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!”
