The Backroad Butcher (Rie Sheridan Rose)

 

Billy Roy Jenkins drove with his knees down the dark, tree-lined, two-lane road. He perfumed the air with the cigarette held out of the driver’s window, chugging hooch from the flask in his right hand. Life was good.

A flash of movement in his headlights startled him into full alertness. The cigarette dropped to the black tar road, and he spared a second to hope it would go out without causing any trouble. The flask fell to the passenger floorboard, the acrid aroma of moonshine wafting up as its remaining contents trickled out.

Billy Roy peered into the darkness, trying to see past the dim beams of the ancient headlights. There—off to the side of the road. Someone stood there.

He screeched the truck to a stop. Leaning out the window, he called, “Hey there. You okay? It’s awful late and dark to be out here alone.”

The figure turned toward him, and he blinked. “That you, Suzie June? What are you doing out here?”

The girl in the black dress moved closer to the truck, her skin bone-white in the headlights. Her hair hung in lank black strands, framing a face dominated by wide, dark eyes. “Billy Roy?” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

“Just driving. Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be out after dark alone. Haven’t you heard about the Backroad Butcher?”

“I’ve heard. No choice, though. Still need to get home.”

“Well, hop in. I’ll take you home. I go right by there.”

“Thank you. It is getting late.” Suzie June walked around the front of the truck. Kind of glided. It struck Billy Roy as rather…Otherworldly.

Reaching across the cab, he opened the passenger door, and Suzie June slipped into the truck.

“Y’all still over on County Road 10?” he asked, acutely aware of her nearness as she settled into place. “Sorry, the truck’s such a mess.” He threw a couple of burger wrappers out the back window into the bed.

“Don’t worry about it.” She favored him with the ghost of a smile. “It’s awful nice of you to stop for me.”

“Happy to help.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes while Billy Roy tried to work out a decent conversation starter.

“So…you goin’ to the dance on Saturday?” he blurted out, when the silence got too thick to handle.

“I don’t dance anymore.”

“But you’re such a great dancer!”

“Not anymore.”

Silence descended once again. Wracking his brain for something else to talk about, Billy Roy returned to the only other topic that came to mind. “How many kills has the Butcher tallied now? Four, five?”

“Six,” she murmured.

“Jeez. How crazy do you gotta be?”

She turned to stare out the window at the trees flowing by. “You don’t know what can drive a person.”

Billy Roy gave up trying to make conversation, sullenly focusing on the road.

“Next left,” Suzie June said.

He screeched the truck around the curve without comment. The road devolved into a dirt track with mud ruts jarring the undercarriage of the truck. They bounced along for several minutes before he pulled to a stop outside a ramshackle cabin with the requisite number of broken-down vehicles scattered about the bare earth yard. An aura of sadness seemed to permeate the area, and Billy Roy—not usually sensitive to such things—shivered.

“Wanna come in for a bit?” Suzie June asked, her voice hesitant. “We don’t get many visitors way out here. I’m sure Pa will want to thank you for bringing me home.”

Billy Roy weighed his options. Nothing but homework waited for him at home. Ma was working the late shift tonight and wouldn’t even know he was gone. “Sure. Why not? You can tell me why you ain’t dancing anymore.”

Suzie June seemed about to answer, but she stepped onto the rickety porch instead and opened the door. “Pa,” she called, her voice soft and low, “I brought you some company.”

She turned to Billy Roy. “Come on in. I’ll fix us something to drink.”

Billy Roy hesitated. Something was off about this whole thing. He’d been to Suzie June’s before, but he’d never been inside. Even from the porch, he caught the miasma of untended garbage and some other stench—deeper, rusty, disturbing—underneath that odor.

“Maybe I should take a raincheck, Suzie. Ma will wonder where I am. I promised to bring home dinner.”

“You won’t be long, Billy. I just want you to try Pa’s new batch of moonshine. He’s working up a new mix. Thought you’d be interested.” She shrugged.

It proved just the right lure. Billy Roy could never resist a new batch of shine, and everyone for twenty miles around knew it. Misgivings thrust aside, he stepped past Suzie June into the cabin.

The interior was almost as dark as the outdoors. Only one bare bulb in a floor lamp burned across the expanse of the living room. It couldn’t have been more than a 40-watt bulb. Just enough light to see where he put his feet. The only other light came from a television playing a game show at so low a volume he couldn’t even make out which one.

He caught sight of a vague shape in the worn recliner beside the lamp. It didn’t move, even when Billy called a hearty, “Ev’nin’, Mr. Summers.”

The eerie itch something here didn’t seem right prickled between his shoulder blades again, and Billy Roy turned, only to find Suzie June standing right behind him with two brimming mason jars of clear liquid.

“Here’s your shine, Billy. Go sit there on the couch by Pa, and I’ll rustle up a snack to go with it.”

“You don’t need to go to that trouble, Suzie,” he began, trying to inch around her.

“I insist, Billy.” Her eyes flashed in the dim light. She thrust one of the mason jars into his hand and moved past him to set the other on the arm of the recliner. “Here you go, Pa,” she murmured.

Billy sat on the edge of the sofa, holding the jar between his knees. He took one sip when she glanced his way expectantly.

Damn. The shine tasted phenomenal. It had a hint of something he couldn’t define beneath the usual sharp taste. There seemed to be a bit of fruitiness as well, which made it go down easier than the rotgut he’d been drinking earlier.

Suzie June was still watching him, so he took another sip. Why the hell not?

He chugged the entire jar. It tasted so damn good…

Mr. Summers still hadn’t moved in his scruffy old recliner. How could he resist the aroma wafting up from his own jar of hooch?

“Well, I really should get moving, Suzie J. My ma will ground me for a month if I don’t get my homework done before she gets home.”

“I thought she expected you to bring home dinner.”

“Uh, yeah. She does.”

“But she’s not home? Billy, I’m disappointed in you. At least get your lies straight.”

Billy rose to his feet and stumbled into the recliner, knocking the jar of moonshine off the arm and into Mr. Summers’ lap. The old man still didn’t react.

“Whaz goin’ on here, Suzie June?” Billy slurred, blinking his eyes, trying to focus.

“Nothing to worry about, Billy Roy,” she murmured. “Why don’t you lie back on the couch there for a few minutes?”

“I gotta go,” he protested, but his legs wouldn’t obey his commands. “Maybe for a few.”

He collapsed onto the couch in a heap. His head spun like the merry-go-round in the playground at the church. What the hell was happening here?

Suzie June looked down at him, her head cocked to the side. “Yes, I think you will be a delightful addition to the family.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“Well, there’s Pa there—” She pointed at the recliner. “Oh, I bet you need a bit more light to see him properly.” She flicked a switch on the wall, and the room sprang into sharp focus with the addition of the floodlights in each corner.

Billy Roy gasped as he got his first clear look at the figure on the recliner. The man looked almost skeletal—or maybe mummified was a better description. A wound in his neck gaped like a second smile. His clothes appeared stiff with blood and other fluids.

“What happened, Suzie?”

“He didn’t want me to go dancing, Billy…so he did this.” She lifted her skirt to disclose the rough wooden feet attached to her legs. They looked odd…like rocking chair runners more than proper feet. Maybe that explained the weird gliding motion.

“Well, I couldn’t put up with that, now, could I?” she continued. “He expected it would keep me home. So, I showed him how I felt about that. And I liked it. Made me feel powerful. Special. So, now I look for people who need to learn a lesson—and I teach it to them.”

“What?” Billy found it more and more difficult to keep his eyes open. “What have you done?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Billy Roy?” She shook her head with a sigh. “I thought you were smarter than that. You shouldn’t have been out joyridin’ tonight, Billy. Then I would have found myself another loser to teach. But you come barreling down the road like you owned it. You don’t. I do. Guess this will up my count to seven. Always been my lucky number.”

She stepped forward, with that strange gliding step. The last thing Billy Roy saw was the glint of steel in her hand.

 

 

The Dispossessed (Paul Edwards)

 

I spent days plotting how I was going to infiltrate Kirstie Langford’s life.

Most nights I would gaze up at her window, at the pale, dim light inside her room. Sometimes I’d catch sight of her – a shadow, a flicker; as fleeting and insubstantial as a ghost. Then she’d turn and slip out of my sight again.

Sometimes I’d almost feel something. A residue; a trace, perhaps. Memories of Sara would re-surface: her face, her smile, her voice.

“What are you thinking about?” Kirstie asked.

I looked up from my pint. The wood-panelled walls of the Cross Keys Inn snapped back into focus.  

“Nothing,” I replied.

I was quiet for a moment. I rubbed my eye with the palm of my hand. “It’s just… Well, this is kind of weird for me. To be out with you…with anyone like this.” I painted on a thin smile. “I’ve been watching you for quite a while now.”

“I know,” she said.

I stared out the window at the monochrome grey sky.

“This is the first time I’ve asked anyone out since my wife…left.”

It was impossible to feel bad about the lie.

“Sorry,” I said quickly, raking a hand through my hair, “I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

“It’s okay,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “You can talk about her if you like. I don’t mind.”

“She was my everything,” I continued, my voice emotionless. “I would have done anything for her. But I just didn’t see… I…”

She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t let go?”

I nodded.

“I think I understand,” she said, looking down at her hands. “When did you break up?”

“About seven years ago. She went to Sydney, Australia, to live with another man. I tried to find her out there. Spent months just…searching.”

“My husband left me a year ago,” she said, quietly, and half-smiled.

She reached out a hand, smoothed my knuckles with her fingers.

We went back to her place.

In her room she sat on her bed as I gazed about me. It was pretty much how I had expected it to be. Old, peeling wallpaper; a small narrow bed pushed up against the wall; a pot of flowers on a desk; a round makeup vanity mirror. The room smelt of potpourri and a sweet, inexpensive perfume.

I looked at her, and she looked at me with those immensely lonely eyes. She pushed her hands between her thighs and said, “Come sit by me.”

I stepped toward her. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said. “I’m incapable of feeling. And I…miss her, you know? I know I miss her.”

I stopped and plucked a photograph out of my jacket pocket. It was of Sara, smiling that pretty smile of hers.

“Is that her?” Kirstie asked. “Is that your wife?”

“Yes,” I said.

“May I look?”

I shook my head.

There were other pictures in my pocket. Love letters, too. I took them out and laid them on the floor, right next to her feet. 

“What are you doing?” There was a slight tremble in Kirstie’s voice.

“I used to be like you,” I said, straightening up, sitting down on the bed beside her at last. “I had a good life. I have memories. No feelings, though. Not anymore.”

I cast wide, vacant eyes upon her. “I don’t know how it happened, but I’m not human anymore. I can only siphon, see. And what you’ve got… Well, the pain makes it real, you know?”

My fingers brushed her blouse, her skin. She screwed her eyes up tight. Then my hand passed right through her, groping, reaching, searching the space beyond. 

Kirstie’s head lolled sideways, her eyelids flickering.

It didn’t take me long to find what I was searching for.

I withdrew my hand, Kirstie tumbling right off the bed. I knelt beside her unmoving form and stared at all my pictures of Sara on the floor.

Suddenly, a wave of grief came crashing over me. My body shook, my stomach churned. I glanced across at the mirror, tears shattering my image in the glass. I scrunched photographs and love letters under me as I screamed and wept into the carpet. Rolling on to my back, I moaned her name, over and over: Sara, Sara, Sara. 

In time, it subsided.

I sat up, dazed and disorientated.

I stared at the photographs scattered around me.

I felt nothing again.

The police found Kirstie five days later, but by then I’d moved on. I was in another city, another place, looking for girls who were weighed down by the world. It’s not too hard to pick out the lonely, the broken, the dispossessed.

One afternoon I was sat in a park when a pale girl passed me by. She was tall and thin, with blond hair that made me think of Sara. As she walked past, she glanced at me and smiled, although the smile never quite reached her eyes.

She hurried on.

I watched her for a moment, then got up and followed.