The Nightmare Thieves

The city lives on nightmares. It’s a living city. You’d be better off if they took anything else, but that’s not how it goes. The negative pulses are what it craves. The city is alive. It has hearts and lungs hidden behind building facades, scattered here and there. The hearts pump the nightmares throughout the city, and the nightmares are oxygen for the lungs. The city of terror. The infinite city.

I woke up in my room. Lindsey, or Lydia or someone, was lying next to me. I rolled over and took a cigarette out of a soft pack on my nightstand. I lit it and inhaled. Calming. Relaxing. She — whoever she was — started coughing dramatically.

“Nobody smokes in bed except in the movies. Hell, nobody smokes cigarettes anymore.”

“I suppose I’m special, then,” I said. I told her to get out of bed and get dressed. She was pissed, but she did it anyway. I enjoyed the rest of my cigarette in peace. It would be the last fully peaceful moment I would have for a long time.

I fell back asleep and awoke to the sound of my roommate Billy screaming. I got out of bed, grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor and put them on as quickly as I could. 

Billy was in the living room by the window that overlooked the street twelve floors below. I hurried to the window and looked out. Shit. The Faceless. Dreaded brown clay skin creatures with nothing but a jaw where their face should be. Fatty folds creasing their foreheads. Nine feet tall with sharp claws that paralyzed the victim upon penetration. They caught you and took you — well, nobody was positive where exactly, but it was rumored that they were the ones who took you to the machine that extracted your nightmares.

The Faceless grabbed a homeless drunk that I’d seen many times hanging around the building. It stuck its claws in the man’s neck and carried him away. 

I’d heard that you wake up and find yourself in a hospital bed. They attach wires to your head and those wires are plugged into the nightmare machine. Microscopic needles dig deep into all parts of your brain. They dig and dig, until they find your terrors. Then the extraction process begins. 

At first, it sounds like it might be therapeutic to have your nightmares drained, but you lose a very essential part of yourself. What is a person without their terrors? What kind of person would you be with half your reality missing? Maybe more than half? 

Two days later, Billy and I sat at our kitchen table, trying to forget the paranoia that seeing the Faceless had left us with. 

“Hey, listen,” I said. “It’s not like they come back to the same place very often. I mean, how many have you seen in your lifetime?”

“Four. But that’s enough.”

“But that’s my point, right? The sightings are so far between that you probably won’t see another one for a decade.”

“That guy’s face when the claw went in.” 

“He probably wasn’t even hurt. They say those things sedate you instantly.”

They say that at the center of the city, underground, there is a river that doesn’t reflect. On that river is a ferryman. Pay his fee and he’ll take you to paradise. But you have to match his asking.

Twenty, maybe twenty-five people had gathered at our apartment for a little party. That was how many people saw Billy start to phase out of reality. 

Most of us were stunned, and just stood there and watched. A couple of people tried to grab him, but he wasn’t solid anymore. He was like a hologram. He phased in and out, never regaining anything like a solid form. And then suddenly he was gone. 

I sat at the bar and looked at my glass of beer, almost untouched. This had been a real bummer of a week. But what was there to do about it? People phased out of reality sometimes. It was just something that, however unlikely, could happen at any moment. But why Billy? Man, it’s hard as hell to make friends when you’re not in your twenties anymore.

The cuffs were cold on my wrists. They were tight enough that it felt personal. I hadn’t meant to start that fight, but that’s how things go sometimes. How was I supposed to know she had a jealous boyfriend when I asked her to dance? And when she put her hand on my crotch, I took it as a sign that she liked me. And so we kissed. 

Anyway, I took everything out on the guy. It had been a stressful week, and I wasn’t having any bullshit. 

We are dreams dreaming of themselves. We have to be taken from the city to understand what the city means. But the city is infinite. So this is difficult to do. 

The most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me? I once found myself in an unfamiliar alleyway. I was twisted drunk and I wasn’t sure what street I was on. Suddenly, in front of me was a very tall, very thick woman with golden skin and dark gold eyes. She tore at her chest until it heaved open and dozens of tentacles slicked out. I turned to run, but the woman overran me. She grabbed me with her tentacles. They suctioned me inside her chest. I half hung out and tried to wriggle away, but the tentacles held me in. Suddenly we were flying. I screamed, but my terror was muffled by the thickness of her chest fluids as they stuck in my mouth and throat. 

She landed on the sidewalk and I slopped out of her chest. I lay there, all wet and sticky, in incredible pain, looking up as the golden woman laughed at me. 

“It has to do, like,” when they take your dreams and you’re all happy, but you’re not supposed to be that way.” Sherry was drunk again. But it’s not like what she was saying wasn’t true. But that’s not what I had been talking about.

“Sherry,” I said. “What does that have to do with Billy phasing out of reality?”

“Oh, nothing, really. Hey, you want to order some shrimp?”

I went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet for a few minutes, gathering my thoughts.

The meditators levitate in circles and underneath each circle is a fire. They’re a few feet in the air. The fire almost catches their clothes. At least that’s what I heard. But I’ve heard a lot of things. 

I should say, that’s the most terrified I’d been up until the point that I saw a Faceless staring down at me. This past week had driven me to drink more than usual, and usual was a lot. I was stumbling out of Malagoon’s Bar when the Faceless ambled down the sidewalk in my direction. But these sightings were supposed to be rare. And here I was, looking at my second in a week. Well, fuck.

There’s a certain poetry in losing your mind. The machine was nothing like I had expected. It was all ecstasy, yes, but also there was something missing. Something essential. I had visions of my mother and my tenth birthday. It was the day my mother’s wife agreed to adopt me. But it was more than just good memories. It was, how to put it, an abstraction. Light stretching itself around the body. Calm. Comfort. Serenity. Why couldn’t I be like this forever?

Because the body doesn’t last forever. When they took me out of the machine and pulled the wires out of my head, I was barely human. My bones had dissolved and I was a gelatinous mixture of blood and water. I had melted into a kind of flesh sack. There was a man in a tie. He scooped me off the bed. My neck was useless, turning my head was upside down. My legs drooped over his arm.

And then they put me in here with you guys. We slick around all day like snakes and we eat our slop and we’re not exactly sure why except this is what we do. I heard this used to be a problem. And so we flop around on our bellies and we drink from the slop they drop on us after we’ve flipped onto our backs. Something is missing, but we’re not sure what it is. It doesn’t matter, though, does it? We’re happy. That’s all that counts.

The Swamp

Oh, how the swamp stunk in the sticky humid August night. That sweet reek of the endless purgatory in the marshlands. Somewhere lost in the middle was the shack where Brad Gum lived with his wife. He let his toe dip into the black nebulous of the duckweed plated water and watched as the ripples shimmied outward catching the white moonlight on their crests. The oppressive heat sweltered under the arms of Brad Gum and he shifted on the dock as hot beads of sweat ran down his lower back into the band of his three-day-old underwear. He looked out over the bayou through the vapors of humidity and lights of fireflies that winked as the stars above. A frog trilled from somewhere under the ramshackle dock made of rotting, moist planks. Locusts sawed on from the pitch. Brad’s jeans were ripped into capris above the ankle. Oh, did the swamp stink this time of year. 

The axe which was gnawed and splatted with orange rust was leaning restfully on a soggy, moss-capped, timber that was sunk in near the tall grass at the shore. Brad knew the swamp smelt, he knew that his floundering home in the swamp stunk, but he himself could not smell it. Brad was devoid of all sense of smell. His own stink, the stink of others at the store in summer, and the mildew stench of his homeland, of the swamp, were all but scentless steam in his hair filled nostrils. The light of orange embers smoldering at the end of his smoke, and the moon above was caught up in the silvery pools of the eyes of alligators staring, watching, lurking below him. They were invisible apart from this singular give away and would have otherwise been lost to the backdrop as logs or clumps of dirty weed in the murk. But they, like he, were there, part of the night, part of the swamp, predatory and monstrous.  

His wife was upstairs in the bathtub. Happier than he? As he watched the ripples evaporate into the gloom and blackness of the bayou mists perhaps, perhaps not. He could not find the capacity to care. He breathed in deep in a vain attempt to take in the odious bouquet of the marsh but nothing came to him, nothing more than breathing in the vapors over a boiling pot of water on the stove. The only light in the shabby dwelling was coming down in a warm shaft onto the dock from the cracked bathroom window on the second floor. Brad got up from the end of the dock as he heard the grinding of car tires coming along the long gravel driveway leading to his secluded bit of land in the wild swamp. He threw his smoke down from the dock into the water which hit with a sound like a match dying under a faucet. Something jumped at this and splattered in a large waking wave into the black water. He pictured something with pale eyes and ribbed skin that would be eaten by a largemouth bass or a snake upon making such a debut into the stinking surf.  The headlights cut through the stifling summer mugginess in two long glowing poles before the police car. The car came to a slow rolling stop as Brad made his way to greet the officer. 

“Eve’nin’ Offisah,” said Brad. The officer stepped out from the car which had all the windows down on account of the mug in the air.  

“Evening Brad,” said the sheriff, “The missus home?” 

“Aye,” said Brad spitting a large wad from his mouth, “She be in-dis-posed. In the tub. You need ‘er? I’ll fetch ‘er.” 

“No need to trouble ‘er,” said the sheriff. His expression hardened and he stepped closer to Brad. “But Brad, there’s been some odd complaints from the neighbors down yonder,” he pointed to the Landry’s home a bit to the south. The policeman drew a carton of Lucky Strikes from his breast pocket and lit one with his, as Brad would assume it, fancy city lighter, which clacked and clanged as he flipped the lid open and closed. 

Dumb bastards Brad thought to himself. “Complaints, of wut natchya?” Brad asked. 

“Sump’in’ ‘bout a smell, Brad, something ‘bout a smell like hell. Like a rottin’ animal. They say it waftin’ down on them real bad and they want us to take a look ‘round here,” said the sheriff. “Matta of fackt, place is smellin’ awful ripe tonight.” 

“Swamp,” said Brad as he fingered his mildew ridden bellybutton. He sniffed the cheese that he pulled forth from the cavity with indifference even as the sheriff let his hand casually rest on the revolver strapped to his hip. 

“You got one of dem permits now cher??” Brad said before spitting again. It landed with a loud wet pat on the rocks. 

“I don’t, not yet. Don’t want to trouble you with it, but tell me true, there anything I need to know?” The sheriff asked. Eyes reading Brad’s rather vacant and simple face. 

“Swamp always stinkin’, this time of year. Shit, might be a deer fell down a sinkhole. I can help ya look in the mornin’ okay?” he said. 

“Well sure, that’d be just fine,” said the sheriff who turned back to his car but paused before taking a step. “Say Brad, got any coffee on? I could sure use a cup on the graveyard shift, only if ye please.” 

Brad coughed up something large and gunky in his throat and held it in his mouth before discharging it into the gravel at his bare feet. “Sure, I’m sure missus got something for ye.” 

Brad did an overly polite bow to the officer and bid him towards the porch. The timber plank stairs yelled in protest as the two ascended them, almost cutting out the shrill trill of the tree frogs and crickets. The screen door flapped open with a simple and misused wheek before clacking back into its lock as Brad and the officer entered the putrid residence. 

Water-stained walls, cabinets left open to expose the chipped china like bone beneath a wound, plates and tins on the counters, two matching rough wood chairs with their arched backs pushed out from the small round table where old coffee was left in metal mugs, the officer sniffed. Stink. Swamp? An old oil lantern hung from the ceiling from some old cabling and was the sole source of light in the room. It rocked on the breeze from the open window and allowed its light to cast odd and sharp shadows around the room giving all a distinctly purgatorial feel. The wallpaper, once painted with bright sunflowers, roosters, and diamond patterns sagged on the walls like an ill-fitted dress on a woman and was bunched and torn by water exposing the ribcage of timbering beneath. 

“Awful quiet Brad, thought you said missus is upstairs?” Inquired the officer. 

“Indeed, she be. Coffee still?” Brad inquired back. 

“Matter a’ fact, think I might have a look upstairs?” Asked the officer. 

Brad turned and poured himself a cup of old cold coffee from the moldy pot. The officer quietly unsnapped the cover of his pistol. 

“Uh sure,” shrugged Brad. 

The policeman made his way around through the narrow kitchen avoiding the dirty walls for the earnest desire not to get the filth on himself. The banister to the stair was unsurprisingly cracked in the pillars and rail and as he assented the dirt smeared steps. The pistol was lifted with a creak from the leather holster as the stained steps quacked beneath his boots. He knocked on the bathroom, no answer. He knocked again upon the door and entered. 

There the maggot ridden corpse of Mrs. Gum stared back. Holes where eyes had been, now just an eggy residue dribbled from the sockets. Skin blackening, lips pulled back around yellow teeth. An undefinable and dark liquid dripped from her mandible. She was mutilated in places and her stomach cavity was a gutted hole revealing nothing but a dark pocket under her ribs. She was not the only, nor by appearances, the oldest one left here. The officer’s eyes scanned over other bodies, reddened with fresh blood and blackened with old. Some missing teeth, others seemed chewed and sawed. A fest of gore. The stench, unmentionable other than it burned with purification, roadkill left to decompose for months was the only comparable testament the officer could fathom in the seconds the synapses of his mind had to fire the thought into consciousness. The bathmat caught his attention as small things seem to do in times of crisis such as this, and even the once floral pattern was almost unidentifiable under the smudge of liquid and tissue that stained it. He turned to the door, Brad was there. He was stripped bare, showing the thick forest of fur that extended from the scruff of his chin to his loins. Brad was looking at Ms. Gum in the tub. 

“Well, hun, they think a God-damn deer is making that stink!” Brad hooped, “But by god come morning, the po-lice dogs ain’t nevah gonna ever find you in that damn stinkin’ swamp!” 

That axe, orange with rust still managed to flash in the light of the single hanging bulb of the bathroom. The axe knocked the bulb but did not break it, flashing strobes of shadow and light in dizzying arrays around the room. The freshest red blood flowed over the black stains of the old and the sawing of crickets, frogs, and the lapping of swamp water took over the night. 

The next morning when more officers came, Brad’s bathroom was as ordinary as yours. Clean and welcoming to the point one wouldn’t actually mind using it, despite the rest of the house. All the while the police searched the grounds around the home, Brad brewed fresh coffee for them from a clean pot, and no one noticed that the police car was missing. Only Brad knew now where the vehicle settled, deep in the stinking swamp. 

Throwed up the Mountain

Edward Marsh stood atop the massive, rounded stone which leaned outward from the mud of the riverbank to the pool below. Peering over the edge, he saw below, into the perpetual current of the Red River; though shallow in most places, about ten feet deep here. He wondered how it was possible that such a perfect, gigantic rock just happened to be leaning into one of the best pools in the river. 

“It can’t be a coincidence,” he thought to himself, “But how in the hell could anyone move a rock like this? It would take a giant to do it!”

Eddie had no fucking clue. 

He thought of Giza; he thought of Stonehenge. He thought of Cahokia—great mysteries of construction.  

Without thinking any more about it, he bent his knees and leapt into the water, making a can-opener formation in midair. He was aiming for his friend, Tater, who was floating on his back relaxed in the middle. 

Tater wasn’t paying attention. Ed landed right next to him, splashing the hell out of him and rocking the boat of his body, its ballast upside down as his belly faced sunward like the bulbous wreckage left remnant after a kraken strike. 

“God dammit, man,” said Tater, “Fuck!”

Tater began dog paddling, spitting green water from his mouth. It spewed into the curly hairs under his bottom lip and thereafter disappeared amidst the dense forest of the thick beard covering his chin before dripping back into its flowing home. 

“Ya’ll want some fuckin’ bud?” came an unexpected voice from the other side of the river. It was loud; amplified by a hand-shaped megaphone from the woman’s throat outward and into the forest canopy, afterward sliding around the bowl of the forest’s shapely ceiling and echoing downward into the boy’s ears before drowning itself in the river; thereafter flowing westward toward an inevitable convergence with the Kentucky River, thereafter that westward to the Ohio, thereafter that westward to the Mississippi, then finally southward past the French Quarter and into the gulf. 

Something brushed across Eddie’s calf. It was small; it wasn’t a snake—probably a bluegill or crappie—but he still jumped.

“Awh, hell,” said the voice, watching Ed splash excitedly, “I know this kid wants some. He over there feenin’!”

“Fuck is wrong with you?” said Tater.

“Something brushed against my leg.”

“Pussy.”

Tater then turned to the couple atop the other side of the river: “Hell yeah, we’ll take a smack of your hippie lettuce.” He then swam to the riverbank. Eddie followed.

Crawdads and minnows tickled Eddie’s toes as he stepped from the river rocky outward onto the jagged shore. A lizard sunbathing on a nearby rock—a small, smooth stone, though to the lizard’s perception likely similar in size to the one Eddie had just leapt from atop—looked at him as if annoyed; a badass creature so apathetic so as to be irritated with the presence of literal giants. 

“C’mon up,” said a voice. It was a different voice; this one was a man. He was hanging from the limb of a firm though swingy tree root slithering chaotically out of the mud of the wall of the riverbank. “Name’s Rick,” he said, “An’ that woman up there offerin’ up our good, stinky grass is my wife, Lisa.”

Eddie took the man’s hand. It was callous though greasy, as if lotioned with bacon fat.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Tater sarcastically from behind, “I’ll climb up myself.”

“I can’t pull your big fuckin ass up, anyways,” said Rick, “I’m older than shit. Only reason my bones and muscles ain’t constantly feel like dogshit is the relief of this stinky outdoor bud.” 

Rick’s lengthy grey beard blew in the wind as if to emphasize poetically his age. 

“Yep, I’m aware,” said Tater. His feet slid chaotically in the mud as he grasped at the dangling tree root. He finally snatched it, though not before muddying his shins up to his knees. 

Rick and Lisa had a crackling fire near the edge of that cliff descending into the river. The fire was mostly dried leaves and twigs—the smoke was thick. On the other side of the fire was a gravel road leading backward out toward the nearby backwoods town of Nada, KY. 

Rick grabbed at one of the adjacent hanging vines and yanked at it absentmindedly before momentarily losing his balance and stumbling backward nearly off the cliff. Sliding in the mud like a cartoon character, he caught himself at the last moment and recorrected, thereafter clutching at his beard as if it needed brushed. 

“Fuck is wrong with you?” said Lisa from her place sitting in a rusty metal folding chair near the fire. She was holding a stick to the crackling, smoky flame, roasting a marshmallow, which was ablaze, further blackening with each second it remained in the fire. “That bud get to ya’?” she continued, “I didn’t realize you could still be such a lightweight, at your age.”

“Don’t chastise me woman,” said Rick, his face reddening with embarrassment as he walked to their beater of a pickup truck—a red and white 1985 Ford Ranger—and sat atop the unlatched tailgate. He took an emptied tie dye bowl from the pocket of his thin, stained jeans and, after using a paper clip to scrape it from the bowl, took a smack of resin. He inhaled deeply before spitting out the smoke and coughing violently. 

“Jesus H fucking Christ,” said Lisa, “The hell is wrong with you?”

“You got any of that shit for us?” Tater interjected.

“’Course we do,” said Lisa, her tone softening maternally now that she was speaking with a different, younger person, “Here ya’ go there, boys,” said Lisa after refilling the bowl with fresh bud.

Tater took the lighter and bowl from Lisa and flipped it ablaze and took an enormous drag as if showing off.

“Don’t torch it,” said Lisa, looking with concern at the way Tater was carpet bombing the surface of the grass. 

“He always does that,” Eddie said, “He sucks dick at smoking weed.”

“Fuck off,” said Tater, now coughing politely into his bicep as if interested with the pungency of his pits.

Eddie took the pipe and ripped a hit as well. He also started coughing up a fucking lung, though the way he coughed was more frantic, as if he were somehow afraid he may at any moment need to be shipped off to the hospital.

“You boys are bad as Rick,” said Lisa, “Mayhap that’s why he befriended you—he needed someone else for me to rag on.”

“That would make sense,” said Tater, “Say,” he continued, “You got any more of those marshmallows? I need to get the taste of weed out of my mouth.”

“If you didn’t torch it, it wouldn’t taste bad. Weed is like any other plant—hell, it’s like toast! You burn it, it tastes burnt; you don’t burn it, it tastes like it’s ‘sposed to.”

“I like burnt toast.”

“Hell,” said Lisa, “I like burnt marshmallows.”

 “Is that a yes?”

“Here you go.” 

Lisa handed Tater a Kroger brand marshmallow from the bag wedged between her wrinkly thighs. Tater ate it raw, smacking his lips as the mallow stuck to the roof of his mouth and thereafter his tongue and then again back and forth continuously.

“You ‘sposedta’ roast it. The fuck it wrong with you? You takin’ things either burnt to shit or raw as hell.”

“That’s just my personality,” said Tater, grinning. 

Eddie had lost touch with reality, or at least with his perception of it. He was buzzed-off hard from the morning and afternoons PBR’s and the rip of the bowl was the Finish Him type of Mortal Kombat moment metaphorically uppercutting him through the ceiling and sending him crashing back downward into the fucking spikes, his blood spraying everywhere as his combatant—the bowl—posed triumphantly the winner. Flawless Victory. 

Eddie blinked at this thought. He was fucking losing it. He sat below the hood of the overhanging tailgate, his ass itching upon the surface of the gravel. He was using the shelter of the tailgate as a sort of burrow; he considered himself at this point a prey animal—like a rabbit; one of the local eastern cottontails—he needed to hide. 

He was fucked up beyond repair. 

He squirmed around in the gravel, thinking he had lost touch with his senses and as a result become incontinent. 

He was afraid he might shit himself. 

“Hey!” came a booming voice from the other side of the river. 

It was Percy.

Percy was standing at the edge of the riverbank staring in confusion across at Eddie and Tater. Sliding down the muddy bank to the rocks of the shoreline, Chelsea joined Percy at his side, putting her hands on her hips and glaring through sun beams puncturing the overheard tree canopy.

“I’m coming back,” mumbled Eddie, unaware they couldn’t hear him. Unlike him, they weren’t fucking rabbits; they didn’t have satellite ears. 

Eddie limped over the eroded side of the riverbank into those now exposed places where the river had in the past risen. He made to descend the slope and slide gallantly into the water. 

He didn’t make it very far. 

He fell over the edge, tumbling wildly down the surface of the mud. Momentarily catching himself and standing atop the rocky shoreline, he then tripped and fell into the river, fumbling more than swimming as he made his way to the other side.

Chelsea cackled and pointed like a maniac while slapping her thigh with her other hand: “Holy shit,” she said, “What did they lace that weed with?”

At the same moment—when Eddie had just made it back onto the other side of the river—a stuttering rumble was heard atop the riverbank, near their campsite. 

It was a gurgling moped—a true hog—one clearly missing a muffler. The engine wailed and groaned rhythmically before abruptly ceasing as if suddenly slaughtered. 

“Fucks going on down there?” came a voice unknown.

“Who the hell is that?” whispered Chelsea to Percy.

“Fuck if I know,” said Percy, wiping his sweaty palms against the denim clothing his ass as if it might prevent recognition of his building anxiety.

“It’s whoever the hell that guy is,” slurred Eddie, pointing up the riverbank. Percy and Chelsea stared up the slope of the muddy bank. 

“It’s me!” came the response, “Name’s Albert Joseph Crum, but you can just call me AJ, or Crum—I don’t give a single shit.”

“Uhh…” stammered Percy, “Nice you meet you… What’re you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? I fuckin’ live here, goddammit! I tell you what, boy—I’m here to have a good goddamn time. Ain’t that why we all on this spinning rock twirling like a demon-ballerina ‘round the sun?”

AJ walked to the cooler by Percy’s parked 1990 Volvo, opened it, and removed a Bush Light, which he cracked and chugged fully. He crushed the can and threw it down the side of the riverbank to the rocks below, near Chelsea’s feet. He then slid down the muddy embankment in his Wrangler jeans, the collected mud of which he dusted from his ass upon reaching the bottom.

The dude looked and smelled like shit.

“Uh…” said Percy, “What brings you here?”

At that same moment, Tater—who was at that point so stoned he wasn’t even cognizant of where he was—was being helped across a shallow part of the river by Rick and Lisa. He was between them, using each of their shoulders as a crutch. Rick and Lisa strained to walk, slouching in the mud and groaning; Tater was a lot bigger than both of them, and they were pretty old. Tater didn’t give a single shit about that, though—not at this moment, at least. 

“Thanks a bunch,” Tater imagined he said as he sauntered across the rocks and moss like a hobo wino. “Ahhhh!” he wailed abruptly, stumbling violently before recorrecting, “Fuggin’ tadpo’ just touched me. Slimy fuck…”

Eddie smiled while watching from the other side, recognizing his friend’s hypocrisy. 

Percy ran to the tumbling white-capped crossing and grabbed Tater from Rick and Lisa, helping him to the other side.

“Who’s that you got over there with ya’?” said Rick.

“Oh,” said Percy, “I don’t know him. He just showed up. Says his name is AJ Crum.”

“Fuck,” said Rick, “You need to tell that bastard to get on out of here—ride like Clyde—and quick. He’s bad news, and if I’m calling someone bad news, you know they’s really bad news. 

“He’s right,” said Lisa, “Get his ass the hell up out of here. He gets strung out on pills and booze and rides that moped wobblin all along the road, firing his magnum at signs and trees and shit. That sumbitch been arrested buncha fuckin times.”

“He’s got a magnum?” slurred Tater.

“Oh yeah,” said Lisa, “Guys the dumbass in a crowd of other dumbasses.”

Tater, turning away from Lisa, clawed miraculously up the muddy side of the riverbank back toward the campsite like a Morlock on the scent of alien meat. 

“Hold up,” yelled Tater upon cresting the summit of the spongy riverside mound, “Don’t you just think you can just steal my Busch lights!”

“The hell you talkin about?” said AJ, “I’ll thieve a Busch from ya if I goddamn well want to. I say it’s mine, it’s mine. You better believe that shit.”

AJ then reached into the backpocket of his jeans, cakey with the slime of years of wear. 

“You let me fire that gun,” said Tater, “and I’ll give you a beer. Hell, a beer for every shot!”

“Ammunition ain’t cheap,” said AJ, stumbling drunkenly like a practiced barn dancer through the adjacent thick nettle, “Two beers for every shot.”

“Deal,” said Tater.

Tater pointed the firearm toward the river. He fired. The kickback combined with his intoxication made him fall over. He got back up, cocked the weapon, and made to fire again. 

“You might wanna chill out with that thing, Spud,” said Percy. 

“Eh, I’ll be fine,” said Tater.

Tater fired again.

“That’s four beers,” said Albert Joseph. 

“Give me one more shot—may as well make it an even sixer for ya,”

“You got yourself a deal.”

This time, Tater pointed at the huge stone across the river. 

“Can’t miss this big son of a bitch,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to close only one eye as he aimed, wobbling from drunkenness.

Tater fired. 

“Awh, fuck—God dammit!” yelled Albert Joseph. He began hopping around on one leg before falling down into the nettle and screeching like a wraith. 

“You fucking plugged him in the shin,” said Rick, “I’ll tell ya what—that shit hurts. Must had ricocheted off the rock. I seen that happen before, once or twice. Unlucky as hell.”

“No shit, you old fuck,” said Albert Joseph, who then lifted himself from the ground and limped atop his moped. 

“You shouldn’t be driving that damn thing, not right now,” said Lisa, “Why don’t you let us taxi you to the doctor’s?”

“Shut the hell up, you dumb bitch,” said AJ, twisting the key into the ignition. 

“Hold up, now,” said Lisa, unaffected by being called a bitch, “You gonna be hurtin’ good. You want something for the pain?” 

She then reached into her pocket and removed a prescription pill bottle of oxycodone, gesturing toward AJ and shaking the bottle. The pills rattled percussively:

“Eastern Kentucky mating call,” she said, grinning. She handed him the bottle. AJ opened it, popped out three pills, tossed them into his mouth, and swallowed.

“Should of only took one or maybe two at most,” said Lisa, “Those bastards are strong.”

“I’ll be fine,” said AJ. He then revved the engine and, after wobbling unstably atop the moped, its wheels spinning and kicking up mud backward across Percy’s chest, was soon out of the campsite and out onto the road. The squealing motor shrieked as if something supernatural before finally drowning with distance off into the night like some specter shrinking muffled into oblivion. 

“You think he’ll make it?” said Eddie, “He’s already drunk, and those pills are gonna fuck him up.”

“No idea,” said Lisa, “But I figure the pills will give him a better shot. Them pills are no joke—you right about that—but Albert Jo is an experience substance abuser. He drives drunk and high every day, damn near. The pills might distract him from the pain long enough to make it to the doctor’s. AJ gets distracted easily, as I’m sure you’ve fount out.”

“Yeah,” said Tater. Fuck…”

“Yeah,” said Rick, “Yous one hell of a dumbass, but that’s all right—shit happens when you party wasted.”

“True that,” said Chelsea, grabbing a collection of Busch Lights and, doing her best Joe Burrow impersonation, tossed one overhand to everyone. Lisa cracked hers and took a swig, her Adam’s apple dancing up and down her neck like some giant beetle stuck in her throat:

“Tell you what,” she said, wiping remnant suds from her mouth, “Let’s make a fire and sit down. I’ll tell ya’ll about the sasquatch roamin’ round these woods.”

“Sasquatch?” said Eddie, “That shit isn’t real.”

“Hell yes it is,” said Rick, “Lisa and I have seent ‘em. They run up and down the hills, hootin’ and hollerin’, banging tree limbs together. We got all kindsa stuff back in these woods—‘specially deep in the dark spots; far off from town—we got sasquatch, we got wolves and bears, we got mountain lions, I reckon we even got gators. Probably some fuckin’ emus.”

“No way,” said Eddie. Only bears in Kentucky are black bears, and there aren’t any cougars or wolves—they’ve been extinct for a long time. There have never been any alligators this far north. And emus aren’t even native to this country.”

“Just ‘cause they ain’t native don’t mean they ain’t there,” said Lisa, “This whole country is immigrants—immigrant people and immigrant animals. We like to call the animals ‘invasive’, though—we ain’t call people invasive. Wonder why? Anyway, we got it all back in these woods; all of it and more. Sharks in the rivers, every once in a while. Now sit down and let me tell you about Big Foot.”

Though disbelieving, they all sat atop their preferred rock and listened to Lisa’s story, which was told so well that Eddie found himself becoming nervous and looking out into the darkness of the adjacent woods. 

Everyone sat drinking well into the morning as the shadow of the fire flickered shadowy against the tree canopy, smoke all the while wafting skyward into the empty black sky. 

The moon hung dimly overheard like a dying soft-white lightbulb.

*  *  *

 A police officer kicked at the tent. 

“Open up, boys. Unzip this damn thing or else I’m gonna rip her up.”

Percy unzipped the tent and looked outside, squinting from tiredness into the glaring eyes of the cop. He then looked across the river. 

Rick and Lisa were already gone.

“Something you need, officer?”

“God damn right. Albert Jo Denniston is dead. Heard he was hanging ‘round here last night.”

Tater exited the tent: “Who did you hear that from?”

“None of your goddamn business, stranger.”

“Albert Jo is dead?” said Percy.

“Sure is. Dead as hell. He wasn’t sober, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anyone, but it wasn’t just booze he had in him. Seems the fucker had bought some pills.”

“You think we sold him pills?” said Percy.

“You was hanging out with him.”

“Do any of us look like the drug dealing type?” 

“Don’t matter what you look like. I ain’t no profiling cop; I go by the facts. Albert Jo was here, he got some pills, and then he died. Seems clear cut.”

“Where did you find him,” said Eddie, finally looking out of the tent, “Just down the road?”

“Naw. He was throwed up the side of the mountain—way up the cliff. Don’t know how he got his bike all the way up there—fucker must have been speeding good, in more ways than one.”

“Up the side of the mountain?”

“Yessir. Never seent nothin like it in all my goddamn years.”

“Well,” said Percy, “We didn’t sell him any drugs.”

“That ain’t what the evidence says. Evidence points to you did it.”

“What evidence?”

“Eyewitness report.”

“From who? Rick and Lisa?”

“Don’t reckon that ain’t none of your goddamn business.”

“It had to have been them; who else could it be?”

“Ain’t none of your business. Anyway, you need to come with me.”

The officer, removing the cuffs from his belt, then gestured to several of his partners, who were until that point hanging back by the road, away from the campsite.

“Don’t try and do nothin’ dumb.”

“You can’t arrest us just because a couple random people said we did something,” said Eddie, “Rick and Lisa aren’t even reliable witnesses. Plus, they were the ones with the drugs, anyway. They gave the pills to AJ!”

“Don’t you go shit talking Rick and Lisa. Lisa’s a cousin on my mom’s side—some once-removed typa cousin, or some shit. Don’t know exactly how it works. Anyway, she’s family. You go shit talking people’s family ‘round these parts, you in for a good ass whoopin’.”

“You can’t just beat me for saying something you don’t like. It’s not legal.”

“’Round here it’s legal. No one will give a single shit biscuit if I beat your little ass. So stop bad mouthing Lisa. She and Rick are good honest folk.”

“They’re crazy!” said Eddie. “They think there are sasquatches up in these mountains.”

“There are, dumbass,” said the cop. “Matter of fact, that makes sense. I never seen a moped throwed up the side of a cliff like that. Somethin’ like that just ain’t happen, ‘cept for maybe it got throwed up there by a sasquatch.”

Eddie, Percy, Tater, and Chelsea collectively stared ahead, dumbfounded. 

The cops then ushered them into the vehicles and pulled off toward jail. 

On the way, Eddie looked out the window, thinking about what a miserable camping trip this had turned into. 

He saw something move way up the cliff, in the mountains—in the forest. 

It looked big.