Lee Harper Oswald

38

Shit Pail drops another still-burning cigarette butt between her thighs and into the shit pail. At this point, Rupert might have lost his sense of smell, it having been seared from his nostrils.

“So, wait,” she says, shifting and closing her legs to keep the residual smoke from escaping until the butt finally goes out. “The cops showed up? How’d they get there so quick, I mean, inside the cave?”

“Well,” Rupert explains. “Who can tell why they even answered Joe’s ass-dialed 911 call? But I did find out later that there is a serviceable entrance down into the caverns through the Osprey School’s Visitor Center gift shop.”

“No way.”

“Way. Been there for years, apparently. I suspect the clerk there had something to do with it, but I have no idea, and frankly, I’ve kind of had enough of that craziness.”

“Now you just get high,” she says.

“Yep.”

“Well, how did you and Leenda get out of there?”

“Paddle-squid I left on the bank at Webb’s Cove, unscathed by the speedboat crash that killed Osceola and that poor, violated ostrich. Worked a lot better with two people. Took it under Cock’s Footbridge, past the Guptill House and the pioneer boatyard, and kept going north past the Bird Keys and into Little Sarasota Bay. We docked at someone’s personal boat launch on Siesta Key and then walked down Midnight Pass about three miles . . . ”

“That’s an awful lot of traveling for a pedal boat and walking,” Shit Pail interrupts.

“We had a lot to talk about.” Rupert smiles. “Did you know that there is a point about three inches above the ankle, on the inside of the leg, that when electrically stimulated can bring a woman to orgasm?”

Shit Pail looks at Rupert. “No. I did not know that.”

“Well,” Rupert squirms a little uncomfortably. “Now you do.”

Shit Pail nods and rolls her eyes.

“Anyway, once we got to where the resorts are, Leenda called us a cab and we went back to . . . ”

“The Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet,” Shit Pail said, enthusiastic.

“Actually, we got a room over at the Regency Courtyard Royal-Clarion Inn.”

“Ha! Yeah, I guess you didn’t need to see that Angel chick again,” Shit Pail says, smiling.

“You got that right.”

“So, then what happened?” she asks, still smiling.

Rupert opens his mouth and then shuts it.

“None of your business.” He pauses, then says: “I did see in the paper that a large group of despondent Tweakers had descended upon a ritzy retirement home that night and terrorized the wealthy retirees.”

“Is that related?” Shit Pail asks.

“Might be. I don’t know. It was pretty weird, though.”

“Says the guy saved by a mutant-big aloe plant.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she says, eyeballing him through squinting lids. “That’s all, um . . . pretty unbelievable. And I’m high as tits.”

“I know.” Rupert sighed. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure it all happened. Maybe some of it, but not all of it. Probably.”

“How’s the anxiety now?”

“Fine, when I’m high. And I’m usually pretty high.”

“Since you smoked that crack . . . ”

“Meth,” Rupert corrects.

“Crack,” Shit Pail counters.

“It was meth.”

“Okay.”

Shit Pail nods. Rupert nods with her.

“So, uh, you still with Leenda? Whatever happened with her?”

Rupert breaks into a huge smile, the biggest smile Shit Pail’s seen on his face all night.

“Leenda loves me.”

“Even like this?”

“Fucked up? Yep.” His smile becomes comically bigger. “She loves me no matter what.”

Shit Pail nods and looks at Rupert for a moment.

“You know what?” she says.

Rupert looks at her expectantly.

“You should get clean.”

He breaks the eye contact and looks down, thinking. Then finally:

“Yeah. I should.” He looks at Shit Pail. “I will.”

“Because you love her, too, and even if she puts up with this shit, she shouldn’t have to.” Shit Pail’s smile would be pretty if she had any decent teeth left. She passes the remainder of the blunt to Rupert. “But for right now, here’s to one last burn.”

He takes and hits it, thinking of Leenda.

As he exhales, they hear the sound of heavy footsteps moving toward them, and then, like in the caverns, a police radio. Then, a knock on the door.

Shit Pail tries to jump up and Rupert averts his eyes, but her pants have been down around her ankles for so long, she’s forgotten them. She almost takes a header, but not only manages to stay upright, but also to get her pants most of the way up while yelling: “Yes! We’re in here! Help!” And then muttering to Rupert, “it’s about goddamn time.”

The doorknob to the closet turns without any fuss and the door swings open, revealing the half-amused/half-disgusted face of one of Sarasota’s finest. He recoils at the smell and disappears, but his face is replaced by another, who grimaces and says:

“It’s unlocked, idiots.”

Then, from behind him: “You’re under arrest for trespassing.”

“Idiots.”

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37

In the distance, echoing through the chamber and tunnel behind them, they heard what sounded like the footsteps of certainly more than a few of people.

For a minute, Rupert thought it could be Tommy and Bucket, or Merideth and Joe—he felt afraid this wasn’t over yet, not so much for himself, but for poor Leenda, who’d been through so much she’d had no clue about. He felt guilty for not having told her about everything, warned her a long time ago. But, how could he have? How would any normal, sane person react to this? It was more than would fit on a single postcard, and besides, he couldn’t have risked chasing her off completely then, and his heart broke now, knowing this couldn’t end well.

They then heard police radios, which wasn’t much better. They had to move, now.

Leaving Bill’s crumpled, but still breathing form, the three of them ran back through the now-wrecked lab chamber and scrambled up the cemetery access. When Rupert and Leenda got outside and into the fresh night air, they saw Jesus was no longer following.

Rupert made to keep going, but Leenda grabbed his hand.

“We can’t leave . . . that guy,” she said. “Whoever that guy is.”

“We can,” Rupert replied. “He’s a big boy.”

It sounded as if there were cops all over the paths of Spanish Point, and when they heard footsteps running down the trail toward them, Rupert pulled them both through the thick bushes of the cemetery and behind Mary’s Chapel.

They stood there in silence, Rupert’s hand settled on Leenda’s back, but he then realized this and removed it. It was dark, though the moon cast a few flecks of silver over them through the trees, landing softly across their features, but Rupert wouldn’t look at her. Soon, the sound of the police became part of the background noise of the place, blending in with the songs of the insects and the night birds. All Rupert could hear was Leenda’s breathing.

“Rupert,” she whispered. “Do you love me?”

Rupert’s chest seized, full of fear, and he stuttered out something incoherent. He feared he was having a stroke. Leenda stood on her tiptoes and moved close to his ear.

“I have loved you since I first saw you,” she said. “When you came into the museum to apply for the janitor’s job. I can’t tell you why.”

He felt his face flush red and was glad she couldn’t see it. His knees felt weak. He thought only he, Stanley, and Pyrdewy had known about that—the janitor’s application.

“Which I didn’t get because I’m not qualified,” he whispered.

“Rupert, you got a better job, doing what you love, doing what you’re so good at.”

“Wait,” Rupert had to backtrack. “You loved me?”

“Love. Present. I love you now,” she answered. “I thought you knew.” She lowered herself back down, feet flat against the mossy ground. She sounded disappointed.

Rupert couldn’t absorb any of this, though he tried. Everything between his brain and his heart stopped and wouldn’t budge for anything. This is a stroke.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were building a giant meth super lab under the mound?”

“How did you know?”

“That whacked-out white fake-Indian guy told me.”

“Which . . . ?” he began, but remembered she’d never met Osceola. He hung his head. “I wasn’t in my right mind,” he finally said. “There’s something about this place. Something that makes you crazy. I thought I was doing it for you, for us. I thought there was an us. I thought I was better than I am. I just didn’t give a shit—”

“Exactly,” she said. She stretched up again and kissed him. “And that’s amazing. And I’ve never wanted you to be anything but exactly who and what you are. And sometimes . . . often . . . it’s right not to give a shit. Like when you apply for a janitor’s position when you’re not even qualified for that.”

He had closed his eyes at the kiss, but then opened them and looked directly at her for the first time.

“What did I say to you?”

“What?”

“On the phone? I really have no idea . . . ”

Leenda laughed. “Well, it was pretty disjointed—like stream of consciousness—but brief. Something about your taxes and how you might need bail money; the possibility of writing your prison memoirs—something about a Derek Peterson; something about getting married, naked, on the back of a giant alligator. And it sounded like an alarm clock kept going off. Then you just kept saying my name over and over, except you stressed the ‘ee’ like Leeeeeeenda. And, actually, it sounded like you were jerking off, which was flattering in a weird way, but then I’d hear a kind of zapping noise as the alarm went off, and you’d scream. It happened, like, three times. I tried to talk to you, but I’m not sure you knew you were still on the phone. Then the line went dead.”

Rupert was pretty sure death by humiliation was a thing and he was experiencing it now. He wished more than anything that the alarm-clock-turned-electro-stimulation-device had killed him.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Leenda smiled. “I didn’t know what to make of it at first, and I just assumed the negative—I was pretty angry—but I thought about it and had it pretty well figured out by the time I got your completely psycho-creepy postcard. Also kind of flattering. But, seriously, absolutely creepy. You shouldn’t do that.”

Rupert sighed deeply and covered his eyes, trying to rub the mortification out of them.

She laughed again. “You know, everyone has their shameful little secrets. Nasty Habits—that was an Oingo Boingo song, right?—things they struggle with . . . ”

“What’s your struggle?” he asked.

“I find it difficult to find a sexual partner willing to experiment with electro-stimulation.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then embraced for a long, unforgettable, cinematic kiss—which was interrupted by movement in a nearby bush. A scrambling sound, too small to be the police, or Jesus.

Abruptly, Steve Perry came flying out of nowhere, used Rupert’s head as a launch point, and landed several feet away in the Pioneer Cemetery.

“Motherfu—”

But Steve Perry cut Rupert off with a triumphant screech, ripped off his electric-blue monkey vest, screeched again for emphasis, then scrambled over the headstones and disappeared into the jungles of Spanish Point.

Another sigh from Rupert. “Good luck, you disgusting little shit.”

One last, fading screech and all was quiet.

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35

As Joe got about halfway through the opening he’d created in what he hoped was the final blockage, the cave tunnel rumbled, and the rubble shifted enough to pin him where he was, but not crush him.

He struggled, wriggling every way he could to find some space, but there was nothing. Merideth yelled at him in the darkness from behind. Lucky for Joe, she had already thrown her Rolling Pin of Death through the hole, and with the flashlight in his hand—the only part of him still mobile—he looked at it lying on the ground in front of him. If she’d still had it, his legs would have been mincemeat by now.

Joe thanked whomever or whatever that he hadn’t been crushed and wasn’t being beaten right now, but he was immobilized from his shoulders to his thighs. He wasn’t uncomfortable and thought it conceivable to take a nap. Joe was pretty beat. If he was lucky, the pile would shift again and kill him in his sleep.

But Merideth pinched his calves, hard, and he was persuaded to squirm a little more, if only to escape her boney, long-nailed fingers. As he did, he could hear the distinct sound of his phone dialing someone, and then after a moment, he heard:

“911. What’s your emergency?”

Joe had accidentally butt-dialed 911 a number of years ago—it was while he and his mother made meth in another trailer, in another mobile home park. That didn’t go so well. This, though, could go better. He hoped.

“Joe, what the fuck was that?”

Joe didn’t move, said nothing.

“Joe?”

“Nothing, mom.”

“Hello? This is 911 dispatch. What is your emergency?”

“Goddamn it, Joe!”

Joe wished the rest of the cave would collapse altogether and crush them both.

36

Rupert stumbled half-blind over the giant tentacle and through the hole; the tentacle withdrew behind him. Jesus stood there—not having ventured too far in—with his cell phone out for light, looking stunned.

The chamber they’d entered was preposterously large. Rupert pulled a flashlight from his cross-body bag, though his mind grew hazy, and investigated. A few pairs of massive stalagmites and stalactites almost reached each other from top to bottom around the perimeter, but the center of the ceiling looked like packed earth. There couldn’t have been much earth between the ceiling of the cavern and the ground surface above—and the nearly-sheer walls made it unreachable. There was no way out.

In the very center of the cavern floor, dwarfed by the space around it, was a huge pile of what looked to be Native American remains—and quite a few of them, broken and mixed up with various relics. Rupert pointed the flashlight up to the earthen ceiling above the pile, and though the beam just barely reached—a few roots hung down, bones and artifacts jumbled among them.

The lab hadn’t been located under Leenda’s mound—this cavern was—and Native Americans had been depositing their dead here for centuries, not knowing they had fallen down into this chamber. Or maybe they did know. He had no idea.

Some of the stalactites that had formed here over thousands of years had been knocked to the floor and lay in massive, broken heaps. Rupert imagined the power of those falls and of them breaking apart—his thoughts jumped immediately to Leenda. This was how he’d felt when he’d heard her last message—a seismic heartbreak of geologic proportion.

The comparative light coloring where the breaks occurred made the events look rather recent.

The earthquake. Rupert looked to the Plant with No Name, whom he could now see the enormous scale of—it took up most of the cavern floor—and it seemed to shrug. Oops.

Leenda. He wanted to look at his watch, but felt lightheaded and his thoughts scattered. He looked all around and found artifacts everywhere, all over the floor of the cavern and presumably under the gigantic aloe. He wondered how they’d have gotten all over the place as they should, in theory, all be concentrated in and around the pile, when a crash came from the neighboring lab chamber they’d just vacated.

“Jesus,” Rupert said, somewhat drunkenly. “Bill looked pretty unstable in there.” As he said this, the crashing continued and became louder and more consistent—Bill was destroying the lab and screaming something about Derek Peterson and MeeMaw, and demanding to know what had happened to his Whackin’ Dick.

“I don’t know if we can go back that way,” Rupert finished, his thoughts boomeranging more erratically than his lagging mouth could keep up with.

As Jesus looked about to respond, he was cut off by Efunibi’s Tonto voice, echoing through the chamber, soaring over the background of Bill’s destruction.

“Kemo Sabe!”

Rupert ran the beam of his flashlight around and then up in the direction of the voice. It was, indeed, Efunibi, and worse, he had Leenda, gagged and terrified. Rupert’s heart leapt around inside his chest, panicking. But also . . .

She came! She actually showed up!

They stood on a small ledge not much wider or longer than an average bookshelf. Efunibi had deteriorated—he was pallid, but still wrinkled, like bleached leather. Most of his hair had fallen out, except for one ratty braid with a few equally ratty feathers that stuck out in all directions. His jacket had lost much of its fringe. All of his teeth appeared to be missing.

Desperate, Rupert looked around but there was nothing that could be of any use, and he grew foggier, his thoughts less coherent, from whatever the Plant with No Name had doused him with. Again. He saw nothing with which to fight Efunibi and no way to get to them anyway. And Efunibi rambled on about something, which made it difficult for Rupert to think.

“Efunibi come,” he went on, “heap big long time ago. Don’t even know how heap. Efunibi eternal. But him heap tired and want to go home. Holy Nagai Nagayoshi betray Efunibi. Efunibi have no purpose.”

Rupert was quickly losing his ability to rationalize anything, but he turned to the Plant with No Name, meaning to ask it what to do, could it help him get to Leenda? But the oversized aloe plant pulsated slower and slower—it seemed weakened and unable to do much. It might have been dying.

Rupert glimpsed Jesus in his peripheral running to some far area of the chamber. His friend picked something up, examined it for a second, and then yelled to Rupert:

“Hey, ese! Catch!”

Jesus threw something and despite feeling sloth-like, Rupert’s reflexes were quicker than he’d expected and he caught the object. It was an ancient Native American pipe, an exact match to the one from the PBS documentary so long ago from his childhood. The anxiety that memory had always produced welled inside Rupert—he waited for his lungs to shut down, his throat to constrict, for the pistachio and crème to flood his brain, the foul smell of a cheese fondu to fill his nostrils. The plaid.

But nothing came. The feeling simply dissipated, and as it did, everything around him went quiet. Everything but the whimpering pleas of Leenda against the gag and her struggle against Efunibi.

Rupert took a deep breath and reached into his shorts pocket for a lighter. He didn’t have one. He never carried one and he didn’t know why he checked.

“Hey!” Jesus yelled from near the Plant with No Name. He tossed Rupert a lighter, who, again, caught it with surprising agility. He brought the pipe to his mouth, feeling natural despite never having smoked anything in his life, and lit up, inhaling deep whatever was packed inside—some sort of magical plant, hundreds of years old, maybe meant for a marriage ceremony, or for war, or for a funeral—any of these purposes were appropriate here.

He exhaled more smoke than he thought a pair of human lungs could have taken in, and in a few seconds, the chamber brightened and the flashlight became superfluous.

Rupert saw one of the aloe tentacles move slowly, feebly, toward the side of the chamber, beneath the tiny ledge that held aloft Leenda and Efunibi, who was still lamenting something of which no one had any idea. Now, though, he attempted one of his ritualistic dances, still hanging on to Leenda’s arm. Her eyes grew wide with fear as she was pulled this way and that, her center of gravity shifting back and forth, afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep up, or that it would finally be too much for the ledge, and they would both plunge to their gruesome, splattery deaths.

When Rupert saw Leenda’s eyes, the strength of a thousand men surged through him, and not only that, a thousand men his size. He followed the path the tentacle indicated and found in the mystery illumination that a number of shallow and precariously-placed ledges ran all over up the walls of the chamber.

Rupert began to climb.

At first, Efunibi didn’t see, he was so wrapped up in his dance. But as Rupert closed the distance between them, Efunibi noticed, stopped dancing, and pulled Leenda closer to him.

Rupert felt around above him for other areas of purchase, scarcely able to keep his own large form on the ledge he’d landed on. There was nothing—nothing else to climb to, to get him closer to Leenda. He looked down, which one should never do, and realized he had entered what one pioneering rocket scientist of the 1920s referred to as “extreme altitudes.” He also saw that Bill had apparently finished demolishing the lab, had made it through the hole—undeterred by the attendance of a mammoth, sentient aloe plant—and was presently attacking Jesus with the broken dildo.

Jesus didn’t seem too troubled by it, which was reassuring.

Rupert looked up again, trying to maintain his balance, and studied the ledge the two stood on. It appeared to be too small for two people, but Leenda was closest to the wall—a lucky break. Efunibi glared down at him. Rupert braced himself for some sort of reaction, which arrived in the form of a ludicrous screech—like an inadequate, but enthusiastic imitation of an eagle—which even caused Leenda to pause her distress mode to glance at him like, what the fuck was that?

Without thinking, Rupert sprung into action, shrugging his cross-body bag from his neck and shoulder and adjusting its strap to its longest capacity. He then swung the cross-body bag up, and Leenda looked down at him, petrified, but with the same look of, what the fuck? Except it now referred to his idiotic strategy, of which he was also dubious. But there was no time.

Rupert tried several times, swinging his cross-body bag up over his head, and when it finally hooked over a crag in the ledge, he braced himself against the wall as best he could and pulled with everything he had—the strength of a thousand six-foot-ten-inch, 235-pound men—two-hundred thirty-five thousand pounds of power, or so he imagined with an equal amount of force. Bucket’s voice sounded in his head: It is all created by electrical impulses running through your nervous system. Which are, of course, generated by your mind. Your thoughts. In a fraction of a second, Rupert visualized the entire scene, start to finish, ending with Leenda safe in his arms—he willed the success of this stupid, reckless endeavor, honing his thoughts with laser-like accuracy.

“Bucket! Don’t fail me, you nasty, twisted bastard!”

A great crack echoed throughout the chamber and the ledge gave way, plummeting both Efunibi and Leenda toward the rocky, artifact-strewn floor below.

Rupert let go of the strap and reached out in time to catch Leenda by the wrist, which he then grabbed with both hands. This dislocated her shoulder and she screamed through the gag. The ledge wasn’t big enough for the two of them—and Rupert already counted as two people—so he pulled her close and held her tight. She moaned in pain, feet dangling.

As he watched his mentor-turned-nemesis fall, shitty-eagle screeching all the way, Efunibi began to glow—not pink, like the Whackin’ Dick, but a warm golden glow and grew brighter as he neared the floor. Seconds from impact, Efunibi’s now-radiant form made a lightning-fast U-turn upward and, turning into a white-hot bright spherical light, shot up through the center of the ceiling, through the burial mound, laughing, and without displacing a grain of soil.

He was gone.

It was quiet now, and the mysterious illumination of the chamber has disappeared. It was pitch black once more.

Then, a light.

A flashlight. Jesus pointed it up at them, confirming they were still there, and then around himself to show that he’d incapacitated Bill and now sat on him. Bill looked to be unconscious. Then the beam went back up to Rupert and Leenda.

“Holy shit, did you see that?” Jesus shouted up to them.

Rupert could barely hold the two of them in place, Leenda’s feet hung over the edge of the ledge. He was afraid it wouldn’t take their weight much longer.

“Um . . . Jesus,” Rupert called down. “I . . . I can’t get us down.”

As the words came from his mouth, Rupert saw a huge green and black aloe tentacle emerging from below, out of the darkness. It slowly, gingerly wrapped itself around both Leenda and Rupert, squeezed enough to hold them, then gently brought them to ground level.

The tentacle released them and Leenda sank to the ground, her knees too weak from the whole experience to stand, and from the pain in her shoulder. Jesus ran over to her.

Before she could decide whether to not she should trust this complete stranger after what had just happened, with expert torque, he snapped her humerus back into its socket. She screamed one last time, and then Jesus advised: “You’ll want to ice that later.”

Rupert had sat down next to her, but at least a foot away. If she was angry with him before, she must hate him now. In the dark, he focused his eyes on the dirt floor beneath his feet and said nothing. No one said anything for a few minutes. In the eerie silence, they recovered to the greatest extent that one could from such a bizarre, harrowing encounter in such a short period of time.

Then, the darkness of the chamber began to retreat again. Rupert looked behind him at the Plant with No Name. It glowed a faint green light, which became stronger with each pulse of the plant. Soon, as it grew brighter and brighter, its tentacles began to writhe, slowly at first, but gaining strength and a certain wildness. They all got up and moved away, Jesus dragging Bill’s limp body with him.

Now the plant began to shrink, smaller and smaller, but as it did, its glow grew stronger and stronger. The chamber lit up once again, like green daylight, and the plant worked to resume its normal size. As it did, Rupert looked around the cavern and thought something had changed, but before he could place it, the Plant with No Name grew so small, it winked into a little ball and shot up through the bottom of the burial mound, exactly as Efunibi had.

Again, it was dark and quiet.

“Well.” Jesus said after a moment. “That was some crazy-ass shit.”

Rupert flicked the flashlight on again and walked around the chamber a little, looking all over it, trying to place the change he thought he’d seen. Then it was obvious.

There were no Native American artifacts. No relics. No bones, nor sharks’ teeth. Rupert stood surrounded by the largest, filthiest collection of drug paraphernalia anyone’s ever seen in the lives. This place was a drug den for Junkies, and looked like it had been for a very long time. Jumbled up with Florida Fried Gator bags and other myriad take-away cartons, empty drink cups and plastic utensils, were needles, foil, empty lighters, broken pipes, and bent, blackened spoons. There were enough pipe fragments to have sent Rupert into a coma-inducing seizure—but he felt nothing. He felt calm and was amazed by it. He celebrated in his head for a moment, until he whipped around and caught Jesus in the light’s beam.

“What the hell did I smoke?”

Jesus shrugged and smiled.

 

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33

By now, the McEejits had worked their way through three of the four cave-ins, Merideth bitching and swearing the entire way. Some of the holes Joe had pulled in or knocked through hadn’t been as easy or effective as the first.

Joe helped his mother through yet another hole and she flailed the Rolling Pin of Death around as she struggled, catching Joe here and there. He bled all over by now, but she didn’t care.

“Serves you right with this stupid fuckin’ idea,” she said, out of breath.

She fell out onto the cave floor with an abruptly-curtailed “Fuck!” and Joe helped her to her feet.

“Asshole,” she said. “Help me over to the wall, I need a minute or two. Catch my breath.”

“Sorry—” Joe assisted her to where she wanted to be and was about to apologize for the fortieth time when Merideth shhhhed him . . . they heard voices.

“Did you . . . ?” Merideth began. “Did you hear that someone’s about to get DPed? Is someone about to be double penetrated in this cave?”

“Double-penetrated?” Joe shrugged. It seemed unlikely, but any answer would likely get him smacked again.

“What the fuck?” she said. She moved to get going again, but stopped, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “No, I need a minute. Go ahead and see if there’s anymore of this shit to get through.”

Joe took the flashlight and walked ahead, leaving his mother wheezing in the pitch black of the cave. He thought to leave her there altogether and just go back the way they came, but he saw that the cave tunnel turned into a Y-shape, the passage off to the right narrower than the left, an offshoot of the main system.

Curious, Joe turned down the right passage and after a short way he saw what looked like a poorly-installed door—like a cheap bathroom door for the home, thin and hollow, with a simple twist lock. He put his ear to the door, but didn’t hear much, so he tried it—it was unlocked. Behind the door was a manmade, dug-out room full of twenty or thirty withdrawing Meth- and Crackheads. The smell suggested that it may as well have been full of Efunibi’s carcass lab shrines—their appearance was also not far off. None said anything, but stood slowly and staggered past him out the door and down the passage into the darkness, like a horde of non-flesh-eating zombies who simply wanted their fix.

Joe wondered how long they’d been in here—it was hard to tell because they were usually so thin to begin with. He followed them out, not thinking too much of it—surely they’d find their way through the openings he’d made and to freedom. So, he turned up the left in the Y and found another cave in.

“Damn,” he said to himself. Then he found a big stone that jutted out enough and sat down. He was pretty tired. This had been a bad idea, but that wasn’t entirely his fault. He didn’t watch the news.

After a few minutes, he had almost dozed off, so he got up, stretched, took a deep breath, and headed back down to retrieve his mother, when his mother yowled in what sounded like both fear and anger.

The Tweakers. Joe ran.

As he arrived with the sole light source, he found his mother wide-eyed standing like a barbarian with her Rolling Pin of Death locked in her fists before her—it was pretty bloody. On the floor lay a few Tweakers who were probably better off having been put out of their misery. The rest, some injured, felt their way around the pile of rubble. One was already climbing through the opening.

Joe wished he could lead the poor buggers out to safety, but—

“Who the fuck are these people, Joe?” Merideth screeched.

“It’s okay, mom. They’re just some Geekers I found locked up down a passage. Well, not locked. . . . They’re going to migrate out and into the community.”

Merideth was still pretty frazzled.

“Well,” she said, panting. “Is there anymore shit to get through?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Damn it!”

“But it’s got to be the last. I mean, we heard voices, right?”

She grabbed the flashlight from Joe. “We heard something. Come on. We gotta be close.” Joe followed.

34

Fulva—wide-eyed and veins popping—had lost her shit altogether and chased Rupert around the lab again, this time swinging her Derek Peterson flail, screaming about DPing everyone, and occasionally having a go at him with the weapon. Jesus tried his best to stop her, but the vacillating Peterson flail was too much of a deterrent. The fact was, it was highly unlikely that she could kill anyone with it, but if she caught someone with a corner—there looked to be a couple of hardcovers in the book stack—that could be pretty painful, so no one wanted to make contact. Also, if she managed to knock anyone out with it, the presence of MeeMaw’s double-ended Whackin’ Dick made the threats of DPing a little too feasible for anyone’s sense of comfort, so Rupert kept running and avoiding, and Jesus kept looking for a way to incapacitate Fulva.

But she handled the Peterson flail like a warrior—a thin, croaking, Little Girl yoga-pants-wearing, bloody, pink-haired warrior. Bill had begun to come back to life, the whacks of the dildo perhaps getting too much for even his catatonic state to ignore. He covered his head and rolled around under the lab table, seeking to dodge MeeMaw’s ghostly dildo wrath while Fulva hoarse-screamed at him to help her—neither of these things could have been very stimulating to Bill’s self-esteem.

And then, the entire cavern started to shake, building into what felt like an earthquake, but if Rupert’s memory of the Virginia show cave tour served, earthquakes wouldn’t translate with as much strength, if at all, this far underground. Besides, Florida wasn’t known for its earthquakes. Other off-putting things, yes, but not earthquakes. As everything rumbled and wobbled, everyone became—somehow—more confused than they had already been, overloading their systems and halting their festival of flail-swinging and dildo-whacking. Then the first stalactite hit the ground, breaking into pieces, and then another larger one, then several small ones.

Everyone screamed and ran, this time seeking shelter from the falling, stony death from above. While Fulva dove under the flimsy and collapsible table with Bill—which perhaps wasn’t the greatest idea—Rupert and Jesus fled to the perimeter and pushed empty barrels out of the way to press their backs to the walls. Through the falling stalactites and accumulating debris in the air, it was difficult for Rupert to see what went on and where everyone was. But he heard a cry and moved along the wall, kicking each barrel out of the way as he did, so he could at least see what he’d be dealing with next. Three final barrels away, he could see that a large hole had been knocked through from the other side of the cavern wall.

Rupert didn’t even know there was another side.

Before he had a moment to consider what it could be, a massive aloe-like tentacle flopped through and squirmed forward into the lab area, searching. In an instant, he recognized the black ridges and knew it was the Plant with No Name, but now it was immense—Rupert wondered if someone had slipped it some more embalming fluid. Instinctively, Rupert knew the giant aloe plant meant him no harm. The rumbling stopped, the pointy death rocks stopped falling, and the throbbing tentacle lay there.

Silence descended over the cavern and everything settled. Jesus found Rupert near the tentacle and looked at him. Then, as if both remembering at the same time, they swung around to the interior of the lab, looking through the dusty haze in the air for Fulva. Or Bill. Or even MeeMaw.

But there was nothing. Looking around, Rupert saw that a large stalactite had fallen directly onto the double-sided pink dildo, no longer glowing, and had split it in two.

That must have been the scream, Rupert thought. MeeMaw was nowhere to be seen and he breathed a small sigh of relief, if not for himself, then for the sake of the poor, long-suffering Bildo.

Then a noise did catch their attention—a strange whimpering and what sounded like paper ripping. Exchanging another look that determined the need to investigate, Rupert and Jesus searched under tables until they found Bill. And Fulva.

They had not been crushed by falling stalactite. Fulva looked to have had her face smashed in with a smaller stalactite, but not from having fallen from overhead. Bill still grasped it in his hand like a club, mumbling and crying, and his face was covered with fresh, non-ostrich blood spatter. With his free hand, he tore pages out of Derek Peterson’s Bareback Militia, crumpled them up, and shoved them into what was left of Fulva’s mouth, utilizing the pointy end of the stalactite to push them down her throat.

Somewhere in Bill’s incoherent blathering, Rupert made out something about “who’s getting DPed now?”

“Whoa,” Jesus said quietly. “That’s bleak.”

“Yeah,” Rupert replied. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“I was, sort of, but not in this context.”

“It’s . . . a bit much, eh?” Rupert said.

“Overkill,” Jesus responded. “Unnecessarily gruesome.”

“I guess it makes some sense.”

With that, they backed away, back toward the pulsating tentacle—its end curled and uncurled, as if beckoning them.

“We don’t know what happened to everyone else,” Rupert said. “I mean, Bananas and Bucket were sinking in a country club pond. Last I saw Joe and Merideth, Joe was non-responsive, and she was . . . ” He stopped, deciding it best not to reveal that he might have murdered an old woman with a kid’s bike, not even to Jesus. “Um, they could still be on the way.”

“Truth.”

“I think we need to get through this hole here,” Rupert said.

Jesus looked at him.

“Seriously, I don’t think the plant will attack. It’s been pretty non-aggressive since I’ve known it. Kind of an asshole and perhaps emotionally abusive, but definitely not physically aggressive.”

Jesus took a deep breath and moved toward the hole and tentacle.

“I gotta get my bag and papers,” Rupert said. “Be right behind you.”

Jesus replied something that sounded affirmative and then disappeared through the hole. Rupert stuffed all of his lab notes and blueprints into his cross-body bag, and as he slung the strap over his shoulder and approached the hole, the giant tentacle released a gas right into his face.

“Come on . . . ” Rupert wheezed.

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32

Rupert tried to squeeze down the cemetery access too quickly and almost got himself stuck a couple of times, but in a few moments, he’d made it to the cavern floor and yanked the cord on the small generator that provided the lighting. No one appeared to have been there and everything was in its place—except for the Plant with No Name. Its new pot sat empty under the lamp, a few clumps of soil spilled over the side and trailing to the floor—

* * *

“But everything’s fine, right?” Shit Pail asks. Her ass now looks to be permanently wedged into the shit pail. “Man, I wish we had some Superade or something.”

“There’s water from the work sink,” Rupert says, pointing to the grubby, dilapidated sink that hung from the wall. He is also a little parched.

She considers it.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Rupert doesn’t want to see the process of her removing herself from the shit pail and hopes she isn’t that thirsty.

“So, wait. What about Leenda?”

Rupert heaves a deep sigh.

“I’d completely forgotten.”

“How could you forget about Leenda?”

“I was being pursued by a pack of wild Junkies, Shi—” He catches himself. “I had a lot going on right that minute.”

“So, what happened to the plant?”

“I’m getting to all of that.”

“Well get to it!”

Shit Pail sucks another cigarette butt down to the filter, drops it between her legs, and rests her chin on her knee-propped palm. Ashes have been falling into her pushed-down underwear all this time and Rupert is thankful she hasn’t caught fire yet.

He continues.

“So, little did anyone know . . .

* * *

The McEejits had pulled up beside the D.E.A.T.H. program pit in which the mine opening gaped dark and foreboding. Since the cave-ins had been discovered, all work had stopped and they hadn’t even bothered to investigate what had happened. It was assumed that it had collapsed near the entrance—it’s not like they paid too much attention to structural safety, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. And Rupert had been right—it wasn’t important enough for them to pursue it. The program had packed everything up and left. All that remained was the pit, the puke barrels, the rickety wooden steps, and the mine entrance.

“Why are we here?” Merideth asked Joe, testy and worn out from the previous struggle. Her Rolling Pin of Death rested on her knees in the passenger seat.

“I remember hearing Rupert say something about this leading to Spanish Point—like a half-mile or something. Thought it might be quicker if we skipped all the traffic and slipped through here,” Joe replied, turning off the engine. He leaned over his mother, who almost smacked him, and pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment.

“What about the cave-in?” she asked.

“What cave-in?”

“Do you watch the news, moron?”

“No,” he answered plainly. “You know I don’t.”

“Weren’t you supposed to be coming down here for that program?”

Joe looked caught in a trap, which he was. He had not been attending the program. He didn’t answer, figuring silence was his best defense.

“You lying motherfucker,” she said and was about to hit him again, but then thought of the time. “We ain’t got time for this shit, but when we get home, I’m going to beat the snot outta you.”

Joe sighed, resigned to it. He got out of the Yukon and then helped his mother down the steps into the pit. They got to the cave opening and walked about thirty feet in, until the flashlight lit upon a pile of rubble.

Merideth hit Joe in the back of the head as hard as she could. Joe grabbed his head but said nothing.

“Well, asshole, we’re here now. You find a way through this.”

“What? Mom, it’s caved in—”

“I don’t give a shit. This was your brilliant idea, you figure it out.”

Joe sighed once more and looked around the debris for some way through, trying rocks to see if some might be loose. Joe’s luck was in for once and he soon found a spot where the stones were loose enough to pull out of the way, clearing an opening large enough for them to get through.

“Mom,” he called to her. She’d been leaning against the cave wall, angry and tapping her Rolling Pin of Death against it.

She walked over, expecting nothing.

“Well, shit,” she said. “You’re kidding.”

Joe pulled out a few more loose stones and then he crawled through. Upon landing on the other side, the Rolling Pin of Death plopped onto his back painfully, but he got up and helped his mother through the gap.

* * *

Back at RupeLee Industries, after concluding that someone had lifted his talking aloe plant, which caused him a surprising amount of concern for its welfare—in addition to concern that the plant might squeal additional information to the enemy—Rupert heard something off in the shadowy perimeter of the cavern.

“Who’s that?” he yelled.

“Who’s that?” a voice yelled back.

Jesus walked out of the shadows.

“What the fuck, dude?” Rupert said. “What are you doing here?”

“Dropped my wallet, bro,” Jesus answered. Apparently, after he’d flung the condom at Rupert, when he went to replace the wallet into his shorts pocket, missed, and it had slipped to the floor without a sound. “These shorts are too roomy.”

“What are you doing over there?”

“Just looking around.” He flashed his cell phone flashlight at Rupert. “We put everything together, but I never had a chance to look around.”

Then, a noise from the cemetery access—a scampering, and then Steve Perry rolled out, coming to a stop on his feet, and then screeching and screeching back up the access.

“Shit,” they said in unison.

They heard Fulva’s sandpaper voice complaining about getting her bag dirty, and Bill grunting, trying to get himself through to the cavern.

“They’re trying to kill me,” Rupert said to Jesus.

“Man, I told you so.” Jesus was grinning.

“It’s not funny!”

“Okay, it’s not.”

They heard Bill let out a frightened shout and then something fell down the access. MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick flopped down and landed on the floor, bouncing twice before coming to a stop next to Steve Perry.

They all stared at it, even the little psycho-monkey. No one had ever seen it out of Bill’s direct possession.

“Jesus, we need a plan. Now,” Rupert said, no one taking their eyes off the dildo, which looked so strange and alien out of Bill’s worshipping, cooncunt-oil massaging grip.

Before Jesus can answer, the rubber dick began to glow—faint at first, but then slowly pulsing into a bright, perturbing pink beacon.

Jesus opened his mouth to say something, but then shut it.

Steve Perry ran away from the dildo and climbed up Rupert’s body, grabbing onto his head for protection from whatever came. Rupert struggled to free himself of the foul creature, but also remained transfixed by the glowing, pulsing dildo. A pink mist rose from the Whackin’ Dick, swirling as if sentient, and gradually forming a semi-human shape. Then:

“Bildo!” an angry voice yelled. It sounded a little like Fulva, but less like an old man than a chain-smoking old woman, which was accurate for once. “Goddamn it, Bildo, you fucked up again, didn’t you?”

“­¡Joder!” Jesus choked out. “MeeMaw!”

At that, MeeMaw’s ghostly pink form moved and turned to them.

“Who the hell are you?” She looked around herself. “Where the hell is this? Why’s my dick on the floor? Bildo!”

Her answers came in the form of Fulva and Bill tumbling down through the access and onto the cavern floor, knocking the glowing dildo and MeeMaw out of the way, at which she emitted a surprised yelp.

Despite being covered with blood and dirt, Fulva still complained about the filth, oblivious, for the moment, that MeeMaw’s furious spirit had somehow been called forth.

“Christ, Bill,” MeeMaw said, “you’re still with this hooker?”

At the sound of MeeMaw’s voice, Bill screamed and ran around, desperate for a corner to cower in, but found nothing. He hid under a lab table whimpering: “I told you she’d come! I told you you shouldn’t joke . . . ”

Jesus bent over a little to watch this. Bill abruptly stopped his babbling and went catatonic, making the motions of holding MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick and stroking it lovingly. The actual Whackin’ Dick was fifteen feet away and still manifesting the old, dead porn/headshop owner.

Fulva looked at the dildo, then at MeeMaw, and snorted.

“Oh, fuck yourself,” she growled, then turned her full attention to Rupert. “You’re dead,” she said, heading for him. Rupert ran, Steve Perry still clinging to the back of his head.

“God, you crazy bitch, what do you want?” he yelled behind him as he began to make laps around the cavern—still trying to detach Steve Perry from his head—weaving between tables or hugging the barrels against the walls. “I sold your damn tickets; I made you more money!”

She trapped him between a cluster of extra barrels and the framework for the mobile meth lab components.

“Not the point, Rupie,” she said, walking closer, dragging her soiled hippy bag behind her like a corpse. She looked exactly as if she’d just crashed a speedboat and bathed in warm ostrich blood. “When you work for Fulva Siki, Fulva Siki owns you.” Then she stopped and yelled: “Steve Perry!”

And Steve Perry—that devious little bastard—went for Rupert’s eyes, but Jesus, knowing the monkey well, presumed the worst fifteen seconds ago and was already moving to help. He knocked Fulva out of the way, parried with Rupert’s flailing, screaming form for a few seconds, and then swung out a right hook, knocking Steve Perry off Rupert’s head and about ten feet across the room.

As soon as the monkey landed, it ran to Fulva and hid behind her as she got up from the floor. For a moment, Rupert and Jesus were distracted by the fury of MeeMaw, who had become corporeal enough to have picked up her own manifesting Whackin’ Dick and was now leaning under the table, chastising “Bildo” for being such a colossal “fuck up.” Bill looked to be somewhere else—perhaps having an out-of-body experience—and was impervious to the dildo blows.

Rupert and Jesus were transfixed by the scene for a moment, but Fulva didn’t give a shit about anything—a true Florida Woman. She only yelled over her shoulder: “Get ‘im, MeeMaw!” and then mumbled to herself: “That worthless sack of shit.” As she muttered, she stared straight at Rupert and started to pull something from her bag.

Jesus noticed her movement and tapped Rupert’s arm to redirect his attention. They watched in horror as she whipped out a kind of medieval flail fashioned from a chain that had been pulled through a large stack of drilled-through Derek Peterson novels and journals. It had been equipped with a fuzzy, pink handle, which she gripped, white-knuckled.

* * *

Shit Pail is enthralled and more stunned than Rupert imagined her capable of.

“Holy shit,” she gasps. “Jonesin’ for a Diphthong is, like, six hundred pages.”

Rupert concurs—it was an intimidating, potentially fatal literary weapon.

* * *   

The horror was that no one expected Fulva would ever think of defacing her Peterson books like that. This was serious.

“They must have broken up or something,” Jesus whispers to Rupert.

“Christ, no wonder she’s rabid. No one would be this pissed over—”

Fulva, despite her waiflike frame, swung the Peterson flail up and around her head, her face growing more determined and more vicious with each full circle.

As the Peterson flail whoop-whooped around Fulva’s head, Rupert became mesmerized. Time slowed down just enough for him to fully absorb the scene. Surely this was exactly what his outlook on life had come to—he should have expected it. Not for the first time, Rupert realized that he’d made a wrong turn somewhere—perhaps a few—and when you’re looking to Bucket for advice on living—the idea that what you think about most is basically what you tend to get more and more of . . . . He stared at the whirling Peterson book flail, the titles blurring into what looked like a saw blade inching closer and closer. The effect was the conjuring of the horrific, nondescript face of Derek Peterson—sociopathy personified—rubbery and androgynous, morphing from that to Rupert’s own face, to Pyrdewy’s—back through every face of social rejection he’d ever encountered, culminating in his mother’s, where it lingered, and she screamed at him: “Did you bring those little wieners? Of course you did!” Then cackling, which faded back into the sound of the whirling flail, and his mother’s face disappeared, replaced by his own 10-year-old face, then abruptly to Peterson’s voided visage, who grinned at Rupert with sharp, gaped tooth-like forms.

Rupert was frozen with existential horror. Jesus saw nothing, but heard something about a little wiener. It was Fulva.

The books whoop-whooped around her head and she drew out the drama with an insulting tirade on Rupert’s manhood, which ended with: “—and your shriveled little wiener!”  And then, she finished her oratory with: “Prepare to get DPed!”

Jesus Christ. I did this to myself.

Just before she lunged, Rupert heard MeeMaw ask faintly: “Who’s getting DPed?”

And then—chaos.

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31

The Stately Swamp Mobile Home Commons exited right onto Tamiami, and Rupert ran down the main drag, though staying as far away from the road itself, through parking lots, behind buildings if he could, hopping anything that stood in his way that could be hopped. He ran past where McIntosh had curved and met with Tamiami, careening dangerously through the intersection of Preymore Street and Macewen Drive, until he stumbled half-dead into the Osprey School’s Visitor Center parking lot—where he was met with Fulva’s looming Mercury Grand Marquis.

Goddamn it!

He kept running, continuing down the gravel road and into the park complex. Behind him, he heard Fulva’s stony old man voice judder: “There he is!” and then the SIKildo Industries crew fell chaotically out of the vehicle.

Rupert didn’t want to lead them straight to the cemetery access, assuming they weren’t yet aware of it, so he ran past Leenda’s mound and made a right by the massive alien-pod tree, in an effort to disorient. Then he ran them through the lychee field, butterfly garden, and fern walk, losing them way on the other side of the park at the Guptill House. The plan was to slip away and head back to the cemetery.

Fulva, Bill, and Steve Perry tore after him—Fulva with her heavy
hippy bag slung over her shoulder, and Bill sort of screeching, waving MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick in circles over his head. Each time Rupert caught a glimpse looking back, the propelling pink dildo struck fear deep into his heart and he somehow ran faster, though he had already reached his limit somewhere back on the Tamiami Trail.

When Rupert reached the Guptill House, he stopped at the water’s edge, eyed the speedboat for a second, then concluded it was too much for him to figure out with such little time (therefore it must be too much for them). So, he waded in and untied all three animal-shaped pedal boats from the pioneer dock. He had been too busy chasing Efunibi the last time he’d seen them, and even now had only a moment to register what they were—a wombat (ironically), an awkward giraffe, and a squid. They all had wide, round, somewhat protruding eyes, as if shocked that they might be paddled around the inlet. He climbed into the one shaped like a squid and had to straddle the middle—as it was built for two—trying to operate both sets of pedals at once, or risk going in circles. Holding onto the ropes of the other two, he headed toward Cock’s Footbridge, into Webb’s Cove. When he’d cleared the footbridge, sailing underneath, he let the other two paddleboats go and they drifted off, out of reach.

SIKildo Industries arrived at the Guptill shoreline in time to watch Rupert release the pedal boats, and Fulva stomped her feet . . . until she saw the speedboat.

By now, Rupert had reached the other end of Webb’s Cove, dark and invisible from the Guptill House, which brought him to the edge of the Duchene lawn. A quick sprint across and back down the path, he soon passed the alien-pod tree, Leenda’s mound, and then disappeared down the narrow trail that led to the Pioneer Cemetery and Mary’s Chapel.

Bill insisted he did not know how to operate a speedboat.

“Steve Perry can probably do it, you jackass,” Fulva berated him, as they waded out to the boat. Steve Perry hung onto Fulva’s hippy bag slung across her back.

“Well, then Steve Perry can do it,” Bill shot back.

“Fuck,” Fulva growled. “He’s getting away. He’ll be out into the fucking Gulf in a minute. Only way we’re going to catch him is to get this thing running.”

Fulva had never been to Spanish Point and had no idea Rupert had vanished into a closed inlet. They climbed into the boat, took out their cell phones for the flashlight app features, and looked at the controls with a jittery sense of urgency.

“Bill, if you don’t make this fucking happen, you’re out,” Fulva spat at him, wrecked vocal cords grinding. “Out of the operation, out of the house, out of me, everything.” She paused while pulling her sweaty top from her torso, then screamed: “Why is it so fucking muggy?”

Bill wasn’t sure any of that was too terrible, but wasn’t in the right mindset to consider big life changes, so he tried to figure it out with a firm, but flailing feeling of determination. Also, probably out of habit. 911 could not help him now.

There were keys. He turned them, did something with what he thought might be a clutch, and the engine roared, breaking the peaceful silence of Spanish Point.

At that moment, Osceola, still astride the angry, horny ostrich, crashed through the back of the fern walk and flopped clumsily down past the house to the shore, splashed through the water, and half-jumped/half-rolled himself and the bird into the back of the boat.

Fulva yelled at Osceola, Osceola yelled back, the ostrich righted itself, the boat engine roared, and Bill continued trying to figure out what the hell to do, unaware that his foot pressed steadily against the gas, engine whining. Steve Perry watched all of this, then—indifferent or unaware, who can know which?—pulled a lever down on the console. The boat took off, straight into Webb’s Cove. Everyone fell to the bottom while the ostrich’s head and neck somehow remained vertical. As they passed full speed beneath Cock’s Footbridge, the ostrich’s head was sheared off by the impact—spurting blood like a firehose all over everyone and the boat—then landed perfectly centered on the footbridge path to be found by a park visitor from Nebraska the following day.

The boat crashed into the opposite bank of Webb’s Cove, very close to where Rupert had tied his paddle-squid. They had travelled about 400 feet in three-to-four seconds.

Everyone and everything was thrown from the boat as it splintered against the bank, bounced, and burst into flaming fragments.

Steve Perry flew quite a distance, but, being a monkey, landed without injury. Bill and Fulva landed a few yards away from each other, each still clutching their precious cargo, the dildo and the hippy bag. They staggered to their feet, covered in blood, though unable to tell if it was theirs or the sex-mad, headless ostrich’s. They eventually concluded they were as okay as two people could be after something like that.

“Gotta find . . . Osceola,” Bill slurred. “Gotta . . . find 35 Cent . . . ”

“We don’t have time for that asshole.” Fulva wiped blood from her eyes.

Steve Perry sniffed the air and looked at his companions. Bill ignored Fulva and went to look for his partner in rap.

Osceola had either landed near the now-headless neck of the ostrich carcass, or he had crawled to it. Whatever the case, Osceola was not going to make it. It was dark, but Bill was almost positive there might have been a limb or two missing. His shoes and shirt were gone, and parts Bill assumed had always been pretty normal appeared too misshapen, too glistening. Despite these horrific injuries, Osceola had managed to push his pants down, position himself, and was—though weak and unsteady—thrusting into the ostrich’s now available neck hole.

Bill wasn’t sure what was going on. Could a person accidently fuck a dead ostrich during garden-variety death throes? Did they land like this? He got closer and pulled out his cell phone, thankful he hadn’t landed like this with Steve Perry, or Fulva for that matter. In the cell’s light, not only were the facts without-a-doubt confirmed, it also revealed a huge tattoo on Osceola’s back: a large circle, like a secret society’s seal, that read, “Sarasota County Necropoachers.”

As Bill read this out loud, Osceola ceased his desperate thrusts and was still, the silence only marred by Fulva’s old-man swearing several yards off. Bill shook his head and walked away.

“Osceola is dead, Fulva,” Bill said as he approached her.

“Good. I hated that fucker,” she replied, adjusting the bulky hippy bag over her shoulder.

“I thought the whole Necropoacher thing was an urban legend.”

“What?”

“Osceola was a Necropoacher,” Bill said matter-of-factly.

“I knew it,” Fulva said. “He wanted to kill and fuck Steve Perry.”

At that, Steve Perry let out a screech—he’d either understood what Fulva said, or he was trying to get their attention. He sniffed the air again, waved his filthy little monkey hand for them to follow, then he ran off with Fulva and Bill limping after him.

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