Grimoire Diabolique

THE BABY (UNCUT VERSION)

Rosser kind of joggled on the bus, rocking in his seat. It was a county bus, he presumed, Russell County, one of the poorest, so it made sense that the coach lacked air-conditioning. He felt like he was cooking in his jeans, his soiled Christian Dior shirt adhered to him by sweat, his feet baking in K-Mart sneakers. He’d only lived in Luntville a week, chased here, he guessed, by either penance or bad karma. The heat seemed to be chasing him too. The bus rocked and rocked.

Maybe I’m actually in hell, he considered. Hell can’t possibly be any hotter than this. Nor its population any uglier. The bus driver looked like Lurch. The big guy in overalls in back looked like Shrek, and the woman sitting across could easily have been a female version of Don King.

Everything beyond the window appeared as desolate as his thoughts. Fall guy, Patsy—call it what you want. I got screwed and I can’t unscrew myself. Rosser was a project manager for a major construction company—er, had been. Now he was a fleeing felon. Ordinarily he might get a year or two in jail and be out on good behavior after a few months, when illegal cost-cutting lead to deaths. But this? It had been Barren and Franks, company’s owners, who’d charged the client for the firewalls they hadn’t really installed. Same with the extra load-bearing beams in the center of the complex. The client paid for it—they had to, via state building codes—but Barren and Franks had “forgotten” to include these items in the actual construction of the site—and pocketed the money. Hence, little more than a week after the day-care center had opened, a roof strut had collapsed, severing a gas line, and the center had exploded like something carpet-bombed. Three dozen toddlers burned up like bacon, not to mention a number of adults. Barren and Franks had greased the right palms, forged the right invoices and deposit receipts, and bribed some “eyewitnesses,” and that was that.

Business degree from Georgetown, minor in architecture. A brand-new Audi, and $150,000-a-year salary. All gone. All up in smoke. I’m not up Shit’s Creek without a paddle, he thought. I’m in the middle of the Shit Sea without a boat.

Rosser beat the warrant-issuing deputy sheriffs by a half hour, went to the company office, cleaned out the safe, and hitchhiked out of town. He kept hitching till he was halfway across the county, then Greyhounded here, here being Luntville, in southern Virginia, which made the little burg in Green Acres look like Harvard Yard. God Almighty, he’d thought when he first arrived. It was another world, a secret world within the Land of Opportunity. Generations of families who didn’t know what education was. Mind-boggling poverty. Unemployment. Desperation, adultery, and alcoholism as the status quo.

A man sitting next to Rosser grinned at him in a way that seemed knowing. The grin was black. Teeth like pegs of licorice. The guy had greased-stained jeans and a similarly stained gas-station shirt with the nametag COREY. Shoulder-length stringy hair hung down from the grime-edged REMINGTON baseball hat. He just kept grinning, right at Rosser.

Is this the guy from Deliverance? Rosser flinched, tried not to meet his eyes. Why was the man staring?

“You runnin’?”

“Pardon me?” Rosser asked.

“Never mind.” Corey pronounced “mind” as “mand.” “I was, awhile’s back. Couldn’t hack it no more. Wife got fat, baby whined all night like a bad water pump. One day I’se blinked and thunk what the fuck did you git yer’self into, you moe-ron? So I split. Couldn’t stay in Stone Gap. Shee-it, wife’s family lived there—if I’d even started talkin’ ’bout divorce’n shit, her fucked-up kin’d come after me with pitchforks’n shovels.” The rotten grin, somehow, brightened. “The fuckin’ was good, though. At least good enough to knock the pig up.”

Invigorating conversation, Rosser thought.

The bus banged over a pothole. “Anyways, that’s how I’se landed here.” The grin, more of the grin. “Just like you, I suppose. Am I right?”

“Not altogether,” Rosser admitted. “What makes you think I’m… running?”

A phlegmy chuckle. “Come on. That white button-down shirt? Looks like a business shirt that you’re just wearing ’cos it’s all ya got. Ain’t no businessmen in these parts. Ain’t no business.”

Suddenly Rosser felt foolish in the office shirt, a sore thumb. “You could say I recently elected to relocate…” He didn’t want to talk at all, but the question came unbidden, irresistibly: “How-how long ago was this?”

The grin jolted forward. “Was what?”

“How long ago did you leave your wife and child? Er, I mean, how long have you been here, in this area?”

“Six, seven years thereabouts.”

Sounded promising, at least. If this redneck grease monkey started a new life in Luntville, so could Rosser. Who would look for him here? The beard was already growing in, the hair lengthening, dyed dirty blond. The couple hundred grand he’d taken out of the safe could go a long, long time in an economy like this. He’d get some under the table job somewhere, become part of the scenery—and part of a town and population that no one gave a shit about. This was his chance.

And better than Corey’s, right? Rosser had left no wife and child behind, and he had some smarts and an education that would covertly come in handy, so long as he laid low. Things could be worse, he realized.

Optimism couldn’t hurt.

“So you’re—what?—a mechanic?” Rosser inquired next.

Corey stunk like a cross between a Jiffy Lube and an armpit. “Shore, down at Hull’s garage next to the general store,” the black grin answered. “I just do my job, get my paycheck, mind my own business. Works out just fine, ya know?”

Just another example of what Rosser needed reinforced. A person could start a new life, an anonymous life, and leave the past behind. Certainly Rosser hoped he never saw Corey and his rotten grin ever again, but he did appreciate the confidence of his example. The past was the past. Fate had given him a new future, and Rosser was determined to make the best of it.

The shit-hole rooming house he lived in was miles from the nearest store; hence, the bus ride. Store-brand tortilla chips and a can of spaghetti would be dinner. And at the dollar store he’d picked up several cheap t-shirts and pairs of socks. He was serious about this. Thus far it seemed that the landlady approved of him: Mrs. Doberman (that’s right, Doberman, and her name suited her). “A fine, fine young man,” she’d commented this morning when he’d left. “So intelligent and polite… and so handsome!” He’d get a radio soon, a TV, gradually accrue the barest necessities. The more he thought about it, the better he felt.

“Check it out, Hoss,” Corey said. At the next stop off State Route 154, a heavyset woman clodded on, grocery bag under one arm, a baby under the other. She turned around, clumsily manipulating herself, as though preparing to sit down required some urgent consideration. Corey further remarked, “Jesus Christ, is it gonna take all fuckin’ day for her to sit her fat ass down?” Eventually, the woman sat down in the bench seat right behind Lurch, and the bus… lurched on.

White Trash Nation, Rosser mused, eyeing her. Did the woman smile at him? I hope not. She smiled at Corey, he convinced himself. The woman was hideous. Broken teeth, crooked nose, frizzed hair the color of dirty dishwater. The baby hung off her left side; he couldn’t really see it save for a pudgy, dirty leg sticking out across the area of space that ordinarily would’ve been called a lap. Wet, glurpy noises could be heard, however: baby sounds. Peeking from the top of the grocery bag were Twinkies, donuts, a six-pack of Keystone.

Rosser wasn’t sure what Corey whispered under his breath, but he thought it was: “I’m so horny I could spit on the floor and hump the spit.”

Her bloodshot eyes darted quickly to him again, then quickly away: a White Trash flirt. No, no, the glance was to Corey, to Corey.

Corey slapped him on the back. “Looks like this is your lucky day, huh, Hoss? Shit if she ain’t got the hots for ya.”

“Not for me, for you. Either that or she knows you.”

“Oh, I know the look.” An elbow jab. “But do me a favor. Lemme have some sloppy seconds, will ya? Shee-it, bet she’d do us both fer free on account she’s hot for you. Her name’s Maxine, by the way.”

“So you do know her,” Rosser said.

“Any horny fella with an extra sawbuck knows her. She’s the bottom of the barrel pussy in Luntville. Just plop the fat bitch down on the floor, spread those legs, spit on that pie, hold yer nose, and stick it in. Hump it hard, hump it fast, and fill her up. A nut’s a nut, ya know? And she don’t make ya use none of that condom shit.” Another comradely slap to the back. “Not a bad lay if ya keep yer eyes closed and don’t breathe.” Corey laughed loud enough to turn several heads, just not Maxine’s.

So. The local prostitute, Rosser assessed. More of the social dynamic, however pitiful. Rosser could not fathom the man desperate enough to have sexual congress with this human beast. Her face looked puffed, shiny in sunburn. Moles like raisins studded the roll of fat around her neck. Indeed, here was definitive white trash. Four-foot-eleven in her flip-flops, and an easy one-seventy on the scale. The enormous breasts looked flattened in the bland sundress, laying atop a distended junk-food belly. Cellulite-runneled legs wide as fifty-pound sacks of rice, with skin the color of, well… rice. Her hair could’ve been a floor mop stained pitch-black. The outlines of lopsided nipples the size of beer coasters ghosted through the top’s shabby fabric.

He still couldn’t see any details of the baby.

“Get a load of the belly on her, huh?” came Corey’s next enlightening observation. “Gotta wonder if she’s knocked up again. Ya never can tell with some of these girls.” Corey openly rubbed his crotch. “A’course, if she ain’t, I’d be more’n happy ta fuck up her life a little more’n put another white-trash food-stamp bun in her fat cracker oven.”

Rosser wilted.

“Next stop, Crick City crossroads,” the driver announced. “Connection for the Number Three bus.”

Somebody rang the bell and the bus shimmied to a stop. A teenager sitting behind Shrek moved forward for the doors, but Rosser was looking outside at the bus shelter. In the shelter stood at startlingly attractive woman in her mid-twenties. Shimmering blond hair, cut-off jeans and a blazing white halter. Nut-brown tan and legs that never ended. Rosser gulped at the vision, his most spontaneous lust ignited at once. Please, please, he pleaded. Please get on the bus. Not that he would do anything, make conversation, make a move—nothing like that. Rosser knew well that he’d never stand a chance with such a local. He merely hoped she’d get on the bus so he could look at her, just to see something lovely.

But she made no gesture to get on.

“How’d ya like to park a wad up that twat, Hoss?” Corey tittered. “I’d hump her from one end of the floor to the other. Pop the first one in her cut, then jerk off another in her face. Cream the bitch up fierce, huh, Hoss?”

In spite of the appallingly vulgar words, the image was irresistible, and just as Rosser noticed the lusty spark in his penis, his partner said, “Shee-it, practically got me full wood just lookin’ at that. How ’bout you, Hoss?” A chuckle through the black grin. “Think ya just might be able to git it up fer a piece’a that angel-food-cake pussy?”

Rosser’s erection flexed, straining against the confines of his shorts. “I’d say the prospect of that circumstance presents a very high order of probability.”

Corey cracked out a guffaw and clapped his hands. “Stranger, I don’t know what the fuck you just said but I shore like the way you talk!”

No, the blonde wasn’t getting on but the passenger was now getting off. The scruffy kid didn’t even look twenty: long hair, baggy shorts, sneakers with no laces, no shirt.

“Damn boy must be et up with a case of the dumb-ass,” Corey remarked.

“What?”

“The punk’s Jess Fuller. Been run out’a town twice and now he’s back.”

“What was he run out of town for?”

“Makes that crystal-meth shit in his trailer, sells it ta kids.”

“What about the police? He should be in jail.”

“Cops down here ain’t got time, they’se all on the take for the moonshiners up in the hills. They get a cut for every run they protect into Kentucky. The ’shiners make it here, sell ta the dry counties across the line.”

An interesting societal commentary, at the very least. Rosser was uncomfortable but, at the same time, fascinated. No. I am definitely not from around here.

As the punk debarked, Rosser’s eyes flicked back to the window, to the blonde. Seeing her seemed akin to a man in the desert stumbling into an oasis. Sweat glimmered in her cleavage. His eyes ran up her legs to the flat, impeccably tanned abdomen, the petite slit for a navel. Jesus wept… The waist of her cut-offs seemed to draw a line just above where her pubic hair would start, and the seam between her legs divided her vulva through the faded denim. Rosser sighed.

Then noticed something.

The blonde seemed alarmed; she was stepping back. Two tall bulky figures came around the stand of trees at one side of the bus shelter. Two more identical figures came around from the other side.

What’s this?

“Looks like the jig is up fer Fuller,” Corey said.

Outside, a confrontation began. The four tall bulky figures were indeed identical, brawny boys in their late teens, identical buzzcuts, identical shorts and shirts. Identical faces.

“Christ, they’re—” Rosser began.

“The Harkins boys. Quadruplets. They’re all nineteen er thereabouts. And lemme tell ya, they don’t take no shit. As bad-ass a crew as you’ll ever wanna meet. Watch.”

Rosser watched, all right. The quadruplets surrounded the punk named Fuller. There was some laughing, shoving, while Fuller pleaded the likes of: “I ain’t done nothin’ to you guys! I ain’t sellin’ ice no more, I swear!” and on and on, but the Harkins boys wouldn’t hear of it.

“Looks like we’re about to see a good old fashioned ass-kicking,” Rosser observed.

“Oh, it’ll be a tad more’n that, Hoss.”

One of the quadruplets’, in a split-second, slammed a knuckly fist to Fuller’s head. Rosser’s teeth ground—the blow sounded like wet leather snapping—and that was all for Fuller. He was out cold, flat on his back.

Next, the boys were pulling off Fuller’s baggy shorts.

What in God’s name? Rosser thought.

“Bet they do a mallet-job on him,” Corey guessed.

“What?”

“Fuck his balls all up is what. Look—see? The one on the end…”

Rosser’s eyes darted to the last boy, who was hefting a large hubcap mallet while the others cackled.

“Come on, Tucker! Let ’er rip!”

“Teach this cracker piece’a shit not to sell drugs in our town—”

“Sells it ta kids, fer shit’s sake.”

“Do it! Do it!”

The quadruplet named Tucker knelt down, while another boy held Fuller’s shriveled penis back so that it wasn’t laying over the scrotum. Then—

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

Over and over again, Tucker smacked the scrotum with the mallet. Each blow caused Fuller to shudder in spite of unconsciousness.

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

Over and over.

Rosser was grateful that he couldn’t see the details.

“Shee-it, Hoss. Ain’t no nuts left in that sack, you can count on it. They’se mush. They done popped his balls.”

Rosser didn’t need the elaboration. He rushed up to the driver, who’d kept to door open so he could watch the foray. “You must have a radio or something on this bus,” Rosser demanded. “Call the police!”

Lurch looked blankly at him. “Why?”

“Why? There’s a major assault going on out there!”

“Ain’t no need fer police. Things down here have a way of takin’ care of themselves. When somethin’ ain’t right, the Harkins boys fix it.”

Rosser felt uselessly outraged.

“Sit back down, Hoss.” Corey was pulling him back to his seat. “This is how things work down here is all. You’ll git used to it. Besides, you’re missin’ the show!”

Rosser sat back down, dazed. He couldn’t believe this. Corey continued to talk but only half the words were getting through: “—back shore is a motherfucker, huh?” and “—teach his ass.” Then: “Look, now they’re gonna dick-snaggle him.”

Something roused Rosser from the outrage. “What did you say?”

“Ain’t never heard of a dick-snagglin’? Shee-it, Hoss. Watch. Learn somethin’.”

Rosser dared to let his gaze return to the window. One of the quadruplets was now gnawing on Fuller’s penis.

Not biting it off. Just gnawing, as if on a tough piece of steak.

Rosser’s stomach churned churning.

Lurch grinned back at Corey, tittering. “Ain’t seen me a good dick-snagglin’ in a long spell.”

“Me neithers! It’s a sight, ain’t it?”

“That it is…”

The festivities outside were coming to an end. The blonde stood at the other end of the shelter, smoking. She didn’t seem at all concerned. An everyday occurrence? Rosser wondered absurdly. Dick-snaggling? My God.

“Well,” one of the Harkins said, “if he don’t learn this time, he ain’t never gonna learn.”

“Oh, and just so ya cain’t make no more crystal—”

WHAP! WHAP!

One of the Harkins smashed each of Fuller’s hands with the mallet. The punk heaved, convulsing.

“Break his legs, too!”

“Naw, ya dope. He cain’t leave town with busted legs.”

“He ever comes back? We’ll just kill the piece of shit’n be done with it.”

“We should’a done that this time.”

“Yeah, but this is more fun.”

More fun, Rosser thought.

The Harkin’s boys disbanded. The blonde tapped an ash. Did she wink at Rosser? He was too disarrayed to even think about it, and after the atrocity he’d just witnessed, sex was far from his mind.

But not Corey’s, evidently. “Yeah, I’d punch blondie’s little hole but good. Bet she squeaks when ya fuck her, huh? Then I’d flip her over fer a butt-fuckin’. Man, I’d come so much up her ass, she’d shit cream fer a week.”

Rosser felt nauseous. The day was dead for him, and it was only afternoon. Indeed, he needed to come to a different world and, by God, he’d found it.

The driver snapped the door shut and put the bus in gear. Before he pulled away from the stop, Corey looked right at the blonde and licked his lips.

“Corey Ryan, what’choo lookin’ out there at that skinny bitch for?” the woman with the baby said in an irritatingly high drawl. She crudely hefted a breast in her hand. “You wanna real woman, you know where she is.”

Corey promptly responded, “I’ll tell ya where she ain’t, Maxine. On this bus.”

But the woman just smiled coyly at the insult. “Oh, you know you want it. You cain’t jive me.”

Corey leaned to one side and cut a fart.

Oh, man, Rosser thought. I am so out of my element.

The monotonous scenery rolled by in the window. Rosser’s thoughts blanked. More glurpy baby noises resounded, and Corey was rubbing his crotch.

“Next stop, Pegleg Road, connection to Luntville crossroads,” the driver announced. Rosser wearily raised his hand to pull the bell but it rang before he could. When he looked over, he saw the fat woman lowering her arm.

Corey chuckled gutturally. “Looks like she’n you’re gettin’ off the same stop. Have fun. Drop some wax fer me, will ya?”

Rosser shook his head.

“Look, I know what’cher thinkin’.”

“What am I thinking, Corey? Please. Tell me.”

“You’re thinkin’ you couldn’t get it up fer that fat shit-bag in a million years, ugly as she is—”

“I can say with all certitude: that’s not what I was thinking.”

“—so just think about that angel-food-cake blonde whiles yer doin’ it. A nut’s a nut, brother. We fellas gotta get it whiles we can.”

Rosser grabbed his bag and sighed. “I appreciate the elucidating discourse.”

“Yeah, man, I just love the way you talk! Later, Hoss. I’ll be seein’ ya.”

God in Heaven I hope not.

Rosser stepped off into bristling heat and humidity. The bus pulled away before a wake of dust. His worst fear was that the fat woman would be sitting in the shelter, waiting for the next bus, which was exactly what Rosser had to do unless he wanted to walk a mile-plus to town. Maybe she lives here, he thought. Please, God, let it be so that she’s NOT waiting for the next bus. Let it be so that she’s already walking home.

God did not oblige his plea.

“Howdy, handsome,” Maxine said, plopped fat and sassy in the shelter. The baby remained hooked to her side, dirty foot sticking out.

“Ga!” the baby blabbered. “Ga-Ga!”

“Uh, hello,” Rosser had no choice but to respond. “I… presume you’re… waiting for the… next bus?”

“Shore am, just like you. You live in Luntville?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I do too! And we ain’t got but a half hour to wait for the bus.”

Jesus Christ! A half hour? “That’s… not too long.”

Rosser elected not to sit down next to her. She was truly hideous. Moles sticking out, plump fat face shiny in sweat, alcoholic nose like a strawberry. The elephantine thighs filled up the hem of the sundress to the extent that the material looked fit to rip. Corns pebbled the sunburned feet in dowdy flipflops, and tufts of hair, like Brillo, sprouted from her armpits.

“I’m Maxine,” she said. “But I’se shore that character Corey told ya all about me.”

Yeah, a ten-dollar prostitute. “Um, a little.”

“Well, good, ’cos I gotta say I had my eye on you since I stepped on the bus. You’re about the handsomest thang I seen in a while. What I mean is we can make a deal.”

Rosser felt dead standing there. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to be in any proximity at all to this woman.

“Oh, say hi to my darlin’ little boy,” and then she held her baby up. It was the first time Rosser got a direct look at the infant, and—

He nearly gagged.

It was a fat baby—six months old, eight months, he wasn’t sure—and the child’s head looked twice as large as it should’ve been and was slightly warped from what Rosser assumed was some congenital affliction. Rolls of fat under the chin, around the neck, bulbous cheeks. Tiny beady mud-brown eyes seemed hidden in folds of still more fat. The baby’s lips looked inflated, like a pink sucker, smeared with chocolate. Mucus crusted its nostrils. Saliva glazed its chin.

The baby even had some moles on his neck.

Rosser was not a man prone to profanity, but when he got a good look at the child, he thought: That is the ugliest motherfuckin’ baby I’ve ever seen in my fuckin’ life…

Then the baby looked dully up at Rosser and blew out a wad of bubbly, Pop-Tart-flecked spit.

“His name’s Shots.” The woman held the baby’s hand up, puppeting it to wave.

“Shots?” Rosser had to question.

“Named the little fella that on account of that’s what I spent the whole time drinkin’ when I was pregnant.” She giggled. “Shots of vodka mostly, and Black Velvet whiskey.”

I guess that explains the warped head, Rosser concluded.

“Say hi to the nice man, Shots. Hi, Mr. Nice Man.” The woman beamed. “Ain’t he just the cutest li’l thing?”

It’s a fucking abomination…

“Where you from, sweetie?”

“Uh, Utah,” Rosser lied.

“Oh, wow! A Canadian! It’s easy ta tell you’re new in town. I’se kin tell by yer shirt. Guess you used to be a businessman, huh?”

“Used to be. Yes.”

The baby, now, seemed to be glowering at Rosser. If disdain could possibly be conveyed at so young an age, this was it. A pudgy pinky picked a booger from its nose and wagged it at Rosser. The other hand picked at a neck-mole.

“But back to what I was sayin’,” Maxine continued. She munched on a Pop Tart as she spoke, crumbs on her lips. “Bein’ that you’re such a fine-lookin’ man, I’ll give ya a deal, a sweet one.”

Rosser just stood there, numb. He looked appalled at the baby.

“I’ll give ya a blow-job right here—a fine one, at that—fer just twenty-dollars.”

“No. Thank you.”

A coy smile. “Oh, I know, just like all men. Playin’ hard ta get. You wanna see the goods first.”

“Oh, no, that’s really not nec—”

But already she’d pulled a breast out from her top: wide as a dinner plate, and flat. Rosser thought of a pita bread with a nipple. The nipple had several wire-like hairs sticking out of it. She flapped it for him, as though he’d find the gesture enticing.

“Wanna see my pussy, too? Here, take a peek—”

“No no no, really that won’t be nec—”

She traversed her bulk on the bench, pulled her knees up, and there it all was: a quagmire of rank flesh and hair. If anything, the monstrous gash looked like a wound, brownish folds around a pucker. As much as Rosser tried to avert his eyes, some cruel and arcane impulse wouldn’t allow it. He stared into the horror. At the nexus was a hole that glimmered within a rooster-wattle majora, and as if on cue a string of what could only be semen oozed out. The image came to mind: a toothless old man drooling.

“Oh, don’t mind that little bit’a nut. Ain’t no different from yours. Don’t know why guys get the heebie-jeebies ’bout another fella’s come. It’s just fluid. You kin fuck me right here fer, say, thirty.”

“No. Thank you.”

“All right, Mr. Hard To Get. Twenty. And ya ain’t gotta use a rubber ’er nothin’ like that. I’m clean.”

Oh, I’m sure. Pristine. Immaculate. Rosser just said, “No, thank you. I, uh, I don’t have any money.”

She maintained her poise, her knees aloft. The baby, meanwhile, greedily sucked at the broad, flat bag of skin that was her breast. The woman’s knees looked like beaten faces. Now, that string of semen was dangling.

“Aaaaaall right,” she conceded. “Since yer so good-lookin’, you kin fuck me fer free. But’cha gotta eat my pussy first. Deal?”

At this, Rosser nearly laughed. Lady, I would commit suicide before I would perform the act of cunnilingus on you. That’s right. I would BLOW MY FUCKING HEAD OFF.

“No. Really. Not today,” was the only response he could summon that wouldn’t be entirely rude.

Another sigh. “You drive a hard bargain.” She finally lowered her mammoth legs. The visual nightmare, at least, was over. “Ten bucks and I’ll blow ya. I don’t get my welfare check fer two more weeks. I got rent ta pay and a kid ta feed. And I don’t mind tellin’ ya, I give a damn good blow-job.”

Rosser was a reasonable man, but even the most reasonable men would, on occasion, err. The woman was hideous. There was NOTHING about her that could be described as erotic. And her kid was so fucking ugly Rosser thought he could bend over right now and throw up in the wire waste-can bolted to the bus shelter. But then he thought: Well, she is poor. She does have a hard life. It’s not her fault she’s hideous. And the only reason she solicits sex is because she needs the money for her kid. I haven’t had an orgasm in a month, and orgasms do indeed feel good. In fact, my genetics urge me to have orgasms—I can’t help it. Fellatio does feel better than masturbation—a lot better—and to tell you the truth, I could kind of go for some of that right now. Like Corey said, a nut’s a nut. And by doing this, I’d be helping her in a small way, making her very hard life a little bit easier. So—yes—I will go along with that theorem. A nut’s a nut. I don’t have to look at her. I’ll do what Corey said. I’ll close my eyes and think about that hot blonde, and you know what? It’ll probably be pretty good.

Rosser said, “Okay.”

Maxine’s pudding-face rejoiced. She jiggled her kid. “Did you hear that, Shots? Mr. Nice Man is gonna give us a ten-spot. Ain’t that nice’a him?” She waved the kid’s pudgy hand again. “Say thank you, Mr. Nice Man. Thank you, Mr. Nice Man!”

Jesus Christ…

“Any time yer ready, hon.”

Rosser looked sheepishly down each side of the road. It was perfectly straight and perfectly deserted. He could see a mile each way. If anyone drove by, he’d be able to hear them long before they got close enough to see what was going on.

It’s no big deal…

Maxine remained seated; Rosser stepped up. His penis felt numb, it felt like a small, shriveled up twig of flesh incapable of registering sensation—due to the recent assault of unwholesome imagery—but Rosser knew he could fix that.

He’d just close his eyes and think about the blonde.

He unbuckled his pants and lowered them and his briefs to his knees.

“Ooo, sugar, that’s right. Just put it right in Maxine’s face. I’ll give you a cock-suck you’ll never forget. But, I hate to tell ya this. Ain’t ya forgettin’ something?”

“Oh, yes, of course. The money. Sorry,” he babbled and handed her a ten. She stuck it promptly into a pocket on her dress… and began to play with his testicles.

The grubby fingers were callused, not particularly pleasing, but then she began to run the tip of her tongue across his glans.

This gesture was particularly pleasing.

Rosser put his hands on his hips, leaned back a little. Forget who’s doing it. Just let it be done. The frame of mind was working. He closed his eyes, thought about the blonde. It was the blonde’s hand cupping his balls. It was the blonde’s tongue laving circles around the rim of his penis. His erection sprang, hard as it had ever felt.

“Ga. Ga-ga. Ga.”

Rosser opened one eye and looked down. The baby was grimacing up at him, still girded by his mother’s arm. Where the infant’s leg sprouted from the diaper, Rosser could see a line of shit. Jesus Christ, the kid’s diaper is full. A big yellow piss stain was evident too.

“Ooo, honey, what’s wrong?” the woman said in between sucks.

Rosser erection was losing a few notches. “Do, uh, do you think you could set the baby down? He’s, uh… distracting me.”

“Oh, Shots is just fine where he is—”

Rosser couldn’t summon a way to say: Look, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to get my blow-job with my DICK a foot away from your kid! It’s negligent! Mother’s aren’t supposed to suck dicks with their baby’s watching! And the little fucker is staring right at me! But he just didn’t have it in him to say that. Concentrate, concentrate! Eyes closed again, his mind full of the blonde. Yeah, yeah… Oh, man… Those big, pouty lips, running up and down his shaft. Sun-blond hair tickling his thighs. Long tan fingers tracing his balls. Full turgidity returned an instant later. His hips began to quiver; his climax was just a few throbs away. And on the next stroke, just when Maxine drew her mouth back to his glans—

The baby grabbed his penis at the root.

“Jesus Christ!” Rosser winced, jerking away.

“What’s wrong now, hon?”

What was wrong? “Your baby just grabbed my dick!”

The erection deflated.

“What’re you all wound up fer?” Maxine asked. “He’s just a li’l baby.”

“Ga. Ga-ga.” Then the baby picked his nose and tried to wipe it on Rosser’s thigh.

“He’s seen me givin’ fellas head before, and fuckin’ too. Ain’t no big deal.”

It’s child abuse! Rosser pushed out his hand in abrupt jabs. “Look, look, please. Keep the baby’s hands off me!”

“Awright, awright,” she agreed, perturbed.

Of course, it would’ve been easier to just say to hell with it and walk off, but Rosser was pissed. He’d gone to a lot of trouble, a lot of annoyance (and a lot of revulsion) to get this far. He wasn’t a quitter. He was bound and determined to have his orgasm. Just put your dick back in her mouth, think about the blonde, and come!

He put it back in. He thought about the blonde. He imagined her hands all over him. She was cooing in his ear, licking his neck, whispering adorations with her perfect bare breasts pressed against his chest. She was straddling him, her sex tight as a mouth itself, slowly drawing up and down over his erection. She was drenched, her own excitement for him undeniable. Now he was thrusting up, her breasts bouncing, her vagina clenching. She was sighing her bliss to the air, her eyes wanton slits.

Then she panted, “I love you, I love you…”

Rosser shuddered, ejaculating into the fantasy’s loins which were actually Maxine’s white-trash mouth. The semen blurted out of him, and now that he thought of it, it was very good oral sex.

Corey would’ve been proud of him.

Maxine pulled her mouth off. Had she swallowed? Rosser had heard no evidence of expectoration. When he looked at her, her expression seemed nonchalant, but… she kept her lips tightly seamed, as if deliberately holding his sperm inside. Post-climactic loss-of-breath diverted Rosser’s focus; he wasn’t paying much attention, but he was paying a little. Maxine, it seemed, continued to hold the semen in her mouth. Then she began to lean over—

What is she doing? it finally occurred to him.

—toward the baby.

As if on cue, the baby looked up, as though the strange gesture were familiar. Just as strangely, Rosser thought of a chick in a nest opening its beak when the mother landed with a worm.

The baby’s fat-swaddled face beamed in elation.

Then its mouth opened.

Maxine brought her lips an inch from the baby’s and began to—

Rosser slammed his eyes closed. Oh my God, oh my God! He would not allow himself to watch what he knew the mother was about to do…

“There, Shots!” she exclaimed. “Tum-tum full now?”

The initial shock locked him up; he was a root in the ground, in the cement. At first he didn’t even believe what he’d seen. But when the baby—Shots—began smacking his lips with a big fat baby-smile, Rosser knew it was true.

“WHAT DID YOU DO!” he bellowed.

Maxine gave him the most absurd look, as though she’d done virtually nothing out of the ordinary. “It’s just come. It’s good fer him. He’s a growin’ boy and he needs to eat. I feed him all my trick’s blow-jobs, just like my mama done fer me, and my daddy too.” That look on her face lengthened. “Mister, you are one weird guy.”

Rosser’s shock persisted. He frantically yanked his pants back up. “It’s child-abuse, for God’s sake, if the county child-protection services knew—” but then his complaint was severed, by two things: One, a wet splat! and, two, something impacting his chest. Well, make that three: the unmistakable smell of human feces.

“HEY!” he shouted and jumped back. He glared at the baby.

Glossy strings dangled off the kid’s chin. Shots grinned at him—a grin that could only be described as evil. The child had scooped some excrement out of the diaper and flung it on Rosser.

Maxine chuckled. “Oh, he’s such a li’l devil, ain’t he? Always throwin’ his poop around.”

Rosser stood aghast. The waste wasn’t particularly solid, more like warm chocolate pudding, or mousse. Creamy. Smacking noises caught his attention next. He looked at Shots again and saw his little fingers playing with a few strings. The kid cackled greedily, then pointed a spermy finger at Rosser.

“Ga! Ga-ga!”

I’m… absolutely… mortified, Rosser thought.

Maxine was grinning at him, but it was a lascivious grin if anything. She was tweaking her nipples through her top. “I gotta tell ya somethin’, handsome. Suckin’ dick makes me horny as a bitch in heat, and after that blow-job, I am ALL fired up fer you. Git them pants back down. I’ll get’cha hard again in a jiffy, then you’s kin fuck me.”

Rosser’s shoulders slumped as if his collarbones had turned to rubber. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Does it look like I’m kiddin’, cutie? Come on, I’se serious. No charge, neither.” She looked at him and licked her lips. She pulled her knees back up, raised her hem, and bared the entire nightmarish mess that was her vagina. “Come’n get it.”

“There is no way. There is no circumstance that exists on the surface of the earth that could compel me to have sex with you.”

She blinked, uncomprehending. “Huh?”

“Let me put it another way, since you clearly don’t understand the English language. I would rather die than put my dick in you.”

Another blink, then the obese face reddened. When she lowered her knees, her big, corn-riddled flipflopped feet smacked the cement. The baby started crying.

“You ain’t got no right to be so shitty ta me!” she railed, her voice rising. “I’m a respected woman round these parts—”

Rosser rolled his eyes.

“—and I won’t stand fer bein’ treated like that. So you git down on yer knees right now’n fuck me!”

“That won’t be happening,” Rosser said, nose crinkling at the shit-smell from his shirt. “That’s an impossibility.”

“Then gimme more money!” she demanded.

“No. I already gave you money.”

“Why you prick! You asshole!” she began, her face nearly crimson now. The baby was crying in force, in machine-like bursts.

“Who do you think you are!” Maxine continued, “treatin’ me like common tramp!”

Rosser rolled his eyes.

“Well, I’ll show you, I’ll show you—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rosser said. She’s flaking out. I’ll just leave. It’ll only take me a half hour to get back to Luntville. He picked up his dollar-store bag, turned to leave—

“Oh, yeah, I’ll fix your wagon, buddy.” Now she was on her feet, the baby left to squall on the bench. “You just watch.”

She bumbled toward him, flipflops snapping, tits jumping. At first Rosser thought she was going to assault him, but instead she edged out of the shelter, maniacal. Rosser just stared at her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She stood in the middle of the vacant road, waving at something. That’s when Rosser noticed that the vacant road wasn’t vacant anymore.

The next bus was coming.

Maxine ludicrously jumped up and down in the road, waving her hands. Each time she landed, her fat jiggled in ripples.

“Help! Help! Hurry!”

Rosser was totally off guard. “What-what are you doing?”

“Help! This man molested my l’il baby!”

WHAT! “I didn’t do anything of the sort!” Rosser shrieked at her. “You’re the one who spit my semen in his mouth! Stop it!”

“Help! Hurry! Child molesterer! Child molesterer!”

The bus was getting real close, and the driver would have a radio. And call the police, he realized. “Just stop it! Here, here, I’ll give you more money—”

“Fer-GET it, ya prick. I’m gonna fuck you up!”

Rosser tried to calm down. If he ran away, it would appear to the driver and passengers—material witnesses—that Rosser was guilty. If he stayed and stood his ground to dispute the allegation, he’d be more credible than she, right?

Then he looked at the baby. Shots was sitting back up in the shelter, waving pudgy arms and flinging more excrement. But his little fat and thoroughly atrocious face told all. Cloudy white blobs were still ringing his mouth.

Fuck!

Rosser ran.

The area seemed so wide open but then he noticed a decline off the road. He trotted down. He dared jerk his gaze behind him and saw the bus had already stopped, the driver and several rather rough-looking passengers coming out the door as Maxine wailed, “He molested my baby, my poor li’l Shots, right here in the shelter. I tried to stop him but he said he’d kill me—”

Oh, that’s just terrific! Rosser thought.

“Jerked off right in my baby’s face, he did!”

“Look at that! Damn if she ain’t right,” a passenger exclaimed. “Poor kid’s face is covered with jizz—”

“I’m calling the police,” the driver yelled and went back in the bus.

“Ain’t gonna be no need fer no police,” another, bigger, passenger assured, “not if we find this sick fucker first—”

“There! There he is!” Maxine shouted. She pointed right to Rosser, who was in the decline but his head showing. “Get him! Make him pay fer the horrible crime he done to my baby!”

Several figures began to run after him. Rosser hightailed it faster than he ever had in his life.

Lower into the decline, the woods began. He thrashed through brambles, leapt over tree stumps, tore through the forest. Deeper, it occurred to him that he had no idea where he was going, only a general inclination of direction. It also occurred to him, quite quickly, that he was not in the greatest physical condition. His heart hammered, he grew winded, and his knees and ankles began to ache—My God, I’ve got to rest!—but a surge of adrenalin dumped into his blood when he heard more thrashing behind him, the rapid footfalls of several men.

“Daggit, Jory. I’se think I see the monster, right down yonder past them trees!”

“Shore’s shit do, Judd! We’se’ll tune that sick bastard up real good!”

If those hayseeds catch me, they’ll lynch me right here in the woods! Rosser kept running.

The tear through the woods seemed endless. As he progressed he felt more and more lost; he’d deliberately been zigzagging, hoping to lose them. Spider webs stretched across his face, bugs covered him, including masses of mosquitoes. At one point he slipped on something and fell flat on his face: a rotten woodchuck. At another point, when he thrashed through some vines, a yard-long green snake fell on him. Somehow, though, he managed to fling it off without shrieking. Within these woods, the humidity doubled, sucking sweat out of his skin.

Rosser kept running.

He stopped when it felt as though his heart would pop, leaned behind a tree. He wheezed in deep breaths that simply didn’t seem to suffice; for a few seconds he feared he might pass out from exhaustion. The most dreadful notion told him that he’d soon be able to hear his pursuers, gaining on him, strong, young men, men who weren’t winded at all but instead bent on vengeance.

Please, please, God. Don’t let them get me, or if they do, please let it be quick…

Hugging the tree, he held his breath.

Listened.

Nothing.

Thank God…

His pursuers had branched off in the wrong direction. A few shouts in the distance verified the absolving observation: the shouts were getting further and further away, until they disappeared.

Yes, yes. Thank God.

Finally, luck seemed to be on his side. Another thirty yards through the woods showed him an open field beyond the trees, and the modest valley in which Luntville had been built. When he squinted he could even see Mrs. Doberman’s rooming house!

Twenty-minute walk and I’m home!

It would be difficult, but he thought he could make it. He couldn’t stay in town, of course, not with crazy Maxine accusing him of child molestation, but with just a little more luck, he could get in the house, get into his room and retrieve his money, then slip out again and hike to the next town and catch a bus somewhere else.

It was the only plan he had and it didn’t sound too bad. Maxine had been the only one to see him, and he hadn’t told her his name, nor his address. I’ll get my money and run, he reasoned. And I’ll NEVER solicit a prostitute again!

He was just about to exit the woods when sharp voices rose. He jumped to the ground behind a fallen log.

The voices blared with rage and urgency. Male voices.

“Kin ya believe the sick shit that people do?”

“Shee-it, brother. A baby, a little baby!”

The voices… were grimly familiar.

The Harkins boys.

The quadruplets….

“Maxine even said he butt-fucked the baby!”

Rosser nearly pissed in his jeans.

“Yeah, boys, he’s one sick piece of shit, but if he thinks he’s sick… we’ll show him sick…”

“Yeah, man!”

All Rosser could think after that was two things:

A mallet-job…

And a dick-snagglin’…

“Bet he went in the woods. Let’s go!”

No!

“Naw, why would he do that? Bet he went up the main road, to hitch a ride.”

Yes, yes!

“Anybody know what the fucker looks like?”

“Naw, not his face ’er nothin’. Shouldn’t be hard ta spot though, ’cos Maxine said he was wearin’ a button-down white shirt.”

“Come on, yer right. Let’s head to the main road—”

Rosser let out the longest sigh of relief when they stomped off. Luck kept blessing him, that or God. He’d most easily be recognized by his shirt (which still reeked of infant excreta, by the way) but he still had his dollar-store bag, with t-shirts in it.

He changed shirts, waited until the Harkins boys were gone, and crept back to town.

Just act like everything’s cool, he thought when he got back to the house. Not enough time had gone by for police to begin canvassing the neighborhood for the “child molester.” Rosser did a competent job method acting once he was back inside. Speaking briefly to other boarders, smiling and nodding, acting as thought nothing were out of the ordinary. No one gave im a second glance.

Once he’d returned to his room, he thought strategically. He’d leave town with a bare minimum—not that he’d arrived with much—but it made the most sense. The money he’d stolen from the company safe and the clothes on his back were all he needed. I’ll just go somewhere else, somewhere far from here. Florida, perhaps, or Texas. It wouldn’t take long. And I’ll wait till dark, easier get out of Luntville, lower visibility. Yeah, then hitchhike out and get a bus. He’d simply start again, this time having learned his lesson.

He showered and changed, put the money in an innocuous bag, and at about nine p.m., left the room.

Another tenant greeted him as they passed on the stairs, an old man. “Night’s coolin’ down, ain’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it is.” Rosser feigned a chuckle. “It’s about time, too, hot as it was today.”

The old man paused, “Oh yeah, I’se almost fergot. Mrs. Doberman was lookin’ fer ya.”

Rosser almost shuddered. Careful, careful! But he knew he was also prone to overreacting. “Really? I saw her this morning. Any idea what she wants?”

“Naw. She’s down in her office right now, though.”

“I’ll… go see her. Thanks.”

This was something Rosser didn’t need. But he still kept his cool. If I sneak out without seeing her that could definitely raise suspicion. It was probably nothing, though. She probably just wants to ask about next week’s rent, wants to know how long I intend to stay. I’ll pay next week’s rent now. Then no one’ll know I’m gone.

He walked stolidly downstairs, through the day room to the office. The office door was open.

Rosser cleared his throat and entered.

“Oh, Mr. Rosser! There you are!” the landlady greeted from behind her desk. “I was just about to go to bed.”

Mrs. Doberman had what could be described as a “hatchet-face.” Mid-fifties, paunchy, graying hair pulled back in a bun. Through her tacky blouse, her breasts seemed to hang down to her stomach in tubes. Not a becoming woman, in other words, and—now that he thought of it…

She’s almost as ugly as Maxine. Jesus. Must be something in the water.

“One of the other tenants said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Why, yes.” A big bright smile. “I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t call the police.”

Rosser’s heart nearly stopped. He stared.

The ungainly woman stood up, came around the desk, and traced a crabbed, veiny hand across his shirt. “I couldn’t do that. Selfish, call it.”

Rosser croaked: “Puh-police.”

“Of course. See, I know what you did. Molestin’ that poor baby. Shame on you, Mr. Rosser!”

Rosser’s throat felt like it was sealing shut. “I-I-I was set-up. I didn’t do it, I swear to God. This-this woman I met on the bus… She made the whole story up.”

She walked around, closed the office door, and locked it. Then she returned and sat up on the desk.

“Woman like me, gettin’ on in her years, not much to look at no more? Then you walk in, the handsome stranger, so different. And on the run.”

Rosser could not fathom this. “What… are you… talking about?”

The big stiff smile seemed to hover in the air. “Oh, I know that stuff about you messin’ with the baby is all malarky—”

Rosser’s eyes went wide. “You do?”

“Oh, shore, hon! Maxine told me all about it. She’s always pullin’ stunts like that. What a character! But don’t you worry none. You take care’a me, and I’ll take care’a you.”

God Almighty! Rosser thought. Now Mrs. Doberman had hoisted her skirt, revealing a panty-less pubis. She was masturbating right there on the desk, her finger roving a vagina that was as much of a repulsive mess as Maxine’s.

“You give me a some lovin’ when I need it, and everything’ll be fine,” she said. “Oh, and just so ya know, what I like best is ta have my pussy et.”

Rosser’s mind spun. Nightmare, he thought but he knew he was awake. Then he remembered what she’d just said: Maxine told me all about it.

Rosser’s voice grated like millstones. “You know Maxine?”

“A’course! She’s my daughter, and she just moved in here with cute li’l Shots. Hey, Maxine?”

A door behind him clicked open, and in flopped Maxine, all smiles, all hanging fat and bulbous face and mole-studded neck. Now that he considered it, he easily saw the resemblance between the two women.

“Hi, there, Mr. Nice Man!” she celebrated. “Bet’cha thought ya’d never seen me again!”

The atrocious baby remained wrapped around her side. It glared at him, blowing spit bubbles.

“Ga! Ga-ga!”

“Git down on them knees, Mr. Rosser,” the landlady instructed, “and give me some proper pussy-eating. Once or twice a day’s all I’ll need. And each time yer done with me, ya kin have some fun with Maxine, too. Way I understand the law, there ain’t no expiration’a the time Maxine can press charges against ya fer child-molestation.”

Rosser was growing dizzy in nauseousness. Mrs. Doberman spread her legs, dividing her sloppy vulva with her finger.

“So come on, you silly man. Let’s git on with it!”

Rosser fell to his knees.

“And when you’re done with Momma,” Maxine added, “I’ll be in the bedroom, waitin’ on ya.”

Shots flapped some feces on Rosser’s back.

“Ga! Ga-ga!” the baby said.