Family Tradition

“I’ve said nothing of your past history of cocaine abuse, which surely would preclude you from respectable employment, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve said nothing of your past criminal activities, your multiple shop-lifting arrests, your check kiting, and then there’s always that old boyfriend of yours who went to prison for car-jacking, right? And that innocent family he murdered? I’ve kept that to myself, have I not?”

“Yes, you have, and I’m very grate—”

James’ held up a hushing hand. “You’ve, uh, you’ve seen to my satisfaction in the past…and now I have to ask you to do so again. You do receive my meaning, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rochelle groaned. She kicked off her shoes, slipped off her panties, and hiked up her skirt. She walked around James’ desk and immediately slapped him hard across the face.

“Get on the floor, bitch!” she shouted. “Now!”

James pushed his chair out from under the desk. He wore no pants, and his penis was charged up, a furious erection. Oh, God, he whimpered to himself.

“Get on the fucking floor, you fucking piece of shit!”

James flopped out of the chair and lay on the floor.

Rochelle stepped over him, her long white legs spiring upward. Where the legs joined, he could se the precious slit and the muff of hair.

Right over his face.

“You’re a bad boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes!” the respectable M. Gerald James pleaded.

“And bad boys get—what?”

“They get, they get…pissed on by mad mommies!”

“That’s right,” Rochelle said.

She placed her hands on her hips, and her legs and stomach tensed. Then she began to urinate directly into James’ face.

The abundant cascade roved across his forehead, his eyes, and then fell directly into his mouth.

James masturbated frenetically as he cried, “Piss on me, Mommy! Piss on me!”

««—»»

Bess, at the very least, had been half-right. She believed it was her destiny to come out here and die. But half-right also meant half wrong, didn’t it?

She’d die out here, all right, but not by her own hand. To girls like Bess, there was solace in suicide. No solace tonight, however. Not for Bess.

As her consciousness returned, she remembered a nightmare. In the nightmare she was drowning in crystal-clear water. Her huge limbs paddled frantically but she simply couldn’t keep her head above the water. Just as her lungs would dispel her final breath, though, someone was saving her. Someone had grabbed her by the hair and was pulling her up. She could breathe again! Was it Mavis who’d saved her? No, it couldn’t be; Mavis couldn’t swim either.

An angel, then. Yes! In the nightmare, it must’ve been an angel who’d saved her from drowning. Once ashore, however, she looked into the angel’s face and thought, Aw, fuck!

It was decidedly not an angel. Instead it was a huge, bearded hillbilly with rotten teeth.

Bess let her memory click back a few more notches.

Aw…fuck…

No, it was not and angel, and it was not a nightmare.

It was all real.

As real as the boat hook from which she hung naked by lashed hands. As real as this long dark barnlike building she now occupied. And as real as—

“Aw, fuck!” she shouted.

Unpleasant scents in the air seemed to meld with other scents that were absolutely savory. Bess heard a crackling: a fire somewhere. High tiny windows afforded the barn’s only light. Among the barn’s bizarre contents (some large metal drums, a large hole in the ground from which fire issued, bushel baskets full of fruit and vegetables, a fireplace bellows, a plastic bucket full of what appeared to be fish filets) was something more bizarre than anything Bess had seen in her life.

A canoe with a man’s head sticking out of it.

The canoe seemed to be covered over with something. Sheets of metal?

“Hey!” Bess shouted to the head. “You there, you…head. What’s going on here?”

The head moved, looked at with an insane glint, and began to babble. But then:

“Bub-buh-Bess?” a voice spoke, and it did not come from the head sticking out of the canoe.

“Mavis!” Bess shouted. “Is that you!”

“Yes!”

“I can’t see you!”

“I’m over here—he tied my hands together and I’m hanging from a hook!”

“Me too,” Bess said. “The redneck who dragged us out of the water.”

A silence ticked by, then, sniffling, she said, “Bess, you’re my best friend! I’m sorry I called you Jabba the Hut!”

“I’m sorry I called you an anorexic nerd,” Bess confessed. “And I’m sorry I said Duchovny sucks. He actually wasn’t bad in Playing God.”

“It’s all my fault! I feel so bad! We would’ve killed ourselves just like we planned if I hadn’t chickened out.”

“No, it’s my fault. If I hadn’t started fighting, we never would’ve fallen out of the damn raft.”

“What are we going to do!” Mavis shrieked. “Who was that man? And what is this place?”

Poor Mavis, Bess thought. The girl was so naive; she couldn’t think past David Duchovny and a fantasy world of alien invasions and government conspiracies. The real world, Bess knew, was full of perverts, rapists, and murderers, and she had a terrible feeling that all of the above applied to the bearded man who’d dragged them from the lake.

“What is this? A barn or something?”

“I think so,” Bess replied.

“And what are all those baskets and things? Apples and vegetables, it looks like. And what’s that fire for in the hole? What are those big metal drums?”

“I don’t know, Mavis. Get a hold of yourself. We have to think of a way to get out of here before that bearded guy with the rotten teeth comes back.”

As the afternoon had drawn on, the light from the high windows moved slowly toward the back of the barn or whatever this place was. Bess squinted, and in the most dolorous increments she noticed something familiar against the rear wall.

An old gas stove.

It was then that the most abhorrent realization occurred to her. This place was more than a barn and more than a psychopath’s den.

It’s a kitchen, she realized, and that’s when the door swung open.

««—»»

“—still cain’t believe it!” Esau enthused as he followed his big brother into the cookery. “Ashton Morrone, the