Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

Fat Man Number Two came over and looked at the trio and smiled. It was obvious the fatties were twins. They had the same bad features in the same fat faces. They wore Hawaiian shirts that varied only in profiles and color of parrots and had on white socks and too-short black slacks and black, shiny, Italian shoes with toes sharp enough to thread needles.

Fat Man Number One took the cup away from Scott and sniffed it. “A nigger with liquor,” he said. “That’s like a cunt with brains. It don’t go together. Guess you was getting tanked up so you could put the old black snake to some chocolate pudding after a while. Or maybe you was wantin’ some vanilla and these boys were gonna set it up.”

“I’m not wanting anything but to go home,” Scott said. Fat Man Number Two looked at Fat Man Number One and said, “So he can fuck his mother.”

The fatties looked at Scott to see what he’d say but he didn’t say anything. They could say he screwed dogs and that was all right with him. Hell, bring one on and he’d fuck it now if they’d let him go afterwards.

Fat Man Number One said, “You boys running around with a jungle bunny makes me sick.”

“He’s just a nigger from school,” Farto said. “We don’t like him none. We just picked him up because some White Tree boys were beating on him and we didn’t want him to get wrecked on account of he’s our quarterback.”

“Ah,” Fat Man Number One said, “I see. Personally, me and Vinnie don’t cotton to niggers in sports. They start taking showers with white boys the next thing they want is to take white girls to bed. It’s just one step from one to the other.”

“We don’t have nothing to do with him playing,” Leonard said. “We didn’t integrate the schools.”

“No,” Fat Man Number One said, “that was ole Big Ears Johnson, but you’re running around with him and drinking with him.”

“His cup’s been peed in,” Farto said. “That was kind of a joke on him, you see. He ain’t our friend, I swear it. He’s just a nigger that plays football.”

“Peed in his cup, huh?” said the one called Vinnie. “I like that, Pork, don’t you? Peed in his fucking cup.”

Pork dropped Scott’s cup on the ground and smiled at him. “Come here, nigger. I got something to tell you.”

Scott looked at Farto and Leonard. No help there. They had suddenly become interested in the toes of their shoes; they examined them as if they were true marvels of the world.

Scott moved toward Pork, and Pork, still smiling, put his arm around Scott’s shoulders and walked him toward the big storage building. Scott said, “What are we doing?”

Pork turned Scott around so they were facing Leonard and Farto who still stood holding their drinks and contemplating their shoes. “I didn’t want to get it on the new gravel drive,” Pork said and pulled Scott’s head in close to his own and with his free hand reached back and under his Hawaiian shirt and brought out a short, black revolver and put it to Scott’s temple and pulled the trigger. There was a snap like a bad knee going out and Scott’s feet lifted in unison and went to the side and something dark squirted from his head and his feet swung back toward Pork and his shoes shuffled, snapped, and twisted on the concrete in front of the building.

“Ain’t that somethin’,” Pork said as Scott went limp and dangled from the thick crook of his arm. “The rhythm is the last thing to go.”

Leonard couldn’t make a sound. His guts were in his throat. He wanted to melt and run under the car. Scott was dead and the brains that had made plays twisted as fishing worms and commanded his feet on down the football field were scrambled like breakfast eggs.

Farto said, “Holy shit.”

Pork let go of Scott and Scott’s legs split and he sat down and his head went forward and clapped on the cement between his knees. A dark pool formed under his face.

“He’s better off, boys,” Vinnie said. “Nigger was begat by Cain and the ape and he ain’t quite monkey and he ain’t quite man. He’s got no place in this world ’cept as a beast of burden. You start trying to train them to do things like drive cars and run with footballs it ain’t nothing but grief to them and the whites too. Get any on your shirt, Pork?”

“Nary a drop.”

Vinnie went inside the building and said something to the men there that could be heard but not understood, then he came back with some crumpled newspapers. He went over to Scott and wrapped them around the bloody head and let it drop back on the cement. “You try hosing down that shit when it’s dried, Pork, and you wouldn’t worry none about that gravel. The gravel ain’t nothing.”

Then Vinnie said to Farto, “Open the back door of that car.” Farto nearly twisted an ankle doing it. Vinnie picked Scott up by the back of the neck and the seat of his pants and threw him onto the floorboard of the Impala.

Pork used the short barrel of his revolver to scratch his nuts, then put the gun behind him, under his Hawaiian shirt. “You boys are gonna go to the river bottoms with us and help us get shed of this nigger.”