Escape From Kentucky

Matt Ramirez and Alice Logan joined hands and let the soothing sounds of “Oh” by Stone Mecca wash over their exhausted bodies. Just a few more miles on the road and they’d be free at last. Matt took especial care not to drive over the speed limit lest he be pulled over by “Kentucky’s finest”. They’d take one look at his dark skin and wouldn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. Such thoughts caused Matt to accidentally squeeze too hard on Alice’s hand, to which she yelped and he promptly apologized.

“It’s my father, isn’t it, Matt?” asked Alice.

“It’s not just him,” said Matt. “It’s that whole group of assholes and whack jobs he sides with. I can’t go anywhere in Kentucky without seeing a burning cross or a burning swastika. Even when I close my eyes to sleep at night…” That last sentence was punctuated with a sigh as he was lost for further words.

Alice saw the pain etched in Matt’s otherwise handsome face and hers suddenly became visible too. That black eye he received healed quite nicely, though it was noticeable from miles away. All of this hatred over something as stupid as the color of someone’s skin. How senseless and cruel, she thought. She reached into the glove box and pulled out two items: a bowie knife and a manila envelope.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Matt,” said Alice in her sweet southern belle voice. “It’ll only be a matter of time before daddy finds us. If he does, I want you to have this knife. I’ll keep the envelope in case things get too heated.”

“What’s in the envelope?” asked Matt.

“Something my father won’t like. There’s no telling what the hell he might do if he sees what’s inside.”

“Like we need him to be angrier than he already is,” sighed Matt.

“He would have been angry regardless. Racist assholes like him always are. That’s why I’ve got a lifetime of lashes on my ass. Every little thing. Every stupid little thing!” Alice punched the dashboard and almost inflated the airbags.

“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy!” said Matt as he barricaded his girlfriend with his thick arm. “Everything’s going to be alright, Alice. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Let’s just get the fuck out of this god-awful state and we’ll see what happens from here….Alice?...What’s wrong now?”

Alice’s icy blue eyes widened as she gazed into the rear-view mirror. Matt took a peek as well and said, “Uh-oh” when the source of his girlfriend’s horror came in the form of a massive pick up trick with a confederate flag paint job. He squinted into the mirror and saw the scraggly bearded face of an older man in overalls chewing on slimy tobacco. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Who else would it be?” sobbed Alice while wiping away her tears with her bare arm. The couple held hands even tighter and said their I-love-yous before Matt pressed down on the accelerator, giving zero fucks about the police potentially pulling him over. But the faster his SUV went, the further the pickup truck chugged along, spewing smog into the sky like a factory smokestack.

The pickup speeded close enough to tap Matt’s bumper, to which Alice squeaked and hugged her boyfriend’s whole arm. Matt never took his eyes off the road and pressed even harder on the accelerator. But the more he pressed, the harder the pickup truck tapped his bumper. “Son of a fucking bitch!” Matt roared. He didn’t know where the hell to go since there were ditches on both sides of the otherwise empty freeway.

Matt’s sniper sight turned to distracted rage when he saw another flaming cross off in the distance, complete with bigots in hoods dancing around and chanting. Alice tried to keep him focused with squeaks of his name, but all Matt heard was the many racial slurs he’d been subjected to all of his life. Nigger. Spick. Spigger. Porch monkey. Wetback. Being half-black and half-Mexican really brought out the creativity and imagination of his prejudiced tormentors….said no biracial man ever.

Matt’s grip on Alice’s hand tightened as the truck rammed hard into his bumper, causing the SUV to spin out of control and crash into the ditch. The couple screamed and cursed throughout the whole collision, shattered glass flying into them like a hailstorm of bullets, airbags and seatbelts being their only saving grace…or so it seemed.

The red in Matt’s vision wasn’t just hotheaded rage. It was the warm, copper-scented blood trickling down from his eyebrows and forehead. Any vision he still had was obstructed with blurriness. Looking at his own cut up arm felt like he was on acid…and drunk…and stoned. He reached across to the passenger’s seat and felt around for Alice’s arm. He shook it in an attempt to wake her up, but she barely moved an inch. “Come on, baby girl, wake up! Don’t die like this!” begged Matt with glass in his gums.

The excruciating feeling of having his puffy hair yanked on cancelled out the slashes tormenting Matt Ramirez’s body. At least lying dormant in a ditch lent itself to a somewhat peaceful slumber. This was war. And as such, he reached around for the bowie knife and kept a death grip on the handle before being jerked out of the vehicle by none other than Jesse fucking Logan, Alice’s father.

Matt wanted nothing more than to slash Jesse’s throat open like a slaughterhouse cow, but his normally muscular body felt weaker than a grandma who slipped and fell in the bathtub. Every time he went for the slash, the slashes in his arm set the rest of his body ablaze with agony.

Jesse wrestled the knife out of Matt’s hand and held the blade to the “nigger’s” throat. The old man’s body odor along with the tobacco sloshing around in his mouth made Matt want to puke himself inside out. “You ain’t going nowhere with my daughter, you little coon. In fact, you’d been sticking that ugly black thing in her for far too long. I think it’s time we do something about that.” Jesse went to work in pulling off Matt’s jeans and underwear, to which the sluggish victim put up a minimal struggle due to the burning pain he was in. Holding the blade up to Matt’s genitals, Jesse asked, “Any last words before I cut you from asshole to appetite?”

Matt spit out the glass in his mouth and allowed the nickel-flavored goodness to descend upon his throat and tongue. He took a few deep breaths before resorting to his final act of defiance, the one act he could actually perform without torturing the shit out of his own body. “You call yourself a father?” The brown-toothed smile on Jesse’s face made Matt shiver like a naked Eskimo. “I know Alice better than you ever will. Underneath all of that hatred you tried to teach her, there’s a beautiful and intelligent woman. I don’t look at her and see the lashes you gave her. I look at her and see someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Looks like I’ll get my wish one way or another.”

“That’s some sweethearted poetry you’ve got there, nigger,” said Jesse while mockingly wiping away a fake tear with his free finger. “But there ain’t no such thing as magic here in our great nation. You’ll get plenty of that when you’re burning in hell with the rest of the sinners, boy. Later, tater!”

Matt could feel the blade opening a fresh wound on the base of his penis. Slowly. Painfully. Torturously. Jesse had all the opportunities in the world to finish him off straight away, but instead chose to pick the wings off of the proverbial butterfly. If Matt got any sicker to his stomach, his vomit would result in more violence than his torture and car crash combined.

And then out of the corner of his blurred vision, he saw an angel descend upon Jesse Logan. A blood-soaked angel who nonetheless looked beautiful and radiant in her teal dress, glass shards aside. In that small moment of temporary salvation, Matt smiled his handsome smile. And then Jesse shoved his own daughter to the ground and trained the blade on her. The smile was dead, just like the couple would be in a few seconds.

“I didn’t raise you to be no nigger-lover, Alice,” sneered Jesse while spitting tobacco in his own daughter’s face. “You’re a disgrace to this family. You’re a disgrace to my people. You’re a disgrace to God himself! You see that cross burning out there? That’s going to be you and your lover once I send both your asses to hell.”

“Be….before you kill us…” stuttered Alice. “Open this…” She lifted her battered arm just high enough to hand Jesse the manila envelope.

Jesse shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s the least I could do for my baby girl before she spends eternity getting butt fucked by the devil.” He took the envelope and slashed it open with the bowie knife. He read the contents inside at first with an arrogant grin. That grin slowly faded into wide-eyed shock. He lost control of his jaw and allowed the rest of his tobacco to splatter all over his daughter’s leg. “This is bullshit! This ain’t real!”

“Oh, it’s very real, daddy. Looks like you’ll be going to hell with me!” said Alice with a bloody grin.

“No way…no way in fucking hell…” Jesse dropped the paperwork and held the blade to his own throat. “I’m sorry, Jesus! I’m sorry for everything!” In one swift motion, Jesse D. Logan slashed his own throat and plopped to the ground dead as a doornail, covering both his daughter and her lover with his viscous life juices.

Although Matt felt a weight the heaviness of Jesse’s truck being lifted off of him, he couldn’t help but give his girlfriend a confused frown. Alice smiled her beautiful smile at him and said, “That was a DNA test, my love. My daddy has a little good in him after all.”

“He’s black?” asked Matt, to which Alice nodded. “That’s some sick ass irony.”

“It is. And when those Klan bastards come running over here to see what’s up, they’ll find that paper work and know their whole bullshit is just that: pure cow manure. They can kill us both, but love itself never dies. Hold my hand, just like we did in the car.”

As soon as Alice reached out, Matt found the strength in his left arm to squirm over and hold hands with his girlfriend. In this moment of beauty, he didn’t care about the Klansmen rushing over with their hateful rhetoric. He didn’t even care about the burning crosses that haunted his mind like schizophrenic ghosts. All he felt was love. His heart beat faster, the wounds stopped hurting, and even his blood-soaked penis couldn’t help but stand up for what felt right. Alice gave him a little giggle and said, “If only we could do that in front of these racist assholes.”

“I love you, Alice.”

“I love you too, Matt.”

Flipped Off

A massive red pickup truck pulled in slowly in front of the rickety three-tier house on top of Claymore Hill. On the outside the house looked like it was used every Halloween to scare the shit out of little kids. Cobwebs, broken windows, loose doors, shoddy construction, basically this place looked like a nightmare to live in.

When Ivan Savage and his heavyset buddy Mickey Ryder got out of the truck dressed in blue jeans, stained white T-shirts, and black combat boots, that could have only meant one thing: it was time to go to work on this puppy.

Ivan ran his gloved hand through his messy brown hair and said, “This feels wrong. This feels very wrong.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mickey.

“What do you think I mean? Didn’t you hear on the news who this house used to belong to? Angelo Crockett. Not just any Angelo Crockett, but the same guy who used this house for a goddamn rape dungeon. He kept anywhere between twenty and thirty underage girls here. If I start talking about what he did to them, I’m going to vomit. We should just get back in the truck and get out of here.”

Mickey made a flat tire noise and said, “Dude, what did you expect? You bought this house sight unseen at a flea market. A flea market, for shit’s sake. Hell, there are probably a bunch of fleas living in there right now. But you know what? This is the kind of work we get paid to do. As flip men, we have certain obligations and though they may seem cruel and unusual, they do include flipping houses and getting them ready to be sold at a high price.”

“Hey, I have no illusions about what I do for a living. It’s just that this is the most disgusting assignment I’ve ever had to do.”

“You think I feel any better about it, Ivan? You think I condone what that bastard did to those kids? That’s why we owe it to those young girls to clean this place up. Trust me, buddy, by the time we’re finished, Angelo Crockett’s name will be long forgotten about. Let’s get inside and see what we’ve got to work with.”

Mickey waddled his fat ass up the stairs and into the house while Ivan shook his head and reluctantly trailed him inside. The outside and the urban legend surrounding this house was vomit-inducing enough. But the inside was a disaster. The floors were covered with blood, puke, and feces. The walls were covered in even more sickening bodily fluids. The kitchen was so caked in urine and dirt that eating anything from there would be certain death. The bathroom reeked so badly that stepping one foot could mean a gut-busting assault on the nose. The basement? Well, that was easily the most sickening part of the house since it was everything the above two tiers was multiplied by ten.

Despite the horrific condition of this lonely house, the stench of it all was something Ivan and Mickey were both used to. They were flip men after all and remodeled houses as bad as this all the time. In fact, Mickey was already on the attack when it came to his plans to fix this house up.

“Alright, so here’s what I’m thinking. The carpets and the linoleum both have to be ripped up from the ground. There’s no saving them. In their place will be wooden floors. We’ll have wooden floors all around the upper two tiers and even the staircase will be like that too. We’re also going to use wood paneling for the walls, which are going to be painted afterwards, probably in the neighborhood of greenish blue. The bathroom will be a different story; it’s going to have square tiles both on the floor and on the walls. The appliances will all have to go from the sinks to the oven to the refrigerator to the toilets to the tubs. We’re going to buy brand new appliances and put them in their respective places. The cupboards are also going to have to be replaced with new wood. And finally, those light fixtures above us are going to have to be replaced with ceiling fans. You think we can do all of this, Ivan?”

Ivan gave his friend an “Are you kidding me?” look and said, “That’s all fine and good, but did you forget that this place used to be a goddamn rape dungeon for small children?!”

If either flip man needed a reminder of that, all they had to do was look on the kitchen floor next to the burned out stove. Ivan knelt down and picked up what appeared to be a porn magazine. He dusted off the cover and gagged when he saw what the book was titled: “Sexy Teenagers Weekly”.

“I’m going to be sick! I’m going to be sick! I’m going to be sick!” Ivan kept saying to himself as he dropped the magazine, ran out the front door, and retched all over the lawn. He shook hard as he tasted his McDonald’s breakfast sandwich from earlier that day. His decade-long experience of being a flip man didn’t prepare him for this.

“I’m going to go ahead and survey the basement. You can feel free to join me once you’re done throwing up,” yelled Mickey from the inside. Ivan was huffing and puffing while struggling to make it to his feet. As soon as he wiped the vomit from his mouth, he heard his construction buddy let out a blood-curdling scream followed by the sounds of fire and shredding.

Ivan slowly turned his head around and said, “Oh dear lord, no…Mickey!” He bolted inside and visited all of the rooms in the house in search of his friend. No sign of him. The one place he hadn’t looked was the basement aka Satan’s port-a-potty. Ivan swallowed a glob of barf-flavored saliva and shakily ventured down the stairs into the dark basement.

He struggled to find a light switch, but eventually found one at the bottom of the world’s longest stairs. He flipped it on and saw the ashen and shredded remains of what was once his best friend Mickey Ryder. “What the fuck?!” yelled Ivan as he rushed to the middle of the dingy basement to check on his friend. Once on his knees, tears formed in Ivan Savage’s eyes.

His sadness would be blended with fear when he heard the whispers of small children all around him. There they were: the ones responsible for the soul-stealing death of Mickey Ryder. They were the ashen souls of the thirty raped girls, who were forming a large circle around Ivan by holding hands and dancing around him.

“Please!” begged Ivan. “Please let me out of here! I never wanted to be here in the first place! I don’t even want to be a flip man anymore!”

In demonic, unified voices, the ghosts of the girls said, “Your friend had to pay the price! He wanted to use our deaths as a way to make money! He wanted to exploit us just like Master Angelo did!”

Disturbed by the fact that these girls just called their rapist “Master Angelo”, more tears formed in Ivan’s eyes when he said, “Listen…that man will never hurt you or anyone else again. He’s behind bars and he’ll never get out. He’s probably being stabbed to death in the showers right now.”

The ghosts said, “As well he should be! But that doesn’t solve the problem of you, my friend. You came here for the same reason as that giant sack of protoplasm over there. You wanted to exploit us for some easy cash! We’re not going to let you nor anyone else get away with that!”

“Please! You have to believe me! I wanted no part of this! I’ll do whatever you girls want! Anything you want!”

“…Anything?”

“Anything you want! Name it and it’s yours!”

The ghosts stroked their chins in mock contemplation before dancing around in a circle again and closing in on Ivan, who was curled in a little ball waiting to be murdered. But then the girls picked him up off the ground and made their conditions known. “You want to live, money man? Then you set us free right now. You will not flip this house. You will instead burn it to the ground. No one shall make money off of us again! Nobody! Do you understand?!”

“I…I…I…” Ivan swallowed hard. “I have a gas can and some matches in my truck. As soon as you girls let me go, I’m burning this place to the ground. Just like we promised.”

The next time the girls danced, it was in a celebratory ballet style. They hugged each other and spun around in happiness while Ivan ran past them, up the stairs, and out to his truck to do what he promised.

He scrambled in the back of the pickup truck for that gasoline. He panicked when he almost didn’t find it, but there it was buried underneath the lumber. The matches he got from the glove box. Ivan took a few deep breaths and steadied his nerves before slowly approaching this former rape dungeon to do what he wanted to do all along. He splashed some gasoline on the walls, lit a match, and watched the fire consume the entire house.

Before the fire could get too out of hand, Ivan hopped in the truck and drove away in a hurry, easily doing 80 miles per hour. Sooner or later, someone would call the fire department and the rape dungeon would be nothing more than cooling ashes. Knowing it was all over gave Ivan a sense of relief, therefore he slowed down his driving speed and breathed a sigh of relief. All he needed to do at that point was come up with a little white lie to tell his superiors when they ask him about what happened to both the house and Mickey Ryder.