This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of Down in the Dirt magazine.
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Billy Ray took a long pull from the half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey and passed it off to his cousin Chuck, who took a smaller swig. They continued to hunt, even though they were both so drunk they could not have hit anything they shot at, even if it was the broadside of a barn. They stumbled through the underbrush and made so much noise that any prey they could have fired at had heard them coming a hundred yards away and summarily vacated the area. And still they wondered why they had not seen a deer all day.
“Your sister’s hot, Chuck,” Billy remarked.
“Yeah, I know,” Chuck answered.
“I know we cousins and all, but would mind too much if I took her out?” Billy asked. He was only asking to be polite. Billy had already screwed Chuck’s sister five times.
“I don’t give a shit. She’s a whore. Go ahead and fuck her. She’s already told me she wants to.”
“Wants to what?” Billy Ray asked, trying to sound innocent.
“You know,” Chuck replied, and left it at that.
This was the intellectual and emotional limit of Billy Ray and Chuck’s conversation. They were hunting in the forests of the Sierra mountains, taking a brief vacation from their menial jobs and trailer park existences. Billy Ray was a substandard welder, and Chuck subsidized his social security disability check with odd jobs. Chuck received $540.00 from the government every month because he had the I.Q. of an eggplant. Billy Ray was only slightly smarter, but was still the brains of their redneck operation.
They continued staggering through the forest, drinking, cursing, spitting, farting, and yelling the whole way. Rather abruptly, the forest opened up into a clearing. In the center of the clearing was a small ramshackle cabin with a crooked porch. Dreamcatchers dangled from the overhang. Lush green grass surrounded the house. Mountains and forest rose up behind it.
Billy Ray took another drink from the bottle of Wild Turkey and passed it to his feeble-minded cousin. “Who the hell’s livin’ way out here in B.F.E.?” Billy asked.
“What’s B.F.E.?” Chuck asked, his simian-like forehead wrinkled in consternation.
“Butt-fucked Egypt,” Billy Ray answered. Chuck began giggling like a little girl.
“Butt-fucked Egypt,” Chuck repeated, and giggled again.
Billy unshouldered his shotgun and held it ominously. “Must be some kinda hermit or something, livin’ out here,” he deduced. “Must be crazier that a shithouse rat.”
“Let’s check it out,” Chuck suggested, only because he could tell that Billy Ray was thinking the same thing.
“Cuz, I was just thinking the same thing,” Billy said.
They each took another long pull from the bottle of whiskey, then started walking towards the cabin. Their shotguns were slung over their shoulders as if they were a woman’s purse. Billy was in the lead, Chuck a few paces behind.
They stomped up the rickety wooden stairs to the front door. Chuck gave a cursory glance at the intricate, beautiful dreamcatchers suspended around his head. Billy Ray took no notice. He raised his leg and kicked in the door.
Billy half-staggered into the rickety shack, nearly losing his balance on the uneven floorboards. There was an old man sitting in a shabby recliner. He looked at the intruder and frowned. The old man’s hair was long and white, and his skin was the color of old, brown leather. He looked as old as the mountains that surrounded them. He slowly eased himself out of his chair and walked over to his small television and turned off the fuzzy picture it displayed. He stood slightly stoop-shouldered, and regarded the intruders with a look of pity. His Native-American ethnicity was unmistakable.
Billy Ray paused for a moment, struck by the appearance of the old man. Chuck came in behind him and stood there, transfixed, staring like the moron he was. The sight of the decrepid old man and his shabby quarters infuriated Billy Ray in the recesses of his Neanderthal mind. Chuck’s mind, as usual, was basically blank.
Billy Ray was overwhelmed with disgust for the old man in his broken-down shack. The whiskey in his blood intensified his hatred. What little rationality he possessed disappeared like feces down a toilet.
“I’m going to kick your dirty ass, you old injun motherfucker,” he said, deadly serious.
“Um, Billy,” Chuck said, with his usual timidity.
“Shut the fuck up,” Billy snapped, and Chuck shut his mouth on command. Billy approached the old man until their faces were only inches apart.
“You’re about to have a very shitty day, old man,” Billy said. The old man said nothing.
Billy Ray punched him in the jaw as hard as he could. The old man fell like a trap door had been opened beneath him. Billy unshouldered his shotgun and held it by its long black barrel. He raised it above his head and brought it down on the old man’s skull, butt first. The crack was sickening, but Billy was just getting started. He swung the rifle again and again, with all his drunken strength. With each blow there was another cracking sound, like squeezing a bag of potato chips. Each blow brought another copious splatter of blood. Chuck, not wanting to be left out, came over and began kicking the corpse in the ribs. In two minutes, it was over, and Billy and Chuck were out of breath. The old man lay dead on the wooden floor of his home. An expanding pool of blood and brain matter surrounded him. As the cousins turned to leave, Chuck slipped in the blood and Billy Ray grabbed his arm, saving him a fall. Billy held onto his arm and led him out of the shack.
They did their best to wipe the blood off of their clothes, hands, and faces. Neither of them said a word. They walked back to their pickup truck and began the drive home. Billy Ray had no conscious; he was a born killer, and did not think at all about what they had just done. Chuck’s brain was too retarded to comprehend what had just happened. He felt sick, and there was the slightest inkling of guilt in his heart.
**********
The old Indian’s brains leaked out onto the wooden floorboards of his house, but his spirit had not yet departed his ravaged body. The lips of the corpse began to move. The corpse muttered an ancient, incomprehensible incantation, handed down to him from times before white men ever walked on the continent. The words uttered, the old man’s spirit left its earthly vessel.
**********
Billy Ray drove his pickup truck slowly down the bumpy forest road. He was extremely drunk and did not want to crash his truck into a tree. Neither he nor Chuck had spoken a word about their murder. They passed the nearly empty bottle of whiskey between them at regular intervals. In Billy Ray’s mind, it had been a successful hunting trip.
Billy Ray’s blurred vision suddenly spied a large object in the road. He shook his head, still saw it, and slammed on the brakes. Chuck was vaulted forward and slammed into the dashboard. The bottle of whiskey flew out of his hands and landed on the floorboard. Billy Ray’s chest impacted the steering wheel hard enough to knock the wind out of him for a few seconds.
“What the fuck is that?” Billy Ray asked when he had found his breath again. He was enraged.
“It’s a tree,” Chuck said.
“No shit,” Billy Ray replied, and got out of the truck. Chuck followed. A large tree lay across the dirt road, its roots pulled out of the earth. There was no way for the truck to maneuver around it. “Motherfucker!” Billy Ray cursed after assessing the situation.
“This wasn’t here when we drove in,” Chuck said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Billy Ray said.
“Maybe the wind blew it down?” Chuck ventured.
Billy Ray rolled his eyes. “What wind, you dipshit? There ain’t been a breeze stronger than a fart all day,” he said.
“Well, maybe it was just rotten,” Chuck suggested. Billy Ray looked at the thick healthy trunk and lush foliage of the tree, and did not bother to reply. He had no idea why the tree had fallen (at least, no idea he would admit to himself). He just knew they had to move it, and something told him they better do it fast.
“Help me get this bitch outta the way,” he ordered Chuck. They began to strain against the huge fallen tree, but they could not even shift it an inch. They kept trying, in vain, until a sound from the forest stopped them dead in their struggle. A horrible growl emanated from the woods. It sounded like a starving, psychotic lion.
“What the holy fuck was that?” Chuck asked, terrified.
Billy Ray did not answer him. He scanned the shadowy forest intently. Something was out there, watching them, stalking them. He felt it as surely as he felt his own rapid breathing.
“Billy, what was that?” Chuck asked again.
“Shhhh!” Billy Ray hissed.
They stood frozen by the inexplicably fallen tree in silence. They stared into the woods around them. The growl came again, low and guttural, and closer. They heard twigs snapping, as if under the feet of—something. Suddenly Chuck glimpsed a shadow charging towards them out of the thick woods. His brain was too slow to process a reaction. He stood, ice cold, in utter stupidity. He stared at what was bearing down on him.
Then Billy Ray saw it, and it wasn’t just a shadow anymore. It was gargantuan, and covered in long brown hair. Its eyes were wild with rage and its mouth was open in a gaping snarl. Billy had seen a Laker’s game once, and this monster made Shaquille O’Neal look like an average-sized man. It galloped towards them at superhuman speed. Billy Ray did not freeze up. He jumped over the fallen tree and took off running down the dirt road. He heard Chuck scream, but did not look back.
The beast reached Chuck, who was still locked in motionless, dumbfounded fear. It laid its hairy hands on his body and tore off his left arm in an effortless motion, as if it were attached with Velcro. It tossed the arm aside and plunged its huge, clawed hand into Chuck’s stomach. It ripped out a giant handful of vital organs and stuffed them into its fanged mouth. It swallowed the mess in one gulp. Chuck’s dead eyes stared blankly into the beast’s satanic, simian face. The beast held Chuck’s lifeless, disemboweled body in one hand and wrenched the head off the body with its other hand. Chuck’s head popped off, and blood rained down on the monster like a geyser, soaking its thick fur. It dropped the mutilated corpse and ran off into the woods, still carrying the decapitated head like a football.
**********
Billy Ray had been running as fast as he could down the forest road for over twenty minutes, and adrenaline and whisky could carry him no further. His body gave up. He collapsed to his knees, lungs burning, muscles screaming, stomach churning. He did not give a single thought to the fate of his friend. He simply wondered how long it would take to regain his breath and start running again. His only thought was to survive. What he had seen coming out of the woods defied everything else.
After several minutes, he staggered to his feet and began to jog slowly down the dirt road on wobbly legs, like a newborn giraffe trying to run. He started to feel safer as he jogged. Whatever that thing was, whatever it had done to Chuck, he had a good head start on it. The first hopes of escaping alive began to slither into Billy Ray’s mind.
Something heavy hit him in the head. It knocked him down and sent him rolling down the road. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but the packed dirt he had been running on. He laid on the ground and cautiously scanned his surroundings, and then he saw it. Chuck’s head lay across the road, its dead eyes staring into his black soul. Everything became clear to Billy Ray as he stared into Chuck’s lifeless, petrified eyes. He knew he had been beamed in the head by the skull of his cousin. He knew his pathetic life was about to come to a violent end.
He rolled over onto his back, his head throbbing, his heart pounding. He saw what he expected to see. An eight-foot beast was walking slowly and purposefully out of the woods toward him. Its long hair was matted down and rust-colored from Chuck’s blood. It roared as it stomped toward his prone body.
Billy Ray did not even bother to scream. The mountain of muscle and hair picked him up and held him horizontally in its massive arms. Billy Ray squeezed his eyes shut and cursed God. The beast pulled him apart at the waist and tossed each half aside. It fed on the top half of Billy Ray for a few minutes. It snacked on his liver and lungs. It dug out his heart with its massive, clawed hand and ate it like an apple. It knew the intestines were filled with shit, and left them lying in the road.
It’s hunger satisfied and its calling fulfilled, the Sasquatch loped off into the dark forest and disappeared.
