*****
Issac told Jeremiah to keep watch while he checked on the man missing half his face. “Sir, do you have a first aid kit inside the trailer? Just blink twice if you do.”
Charlie closed his eye that still had a functional eyelid and made a lisping squawking noise. It sounded like neither a yes or no.
“Jeremiah, go inside and see if you can find a first aid kit or maybe just some clean towels. Get anything to help staunch the flow of blood. And maybe some bandages for my leg where that thing bit me- And some rubbing alcohol if he has any. I'll stay here with our new friend,” Issac said, and patted Charlie gently on the shoulder as he wiped the sweat off his own forehead. He felt queasy and flushed as Jeremiah hurried inside the trailer.
Charlie made another slightly louder lisping noise as he heard the younger man climb the steps and go inside his home.
“Just try and relax. I've seen much worse wounds,” Issac lied, as he slowly felt increasingly dizzy and flushed. He sat back against the trailer and closed his eyes to rest until Jeremiah came back. Issac tried to pray as he rested. God help us. Please help me to be strong... and, and do your will. There was a confusing moment of pain stabbing deep inside his head. Issac fought hard against it- and continued, God, oh...oh God! He clutched his head tightly with both hands and felt the pain increasing exponentially as a brilliant flare of agony exploded deep inside his brain. His last coherent thought was, GOD!
Charlie heard the man behind him breathing harder. It sounded almost like a dog panting. He would have turned to see what was going on if possible, but of course being paralyzed from the neck down there was no way for him to do it. Through garbled grunts he'd been trying to tell them not to go in the trailer and begged for them to put him out of his misery. But from what little he’d overheard from their conversations, Farro was certain the two kids were 'Bible Thumpers' of the worst sort.
They were the kind who would never commit a mercy killing, damn it. He also feared what the young man would find inside his trailer. Having been a lifelong pornography enthusiast, Farro shuddered to think what had been left sitting around inside. Of course, if the kid triggered any of the booby traps Charlie had cleverly hidden around the trailer what the young man might find would hardly matter. He’d planted the traps years earlier and checked to make sure they were in working order every now and then just in case he was ever burglarized or raided by the police or the government. Charlie Farro had almost no faith in the idea of people possibly being of good will.
Hearing the kid inside the trailer shifting things around and looking around, Charlie wondered if it would hurt when the trailer exploded. He heard the other kid panting harder behind him, concentrated and tried to say slowly and clearly, “Get your friend out of there.” But it came out sounding more like, “Ge yr hrend ow der.”
The older kid moved closer and was breathing heavily on top of his head, sniffing loudly and grunting.
Charlie was mystified and confused as the kid slowly circled around so he could see him.
The floodlights made him all too easy to see as they came face to face. The whites of the young man's eyes were a bright crimson color and he felt him yank the folded up bloody shirt off the missing side of his face.
Issac leaned closer and reached over to Charlie's partially dislodged eyeball, grabbed it and pulled.
This place is an insult to pigsties everywhere, Jeremiah thought as he picked up a kerosene lantern that had been burning just inside the door. Walking down the filthy and foul smelling narrow hallway he managed to step into a pile of gooey stuff. The horrible smell suddenly grew exponentially worse, and he held his breath while hurrying into the bathroom.
Skynyrd watched from the shadows as the intruder stepped through its bodily wastes and flicked its tongue to taste the air. The snake had been sleeping peacefully until it first heard then smelled the stranger blundering around in the living room and hallway. Slowly uncoiling, it slithered down the hallway from the back bedroom that served as its lair.
Charlie had tried to coax Skynyrd outside over the last several days to eat some of the rabbits, but it hadn't been hungry then. As it uncoiled and slid forward it finally felt hungry and deeply perturbed to have been so rudely awakened. The snake tasted the air again and was certain this man was a stranger and consequently a possible snack.
Jeremiah looked for medical supplies in the bathroom closet and was befuddled by the sight of so many cigar boxes stacked neatly on every shelf. There must have been more than a hundred of them and he couldn't help opening one to discover its contents. It was filled with stacks of dirty twenty and fifty dollar bills bound together with rubber bands. He closed the cigar box lid and left it alone after a moment’s hesitation. Having always been good at math, his brain switched automatically to 'calculator mode' and he tried to estimate the possible amount of money kept in the filthy bathroom closet. Estimating the number of bills was nearly impossible, but after a few seconds he guesstimated each box could contain two thousand dollars- assuming the denominations remained somewhat consistent for each box.
The man outside missing half his face could have two hundred thousand dollars in here, Jeremiah thought and shook his head in disbelief. He closed the closet door and turned to the medicine cabinet over the sink, muttering, “Lucky for him I'm not a thief.”
Actually it was lucky for everyone in a two hundred meter radius that he wasn't a thief.
Long ago, Charlie rigged a weight sensitive bomb under the boxes. Removing one or two boxes wouldn't set it off but anything over five pounds would have. Not being a believer in doing things half way, Farro rigged ten blocks of C-4 plastic explosives- assuming that if anyone ever stole the money he would already most likely be dead.
Jeremiah found the medicine cabinet full of various kinds of pills in clear plastic containers with no labels on them, two empty tubes of toothpaste, a straight razor, some anti-fungal creams, an ancient looking condom package, and a small box of adhesive bandages.
After grabbing the bandages he was disgusted to find a pile of old, foul smelling, filthy, towels by the wall. He picked up the least crusty feeling one and started back out when a brief gurgling scream was followed by an almost ear splitting shriek seconds later from just outside the trailer.
Tripping over Skynyrd in the dark hallway and not realizing what it was, he ran to the front room holding the towel and bandages. More screams from right behind the trailer door made him stop with his hand already on doorknob. Shuddering, he instead leaned over to move aside the dusty curtain and peered outside. He only looked for a second before pulling the foul smelling towel to his face and struggled not to scream and or throw up.
After several moments, Jeremiah worked up the courage to look back through the window and prayed silently.
Issac was sitting on Charlie's lap with his legs spread wide on either side of the lounge chair, which the grievously wounded man was still on.
In the bright glare of the flood lights, Jeremiah saw his friend’s eyes were bright red where they had been white just a few minutes earlier. His mouth dribbled blood as he pulled on the grievously injured man’s face. Issac ripped off a large strip of skin and shoved it in his mouth while snarling like a crazed animal.
Jeremiah noticed that both table leg clubs were leaning against the lounge chair outside and bit his lip as he tried to formulate a plan.
Charlie hurt his throat screaming and was desperately willing himself to pass out, faint, or preferably die. Unfortunately, much to his dismay, he continued to live. Feeling his face being ripped off, the best he was able to manage was a deep gurgling whimper as he closed his remaining eye and wept.
The monstrosity sitting on his lap, dressed like a preacher boy, made joyful noises while smacking his lips and seemed oblivious to the angrily chattering Cha-ka. The tiny monkey was witnessing her master being devoured, piece by piece, from the relative safety of the trailer's roof.
Charlie felt the man grab a loose flap of his left cheek
and pull upward.
Issac grunted loudly and then Charlie was again forced to see. The crazed traveling evangelist ripped the skin up and off. It left the entire front of Charlie's skull peeled back, much like a tangerine. His eyelid went with the rest of his face and Farro's remaining eye looked in every direction in rapid succession. Unable to close his eye any longer, he stared at the man chewing on his face. My face! It's like a mask! It looks just like a cheap rubber Halloween mask! This is not happening! Charlie thought frantically as his facial nerve endings screamed in agony.
Apparently something about the way the man's unwashed greasy hair tasted did not appeal to Issac and he stopped eating when he reached it. Spitting out chunks of hair and skin from the torn away piece of Charlie's face, Issac stood and ran to the stream. He knelt on his hands and knees then lowered his mouth to the water and slurped noisily from it.
Jeremiah saw Issac drinking from the stream and decided to take a chance. He opened the door of the trailer, bent down, and felt the injured man’s heart somehow continuing to beat. It took just a brief glance at the mostly skinless headed man that was staring up at him with his remaining eye, to know he was still all too aware of his surroundings. His eye rolled around in his peeled meaty and bleeding face as he gurgled pitifully.
Jeremiah knew moving a man with injuries as extensive as the stranger's had to be was usually a bad idea, but he strongly suspected dragging him inside must be better than the alternative of letting him be eaten alive by his former friend. He slipped his hands under Charlie's thighs and back and lifted him easily, as Issac continued to noisily slurp and spit into the water.
Farro wasn't heavy and very quickly Jeremiah managed to carry him into the trailer and set him down in an ancient rather ratty looking red and black plaid recliner. Jeremiah looked back outside at his oak club and then at his monstrous friend rolling around in the stream. Caught between two conflicted options, he couldn't move. Should I help this man who is sure to die of his injuries no matter what or go out and take an oak club and bash in Issac's head?
Charlie gurgled loudly from behind him as if to remind the young man that he was still there. Jeremiah closed the door to the trailer and locked it then knelt down beside Farro. “Don't worry. I know it hurts, but just... uh don't worry. I won't let you die. Um, just try and relax. I'm going to see if there's something in the kitchen I can use to help you. Just... just try and relax and please, for God's sake, stop looking at me like that,” Jeremiah whispered. The faceless man's eye staring up at him was disturbingly nightmarish looking.
The eye followed him as he walked away.
Spotting an empty plastic cup on a small table Issac paused to pick it up. He turned it upside down and gently placed it over Charlie's remaining eye so it would stop staring at him.
Charlie was not amused by the kid's placing it over his eye and managed a slight twitch of his head and the cup fell into his lap after Jeremiah had gone into the kitchen.
Skynyrd smelled fresh blood as it slithered into the living room. The enormous snake smelled Charlie and the aroma was irresistible as it hurried toward the recliner.
Charlie stared at his python as it climbed up in the recliner and heard the young man looking through cabinets in the kitchen. His eye rolled frantically as he tried to scream, but what came out of his mouth was just a barely audible wet gurgling sound as Skynyrd began wrapping itself around his waist.
This wasn't the first time the snake attempted to squeeze him to death. Over the years, it had squeezed and broken a pair of prosthetic legs and a few ribs, yet Charlie always managed to teach it who was the boss.
Pans rattled behind him as the kid kept looking for something in the cupboards. What the young man hoped to find Charlie had no idea as the snake quickly completed a fourth lap around his torso. His eye looked down and saw Skynyrd's head rising until they were finally scaly face to skinless face.
The bathroom was cleaner than an operating room compared to the kitchen, Jeremiah thought as he searched for something. He wasn't sure what he hoped to find. A powerful feeling of shock was overcoming him as he tried not to think about just how wrong things had gone. His best friend been transformed into a homicidal monster and nearly killed a man who miserably failed in trying to kill himself. Completely out of ideas, he leaned wearily against a cabinet and closed his eyes in prayer, God, what should I do?
Charlie realized he was dead. He couldn't feel his ribs snapping, but did hear them and then- as if the situation couldn't get any weirder- Charlie saw a familiar looking dead man walk in from the trailer's narrow hallway.
“It's like I told ya, buddy, Karma is a bitch,” Carl said, appearing exactly as he had when he'd last seen him in Vietnam... except for the giant, bloody, ragged, hole where the dead man's chest used to be before the landmine Charlie stepped on had gone off. “Tsk tsk,” Carl said, tapping Skynyrd on its head with a finger and immediately the snake seemed dazed and stopped moving.
Charlie's eye stared at the dead man standing before him but couldn't think of anything to say even if he were capable.
“You think you want to die, don't ya Chuckles? You think anything’s got to be better than what you're feeling right now. Go on admit it.” After a second Carl looked slightly chagrined. “Oh that's right, you've managed to quite 'ingeniously' paralyze yourself. You may not know it, my perverted little friend, but that might have been the smartest thing you've ever done in your whole pathetic excuse of a life.
There's no secrets in the afterlife, buddy. All those nasty things you’ve done have been known and categorized since the moment you did them. Oh by the way, in case you were worried about that little girl you raped, Kim Soo... You remember her, don't you?” Carl's ghost looked down at Charlie's pants where the blood still oozed out of his remaining testicle. “Maybe instead of ‘one nut’ I should just call you Charlene?” The apparition chuckled for a few moments before continuing. “I have good news for you, Charlene. Kim Soo escaped in one of the boat lifts at the end of the war and got herself adopted into a good family from Iowa. She even managed to earn outstanding grades in school and eventually became a doctor.
Of course, she can never have children because of the hideous things you did to her that night before she taught you a valuable lesson. But you want to hear something funny?” Carl asked, leaning closer as Charlie's eye followed him. “Even after all the shit and Hell you put her through that girl still managed to lead a joyful productive life surrounded by people who love her. And who are you surrounded by, Chuckles? Looks to me like you're surrounded by one extremely bad-ass hungry snake.” Carl laughed, stood up, and grinned down at him.
“Well time's a wasting, old buddy, so let me cut to the chase here. Remember when I said paralyzing yourself was the smartest thing you've ever done? I wasn't being sarcastic or kidding.
You are destined for Hell, pal. I'm not saying you don't deserve it, but thanks in part to that kid over there in your kitchen the powers above wanted to offer you a lifeline. And lucky me, I get the pleasure of offering it.” Carl used two fingers to pick up an ancient badly stained magazine full of photographs of naked children then quickly set it back down so the front cover was hidden and shook his head. He stared at Charlie with a look of complete disgust for several seconds then continued. “You can choose door number one, and Skynyrd here will finish your miserable excuse of a life in less than a minute and have an upset stomach for a week. Plus, you'll get to suffer for all eternity in Hell.” He smiled and leaned closer. “You know how preachers like my dad would describe it as a lake of fire and how your immortal soul will be tormented for all eternity?
Well, my perverted little friend, that doesn't even begin to come close to just how hideous it truly is down there.” Carl leaned back and ran his fingers softly over Skynyrd's head.
The snake blinked its eyes while its tongue flicked the air again.
Charlie's eye looked around frantically as he gurgled a loud a series of nonsensical syllables.
; “Sorry, Charlie, but I don't speak faceless Chomo,” Carl said, looking down in disgust. “Now where was I? Oh, now I remember. You can go straight to Hell or choose door number two. I can get Jeremiah's attention and he might be able to save you. And here's the really good part. You get to spend the rest of your life atoning for your sins and trying to become a good person.
Personally, I have no doubt you'll choose door number two and then try to delude yourself that I was a hallucination brought on by shock or something and go back to being what your best at- A degenerate perverted worm of a man. I bet you're thinking a lot about that aren't ya? Is this really a ghost or just a figment of your demented imagination? Who knows?
Hurry up and choose, Chuckles, because even though I may be a ghost your nasty trailer is really creeping me out.”
Charlie looked at the floor and his head shuddered a little bit from left to right.
Carl's ghost rubbed at his eyes in an exaggerated pantomime of crying. “Oh, boohoo. I lost my legs and an arm. Oh, pitiful me. I lost a girl that I thought I was in love with because she let me fuck her before she stole my van. Bless my ever loving heart. I lost a marijuana garden in the middle of nowhere while real living people, with real lives, fight for their very survival.
Just hurry up and choose, Chuckles. Skynyrd's coming out of her daze and I've got to hit the road. Just think your choice. I'll know what you choose.
Oh, one last thing Chuck, if you choose to live there is no guarantee you won't end up in Hell anyway so Caveat Emptor, old buddy.”