The Minotauress Edward Lee

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Balls looked taken aback. "What'cha take me as? We'se partners. And we'se'll need yer ‘Mino to pull the U-Haul."

"You gotta U-Haul?"

"No, but I will once I steal me one. Only a fool'd pass this up. You wanna be a fool?"

Dicky hemmed a bit. "Risk-free, you say?"

"Damn straight... "

Dicky's shoulders lowered. "All right, tell me about it... "

They huddled closer, Balls whispering. "The score's about this old guy named Crafter, gotta old house ‘tween here'n Crick City, but it's like way out in the woods somewhere."

"Crafter," Dicky chewed on the name. "Ain't never heard of him."

"That's 'cos the guy's, like, a loner, don't go out much. And he's got a real fucked up first name, too," and then Balls took a slip of paper out of his wallet and read off it. "Ephriam Crafter. Ain't that somethin'? Ephriam? And he lives off some place called Governor's Bridge Road—"

"Oh, I heard me'a that road," Dicky said, kindled. "Used ta drink beer on the bridge'n throw the bottles off."

"Well that kicks ass, Dicky, that you know where the road is and, see, this guy Crafter? He's like a collector of ‘spensive stuff, like antiques'n old paintin's'n jewelry but, like, real old jewelry that we could fence in Pulaski or Roanoke. Big, big money in this house, Dicky."

Dicky hadn't been terribly enthused in the first place, but now he just frowned. "Some score, Balls. A fuckin' B&E? You'll git yourself caught, you will, or worse blowed away. Ever-body's got guns in this county, man."

Balls' eyes were glittering he was so torqued up. "No, man, 'cos, see, the guy won't be home, and he's got no wife or kids or anyone else in the house. Beginnin' of every September, he goes out'a town fer a coupla weeks—Spain, he goes to, wherever that is. So's the house is empty. All we gots to do is knock the place over'n fence the haul ‘fore he can git back ta report it missin'."

Dicky gave a strained expression. "I don't know, Balls. Ya could still git caught a mite easy. If this guy Crafter tolt ya he goes out'a town ever September, then he'll know it's you who done the job."

Balls was nearly giddy in excitation. "That's the best part, Dicky. I don't know the guy from Adam. Never met him, never talked to him."

"Then how you know so much 'bout him?"

"This guy tolt me, see?"

"This guy?"

Balls nodded. "'Bout a year ago this newbie con named Bud Tooler got dropped on our cellblock. Biggest, dumbest cracker you ever saw, and the poor rube got sent up twennie-five years on a rapo. Raped some gal in the back of a Good Humor truck, he did, after knockin' her out'n takin' the cash box, and the big cracker wouldn't'a even got caught ‘cept you know what he did? He went back to the truck a few minutes later and stole a box'a Tastee Pops."

"Shee-it!"

"The splittail were still unconscious but someone seed him takin' the fuckin' ice cream!"

"Fuckin'-A, man! That's dumber'n dogshit!"

"Yeah, man, fuckin' Bud Tooler, biggest dumbest rube you could ever meet'n yer life. Fucker's got dick fer brains."

Dicky joined Balls in some laughter, but then calmed down and squinted at a thought. "Hey, Balls? What's this rube Bud Tooler got to do with this old Crafter guy?"

"I'se tellin' ya, Dicky. See, Tooler had a job fer years, cuttin' this guy Crafter's lawn'n doin' his hedges'n shit, so's that's how he knowed that the guy goes away first week'a every September. And one time Crafter's sink got stopped up so's he let Tooler into the house ta fix it. Only time in all them years Tooler ever got asked in the house were that one time, but one were enough. He got a gander at all kinds'a ‘spensive shit in there. So's after that Tooler got ta thinkin' he'd knock the place over himself when Crafter went on his next trip but then he got busted on that Good Humor rapo last week'a July," and, of course, Balls pronounced July as "Joo-lie."

"Hmm," Dicky murmured.

"Yeah. Hmm, brother."

"Crafter, you say his name is?"

"Yeah, man. Crafter. Ephriam Crafter and he's got a million bucks'a shit in his house just waitin' ta be cleaned out. If'n we don't pull this job, we'd be dumber than Tooler fer goin' back fer that box'a Tastee-Pops, am I right?"

Dicky's mental gears spun as best they could. "Ya know, Balls? Just you might be right 'bout that."

"So's it's settled, partner. Tomorrow you git'cher new trannie. Then till the first week'a September we'se rake in some cash runnin' shine. And after that—" Balls raised his beer mug again—"we' git pig-shit rich when we knock over Ephriam Crafter's house on Governor's Bridge Road."

"I'se'll drink ta that!" Dicky celebrated and clinked mugs.

They split another pitcher as the tavern's din rose. All the pool tables were full, and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. Doreen was seen slipping out of the men's room—deftly replacing her dentures and wiping her mouth—and then a second later a man came out as well. Meanwhile, Cora Neller had seen fit to get up on a table and dance, but when she pulled up her top—showing death-camp breasts—she got booed down.

Balls remained excited about his new business propositions, especially Crafter's house, which he knew in his heart was a done deal. But something else, on the periphery of his psyche, was bothering him.

"Hey, Dicky. ‘Member when we was kids'n every so often we'd go over ta Mrs. Houser's house'n look in her winder'n watch her brush her hair nekit?"

"Aw, yeah!" Dicky recalled, a bit tipsy now. "And then she'd do jumpin' jacks and bendin'-over exercises whiles we was watchin'!"

"Yeah, and ‘member how we'se always had the idea she knew we was watchin' but she never did nothin'."

"Yer right, yer right! And then we'd beat off whiles we was watchin'!"

Balls nodded. "Yeah, yeah, and we'se were all pissed off 'cos we was too young ta squirt."

"Aw, yeah, man, we couldn't wait fer our peters ta start kickin' out juice like the older boys—"

"And like in them old porno mags we found in that ravine behind the old Dart Drug." Balls peered intently at Dicky. "We knew that jism came out'a peckers when we saw that. ‘Member?"

Dicky searched his not-very-elaborate memory. "Yeah! They was in a old suitcase! So's we'se crawled down that ravine thinkin' it was full'a money from a bank robbery or somethin' and thens we busted it open'n it was stuffed with old porno, and each page had some fella squirtin' a big ole load in some skanky chick's face or tits."

"Um-hmm, and that one mag had pregnant chicks that guys was fuckin' and comin' on, and we couldn't believe that shit—"

"Oh, yeah!" Dicky's memory began to chug.

"—and then that other mag with mostly black fellas with cocks on 'em like chunks'a radiator hose and they'se was cornholin' all these little skinny white junkies, and fer the life'a us we couldn't figure how somethin' that big could go into somethin' that small—"

"Man, I'se forgot all about that, Balls!"

Balls lowered his voice. "And do ya remember that last mag in the suitcase, Dicky? That one we figgured must'a been from the '50s on account it were black'n white?"

Dicky's yap fell open as he searched his mind...

"‘Member that? It were these big brawny guys fuckin' the stuffin' out a bunch more junkie girls, and these fellas was spittin' in the gals' mouths'n blowin' their noses on 'em, and all kinds'a groaty stuff, and then one guy had his fist up a splittail's snatch coupla inches past the wrist, and then another fella stuck his whole foot in a girl... "

Dicky suddenly blanched at the recollections of pornographic imagery. "Aw, yeah, now I ‘member. The mags with guys fuckin' girls and gittin' blowed were fine but that last one like ta turn my stomach. Made me fuckin' sick, it did... "

Balls seemed focused on some inner impulse. "But'cher forgettin' the last page, Dicky. ‘Member the last page'a that black'n white mag?"

Dicky stared, then gulped.

"Had that fella with, like, a Beatles haircut stickin' a pistol barrel right up that girl's beaver, and theres was some blood comin' out her."

"Aw, man. That were some disgustin' shit, man. Didn't turn me on none, that's fer shore. It even killed my hankerin' ta beat off."

"Well that's just it, Dicky. Average person's probably of a mind that that sorta porn ain't fer no one but folks sick in the head."

Dicky gulped again, nauseated. "Fella'd have to be sick in the head ta git boned up lookin' at shit like that. A gun stickin' up a gal's bloody pussy? Shee-it."

"And, fuck, Dicky, we weren't no more'n ten years old when we'se found that old suitcase. But ya knows what? When I gots home that day... I did beat off, and I did on account of that last picture. Sick as the shit was, I had a boner somethin' fierce, I did, and once I got ta thinkin' 'bout that pistol in the gal's cooze, I beat off like there were no tomorrow, and even now, after all them years, I still got that picture locked in my head, and if'n I think about it, I get wood."

Dicky stared at him.

"So's I'm startin' ta think there's somethin' wrong with me, ya know? That I'm the one sick in the head."

This was getting too deep for Dicky. He scoffed, "Aw, shee-it, Balls, ferget it. Ain't nothin' but a picture of a bunch'a fucked up junkies."

Balls nodded with some contemplation. "Maybe, but gettin' back to what I was sayin' first? 'Bout Mrs. Houser?"

Dicky smiled, for this image was much more appealing than the previous. "She had tits on her bigger'n our blammed heads. And ‘member that hair-pie she had?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but here's somethin' I never tolt ya," Balls went on, serious. "It was after me'n you dropped out'a that shit-hole junior high they bussed us to in Clintwood. Me'n you didn't see each other much after that 'cos we'se was workin' fer our Daddys, but, see, I kept goin' back ta Mrs. Houser's place at night ta jerk off whiles lookin' at her nekit, see?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I were thirteen, fourteen years old by then, and lemme tells ya, my dick was kickin' out some cum by that age... "

"Yeah, me too," Dicky hastily added. "I was shootin' it five, six feet at least."

Balls frowned. "Yeah, yeah, but, see, I went up there one night'n I was all boned up to begin with 'cos I'd been thinkin' about that picture'a the gal with the gun up her snatch, and then I get to Mrs. Houser's winder figgurin' I'll have me a good ole yank watchin' her doin' them bend-over exercises, but'cha know what?"

Dicky stared back. "What?"

"I look in that winder—"

"Was she nekit? Was she?" Dicky prodded.

"Oh, she was nekit, all right, and so was the fella in there with her, but, see, Mrs. Houser, she was tied up, her ankles'n wrists was tied ta each corner of the bed, and she hadda gag in her mouth... "

Dicky's drunken eyes bloomed from the intrigue.

"And it was a big black fella in there with her, and this fella hadda cock on him like a tennis-ball can painted black is how big it was."

"Fuck," Dicky whispered.

"And he was layin' a right hard hand on Mrs. Houser, punchin' her in the breadbasket'n bitin' her belly'n tits, and he were slappin' his open hand across her pussy so hard it sounded like a horsewhip."

"Yer shittin' me!"

"Naw, not a bit, Dicky, and then he got ta slappin' her across the face, too, then he'd punch her up some more and then put a piller ‘cross her face'n press down fer, like, a long time, man, and then he'd take it off'n slap her awake again, and in between all this rough-housin', he'd fuck her a whiles with that giant cock'a his, then he'd stop'n bite her tits'n belly'n crack his hand to her pussy, like that, startin' the whole deal alls over. So's I'm thinkin' this fella busted inta her house ta rip her off but figgured he might as well rape the livin' shit out'a her ta boot."

"Fuck, yeah. Must'a been what he was doin', I'd say."

"Uh-hmm, so's this voice in my head tells me ta run back to the house'n call the poe-leece'n tell 'em Mrs. Houser's bein' raped."

"Did the cops catch the black fella?" Dicky asked.

Balls paused, ruminating. "Naw, 'cos, see, I never called 'em. Just as I were about to run home, this other voice in my head tolt me ta stay... "

"Shee-it, Balls!"

"I know, man. That's low-down, but that's what I did. I stayed at that winder'n watched this guy fuck Mrs. Houser all up, and after a bit more fuckin' with that giant cock'a his, he sat on her belly'n wrapped a belt ‘round her neck'n started chokin' her. She started flip-floppin' on the bed'n her face started turnin' pink, and this black fella's tightenin' up that belt with one hand'n strokin' his pole with the other, so then finally he gits his nut'n squirts it all over her face, and I swear, Dicky, it looked like an ant-eater pukin' Elmer's Glue, it did, and it was right then when I had me my own nut, and it's like the best nut'a my life, Dicky, watchin' this bad shit happenin' to Mrs. Houser. I cummed all over that winder."

Some silence stretched by, then Dicky blinked through something like dread and asked, "Balls, what happened next? Did that big player kill her?"

"Nope, but that's what I thought shore were gonna happen next. But ya know what he did instead? Shee-it. He untied her'n took off the gag, and then she gives him a big sloppy kiss'n says, ‘Oh, baby, that was great! I love you so much!'"

"Well I'se'll just shake the shit out my drawers!" Dicky honked laughter. "So's she were one'a them kinky splittails who likes rough fuckin'."

"Guess so," Balls assumed. "The whole time, the joke was on me. Shee-it, I thought he was killin' Mrs. Houser, but ya know what? Just as soon as I kin see that they'se just playing around, I squeeze the rest'a the snot out my dick'n and start ta zip up when I look back in the winder, and there ain't no one there. I figgure they both went to the kitchen're somethin', after all that hard hobknobbin'."

"Must'a been," Dicky concluded.

Balls shook his head. "I turn around to go back home but that big black fella's standin' right behind me, and Mrs. Houser too, both nekit as jaybirds."

"What'cha... what'cha do, Balls?"

"Tried ta run, a'course, but that guy's hand landed in my hair and yanked me back like I was on a tow-line. He chicken wings me, see, holdin' me a dang foot off the ground, I'se swear, and he says, ‘Just you watch, white boy,' so's I look and I see Mrs. Houser on her knees at the winder, and ya know what she's doin'? She's lickin' my fresh nut right off the shingles beneath the sill."

"Aw, man! That's some groaty shit!"

"Shore is, and once she's done eatin' all my load, she come over all grinnin' and she pulls down my drawers'n starts playin' with my peter whiles she's sayin' ‘This little shit'n his friend've been beatin' their little-boy dicks at my window for a coupla years, they have, the dirty little fuckers,' and then she starts suckin' my peter, boy, and by now the black fella's got one hand 'round my neck, and whiles Mrs. Houser's suckin' my tool ta kingdom come, he whispers in my ear: ‘I'm a-gonna snap yer little white neck right when you come, kid, and then I'm gonna whup your dead white ass till there ain't nothin' left but a mud hole,' and when he said that Mrs. Houser starts suckin' harder'n faster and, see, I'm more shit-scairt than I ever been in my life—"

"Bet'cha were, Balls... "

"—I'm all cryin' and shakin' and fuckin' terrified, but ya know what? And it's the strangest part of all, but even in spite'a bein' scairt shitless, my fourteen-year-old peter's rock hard."

"Shee-it, man, ya'd think it'd be limp as a dead man's dick—"

"Yeah, that's what ya'd think, but I still had me the hardest boner ever. Anyways, in another second, I have me another nut'n this one goes right down Mrs. Houser's throat'n then she just starts gigglin' and lickin' her chops like a mutt with a bone."

"And-and... what 'bout that black fella?" Dicky asked. "Did he snap yer neck?"

Balls frowned. "No, ya A-hole! If he'd snapped my neck, I wouldn't be sittin' here tellin' ya the story, would I?"

"Uh, oh. No," Dicky said.

"The black fella lets me go'n starts laughin', sayin' ‘Git on outa here, kid. You've had yer fun for the night. Don't be peepin' in folks windows no more. You're liable ta get shot.' I beat feet out'a there so fast I think I must'a run a mile in ten seconds, I did, but damn near every step'a the way I could hear them laughin' at me... "

Dicky stared through the next pause. "Shee-it, Balls. That's some story."

"Yeah, a fucked up story... and the mores I think about it," Balls cerebrated, "the more it tells me that I'm fucked up. That there's somethin' wrong with me."

Dicky's dim eyes fluttered. "You? Sounds ta me like the one there's somethin' wrong with is Mrs. Houser." Then he gave a nitwit chuckle. "Wantin' ta get beat up by black fellas'n eatin' jism off a wall don't sound exactly normal ta me."

"Naw, naw, Dicky," Balls complained with some aggravation. "You ain't gettin' what I'm sayin'. It ain't about her—all women eat cum off the wall'n like ta get beat'n fucked by black fellas with giant dicks, just 'cos they'se all low-down dirty whores. I'm talkin' 'bout me. When I thunk she was really gettin' murdered... I stayed at the winder ta jerk off! And even now, most times when I'se havin' a wank... I'se still think about that picture of the guy with the Beatles haircut jamming that gun up the gal's bloody pussy. If'n I look at Playboy—shee-it. That don't turn me on none at all. I think about the girl with the gun up her snatch. I don't think about regular stuff, I think about fuckin' girls up, and ya knows what? I don't care! If someone really was murderin' Mrs. Houser, I still wouldn't call the poe-leece. I'd be standin' at that winder beatin' my meat anyways."

Dicky's eyes rolled in the fat face. "Dang, Balls. You're one fucked up piece'a work," then he slapped Balls' back and laughed.

Balls smirked over his beer. "Beats the shit out'a me why I'se always think about shit that makes ever-one else sick."

Dicky's simple gray matter couldn't handle these subjectivities. "Aw, man, you's're just drunk—forget 'bout all that."

"But I'se serious, Dicky. Average dude looks at a hot splittail, he thinks ‘man I'd love to hump that hot bitch,' but I think ‘man, I'd like to piss up her ass whiles I'm pushin' her head in a wood-chipper or string her up by the neck buck nekit and beat off whiles I'm watchin' her twitch.'"

Dicky just shook his head, in queasy disbelief. "Balls, as long you ain't really doin' it, it don't matter much 'bout thinkin' it. Now this crazy talk'a yours is damn uglier than my grandma's ass when she had all them bed sores. We gots cool shit comin' our way, man. We got ‘shine ta run and that old guy's house ta knock over, and money to be made! And we'se only twennie! We'se gonna be bird-doggin' chicks'n bangin' beaver whiles our wallets're full'a cash. So forget 'bout all that other shit—" Dicky smirked up at the TV—"it's that dang homo psycher-path stuff on TV's got you all fucked up."

Balls shrugged uneasily. "Yeah, I guess yer right," and, of course, he pronounced right as "rat."

Dicky's girth rose from the stool. "I'se gonna go contribit to the Luntville water supply. Why'n'chew order us up another pitcher?"

"Shore... "

Dicky wobbled off. When Balls ordered another pitcher, he and the keep looked up at the television at the same time. It was a commercial: "Try the new Abiciser!" an attractive blond in a red bikini enthused. "If you don't have abs like these in thirty days, return it for a full refund!" and then the camera zoomed in on her flat, bare belly and slit-like navel. There was even some camel-toe printing against the bikini bottoms, the sight of which caused half the men in the bar to woop.

The keep chuckled. "Wouldn't mind fuckin' that ‘un till she's seein' stars, huh?"

Balls shrugged. Shee-it, I'd rather yank her intestines out her asshole with a gaff pole, then cut off her head'n fuck her neck...

The commercial ended, replaced by still more gruesome news of this ghastly killer in Milwaukee. "... when police first entered the apartment, they arrested Dahmer immediately after noticing a pair of severed hands wired together, hanging in a closet. Later, according to hazmat and fire officials, the partially dissolved remains of at least one victim were found in a fifty-seven-gallon industrial drum full of corrosives. In the bedroom, several more body parts were discovered lying on top of Dahmer's bed, which had been covered in plastic dropcloths... "

Dang, Balls thought. He just couldn't figure it. When he glanced right he noticed that dullard in the white shirt still sitting there, looking up at the TV. "Hey, buddy? They say anything 'bout what caused him ta be that way?"

The guy in the white shirt seemed thrilled that someone was talking to him. "Well, one forensic psychiatrist from John's Hopkins has already labeled Dahmer as a sexual-sociopath."

Balls smirked. "That must mean he's crazy, right? Only a crazy person could pull shit like that?"

"Actually, no. Some killers of this ilk display psychopathic symptoms, but that's not the case with this Dahmer man. While it's true that a number of serial killers become inclined toward sexually motivated homicide due to catastrophic childhoods rife with neglect, perversion, sexual abuse, and battery, others have had a childhood experience that would be deemed as normal. The verdict's still out on Dahmer, of course, but it is interesting. Experiences and observations, particularly in the formative and adolescent years, often have a dramatic impact on a young mind, which all leads to transitive behavior in adulthood. Naturally, negative experiences and observations will have a negative impact. So where does that leave the serial killer who enjoyed a positive childhood indoctrination?"

"Huh?"

The guy in the white shirt raised a finger. "There's just as much evidence that proves environment need not have any bearing on certain mind sets. In other words—and this is just one of the current theories—a certain percentage of these so-called serial killers are possessed of no psychological defect and experienced nothing deleterious while growing up. They become serial killers in adulthood simply because of a genetic predilection."

"Huh?" Balls repeated.

"It's an innate impulse, just as it's an innate impulse for a dog to chase a rabbit. These men, these monsters of the modern world, become serial killers purely and simply because it's in their nature."

To Balls, the dissertation was barely comprehendible, but he understood enough. Like a dog chasin' a rabbit... It's in their nature...

Further discourse was then severed when the barkeep re-appeared with another pitcher. Dicky returned presently, and noticed an immediate reversal in his partner's previous preoccupation with morbidity.

"Ya knows what, Dicky? I feel a shitload better right now."

"Well that's dang great, Balls."

"And it's 'cos'a that guy over there," and he pointed to the guy in the white shirt, who was lighting what was likely his twentieth cigarette of the night. Balls slapped a five down on the bar. "Barkeep! Get that Poindexter-lookin' dude in the white shirt over there a drink on me."

"Comin' right up."

White Shirt looked flattered. "Much obliged."

Balls raised his mug. "Here's to our natures... "

Dicky raised his. "And here's to makin' money!"

White Shirt raised his. "And here's to providence"—he winked—"and I don't mean Rhode Island... "

PART two:

EPIPHANIES

ONE MONTH LATER

(I)

Snot McKully had stump-grinder breath and teeth the size and color of lima beans; he was technically the man who owned one of those old manual drills—properly termed a "brace" drill. Not the kind that worked like an egg-beater; instead, it was shaped like a squared-off U with outward protrusions. The bit was set into one protrusion, a bearing'd palm-wheel was fixed on the other. The manufacture's name—Stanley—could still be detected beneath the tarnished steel, and locked into its chuck was an 8-inch long double-twist auger bit, 3/8th of an inch wide and, anyway, the sequence of events that led up to the instance of Tritt "Balls" Conner cranking that bit into the girl's head was multifarious and rich.

It belonged to Snot McKully, and it was made back when elbow grease was more accessible than electricity.

The idea had simply "occurred" to Balls when he'd seen the drill lying by the main fermentation tung. An epiphany?

Yes.

The tool was a psychic totem of sorts, the Angel of Dementia that whispered into Balls' ear just as surely as Gabriel had whispered into the ear of Christ's mother Mary.

This took place exactly one month after Balls had met up with Dicky in front of Pip Brothers Laundromat two days out of the clink, and given Dicky the money for the Rock Crusher transmission... and in a sense, the affair was an epiphany for Dicky as well. That El Camino was now probably the fastest car in the county, and this is why he and Balls had been hired immediately to run illegal liquor from local stills into the "dry" sectors of Kentucky. It wasn't much of a work ethic but at least they were making money. The car, purely and simply, had gotten them the job.

Here's how it went...

««—»»

When Balls and Dicky got out of the ‘Mino, the barefoot and overalled bulk of Snot McKully rose from a wood table on which he appeared to be playing checkers with himself. Snot wore a straw hat; his face, within an untrimmed beard, seemed inflated and red at the edges. Balls thought of a balloon with eyes, mouth, and nose drawn on, and rimmed with Brillo. McKully sneered, showing the aforementioned lima-bean teeth when the ‘Mino pulled up.

"Don't talk shitty to him now, Balls," Dicky warned. "Snot don't take no shit, and remember, he is payin' us... "

Balls' eyes darkened below the John Deere hat, his black goatee tightening in some resentment. "Shee-it, Dicky, he's got tits bigger'n his wife's, and he ain't payin' us what we'se worth."

Dicky seemed nervous, a trait that had been growing on him since he and Balls had become "partners" in this venture of commerce and other less-seemly ventures. "Yeah, well, Balls, ya know, a hunnert a week just fer five twennie-five gallon runs ain't bad—"

"It's piss, Dicky. Clyde Nale lets us haul a hunnert gallons per run. Why not this guy? Don't never let a man take ‘vantage of ya. That's the first thing I learnt my first day in the joint," and then Balls, Webley .455 stuck in his belt, walked determinedly across the clearing which housed McKully's largest operational still.

Balls liked the smell of a backwoods still: the sharp vapors of the diamond-clear liquor itself, and that tinge of burnt corn. Piles of corn lay about, and pyramids of empty gallon jugs. Coils of copper tube hopped from one tank to another, and beneath the main tank a hefty fire crackled.

Beside a chicken coop, a '64 Ford Fairlane station wagon sat up on blocks, its hood up. A man who looked like a 100-year-old version of Larry on the Three Stooges was idly scraping rust off the battery terminals with a stiff wire brush. A dirty little girl, early teens, filled plastic jugs with moonshine from a large drum standing on props. Greasy blonde hair hung over her face. Skinny legs and arms but a distended belly told Balls she was dirty in more ways than one. Beside her, a mangy baby sat into the dirt, in brown-stained diapers. When it began to cry, the girl leaned over and poured some moonshine into its mouth. "There, there, Little Snot, jest you have a nip. It'll settle ya down," and then she went back to filling the jugs. But Balls' crotch stirred a bit when she'd leaned over, the baggy overalls drooping below her chest. Balls saw nipples like cherry tomatoes.

Dicky's belly jigged when he trotted up. "Howdy there, Mr. McKully!"

McKully glared. "Boys. Yer early. I like that," but he pronounced like as "lak."

"A‘corse we'se early," Balls said. "'Cos we'se efficient'n reliable. Gotta be ta be the best ‘shine runners in the state."

McKully thumbed closed his left nostril, tilted his head, then fired a streamer of discolored mucus upward, and damn if he didn't hit a sparrow sitting on a limb. The bird chirped in surprise and fell, and as it tried to shake off its new, ungainly hood, McKully squashed it under his bare sole.

"We'se supposed ta be impressed there, Mr. McKully?" Balls laughed. "Killin' a pissant little bird?"

McKully jabbed a finger so hard into Balls' chest, Balls almost fell backward. Dicky winced, thinking Aw, no, Balls, now what'cha have to say that fer?

"I could tell even ‘fore you got outa the car that you got-cher dander up, boy," McKully's voice vibrated. His atrocious breath seemed to hang like fog. "I ain't got time fer punks—"

"Aw, no, Mr. McKully, Balls, see, he were only jokin'," Dicky jabbered.

"—and if you two baby-blowers are the best shine-runners in the state, I'll grow a square asshole and shit a television," McKully finished. He fired more snot out a nostril—he did that a lot; that's why they called him Snot—then he turned and lumbered back to the table. "You boys are fired. Get out'a here."

Dicky looked apoplectic. "Aw, jeez, sir, don't do that—"

"I don't like yer buddy's attitude," McKully said. "Never did. Bad attitude means trouble in this business. I don't need fellas with bad attitudes. I just need fellas who're bad."

Dicky frowned at his friend. "Come on, let's git. You done fucked this all up."

"Dicky, trust me... and watch," Balls assured. He strode cockily to McKully's checkers table. "That's a right fucked-up of ya, Mister McKully."

Just as McKully would sit back down, he turned with a surprising agility and jabbed that big dirty finger right back into Balls' chest, smudging his t-shirt which read THE THREE COMMANDMENTS: TITS, CLITS, & ICE COLD SCHLITZ. "Well I don't rightly give a fuck if that's fucked up'a me, boy. I don't like yer face, so's I don't want-cha workin' fer me no more. Now git off my land"—McKully jabbed the finger yet again—"and if you don't like me jammin' my finger in ya... then do somethin' about it."

Balls grinned, hands on hips (a favorite pose). His eyes flicked down once very briefly in the direction of that big Webley pistol sticking in his belt.

McKully laughed. "And don't think I don't see that gun there, boy, but do I look worried? You go ahead and make a move. I'll bitch-slap you with that gun in less time than it takes me to spit. Then I'll pull yer dick off'n give it to my daughter's baby fer a fuckin' pacifier."

"Come on, Balls!" Dicky called out from safe distance. "Let's just go... "

The seat creaked when McKully sat back down.

Balls didn't move. "Just tell me man to man, sir, why you let us run but twennie-five gallons'a shine per run when Dicky's ‘Mino'll hold a hunnert jugs easy?"

McKully wasn't even looking at Balls. He made a checker-move. "It's 'cos you guys ain't got the nuts."

Balls leaned forward, hands still on hips. "Uh, what's that?"

"You fellas ain't bad enough. Bad as in down'n dirty. That kind of bad. Get it?"

"No, sir, I shore as shit don't 'cos, see, me'n Dicky here? We'se the baddest motherfuckers in these here parts, and that you can take to the bank."

McKully waved a hand. "I couldn't take it to the fuckin' toilet," but he pronounced toilet as "toe-lit." "Talkin' it's one thing, boy, walkin' it's another. Shee-it, any asshole with a fast car can outrun the cops on these roads, but I need runners who can do the whole job."

"The whole job?"

"Yeah. Like when the shit hits the fan, I need boys who're willin' to do anythin' to get out of the jam and leave no witnesses."

"Aw, hail," Balls began. "Me'n Dicky, we'se can do—"

McKully's fat hand shot out to silence Balls' protest. He moved another checker. "I need fellas who'll kill." McKully grinned up with the pale green smile. "Boy? You ever kill a man?"

"Shee-it, Mr. McKully. I'se killed me plenty'a men."

"Yeah? How's about women? You ever kilt a woman?"

"Aw, a bunch of times," Balls said, but in truth, at this particular point in Tritt "Balls" Conner's existence, he'd actually killed no one. He'd raped some girls, sure—but they were all asking for it anyway—and he'd jacked out a number of fellas for their green, and he'd even mugged a few old ladies. But the act of murder was one crime not yet on his list of achievements.

Snot honked another nose-shot of snot. "I think yer fulla shit, boy. But I'll'se give ya the benner-fit of the doubt. You lay a good ruckin' on a gal, and I'll hire ya back."

Balls scratched the top of his hat. "A... ruckin'? What's that?"

McKully glared up as if offended. "Shee-it, boy! Yer from the south'n you don't know what a ruckin' is?"

Balls didn't know what to say. "I'se lived my whole life here'n did two years in the Russell County slam, and I ain't never heard'a no ruckin'."

The obese moonshiner seemed disgusted. "Kids," he muttered to himself. "All right, I'll'se tell ya. A ruckin' is when ya snatch yerself a perfectly inner-cent woman and just fuck her all up'n then kill her, fer no reason. That's what a ruckin' is, son."

"Oh," Balls said.

"So that's my deal, boy. If you kill a perfectly inner-cent splittail, without so much as battin' an eye, and real down'n dirty-like, a real hardcore job... then I'll give you'n yer fat buddy a hunnert gallons of ‘shine to run four days a week... and quadruple yer pay."

Balls shrugged nonchalance. "I'll go do it right now and you'll read about it in the paper tomorrow—"

Snot McKully belted a laugh. "Naw, naw, punk. You do it right now, wheres I can see ya do it. I needs you to show me the ruckin' so I know ya got the nuts fer it."

Balls blinked. "Uh, well, okay but... where's I gonna get a splittail?"

McKully whistled. "Pumpkin? Pull that skinny gal out the coop'n drag her over."

Like an automaton, the teenaged girl with greasy hair loped over to the chicken coop, baggy overalls flowing around her frame. She opened a wire-covered hatch, and suddenly Balls thought he heard a muffled mewling sound.

The fuck's he got in there anyways? Balls wondered. Dicky looked grimly on from the El Camino.

From the coop, out flopped an emaciated woman, nude, and with a black rat's nest for hair, wrists and ankles tied. She mewled through a gag of what appeared to be a pair of very soiled men's shorts. Her eyes were huge orbs of terror in the thin face, and she was so skinny her ribs were deep grooves in paste-white flesh. She was ankle-dragged into the center of the clearing by the young blond girl.

"There's yer splittail, son," McKully said.

"Who the fuck is it?" Balls asked.

"Just some gal—an inner-cent gal we caught walkin' through the woods. Had no choice but ta nab her. Cain't have her tellin' the ATF I got a still here, ya know?"

Balls frowned at the trembling, skin-covered skeleton. "She a creeker or somethin'? How she get so dang skinny?"

"Aw, we caught her over a week ago," McKully explained. He took a slug of his own panther piss from a clichéd glass jar. "Couldn't make my mind up what to do with her so's I stuffed her in the chicken coop. Ain't fed her nothin' 'cos I didn't want her shittin' in my coop." McKully fired yet another nose-loogie off to the side, a big one. The young blond girl was already back to filling more jugs, unconcerned by the event taking place.

"Well, boy?" McKully grinned. "Got the belly fer it, or don't'cha?"

"Shee-it... " Balls ruminated on his thoughts, and then it occurred to him that he didn't give jack-fuck about this unfortunate soul at his feet. Innocent? Absolutely! But could Balls really kill her—kill her down and dirty-like? Could he lay a genuine "ruckin'" on her?

Balls' epiphany was now at hand.

"Dicky! Come gimme a hand!"

"Uh, uh, well—"

"Just come on!"

Dicky moseyed over, hands in pockets.

Balls shook his head when an inadvertent glance showed him the baby eating McKully's jettisoned splat of mucus. These really are some crackers here, he thought. Then he whipped out his Buck knife and snapped! it open. He straddled the emaciated woman and cut off her gag.

She wheezed like a kazoo. "Jaysus, Mary'n Joseph lemme go my God please lemme go! I ain't gonna tell no one 'bout the still I'se swear!"

"A‘corse yer not, honey," Balls said.

Starvation had melted her breasts down to nippled flaps. "Cut me loose I'se beggin' ya! I weren't doin' nothin' but walkin' through the woods! Please please please cut me loose!"

Balls cut the rope binding her ankles.

"Oh God bless ya bless ya bless ya!" she wheezed. "Nows cut my hands free'n git me away from that evil man!"

"Shore, baby," Balls said, but then he sat on her belly with his back toward her face. "Dicky! Spread them walkin' sticks wide as ya can!"

The woman shrieked, her body writhing in the dirt beneath Balls' weight. Dicky reluctantly grabbed her ankles and, struggling against an expected resistance, spread her legs.

A great mound of bristly black pubic hair sprouted at her crotch.

"Dang, Dicky. Looks like a hunk'a sod, don't it?"

"Uh, uh, yeah, Balls, it shore does but, ya know, maybe we shouldn't be doin' this," his friend suggested. "She ain't done nobody no harm. This ain't right."

"‘A'course it ain't," and then began cutting down there with his Buck. He inscribed the knife tip around the hairy triangle. Now the woman was really screaming, and Balls found that he liked that sound very much. It seemed delicious and warm and delectable.

Just like the sugar rolls my grandma used to make...

You could say it was with considerable craft that Balls skinned the woman's pubic mound. He held the ragged triangle of fur up for McKully to see, then flung it away. Blood poured from the wound as if from a bucket, and now the woman, all eighty or so pounds of her, managed to buck so hard, the reflex lifted Balls a good six inches off the ground.

"Dang," Dicky muttered.

Balls faced Snot McKully. "Down'n dirty enough fer ya?"

McKully waved a hand. "Aw, that ain't nothin'. I've scalped gals' pussies before, lots of times. That's the kind'a shit I was doin' fer fun when I was a kid."

"Well I'm glad you said that, Mr. McKully, 'cos I'm just warmin' up," and then Balls strode over to the jugging table. A side glance showed him the young blonde now sitting on the ground with her baby, offering it one of those cherry-tomato nipples. The baby sucked like someone at the bottom of a milkshake.

"You shore ya want yer daughter and the baby watchin' this?" he asked McKully.

McKully just waved a dismissive hand.

Balls grabbed a jug of moonshine and strode back over. Now the woman was sort of pinwheeling in the dirt, her screams grinding down.

"Dicky, git me some rope out the ‘Mino."

Dicky stood in half-shock. "What'cha, what'cha need that fer?"

"Just git it!"

Balls uncapped the jug, then—SPLAP!—dumped a plume of 200-proof grain alcohol on the woman's scalped pubis.

The woman shrieked so loud even Balls jumped back a foot.

So he wants a ruckin', huh? Down'n dirty-like, huh? Balls spotted something near a pile of broken planks next to a fermenter: an old-fashioned brace-style manual drill. He snatched it up, not realizing that he'd just been touched by something called innovation. He rolled his eyes walking back to the scene, noticing now that the blond teenager was back to filling jugs, while her baby was playing with the pubic scalp.

Balls straddled the girl again. Her combination of kicks, flails, and screams filled the clearing with a unique dervish of pandemonium. Balls found that he enjoyed the aural effect. "Dicky! I needs ta get this ‘ho simmered down. Sit on her knees."

Dicky frowned but did as he was told. Now the poor girl was pinned to the ground. Balls put a knee on her cheek, squashing her other cheek into the dirt, and then he started cranking away on the brace-drill. It was tough going at first. That auger-bit turned like a barber pole, making a sound sort of like a meat-grinder, and when it finally ate through her skull, he cranked it into her raw brain about an inch. The girl's screams were extraordinary; they sounded more like a bad wheel bearing than any mode of human protestation. But once that bit sunk in an inch, the screams abated, and her maniacal flailings digressed down to a steady, low-grade convulsion.

Balls and Dicky stood up, looking down. Balls smiled. "That shore took some spark out of her, huh?"

"Ya done drilled a hole in her head," Dicky observed with a roiling gut. "But she ain't kicked the bucket. Where'd ya learn that trick?"

"‘Member 'bout a month ago we'se was in the bar watchin' 'bout that Dahmer fella? He took the zing out'a some'a his victims the same way—said so on the news. Figgure if it's good enough fer him, it's good enough fer me, and see?" Balls gestured an opened hand to the convulsant girl. "Works like a charm."

Dicky made every effort to keep his eyes from lingering too long on the girl. Her eyes looked up at them, darted back and forth, and her lips moved but uttered no sound. All she did was lie there and tremble. The 3/8th-inch hole in her head effused surprisingly little blood.

Now the baby, however toothless, was gnawing on the pubic scalp like hairy jerky.

Dicky's eyes beseeched Snot McKully. "How's that fer a ruckin', Mr. McKully?" hoping the fat moonshiner was satisfied by the demonstration.

McKully inspected the unfortunate girl from his seat. "Ain't bad but I've seen better."

Balls guffawed. "What? You think I'm done? Shee-it," and then Balls grabbed that battery brush from the old guy who looked like Larry, and was sitting on the girl's stomach. He tweezed a nipple between his fingers then began to vigorously scour at the flesh with the brush's stiff, iron bristles.

"How's that, baby? Feel good?"

The girl's convulsions heightened again, and Balls found that the sensation against his crotch was pleasurable indeed. When the first nipple had been essentially scoured off, he proceeded to the next. All the while, the girl never uttered a sound. She simply convulsed.

Balls brought his lips down to the bleeding abrasions and began to suck.

Dicky could only wince. "I think ya done rucked her up enough, Balls... "

"Naw. Ya kiddin' me?" Red-mouthed, then, Balls got back up and grabbed the rope that Dicky had brought from the vehicle. McKully watched raptly as the girl's ankles were tied to a nearby tree. Then Balls cut another length. "Git in the ‘Mino and start her up, Dicky."

"Whuh—what?"

"Go on!"

Dicky shuffled back to the El Camino and started up the hefty 427 big block.

Balls made a noose out of one end of the rope and secured it around the girl's neck, then secured the other end to the ‘Mino's trailer hitch. She was still alive but beginning to bleed out.

"Okay, Dicky-Boy! Let the clutch out! Slow!"

The ‘Mino's engine revved once, then Dicky slid the Hurst into first. The car chugged forward a few inches at a time, eventually taking up the rope's slack, and when there was no slack left at all, the girl's emaciated frame stretched fully out and rose from the ground.

"Keep goin', Dicky!" Balls called out over the engine-noise. "Nice'n slow!"

The girl's eye bugged, her frog-belly-white face going first pink, then heather- blue. Her tongue stuck straight out, then—POP!—a vertebra in her neck gave way. Dicky kept inching the ‘Mino forward while the neck stretched like a column of pale taffy. Balls clapped, amused, when the neck stretched out past a foot. The baby watched with a mild curiosity, until—

POP!

—her head snapped off and her body thumped to the ground.

"Good job, Dicky! Shut ‘er down!"

McKully nodded approval. "Gots to admit, boy. That there was a dang fine ruckin'."

Balls cut the corpse's ankles free with the Buck, then shot McKully an exaggerated look of dismay. "Well, I'se hope you don't think that's it, Mr. McKully. You don't think I went ta all this trouble to call it quits ‘fore I have me some real fun, do ya?"

"Well, seein' that you just scalped her pussy, drilled a hole in her skull, and popped her head off, it don't look to me like there's much more you can do."

"Shee-it," Balls grinned.

Dicky leaned against the ‘Mino's tailgate, his face going ever paler as he watched Balls flip the corpse over and part the very dead legs.

Balls dropped his jeans and found an erection hard as a glass-cutter sprouting from his groin. He got on his knees, spread the corpse's buttocks, and spat. When his penis sunk in, his eyes rolled back in the most potent wave of ecstacy, and he proceeded to hump the lifeless rectum with gusto. Aw, shit, that's good... His grin flashed back to McKully, who was actually raising a brow. "See, Mr. McKully, there cain't be no doubt in yer mind that we can do the job, see? I'm fuckin' a headless corpse in the ass, after all. That sounds pretty down'n dirty ta me."

"I ain't denyin' it, son."

"I mean, I want'ja to know that I walk it like I talk it."

"That you do... "

"I wouldn't want you ta have no reservations 'bout me'n Dicky not bein' bad enough ta work for ya."

"Ya done proved yer point, son," McKully said.

Yeah? Balls thought, and then on the next stroke, his orgasm stunned him. His own rectum felt like it was trying to take a breath as his penis dumped a half-dozen big belts of sperm.

Balls gulped and collapsed on the corpse's back, exhausted, and at once he felt the full force of his epiphany and the ultimate revelation of his newfound calling...

That was the best nut of my LIFE...

He pulled his jeans back up, then dusted off his hands. Now his grin toward McKully sharpened to a cunning glare. "Down'n dirty enough for ya, Mr. McKully?"

"I'd say so."

"Hardcore enough?"

"All right, boy, now don't git cocky. I just done admitted ya proved me wrong. Yer badder than I thought. Yer hardcore."

"Good," Balls gloated. "So's just you watch this... "

Even McKully looked appalled now. Balls kneeled back between the corpse's legs and spread the buttocks wide. Then—

"Aw, no, son!" McKully objected. "Don't do that! Ya done proved yer point!"

Balls wedged his face right into the corpse's ass-crack, guttering muffled laughter, and then planted his lips in a tight circle around the sullied rectum...

And sucked.

He sucked hard, good and hard.

Of course, the girl hadn't been fed in a week, so there wasn't much in the way of fecal matter down there, but there was plenty of pasty, tacky, revolting stink, and there was plenty of something else as well: Balls' semen.

Balls sucked it all out of her ass right into his mouth. McKully, Dicky, the blond girl, and even the baby stared open-mouthed.

Balls rose. He picked up the severed head, then spat his own sperm into the dead girl's lips.

He cast the head aside and grinned right at McKully.

"Now that, Mr. McKully, is how Tritt Balls Conner puts a ruckin' on a gal."

(II)

This is how much of his new novel the Writer had completed in a month's time:

WHITE TRASH GOTHIC

CHAPTER ONE

There was a knock at the door. When Nikoff Raskol opened it, he

That was it. The Writer stared at the lone page in the Remington Model No. 2, dismayed. One and a half damn sentences in a month? Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in three days! But when the Writer scrutinized that sentence and a half—really just one independent clause, and a prepositional clause, he saw no falseness in it. Time means nothing to true art, he reminded himself. He was one of a privileged lot: a full-time fiction writer. Percy Shelley didn't rush Prometheus Unbound, and Eliot didn't rush Prufrock... And wasn't it Flaubert who said that not only was it the author's luxury to spend the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon taking it out, it was also his obligation?

Yes, the Writer was certain of it.

"That's enough work for today," he talked to himself and stood up and stretched. He lit a cigarette, opening the shade to let his gaze plummet down to the moonlit junkyard. Small animals which he presumed were rats scurried about the debris, and he could swear the dog defecating next to a junked car was the same dog he's seen doing the same his very first night. A bum staggered about, then plopped down by a heap of trash, opened a bottle of something. After several chugs, he tilted his head, vomited, then continued to imbibe.

Real life, the Writer thought with some satisfaction. Ideology reduced to material elements and physiological addictions contrary to the ethereal pursuit. Biological mechanism versus determinism...

Of course, the word "addiction" was subject to interpretation.

He went to the bathroom, then, and considered his use of the name Nikoff Raskol—the protagonist for his novel—and wondered if it were too obvious a reversion of Dostoevsky's protagonist in Crime and Punishment, the greatest fictional work of existential enlightenment in the history of the written word. Might critics think it trite? The Writer urinated mightily. No. Of course not. Great painters often paid homage to their contemporaries by ingeminating authoritative themes. He flushed the toilet and smiled, knowing beyond all doubt that White Trash Gothic would herald him as the Dostoevsky of the modern age of literature.

He turned on the old radio, which always drifted off the only classical station he could find. "Jaysus WANTS you to drive fine cars!" an evangelist trumpeted, "because it's Jaysus who rewards the faithful so long as you remember the importance of charity and leave those fine cars to the church in your wills!" The dial pushed through static, then he caught a snippet of moody slide guitars and a man singing, "I will fuck you until you die, bury you and kiss this town goodbye!" The Writer winced—Gracious!— finnicked further, then stumbled on insipid hard rock and some sports stations before he found the following manic voice-warble, asserting, "I could be Raskolnikov, but Mother Nature RIPPED me off!"

Portents in the wind, he thought, emboldened by the coincidence. Surely it's a sign of Dante's Sisters of the Heavenly Spring, whispering their approval in my ear...

Then:

I deserve a drink!

He left and locked his room, only to turn into a burst of commotion. "Gimme that, you ‘ho!" a chubby blonde girl in holey lingerie snapped at a chubby brunette in holey lingerie: "Fuck you, Irene! It's mine!" and, of course, she pronounced mine as "man." The pair were playing tug-of-war with a box about the size of a box of aluminum foil. The Writer squinted, noticing the words AS SEEN ON TV! printed on the box.

"It ain't yers!" wailed the blonde. Her breasts and a belly of baby fat bounced. "It's both ours!"

"Well I'se usin' it now, so's you kin grow a dick'n blow yerself!" but then both girls looked with alarm at the Writer. Their eyes shot wide and their argument abated.

"Shhh!" whispered the blonde. "It's that famous writer fella! Mrs. Gilman said she'd kick any girl out the house if'n we disturb him."

"Oh, you're not disturbing me," the Writer ingratiated them. "But harsh words and un-civil gestures are no way to solve a disagreement. What is that, anyway?"

The blonde handed him the box, which the Writer took after a quick visual surveillance of the large and mostly visible breasts buoyed up in a lacy brassiere. Then he frowned uncomprehending as he turned the long box around in his hands. NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES! it claimed. The top read WONKO KITCHEN PRODUCTS: THERM-O-FRESH FOOD SAVING SYSTEM! It was one of those kitchen gadgets for keeping leftovers fresh for longer.

In the Writer's head he made a rare departure from his avoidance of profanity: Why the fuck are two backwoods hookers fighting over THIS? though he didn't feel inclined to ask. "Flipping a coin seems the most fair manner by which to solve your discrepancy, hmm?"

Both girls begrudgingly nodded.

The Writer produced a quarter. "You call it," he said to the blonde and flipped.

"Heads!" the blonde snapped.

"Aw, you poop-eater, Stacy," sniped the brunette when the Writer caught the coin and showed heads. She thumped off to another room.

The blonde had won the box. "Thanks!"

The Writer figured it out: She must have children, and wants to stretch her food budget by saving leftovers.

"So what'cha write about, Mr. Writer?" she asked in a bouncy enthusiasm.

The Writer tried not to groan. "Fluctuations of the human condition in an ever-evolving—or de-volving age. I symbolize the tenets of post-Sartrean existentialism in the lives of characters in fiction."

She looked crosseyed at him. "Is that, like, havin' folks in a story that's made up do real things like what folks in real life experience?"

"Well, actually, yes."

"Aw, cool! So if'n ever ya wanna fuck me 'cos ya got someone in a story fuckin' an' you cain't remember what that's like, just you knock on my door. And all I'se'll charge ya is ten bucks!"

The Writer was flabbergasted. "Uh, well, I just might do that if I need to reflect that aspect of the human condition in my work."

"Good! ‘Bye!" but, of course, she pronounced ‘bye as "baa!"

Depressed now, the Writer left the house and proceeded at once to the Crossroads, to drink with the gusto of Hemingway...

(III)

Needless to say, McKully rehired Balls and Dicky, upped their twenty-five-gallon runs to a hundred, and quadrupled their pay—and with the jaded event came the actualization—the epiphany—that would forge the true meaning of their destinies. They ran liquor for another man, as well, a man named Clyde Nale. What they each earned on a weekly basis was a fair shake of money, solid remuneration for two young dropouts in an economically wasted town. Balls and Dicky, hence, were a unique pair in Luntville: they were successful.

But Balls, since the genesis of his epiphany, wasn't satisfied with one-dimensional success...

That night, the El Camino cruised smoothly down dark, winding roads. They'd just finished dropping off a load of moonshine in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and now it was time to relax. Each had a beer between their legs and a smile on their face.

"Dang good day, Dicky," Balls remarked, his long hair billowing in the breeze from the open window.

"That it was, Balls," Dicky replied.

Balls went to wipe a booger when Dicky wasn't looking, but after doing so his fingers touched a small pile of odd plastic strips under the ‘Mino's seat. The hail? "Hey, Dicky? What're these here funny thangs?" and then he held one up. "Come ta think of it, they look familiar... "

"Huh?" Dicky replied, squinting over.

"Oh, I know what these are," Balls finally said. "They're Flex-Cuffs, ain't they?"

"Oh, yeah... "

Balls nodded in the moonlight as the stars streamed by the open window. "The bulls used these things on us whenever they'd transport convicts to another block." Next, Balls' lips pursed. "But, Dicky... What'choo need Flex-Cuffs fer?"

"Aw, see, my Uncle Marty works the state penn, he brings home boxes of 'em. It's always good ta have some in the car in case ya need ta pole-tie a deer. It's the fastest way ta truss 'em up if'n you're out poachin'."

Balls thought about that and found the idea to be quite innovative. But then, in a mental jag, it wasn't a deer he saw pole-tied in his mind's eye, it was a naked woman. Or better yet, Flex-Cuff her wrists'n hook 'em over a broken branch-end stickin' out of a tree. Then git ta workin' on her nice'n slow with the manual drill, right in the breadbasket...

Dicky was chuckling. "Shee-it, my Uncle Marty's got it made workin' up at that place."

"The state slam?"

"Aw, yeah, man. Decent pay and benner-fits, plus he's kin git a blowjob anytime he wants and alls it costs is a quarter."

Balls thought about that, eyes thinned. "Oh, you mean from the female cons on the women's block."

Dicky paused for a number of moments, then blurted. "A'course! What'cha think I meant? From dudes? Shee-it."

Balls wondered but dismissed it. Suddenly he was thinking what it would be like to stick a spoon down a woman's throat in order to make her vomit while simultaneously engaged in the act of intercourse...

"But'cha knows what?" Dicky blathered. "I was thinkin'. Since we'se been runnin' ‘shine? I'll'se bet we make more scratch than dang near anyone in all'a Luntville."

In Balls' mind, he was now making the woman drown in the vomit... "Huh? Oh, yeah, Dicky, I'll bet we do, buts ya know we'se'll be makin' even more real soon. You ain't fergot 'bout Crafter's house, now have ya?"

Dicky thought behind the wheel. "Aw, yeah. That fella on Governor's Bridge Road."

"Right. And it ain't but a couple'a days ‘fore he goes to Spain."

"Then we'se'll really be loaded, after heistin' all that fancy jewelry he's got."

"And other stuff, too, like really old statues'n furniture. Bud Tooler tolt me Crafter even had dinner plates made'a gold."

"Shee-it!" Dicky whispered.

"Yeah, man. So what's our schedule lookin' like?"

Dicky put on his Thinking Cap, which took a while. "Uh, let's see, I'se think tomorrow we got a full run for Clyde Nale, and day after a run'a piece for McKully'n Nale. And day after that... we'se off."

"That's dandier than a double-blowjob from underage twins, Dicky-Boy. So's figgure night after tomorrow, we do the job'n fence the shit in Pulaski the next day."

"Solid."

Dicky drove on through the wooded night, thinking sweet thoughts of all that money they'd have soon. Balls' thoughts, however, remained not so sweet. Now he dredged up the delicious memory of that rucking he'd pulled at McKully's, and recalled the accelerated intensity of his orgasm when he'd sodomized the hill girl once she was headless. He focused on the recollection, like a scientist focusing a powerful microscope, and he re-lived the rush he'd gotten whilst scalping her pubis. He relished the remembrance of the minute and indefinable sound that the battery brush had made when he'd been scouring off her nipples...

And a moment later his maladapted synapses were firing impulses into his libidinal system, and in less time than it would've taken him to say the word "pathological," his penis thudded within the confines of his jeans, painfully erect.

As he luxuriated in these thoughts, he was pap-pap-papping his homemade blackjack into an opened palm...

"What's that?" Dicky inquired.

Balls blinked out of his distraction. "Huh? Oh, this? Ain't nothin' but my jack. Found it in a box'a junk at my Daddy's house. I made it myself when I'se was a little kid, I did. Alls ya do is screw a fishing weight inta the top of a screen-door spring, then ya wrap it up in ‘lecktrical tape." Pap-pap-pap. "Kind'a neat, I'd say. Figgure I'll carry it ‘round in case of a emergency."

Dicky's corpulent face screwed up. "What'cha need a dang blackjack fer when ya got that big ole pistol in yer belt?"

"A quiet-type of emergency, Dicky."

"Oh... But, hey, you ever really use it on anyone?"

Balls' cheeks billowed as he scoffed. "Shee-it, Dicky, you kiddin' me? I'se jacked dozens of fellas out with this here jack, and a lots of 'em was really big fellas too, I'se kin tell ya. Some turd give me a hard time? I just pop him one in the noggin and he's lights out. Then, a'course, I take his green."

"Wow," Dicky responded, impressed.

Naturally, everything Balls had said was a lie. He'd never struck anyone with his homemade blackjack—only neighborhood cats as a child.

But now? Since his epiphany?

"Where we at now, Dicky?" Balls asked. The 'Mino was cruising through another drab, rundown little town. Most shops stood closed, and no other traffic could be seen.

"Waynesville. Don't'cha worry none, Balls. Won't be more'n ten minutes'n we'll be pullin' inta the Crossroads."

Now, for some unidentifiable reason, Balls scanned the streets more intently, as if looking for something in particular... When they turned a corner, though, he saw a small, dented sedan parked in the front lot of a Peoples Drug Store. It was the only car in the lot, and in the back sat several young children. A haggard fortyish woman with a beehive hairdo was walking away from the store carrying two bags.

"Pull inta this drug store, Dicky. I gots ta pee."

Dicky frowned. "Ya cain't wait ten minutes?"

"I ain't peed in two or three hours, man, and I'se already done drunk a six-pack. My piss-bag's full, brother. Just pull in."

Dicky did so, then Balls jumped out, but instead of heading toward the store... he headed toward the sedan. He leaned over and smiled into the back seat, where three little girls sat huddled.

"Howdy, girls! What'cha all doin' this fine night?"

The little girls exchanged wide-eyed glances, then one peeped, "We'se havin' a pajama party so's my ma's gettin' us some sodas and cheese doodles."

"Well, that sounds like a lot'a fun!"

Just then the woman rushed up to the car. "Who're you? What'choo doin' talkin' to my kids! Just you get out'a here!"

"Aw, ma'am, I'se was just sayin' hi," Balls replied and—smack!—hit her right in the forehead with his blackjack. She collapsed, instantly unconscious, while the little girls in the backseat burst into a round of ear-piercing shrieks.

Balls whipped out his penis and wasted no time in relieving the volume of his bladder. He fired the hot, yard-long stream right into the back seat, swaying back and forth across the horrified little chipmunk faces. The little girls shrieked like referee whistles.

Balls zipped up quick, snagged the woman's purse and a bag of cheese doodles, then jogged back to the El Camino.

"Holy shit, Balls!" Dicky yelled when his cohort jumped back in. "What the fuck?"

"Drive, Dicky! Drive!"

Dicky dumped the ‘Mino's clutch and pulled a 450-horsepower hole-shot out of the parking lot. Tires screamed, rubber burned, and the engine's roar fractured the night. Dicky careened out, then lead-footed it off the main drag.

Balls cackled laughter.

"Jaysus Chrast, Balls! You just jacked a lady out and peed on her kids!"

"Yeah. Cool, huh?"

Dicky's face darkened with rage. "Someone could'a seen! What if a cop drove by when you was pullin' that stunt?"

"Aw, shee-it, Dicky. The parkin' lot was empty and there weren't another car on the street. Relax."

"Relax?"

Dicky sped as far away from the incident as he could without dumping the car. Within minutes they were cruising through more winding, dark roads through the woods.

The dashboard lights tinted Balls' grinning face. He rooted through the woman's purse, snatched up some bills, then threw the rest out the window. "Dang! That beat bitch had sixty bucks on her."

"Fuck, Balls!" Dicky continued to bellow. "What the FUCK did'ja do that fer?"

Balls shook his head. "I don't rightly know, Dicky. It just come inta my head to do it. ‘Sides, I had ta pee bad and I'se thought it might be interestin' to do it on them little girls."

"Interestin'! We could get throwed in jail fer that! And you's on fuckin' parole anyway!"

"Aw, ferget it." Balls busted open the bag. "Here. Have a cheese doodle."

"I don't want no fuckin' cheese doodle!" Dicky glared in disbelief. "You are crazy, man! Crazy!"

Balls sat back, munching contemplatively. "Naw, Dicky. I ain't crazy." He smiled out the window, into the endless night. "I'se just followin' my nature... "

(IV)

The Writer left the Crossroads—fairly drunk—in the vicinity of midnight. Just as he shuffled across the gravel parking lot, he was given a start by a sudden avalanche of noise, a great, clamorous chugging that reminded him of one of those ridiculous four-engine powerboats pulling up to a dock. But this was no boat, it was a vintage black El Camino. The Writer sighed in relief when the engine racket severed. It should be against the law for cars to be that loud... Two figures disembarked amid the shadows. The Writer heard some quick redneck dialect: "Aw, shee-it, Dicky! Yous should'a seen their faces when I'se was hosin' 'em down with my kidney juice! Oooo-eee!" Then the figures entered the bar.

Kidney juice? the Writer thought.

The moon watched him through gnarled trees when he took the narrow road out of the woods to the main street. Did he hear a wolf howl? No. Power of suggestion. Crickets trilled in a palpable throb; he thought of old Tangerine Dream records. Damn. Cigarettes, he reminded himself, and turned with some trepidation toward the Qwik-Mart. Out front a man in a suit and tie was getting into what appeared to be a Rolls Royce; the Writer immediately noted that the man had inadvertently placed his wallet on top of the car when he'd extracted his keys, then forgot to reclaim it when he got behind the wheel. He backed out and began to pull away, and the wallet slid off the car onto the pavement.

"Hey! Wait!" the Writer called out. He jogged over. At least a dozen credit cards and various ID's had slid out of the wallet as well. He scooped them all up and jogged over. The car idled at the exit, a man looking out.

"Yes?"

"You left your wallet on the car and it fell off."

The debonair-looking driver frowned at himself. "I must have left my wits at home today. How stupid of me."

"Some of your credit cards slipped out but I picked them up," the Writer said, and handed it all over to the well-groomed older man.

"Honesty is such a rare commodity these days. You're one of a choice few, and you have my thanks." Then the man handed the Writer a $100 bill.

"Oh, really, sir, I couldn't—"

"Take it, with my compliments... " The man's face seemed to darken as he smiled. "What a tenuous power... The power of truth... "

The Writer stared as the Rolls Royce drove off.

The comment unnerved him, even though he knew it to be sheer coincidence. But then his shoulders slumped as he headed back for the store. A lone credit card lay in the parking lot. Damn, I missed one. The Rolls Royce was long gone now. He pocketed the card and resolved to call the 1-800 number on the back tomorrow.

In the store a tall young man with a shaved head was buying several cans of refried beans and jalapeno peppers. He wore a swastika earring, and had a tattoo on a bulging deltoid which read: ARYAN NATION. Was the man whistling "The Sound of Music" when he left?

"You again," the visored, old proprietor greeted. "The Writer."

"It's good to see you, sir."

"Shee-it. You 'bout done with this fancy book'a yers?"

I've only written one and a half sentences... "It's coming along. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."

"Rome, huh? My brother fought the Germans in Italy. After they up'n killed everything that moved, they went on leave to fuckin' Rome. Said ya needed a clothespin on yer nose to fuck the whores."

"How... elucidating," the Writer remarked.

The proprietor snorted. "Said the whores in Rome were the hairiest whores he ever done seen. Even hairier than the krauts."

"Hmm. Hirsute prostitutes... "

The proprietor frowned. "Said they had so much hair under their arms you'd have thought they had the Black Panthers in a fuckin' headlock."

The Writer stood speechless.

"Ya ever read the shortest book ever written?"

"What's that?" the Writer had to ask.

"The History of Italian War Heroes!" and the proprietor slapped his knees and guffawed out loud. Then he began walking toward a rear door.

"Uh, sir?" The Writer raised a finger. "I was going to buy something, and I'm rather in a hurry... "

The proprietor glared. "I gotta take a shit! Do ya mind? Or I guess ya think that 'cos you're the customer, I gotta shit my pants 'cos you're rather in a hurry! Fuck!"

The man's cane tapped the floor as he disappeared.

I love this place, the Writer thought. He browsed the aisles, and took several Three Musketeers to the counter. A small television squawked next to the cigar rack. The Writer's eyes bloomed...

"Don't throw those leftovers away!" spoke an animated voiceover as a Donna Reed-looking housewife dumped a plate of food into a kitchen wastebasket. "Now you can save hundreds, even thousands of dollars a year with the amazing, new Therm-O-Fresh!" Now the housewife emptied another plate of food into a plastic bag. "You can freeze it, you can boil it, you can microwave it! Now your leftovers will taste as fresh as the day you bought them when you use the Therm-O-Fresh Food Saving System!" The housewife slipped a plastic tube into the bag, then pushed a button on a machine about the size of a box of aluminum foil. The plastic bag collapsed, as the tube sucked all the air out of it. "The Therm-O-Fresh patented one-touch vacuum instantly removes all the air from your valuable leftovers, then seals the storage bag in seconds." Next the edge of the bag was placed in a groove on the machine which heat-sealed it shut. Donna Reed was amazed.

That's the thing the two girls were fighting over at the motel, the Writer realized.

"Keep nuts, cookies, pretzels, even potato chips fresh as the day you bought them! The Therm-O-Fresh System includes five specially-designed jars with air-lock tops that you can use over and over again!" Now, the housewife stuck the tube into a valve of some sort on top of a jar full of popcorn. "Watch what our patented lifetime-guaranteed industrial-strength vacuum does to this popcorn!" She pushed the button and the popcorn collapsed like magic in the jar. "Not available in stores! Call now while supplies last! Get the patented Therm-O-Fresh Food Saving System for just four easy payments of $49.95. That's right, just $49.95! And if you call within the next ten minutes, you'll receive a year's supply of patented Therm-O-Fresh vacuum bags absolutely free!"

"Ain't that some shit?" the proprietor returned, glaring at the TV. "Fuckin' Red China's buildin' a hunnert nukes a day to shoot at us, and all we're makin' is a bunch'a fuckin' Chia Pets'n these goddamn Cabbage Patch dolls'n some fuckin' shit called Windows 3.0! What's the country comin' to?"

"I couldn't hazard a speculation," the Writer said, "but I would like a carton of generic lights."

"Fuck! You could at least buy Marlboros... "

When the old crank rang up the purchase, the Writer handed him the $100 bill from the Rolls Royce guy.

"Do I look like the fuckin' U.S. Treasury? I cain't break that!"

Now the Writer fumbled with his ankle-wallet, and put down a twenty.

"Shee-it." The proprietor slapped the change down on the counter.

The Writer sighed. I come in here every week... He slid two quarters over. "And a bag, please."

"Jesus! One dollar!"

The Writer winced but paid nonetheless. "Have a pleasant evening."

"A pleasant evening? You shittin' me? My hemorrhoids itch so bad I could run a fuckin' cactus through my crack!"

The Writer took long strides out of the store, just as a half-dozen Hispanics entered. The old man could be heard in the background even after the door closed. "What is this? The fuckin' Alamo?"

The Writer contemplated Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury as he walked back to the Gilman House. How clever of the Mississippi Nobel Prize winner to title his novel from a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The Writer recited the ironic lines with each step back to the whorehouse: Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

Indeed, the "idiot's" view of the world proved the most truthful...

The previous chorus of crickets was absent now, leaving dead-silence to hover through the night. At the front drive, he noticed Mrs. Gilman's mailbox hanging open; three long boxes were inside along with several envelopes. He gathered it all up and went inside.

"Well, hey there, Mr. Writer!" greeted—if a bit loudly—Mrs. Gilman behind the check-in desk. "How was your nightly walk?" but naturally she pronounced the word nightly as "nat-lee."

""It was wonderful, Mrs. Gilman... "

Three chunky prostitutes in lingerie stood up at the desk as well, a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette. They all had big silly grins on their faces.

"You mean yer nightly walk home from the bar, huh, Mr. Writer?" jibed the red-head.

"I must confess," the Writer chuckled, but only now did it occur to him that he must reek of beer-breath.

"Probably lookin' to git lucky," said the blonde, "but the Crossroads ain't no place to git lucky. All them skanky gals they got up there?"

The brunette batted her eyes. She would've had a great smile were it not for the missing incisor. "Right here's the place to git lucky, ‘specially fer a handsome, rich writer like you."

The Writer sighed. "Really, I'm not that—"

"What's all that?" Mrs. Gilman asked, pointing to the parcels under his arm.

"Oh, the mail. I noticed the post box was full when I was walking up."

All three of the younger girls perked up when they noticed the three long boxes under his arm. "Any'a them boxes fer me?" asked the red-head. "Or me?" added the blonde. "I'se expectin' somethin'." "Me too!" exclaimed the brunette.

"Well, let's see," and the Writer began to read the address labels on each box. "Nyna Rhodes... "

The red-head's hand shot up. "That's me!"

"Anita Gonzales... "

The brunette beamed.

"Beatrice Mullins."

The blonde raised her hand, bouncing up and down. The Writer distributed the boxes, then gave Mrs. Gilman the rest of the mail. "Probably just bills for you, Mrs. Gilman."

"Like death'n taxes," but then she paused. "‘Cept I don't really pay no taxes to speak of. But I reckon I'll be payin' lots more once this Arkansas shyster gets in the White House. Kin you believe the news says he's gonna win?"

"I'm an apolitical writer," the Writer said. "I have no opinion... "

The blonde and red-head ran up the stairs with their boxes, excited as children who'd just been given a surprise. The brunette remained, however, opening her box at the desk. "Oh, I just so hope this is it!" she gibbered.

The girl squealed with delight. The Writer did a double-take. The box read WONKO KITCHEN PRODUCTS: THERM-O-FRESH FOOD SAVING SYSTEM.

"I'se gonna go use mine right now, I am!" she celebrated and scampered up the stairs.

"These girls," Mrs. Gilman said, shaking her head with a smile.

The Writer looked hard at her. "Mrs. Gilman? Why on earth would girls such as these spend two hundred dollars apiece on those—"

The phone rang, truncating the rest of the Writer's query.

"Oh hi, Doris, dear! And how are you today?"

The Writer could feel a long conversation coming so he drifted upstairs. He counted thirteen steps to the landing. What would happen if, say, tomorrow I walk up these same steps, but there are fourteen? And the next day fifteen? And sixteen the day after that?

It must be a slow night; very few bedsprings were heard, but he did hear someone say "Who's your daddy?" but he was sure it was a woman's voice.

He passed a door half-open, unconsciously looked in, then gaped.

"Haa! Come on in!"

It was Nancy, and the reason for the Writer's gape was due to the fact that Nancy was sitting hunched on her bed, one hundred percent naked. Oh, dear, he thought.

Her perfect breasts, however badly tattooed, depended from the pose; she was leaning over painting her toenails. Every contour of her physique seemed to exist without perceptible defect. Redneck paragon... A physical pattern of excellence. Shakespeare could write a pastoral verse-sequence about her, in octosyllabic couplets...

"How do my toesies look?" she asked, then stuck her long legs out.

"Preeminent," the Writer droned.

"Does... that mean good?"

"Yes." Like slow syrup, his gaze drooled down the legs to the adorable bald triangle of creases betwixt them. Even inclined on her elbows, her stomach showed not even an inkling of a ridge.

Though touched upon previously, it must be stated in full now that the Writer was—and had been for a number of years—a self-imposed celibate. It was the sexual angst he craved, that strange edge of need unrelieved. He knew that it's what his Muse demanded: to stare into the promise of la petite-morte only to have it sift through his fingers like so much proverbial sand. Monks did it, priests did it, even Jesus Christ did it, and the Writer figured that if he could imitate just one facet of them, then his writing would be charged by the same verity that charged their systems of faith. But even in his abstinence, however, he was allowed to look. As a Writer, he was a seeker, and hence, a seer. If the human self was the only thing that could be known and therefore verified, everything that that same self saw was verifiable as well.

His penis swelled in his pants to the extent that it felt like a hamster that had died and entered rigor mortis.

"So what'cha doin' tonight?" she asked, rocking her feet.

His teeth ground as the realities bled through the ideal. The atrocious tattoos turned her into a desecrated icon. His autograph was still in plain sight above the "Smiley Face" with a nipple for a nose.

"I was doing my Dylan Thomas imitation," he said.

"Huh?"

"Drinking a lot."

She giggled. "Oh, I heard you hang out up the Crossroads." Her eyes went wide in a hopeful recollection. "I gang-banged ten fellas there once fer ten bucks a piece. Next time you're there, look fer the dark spot by the corner pocket. That's me."

The Writer stood speechless.

"So who's this villain yer talkin' 'bout? His name's Thomas?"

Whuh... "Oh, no, not villain. Dylan. Dylan Thomas. I was making a quip. He was arguably the century's greatest poet in the English language—he wrote Deaths and Entrances. He was what they call a ‘biblical symbolist.'"

Nancy's angelic face showed recognition. "I gots me a step-brother who plays cymbals—and drums, too."

"No, no, Dylan Thomas' best verse juxtaposed the exuberance of faith in God, with the cruciality of our need to redeem ourselves for our sexual sins."

Her peaches-and-cream tits bounced when she giggled again. "Oh. I guess I'se need ta read him!"

"But I was actually joking in my preliminary reference. He was a big drinker," the Writer explained. "I'm sure it was just an excuse for his alcoholism, but he would regularly contend no matter how much alcohol he consumed, he could prevent himself from getting drunk merely by thinking."

"Thankin'?" the prostitute queried.

"Yes. He believed that alcohol accelerated the quality of his creativity, so he would drink but by the force of his mind, not allow himself to get drunk." He was also an oaf and an oddball, who died from alcohol poisoning, but the Writer neglected to mention these facts.

"Just by thankin'," Nancy uttered amazed.

"Oh, yes. The human mind is quite a powerful thing, the sheer force of will."

"But'cha know?" Her face lit up. "I'se kin do somethin' with my mind! Wanna see?"

All those beers were finally sinking in. The Writer was wobbling a bit in place. "Uh, well, I really should be go—"

"Just you watch!" she advised, and adjusted her pose. She leaned up on her arms, and parted her creamy thighs with her knees bent over the bed's edge. "Watch my titties'n cunny... "

Well, I know what titties are, the Writer thought. And I presume that "cunny" is a vaginal reference... "Um, sure."

Nancy closed her eyes and leaned her head back. A delectable pink tongue glazed her lips, and she began taking slow, deep breaths though her nose. She was obviously concentrating on something with great focus. The trim stomach moved slowly in and out and, next, she was moaning ever so lightly.

The Writer's gaze switched from her breasts to her crotch, then back to her breasts. And what breasts they are, he had to note. His drunkenness began to struggle with his stubborn celibacy, as his loins began to percolate quite like a coffee pot. His gaze fixed on the nipples, pink as her tongue and roughly the size of silver dollars but then—

Hmm...

The nipples began to increase in size, a fascinating transformation, like a dried sponge dropped in water, until they'd grown to a circumference of the bottom of a soup can. Even the breasts themselves seemed to gain girth, blood vessels presumably dilating by the command of her brain. Could he even see the gentle blue ghost-lines of veins pumping more blood into the coveted tissue? My God, the Writer thought. And not only did the areolae grow in circumference; they also grew in depth, until they stuck out like pink macaroons.

And when the Writer looked between her legs—

Gracious!

The pea-sized clitoris has transmogrified into a drunkard's nose.

"There!" Nancy celebrated. "How ya like that?"

"You are woman not only of description-defying beauty, but one also of applaudable talent."

She unconsciously tweezed her papillas, which were now the size of those mini-marshmallows, strawberry-flavored, of course. "And I'se done it just by thankin.'"

"Proof of the mind's power, indeed," but the Writer had to keep wincing away from the tumid attributes.

She grinned coyly. "Wanna know whats I was thankin' 'bout?"

"Uh, well... "

"I was thankin' 'bout you fistin' my cunny'n jerkin' yer peter off on my stomach, I was. Then just rubbin' all that warm cum all over my skin... "

"My, oh my... "

Now her bare foot trailed up the inside of the Writer's leg, and suddenly the toes were wriggling like an old Magic-Fingers over his crotch. The Writer felt his penis urp up an instantaneous effusion of pre-ejaculatory fluid.

"It's a real slow night," she pointed out. "And I ain't got another trick fer another half hour... "

The Writer knew an embarrassing wet spot was surely forming against his pants. He stepped back, careful not to stagger. "Really, I must be going."

"Aw, yeah," she said, disheartened. "Guess ya gots to git back to work on yer book—"

"Yes, yes, but have a good n—" and before he could bid her a good night, a side-glance showed him something familiar on her dresser.

It was a Therm-O-Fresh Food Saving System.

Very slowly, the Writer's gaze lolled back to the young prostitute. "Hey, Nancy. Why do you have that Therm-O-Fresh machine?"

"Aw, we'se all have one," she told him, nonchalant. "They're fer—" but then, of course, the phone rang.

The Writer groaned.

"Oh, hi, Grandma," Nancy said cheerily into the phone. "Naw, kind'a slow tonight, only had three tricks so far, and two of 'em were blowjobs. But then there was this one fella comes in sometimes'n pays me fifty ta put it in my backside... Oh, yeah, but you'n ma was right—this is a great way ta make a livin'. I'se so happy I took yer advice."

The Writer retreated from the room and closed the door.

His entire groin throbbed. How many years had it been since he'd masturbated? I cannot, I MUST NOT allow myself to succumb to primitivistic lust! he ordered himself. In order to be the best writer I CAN be, I must deprive myself of this volition-stealing vice, just as Salvador Dali accelerated his creative visions by depriving himself of sleep... There was too much stimulus around here, all these pretty prostitutes. I don't need to see any more of them tonight.

Just as he would enter his room, the plush blonde from downstairs exited the adjacent room with a look of need on her face. Grapefruit breasts sat in fishnet bra-cups like dainty hammocks.

"Beatrice, isn't it?" the Writer recalled.

"Yeah, but see me'n Anita gotta share a room'n right now she's got a trick. You mind if I use yer bathroom?"

What could he say? It won't take long... "Of course, Beatrice. Come right in."

He watched the white rump bounce in see-through, black panties, and when she turned, the dark tuft of pubic hair was all-too-apparent, poofing out the sheer material of the front.

She giggled. "You kin watch if'n ya want," and then she strode briskly into the bathroom.

There was no logical reason to want to watch a woman go to the bathroom; nevertheless, the Writer—much to his displeasure—was hijacked by the primitive male curiosity that was probably a mental mechanism similar to that which causes people to peer at car wrecks or dead animals in the road. After a few moments of deliberation, and as delicately as possible, the Writer stepped into the bathroom.

What is— he began.

Beatrice was not sitting on the toilet as one might expect. Instead, she lay on the floor, and jutted her shapely legs in the air in order to slip off her panties. And she'd brought something with her, but the Writer had been too busy visually assaying her physique to take note of that fact.

She'd brought her Therm-O-Fresh Food Storage System.

Just the unit itself, not the bags or jars. And she'd already taken the liberty of plugging it into the outlet where the Writer kept his electric toothbrush.

"A gal kin save a lot'a money with one'a these," she said, on her back and with her legs widely spread. She'd already liberally lubricated her vulva as well as the machine's vacuum tube with saliva, and now, as she explained, she gingerly worked the tube into her vagina. "Most all'a us got one now. See, whenevers we'se a week late on our period, nine times out'a ten"—of course, she'd pronounced the word times as "tams"—"it means we'se knocked up, so's we use the machine ta git 'em out ‘fore they git too big. Ya git 'em early and I'se swear they ain't no bigger'n a popcorn kernel—ya know—before ya pop it. Mrs. Gilman showed us hows ta do it—only tricky part is ya gots ta git the tube right up inta this special place called a—dang—I'se cain't remember. She called it a servo? Or was it a servik—"

Outraged, the Writer offered, "Your cervical canal?"

"Yeah!" she beamed. "That's it! Ya gots ta git the tube up in that'n then push a little," and all the while her fingers manipulated the tube until—

"Uhh! I gots it!"

The Writer watched appalled, face sagging, as Beatrice turned on the Therm-O-Fresh vacuum machine. It hummed like a old-style aquarium pump, then seemed to admit a faint whine as if encountering resistence, and then—

"There!" she announced.

In an eye's wink, the tube filled with blood. Beatrice turned the machine off, extracted the tube, and got up.

The Writer's face continued to sag in uncomprehending horror. The girl detached the other end of the tube, then held it over the sink. When the tube failed to empty, she blew into its clean end and—

splat!

—something jettisoned into the sink, along with a modest spatter of blood.

"There it is. See?" She plucked something tiny up with her fingers and placed it in her palm. The Writer only ventured a second's glance, saw something like a blood clot with a disturbing configuration. A human spitball, he thought.

"Costs a lot less than goin' to a doctor," the blonde continued, "and it sure beats the hail out'a the hanger. And best part of all is it don't hurt none... "

The Writer gasped at a well of blood running down her thigh.

"Aw, that ain't nothin'," she assured. "The bleedin' stops right away. I'll just stick ta blowjobs'n ass-fuckin' tonight, and I'll'se be good as new tomorrow." She flapped her hand into the toilet, flushed it, rinsed the sink out, and then gathered up the machine. "Some'a the gals keep theirs—"

"Kuk-kuh—keep?" the Writer gasped.

"Yeah, they'se keep 'em in a jar'a alcohol. Jennie's got like almost twennie, and some of 'em are bigger than chickpeas. Oh, and, Marcy"—she giggled, shaking her head—"she even names hers. Ain't that just the silliest thing ya ever did hear?"

The Writer could only stare, utterly obfuscated.

"Well, thanks! Good luck workin' on yer book!" and then Beatrice bounced out of the room, pantiless and quite content.

The Writer collapsed on his bed, and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

(V)

Dicky pulled up in front of the ramshackle house left to Balls by the latter's departed white trash, walking shit-heap of a father: gray wood planks and a canted roof. Jeez, Dicky thought. The place sat back in the woods at the end of a quarter-mile drive, quite remote. Dicky smelled woodsmoke, however, and something cooking that smelled damn good. I'se could use a little somethin' in my breadbasket, he acknowledged. Today they'd be driving a hundred miles into Kentucky and back again. When he stepped onto the porch, it creaked to the point that he feared his sheer weight might snap the planks. He knocked and the knobless front door swung open.

"Hey, Dicky-Boy! Come on in! Beautiful mornin', ain't it?"

More floorboards creaked when Dicky's bulk entered. Balls sat at a kitchen table, reading over mail. "Shore is, Balls. Beautiful mornin' ta be runnin' moonshine."

"Yeah, man. Fer Clyde Nale today, right?"

"Yeah. He's a dang sight nicer'n Snot McKully."

Balls seemed to be addled by the mail. "Shee-it my drawers. Ain't nothin' good never comes in the fuckin' mail. Probation shit, bill-collector shit, and a bunch'a fuckin' bills my Daddy never paid. No wonder there ain't no ‘leck-tricity."

"Dang. Sucks."

Balls flapped another letter down in disgust. "And a county property tax bill! Four hunnert bucks! Fer this shit-house?"

"What'cher dander up fer, Balls? You'll have that and a shitload more once we make this run for Nale'n then clean out Crafter's place."

"You's right, Dicky," Balls calmed down. He cracked a laugh. "The fuck I care!" One last piece of mail remained, an ad flier. Balls squinted at it. It was a special offer for something called the Therm-O-Fresh Food Saving System. Balls just shook his head and threw it out, along with the rest of the mail.

Dicky sniffed the air, looking to and fro. The woodstove was off, and the thirty-year-old oven was dead. "I smell somethin' damn fine, Balls. What'choo cookin'?"

"Out back, Dicky. I'se steamin' a pot'a crawdads. Gotta creek out the woods that's loaded with 'em."

"I ain't had me crawdads in a coon's age!"

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