourself. Just learn from the experience.”

  “I guess you’re right. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of him.” She crushed out her smoke in the ashtray, suddenly brightened a little and said, “You could help me do it. If you could be with me when I tell him it’s over and I want him gone. ’Course, we’ll have to do it when he’s sober and less likely to wanna fight.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “Sure it is. With you there, he won’t try to push me around or threaten me.” She reached across the table and clasped his hand. “Will you help? Please? You’ll have a friend for life if you do. I’ll do something good for you sometime.”

  The touch of her hand sent a wave of warmth through him. “I…I want to help you, sure, but I don’t want to get in the middle of something that might land me in jail, you know? I mean, this is a volatile situation. What if he flies into a rage? Somebody could get seriously hurt. You never know how these things might turn out. I think you should get a restraining order to keep him away. Let the law handle it.”

  “The law? We just saw the law in action. I don’t need that kind of help. They might decide to stick a broom up me.”

  Joe blushed. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Damn, I’ve got to
call my wife.”

  He started to get up but Suzie didn’t let go of his hand.

  “Will you think about it? Please?” Her eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

  He sighed. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Thank you.”

  His thigh bumped the table’s edge as he stood. He hardly felt it. He could still feel the warmth of her lips and breath on his knuckles. He made his way through the scattered tables to the pay phone next to the cigarette machine. Though he hadn’t finished his first drink, he felt a little light-headed and his legs seemed a bit rubbery and disconnected from his hips. He fished coins out of his pocket, fed a couple of quarters into the slot and picked up the receiver. He punched his home number. A plump woman with huge breasts came out of the Ladies Room, tugging at the seat of her tight slacks. She smiled at him. Winked a painted eye. He smiled back at her but the corners of his mouth felt sluggish and his smile didn’t feel much like a smile. More like a grimace. The faraway ringing in his ear somehow gave him a sense of dislocation. A movie-like image flashed through his mind: a phone ringing in a tomb; a desiccated hand reaching to answer it. Joe shuddered. How many rings was that? Six? Seven? Why wasn’t she answering? What was wrong? Had something happened to Sara? Maybe she’s out looking for me. No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been gone that long. She was probably in the bathroom, maybe taking a shower. Had she showered before work this morning? He couldn’t remember.

  He hung up the phone and went back to the table where Suzie was lighting another smoke. The song on the jukebox finished with a twanging bang. The chorus of distant sirens outside reminded him of a pack of howling dogs.

  “Did you get her?” Suzie asked as he sat down.

  “No answer. She’s probably taking a shower or something.”

  “Let’s have another drink and you can try her again later.”

  “I don’t know,” he said with growing concern. He looked at his watch. “We’re usually eating supper about now. Maybe we should call a cab and head on over there. You hungry?”

  “She might not like me dropping in unannounced. You go ahead. I’ll stay here till I decide what to do.”