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Veronica snatched the phone from him and answered.

“Hello?”

A steely, Jersey accent snapped back, “Who’s this? This Tuckton’s whore?”

“I beg your pardon!” Veronica half-yelled and half-sobbed.

“This is Paulie!” the man on the other end barked. “You tell that white-trash Gomer Pyle fuck that he’s got an email!” and then the line went dead.

“Well?” the others all seemed to say simultaneously.

“Paulie sent you an email,” she told them. “And, gee! Why do I think he’s attached a movie to it?”

“Dang, Paw! Ya reckon he done sumpin’ back ta us alls-ready?”

“But what the hail could he do?” Micky-Mack said in disbelief.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Veronica snapped. “I have to go online.”

“On what?”Dumar asked. “Like a clothes line? Paw, what she talkin’ ’bout?”

“I think,” Helton perceived, “that it’s the same magic phone line like what she used last night to send Paulie our movin’ picture. Am I right, hon?”

“Yes, and if you want to see what he sent you, you’ll have to give me my laptop.”

“Oh, ya mean yer fancy ‘puter?”

“Yes,” she sighed, slumping in her own piss. “My fancy ‘puter.”

Helton brought the laptop, and in minutes, Veronica was downloading the file sent to the new eddress she’d created last night.

“Is it…,” Helton began with a dry dread in his voice.

“It’s a digital video file,” she told them. She opened it through her media player, then passed the laptop to Helton. “Here. Whatever it is, I don’t want to see it.”

“Probably fer the best, hon…” He set the unit on the metal table. “Come on, boys. We needs ta watch this.”

“Just hit the enter button,” Veronica said, then sulked in her corner.

With some difficulty, Helton did so, and then…

They watched.

««—»»

It’s nighttime, though there’s an icy glare from some mode of auxiliary lighting. The camera pans across leafless trees, then the forms of three men are waving at the camera: men with the most curious rubber masks. The husky man wears the face of Abraham Lincoln, while a slimmer man wears Mr. Spock. A third, who carries the air of ringleader, looks back with the face of Richard M. Nixon. The masks look very old but remain quite flexible. The men wave for quite awhile. Then the scene cuts to—

A roaring fire.

It’s an elaborate yet quite ramshackle dwelling made of wood planks and what appears to be hand-hewn cedar shingles. Sound that is somehow grainy accommodates the image: the crackling of abundant flames. In only minutes, the wooden edifice is consumed, collapsing in a minor mushroom cloud of smoke and sparks. There’s something almost awesome about the fire’s voracity, as well as the promptitude of its reducing the shack to a pile of raving embers.

Nixon steps into the foreground and says in an undeniable Jersey accent: “See that pile of shit house, Helton? I’ll bet it looks familiar, don’t it?” and there several robust off-screen laughs are heard. “But that’s just for starters…,” and the scene cuts again to—

A wooden plank sticking in the ground. The camera zooms in, for there seems to be crude writing?on that plank.

The writing reads:

MARY BETH TUCKTON

WIFE OF DUMAR TUCKTON

DAWTER OF CLONNER MARTIN

NEECE OF JAKE MARTIN

LUVING WIFE & MOTHER

B. Apr. 30, 1977

D. Dec. 13, 2010

The camera pulls back wider amid an erratic, gritty sound that is soon revealed to be the sound of shovels digging into the crude grave. Wider and wider, the lens retreats and at last the grave-diggers are shown: Spock and Lincoln.

Again, the scene cuts to—

The grave now fully opened. It’s only several feet deep and the shrouded form within indicates that no liner or coffin was available for the interred.

“There’s our bitch,” Nixon relates off-screen. “Good job, guys.”

Hands reach into the shallow pit and haul out the long, shrouded bundle. A tearing sound is heard, while—closer—two sets of hands rip the shroud open. The glare of moonlight reveals the form of a shapely female corpse: light hair that’s probably blond, a face that would’ve been pretty in life. The corpse has been dressed in a simple cotton nightgown with some unidentifiable floral print; then this, too, is riiiiiiiiiiiiiipped open. The globes of large, firm breasts fill the screen: frost-white, with large, oblong nipples puckered in death and tinted the faintest blue.

“Damn,” an off-screen voice comments. “Not a bad set of tits for a stiff.”

“I ain’t never tit-fucked a corpse before but”—a chuckle—“there’s always a first time.”

Brusk laughter.

“Doc. Go up and down the whole body.”

“Of course, sir.”

The camera tracks down over the flat stomach, curvaceous hips, plush thighs. It is a conspiracy of visual elements that collide now: the crisp December night, the crisp radiance of moonlight, and the crisp white skin. They all seem to contribute to an overall image of death-perversity and, somehow, death-beauty. The thighs are parted to afford the camera a more concise vision: the furred pubis, and the plump slit beneath the hair.

More off-screen voices deliberate…

“How ya like that? This is one dynamite-lookin’ dead redneck tramp.”

“Yeah. Drop-dead gorgeous.”

Laughter.

“She don’t even stink. Says on the marker she’s been dead, what, ten days?”

“Nine, sir.”

“Then how come she don’t stink? Wouldn’t her cunt and mouth and all be full of worms?”

“Actually, no, sir. The cool temperatures of the December climate have essentially kept the corpus refrigerated, forestalling most, if not all, putrefaction. There will be evidence of post-mortal lividity, of course, and some visual venosity contrasting with the death-pallor. Rigor has passed, though. She’s quite well preserved…”

A rough cut, then—

A vigorous slapping sound as the screen is now full of a hairy, pumping male buttocks. The dead woman’s parted thighs jostle aside.

slap, slap, slap, slap, slap

“Pussy’s cold but—fuck—I think I’m gonna be able ta—”

The copulation intensifies.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m comin’…”

“Bitch is gettin’ her Christmas present early!”