King Scratch Read online

  “My apologies, Jim. But let’s be honest. It’s mighty unkind of you to not offer some of that cunt-cake. Hell, she’s half out of her mind. She wouldn’t know the difference whether it’s my dick or yours, you know? Just sayin’, I’m givin’ you a ride and all.”

  I’m the type of guy that tries to avoid trouble when I can. I try to prepare for trouble, sure, but I make my best efforts to avoid it. Rarely do I have that macho attitude that gets a lot of men into trouble. Instead, I usually pick the choices that will cause me the least complications in the long run.

  “Seriously, Fred, that’s not funny,” I said.

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” he said. “I’m not a fucking comedian, Jim.” That’s when he took one of his quivering hands off the wheel and grabbed my neck. I’ve never felt a grip like that before. It was a serious vise grip and there was no way I could pry it loose.

  So I grabbed the knife out of my boot and stabbed Fred in the chest.

  Call me paranoid or whatever but I like to be prepared so I always carry a blade with me.

  His blood splattered all over the steering wheel. He let go of my neck and made gurgling sounds. I pulled the knife out of his chest and into his glassy right eye.

  The car swerved but I caught the wheel in time, managing to step on the brake and pull it to the side of the road. I reached over, opened the driver’s side door and pushed Fred out. Once I had stabbed his eye socket, he wasn’t much in the mood for struggling. He just whimpered, burped and surrendered himself to Fate.

  I got out and pulled Fred to the back of the car. I opened the trunk and realized that there might not be enough room for my new cargo. The trunk was full of brown leather satchels. I got curious, opened one up and almost vomited from what I saw: a battered corpse of an infant complete with bite marks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Black Boned Keith

  Keith put on some clothes. He kept an ear out for the potential intruder in the hallway. Contemplating using the fire-escape to avoid any confrontation, Keith instead settled on charging out the door like rhino. It wasn’t his usual style, but something about that person in the hallway gave him an ache in his bowels.

  He was wearing his usual drab outfit: a beige button-down shirt and dirty black jeans. Keith wasn’t interested in fashion because he’d rather be naked. Now he was holding his hand over the doorknob, getting ready to rush out into the hallway and down the stairs.

  Out the door Keith ran, flopping against the wall of the hallway, hurting his right shoulder in the process. He heard his door slam closed behind him. A shuffling sound soon followed as he fumbled down the stairs. The shuffling turned into a pair of high-pitched whispers. They followed him down as he almost tripped down the darkened stairwell. Keith’s heart was beating fast and he was starting to sweat. The whispers that followed were scaring the shit out of him.

  He finally landed on the sidewalk outside, moonlight hitting his face like a frying pan. The whispers didn’t follow him outside. Keith heard a shattering noise hit the door and then go back up the stairs. Nervously he walked past the Mexican restaurant wanting to step inside and check out the sexy Spanish woman but decided he wasn’t up to it. He needed to get a cab and intercept Jim and that whore Peggy.

  The street was bustling tonight. The drunks, hookers, and junkies were in full force. Keith eyed the prostitutes. Most of them dressed in sweat pants and dirty shirts with football team logos on them. All sorts of stains were evident: motor oil, semen, salsa, baby food, and an assortment of unknown substances. They weren’t just hookers. They were desperate women at the end of their rope who sell their orifices daily for dope money. But Keith was never interested in them. He liked his women to have all of their teeth left in their head.

  Keith passed Ram’s Head Bar & Tavern and had to talk himself out of going in for whiskey. He had given up moonshine months ago and now only drank legit liquor even though shine was quicker and cheaper. Keith knew he had to quit after he found himself standing face to face with Abraham Lincoln himself, his skull popped open like a soda-pop can. Lincoln had stared at Keith who watched in horror and awe as the silent Lincoln turned into a very talkative John Wilkes Booth. Keith couldn’t understand most of what the man said except for the last part. Booth grabbed Keith by the ears and shouted: “I have too great a soul to die like a criminal!”

  The next morning, Keith poured three gallons worth of shine down the drain.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jim

  The way I saw it I could do either one of two things. First, I could ignore the totally repellent shit in Fred’s trunk and drive on. Only problem is that I knew that in good conscience I couldn’t do that. It seemed to me Fred was a degenerate child-killer and that I couldn’t ignore. My other choice was to go to the police station and report my findings. That, too, did not strike me as something I could do. After all, I did just kill the son of a bitch. Granted I did the world a favor by wasting Fred, I doubted the cops would see it that way.

  I decided against ignoring the contents of the trunk. I knew that if I left the car on the side of the road, I wouldn’t be able to sleep unless I forced myself to discover the deep, dark secrets of Fred’s car. Instead, I settled on first taking Peggy to the hospital and then going to Red Henry’s house. After that, I’d deal with the whole dead-infants-in-trunk situation.

  Every satchel in Fred’s trunk had a battered and bitten infant inside. I moved some of the bags to the backseat, not telling Peggy what was inside. I heaved Fred into the trunk, his one good eye staring at me, glassy and wide like a speckled marble.

  Fred’s other eye was missing, its socket a deep red that reminded me of seedless strawberry jam. It was actually less creepy than the other eye which kept staring up at me like a marble. Before closing the trunk, I found myself entranced by the empty socket. I bent down and inspected the messy abyss. Images of my days as a short-order cook shuffled into my head. There was a guy who always came in on Saturday mornings, a guy named Keith. He’d always order the same thing: corn pancakes with a side dish of strawberry compote. I remember one particular morning. I was preparing the order and started to stare at the bowl of red mess. Cathy, one of the waitresses, shook me out of my trance.

  “Hon, whatcha up to? That boy is waitin’ for his pancakes,” she had said, lipstick on her teeth as was her style.

  “What? Oh yeah, it’s ready, sorry,” I had muttered, not sure why I was having images of an empty red eye socket when I looked into the bowl. The corn pancakes looked fine. In fact they actually looked so good that I was almost ready to eat them myself and just make Keith wait a few more minutes for another batch.

  Cathy took the food out to Keith and I could see by his face that he was pissed as hell. He was the type of guy who’d force himself not enjoy a delicious meal just so he could complain about it afterward. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of shit that morning but I knew Keith was a regular so I had to deal with him.

  The only reason why I even knew that guy’s name was because he seemed to make every effort to tell the waitresses that he, Keith, thought the pancakes were too burnt or the eggs too rubbery. At first my reaction was “Who the fuck is Keith?” but then I realized that he was just another lonely flake who needed a routine. So be it.

  Saturday after Saturday, Keith and I developed a sort of long-distance relationship with Cathy or another waitress bringing messages back and forth. He’d complain about the food and I’d send back a semi-sarcastic apology along with a three-day old slice of pie. Most of the time he wouldn’t respond but he always ate the pie, though I knew he knew very well that it was stale.

  My relationship with Keith didn’t end there but I wasn’t thinking too much about it while I was looking at Fred’s gooey socket. I actually started to think about that waitress Cathy and the way her ass stuck out against her skirt. She was an older woman, with puffy blond hair and a lot of wrinkles. Her breasts jutted out like droopy hypnotic doorknockers. Many a mornings passed when I droppe
d a spatula as she walked by. I tried flirting with her once but I had a feeling she thought of me more of son than a screw-interest.

  As I stared down in the trunk I started to smell Fred’s urine and shit and I had a vivid memory of the time I walked in on Cathy going to the bathroom. Her white panties were around her knees and she was in mid-wipe. I stopped short and her eyes widened in embarrassment. I was a little bit embarrassed but I was more entranced by the sight of her shapely legs and her ass bulging over the toilet seat. Our eyes met and for a second I swear that I had an opening where I could’ve seduced her. But then that opening was gone and I apologized and walked out, the scent of her perfume and shit lingering in my nostrils.

  I closed the trunk and went into the driver’s seat. Peggy was out like a drooling light. The car sped off and I drove in the direction of the hospital. Wanting to break the silence and get my mind off of all the fucked-up shit that had happened so far, I turned the radio on and listened as some drunken man sung the blues, going on about some broke down engine wheel.

  The car started to shake and smoke. Then it stopped in the middle of the road like an exhausted elephant.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  Black Boned Keith

  Keith jogged down Main Street until he got to Brewer’s Taxi Cabs. He almost tripped when he got there, his green scuffed boots scraping against the pavement. He smelt cigarette smoke and dog shit at the moment he stood eye to eye with a cabbie who had just gotten out of his car.

  “Hey, I need a ride,” Keith said, both anxious and apprehensive. The cabbie was all muscles and beard hair.

  “Sorry, I’m not on duty,” the cabbie replied. He put his hand to his chin and fiddled.

  “Anyone else around? I need a ride.”

  “Yeah, someone should be here soon. Where you headed?” the cabbie said, plucking out a small beard hair that resembled a spider leg.

  “Fisherville,” Keith said. He was sweating now. His left eye started to twitch. That was always a bad sign. His thoughts now went back to the intruder in the hallway. Even after catching up with Jim and Peggy, he was going to have to deal with whoever –or whatever- is up there when he got back.

  “You kidding me? You can fucking walk there from here.” The cabbie shook his head. “Ahh, fuck it, I’ll drive you.” The cabbie laughed and spat out a yellow glob of after-dinner phlegm.

  Keith nodded and hopped into the backseat. The dog shit smell was stronger now and with it was the stench of pond scum. The cabbie, Keith noticed on the license attached to the dashboard, was named Matthew O’Kelly.

  They drove off in silence, Keith listening to the gurgling digestion of Matthew’s stomach as well as the metallic settling of the car. About a minute into the ride, he looked up and noticed Matthew looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “I was just looking at your tattoo. What is that? Snakes?” he asked. Keith looked down at his chest and realized that his shirt was not buttoned all the way.

  “No.” Keith reluctantly pulled down his shirt a little more. “ It’s a squid.”

  “What the fuck is it doing? It looks like it’s eating a brain.” Matthew’s eyes bugged out of his head and the car swerved to the right in order to avoid another car.

  Keith said, “Yeah.”

  “Weird. What you into, anyway? You a squid-fucker or something?” Matthew seemed on edge. Keith got the feeling that Matthew had some strong opinions on squid.

  “It’s hard to explain…” Keith tried abandoning the subject. He turned his head to look out the window. Matthew didn’t seem that keen on the idea of dropping the topic.

  “You think I’m too goddamn stupid to understand some fucking tattoo?” His voice echoed in the cab, making Keith’s ears pop.

  “Calm down.” Keith raised his voice and immediately realized that it was probably a mistake to do so.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. I had too long of a day to put up with some bum’s fucking bullshit.” Matthew’s face was red now and he turned his head, facing Keith eye to eye.

  Meanwhile the car was moving and Keith could see a tiny bit past Matthew’s head as the headlights guided them through the darkness. As the cabbie spit a few more words of anger into his face, Keith noticed a dark shape getting bigger.

  “Watch out!” he said, pushing Matthew’s face forward, the beard hairs causing friction against his hand. Keith rubbed it against the seat of the cab but ended up getting his hand wet.

  Like a cannonball, the cab hit the back of the car that was stopped in the middle of the road. Matthew put his arms up to protect his face from flying glass but ironically the windshield did not shatter. Instead, the collision forced Matthew’s seat backward until it was crushing Keith’s left leg.

  The car that they had hit was an accordion of metal and glass. As Keith shouted in agony, he stared out at the wreckage in front of the cab, wondering if anyone in there was sharing in the pain perhaps as some sort of universal and communal nerve-ending experience.

  Matthew was leaning back on the seat, looking upside-down and sideways at Keith. He was pale and breathing heavily.

  “Goddamnit, I can’t move,” he said while his seat was crushing Keith’s leg.

  “Get up…” Keith said, “move….”

  “Don’t tell me…” Matthew said right before he vomited. It hit Keith on the right leg. Chunks of chicken and corn collected on the floor mat.

  Keith struggled against Matthew’s weight, attempting to pull his leg out from under the seat with minimal damage. He was having limited success since Matthew was turning back and forth, causing the seat to dig deeper into the area above Keith’s knee. The actual kneecap was being pushed down itself so much so that there was an audible pop every time Matthew moved back.

  Grimacing, Keith opened the door and lunged out. His right hand hit the asphalt hard and his elbow gave out. He hung from the car, twisted at the waist, his left leg still not loose. Keith’s eyes bulged in pain and his eyelids dropped slowly. Matthew coughed up another batch of chunky vomit and passed out.

  Keith was in a haze of vague pain and increasing numbness. His eyelids fluttered open. Crevices of black tar lay before Keith: jagged revelations of burnt rubber and road kill. The tiny asphalt hills turned into towering mountains inhabited by a tribe of primitives. They spent most of their day meditating on the highlands until ethereal shapes and sensations became all they experienced.

  Though the primitives would have no conception of the significance of this fact, the forms they saw often took the shape of rusting cars. The rust would flake off and combine with the black snowflakes that flew off the top of the tar-mountains. Keith himself did not see this swirling combination but instead sensed it through the eyes of a half-burnt primitive who gripped the rib bone of a goat while in a trance.

  Keith kept his mind’s eye on the shivering hands of the primitive man who was now holding up the bone in front of his face. Flakes of rust and snow fell down around him, forming a shimmering car. The two ends of the rib bone twisted to form a circle and the primitive held it like a steering wheel. Fingers and bone trembled while unblinking eyes stared out past the snow-rust windshield. The mountainous land of black tar became a busy highway of transcendental mind projections. Primitive people of all ages, shapes and sizes were floating around on faded forms of pseudo-automobiles that glimmered and hummed as they glided through the crevices.

  As the space before Keith became crowded, his mind started to superimpose a memory over the proceedings. Entranced mountain people spiritually convulsed alongside a group of masturbating men. The oldest of the group stood in the middle, directing the others. One of the primitive trance vehicles collided with the man in the middle: black snow and rust enveloping hormone-riddled skin. The man put his hands to his face in an effort to brush the phantom glass away. He cried out for his mother as the other men looked on in confused horror. A couple of the men ejaculated despite their terror, the reproductive system ignoring the fear that was now circulating in their brains
.