To Jake Blackwood, for showing me how it’s done.
ONE
The Vipers were on a run up to Detroit when they saw the girl. Porky spotted her first, pointed her out to Cowboy and Buck. She was walking along the side of the road wearing a knee-length skirt, pedal pushers. She was tall, rangy; no real tits to speak of. Her hair was straight and black and hung way down to where her ass should’ve been.
“You see that?” Porky shouted over the engine. “Hell yeah, I did!” Cowboy hollered back. Buck eased off the throttle. “Let’s have ourselves a closer look,” he said.
The trio cut their engines and angled their bikes across the road in a glittering wall of chrome, blocking the girl’s path. She kept right on coming towards them, completely unphased. When she got closer, the three men saw she was clutching a well-worn Bible to her chest. If the girl saw their 1%er patches, she apparently didn’t know what they meant. Porky said, “Where you headin’, baby?”
“Just to Taylortown.” She blushed, shy. “Youth Group.”
“That far from here?”
“Up the road a ways,” the girl said.
Cowboy: “Need a ride?”
Porky: “Don’t want you wearin’ out your shoes.”
“‘Sides, it’s getting dark. Hard tellin’ who you might run into out on these backroads,” Buck grinned.
The girl hesitated. Cicadas screamed in the silence. “Well… I don’t s’pose it’d do any harm,” she said.
“Hop on then,” Buck said. She tucked the Bible under her arm, straddled the bike, then wrapped her arms around him. “I’m Buck. That guy in the fancy boots is Cowboy. The other guy over there, the porky one, is Porky. What’s your name, sister?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Kitty,” she said.
“Hold tight, Kitty,” he said. Buck screwed it on. The bike roared beneath them like some revived prehistoric monster, and they were off. Porky and Cowboy followed close behind; hairy, knuckle-dragging atavisms themselves. Kitty almost expected to see Dinny peeking over the cornstalks. Alley oop, oop, oop-oop, she thought with a smile.
The way the wind felt in her hair, the masculine throb of the machine between her knees, holding tight to this strange man she’d only just met…
Kitty loved it.
Until they blew by a sign that read TAYLORTOWN, POP. 2,125.
“Hey!” she yelled over the din. “Hey! You missed the turn!” If Buck heard, he didn’t listen. It seemed to Kitty like he’d sped up, if anything. “Hey, Buck!” she repeated, balling her fist and hammering his back. One time, two times, thr—
“Knock it off, bitch!” he snapped back at her.
Tears welled in Kitty’s blue eyes as she realized her mistake.
The trio and their captive went careening down emerald corridors of corn, past quietly decaying farmhouses and crows tugging at dead things at the roadside. The black birds scattered at their approach, fluttered back down to their fetid feast as they passed.
The sun sat low in the sky.
A bit further on, Buck spotted a crumbling white barn and pointed it out to the others. The three men angled off the asphalt and down the weed-eaten drive to the sliding doors. When Buck stopped, Kitty tried to run; launching herself headlong from the bike and stumbling back to her feet. She dropped her Bible and skinned both knees on the gravel, but she didn’t care. Her every thought was on escape. Kitty had to get away before, before…
But she didn’t get away.
Buck leapt off his chopper and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off the ground as she kicked her feet at the air—at Buck—and screamed her throat raw.
“Go on and scream, girl,” he growled in her ear. “Nobody’s around to hear.”
Whoever owned the barn didn’t seem to think there was anything inside worth stealing, since he hadn’t bothered to lock it up. Cowboy and Porky threw the barn doors open wide, revealing a thousand-edged heap of oxidized farm equipment within. Buck backed into the tangled darkness, Kitty thrashing against him with less and less strength. She was tiring out. The other two followed them in, slammed the doors shut behind them.
Buck threw her down to the hard-packed dirt that served as the building’s floor. She tried to rise; couldn’t. Porky, Buck and Cowboy stood over her in a loose circle. She looked into each of their faces and what she saw there made her cry.
“No… No…” Kitty moaned as Cowboy pulled a wickedly serrated Bowie knife from his belt. He sat on her stomach, a nightmare in denim. Porky and Buck pinned her arms down as Cowboy slashed from the bottom of her blouse up to her neckline, exposing her bra. “The fuck you wearing that for?” Buck laughed. “All you got under there’s a couple nubs.”
Kitty turned her head aside when Cowboy cut it off her, bent to lick her nipple erect. “Stop, you bastards!” she spat. Cowboy punched her in the face. Porky laughed. Kitty swallowed blood.
She was quiet then, and she stayed quiet while Cowboy pulled her skirt away and ripped her panties off. “Get up,” he said. Buck and Porky cleared off, letting her get up to her knees. Cowboy rose too, and took her by the shoulders. He spun her around, pushed her face into the dirt with his boot so her ass was up in the air. Kitty’s hair was caked with road-grime, dog shit.
Cowboy was her first.
He undid his jeans, pulled them and his boxers halfway down his thighs. Kitty heard him hock something into his hand. She screamed as he entered her, savagely ripping through her hymen. Blood ran down her thighs and she writhed in pain. Cowboy held her hips steady and pushed and pulled himself in and out of her gory cunt.
Kitty didn’t know how long it went on, only that eventually he came inside her and that it was over. But it wasn’t.
Porky was next up.
He rested his potbelly on Kitty’s backside as he slid his warty prick into her. He wriggled back and forth inside her a few times, finding the fit. He didn’t last long after that. “Fuck,” he grunted. “Fuck! Fuck, I’m gonna cum!” He thrust one, two, three more times before slicking his cock from the slimy folds of her pussy and jerking his load onto her upthrust ass. “Fuck! That was good.” He slapped her ass one last time and stumbled off with a smirk. Kitty whimpered.
Then it was Buck’s turn.
“Get in there, Buck," Porky said, wiping his brow with a filthy handkerchief. “Cowboy and me loosened the bitch up real good for you.”
“Hand me that rag,” Buck said. Buck used the handkerchief to wipe the puddle of Porky’s cum off Kitty’s asscheek, leaving a greasy black stain in its place. He unbuckled his belt, slid down his jeans, and rammed his cock deep into the girl’s asshole. Cowboy cheered. “All that work for nothin’,” Porky said, mock forlorn.
“Fuck you all.”
“You already did, sweetheart,” Cowboy said.
“Go to hell,” Kitty hissed.
“Keep running that mouth and I’ll stick somethin’ in it,” Buck shot back. The other two had a good laugh at that.
“You can’t… do this.”
“What’d I say, you stupid whore?” Buck wrenched his shit-stained cock out of her, grabbed her by the hips and flipped her hard onto her back. She looked up at him in terror as he took a fistful of her hair with one hand and squeezed her cheeks until her mouth popped open with the other.
Kitty took his balls on her chin.
Buck’s dick was tangy with the taste of Kitty’s own ass and his sweat. He held himself there, halfway down her throat, until Kitty started clawing at his thighs. Buck pulled out before she remembered she had teeth. She spit, opened her mouth to say something more. But Kitty never got the chance: Buck took the opportunity to shove the grease/cum rag in Kitty’s mouth.
Buck pried her skinny legs apart and crammed himself into her bloody slit. She whimpered around the improvised gag while he fucked her pussy. He kept his right hand vised around her throat, used the other to keep her left hand pinned to the barn floor. She beat and scratched at him viciously with her free hand.
At first.
After his seventh stroke, something snapped in Kitty. She sent her hand down his back, felt the taut muscles flexing as he pounded her, and liked the way they felt. The way he stank, like grease and sweat. Something was building in her.
“You like that, don’t you, you slut?” Buck grunted. Kitty nodded, despite herself. He let go of her throat, took the rag from her mouth and tossed it. “Tell me you want it.”
“I—I—Oh, fuck! Fuck! Yes!” she yelped involuntarily. Buck let loose the same thing that had been building in Kitty, collapsed on top of her. He lay there a moment, panting. Kitty ran her fingers through his hair. But then Buck was on his feet, zipping his fly.
“Goddamn,” he said. “You got a good eye, Porky.”
“I appreciate you sayin’ so,” Porky said, smiling.
Cowboy: “I could use a beer.”
Buck: “Me too. Wonder if they’ve got a bar back in that town we passed.”
Porky: “Only one way to find out.”
Cowboy: “What about the cooze?”
Buck: “Leave her. We’ll be long gone before she comes to.”
“Fair enough,” Cowboy said. “But just to be safe—” he kicked Kitty in the ribs with his steel-toes. The last thing she saw before passing out was the three big hoopsnake patches sewn onto the back of each man’s vests as they walked out of the barn into the dying light of the day.
TWO
The Vipers slowed just enough at the town’s one stoplight to make sure they wouldn’t get splattered before carrying on down Mainstreet to the bar. The bikers parked out front between a couple of beat-to-hell pickup trucks. A bicentennial banner stretched from the First National Bank next-door to Redneck Billy’s to the Taylortown Public Library across the street. Cowboy could just about make out the red, white, and blue 200 by the neon light of the bar’s flickering OPEN sign.
The three of them entered. The place was nicer than what they’d expected, which was saw-dust on the floor; the crunch of spent peanut shells underfoot. Instead they got dark wood, a pool table. Some high-tops across from the bar where a gaggle of fifty-somethings sat clucking to each other, picking at an order of fries.
A half-dozen crew-cut heads turned to study the long-haired intruders; stared for a second or two, looked away. Nobody wanted any trouble. “VFW must be closed tonight,” Buck said.
The Vipers took a seat at the bar. The ponytail’d guy on the other side said he’d be right with them, and they said that would be fine. When Ponytail came back, Porky and Cowboy ordered beers. Ponytail handed them over. Buck ordered a double tall gin and tonic. Ponytail tried to hide a smile; failed.
“Something funny?”
“No, sir,” Ponytail said. “Only that that's what my mother drinks.”
Laughs up and down the bar. But not from Porky, Cowboy, and Buck. Stares were one thing, but laughs… That was something altogether different. Word must not have reached this two-bit burg the Vipers were not to be fucked with. They’d sure showed that slut—Kitty, was it?—that much. Now it was time to show these smart-assed shit-kickers too.
“What kind of gin?”
“Gordon’s.”
“What?” Ponytail couldn’t hear Buck over the townies sitting to his right.
Buck repeated himself. “Do you have it?”
Ponytail studied the bottles. Buck did too. All they had was Bombay.
“I’ll take that,” he said, pointing at the blue bottle.
“I didn’t even know that was gin,” he said.
Buck: “Thought you said it was what your mama drinks.”
Ponytail: “I was just fooling with you.”
Porky: “He look like a guy you want to fool with?”
Cowboy: “Might even get the idea you were calling him queer, saying a thing like that.”
Buck: “You calling me queer? I look like a fag to you, boy? Think I like it up the ass? Sucking dick?”
“He didn’t mean nothing by it,” one of the townies cut in.
Buck: “Who the fuck asked you? I’m the one decides what he meant by it. Not you, old-timer.” That killed the chatter. For the first time that night, they could hear the jukebox playing. Something twangy and countrified.
That’s when Buck realized how young Ponytail was. Eighteen, he guessed. Probably about the same age as Kitty. Could be the two were classmates. Buck watched the bartender carefully measure out a double shot of gin, search for the TONIC button on the gun. He slid the drink to Buck once he found it. “Can I get a lime?”
Ponytail pulled a slice from under the bar, promptly dropped it on the counter. Buck chuckled, squeezed it into his drink. “Where the hell they hire you from, the kindergarten?” Cowboy said.
“My dad, he owns the place.”
Porky laughed. “What’d I say about fooling? Redneck Billy’s your daddy?”
“I’m not fooling.”
Cowboy: “Well, hell. I didn’t know this was a family concern.”
Buck: “Would be a goddamn tragedy if somebody were to bust it up. Burn it down.”
“That’s enough!” The townie, again. The Vipers—and everybody else in the place—turned to look at him. His skin was leathery from decades spent working in the sun and he was still strong from that self-same work, even at his age. “That’s enough,” he repeated.
“...not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow, ‘cause nothing’s gonna be alright no how…”
Buck splashed his drink in the man’s face. Then Buck hauled the old-timer off the stool by his shirt-collar, dragged him to the ground. He landed on his right forearm with a muted crack that announced to everyone within hearing that he’d broken it. The man moaned, then threw up a sudsy mixture of half-digested hamburger and Pabst. Now it was Porky and Cowboy’s turn to laugh. They rose and kicked the old farmer quiet.
“Anybody else got something to say?” Buck asked the bar.
“...never get outta this world alive…”
The Vipers sat back down at the bar. “I’ll have another gin and tonic,” Buck said.
THREE
While the three Vipers were bellying up to the bar, Kitty was stumbling home.
She thanked God for the moonlight. Without it, she would not have been able to piece together what was left of her clothes to cover her nakedness. Even after what those men—those serpents—had done to her, she still clung to something of her modesty and pride. But the tatters of her skirt and blouse did little enough to conceal her as it was. A breeze would easily reveal her.
Kitty left her Bible where she dropped it.
The same pride that compelled her to cover herself curdled into self-loathing when she saw that black book lying in the dust. How could she face Him when, at the nadir of her defilement, she’d begged for it; overcome with the rapture she’d been taught to expect from the pulpit? Her body had betrayed her, betrayed God. She was unclean, and nothing would ever wash her white.
Such were Kitty’s thoughts as she retraced her steps toward home. And so pleasantly/painfully absorbing were these thoughts, she nearly didn’t hear the roar of the chopper until it was nearly on top of her. Just as it was about to run her down, the bike swerved to a stop. Kitty was luminant in the single head-lamp, a wingless angel standing deer-still in the soft yellow glow. “The hell happened to you?” the rider said.
Kitty opened her mouth to answer, but only sobbed instead. The rider got down from his bike and unspooled a rough cotton blanket from around the sissy-bar of his machine. He walked toward Kitty—slow, so as not to scare the girl—and wrapped it around her shoulders. “You alright?” he asked, softer now.
Kitty nodded.
“Who did this?”
“Three… three snakes,” she said. “Snakes with legs…”
The rider’s eyes flashed with recognition. “Where are they? Did you see where they went?”
Kitty nodded again.
“Where?”
Kitty: “To the bar.”
He paused, then said: “Let’s get you home, first.”
Kitty: “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“I’m not going home,” she said. “I can’t. Not after… after all this.”
The rider studied her. There was a hardness in her eyes he’d only seen once or twice in his life that told him she meant to see this through to the bitter end. She wanted revenge. “Get on,” he sighed.
Kitty followed the rider back to his bike, draped in his blanket. He got on first. Kitty followed, wrapping her arms around him the way she’d done with the Buck. The thought turned her stomach. But where Buck wore a hoopsnake patch, Kitty saw that this man’s vest was bare. Bare, that is, except for a darkened spot rimmed with frayed string; as though something had been sewn there once and ripped away—
“Watch the tailpipe,” the rider said. Kitty looked down and saw a brown leather scabbard hanging from the side of the bike. The wooden stock of a shotgun stuck out the end. “She backfires.”
Impossibly, Kitty smiled. “What should I call you?” she asked.
“Ricky,” he said. “We’ve got snakes to kill.”
FOUR
It was closer to 3:00 AM than it was to 2:00 when Ricky and Kitty pulled up in front of Redneck Billy’s. Kitty’d gotten them there, calling out the turns to Ricky over the engine so he wouldn’t get lost out in the sea of corn that surrounded Taylortown. There were three bikes parked outside. The lights were still on inside.
“Last call was almost an hour ago. They should be closed or closing up by now,” Ricky said. “Don’t you have any law in this town?”
“Sheriff retired a year or two ago and it’s so peaceful here; nobody got around to electing a new one,” Kitty explained.
Ricky: “Not anymore.” He pulled the shotgun out, broke it, fed two shells into it, and started toward the bar. Kitty hesitated. She knew following Ricky meant abandoning whoever she’d woken up as this morning. No more ice cream dates. No more Youth Group. No more God.
But what did it matter? The Vipers had taken that from her already. Kitty’s choice had been stolen from her. She could never go back. Kitty followed Ricky into the bar.
Cowboy was her first.
She slit his throat with a broken bottle. He died gurgling.
Porky was next up.
She gave him both barrels in the gut.
One Spring—back when Porky was only a piglet—he’d gone out into the woods with his daddy’s .22, looking to kill a squirrel or two. The weather was just warming up then, which meant that the snakes were coming out of hibernation. Porky came close to a creek and that’s where he saw a big knot of cottonmouths all tied up together against the fading cold. The reptiles Möbius’d over and through one another, making it impossible for him to say where one snake ended and the other began.
The tangle of slippery black intestines that spilled out of the hole in his midsection reminded Porky of that as he fell to his knees and died.
Then it was Buck’s turn.
She bent him over the pool table. Kitty reached around the front of him, undid his pants and let them fall to the floor. She held him at gun-point while she decided on a pool cue, finally landing on one that could’ve used some sanding.
Kitty was only two inches deep when Buck started to moan.
“Sounds like he likes that,” Ricky said.
Buck: “Fuck… Oh, fuck… you.”
Ricky: “Keep that up and he’s liable to cum.”
Kitty: “Tell me you want it.”
Buck: “I—I—Oh, fuck! Fuck! Yes!”
Disgusted, Kitty grabbed the eight-ball off the table and jammed it into Buck’s mouth, parting his mustachio’d lips and nearly unhinging his jaw to fit it in. The ball vanished into his mouth. Buck’s jaws convulsed and he clawed at his cheeks, as though to force it out.
But it would not come.
His face purpled as he tried to stretch his jaw wider and wider, thrashing against the table. Inarticulate sounds came from his crammed mouth when, in his wild movements, he snapped the pool cue off in his ass. Blood spouted from his shredded sphincter, gouts of tender flesh and less identifiable liquids trickled down his thighs.
All at once the ball slipped out of Buck's mouth as easily as it had gone in. He screamed aloud for as long as it took Kitty to level the shotgun at the back of his head.
The last thing the stunned patrons of Redneck Billy’s saw was Kitty climbing onto the back of Ricky’s bike, the two riding off into the sunrise.
-- Dawson Alexander Wohler.
header image by Seagan.
