Family Tradition

Chapter Seven

When Bess had yet again regained consciousness, the nightmare was not over. Indeed, it was only beginning. Her thoughts pin-wheeled backward, and she remembered when not one but two humongus rednecks had come in to this kitchen of the abyss. The younger one had begun groping her, and that’s when Bess had shouted at him, and after that…

He’d knocked her unconscious with a single blow.

When her eyes flicked open and finally focused, she looked back around. The older and larger maniac had Mavis lain across a table and was smashing what appeared to be chopped fruit into her mouth. Evidently it was a lot of fruit, because Mavis’ ordinarily rack-skinny stomach pushed out like she was six months pregnant.

“Hey, spinach-chin!” Bess yelled. “Leave her alone!”

The man simply glared at her, kept mashing fruit into Mavis’ mouth. But in response to Bess’ objection, his throat rumbled and then he spat.

The wad of phlegm, large as a golf ball, sailed across the air and—

Yuuuck!

—hit Bess right in the eye.

“Pipe down, ya hog,” the man told her. “Looks ta me like you gots more things ta worry ’bout than yer stringbean friend here. Like that gut-cut.”

Bess, as she hung from her hook, didn’t know what he was talking about, but at the same time he’d said it, she finally became aware of the sharp, ripping pain at her mid-abdomen. She looked down at her distended belly and couldn’t help but notice the six-inch-long gash and the blood seeping out of it.

“But don’t’cha worry none, Fattie,” the man added. “My brother Esau shore knows how ta do a gut-cut right. It won’t kill ya…”

Bess gaped at the wound.

“The killin’ comes later,” she was told. “It’ll be nice’n slow.”

Then another man (his brother, she assumed) walked into Bess’ field of vision. He went over to the table, patted Mavis’ bloated abdomen. “Dang,” he exclaimed. “This little twig et dag near half the bushel!”

“She shore did. So’s what I do with her now?”

“Just let her set a spell, digest a bit. Then we’ll be ready.”

“Dag it. I should’a figured I’d miss wrasslin’.”

“You won’t miss much,” the younger one said. Now he was at the fire pit, stoking it with a metal rod. “Go ahead’n fuck her. Might as well have a go, huh? Why waste pussy when it’s there?”

The older one glanced at Mavis’ convulsing white body. “Naw. Shee-it, you know I prefer fellas.”

“Hey, a nut’s a nut, Enoch. Stick it up her ass if ya don’t like gash. Git’cher pecker brown.”

Enoch cast a second glance. “Naw. I’d rather beat off, er poke a sheep. Shee-it. Fuckin’ this here skinny thing’d be like fuckin’ a bone.”

“Suit yerself,” Esau replied. “I’d fuck this big ’un ’cept—shee-it! I’d need ta roll her ’round ina pile’a flour ta find the wet-spot!” He scratched his crotch, eyed poor Mavis on the table. “I guess we’re ready. Enoch, flip her over—”

Enoch did exactly this, while his uncomely brother grabbed a wooden saute spoon. He put Mavis in a headlock, jammed the spoon down her tongue and pressed. In a great urping splatter, Mavis vomited up several plumes of partly digested fruit into one of the pie crusts. He slid across another crust, pressed, then out came more fruit puke. Esau continued the process until Mavis little belly was empty and all the pie crusts filled.

Atop each tin, he lay several circles of uncooked biscuit dough. Then he placed all the crusts on a tray and slid them into the oven.

Shee-it yeah!” Esau celebrated. “Grandpa Ab’s gonna love me! I’se makin’ his favorite dessert! Vomit Cobbler!”

“So what I do with this skinny bitch now?” Enoch asked. “Just kill her?”

“Yeah, might as well. “in’t good fer much else. No meat on her, just like that bitch ya brung me from the girlie prison.” But as Esau loped back to the table, he jerked a gaze. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna fuck her.”

“I dang didn’t,” Enoch assured.

“Then what’s all that blood running down her skinny legs?”

Enoch took a look, and sure enough, streaks of blood were running down the insides of Mavis’ thighs.

“Weren’t me,” Enoch attested.

Esau cracked his hands together loud as a stropping belt. “Hot DAMN!” he yelled. “Is this dang perfect or what? The stringbean bitch is havin’ her period!”

Enoch scratched his beard. “Why’s that perfect?”

Esau’s eyes beamed. He jogged to another bucket, withdrew a still-flopping one- pound lake trout. “It’s Grandpa Ab’s favorite thing in the world! Pussy-poached fish! Hold her down, brother! And spread her legs!”

Enoch wedged the girl’s stick-thin legs apart, while Esau inserted the fish all the way up into her vagina. A wet crunch resounded; the girl flinched. “Dang,” Enoch remarked at the sudden ooze of blood. “This here skinny one was cherry.”

“You don’t say?” Esau replied. “And you just popped it—with a trout!”

It was a hell of a way for a girl to lose her virginity. Once the trout was inserted—and still flopping—Esau pinched the labial lips shut with one hand, and with the other—

“Stop it!” Bess shouted. “You sick redneck FUCKERS!”

—he picked up a heavy-duty hand-grip stapler.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Bess screamed.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Esau stapled those labial lips shut. Mavis, now stupefied by shock, flinched at each hard, metallic clack.

“Put her back up on the hook,” Esau said. “We’ll let her hang fer a few days, let that fish suck in all that pussy blood. It’ll be poached perfect time she’s dead. Then I’ll serve it up with some linguini and marinara sauce.”

Enoch hoisted Mavis back up, then lay the lash between her wrists over the stall hook. “There ya go, Slim,” he said.

Bess’ senses swam in turmoil. “What the FUCK is wrong with you crazy backwoods psychos!” she screamed from her own hook.

“We’se just providin’ our fine grandpap with the viddles he most likes,” Esau explained. He looked at her. “It ain’t nothin’ personal.”

Nothing personal! They stripped her naked, hung her off a hook, and cut a rent in her abdominal wall! What could be more personal than that?

Bess would find out in a moment more.

As Esau approached, Bess tried again to kick out, but by now, between the sheer horror and the depletion of electrolytes, her efforts were inadequate to say the least. Her big legs just slogged forward, harmlessly.

The bearded grin homed closer, then the dirty hand reached out. Then—

Bess screamed.

—then the hand reached into the cut in her abdomen. It reached in deep, fished around, then began to withdraw.

When the hand withdrew, it pulled with it the long gray-pink ropes of her small intestine, twenty feet and then some. Soon, off of one arm, Esau cradled a veritable roll of Bess’ innards.

Bess just stared, paralyzed and numb from the horror.

Esau tugged a bit more, extracting Bess’ stomach and duodenum. “Yeah, we can make some great haggis out’a that. And with the rest of the gut—”

He raised the great roll of small intestine like a prize.

“Shit sausage! Another one’a Grandpa Ab’s favorites!”

He cut the stomach off with bone shears, then carried the roll, as if carrying garden hose, to another table. Meticulously, then, with small pieces of roast string, he tied crimps into the intestine at eight-inch intervals, setting the stomach aside for later tendings. “Yeah,” he proclaimed. “Ain’t nothin’ like a fat girl’s gut to make the best shit sausage! Hot links here we come!”

Bess watched as the dirty rube slowly fed the roll of her own intestines into the pot of boiling water.

“Twenty minutes and then we’re there! It’s better than bratwurst!”

For whatever reason, Bess had a funny feeling more was in store for her.

And she was right.

Esau, first, dragged over the plastic bucket of fileted fish, then the bushel basket of vegetables. Closer, now, Bess was able to see that the baskets contained peeled and quartered white onions, shallots, potatoes, and wedges of fresh cabbage.

Esau stuffed the fish filets and the vegetables into the deep pit of Bess’ abdominal cavity. When he was finished, Bess’ belly stuck out round as a medicine ball.

“There it is. All full up now, huh? Like a stuffed turkey!”

In spite of the absolute insanity, some segment of Bess’ psyche managed to think: I’ve just been stuffed with fish and veggies….

“Come on, Esau,” the brother complained. “Hurry it up, will ya? I’m gonna miss Big Papa Pump and the Macho Man!”

“We’re all ready. Git the drum, the big one.”

The question as to how long a human being could live without an intestinal tract soon became moot. Bess, all 240 pounds of her, was flopped into a 300-gallon industrial drum. A bucket of salt and a half bucket of black pepper was dumped on her head. “Yes sir-REE!” she heard Esau exclaim above. “We’se gonna pressure-cook the bitch!”

As the last of Bess’ energy ebbed away, the metal lid was placed atop the drum then sealed securely with a hammer. A sensation of revolving, then, as the drum and its still-living contents was rolled several yards and then placed in the fire-pit to cook.

««—»»

“Too bad you didn’t buy a boat with a head, Bobby Boy,” Ashton chuckled. He stood at the bow, peeing a high arc into Lake Sutherland’s still, crystal waters. “You’ve left me no choice but to urinate in public.”

“I also should’ve bought a boat with an ashtray.” Bob, sitting aft, flicked his cigarette butt into the water. “And a garbage can too.” He emptied a bucket full of empty beer bottles over the side.

“Don’t deface God’s Green Earth. Look!” Ashton pointed mockingly to the shore. “There’s an Indian chief crying!”

Ashton and Bob brayed laughter. The laughter echoed across the lake like a cannonade.

Fat, drunk, and obnoxious, the two brothers sat in the brand new 17-foot SeaRay, anchored in the middle of the lake. For the past several hours, they’d been dropping their eel-pots loaded with clusters of Zebra mussels, and so far…

They’d not caught a single Crackjaw eel.

So now they sat waiting—and drinking—hoping to find the right spot.

Ashton wiped sweat off his brow. “Whew! It’s hot—”

“And so am I,” Bob said. “I’m so hot I could pull train at the hot-tub club.”

“Don’t start talking that shit,” Ashton said, lighting up a La Corona. “I’m horny enough as it is.”

“Brother, I need to be held down hard and fucked like a pig, I’m telling you.”

“What are you complaining about? At least you’ve some hot cock waiting for you back at the ’Bago. Is Carol hung?”

Bob nearly inhaled his next sip of beer. “Are you kidding? Every night I feel like I got a french bread stuck up my ass. And when I’m blowing her, I practically need a shoe horn.”

Ashton gritted his teeth, wincing. “Oh, man. Don’t talk like that. It just makes me hornier.”

“I still can’t believe Sheree doesn’t know. When are you gonna tell her you’re gay?”

“Never. She keeps the house clean and I need her. She’s great furniture. No way anyone’ll accuse me of being gay. Arm in arm with a former porn star?”

Bob cracked open two more cold bottles of Holsten. “Yeah…but what about sex?”

“I get around it. For all the time she’s been living with me, I think I’ve actually fucked her three times. When she’s hot to trot I give her the old line about being too stressed out from work. I generally just ask her for blow jobs…and I pretend it’s Leonardo DiCaprio.”

“Ha!” Bob belted. “Now that kid’s got an ass I wouldn’t mind getting my beard in!”

“Ha!” Ashton belted.

“Yeah, but you know, a woman’s got her needs,” Bob pointed out.

“Oh, I know she picks up guys behind my back.” Ashton chugged his Holsten. “That’s fine with me. I get what I want out of her, and she gets what she wants out of me. I bought her a Beemer, gave her a credit card. She’s happy. I don’t care if she picks up guys at bars and fucks them in the car. And me? When I need a stiff dick up my ass, or a pair of balls across my nose, I get a room at the Sheraton and call Pauncy’s Escorts.” Ashton tapped cigar ash into the lake. “As long as Sheree’s around when I need her to be seen with me, I’m happy. So what if she’s a gold-digger? Carol’s a gold-digger too, ya know.”

“Tell me about it. Those injections cost a fortune, not to mention the twenty-five grand for total-body electrolysis,” Bob griped. “Her second set of implants cost forty-five K—best plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. The same guy who does all the movie stars. He also shaved her adam’s apple. No scar at all.”

“You’ve got the best of both worlds. Ain’t no way anyone’ll think you’re gay when you’ve got her arm around you.”

“Damn straight. And, Christ, she’s hung. She tossed my salad like you wouldn’t believe.”

Ashton winced again, errantly rubbed a hand across his crotch. “I told you, don’t talk like that. It’s killing me!”

Bob leaned forward, grinning like an imp. “She’ll handcuff me to the bed on my back, pushes my knees back damn near to my shoulders and butt fucks me so hard it feel like a piston going in and out of my ass. Then she’ll suck her cum out, spit it in her hand, and slap me in the face with it.”

“You bad bitch!” Ashton proclaimed.

“Then she’ll jerk me off onto a dinner plate and make me suck it up!”

“You whore!”

“That big hard cock goes so far up my ass it feels like she’s fucking my stomach. You should see her in her biker outfit. The chains, the hat, the whole nine yards. Then she pulls that big cock out of the leather pants and waves it at me, her balls going up and down like yo-yos. Brother, it’s a sweet sight.”

“DAMN you!” Ashton snapped, grinding his teeth in angst. “Fuck it! Who’s going to see? That redneck kid? The FUCK if I care!” Ashton stood up at the bow again only this time he wasn’t pissing into the lake, he was jerking off into it.

“Careful you don’t yank it out,” Bob laughed.

Ashton’s entire face looked squeezed shut as he steadily pumped and pumped each and every of the five inches nature gave him. Images filled his mind like dark, sooty smoke: images of stiff, veined cocks sliding into his tonsils, sweaty balls slapping his chin, and Leonardo DiCaprio belly down and waiting for him. Yeah, I got some Titanic for you, bitch… Ashton’s blubber jiggled beneath the Christian Dior short sleeve shirt as his body tremored, and next his sperm was dribbling into the lake.

“Damn, I swear the lake just went up an inch!” he laughed. He zipped back up, wiped his brow again with his shirt sleeve. The boat rocked when he sat back down.

“Look!” Bob pointed to the shore. “You hit the Indian in the eye!”

“Remember the Little Big Horn? Pay-back’s a bitch!”

Ashton and Bob brayed laughter.

A little later, they grabbed the plastic buoys and pulled up the eel-pots.

All empty.

“Damn it!” Ashton griped. “We’ve been out here for hours and we haven’t caught one damn eel.”

“Maybe that dirty redneck kid was jiving us.”

“How could he be jiving us? You saw that box of eel he had in the bait shop.”

“Well then we must be doing something wrong. He said the south side of the lake and—” Bob checked his compass.

“Oops.”

“What?” Ashton asked.

“The bezel was turned around. We’re at the north end of the lake.”

Ashton and Bob both brayed laughter.

“You may be a Microsoft genius and I may be the best chef in the country,” Ashton posed. “But you know what?”

“We don’t know dick about fishing!”

Bob revved up the Evinrude outboard while Ashton fetched more beers from the cooler. The boat picked up speed and began to head for the other side of the lake.

“Hey, Bobby?” Ashton asked, emptying his coffee can full of petite cigar butts over the side. “You think Sheree has any idea that Carol’s really a man?”

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