Family Tradition

down hard on one of her nearly breastless nipples, she flinched.

“Good gal. Yer still alive. Cain’t have ya dyin’ just yet.” He patted her stapled vagina. “Gonna let that fish in there cook just right.” Menstrual blood dripped slowly from the gaps in the staples, crusted the pubic hair. “Oh, and thanks fer the cobbler fillin’. Grandpa Ab loved it. He done et six cobblers in one sittin’.”

Just for the hell of it, then, he bit her again, on the side of the ribs this time. She flinched once more and peeped out a scratch of a scream.

“Spunky little dickens! I like that in a gal! Hail, if’n it weren’t fer yer pussy bein’ stapled shut, I’se might give ya the high, hard one!”

He turned around, then leaned over the giant metal drum sitting over the fire pit. The coals glowed bright- orange, tinting Esau’s grinning face. He sniffed at the trace steam leaking from the drum’s rim. “Ummmm- MM that smells good! We’ll let Fattie cook in their till tomorrah, let all that blubber melt down into a nice rich stock. Then the meat just falls off the bone!”

Next, Esau walked over to the canoe, and touched the head sticking out of it. The head just lolled there. “Dang, ya finally died, fella. Looks like it’s pate on toast fer Grandpa’s breakfast. Cain’t wait ta see that liver on ya, bet it’s huge.”

Esau set the oil lamp on a table, then grabbed a hammer and with its claw began to pull out the roofing nails which he’d used to tack the tin sheets over the canoe. “Dang!” he remarked when he’d pried off all the tin. The canoe was full up with corn-flecked diarrhea. The stench rose like the miasma over an open sewer but this did not afflict Esau in the least; to him, the stench was just another culinary aroma. The body simply lay there, submerged in shit save for the oval of its face. Esau used his knife to cut the nylon twine lashing the boy’s wrists to the front seat prop. Then he pulled the boy out on to the ground.

“Hot damn!” Esau excitedly exclaimed. The boy’s belly looked pregnant. This internal protuberance would be the liver, swollen to four or five times its normal size from weeks of force-feeding. A delicacy. Most would be used for pate, while the ends he would grill over soaked cherrywood. The trimmings would make a delectable wurst.

The boy’s body dripped liquefied shit as Esau hoisted him up and placed him on the cutting table; Esau’s arms came away slick brown. He next cut the ankle lashes. All manner of bugs and worms churned over the boy’s excrement-shellacked skin, but that was no matter. The skin would all be trimmed off. The thighs, of course, would serve as roasts; the belly, bacon; the rest rough-chopped for bouillabaisse. But first…

“Let’s get that big, sweet liver out’cha,” Esau said to himself. He went to the counter, for a paring knife. Cutting out the liver required some finesse. “Grandpa Ab’s gonna shit!”

But when Esau turned back toward the table, the boy was sitting upright.

“Well don’t that beat all? The dead kid ain’t dead!”

The boy’s wild face looked at Esau and said: “Nab-bluh-glab-noob-plap!”

Esau burst laughter.

“Flup-loopsie-groo-moobuh-lops!”

“I hear ya, buddy,” Esau guffawed at the boy’s insane babble. “Life’s a bitch, huh? Well, take my word fer it, it’s ’bout ta git worse.” After four weeks in the canoe, certainly the boy would not be a threat. Weak, insane. Esau would simply cut his throat and bleed him out, then get to work but before he could—

In a feeble gesture, the boy swung his arm as if to strike a blow. “Floop!” he shrieked. Esau honked laughter but only for a moment. Even though the blow had missed, the motion sent a splat of ammonia-rich diarrhea sailing through the air, and this splat landed directly across Esau’s eyes.

“Aw, good GAWD!” At once, Esau dropped the knife, fell to his knees. His eyes burned like tear gas. He tried rubbing them, tried blinking the shit out of them, but that just made it worse. He was helpless, blind.

Meanwhile, Darren—the nineteen-year-old boy who’d been sitting in his own shit for the last month— continued to babble insanely and got up from the table. His skinny legs wobbled but he was still able to walk. He began to walk toward the door.

“Help me PLEASE!” a shriek ripped through the shack. It was Mavis, surfaced from her shock and flopping intently on the hook. “Help me please I’m BEGGING you!”

Darren looked at her. “Gar-hoob-lee?”

“Please don’t leave me here!”

Darren, even in his quite understandable clinical psychosis, must have summoned tiny remaining speck of coherence. His shit-covered feet carried him over to the stall, and then he wrapped his arms around the girl’s hips and with considerable difficulty was able to raise her up the necessary several inches for her to lift the lash between her wrists off the hook.

“Bloom-oop-duh-lie!” Darren celebrated.

“Thank you thank you!” Mavis shrieked once her feet touched the ground. She ran out the door.

Darren shrugged. “Zoo-lee-doop,” he said and then staggered out himself.

««—»»

“Look at all this stuff,” Carol remarked in amazement. Sheree stood nervously behind her in Esau’s filthy shack while her friend rummaged through an old termite-ridden dresser.

Carol held up a fat titleless book; it cover seemed to be some kind of lizard skin.

“Big deal,” Sheree said. “An old book.”

“Yeah? It’s written in Arabic. Why would that redneck moron have a book that’s written in Arabic?”

Sheree moaned wearily. “I don’t know—”

Carol clunked the book down, then picked up some other things from the drawer. “Look at this. It’s money but—”

Sheree’s eyes flicked to the drawer, which was lined with old coins and some bills.

“This money’s, like, real old.” Carol held up a worn silver dollar with the face of William Jennings Byran. The date read 1873. Several two-dollar notes displayed Jefferson’s face but had dates from the 1840's. Several dull gold coins in ten- and twenty-dollar denominations lay in the drawer.

“Big deal,” Sheree insisted. “So he’s a coin collector—”

“That hayseed? You got to be kidding.”

“Then maybe it’s his grandfather’s.”

“Sheree, some of these coins are much older than his grandfather can possibly be. This stuff must’ve been passed down from his family for generations.”

“Fine. Now let’s get out of here. He could be back any minute. And didn’t he say he had a brother?”

Carol gave it a sudden thought. “You’re right. Go wait by the door and keep an ear out. If you hear anything, whistle.”

“Carol!”

“Just go. I’ll only be another minute.”

Shaking her head, Sheree went out, stood at the front door. The acid was still streaming in her head, disorienting her. She felt as though she were standing on a trampoline as she tried to maintain her attention. She couldn’t imagine why Carol insisted on searching the shack; perhaps the LSD had brought out a kleptomaniacal impulse. Or maybe she was just a snoop. It was in a woman’s nature to snoop, she supposed…even if the woman had a penis.

Before she could further speculate, she thought she heard something. The faintest sound? Or just some aural glitch from the LSD?

Rapid tiny crunches…

Then Sheree froze, her eyes blooming. Carol had told her to whistle if she heard anything, but there was no time. That’s how fast it happened.

That’s how fast the figure appeared.

Sheree remained planted in shock as what she first thought must be a wraith emerged from the woods. A ghost, yes, like a death-camp ghost—that’s what it looked like: a tall, skeletally thin girl with short brown hair. Completely naked. Her wrists were tied together, her hands covering her pubis. The insides of her skinny white legs were smeared with blood, and her eyes, though wide, looked dead.

The figure, fast as a sprite, ran wildly past Sheree, muttering, “Fox! Fox! They put a fish in my vagina!”