The Devil Next Door

A carcass of dog was spitted over a low fire, the air redolent with the fine, juicy smells of its dripping shanks. Mr. Kenning was squatting there, slowly turning it over the flames with absolute patience and absolute rapture. His primitive mind was fascinated by the cooking meat, the flickering flames.

Mike knew he had to have some of that meat.

One way or another.

But the girl snarled again and Mr. Kenning turned. He had a knife in one hand. He rose from the fire, his body greasy with yellow dog fat he had smeared over it and slicked his hair back with.

“ Are you hungry, boy?” he said.

Mike nodded.

“ I have a nice dog here. It’s very tasty. I will share it with you if you will share what you have with me.”

Mike’s simple brain tried to reason it out, but reasoning was getting harder and harder. Mr. Chalmers would be angry if he didn’t bring the female to him. But Mike did not care. He wanted the meat. And he could have it without a fight, just by sharing. Simple animal desire quickly overcame reasoning.

“ What do you bring me?” Mr. Kenning asked. “What do you offer?”

“ This,” Mike said, yanking on the clothesline that snared the girl’s wrists and dumping her into the grass.

Mr. Kenning appraised her. “Lay it at my feet.”

Mike dragged the girl over to him and Mr. Kenning kicked her until she stopped thrashing. He sniffed her length, licked her throat, slid a finger into her. He nodded. The offering was pleasing to him.

Using his knife, he cut a greasy slab of meat from the dog and handed it to Mike. It was hot, sizzling, but Mike tore at it with his teeth, filling himself with its salty richness.

Together, wordless, they ate.

When they were done, Mr. Kenning raped the girl. Then he showed Mike how to do the same…

33

“Listen to me, Dick,” Louis said to the mud-covered man with the axe, the man who had once been Dick Starling. “Just listen to me, Dick. We’ve been friends for years, you and I. Just please put down that axe, all right?”

“Friends?” Dick said, as if he were trying to make sense of that word.

“Yes, Dick. We’re friends. I trust you and you trust me.”

Dick cocked his head like a confused animal and grunted. A low guttural sound that was completely unnerving. Filthy with mud and blood, dry leaves and sticks clinging to him, he looked like some primeval savage.

“Dick? Do you understand?”

Dick Starling just stood there, darkness filling his eyes and looking like it wanted to spill out like tears. His mouth was hooked in a contorted grin and he was breathing very fast, his chest rising and falling. He looked from Macy to Louis, couldn’t seem to make up his mind what he wanted to do.

But he was thinking.

You could almost hear the primitive machinery of his mind whirring. And Louis was pretty much thinking that it was a very simple mind that Dick Starling now possessed. Gone were all the things that had made Dick, Dick. Whatever powered that brain, it cared not about the NFL or swimsuit calendars or basketball pools or sports betting. It had lost interest in the ’66 Camaro kept under the tarp in the garage, the one the old Dick babied, buffed and polished and tuned, taking it out only for vintage car shows. Things like that meant nothing to the new and improved Dick Starling. He didn’t even give a shit about his wife or his two daughters.

All of that had been replaced by much simpler imperatives…to hunt, to kill, to fuck, to eat. Maybe Earl Gould was right.

All of them out there…animals, they are regressing to animals, throwing off the yoke of intelligence and civilization, returning to the jungle and survival of the fittest…

“Dick,” Louis said, his voice very calm even though his heart was trying to pound a hole through his chest. “Dick…listen to me. It’s important that you hear what I say.”

But Dick didn’t seem to think that was important at all.

What was important here, friends and neighbors, was getting this fine piece of teenage snatch and raping it, then maybe slitting its throat, letting that hot blood pour into your mouth because that was the world’s oldest orgasm, the smell and taste and feel of the blood. Only tightass Louis Shears didn’t seem to know that because…well, because, he was still hung up on outdated, trifling things like morals and ethics and civilization.

“Louis,” Dick finally said and it looked like it took some real effort just to be coherent. He shook his head, licked his lips. “Louis, goddammit, don’t go fucking up things. I’m taking that bitch and you can either join in or I’ll go right through you. How’s that sound, old pal?”

Louis was scared.