Having a Cold One

Whoever built a funeral home at the end of this abandoned highway was creepy, low, and rotten…and an imaginative guy. Casey Carter had a phantasmal grin on his face as he drove through here in his hearse with a dead body in the back. Some of his teeth resembled wolf fangs, others were golden or diamond-encrusted. His gray puffy horseshoe hair looked like a tumbleweed ready to blow down the highway as Casey drove with the windows rolled down. The smell of death was in the air that night, and that was just the mortician’s bloody lab coat and latex gloves. Heart-racing organ music played on his stereo and that gave Casey an even bigger grin, reminiscent of a wild animal ready to devour an injured rabbit.

It seemed as though it would take some serious plastic surgery to remove Casey’s grin, but all it took was a hard bump over a pothole and the deflation of his front passenger’s tire. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled demonically as he pulled over to the side of the empty highway. Once the hearse was stopped, he pounded on the steering wheel like he was in a championship boxing match. With hands as meaty and calloused as his, it seemed like an apt description. The undertaker let out a monstrous growl before throwing open the door and stomping towards the back to get the spare tire.

Corpulent Casey Carter fumbled with his keys so much that it looked like he was playing pocket pool. Maybe he was. He unlocked the back door and instead of reaching for the jack and the spare tire, his hideous smile returned as he gazed lovingly at the casket he was supposed to deliver. “Oh dear Beatrice, you are so radiant and beautiful even in death. You’re just like a ray of golden sunshine!” he whispered.

Speaking of radiant lights, a bright one shone from behind Casey while a gruff voice yelled, “You there! Put your hands up! Turn around slowly! That cutie girl is mine!” The undertaker did as he was told, but not without losing his jack-o-lantern smile, which complimented his bushy black and white eyebrows perfectly. His eyes widened with delight as he recognized the man who was holding him up.

With little more than a candle-lit pumpkin-themed lantern to reveal his features, the gray prison jumpsuit, slashed up face, and greasy brown hair gave away the profile of escaped convict Jay David, who licked his lips as if he just ate a bucket of fried chicken, all while gazing lovingly at the casket. With a prison guard’s pistol trained on Casey, Jay said, “Step aside, sweetie pie. That bitch is mine for the taking. I’m having a cold one tonight, motherfucker!”

Casey laughed like a demonic hyena and said, “Enjoy my sloppy seconds, Mr. David!” The prisoner’s demented slasher face turned into one of disgust. “Well, what are you waiting for? You clearly came here look for some fun. How many years have you been locked up? It must be so lonely in solitary confinement. Yes, you’re a popular guy on the evening news, but not so popular with the ladies. Well, the live ones, anyways.”

Jay laughed right back at him and said, “You’re a sick son of a bitch, I’ll give you that. If you weren’t taunting me right now, I’d probably have a beer with you. I’d probably crack the bottle of your head and throw you under the bus, but I’d still have a nice cold beer with you.”

“Now why would you do that to your best friend, Mr. David? Prisoners don’t like being around snitches like you. If you wanted to ‘have a cold one’ so badly, why don’t you just go back to jail?” chuckled Casey.

Jay squeezed the trigger and blew off a chunk of Casey’s hair, causing the mortician to drop to his knees and let out a few sarcastically frightened coos while holding his cheeks. Those coos turned to laughter and “Woo-hoo’s” as he slowly returned to his feet. He looked his adversary in his confused eyes and said, “Let me guess: you don’t miss twice?”

The convict rushed up to Casey and pressed the gun up to the old man’s scraggly chin. He said with clenched teeth and an itchy trigger finger, “Don’t you fuck with me, you goddamn nut job! You want to live to see another day? Huh?! Step aside, shut your mouth, and let me have the bitch in the box!”

Even at the threat of getting his head blown off, Casey chuckled, slowly stepped back, and said, “Okay, sweetheart, you win. The bitch in the box is all yours. But you have to promise you’ll let me watch. I love to watch!” The oratory ended with Casey blowing a wet kiss at his captor.

Jay squeezed off another shot and this time hit Casey in the arm, causing the old fart to double over and emit a blood-curdling scream as he kept his coat sleeve over his wound to stop the bleeding. The scream continued in the form of babyish crying, even going so far as to suck his thumb and call for his mommy.

“Yeah, and I’m the one with mental problems. Give me a break,” said Jay while shaking his head. He cast a hypnotic gaze at the coffin and crawled inside the hearse like he was possessed. “Alright, baby girl,” he said in a raspy whisper. “It’s just you and me versus the world. I’ve been waiting for this moment a long, long time. Jerking off just isn’t the same. Then again, neither is getting corn-holed in the showers. But you know that already. Of course you do, because you put me in that hellhole. Well, now that you’re dead, Miss Beatrice, you and I will be together until the end of the world. I love you, sweet princess. I love you so much!”

Jay set down his pistol and lantern and ripped the coffin lid off with hulking strength. Instead of a “bitch in a box”, he got a face full of green poisonous gas, which has him hacking up blood right away. The fumes got so bad that he tumbled out of the hearse and landed on his back. He violently coughed some more and even rested in a puddle of his own vomit, which tasted like rotten prison chow. Once he was done barfing and coughing, he was so lightheaded that he was ready to pass out in his own filth.

The convicted necrophiliac had his hands firmly held behind his back while cuffs were tightly bound to his wrists. “On your feet, you sick prick!” shouted a much less creepy version of Casey Carter. With one Herculean jerk, Jay David was pulled to his feet, but still had a head full of clouds.

“Bet you didn’t see this coming, did you?” whispered Casey, whose arm wound turned out to be a ketchup stain. “Bulletproof lab coats: what else will they come up with? Of course, you can’t get that kind of equipment unless you’re part of a special group, like I’d say, the Paulson City Police Department.”

“You’re…you’re a cop?!” said Jay as he breathed heavily with a sore throat and nose.

“For a guy who spent most of his life tricking the police, you sure are slow to catch on. You’re damn right I’m a cop. This whole thing was a setup. Like a moth to a flame, motherfucker. Like a moth to a flame!” Casey punctuated that last line with his in-character laugh before chucking Jay in the back of the now-clear hearse and locking the doors.

Accompanying Jay’s winded breathing were a girlish sob and kicking legs. “It’s not fair! It’s not fucking fair!” he shouted as Casey got in the driver’s seat and pulled away. “Why can’t women say yes to me? Just three little letters! Y-E-S! It’s not that hard! I didn’t want to kill them, but they gave me no choice!”

Detective Carter slammed on the brakes and caused Jay to lurch forward headfirst into the “casket”, causing even more dizziness and heavy breathing than before, not to mention a small drip of blood. The cop said, “You know what? You’re probably just going to keep escaping from prison anyways. You’ve done it half a dozen times already. I don’t know why the prison guards keep doing the same thing over and over again. So you know what? I’m going to do them and the whole world a favor and deal with you myself. You and I are going for a ride. Not just any ride, but a nickel ride! Buckle up, sweet cheeks! It’s going to be bumpy!”

Jay shouted an extended, “No!” before Casey slammed on the accelerator and drove over the bumpy road, all with a flat tire, making this ride even more bouncy and miserable. Jay was hurled into the casket edges and hearse walls with such force that his bones shattered and deep gashes were forming on his body. Sparks from the flat tire grinding against the pavement shot inside the hearse and burned Jay like a branding iron on his fresh wounds.

By the time Casey reached his new destination, Jay Nathaniel David, a thirty-one-year-old rapist and murderer, looked less like an intimidating criminal and more like a pile of human wreckage. Blood and bone powder flooded the back of the hearse. Organs splashed against the walls. Teeth rolled around like dice in the most violent game of craps.

How did Detective Carter react to this? With a million dollar smile and a finger to his lips as he shushed the dead body and softly said, “Don’t tell a soul. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my bonus pay!”