Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked

Voodoo Children-4

“Looking for these?” I asked, holding out a set of car keys.

“Where did you find those?”

“On the ground while you were cowering in your car.”

“They must have fallen out when I was jumping around casting spells last night.” I didn’t ask where they had fallen out of, since all he was wearing were boots and a jock, I just dropped the keys and started looking around for a place to wash my hands.

“So what was all this crap about, anyway?”

“What crap?”

“Kid, don’t screw with me. I have been awake in a graveyard all night. I have brains all over my favorite boots and what used to be a clean pair of jeans. I have a couple of random zombie teeth stuck in my knuckles, there is no bacon within half a mile and I am out of beer. If you don’t want me to stomp a mudhole in your ass and walk it dry, I suggest you commence to talking.”

“Well, there’s this girl, you see.”

“There always is.” I muttered.

“What?”

“How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty-four. But I’ll be twenty-five next month.” He puffed himself up to try and make himself look older, but that’s hard to do when you’re in a graveyard with your buttcheeks flapping in the breeze at seven in the morning.

“That fits. You see, kid. I’ve got a theory that whenever a guy, or a lesbian, but that part has less data to back it up, under the age of thirty does something spectacularly stupid, that there’s always a girl involved.”

“How often does your theory turn out to be true?”

“So far, one hundred per cent of the time. Now go on. There’s a girl. You like her, but she won’t give you the time of day.”

“Well, kinda. We like each other; at least she says she likes me. But she won’t go steady with me until I can come up with seven thousand dollars cash.”

“Do I even want to know what the money is for?”

“She wants a boob job. It’s tax-deductible, because of her work. She’s an exotic dancer at the Ride ‘Em Cowboy. And she swears she’ll pay me back, but I’ve got to come up with the money before the prices go up again.”

“So you’re in love with a stripper, who tells you that she likes you, and she’ll be your girlfriend if you’ll buy her a new set of boobies?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take that stupid mask off.” I reached out and snatched it off of him. He wasn’t a bad looking kid. Certainly didn’t look like a rocket scientist, but he was no freak show. Eyes in the right place, nose shaped roughly like what a nose ought to be, one ear on each side of his head. All in all, he was alright. A couple of leftover zits from high school maybe, and he might have had a little of that ferrety look that skinny people sometimes have, but he wasn’t hideous or anything.

“Why in the world do you think you have to buy this girl a pair of boobs for her to like you? Don’t you think a girl can like you for who you are?”

“Maybe some girls do, but not this girl. And she’s the prettiest girl in the whole world, mister. I know if you met her you’d see what I mean.”

“Well, what’s her name?”

“Brandy.” I remembered her. And her boobs.

“Yeah, I saw her at the club yesterday.”

“Then you know why I’m doing this.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re an i***t. Look, kid, lemme tell you something about women. Especially women that take their clothes off for money. They are all after one thing, and it ain’t the same thing all us guys are after. You understand me?”

“No.” This boy was obviously dumber than a box of hammers.

“Look. She don’t love you. She loves the money she thinks she can get from you. You give her that money the only thing you’re gonna get in return is bigger boobs when you buy your next lap dance from her.”

“That ain’t right! She loves me! We’re gonna get out of this town and run away together.”

“Yeah, and I’m gonna be the next spokesmodel for Jenny Craig?”

“Really? How much weight you gonna lose?”

I slapped him upside the head so hard he fell to one knee. “Don’t be stupid son. Or at least try not to be as stupid as you’ve been this week. You are tampering with things you can’t control. You are raising the dead, boy! Don’t you get what happens to people who mess with the forces of darkness?”

“Well, I might go to hell, but if I quit right after I get enough money and repent of my sins and don’t do it again, I oughta be okay.”

“What are you, Presbyterian? You don’t get off that easy once you go down the dark path. Kid, I wasn’t sent here to save you from yourself, I was sent here to kill you.” I might have stretched the truth a little, but he didn’t need to know that I was being paid to kill zombies and remove the creator. Uncle Joe didn’t care how I did it, as long as the dead people stayed dead in Columbia after I left.

“Oh.” He went even paler than he already was and sat down in the dirt. I watched as a couple of big fat tears started to well up in his eyes and roll down his cheeks. Then his skinny bare shoulders started to shake, then he threw his arms around my legs and he sobbed into my knees. “Please don’t kill me, mister! I’m too young to die! Please, let me live!”

I gave him a little kick and got up so I’d be out of range if he started crying again. “Cut that s**t out, you’re getting snot on my boots. And brains in your hair.” He sniffled, but straightened up a little. I sat back down.

“Alright kid, here’s what we’re going to do. How much cash do you have?”

“Fifty-five hundred.”

“I’m going to give you fifteen hundred, to get you where you need to be. Then I’m going to take whatever spell books and magical hoo-ha you’ve got that showed you how to raise the dead, and I’m going to destroy it. And I’m going to leave town. And if I ever see or hear of you involved in anything like this again, I swear I’ll shoot your nuts off. Any questions?”

“Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you going to do this? I sent zombies to kill you. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“Forget about it. I’ve done stupid things because of women in my time, so I’m sympathetic.”

“So you know what it’s like to be in love.”

“Not to the point where it rots my whole brain like it did you, but yeah, I know what it’s like.” Besides, the Church was paying me five hundred bucks for every zombie I killed, so I figured I was making some decent bank on this gig. Just had to get the video footage back to Skeeter and wait on good old Uncle Joe to send me my check.

I loaded up my gear and headed back to the truck. I loaded everything up, pulled my axe out of the tree I’d got it stuck in the night before, and handed the cash to the kid. He handed over his spellbooks and a funky little dried-up thing that looked like a chicken’s foot.

“What’s this?”

“Blessed chicken foot of the Baba Yaga. It grants the bearer the ability to cast any spell. That’s how I was able to do the stuff in the book.”

“Neat.” I hung it from the rearview mirror of the pickup next to the little green pine tree air freshener and my fuzzy dice, then pulled out of the cemetery and back onto the main road. If I timed my trip back through town right, I might just make it for the start of the afternoon shift at the Ride ‘Em Cowboy.

The End