Evangeline Read online

“What do you think, William?” I said, shifting my aim to Brianna. “Should I shoot the bitch instead?”

  “No, don’t shoot me!” the bitch cried out.

  “Why not? Isn’t your boyfriend worth dying for?”

  Brianna couldn’t answer. I think her brain had melted. Didn’t matter, though. If the cheerleader ended up as collateral damage, well that was just tough titties. It was the price she’d have to pay for her lousy taste in boyfriends. Meanwhile The Asshole was eyeballing me in the rain, no doubt working on a plan to escape the trap he’d been caught in.

  I swung the shotgun back his direction, just to keep the bastard honest. “I think I want you closer,” I told him. “Come on now, William. Don’t be shy. Move that cute little ass up here.”

  Without taking his eyes off me, Billy limped from the water and onto the muddy bank. “Close enough,” I said when he was almost within spitting distance.

  “What about me?” whimpered Brianna, knee deep in the pond.

  “You? You’re a cunt,” I told her, then turned my attention back to her boyfriend. “You know, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see you again, William. Real shame what happened to your two Nazi friends. But if it’s any comfort, I want you to know that I always keep a piece of those boys close to my heart.” I pointed out two shriveled stumps hanging from the dicklace. “This one’s Kyle and that’s Danny. Or is it the other way around? I can never keep those two pricks straight.”

  “Oh, my God!” wailed Brianna.

  Both she and Billy knew who they were dealing with now, and the chilling realization that they were in the presence of the Holt Hacker launched that cheerleader into another wild bout of hysteria. Meanwhile, The Asshole stood silent in the rain.

  I pointed to an open spot on the dicklace between two crow feathers. “You see this, William? This special place right here in the middle? I’ve reserved that spot just for you. You’re going to be my guest of honor.”

  “Oh, my God!” Brianna bawled.

  For the first time in memory, the smirk had been wiped from the face of Billy Quinn. An entirely new emotion was written there now. One I was quick to recognize. I’d seen it on all the lambs I’d slaughtered. Fear. I saw fear in that boy’s eyes. And they went wider still when I slipped the hand sickle from the macramé bag and gave it an underhand toss that landed at his feet.

  “Pick it up,” I told him.

  “What for?” he said.

  I thrust the shotgun at him and exploded, “Don’t ask questions, motherfucker! Just do it!”

  As The Asshole bent to retrieve the sickle, Brianna’s caterwauling became intolerable. I rolled my eyes and swung the shotgun back her direction. “Oh, dear Lord, girl! Would you please just shut the fuck up?! I can’t hear myself think!”

  She slapped both hands over her mouth, muffling the sobs.

  “Now where was I?” It took me a moment to find the bookmark. “Oh, yes, now I remember.” I looked over at The Asshole. “I was thinking I could just blow your head off and take that dick of yours, or… I could offer you a choice.” I shook the dicklace and the peckers danced on the string. “A choice these pricks never had.”

  I took two menacing steps forward, keeping the shotgun trained on his head. “I’ll consider letting you live… if you chop it off yourself.”

  The Asshole had no response at first. His nervous eyes shifted between the shotgun and the sickle in his hand before he finally said, “Chop it off?”

  “You heard me. It’s either your dick or your head. But one of them is coming off. Which one is up to you. I’ll give you ten seconds to decide before I pull this trigger.”

  I just love a good countdown, don’t you? They’re so dramatic.

  “Ten… nine… eight…”

  “Whoa, wait!” Billy protested. “How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?”

  “Better back away, bitch,” I warned Brianna, squinting down the double barrels. “This is gonna get messy.”

  The girl whimpered and took three steps back as the countdown resumed; “Five… four… three… two…”

  “Okay!” Billy blurted out, grabbing hold of his cock. “I’ll chop it off. Just don’t shoot me.”

  “Make it hard first,” I commanded… because it was no longer enough to kill The Asshole. Now I wanted to completely humiliate the bastard as well.

  “Alright,” said Billy, getting busy. “I’m doin’ it, okay?”

  “Do it faster!” I barked.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, picking up the pace.

  Ah, my friends, if you only could have been there. Watching The Asshole frantically flog his meat on the banks of Steel Creek Reservoir was one of those rare moments in life that exceed all expectations. Nearly as gratifying, the boy couldn’t get his dick hard. No matter how fast he cranked the shank, his flag just wouldn’t run up the pole.

  “What’s the problem?” I snapped impatiently.

  “You’ve got a fuckin’ gun pointed at me,” was his lame excuse.

  I swung the twelve gauge toward Brianna who was watching this shameful performance with chattering teeth. “You. Sugar britches. Give him a hand.”

  “What?”

  “Are you deaf?! Get up here and make me a boner!”

  The girl slogged out of the water, grabbed Billy’s cock and began pumping it furiously. I suppose I should have felt a smidgeon of empathy for those two perfectly miserable human beings-- only I was having way too much fun to give a shit.

  “C’mon, Billy,” Brianna implored. “You can do this.”

  “I’m trying,” he said.

  “Try harder!” she cried.

  But it wasn’t happening. More drastic measures were required. “Suck on it,” I ordered Brianna.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you deaf and stupid?! Get on your knees and suck his cock, idiot!”

  And, friends, that’s exactly what she did. Brianna Dresner dropped to her knees, wrapped her cold purple lips around that meat popsicle, and gobble-gobbled.

  “You go, girl,” I exclaimed, cheering on the cheerleader. “Show that Buffalo pride!”

  She shifted into high gear, moving like a bobble head riding a jackhammer. I have to admit, that little redhead was a natural born cocksucker.

  When she finally released, Billy stood semi-erect and unimpressive. The results were certainly disappointing but it would have to do. I’d grown tired of waiting.

  “Chop it off quick before you lose it,” I warned him, amused by my own clever wordplay.

  The boy lowered the crescent blade over his cock and let it waver there as he searched his empty heart for courage. A few feet away, Brianna held her breath and watched with numb jaw agape.

  “It’s not going to cut itself off,” I scolded Billy.

  “Just… just give me a second, would you!?” he snapped at me. “This ain’t easy!”

  After taking a determined breath he lifted the blade higher, prepared to bring down the guillotine. It hovered in the air, trembling in his nervous hand.

  “Do it!” I screamed at him. “What are you waiting for?!”

  And that, my friends, is when The Asshole finally broke.

  “Please, don’t make me do this,” he suddenly blurted out.

  I lowered the shotgun. “What did you say?”

  “I’m begging you,” Billy pleaded. “Don’t make me cut off my dick.”

  It was weird hearing that timid voice coming from that boy’s lips. At first I thought it might be some kind of trick to catch me off guard. But this was no trick. This was the bogeyman of Willowdale High--the cruel bully that had terrorized my sister--reduced to a sniveling toddler in a wet diaper. Staring down the twin barrels of Grandpa’s Winchester, Billy Quinn had shucked bravado like a cornhusk and laid bare his yellow innards.

  And, my God, how delicious it was!

  “Well,” I sneered with contempt. “If you’re going to beg, shouldn’t you be down on your knees?”

  Without hesitation, that chickenshit drop
ped right to the mud. Incredible. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, there knelt The Asshole on muddy knees, groveling for mercy.

  “Now ask me nicely,” I demanded.

  He looked up at me, his one good eye blinking against the pelting rain as he pleaded, “Please don’t make me cut off my dick.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said coolly. “But only if you say… I’m a big fucking asshole.”

  “I’m a big fucking asshole,” he quickly parroted.

  “Now say… I’m a pathetic piece of shit.”

  “I’m a pathetic piece of shit.”

  “How ‘bout… I’m a total douchebag.”

  “I’m a total douchebag.”

  Boys and girls, what can I say? I could have gone on like that all night, but your trusted servant was cold and wet and done playing games.

  “Yes you are, William,” I agreed. “Yes you most certainly are all of those things. But let’s try one more, shall we? Let’s try… I’d pay anything to bang Angeline Gottschalk.”

  The Asshole looked at me like I’d sprung an extra head. “What?”

  “Say it!” I exploded at him. “Say it you pathetic piece of shit douchebag asshole!”

  And guess what, friends? That pathetic piece of shit douchebag asshole said it word for word.

  “I’d pay anything to bang Angeline Gottschalk,” Billy repeated with a perplexed look.

  “Well, that’s very sweet of you, William,” I said. “But if you really want to bang the skank, maybe you should ask her yourself. So, go ahead…” I yanked the wig from my head and snarled, “Ask muh-muh-me.”

  At first this didn’t seem to register. I guess The Asshole’s brain had blown a fuse. But as the power came back on and recognition dawned, it was like he’d grabbed hold of an electric fence.

  “Oh, my God,” gasped Brianna, a half-step ahead of her stunned boyfriend. “It’s her.”

  “Ask muh-muh-me mmm-motherfucker!” I commanded again.

  The Asshole just knelt there, dumbfounded, blinking against the rain.

  “Ask!” I screamed furiously, nearly popping the arteries in my neck. “Ask! Ask! Ask! Ask if you can fuck me!” I pushed the shotgun against his forehead. “Ask now or die!”

  “Can I fuck you?” he said, bracing for a lead pellet facial.

  “Can I fuck you, G-G-G-Gottshit,” I growled.

  Billy swallowed hard and said meekly, “Can I… can I fuck you G-Gottshit?”

  Without hesitation I answered, “Not if yours was the last dick on Earth, buh-buh-buh-buh-Billy.” I lowered the shotgun and brushed the muzzles against his lips. “Now open up.”

  “Please, I don’t--“

  “Suck on it!” I screamed at him.

  The Asshole spread his lips and I shoved in the barrels. “You see, William,” I said as the boy knelt in the mud with a mouthful of pipe. “This is what happens when you play with the lives of others. This is what it comes to.”

  “Please don’t kill him!” Brianna wailed… and that’s when we were washed by the sweep of headlights.

  A vehicle had pulled into the reservoir, its approach muffled by the howling wind and rain. I withdrew the shotgun from Billy’s mouth but kept the barrels trained on him as the car rolled to a stop about twenty yards away. The driver’s side door opened and a dark figure stepped out onto the road.

  “Caleb!?” Billy shouted, squinting against the blinding headlamps.

  “Yeah, Billy! It’s me!”

  Later, giving evidence at trial, the prosecuting attorney would explain that when Caleb Quinn emerged from the gymnasium and found Angeline Gottschalk a no-show, he’d feared the worst. The girl had been lurking near his brother’s van after the football game and Caleb had an uneasy feeling that it wasn’t Angeline he’d been talking to, but that other one. It was that gut hunch that brought him to Steel Creek Reservoir on that dark and stormy night.

  “Help me bro!” Billy yelled at him. “The bitch is gonna kill me!”

  Caleb approached slowly with his arms extended and palms turned out, backlit by the headlamps of the El Camino. “Don’t do it, Angel,” he said as he came closer, sounding surprisingly calm given the danger.

  “Hate to disappoint you, brother,” I answered, squinting against the bright light. “But I’m no Angel.”

  I swung the shotgun toward the boy and switched the selector from two barrels to one; a shell for each Quinn. “That’s close enough,” I told him.

  Caleb checked his step about ten feet away and stood motionless in the rain, his long hair plastered against his face, the Carhartt jacket and jeans soaked through.

  “Let me talk to Angeline,” he said.

  “Miss Gottschalk doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”

  I checked on Billy then took a few steps toward his brother. “You’ve got balls coming here,” I said to Caleb. “Either that or a death wish.”

  “I didn’t come here to die.”

  “Well, you came to the wrong place then, didn’t you?” I told him. “But don’t sweat it, brother. We all have to go sometime. You said so yourself.” I raised the shotgun closer to my chin and zeroed in. “So is this it? The date they carve on your tombstone?”

  In a moment he answered, “Guess that’s up to you.”

  “Pity then. You were good to my sister. I hate to kill you. I really do.”

  I was ready to squeeze the trigger when Caleb suddenly screamed in my face, “Wake up Angel! Wake the fuck up!”

  Friends, I tried to unload that twelve gauge. Swear to God I tried. But it was as if my trigger finger had developed a mind of its own. Hard as I tried, I just couldn’t squeeze the fucking thing.

  “Don’t do it, Angel,” Caleb pleaded forcefully. “I need you, girl. I need my sister.”

  “Shut up!” I screamed back at him.

  “I want my Angel,” Caleb demanded, stepping closer. “Let her go!”

  I felt a stirring within.

  “Shut up!” I exploded again, beginning to panic. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  It was no use. Control was slipping away. My sister was coming home. The girl with nothing to fight for had found her cause in Caleb Quinn.

  She arrived that night as a newborn--much as I had in the storm cellar five years before--not knowing where she was or how she’d come to be there. The only thing my sister knew for sure was that Grandpa’s Winchester was pointed at Caleb Quinn’s face with her finger hard on the trigger and murderous intent still echoing in her heart. Angeline had awakened from one nightmare only to be cast into another.

  And then came the memories-- such ugly memories. Every horrific moment of my life went sweeping through Sister’s mind like a tsunami, and poured through the breach to fill the gaping holes in her past… from my first time getting corn-holed by Ted through each and every righteous kill. In the blink of an eye my life had become hers, and Angeline found herself drowning in that dark and terrible flood.

  My friends, there’s no describing the eerie sound that escaped my sister’s lips at that moment. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before… a guttural, animal-like wail of pain and soul-crushing sorrow. She reached up, found Elvira’s wig plastered to her head and flung it away as though it were something alive.

  “Angel?” Caleb asked, sensing the change. He took another step forward but Angeline immediately straightened and leveled the shotgun at him. “No!” she cried, backpedaling toward the pickup. “Don’t come near me!”

  When Sister reached the truck she felt the dicklace hanging from her neck, tore if off in revulsion and flung all my hard-earned pricks into the mud. After tossing Grandpa’s shotgun onto the front seat, she hoisted herself into the cab and turned the ignition. The engine caught on the second try and Angeline swung the Ford around and left Steel Creek Reservoir with the radiator fan rattling and one headlamp beaming askew into the cottonwoods.

  Through the lashing rain and country dark, Sister drove toward Hainesville. It no longer mattered what had happened ba
ck at the reservoir, or that her face in the rearview was streaked with blood. She was numb to that now, and focused on the task ahead. I knew the girl’s mind, of course, and to be perfectly honest I was scared shitless. Angeline planned to return to the farm, park the truck in the barn, then run a hose from the exhaust into the cab and end us both with a lethal dose of carbon monoxide.

  Friends, as you might imagine your good and faithful servant was not thrilled by this news… but neither was I oblivious to the rationale behind it. Despite the terrible lies you may have heard on television or read in the newspapers, I am not an insensitive, cold-hearted monster. I understood Angeline’s desperate need to self-destruct. To be rid of me, she had to be rid of herself. I totally got that.

  But, see, here’s the problem.

  What that girl had planned for us wasn’t just suicide, it was flat-out murder. And that’s where I took exception; given the fact it was my ass getting murdered. Yes, our relationship was complicated. This I grant you. But after five difficult years together--after I’d been screwed and abused every possible way on her behalf--wouldn’t you think I’d at least have some small say in matters of life and death? Well you’d think so, sure, but Angeline wouldn’t listen. It was as if the girl was humming loudly with her fingers shoved in her fucking ears.

  And if that sounds bitter, well, my apologies, but how would you feel if some spiteful bitch wanted to gas your ass?

  Goddamn right you’d be bitter.

  As I contemplated sucking on some tail pipe, the Ford sped past the weather-beaten sign that stood on the village line:

  Welcome to Hainesville

  Population 26

  Well, they’ll be changing that number soon enough, I remember thinking. Scratch one more and make “Population 25” my epitaph… a fitting farewell to the girl who never was.

  Yes, boys and girls, the situation was looking mighty grim on that dark and stormy night… until bitch fate unexpectedly arrived to lend a most welcome hand. A cloud of steam suddenly billowed up from under the truck’s hood, most likely a puncture in the radiator from ramming Billy Quinn’s pussy wagon.

  The pickup sputtered to the side of the road and Angeline killed the overheated engine and climbed from the cab. When the girl lifted the hood she was greeted by a hissing blast of hot steam. J.D. Gottschalk had taught his daughter an old trick for a radiator run dry; remove the cap and let the air cool the engine instead. Sister was trying to do just that, and scalding her hand each time, when she remembered the Winchester.