The Minotauress Edward Lee

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THE MINOTAURESS

Edward Lee

first edition trade paperback

THE MINOTAURESS

Novella Collection

this electronic edition November 2008 © Necro Publications

available in a trade paperback

ISBN: 1-889186-80-5

originally published in 2008 as a limited edition hardcover

and deluxe lettered edition hardcover

book design & typesetting:

David G. Barnett

Fat Cat Design

assistant editors:

John Everson

Jeff Funk

C. Dennis Moore

a Necro Publication

5139 Maxon Terrace

Sanford, FL 32771

Printed by

Publishers' Graphics

Carol Stream, IL

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Wendy Brewer, Dave Barnett, Bob Strauss, Matt Johnson, Dustin La Valley, Monica Kuebler, Mark Justice, Tom Moran, Monica O'Rourke, Erik Wilson, Jeff Funk, Minh, Nanci Kalanta, Terry Tidwell, Michael Pearce, and Paul Legerski.

For Mike Anthony and Michael Kennedy.

Let's see you make THIS into a movie...

THE MINOTAURESS

PROLOGUE

The mansion looked haunted, and was even rumored to be, though in truth the things which prowled its narrow halls at night, and occasionally peeked out the dark, heavily draped windows, were all too corporeal. The only ghosts here lurked in the mythic obsessions of the mansion's elderly owner. Since the old gentleman had occupied the house—some forty years—not once had a guest stayed the night... even though, in a sense, he'd had many guests... if you chose to call them that.

The mansion loomed from a desolate hill surrounded by high but sickly trees and other vegetation which seemed jaundiced, even deformed, this due—according to further rumors—to countless marked and unmarked graves that pocked the proximal land. And to nod toward an elemental cliché, there was an Indian scourge here in 1642, where Governor William Berkley had ordered armed colonists to slaughter over a hundred Powhatans—most of whom were women and children. These unfortunate natives were then buried unceremoniously in a trench beside a brook which ran less than fifty yards from where the mansion's foundation would one day be lain. Periodically, over the next two hundred years, this land was additionally chosen to be the convenient resting place for lynching victims and the worst of condemned criminals, and more interestingly, there was a small fenced graveyard to the east of the house which included the bodies of eleven young women hanged for witchcraft by remnant Puritans in 1689. This graveyard, of course, was officially unconsecrated and so, too, were all of the unmarked graves amid the property.

The old man liked unconsecrated graves.

In fact, that's why he'd bought the house.

««—»»

The mansion itself? Three stories but narrow, a tower with a garret at the north corner, great bow windows, parapets, a circular tympanum of stained glass above the front door's stone arch whose glittering mosaic depicted the face of Alexander Seton—the only alchemist in history to successfully transmute lead into gold. Sloping dormer windows topped the mansion's twin wings, and behind these windows more obscurely notorious likenesses could be viewed: stone busts of Count Cagliostro, Dr. Edward Kelly, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and Gilles de Rais. Tin gutters lined the friezes which framed each story, and paired flues sprouted from several chimneys, like horns. Iron cresting rimmed the top garret, and sometimes, in the garret's oculus, candlelight could be seen.

The mansion, like the land it sat upon, was a cliché, but then so was the old man who owned it. He craved seclusion and antiquities, black moonlit nights, and the paneled rooms within full of the most forbidden books.

The old man believed in those books, because he knew that the only true force in existence was faith.

««—»»

"Oh, dear," the old man muttered when he saw that the pallid naked girl had shat herself. It happened on occasion; at least half of the girls were heroin addicts. Morphine derivatives routinely caused constipation, but when the owners of said clogged intestines were terrorized enough, it would all come out at once.

The rich smell rose up in the room, like fog. The old man gagged.

Oh, God! He rushed to the door and called up the stairs: "Waldo! Come down here, quickly, please!"

I'm a scholar and a celebrated antiquary, he reminded himself. My station in life exists on too high a level to clean up... accidents such as this.

The old man looked genteel, like a retired professor or perhaps the owner of a high-end clothier's. Bald on top but neatly thick gray hair below the pate, a long but trimmed goatee, a Lord & Taylor white dress shirt and smart black slacks. Seventy years old but with eyes keen and bright as a teenager's—bright in their hunger for knowledge and their passion for life, and the things he was certain that awaited him after life.

He was working in the basement just now, though he referred to it as the temple, for in a manner of speaking it was—indeed, a place of revered travail and worship. Facsimiles of Doric columns were present, and six arched doorways lined three of the brick walls; they'd been monumentally difficult to install, given the specifications. Each door showed stains of old brown blood and housed a single, pointed iron spike.

Several books lay opened on various reading-tables, the one he perused now being Tephramancy, by Christoff Deniere, Glastonbury Abbey Press, 1539. For those unaware, tephramancy was an occult science which involved the use of the ashes of burned human body parts as an activating ingredient of particularized metaphysical rituals.

Footfalls clunked down the stairs, the door squeaked open. Waldo Parkins had to duck to enter the basement—er, the temple. He could've been a college senior linebacker... that is if he could raise his IQ enough to even get into college. The old man thought of still more clichés when he'd first engaged Waldo's services as manservant. It would've been better had he been named Igor...

He'd hired Waldo less than a year ago—from local stock—for youth brought the physical strength that the old man had lost. Digging graves and hefting bodies was harder than it appeared, and besides, all great warlocks had apprentices. Where would John Dee have been without Edward Kelly? the old man considered. Indeed, Waldo's 6'4" frame and accommodating musculature fit the bill just fine, that and the ever-crucial weak-mind. See, the weak-minded were much easier to control—yet another cliché. Every thirteen days, the old man revitalized Waldo's Subservience Charm, whose ingredients and procedure he'd obtained while Slate-Writing one Candlemas Eve in a successful attempt to achieve otherwordly discourse with a long-dead French witch named Marguerite Lamy. Ms. Lamy had been burned at the stake in 1534 for casting spells upon the more comely nuns of the Convent of St. Brigitta and inducing them to consort with incubi.

"What'cha need, sir?" Waldo beamed. "I was upstairs packin' yer bags like ya tolt me." The boy paused, sniffed. "Whew! I smell Number Two... "

The old man winced when he noticed more feces oozing from the unconscious girl's buttocks. By now, so much had escaped her bowels that it looked like a long brown tail. "I'm terribly sorry, Waldo," the old man fidgeted, "but as you can see, our friend here has... had an accident, and I'm afraid I just don't have it in me to... "

Waldo smacked a grin. "Don't wanna clean up her shit, huh, sir?"

"Precisely. So if you don't mind... "

Waldo didn't mind at all, proof of the Subservience Charm's potency. He leaned over and scooped up the excreta in his bare hands, with no more concern than if he were scooping up popcorn. "What'cha want me to do with it, sir?"

Good Lord... The old man opened the iron hatch on the back wall. "In the crematory, if you please."

Waldo flapped the excrement into the fiery hatch, and continued doing so until it was all up. The old man fervently sprayed a can of Renuz-It Apple Cinnamon Home Fragrance around. Waldo whistled "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses," then, as he happily mopped up the smears on the floor.

"Now I'd like you to wash her, please," the old man directed. "These girls are just so foul."

"Yer wish is my command, sir," Waldo chuckled. The old man shook his head.

Metal links clinked; Waldo yanked on the pulleyed chain and watched the morbidly naked girl rise in the air, her wrists being cuffed to one end of the chain. Beneath her dirty bare feet the broad-shouldered manservant slipped a washtub. Then he cranked on the faucet, hosed her down, soaped up a car sponge, and began to suds her off.

Gad, thought the old man. The girl was appalling, pudgy flesh the hue of vanilla ice cream, cellulite-dimpled, and peppered by needlemarks and scabs from abscesses. Her buttocks could've been two twenty-pound sacks of flour pushed together, her pubis a great swatch of dull brown hair that had begun to grow traceably down the insides of her thighs and trailed up to her navel. A preposterous tattoo across her belly read LOVE DEPOSIT in large cursive letters.

Waldo seemed rapt whilst thoroughly sudsing the caramel smears out of her rump's cleft. Fat, expansive breasts hung unevenly, and one nipple was as big around as a coffee cup's rim, the other but a small puckered oval. The navel looked like a deep finger-hole in raw dough.

The old man busied himself by arranging the retractors and saw, and securing the proper crucible. He'd already done this once before but he did it again nonetheless, to distract him from the vision of the unwholesome human hulk hanging from the chain. Next, from an armoire, he inspected the glittering surplice which he would wear during the rite: a simple black-dyed cotton smock stitched with sundry gemstones. The stones were worthless to a jeweler, but to a sorcerer?

They were more valuable than a bucket full of Faberge eggs.

The power of faith, the old man mused.

Content, he turned—

"For goodness sake, Waldo!"

Waldo was kneeling now, performing fastidious cunnilingus on the suspended girl. The majora looked like a slice of baloney—the "cotto" kind—folded in half. At the old man's objection, Waldo glanced guiltily over his shoulder.

"What on earth are you doing?"

Waldo's brows rose. "Well, sir, I'se eatin' me some hair pie. It's a right fun, it is." Waldo's eyes widened in concern. "Ya wanna take a lick, sir? Bet it's been a whiles since ya et a splittail's gash, huh?"

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" the old man repeated, appalled. "Waldo, she's a prostitute! Do you have any idea how many filthy, immoral men have ejaculated in her orifice?"

"Orif— Oh, you mean her joy-hole? Well, I guess quite a number but... so what?" His grin flashed back. "Say, sir, can I fuck her in the graveyard and bleed her some, like ya let me do with that last gal?"

"No, no, that was an oblatory rite, this is for a materialization... ," but now the old man was getting a headache, and it was with further distaste that he noticed what Waldo had been doing while his tongue had ranged the abominable folds. His trousers were open, his hand wrapped around his penis which, like the rest of him, was overly large. This was one unfortunate side-effect of the Subservience Spell: accelerated libidiny.

"Please, Waldo, try to focus on your task. Don't succumb to diversions of the flesh."

Waldo's broad shoulders slumped. "Sorry, sir... " He stood up and forced the unsated erection back into his trousers. But suddenly a confusion lit in his eyes. "Sir? What'cha need the splittail fer if you're goin' on yer trip in the mornin'?"

"That's the surprise, Waldo."

"Surprise?"

"Yes. Now that you're done washing our sacrifant, you can go back upstairs and finish packing my bags, and when you're done with that, you can pack your own. You see, Waldo, I've decided to take you to Toledo with me."

Waldo's face brightened in delight. "Aw, shucks, sir! I'se always wanted to go to Ohio!"

The old man groaned. "Spain, Waldo. Toledo, Spain. There's a broker of sensitive collectibles there, and I see him every year at this time. You've worked hard during your time under my employ, so I thought you'd enjoy a trip overseas."

"Shee-it-yeah, sir!" Waldo rejoiced. The boy's twenty-six years of redneck oblivion had never taken him across the Russell County line. "You're a super-cool boss, I'll tell ya!"

"Actually, Waldo, I'm morose, narcissistic, and boring, but thank you for the compliment." In truth, though, it was not any impression of reward that urged him to take Waldo along. This particular excursion would require him to venture into some of the cryptic city's back alleys which more and more were being overrun by a ruffian element. This year his broker had procured for him a blasphemous 15th Century codex supposedly owned by one of Vlad Tepes' concubines—Canessa—a prostitute and sorceress who had, at Vlad's order, infiltrated a Wallachian monastery and cast, among other things, a Bloodlusting Hex on all of its monks. The hex had proved a whopping success, turning the monastery's contingent of faithful friars into Satan-worshiping madmen who wound up draining the blood of several dozen local children before a tribunal from the Holy See had condemned them and ordered the monastery razed. The codex was a book of intercessions said to conjure a demon named Baalzephon. The old man would also be visiting another dealer—his ossifist of choice—to purchase the pelvic bone of one Saint Radegunde, whose tomb in Poitiers, France, had been plundered by professional grave-robbers-for-hire. The bones of saints, especially those known to have displayed stigmata, were of great value to occultists; when powdered or tinctured they could be used very effectively in smoke-divinations and automatic-writing trances.

"Run along now, Waldo, and when you're done with the packing you'd best get to sleep. It's a long drive to the airport in the morning."

"Hot dog, sir! You kin count on me!" And then he turned for the stairs. "I'se going ta Spain... !"

But before the young dope could fully exit the room, something sparked in his feeble brain. "Er, wait, sir. If I'se goin' with ya on yer trip... who's gonna keep an eye on the house and all yer val-yer-bulls?"

"That's a good question, Waldo, and very astute of you." The old man's hand bid, first, the hanging girl and, second, the implements on the table.

"Ooooooh. I git it... "

"Um-hmm. And thank you for cleaning up the excreta."

Waldo's jaw dropped. "The what?"

"Just go finish packing."

Waldo tramped back up the steps, hooting more exuberance.

Sniffing apple-cinnamon now, the old man upped the crematory temperature and donned a plastic apron and gloves. That's when the dowdy drug addict regained consciousness. Her sty-flecked eyes fluttered, then shot open to show dulled whites. Dazedly she looked at the old man, then looked around to see herself suspended from the chain. She looked back at the old man and shrieked.

The old man winced. He deplored loud, sudden noises. "Please, miss. You won't benefit at all by that."

"You old fuck!" she protested. "You skinny piece of old shit!"

These protestations did not carry the typical southern accent the old man was used to; instead, it sounded more like Jersey or the Bronx. "Flattery will get you nowhere," he quipped.

"You tricked me! You were supposed to be a twenty-dollar trick! You-you-you... " The dull eyes blinked in the pudgy face. "You knocked me out!"

"I congratulate you on your perceptivity."

She wriggled uselessly on the chain, which only caused her to sway back and forth, pendulum-like. A pendulum of ungainly human flesh with a LOVE DEPOSIT tattoo on a belly busted out with stretchmarks from untold trick babies. "You spinach-chin motherfucker! I knew I shouldn't have gotten in the car with you! You look like my motherfucking grandfather, you dick-suck ass-lick psycho shit-suck ass-bag piss-slit ASS-motherfucking-HOLE!"

"You speak with the eloquence of queens, my dear."

"And-and... you fucked me already, didn't you, you gray-haired bald shit! My pussy doesn't feel right! You fucked me while I was knocked out, didn't you, you sick cock?"

The old man couldn't resist. "Young lady, I'd sooner admit my penis into the drain-hole of a ghetto dumpster than admit it into that horrific morass you call your vagina."

She paused in an attempt to comprehend his words, then gave up. "Just let me go, you shit-dick!"

The old man chuckled. "I would estimate that such an event presents a very low order of probability."

Her pasty bulk kept swinging. "Where're my clothes!"

The old man's fine leather shoes tapped across the room's cement floor. He opened the hatch of the Ener-Tek IV crematory, showing the rows of white-hot liquid-propane nozzles kicking out 2,200 degrees.

"Regrettably, your attire was consigned to the flames... along with what I would approximate to be your last dozen or so meals."

The girl shrieked again, so shrilly this time that the cords stood out in the old man's neck.

"Oh my God you crazy sick piece of shit! You're going to burn me alive!"

"Please, miss. I can't implore you more deeply. Be quiet. And, no offense intended"—the old man shook his head ruefully—"but your accent is killing me. And don't despair. I've no intention whatever of burning you alive," and then he closed the hatch.

Her terror dropped down a notch, her flip-flopping on the chain retarding. She blinked repeatedly, cogs turning in the spoiled brain. "Look, look—lemme think. Er, look, mister, I'm sorry I called you bad names—"

"Bad names?" The old man couldn't help but be amused. "That's putting it a bit mildly, I'd say. Your language could stop the Devil in his tracks—"

"Look, look, listen... " For the first time, her eyes appeared half-enlivened. "I'll do anything you want, no shit. You ask any of those guys at the truck stop and they'll tell you I suck better cock than any girl working. I'll give you the best nut of your life—just let me go."

"Please... "

"You wanna piss on me, shit on me?"

"I should think not."

"Oh, I get it, you're one of those guys. You want me to shit on you—"

The old man grimly recalled the sheer volume of the feces that was now reduced to ash. "Trust me, miss, even if I did desire to be so debased, I'm sure you're not up to it at the moment."

"All right, all right," she hurried, desperately assessing possibilities. "I'll tongue your asshole and suck your balls at the same time—how about that? Or—hey!—I'll put my big toe up your ass and sit on your dick. Think about it, mister. I can really do that."

The old man groaned. "Really, miss, I've no interest in your debauched delights, I assure you. Your being abducted by me and my associate is an example of ill-fortune, I'm afraid, but such are the pitfalls of your profession, hmm? There's a fair share of disturbed people out there, and, plying this trade of yours, you could fall victim to any one of them: psychopaths, rapists, the sexually monomanic, the mentally ill. But at least you didn't fall into the clutches of one of them. Instead, consider yourself privileged. You've fallen into the clutches of an eccentric antiquary who also happens to be a sorcerer of some authority."

She squirmed more on the chain now, but then stalled. "Sorcerer? You're into, like, satanic shit, devil worship and all that?"

The old man's bushy gray brow rose. "Indeed."

"Well that's great because I've got five kids back at the projects. Shit, man—I'll give 'em to you if you let me go. I mean, you satanic guys sacrifice kids all the time, right? And, shit, one of the little fuckers is only a month old. You can drink his blood. That's what you guys do, isn't it? Drink baby's blood and use it for rituals and shit?"

Oh, such a sad refrain... The old man pushed the girl toward the second of the six arched doorways. This was possible because the chain's ratcheted pulley was fixed to an overhead track which branched off to each door.

"What are you doing, you fuckwad!"

"Your time has almost been expended, my dear," he told her in a kindly voice. "I'd advise you to spend these last moments in prayer, because one thing I can tell you beyond all doubt is that in the course of my studies I've verified that there is indeed a God in Heaven and a Devil in Hell, not that I suspect any amount of repentance on your part could save you from meeting the latter... "

"You cock-lick dingleberry-eating piece of fuck!"

The old man re-opened the crematory's hatch.

"I knew it! A lying old shit-heap motherfucker!" she railed. "You said you weren't gonna burn me!"

As aforementioned, the wooden door in each archway had been fitted with a sharpened iron spike. The old man, next, grimaced when he placed both hands against the girl's flaccid breasts and pushed.

She tensed, then convulsed, gargling blood when the spike exited the hollow of her throat. The pale belly sucked in and out in horror, causing the atrocious LOVE DEPOSIT tattoo to sort of undulate. Her last words, though barely intelligible due to the puncture, were as thus:

"I never should've left Atlantic City... "

The retractors were out and ready; there was only the minor problem of separating the sternum from top to bottom. For this he used a simple branch-cutter. The sickle-like blades first cut up into the outer solar plexus, then eight or ten strokes on the tool clipped a reasonably straight line right up the sternum. The task never required as much strength as one would surmise, but that grisly clipping sound never failed to unnerve him.

The girl continued to tremor on the spike, blood seeping out nicely. She was still in a sense alive, and perhaps she even heard the old man when he said, "Have no fear, young lady. I'm not going to burn all of you, just your noxious heart," and then he applied the cardiac retractors and began to crank her rib cage open.

PART ONE:

ADVENTS

ONE MONTH AGO

(I)

It was a fine summer day when twenty-year-old Richard "Dicky" Caudill dragged two large plastic bags across Main Street, as he did every day, into Pip Brothers Laundromat. This was July 24th, 1991, six full years before Dicky would meet his death by having his spinal column torn out of his rectal cavity at a place called Wroxeter Abbey. The official cause of death filed by the Russell County Sheriff's Department would be "Death by traumatic mutilation via an unknown mode," but there were plenty of folks who knew full well that he was actually killed by a legendary monster called The Bighead, but that was another story. This would occur in the future, of course, as Dicky was alive and well just now, and what he had in the preposterously depressed town of Luntville was something many didn't: a job. Hence, the large plastic bags he was dragging into the laundromat. Dicky was fat, with a buzzcut, a symptomatic dopey redneck. The Caudill family went back a ways; in fact, his great, great, great grandfather was a Confederate general in the Civil War who had supposedly sold his soul to a demon named Anarazel, and who then allied himself with an industrialist named Harwood Gast... but that was another story as well. He also had another blood relative named Thibald Caudill: yet another story.

Dicky's T-shirt showed a flowing American flag and the words TRY BURNING THIS FLAG, FUCKER! but in truth he wasn't much of a patriot. A number of Luntville's young men had joined the Army and some of them had gotten maimed or killed in some place called Bosnia and right now there was this other war going on in one of those nutty sandbox countries called Iraq and the news was dubbing it Desert Storm. There was no way Dicky was going to go get his fat ass shot up in some place like that just for a paycheck and benefits. Besides, he already had a job.

And, to say it for the third time now, in a terribly undisciplined narration, he was dragging those two big plastic bags—the first two of many—into the laundry when he stopped at the door at the sound of footsteps. He looked up and saw a wiry fella with long hair, black goatee, and jeans coming down the sidewalk. The snapping footsteps came from a pair of beaten rawhide boots. The fella was wearing a John Deere hat, and he was eating what appeared to be chicken nuggets from a Wendy's bag.

Dicky blinked. Is that... "Balls?" he called out. "Tritt Balls Conner?"

The wiry fella stopped and stared, then his unpleasant face turned up in a sneering smile. "Dicky Caudill! Well shee-it my drawers!"

"I ain't seen you in, shee-it, two years I'll'se bet."

"That's 'cos I just got done doin' two years, in the county slam."

"Shee-it. What fer?"

Balls ate a few more nuggets. "Cop was hasslin' me one night, so's I'se beat his ass fierce, I did," Balls bragged, but actually this was a bold-faced lie. He'd received the two-year sentence for stealing a woman's purse in a Giant food store parking lot, but before he'd run off with the purse he'd felt up the woman's ten-year-old daughter. "Got out two days ago."

"Where's ya livin'?"

"My Daddy's house in Cotswold." Balls eyed a redneck woman probably in her forties walking into a pawn shop two storefronts down. He rubbed his crotch, thinking it might be fun to fuck up her hair with his sperm. "He died whiles I was in stir, some disease I never heared of called hepatitis," but he pronounced the word as "heppa-tat-iss."

"Dang, Balls. I'se sorry ta hear it."

"Fuck," Balls gruffed. "I'se glad the fucker's dead. All he ever done was beat my ass and lock me in closets whiles he was fuckin' a bunch'a whores. I done inherited the house'n all the shit in it, not that it were much."

It needs to be mentioned now that Balls and Dicky had been friends in their early teens, both having attended Clintwood Middle School, and they both would've gone to the same high school had they not dropped out in the seventh grade. The two went back a ways in a history of petty crime, willful auto-sexual malfeasance, and entry-level redneck hooliganism.

"So's what'cha doin' now?" Dicky asked.

Balls stood hands on hips. When a young pregnant woman rolled a baby carriage by across the street, he spat. The woman was Hispanic, and he thought it might be nice to cornhole her on her hands and knees and then pull out just in time to send his load into the carriage. That would serve the bitch right for violating immigration laws.

"Fuckin' pepper-belly immer-grints," he complained. "Their men take all our jobs fer cheaper, then all's they do is keep their women knocked up shittin' out them little spic babies'n goin' on welfare. Ain't right."

"No, it ain't."

Balls continued to eye the young woman. "Like ta squeeze the milk outa them fat tits, I would." He slapped Dicky on the back and laughed. "Bet it tastes like tacos!"

Dicky laughed out loud. "Bet it does, Balls! Bet it does!"

"But you ask me what I'se doin', I'se beatin' the street lookin' fer a job."

"Dang, man. Ain't much in the way'a work here these days. Most places're closed up, ‘cept the Wendy's."

"I know me that," Balls snapped and pointed at the pregnant Hispanic. "'Cos of them. Hard-workin' American fellas cain't git no work 'cos they take all the jobs."

"Most of the gals work in the sewin' shops, and the fellas work in the meat-packers," Dicky informed.

Balls pointed down to the corner, to the Wendy's. "Even that place is full up with 'em. I'se asked fer a appler-kay-shun, but the spic manager jabbered somethin' at me shakin' his head."

"Ain't right, man, just plum ain't."

"What about that Jiffy Lube? It still here?"

"Yeah, but it's closed, and I heard the drug store don't hire ex-cons. But, ya know, Pappy Halm still owns that Qwik-Mart next to the Greyhound stop. Maybe he's'll give ya a job."

Balls frowned. "That old dog turd? No way. He caught me shopliftin' Neccos when I was a little kid, so's he told my Daddy and, a'course, my Daddy beat the shit outa me'n stuck a lit cigarette in my bag. So's then I went to Pappy Halm's house that night and shit on his car, and ya know what?"

"What?"

"He caught me doin' that, too. Called the poe-leece fer that one. My Daddy had to pay a fine on account I was a minor'n then he beat the shit out'a me again and sat my bare ass down on top'a the wood stove to teach me a lesson."

"Gawd dang!"

"Anyways, I need me a job to tide me over fer a month so's I kin eat, but after that I'll be just fine."

Dicky scratched his head. "What's happenin' in a month?"

Balls smiled again, the smile like a sneer. He lowered his voice. "I gots me a big score."

Dicky's jowls drooped. "A score as in a heist?"

"Sort of."

"Dang, Balls. You just got done gittin' outa the joint. Whys do somethin' that could git'cha right back in?"

"It's a shore thing, Dicky, but I gots to make me some kind'a money till then." He looked more intently at Dicky. "You got a job?"

"Dang straight," Dicky was proud to state. "I'se a... maintenance man."

"Maintenance? What kind?" but Balls pronounced the word as "kand."

Suddenly, Dicky was less enthused to talk about his position of employment. He kicked one of the plastic bags. "I do laundry'n stuff, cleanin'-up work."

"Yeah? Fer who?"

"Just a... a place across the street."

Balls looked across the street. He saw a liquor store, a thrift shop with a CLOSED sign, an ice-cream parlor with a CLOSED SIGN, another place whose sign read simply RELAX AT JUNES, and a shoe store with a CLOSED sign.

"Laundry, you say?" Balls questioned, confused. "Where ‘cross the street needs laundry done?"

Dicky shuffled his feet. "Aw, just a place, but the pay ain't bad—five bucks'n hour under the table."

Balls raised a brow. "Righteous," but then he squinted across the street again. "So's... where do you work?"

"The place that says Relax At Junes," Dicky finally admitted, trying not to blush. "Ain't nothin' I brag about much. See, it's really a massage parlor. Ya pay twenty bucks fer a massage, then if ya tip the gal another twenty, she jerks ya off."

Balls shook his head. "Hail, a buck's a buck, I guess, but... " Balls squinted at the laundry bags. "Dicky, I still don't git the laundry part. Laundry? From a jack shack?"

Dicky opened one of the plastic bags, and out wafted a rich, stifling yet readily familiar scent that was turning into a stench.

"Ho-boy!" Balls exclaimed. He stepped back, fanning his hand before his face.

The bag was stuffed to bursting with white wash cloths. Dicky continued, "See, after the fella blows his load, the gal wipes it up with one'a these rags... "

Balls scratched his head, befuddled. "Hail, Dicky, I'se smelt cum before, shore, but I'll be damned if I don't smell some shit in there too."

Dicky smirked. "Yeah, well, see, Balls, if ya tip the gal an extra twenty, she'll stick her finger up yer ass whiles she's jerkin' ya."

"Yer shittin' me," Balls replied. "Them gals workin' there... they ever lay any of that finger-action on you?"

"Fuck no!" Dicky assured his pal. "I don't want nothin' goin' up my asshole! I ain't no queer," and with that, Dicky stuffed the rags back down into the bag—with a bare hand—then twirled the bag closed again.

"Dicky, you just put'cher hand in a bag chock full'a cum-rags," Balls pointed out.

"Aw, shee-it, I ain't grossed out by touchin' 'em none. My Uncle Wally always said a little nut never hurt no one."

Balls reflected on the information. "Why would yer uncle tell ya that?"

Dicky faltered. "Oh, uh, no reason. Just somethin' he said once," he quickly excused.

Now Balls chuckled a bit. "So that's yer job, huh? Warshin' cum-rags from a jack shack?"

"Well, uh... yeah... "

Balls slapped Dicky on the back again. "Great job, Dicky-Boy!"

"Shee-it." Embarrassment drew tight lines in Dicky's corpulent face. "I knows it's a dumb-ass job, Balls, but, see, it's only temporary. You remember Randy Turcot?"

Balls sat down on a bench and struck a Thinker pose. "I know I'se heard the name—oh, yeah! That lowdown scumbag used to drive that shiny black El Camino ‘round'n was always pickin' up the few decent-lookin' chicks in town. Anytime I'd git somethin' goin' with a splittail, he'd come along in that hot rod of his and next thing I knowed, the girl's ass was in the seat next to him. Always hated that cracker. He'n his brother used ta jack deer on my Daddy's land, and I'se swear one time he sugared one'a our tractors. I hadda mind ta kill him, I did... "

Dicky snickered. "Well, some player beat'cha to it 'cos about a year ago he went ta Pulaski to buy dope'n the dealer pig-stuck him in some alley and took his green. Bled out right then'n there."

Balls' eyes beamed, and he hooted. "Well ain't that just grand! Dicky, that's the best news I heard in years!"

Dicky nodded, continuing, "And that shiny black El Camino of his? I bought it off his daddy 'bout six months ago, and been fixin' it up somethin' fierce."

Balls looked astonished. "Shee-it, Dicky, that was the fastest car in the county's what I always heard."

"You heard right, but, see, it throwed a rod ‘fore Turcot got shivved and that fucked the engine'n trannie all up. I done rebuilt the engine with what I make at the jack shack, but the trannie's blowed. Gotta get a new one and, see, I cain't just use any ole trannie, it gots ta be a M-22 Rock Crusher, and that's twelve hunnert bucks. But once I got the bread, I'll be droppin' that trannie in myself'n then I'll be drivin' the fastest car in the county, and that's when I kin git me a real job."

"What the fuck's a fast car got to do with a real job?"

Dicky sat down on the bench, whispering giddily. "Runnin' ‘shine, man. Runnin' ‘shine. Snot McKully'n Clyde Nale got more stills in these parts than anyone, and they'se always hirin' fellas with fast cars to run the hooch ‘cross the state line to all them dry counties in Kentucky. They won't hire ya if ya ain't got the wheels, though, 'cos, see, you gotta have a rod that'll outrun the ATF boys and the state pursuit cars. But with my 427 ‘Mino and a Rock Crusher? I'll blow the doors off anything on the road."

Balls nodded, eating a few more chicken nuggets. "I don't doubt it would, Dicky."

"And McKully's runners make a hunnert cash a day and that's only drivin' one run."

Balls was thinking again... "And with a partner helpin' ya out you could make two runs a day, and split it with yer partner... "

Dicky's expression soured. He could smell shit just as well as anyone. "Just 'cos we growed up together'n all that don't mean nothin'. You want me to cut you into my deal? You gots ta bring something to the table, brother."

Balls put his arm around Dicky. "Way I see it, Dicky-Boy, is you need somethin'—a $1200 transmission—and I need somethin'—a job fer a month—"

"Why just a month?"

"I tolt ya," Balls reasserted. "In about a month, I got this score—a big score—but I don't wanna eat garbage till then."

Dicky hemmed and hawed. "Well, dang, Balls, I don't want to see ya starve but I ain't gonna be able to run no moonshine fer six, eight months at least. Workin' this job?" Dicky pointed to the bloated plastic bags. "That's how long it'll take me to git up them twelve hunnert bucks."

Balls had a very characteristic grin: like a weasel's face morphed into the face of guy who sells "Rolexes" from the inside of a raincoat. "Just you listen, friend. I'se walkin' back to my Daddy's place now but you be sure ta meet me at the Crossroads at midnight tonight, ya hear?"

Dicky looked confused. Had Balls given up working him for a cut of his future moonshine-running job? "The Crossroads? What fer?"

"Fer a coupla beers"—Balls winked—"and fer you ta pick up the twelve hunnert bucks I'm gonna give you ta git that new trannie," and then Balls' boot heels snapped down the pavement as he headed for the side road out of town. He was tossing chicken nuggets from the Wendy's bag into the air and catching them in his mouth as he proceeded.

Well ain't that some shit? Dicky thought. Then he sighed and dragged the big plastic bags into the laundry...

(II)

Now I know how Roquentin felt in Sartre's NAUSEA, the Writer thought. The Greyhound rattled as it soared scarily around the backwoods bends. He'd gotten the seat in the very back—it was his karma—which even the bums didn't want. Used condoms had been stuffed in the window crack, while on the floor lay several used hypodermics.

The Writer had vast experiences on Greyhounds; he needed to travel, to follow the call of his Muse, and this was the cheapest way. Besides, he needed to see. He fancied himself as a seer, and, hence, a seeker.

And what was he seeking?

The verities of the human condition.

It was a very real world—and often a beautiful one—on the other side of those panoramic windows complete with the plaque that read PULL RED HANDLE UP TO ESCAPE.

The bus stank. That was the only part he could never get used to. It was the smell of life, yes, and in a sense the smell of truth—indeed, of verity!—which was what the Writer craved beyond all else. Most people had personal mottos, like: Another Day, Another Dollar, or Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life, or Every Day I'm Getting Better and Better in Every Way. But the Writer's motto was this:

How Powerful is the Power of Truth?

Not a motto as much as a universal query. It was the fuel for his existence... or the excuse.

The truth of what I write can only exist in its stark, denuded words, he recited to himself. Black ink on white paper... and the million subjectivities in between...

It was all he lived for as an artist, and most would credit him with having a noble goal.

Nevertheless, the bus stank. They all did, of course, but this was the worst. It was a smell he'd tried many times to delineate with words, and the best he could come up with was this: unwashed hair-oil mixed with unwashed armpit mixed with unwashed prostitute's vagina mixed with something vaguely sweet.

It was that sweetness he could never isolate and identify. Candied papaya chunks? Figs? Crystalized ginger?

It was something like that but like wasn't good enough. Not being able to define the smell was one of the Writer's innumerable failures, and though he viewed failure as something more important in his field than success, it was a particular failure that would always infuriate him.

He joggled in the seat as the bus rocked on. A woman of indeterminate race sat next to him, and she must've weighed three hundred pounds. The side of her arm pressing against his possessed the same girth as the Writer's leg. Every seat on the bus was full—naturally. Off and on, he tried to read, either Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim, or The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. by George Steiner, but whenever he opened either book, the woman—as if prodded by a Pavlovian trigger—pulled out her one-pound bag of pistachios and started eating, quite noisily. Between the eating sounds, the overall not-quite-definable stink, and an encroaching claustrophobia that made him feel like a Girondin Royalist stuffed behind an oubliette during Robespierre's Reign of Terror, the Writer was at his wits' end. He looked at his watch, a Timex Indiglo, and saw that it was 6 p.m.

God knew when they'd be in Lexington.

On the plastic seatback in front of him, someone had magic markered: THE PERFECT MATCH: YOUR WIFE, MY KNIFE, and in worse script just below it: GANG BANG ALL WIMMIN TO DETH AND KILL ALL WHITE PEEPLE, NIGGERS, JEWS, MUZLUMS, INDIUNS AND SPIKS!

Curious, the Writer thought. At least the Asian-Americans can rest easy...

The massive woman next to him had stopped eating and fallen asleep, her maw agape below the sagging face. The Writer couldn't resist; he extracted his Sharpie and applied a graffito of his own: NATURE, THOUGH AN APPEARANCE, IS NOT MERELY THE IMMANENT MIND'S ISSUE OF CONSCIOUSNESS BUT A MANIFESTATION IN ITS OWN RIGHT OF A SUB-TOPICAL SPIRITUAL REALITY.

There, the Writer thought.

Just then the threat of a potential symbology pressed to his face like a clammy hand. My watch! the thought, unbidden, occurred to him.

But why would he think that?

He looked again at his Timex Indiglo. On the back it read "8-Year Battery," and he knew he'd bought it eight years ago. Hmm, he thought.

What could that mean?

Time's up, he guessed.

Like when the narrator of that Bergman flick says "At midnight... the wolf howls." Did it mean something pontifical? A deep-seated literary allusion that was clear only to the most astute?

Or was it just pretentious poop?

The intercom crackled, then the driver's voice boomed, "Next stop, Luntville."

The Writer had never heard of the place, and was glad of that when he looked out the window. It reminded him of that show he'd seen on cable about an Appalachian family: rusted trailers, dilapidated houses that were visibly leaning, cars up on blocks. Many houses had CONDEMNED signs on their front doors while obviously still occupied. The road wound through wild woods with vast breaks of scrubby farmland pocked by tractors scarlet with rust. When they passed another ramshackle house, the Writer noticed an entire family sitting vacant-faced on the bowing front porch: an older man in overalls sipping clear liquid from a jar, an obese woman with a masculine face pulling leaves from a bag of Red Man, a teen daughter in cutoffs and stained white bra smoking something from a glass pipe, and a dirty tot sitting naked on the bare wood, shuddering as if from Parkinson's.

White Trash Gothic, the Writer mused.

Eventually the road drained into what was apparently the main drag of a township, this Luntville. Closed storefronts lined either side. The driver swore in some kind of an accent when the street's only stoplight turned red; the bus squealed to a halt like a train slamming its brakes.

No vehicles were seen in the perpendicular lane.

Then the thought sparked, a delicious aesthetic fire in the Writer's head. WHITE TRASH GOTHIC! Suddenly he wanted to cry out in joy.

That's my next book!

Hence, on the Greyhound bus, no less, his next creative calling had struck, a veritable lightning bolt of the truth that was his aesthetic blood. He'd left Ipswich on this self-same bus three days ago and prayed he'd leave his writer's-block as well. But a new book idea had never occurred to him.

Until now.

Oh my God... It will be my most genuine novel... I'll win the National Book Award!

In a split-second, then, like a death-flash, the entire novel appeared before his mind's eye...

Moments later the bus roared into the front of a convenience store. A tiny sign on a streetlamp read GREYHOUND DEPOT: LUNTVILLE.

One old man with a beard and white hair hobbled down the aisle. The Writer grabbed his two carry-ons and followed him, after, of course, the arduous task of asking the behemoth next to him to get up so he could squeeze by. The woman's walrus face fixed on him; she had a Big Dipper of moles on her forehead.

"I saw you writin' that dirty shit on the seat," mouthed the walrus-faced woman. Green pistachio-mush was caked between her inordinately large teeth.

"It's Wilhelm Leibniz," the Writer replied. "Pluralistic objective monadism."

When he tightrope-walked by, the driver said, "I thought you were going to Lexington," but the man pronounced the word as "Rexington." He was Asian-American.

"I've experienced a creative advent, a new variance of my Muse has arrived," the Writer replied. "And, I'm sorry to point out, your bus is too fetid."

The driver's slanted eyes looked cruxed. "Fetid?"

Someone from the seats cut in, "He means your bus stinks!"

"Oh... "

Next, a passenger with a more distinct voice appended, "Yes, it smells like B.O. mixed with the smell of dried apricots. You know, that uncanny way you taste the smell right as you're eating one? The sapor?"

The Writer stared back as if into a glittering chasm. The person who'd made the simile was a gaunt-faced man with spectacles and a slight malocclusion of the jaw. He looked about as happy to be on the bus as the Writer had been.

Thank you, sir! the Writer thought and hopped off the bus.

The Greyhound tore off in a deafening roar mere seconds after the door had flapped closed behind him. The Writer felt siphoned within a dervish of dust and noise; a final glance at the bus showed him a smear of faces, like apparitions, inducing him to recall Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." Like petals on a wet, black bough... The old man who'd gotten off with him fell down from the roaring vacuum drag.

The Writer helped him up. "Are you all right, sir?"

"Blammed dink driver!" the old man railed. "Bet'cha he was VC, I shorely do! Wants to get back at us fer blowin' his shit country up'n that Ho Chi Minh fucker!"

"Actually I think he was Japanese, but then... we blew their country up too."

The old man waved an irate fist in the air. "And I just had me some Hin-doo doctor at the hospital in Pulaski tell me I gots some blammed disease called dye-ur-beetees."

"Oh, sorry to hear that. Type 1 or 2?"

A cockeyed glare. "How the fuck do I know? I tolt ya, the fucker was Hin-doo, could barely understand his swami jabberin'... . A'course, maybe he wasn't Hin-doo on account he didn't have one'a them dots on his head. What's that make him, then? A fuckin' A-rab?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir."

"And looky there!" the old man continued pitching his fit. "I'se in a swivet, I am!" He pulled up a pant leg to show a swollen ankle purple as an eggplant skin.

Ew, the Writer thought.

"Swami fucker says I ain't got no cirkalayshun no more on account'a this dye-ur-beetees ‘so's if I wanna live, I gots to have my fuckin' feet cut off! And ya knows what else? Says I gots ta pay him to do it! Eight hunnert bucks, and the fucker had the balls ta tell me that's the poverty discount!"

The Writer's heart went out to the old man...

Rheumy eyes peered back below bushy white brows. "You ain't from ‘round these parts, are ya, boy?"

"No, sir. I'm from—" but then the Writer faltered. I'm the man who came from nowhere, he answered in thought. He picked a random city in his head. "I'm from Milwaukee."

The old man tensed. "Same place that fella in the news is from?"

"Pardon me?"

"It's been on the blasted news the last three days straight!"

I've been on a Greyhound bus for the last three days straight... "I hadn't heard. Something happened in Milwaukee?"

"Dang straight. Cops caught some fella with dead bodies in his apartment, had cut-off heads in the fuckin' refrigerator. Said there was even a head in a lobster pot! One'a them homo fellas, probably chugged more cock than I'se chugged moonshine. And he hadda pair'a cut-off hands hangin' in his closet."

"How... macabre... "

Now the old man seemed to give the Writer a disapproving once-over. "What's a city boy like you doin' here?"

"I'm following my Muse, I guess you could say."

"The hail?"

"I'm a speculative novelist," the Writer said. "I infuse relatable modern fiction scenarios with charactorial demonstrations of the existential condition. Allegorical symbology, it's called, rooted in various philosophical systems."

The old man smirked. "Fuck." Next, the rheumy eyes shot down to the Writer's sneakered feet. "Where'd ya git them shitty shoes, boy? K-Mart?"

The Writer was surprised. "Actually, yes."

"Well, they look like shit, son, and if you're a writer then you must have money—"

The Writer laughed.

"—so's you just come ta see me. I'm a mile off County Road One, take a left at the deadfall, the big ‘un. Jake Martin's the name, and I'se the best shoemaker in the county just as sure as rabbits can fuck. Just you come to see me fer some real shoes'n I'll give ya a deal."

The Writer was waylaid by the stunning irony. A shoemaker... soon to have no feet... "I'll be sure to look you up."

"You do that," and then the oldster began hobbling away.

"But if you could spare a minute, sir. Where might I find some suitable lodgings?"

A big black vein beat beneath the purple ankle. The bony hand pointed somewhere unfixed. "Ya might try Annie's bed ‘n' breakfast couple miles yonder, and then there's the Gilman House, but a fella with money like you—a writer—ain't gonna wanna stay there 'cos it's a shit-hole full'a dirty cunts." The bony hand pointed down the street. "Alls they charge is ten bucks a night so's how good kin the rooms be?"

That's my kind of price... "Thank you very much for your time, sir."

"Shee-it," the old man hobbled away, waving his arm.

My first significant verbal exchange with the local populace, the Writer realized. A block down he noticed a row of stores, most showing CLOSED signs, but one—PIP BROTHERS LAUNDROMAT—looked open for business because a young fat man with a buzzcut was dragging large plastic bags inside. The man didn't look happy yet the Writer couldn't have felt more relieved. Three days on a Greyhound, or three minutes—it didn't matter. An obligatory sanitizing was mandatory, and all the clothes he wore right now would have to be washed. Twice. More closed shops stood across the street from the laundry but one establishment (whose sign read merely RELAX AT JUNES) appeared to be open, for a man in a plaid shirt and cowboy hat exited the front door wearing quite a grin. A moment later, a woman in cutoffs and large breasts straining a halter came out the same door, then sat down on a bench to smoke. Did she inadvertently sniff her finger? Peculiar, thought the Writer. But what he noticed first was the misspelling on the sign. I should tell them, he considered. It needs to be possessive.

At the next intersection stood a Wendy's fast food restaurant, with only a few customers observable in the windows. He'd never been to a Wendy's. Someone had told him once that this chain served square hamburgers. Why not rhombuses? the Writer questioned the prejudice. Why not cordiforms and dodecagons?

Down the street in the opposite direction he spotted a rundown tavern. Thank God, a bar... No writer worth his ink didn't drink. Hemingway, Sartre and Beauvoir, Poe... Then he noted the tavern's wooden sign: THE CROSSROADS.

How curious...

The Writer couldn't count how many taverns he'd happened upon which bore the same name. It was a name rich with allegorical promise, and he liked that. He needed to be surrounded or even besieged by it...

But profound allegories can wait a moment or two, he prioritized. He needed some cigarettes and some food. Then, contemplating what the first word of his new novel would be, he grabbed his bags and trudged into the Qwik-Mart.

"We're closed," snapped the old crank of a proprietor behind the counter.

The Writer rechecked his 8-year-battery Timex. "Really? What kind of convenience store closes at 6 p.m.?"

"This one!"

The old crank had the face of an elderly Heinrich Himmler but wore overalls and a long sleeve shirt, and one of those visors like bankers wore in days of old. The Writer thought: Mr. Drucker, in Green Acres... There was a cane with a dog's head propped behind the counter.

"I don't mean to be an imposition, sir," the Writer began, "but I've just traveled a considerable distance in... less than savory conditions, and I really need some cigarettes and food. It would only take a minute of your time."

The old crank made a psst! sound, flapped a hand, and belted "Fuck! Go ahead! Ever-one else's shittin' on me today! Why not you too?"

An amiable old chap, I'll give him that. The Writer grabbed some instant coffee, sugar, and Saltines. The dinner of champions... Besides, he'd read somewhere that these three ingredients were primarily all that academic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft consumed for the majority of his career. (And what he hadn't read was that these same three ingredients had probably been the cause of the colon cancer that had killed him in 1937.) Back at the counter he asked for a carton of cigarettes as well, then withdrew his credit card from the velcro pouch he wore around his ankle whenever he traveled.

"You gotta be shittin' me!" the old crank wailed. "Does this look like New York City?"

What could I expect? He stooped again to retrieve cash from the pouch.

The register bell dinged as the proprietor rang up the sale. He looked as though he'd sipped straight lemon juice. "You must be the Writer I keep hearin' about."

The Writer stared, disbelieving.

"Word gits around. And I seed you just got into town, but if you got a sliver'a brain in yer head, boy, next thing on yer to-do list should be gittin' out of town."

The Writer was astonished. "You recommend the place that much... "

"Ain't nothin' but white trash'n immer-grints here, son. Meth-heads, drunks, fat cows on welfare, and enough dirty little kids that if ya put 'em all in the same place at once, the stink'd open a crack in the earth bigger'n the Grand Fuckin' Canyon. I got more crackers comin' in and out'a here tryin' to shoplift than to buy anything."

"So business has been better, I presume."

"Fuck. Today I got this one trailer cow named Sadie Fuller givin' me a ration of shit 'cos I won't sell her dog food on her food stamps, then I'se said ‘Sadie, you ain't even got a fuckin' dog,' and she said ‘I know, but I'se got eleven kids, and the money I'se save feedin' 'em dog food leaves me with more to buy steaks, then I'se trade the steaks fer moonshine.' Can ya believe it?"

The Writer struggled for response. "How... tragic."

"Aw, fuck, that ain't what I mean, ya moe-ron! Half the fuckin' population's on welfare! ‘N by the time a little girl's got some hair on her slit, her daddy knocks her up so's they kin git more food stamps! Only folks who buy anything in my store're the fuckin' wetbacks 'cos they'se the only ones who work! I sell more cans'a refried beans'n haller-peener peppers than I sell fuckin' Three Musketeers! What ever happened to America!"

This guy's more racist than the shoemaker, the Writer figured. "Paradise... lost, I'd say. The proverbial American Dream is just an illusion behind a prevarication."

The proprietor cracked! his cane on the floor. "Don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about but at this rate, it'll take me ten fuckin' years ta pay this place off! I'll be fuckin' eighty! What I fight the war for?"

"So... you're a World War Two veteran?" the Writer asked, if only to divert the sour conversation.

"No, Korea. The big one. We'se could always tell when we was in enemy territory anytime we found a pile'a shit."

The Writer looked bewildered. "I... "

"If the shit smelled like cabbage'n fish, we knowed there was commies nearby."

"Sounds very tactical to me... "

"Eisenhower should'a fuckin' nuked the whole kit'n caboodle. Fight my ass off fer my country and this is what I get. Redneck bitches who've been pregnant so many times their bellies look like fuckin' accordions, and enough dirty, snot-eatin' little kids ta fill a goddamn football stadium! Half of 'em got squashed heads 'cos their mommas live on corn liquor!" The proprietor snapped his dentures. "But I'll tell ya, boy, the minute I pay this shit-house off, I'll open me a new one in Agan's Point. Ain't no welfare trash there, and no pepper-bellies. You heard'a Agan's Point, ain't'cha?"

"Uh, no," the Writer admitted.

"Figures!"

The Writer finally got his change. He looked at his purchases on the counter. "Would you mind putting those in a bag for me, please?"

"Jesus ta pete!" He jammed the items in the bag. "Fifty cents!"

"For the bag?" the Writer protested.

"Fifty cents! What I look like, fuckin' Santa Claus?"

The Writer sighed and put two quarters down. This is too much work...

"The fuck you doin' here anyways?" Suddenly the proprietor's glare took on a scrutinizing gleam. "You writin' a book about this dog's dick of a town?"

"No, no," the Writer hurried. "It's a societal abstraction. The place is a symbol for a notion, or an idea that suggests a profundity."

The old crank cracked! his cane again and laughed. "I don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about but you oughta put me in yer blammed ‘dickerlus book. I can be the unfriendly old codger who's lived in town his whole life'n warns the main character ta get out. A stock character's what they call that, ain't it?"

The Writer rose an involuntary brow. "Indeed it is... "

"There's yer fuckin' symbol, boy. Me. I'm the fuckin' notion!"

"Intriguing," the Writer said and almost laughed.

"Now get outa my store, and if ya got a sliver'a brain, get outa town."

The Writer fled the Qwik-Mart as if fleeing killers.

That was something... and I've only been in town a few minutes. On the street, he lit a cigarette and stood for a minute in a studied daze. What a rush—profound yet... indefinable. He figured that first kick of nicotine-drenched smoke had to be as good as the opium Thomas de Quincey smoked when he wrote "Sighs from the Depths." Next, he walked down the vacant road, to the Gilman House Motel.

««—»»

The Writer rented his $10-per-night room—Room Six, the imperfect number, according to the Bible and the Koran—from a stout, fiftyish woman with a face uncomfortably similar to Henry Kissinger's. "Oh, you must be the writer!" she enthused the instant he came through the seedy doorway. This continued to perplex him. The shoemaker with diabetes told people I was here? Impossible. He didn't talk to anyone...

Much to the woman's delight, he paid a month in advance. "Oh my word! I'll give you the best room in the house! We've never had a bestselling author stay with us before."

The Writer smiled modestly. He didn't quite have it in him to point out that of all his dozens of published books, he'd never even come close to hitting a bestseller list, but of course, he wouldn't have wanted to. He despised all that was commercial, like Faulkner. The art of writing could never be about money. It had to be about the struggle for true art.

"Is that one'a them newfangled computers I keep hearin' about?" she asked of his second carry bag. He had associates who had solicited this new, corruptive technology, with things called RAM and kilobytes and five-inch floppies. My God! What would Samuel Coleridge think? "You can make revisions on the screen!" one peer, a frivolous high-fantasy writer, had celebrated. "No more Liquid Paper!" The Writer had calmly informed him that he'd own one of these infernal contraptions over his dead body. "The day I allow technology to come between my Muse and the sheet of paper is the day I hang myself at the foot of T.S. Eliot's grave. Indeed, the New Age of Creativity is becoming... pun intended... a Wasteland... " Liquid Paper and white-out tape were as crucial to the writer as oil paints were to Peter Paul Rubens. If there were no metal type bars striking a piece of paper rolled over a rubber platen, then it wasn't art one created, but something sorely less. Bells needed to ring! and keys needed to snap! The carriage needed to zip! back and forth as the writer's Muse fired from his mind to his fingertips and poured like blood onto the page. Without any of that?

Folly, the Writer knew. A lie...

"No, it's a typewriter," he told her. The woman's name, not surprisingly, was Mrs. Gilman, and it was the "Mrs." part that sent a bolt up the Writer's spine. He knew it wasn't compassionate but he couldn't help it. Some man actually married her—that face, Henry Kissinger. "I keep it well-lubricated so it doesn't make a lot of noise. I hope no one's disturbed."

"By some noise?" The woman huffed a laugh like Aunt Bee on Andy Griffith. "You could probably tell this ain't exactly a flourishin' town, sir. I mostly rent by the hour, if ya know what I mean. A gal's gotta make a livin' just like anyone, hmm?"

The Writer wasn't disheartened. It was just more reality to nourish his Muse. Prostitution was certainly an integral facet of the human condition, and he thought at once of the monumental play by Sartre. My book needs to be REAL... "I understand completely, Mrs. Gilman."

Her voice lowered. "And if ya choose to indulge... ya might wanna wrap it, as they say."

"Oh, I won't be indulging, Mrs. Gilman. As an artist, my perceptions need to be keen. Angst from abstinence is converted to creative enlightenment."

What Mrs. Gilman dubbed The Best Room in the House was easily the worst room the Writer had ever checked into. Cockroach corpses lay scattered like broken brazil nut shells, and when he peeked under the bed, his vision was greeted by a petrified rat belly-up, little legs stiff in the air. The small, iron-railed bed had a great dip in the center, as if previously owned by someone who weighed half a ton. Peeling wallpaper was patterned by smoke-stained tulips and, in places, dirty handprints. Every handprint tells a story, he considered. A genuine Philco radio sat on an exhaust-blue dresser, though the Writer doubted he'd be opening any of the dresser's drawers. There was also a fan festooned by strings of dust, a metal waste can with, of all things, G.I. Joes on it, and a put-it-together-yourself writing desk and chair that had stickers on them reading DART DRUG. More dust-strings rounded the room's corners.

Not exactly a "Clean, Well-Lighted Room," eh? he ribbed himself and had to bite his lip not to laugh.

Get it?

A peek in the bathroom showed a rusted, claw-foot tub, a cracked mirror (was that blood in the cracks?) and—wouldn't he know it?—used condoms floating in the toilet. Mrs. Gilman was fluffing the pillows on his bed when he came back in, and that's when he noticed some irregularities on the wallpaper. Someone had drawn a bull's eye over the waste can. A yard back was what appeared to be a crayon mark on the floor. Closer inspection showed him lines of some dried starchy substance in or near the bull's eye.

My God, the Writer thought. Target practice...

"It ain't a fancy room, sir," the husky woman said, "but it's got... "

The Writer pointed a finger and smiled. "Character. It'll do fine, Mrs. Gilman."

"And if there's anythin' you need, you just come see me."

"Thank you. You're very hospitable."

From a pouch on her frumpy dress, she withdrew a plastic bag of something. "Try some. They're delicious!"

The Writer paled. It was a bag of dried apricots. "No. Thank you."

"Hope you enjoy your stay!" She beamed. "My goodness! We gots a real live writer stayin' with us!"

"Goodnight, Mrs. Gilman."

She left but stuck her head back in. She pointed to the clap-trap writing desk. "Oh, and you kin put'cher typewriter right there," but of course she pronounced typewriter as "tap-ratter." "You got a wonderful view!"

"I'll do that, Mrs. Gilman."

Finally she left. Wonderful view? He looked out the window and winced. It was a junkyard that extended back to a scrawny woodline. Old car hulks lay on their sides, and between two, a mangy dog was defecating. He kept convincing himself that the environment was a creative necessity. Henrik Ibsen would've LOVED this room. He could've written a sequel to "The Wild Duck" here... So if it was good enough for Ibsen, it was good enough for the Writer.

But the "view" would have to go. He pulled down the stained shade, then immediately saw some graffiti. IF THE SUN REFUSED TO SHINE, I WOULD STILL BE LOVING YOU— LED ZEPPLIN, some redneck had scrawled. The Writer winced again. He whipped out his Sharpie and wrote HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE—J.P. SARTRE.

There.

White Trash Gothic, the words ran round and round his head. The daze of his creative bliss returned as he set up his typewriter. It was a Remington Standard Typing-Machine No. 2, from 1874. He'd spent several thousand dollars refurbishing it. Many great writers had used this same model: Samuel Clemens, Joseph Conrad, Henry James. In fact, when Clemens aka Mark Twain had been the first fiction writer to officially submit a typed manuscript to a publisher, that manuscript had been prepared on an identical machine.

Hot water from the sink was sufficient for his instant coffee, and he arranged his ashtray in a nearly religious ceremony. He took one bite of a Saltine, frowned, then put the whole box in the G.I. Joe trash can when he read that the Sell By date was June 1980. The idea of taking it back and asking for a refund simply wasn't serviceable.

Music, he thought. Very light... He turned on the old radio:

"... in Milwaukee on North 25th Street, Building 1055, Unit 213, a gruesome scene unfolded before... "

"... may have evaded police for the last five years... "

"... when the employee of a chocolate factory was arrested by Milwaukee Police after a naked boy in handcuffs reported his abduction and... "

"... confessed today that he lobotomized and even cannibalized many of his unsuspecting victims... "

What a world, he thought. Between the news of this serial killer, he stumbled upon unacceptable country and western and, worse, hard rock. His stomach hitched when he heard, "I'm a freeeeeeeeeeeee biiiiiiiird... " Would he throw up in the G.I. Joe garbage can? Finally he found some layered violin work.

He creaked back in the chair and sighed. Ahhhhhh. Archanglo Corelli, Concerto #8...

Now, the Writer was ready.

He carefully rolled in a sheet of Eagle-brand 25-pound bond paper, and typed:

WHITE TRASH GOTHIC

CHAPTER ONE

He put his finger on the T key. It was unbidden, just as it needed to be. My Muse is flowing. Now... write the first sentence—

There was a knock on the door. Oh, for pity's sake! he whined. His Muse collapsed.

"Yes?" he answered testily. Then he blinked and gulped.

A voluptuous girl with hair the color of corn silk stood hip-cocked and grinning in the doorway. Bare-foot and bare-legged, she wore a faded denim skirt and a painfully tight pink T-shirt that read LICK BUSH IN ‘92!

"Hi!" she said, naturally pronouncing the word hi as "Haa!" "I'se Nancy. My ma tolt me you was here."

"You're... Mrs. Gilman's daughter?"

"That's right."

Staggering, he thought. Not only did some guy MARRY the woman who looks like Henry Kissinger, but he had SEX with her as well... But by the looks of this girl, she didn't get any of her mother's less complimentary genes. "Ah, well, it's very nice to meet you, Nancy, but, wow, I'm very busy... "

"Oh, I'll only be a sec, see—" She cocked her hip to the other side, offering a blushing smile. "I gotta question, but... shucks, you might think it's dumb... "

Oh, for pity's sake! But he felt he had to be a gentleman and a positive role model. "No question is petty or without value, Nancy, except for the question stifled by reluctance."

"Huh?"

He sighed. "What's your question?"

She rose up on her tiptoes for one bounce. "Can I blow you?"

The Writer was waylaid. "What?"

"Oh, and I mean fer free. We'se don't git busy ‘round here till later noways—"

Mrs. Gilman... tricks out her own daughter...

"—and, gosh, I got this hankerin' ta suck yer willy on account of you're a famous writer—"

The Writer rolled his eyes. "Really, I'm not that famous—"

The insides of her knees rubbed as she cocked her hips back and forth, with the Naughty Schoolgirl grin. "See, I don't want ya ta think I'm trashy—"

"Oh, I could never think that!"

"—but, see, I'se'll just be all twisted up if I don't gets a chance to taste yer cum... "

The Writer glared. "Why on earth would you... "

"Just wanna know if a writer's jism tastes like regular."

This is bombast... But still, he considered the proposition for a blazing moment. After all, Stephen Crane's greatest creative influence had been a prostitute, and then he'd gone on to write The Red Badge of Courage and "The Open Boat." The Writer couldn't deny his gentility, a refinement born of erudition. "That's quite an offer, Nancy, but I'll have to turn it down. You must understand—abstinence is crucial to the aesthetically inclined. Like boxers."

She was a redneck Venus alive in his doorway. "You shore?"

God in Heaven, would you PLEASE go away! Your body's KILLING me! "Really, Nancy, I'd love to. You're a very beautiful young woman, but—"

Her grin widened, showing perfect teeth, a rarity in these parts. "And I gots me a beautiful cooter, too. Fellas always say so. Wanna see?"

"Oh, no, really—"

She hitched up the denim skirt. The Writer glanced down.

He wanted to cry. It looked like fresh sourdough with a curl of pink taffy: a flawless sex-tart. My God... "I can say with authority, Nancy, your cooter should be displayed in the Louvre. Nevertheless, I'm terribly busy. Another time, perhaps."

Her cringing pose loosened. "Oh, all right. But you'll at least autograph my tittie, won't'cha?" and then up came the pink T-shirt.

The Writer slumped, and extracted his Sharpie.

The breasts were comely—firm and full of the vitality of youth... and ruined by tattoos. The right was a Smiley Face—black curve for a mouth, two circles for eyes, and a big pink nose—while on the left had been branded a great eagle and the words FREE BIRD.

The Writer could've groaned. How could you vandalize yourself like that? "Which, uh, one?" he asked, pen poised.

"Smiley!"

He scribbled his signature right over the "eyes."

"I cain't wait ta show my friends!" she squealed.

Terrific...

She gave the Writer a big wet kiss, running her tongue between the seam of his lips. My God... She just licked my lips with the same tongue that's licked UNTOLD dirty, hayseed penises...

"Just you git back to work now!" she said cheerily.

"Yes, yes, thank you. Have a great... night... "

"Nightie-night... "

The Writer closed and locked the door, leaning against it in the exhaustion of his ire. The realization didn't set well. Men will inseminate her tonight... over MY signature. Flustered now, he returned to the desk, lit a cigarette, and stared at the page in the Remington.

««—»»

Hours later, he was still staring at the page in the Remington. Now the page looked like this:

WHITE TRASH GOTHIC

CHAPTER ONE

There was a knock at the door.

Writer's block again! he screamed at himself. It's HER fault!

The ashtray had become a pyramid of butts. Through the walls he could hear muffled and distorted sounds: creaking, giggles, rapid footfalls and doors slamming. A whorehouse, he chided himself. I'm trying to write the most important American novel of the Twentieth Century in a whorehouse... He'd believed the grim reality of the place and people would alight his deepest creative visions—to saturate every page with human truth, but...

Just another subjective desert, a terra dementata not worthy of artistic interpretation. Or perhaps he was being too hard on himself. It was only his first night.

I pray God...

He needed to convert this experience into the genius of a Bergman film, with the insights of a Steinbeck novel, and the imagery of a Stevens poem.

He needed... something...

He opened the smudged shade before him, to be looked back at by a desolate night. A lopsided full moon hovered over the junkyard. He cracked the window to let in some air, then without conscious impulse looked at his watch.

It was midnight.

Outside, a wolf howled.

The Writer got up from the desk and sighed. I need a drink, he thought. Then he turned out the light and left the room.

(III)

Dicky stopped in his tracks at the Crossroads' front door. He looked up at the moon and could've sworn he heard a wolf howl. There ain't no wolves here... I hope... Inside, the loud bar was milling with ex-cons, fugitives, ‘shine-runners, alkies, and sundry redneck scum. Dicky felt at home. When he scratched his nose, he took an inadvertent sniff and almost gagged. Dang! Dicky had neglected to wash his hands after dragging the last of the clean rags back to the massage parlor. The redolence of old sperm and excrement seemed imbued on his palms. He wended through the overall'd mass to the bathroom and scrubbed up. Probably wastin' my time. Balls is talking big bullshit sayin' he's gonna give me the green fer my new trannie. On the wall someone had written: THE BIGHEAD'LL GET YOU IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT, but Dicky scoffed at the backwoods myth. Beneath it someone else had written, much more recently, THE EMERGENT EVOLUTION OF NATURE DEVELOPS BY ELEVATING LEVELS OF SPACE AND TIME THROUGH MATTER, THE END RESULT OF WHICH EQUALS GOD.

Dicky read it as best he could, got a headache, and left the bathroom.

Doreen, one of the bar's working girls, attempted to entice potential customers by playing Nine Ball with herself. She leaned over extra-long to take shots, allowing her low-cut top to droop so that anyone looking could see her breasts, but nobody ever looked. Poor stupid gal just don't get it, Dicky thought. Her breasts dangled like two stuffed white socks, with a cow teat at the end of each. Another prostitute, Cora Neller, was rack-skinny from meth—and from the booze she chugged to take the edge off when she didn't have meth. Her legs looked like flesh-covered dowel-rods sticking out of her cut-off jeans. When she sat down and crossed her legs, patrons often groaned, for there was so much gap-space inside her cut-offs that her vagina could be fully viewed: flaccid lips surrounding a scary black hole, like a hundred-year-old man's agape mouth. "Hey, Cora!" someone yelled. "Don't'cha git too close to the pool table. Someone's liable ta mistake ya fer a cue stick!" The whole bar ripped laughter; in fact, Doreen laughed so hard, her dentures fell out and landed in the corner pocket. "Fuck all'a ya, ya queers!" Cora shouted back. "You's kin all suck my Daddy's ass-hair!"

"Yeah!" someone shouted back, "like you been doin' since you was four!"

This was the cream of the crop at the Crossroads.

Dicky plopped his girth on the stool right next to Balls.

"Hey, Balls."

"Shee-it, man. Yer late. Thought ya lost yer confer-dance in me."

"Naw, after I'se got off work 'bout six, I hadda take me a long nap—"

"Shee-it. All that hard work warshin' cum-rags at the jack shack's got Dicky all wored out, but you ain't gonna have to work there no more." Then Balls cracked a sneering smile and slapped Dicky on the back.

"You got it?"

"I tolt ya I'd git it, didn't I?" Balls slipped an envelope over—a fat envelope.

It took a few minutes but Dicky counted the money, his hands trembling. "Well shee-it in a picnic basket, Balls! I just cain't believe it!" There was twelve hundred dollars in the envelope, in mostly ratty fifties and twenties.

Balls nodded. "So's when'll you git'cha that new trannie?"

"I'll pick it up tomorrow'n have it dropped the next day."

"And then the day after that, you'n me'll be runnin' moonshine, right?"

"Right!"

"As partners." Balls shot Dicky a solemn glance. "Right?"

"Dang right, Balls!" Dicky was nearly crying in his joy. All that money in his hand? What a fine friend Balls was, and not three days out of the poky. That brand-spanking-new M-22 Rock Crusher would make his motorhead dreams come true. A 427 El Camino with a radical trans was just the ticket. That fucker will fly...

Dicky simmered down, as some logic seeped into the conversation. "Hey, Balls... If you're flat broke after gettin' out'a the joint... how'd you come up with twelve-hunnert bucks faster than shit through a buzzard?"

Balls grinned. "Aw, now, don't you worry 'bout that none, Dicky-Boy." Balls snapped his finger at an ancient barkeep in suspenders. He wore a ballcap with a patch that read: LIQUOR IN FRONT, POKER IN BACK. "Hey, bartender! I gotta stand on my head'n flap my balls ta git a pitcher in this joint?"

The barkeep frowned his way over. "You look like a con, son. I gots ta see some green first."

"Shee-it," Balls muttered through his grin. He snapped a twenty down.

Then the barkeep noticed Dicky. "Aw, shee-it, Dicky, I didn't see ya walk in. Damn shame what happened at yer place."

Dicky scratched his head. "My place?"

"Yeah. June's jack shack. Ain't that where ya work?"

"Uh, well... "

"I guess ya ain't heard. 'bout seven o'clock, some fella walked in there and knocked the place over."

"Ya don't say?" Balls offered.

"Shore as shit," the keep replied. "Took the whole week's till, he did."

Dicky was astonished. "Yer shittin' me. Man, I was workin' there myself earlier."

"The fucker had a big gun too, and terrorized the livin' shit out'a all them poor girls. Made 'em all strip nekit so's he could gander their pussies'n tits."

"What a scumbag," Balls offered. "World's goin' ta shit, I'll tell ya."

The keep nodded in earnest. "And before he left, ya know what he done? He put his gun to poor June's head and made her stick her finger up his ass'n jerk him off."

"The lowdown bastard!" Balls offered.

"I cain't believe it," Dicky lamented. "And he cleaned the place out?"

"The whole week's till, like I said. Two grand's what June tolt me. Then he got clean away."

"Well, shee-it, with all them girls workin' there, they must've got a good description of the guy."

"Nope," assured the keep. "Dirty som-bitch were wearin a Wendy's bag on his head with eye-holes cut out. Don't that beat all?" and then the keep walked off to get them a pitcher.

Wait a min... Dicky's head slowly traversed on his fat neck to look right at Balls. "You?" he whispered.

Balls' grin flashed like a switch-blade in the sun. He nodded, and gestured his waist. He pulled his T-shirt up for just a second, and stuck in there under his belt was a big-ass pistol, a Webley .455.

"Jimminy Christmas, Balls!"

"Shhh. Some piece'a work, huh? I knew my Daddy'd be good fer somethin' one'a these days. See, this piece under my shirt's about the only thing he left me worth more than a pack'a butt pimples."

Dicky leaned over, keeping his voice low. "You pulled a heist in broad daylight?"

"Why ya think they call me Balls?"

The keep returned with their pitcher. Balls filled two mugs and slid one to Dicky. "Cheers, buddy."

Dicky raised his mug with a great pumpkin grin. "To our new partnership! Man, we are gonna make some money whens I get my rod on the road!"

Their glasses clinked.

Three fat young men with buzzcuts sat on the other side. "Hey, ya old putz!" one shouted to the barkeep. "Git us another pitcher, and don't make us wait till we're old as you. And also give us an order of Redneck Steak Tenders."

The barkeep smirked. "Comin' right up... "

Balls seemed cruxed. "Hey, Dicky... what the hail's Redneck Steak Tenders? I ain't never heard'a that."

"Cheapest thang on the menu."

"Yeah? Well why not we'se git us some? I'se love a good steak, ‘specially if'n its cheap."

"Naw, Balls. Trust me." Dicky pointed to the keep, who threw a handful of soda crackers onto a paper plate. Then he shot a dash of A-1 Steak Sauce on each cracker. "There ya go, fellers," he said to the fat brothers.

"Awright!" one reveled.

"Yeah, I'se thank I'll pass on that," Balls said.

The barkeep wandered back over, and pointed up to the TV. "You boys been listenin' to this crazy shit on the TV? This feller in Wisconsin?"

"Naw," Balls said. "Ain't really seen TV fer a while."

Dicky rubbed his chin. "Ya know, I think I did hear somethin', some crazy guy or some such."

The keep leaned forward. "A serial killer they'se callin' him. Name's Dahmer, a queer-boy from up north. Kilt lots'a dudes they say."

"Kilt 'em?" Balls asked. "How?"

"Some'a the worst shit you can imagine, son. He'd go inta one'a these faggot bars and start swish-talkin' with some feller, and a‘course, the feller thinks he's gonna get a fudge-packin' like they do but, see, what this Dahmer dude did was slip mickeys in their drinks ta git 'em all disorientered, then he'd take 'em back to his place."

"Yeah?" Balls goaded. "And then he fudge-packed 'em?"

"Aw, yeah, he shore did but not ‘fore doin' a shitload'a sick shit first. Lotta times he'd just plain kill 'em, and then pack their fudge. And other times he'd cut parts off 'em, and then he'd cook it and eat it. Cops found heads in the fridge, body parts all over the place, pair'a ears in a bread box."

"Shee-it!" Balls exclaimed.

Dicky smirked with distaste. "And you say he et parts of these fellas?"

"Damn straight. Admitted it. Ate a fella's whole bicep, he did, and some leg-meat cut right off the bone. Broiled it. Ate some'a their brains too."

"Fuck!" Balls exclaimed.

"And ya gotta figgure, if he ate brains, and he was queer, you know damn well he must've eaten some'a their peckers, too."

"Bet he slapped 'em right down on a grill'n cooked 'em like hot dogs," Dicky speculated.

"Bet he did," Balls added, intrigued.

The keep wagged a finger. "But that ain't the worst, boys. Some'a these fruiters he'd pick up? He'd drill holes in their heads, to take the fight out of 'em so's he could butt-fuck 'em all night long—sometimes fer even days—and the feller couldn't do nothin' about it."

"Jay-sus," Dicky remarked.

The keep gave a curt nod. "Just goes ta show, boys. The devil comes in all shapes'n sizes," and then he wandered back to his beer taps.

Balls and Dicky stared up at the TV.

"Damn," Balls muttered. "He drilled holes in their heads. That's some cool shit, ain't it?"

Dicky looked aghast. "Cool? Balls, that's some right sick-in-the-head shit is what that is."

Balls raised a brow but said nothing, still staring up at the TV.

"But ya know what I don't git, Balls?" Dicky ventured. "What's a fudge-packin' murderer got to do with cereal?"

"Hmm. Don't rightly know. Maybe that's what he fed these fruiters after he took the zing out of 'em with the drill."

A voice to their right cut in: "Actually a serial killer is a modern law-enforcement label that's used to differentiate from mass-murders and spree killers. The individual will kill a series of persons, generally over an extended period of time, functioning normally in between victims. It's not uncommon for serial killers to work everyday jobs, own homes, and even have families."

Balls and Dicky looked over at the guy who'd related the information: a clean-cut guy with brown hair, glasses, and a white shirt—a nerd. He was drinking beer by himself.

"But ain't they all crazy?" Balls asked.

"Sometimes but not exclusively. Some serial killers even have high I.Q.'s. The frightening part is they tend to not stand out. The average serial killer is typically a white male in his twenties or thirties, and he commits his crimes, often undetected for years—like Ed Gein or Henry Lee Lucas—to live out a deep-seated sexual fantasy born in some mode of dementia."

Balls leaned over to Dicky. "Wow, this fella knows some big words."

"That he does—"

The guy continued, "The term was dubbed by FBI Agent Robert Ressler in the ‘70s, during the plethora of national news coverage about Ted Bundy, who raped and murdered women and children in at least five states. He's right up there with Gein and Lucas, the Green River Killer, John Wayne Gacy, but this guy here—Dahmer—he may wind up being the most grotesque of the bunch."

"Dang," Dicky said. "There's some fucked up folks in this world."

Balls leaned over, to face the guy in the white shirt. "Hey, buddy? You seem to know a lot 'bout this kind'a stuff. Any idea why they do it?"

"They all have essentially the same answer," the guy said. "They do it because, to them, it's fun."

Balls leaned back down, thinking.

"Fun? Fuck all that shit, man." Dicky was growing ill at ease. "Eatin' folks, drillin' holes in their noggins—shee-it. Let's not talk 'bout it no more—it's givin' me the willies. Just let's us think about all that cash we'se gonna make when we's runnin' ‘shine in a big block 427 with a Rock Crusher trans."

"Yeah," Balls said, but he seemed preoccupied now.

"And weren't there somethin' you was gonna tell me tonight?" Dicky reminded.

"Huh?"

Dicky lowered his voice further. "You said you had some score next month."

"Aw, yeah. Early September, right." Balls shook out of his bizarre daze. "It's pretty righteous and a shore thing. In fact, it just might be so good that we won't have to run no ‘shine after that."

"The hail?"

"Dicky-Boy," Balls whispered. "This score could be so big that neither'a us'll have to worry 'bout cash again. Ever."

"I don't know, Balls."

"Bullshit, Dicky."

"A heist, ya mean?"

"Well, yeah, kind of. And it's risk-free, man. Now don't tell me you ain't in with me."

"Shee-it, Balls. It's your score. Ya don't have to cut me in."

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