Uschi! (17 page)

“Now comes the best part,” Uschi told Denny.

Bending down, her hand went to Linda Blair in
Roller Boogie’s
face. She put a finger in each of her eyes, popping them, and managed a bowler’s grip on her head. Uschi tore the head off the body as simple as ripping aside the pretty wrapping paper on a Christmas gift.

The Linda Blair in
Roller Boogie
remains immediately turned to nasty goo. Melting flesh and bone popped and sparked like green wood in a campfire. The severed head in Uschi’s hand poured between her fingers like running water and joined the boiling toxic stew on the bathroom floor. Her leotard, headband and roller skates dissolved away along with the rest of her. Only a foul stink so potent it would’ve uncurled Denny’s pubes if he still were sporting any and a slippery stain on the floor tiles remained.

Denny found his voice. “Goodness. I don’t think ol’ Peter Cushing ever did it that way.”

Through the distinct oily fog only the steam from an evaporating nosferatu could produce, Uschi stared at her boyfriend and said, “You can do the one in the suit.”

“Me? I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. Don’t fret so. Keep it Mark Hamill in
Corvette Summer
. I’ll talk you through it.”

“That don’t sound like we’re winning,” Li’l Bocephus told the sink’s drainpipe. He next spent a spell fighting with the sink, trying one more time to work himslef free. He promptly failed again—could neither tear his eye socket loose of the faucet or the sink off the wall. “Shit. I’m going from bad, to worse, to raped by a camel despondent.”

Uschi pulled an ear off the Republican and sampled him. She chewed the cartilage as if it were a stick of gum. Like Linda Blair in
Roller Boogie
, he too sadly didn’t have that secret spicy ingredient that made Li’l Bocephus such a culinary delight. His removal from the world wouldn’t chap her ass any.

“Okay, best thing, destroy this motherfucker for good.”

The Republican was still very much animate. His sliced down the middle head and stomped belly injuries couldn’t allow him much mobility, but he continued some movements. From the look in the eye that occupied space on each split half of head, it seemed likely he had a fair understanding of what was going on in his surroundings.

Denny started to lean down toward him, trembling hands out and appearing like they were ready for any kind of action, then he stopped, straightened himself, and bashfully admitted to Uschi, “I have no idea what I’m exactly supposed to do here. I’m painfully confused and disturbed right now. Do you want me to try and yank his head parts off his neck? Or are you expecting from me a stake through the heart operation? If it’s the heart, then I’m lacking specific tools. I’m gonna need something made from wood. The cardboard tubes in the toilet paper rolls are wood, I think. Maybe we could join a bunch of them together and fashion a kind of wooden stake outta them. Can we do that? Would something like that even work? Or maybe I could use my pocketknife and cut the head parts off? I’m just throwing ideas out there. Does any of this sound like a plan to you?”

Uschi placed a bloody finger with shit under the nail on his lips and this gently silenced him. “Best thing, you’re rambling. Hush.” She then opened her arms and embraced him in a hug. They held on to one another for a time. Just hugging. Just enjoying the comfort of each other. Denny’s condition rapidly improved. He calmed and resumed thinking rationally. Love can do that to a person; sometimes work as a cure for what afflicts you better than anything else.

“Thanks, sugar cube, I needed that.”

A pair of guys stepped inside the men’s room, sweaty and laughing and already working at unzipping their pants. They were alike in buzz haircuts and porcelain pale skin, fingernails painted black, and waif thin figures inside spike studded leather motorcycle jackets and skinny jeans drainpipe narrow in the legs and dog collars around their necks.

Both froze at the sight of the dead bodies scattered all along the floor and the redneck dude with his head in the sink. Neither could decide on what was the best way to react to the green hoochie mama whose lung pumpkins were bigger than her head and a face only a Stephen King fan could truly appreciate.

Uschi was perfectly polite, ladylike, but as well undeniably firm when she told them, “I hate to put you out any, boys, put you need to put your dicks back in your britches and turn around. Sorry to report the men’s room is closed for the foreseeable future. Y’all need to head on over to the ladies. You might enjoy pissing sitting down for a change. Have a good night, drive safely on the way home, and now get your asses in gear.”

They decided going on over to the ladies room for a piss could well turn out to be the swiftest goddamn move they ever did. They were quick to depart.

The Republican was still in need of being taken care of. Uschi gladly guided Denny through what she believed was the best way for him to slay the monster. She suggested a good ol’ fashioned head stomping.

“Trust me. You’re gonna be surprised at how easily it comes off.” She slipped her hands around the thigh of one of his legs, casually lifted his foot and aimed it directly above the Republican’s throat. “Just bring your foot down as hard as you can manage it. It’ll probably take more than one stomp, but that’s okay. Do as many as necessary. Go on. Stomp away.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

Down came Denny’s Converse All Stars encased foot. It took a few times and caused a heck of a mess on his shoes and jeans, but it finally worked. He stomped clean through the neck—a decapitation was achieved. The two head halves of the Republican were sent in separate directions away from the rest of his right-wing body.

Everything that was the Republican instantly became like hot muck on a stick, dripping away and soon vanishing.

A proud Uschi laughed and kissed Denny. “That’s how we do it.”

He was sweating and out of breath from the procedure. “Now there is some business I never dreamed I would be involved with. I just went and killed me a vampire. Somebody call Buffy and tell her to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Uschi approached the sink. Her mouth commenced to watering and stomach growling. “Oooo,” she excitedly purred, “this is going to be so, so, so good.”

“Don’t hurt me no more,” Li’l Bocephus cried out. He elevated a leg and blindly mule kicked in hopes of warding off the zombie woman. “Don’t you hurt me no more. Titty bitch be kind.”

Trigger and Dale Evans need not worry. Roy Rogers never did fuck Li’l Bocephus’s Momma. He just had that statement inked into his arm because he figured it made a nice conversation starter and enjoyed the different reactions it stirred in people. He believed John Wayne would prove too hard for folks to swallow and Lash Larue too obscure the cowboy star. The king of the singing cowboys fit just right.

Momma, three years dead when he was tattooed, would never have approved of such a thing. Lot of things Li’l Bocephus was up to she would not have approved of. She’d been a hard working and loving and clean thinking woman during her stay on Earth. She hadn’t deserved such a vulgar, lazy son such as the one she was afflicted with.

Uschi caught the kicking leg by the ankle and removed and discarded the Tony Lama snakeskin cowboy boot. The tube sock Li’l Bocephus wore on the foot was once white but now filthy and turned a fresh cow patty russet. A hungrier than fuck Uschi bit like she was going to town on a turkey leg through the sock and tore a sizeable chunk of meat from the arch area of his foot.

Aw yeah, there was the good shit. He was as delicious as she remembered him. Dirty sock didn’t do a thing to hurt the taste. Uschi, chewing away and the blood running down her chin, rolled her eyes and groaned in pleasure at the party going on inside her mouth.

“Kemo sabe,” Li’l Bocephus was saying. “Kemo sabe. Okay? Kemo sabe. Y’all with me on this? That is the word I want to share with y’all. That’s Indian talk for friend for life … or something pretty fucking sweet close to that. Yes it is. I know that for a fact. I know my Lone Ranger real well. I want to be friends. Let’s be cool now. Let’s be best buds. And friends don’t eat on each other. No they really do not. Please be my kemo sabe. I don’t want to fight no more. Y’all win. I can’t take this any more. I just ain’t made to be able to tolerate somebody eating on me. Let’s talk a deal. Please, please, let’s talk a deal. Y’all uncork me outta this sink and set my ass loose and I promise with everything I got in me you won’t ever see or hear a single, solitary goddamn thing ever again from me. I do swear it. I’m gone. Outta here. Never to trouble you fine folks again. Y’all give that a proper thinking over. Doesn’t it sound fair and a winner? I want to go home so bad. Please let me go. Want y’all be my kemo sabe? And please leave me something of myself below the ankle.”

It was as if his words were never there, totally ignored. Uschi was undaunted in her feasting. She did not leave Li’l Bocephus anything below the ankle but stripped bones that were cracked open and the marrow sucked from them.

About somewhere around mid-calf, with his blue jeans leg rolled up above the knee—Uschi was okay with a side dish of dirty sock, but not any of that heavy denim—she came up for air and said to her best thing, “’bout time we were headed home.”

Denny had questions on what they were going to do with Li’l Bocephus.

“He’s going home with us.” She punctuated the announcement by giving the white trash suckhead a sassy smack on his skinny ass. “There’s still plenty to enjoy on this Happy Meal.”

That was some truly shitty news for Li’l Bocephus to hear. Didn’t seem anybody wanted to be his kemo sabe.

Chapter Twelve

A
nother storm was coming together over Vestron. Lightning flashed and skipped in the clouded skies above the Big Kahuna Trailer Park Oasis. The weatherman on the El Camino’s radio had talked of two to possibly four inches of rainfall between now and the next few hours. The Dallas and Fort Worth and surrounding areas were under a flash flood alert until morning.

“I vote we put him and his ass in the bathtub,” said Denny. He stood in the living room of his and Uschi’s trailer home and was eating cold Wolf Brand chili direct from the can. “I don’t care for him to become leaky in here and possibly might splatter and stain any of my stuff. I don’t think I would ever settle down if something vile and icky were to get onto one of my Mego
Planet of the Apes
figures and permanently disfigure it.”

“Works for me,” said Uschi and casually shrugged her shoulders. She carried Li’l Bocephus slung over a shoulder in the same casual fashion a cowboy with no horse would haul around his saddle.

Back at Club Mutt’s men’s room, a fistful of red hair and a pair of hardy tugs on him was all Uschi had to do to liberate Li’l Bocephus from the sink. He left behind hooked on the spigot’s mouth a dollop of dripping raw eyeball that dangled over the sink bowl like a recently picked runny booger on the end of a kid’s finger. Uschi never noticed it; or else for sure she would’ve had it for a nosh.

That eaten on skeleton foot of his wasn’t much use for standing. He required leaning on Uschi to help stay erect.

“Now, how are we going to handle you exactly?” Uschi asked herself more than anyone else. Then, as inspiration suddenly struck, her dead face split open with a smile proud with herself over how smart her thinking could be. “I know, let us give this a try.”

And she took the undead good ol’ boy’s head and commenced pounding it against the nearest available cinderblock wall.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!

And these were some good-sized savage blows, but still playing it conservative enough to keep the skull in one piece. She wasn’t looking to set the brains free. This would have killed an average alive human being. Li’l Bocephus, however, was only pestered by it.

He went to yelling, “Waitaminutewaitaminute! Two rats fucking hard and funky in my sock drawer, what the goddamn hell are you trying to do to me?”

Uschi paused in her work to reply, “I’m trying like the dickens to knock you unconscious. But so far you’re not being particularly cooperative about the endeavor.”

And then she was right back at it.

Bam, bam, bam, bam!

“Well, stop it. C’mon, I mean it. Stop it. You’re behaving retardedly. It ain’t gonna work. I don’t think I’m wired that way.”

Uschi, sighing in frustration, did cease the head bashing. “You could be right.” She gave Li’l Bocephus a disgusted with him stare. “Backwoods bloodsucker, you sure can be the biggest of disappointments at times.”

Holding him strong at arm length and his head shoved down between his knees to curb any drive to tangle with her, Uschi did some more heavy thinking. “Can we trust you?” she asked him.

For some stupid as fucking a tree stump and later bragging about it to all the relatives and friends reason Li’l Bocephus went with his first instinct and answered honestly. “No. Pert near not especially.”

“I see. Well, I thought there for a second we could put you on the honor system and you could ride in the El Camino with us unmolested.”

“You call this unmolested?” asked Li’l Bocephus, one-eyed and a foot gnawed down to the bone.

“I need you situated in the proper form.”

She broke his arm at the elbow. The sound of the fracture commandingly zipped through the bathroom’s air. There was no other noise like that in the world, the breaking of large bones. It caught the attention as undoubtedly as would God clearing his throat.

Denny watched on in wonder. That shit right there was far and away more visceral and cooler than anything you can get treated to in a direct-to-video Steven Seagal movie.

She moved to the other arm. It snapped with roughly the same degree of protest, only on this one a bone splinter tore through the forearm. It was blood spurty and ivory white and over three inches in length, jagged at the end like the whittled point of a bamboo stake lying in wait at the bottom of a tiger pit. This totally ruined his classy ROY ROGERS FUCKED MY MOMMA tattoo.

“Oh shit,” Li’l Bocephus despairingly spoke out loud. Whether he was distraught about his arms being broken or the destruction of his tattoo was difficult to decide.