CRIMSON'S CALLING
- by Jon Rollins
The windows are down. Cool autumn night swirls around Mona as Jack speeds his Mustang over paved country roads. His free hand finds her bare thigh and he presses into flesh that burns too hot with anticipation. After all these years, she is finally doing this. Her whole body is on fire, long red hair flickering flame-like in the chilly breeze, and only his touch keeps her grounded, keeps Mona from exploding. So close. After all these years, so, so close.
Her new man, Jack, he’s always grinning like he knows some wonderful secret. “Still with me, sweets?” he asks.
Mona takes his hand, moves it off her thigh, and nestles it deep between her parted legs. She considers slipping off the jean shorts and giving him the full tour, but reaches for Jack’s belt buckle instead. Leaning against him, working frantically at his pants, she nuzzles and licks at his ear.
“Oh baby,” she coos, “I think we gotta pull over for a minute so you can fuck this crazy right outta me.”
She kisses Jack hard on the mouth, nearly choking him with her tongue. He bucks and swells and groans in response. For an instant, they both forget about the world. She comes at him like a fireball, but he just grins and takes it and they burn together, burn away all the ugliness and all the pain. Jack is the only one who can take it. He is her everything. He is …
Screaming?
No, it’s the tires screaming, screeching, scratching, and clawing over pavement in response to the wrench of the steering wheel under his rough command. Mona catches a glimpse from the headlights of a world returned, but with trees where there should be asphalt, trees hungry for blood.
Then the screaming screech of tires is replaced by a victory growl from the Mustang’s V8, and they find themselves pointed down the road again.
Jack’s still grinning. All teeth. But then the grinning teeth part and he laughs long and loud. “First time I saw you up there working that pole, Crimson, I knew you’d be the death of me.”
He keeps grinning, even when she pushes back against her door and stares off down the road. “Don’t call me Crimson,” she says coolly. “That’s not my name.”
“A name is just a name, sweets. You’re my goddess, and I will live and kill and die for you all the same.” She feels his fingers caress her long red windswept locks. “But as a matter of opinion, and far as names go, I think ‘Crimson’ suits you in particular--my beautiful crimson goddess--best of all.”
Not another word is spoken over the remaining miles. But she takes his hand in hers, and she doesn’t let go.
#
“Jesus Christ!”
Cutter white-knuckles the wheel of his lifted pickup, with its oversized monster tires, trying to ignore the whining weasel in the back seat.
“You can’t even see the road, man. Maybe we should rethink our plan.”
“Shut the fuck up, Pauly. I got this.”
The headlights are off, and despite a full moon, the thick press of trees obscures most of the road in night shadow. Cutter’s eyes are fixed on twin red tail lights fifty yards ahead. They vanish with the occasional bends and turns, but he tracks their path, duplicates it, and the tail lights always reappear.
He’s an excellent hunter.
“Look, I’m just sayin’ we got this big-ass truck and there’s nobody else around, so why are we playing ninja? Let’s flip the lights and go run ‘em off the road? That’s all I’m sayin’.
“I got this,” Cutter repeats through clenched teeth.
“But what if they just keep right on going? How long are we gonna follow?”
Pauly won’t shut the fuck up because fear has him wound too tight, because he’s a pussy.
From the front passenger seat, Tank chimes in. “You got some place else to be?” Tank is a big inbred motherfucker. He gets shit done and doesn’t talk much. Tank is a general in Cutter’s army of three.
The weasel’s mouth keeps on flapping. “But the Dekker place was all cleared out. Looks to me like they’re running.”
“I know where they’re going.”
Cutter’s hands grip the wheel too tight as he tracks his prey. It’s not a question of fear for him, because he’s fearless and the big bold “FUCK YOU!” tattoo on the side of his neck is an open invitation to anyone stupid enough to put that claim to a test.
The goober in the car ahead, the drifter who’s been squatting at the Dekker place and fucking Crimson, well, he is a completely different breed of stupid. He is about to die in the worst way Cutter can imagine, and a man like Cutter is infinitely more imaginative than most when it comes to killing.
There’s a commotion ahead, a squealing of tires, and they lose the tail lights for a moment. Cutter maintains course and has closed their distance by half before the squealing car corrects itself and their little game resumes. He eases up on the gas, giving them back their fifty yards.
“Maybe a deer or tree branch?” Tank offers.
“Nah,” says Pauly. “I bet they’re doing the nasty again. Like goddam dogs in heat. Sheesh. I mean, did you see what they did to that bed?”
Tank glares over his shoulder at the weasel, who fails to notice.
“Well,” says Pauly, “that burned out farm has been empty for years. It could be wild animals got in there and tore it up. But the way they were on each other behind the club the other night … I mean, Jesus Christ!”
“Cutter, you want me to climb back there and shut him up for good?”
But Cutter is too busy deciding what to do with the bitch once he catches her. Maybe, after he’s worked her over and she’s a broken, bloody mess, maybe he’ll let Pauly fuck her. And then maybe, while Pauly is pumping away on her like the horny little weasel he is, well, maybe Cutter will execute them both.
He ignores the question. “We’re almost there. Tank, gimme that three-fifty-seven outta the glove box. And I’ll take the bat, too. You work the shotgun.”
“What do I get?” asks the weasel.
Cutter watches the brake lights flash, watches them arc to the right as the car ahead turns off the main road. “Just wait and see what you get, Pauly.”
For the first time since they left town, the weasel falls silent.
But it doesn’t last long.
“Come to think, I guess it was wild animals ripped up that bed. Yeah, it had to be.”
They turn off and creep down a long, narrow drive. The brake lights flash again before all goes dark. Cutter stops the truck, issues quick orders, and then slips out into the moonlit night with a revolver in one hand and a Louisville Slugger in the other. Tank climbs behind the wheel. The final words before Tank quietly closes the driver door are Pauly’s.
Of course they are.
“I mean, Jesus Christ! Nothing human could do that kinda damage, right?”
#
It’s almost midnight, and the full moon is big and beautiful. It casts a soft spell of silvery luminescence over the long-untended cemetery, guiding her way among weather-worn headstones and overgrown weeds. Jack is back in the car, sitting this one out. It’s very personal, this reunion, one long overdue.
Clemens Cemetery inhabits the southern outskirts of a dried up, abandoned mining town. Mona knows there’s a general store on Main Street with gas pumps out front, remembers from childhood visits to her grandmother’s house.
She’s come out here once since the funeral, a few years back, after another incident with her father. Mona wasn’t alone that night, and they did things on the Clemens Cemetery grounds, very nasty things. She was tweaking out of her mind that night, and imagined all the dead had come back to watch their show. Just another show. And she’d performed like a pro.
Afterward, they’d driven up into town and discovered the general store--with its gas pumps--was closed. Everything was closed, boarded up, forgotten. The town was dead. Nearly two hours later, they’d coasted back into the city on nothing but fumes.
But tonight is different. Tonight she has Jack, who’s planned ahead, topped off the tank. Mona only mentioned this place to him once, a vague reference in the midst of too many orgasms (Jack’s tongue is relentless), and now here they are. He’s planned ahead. He knows the way in, but more importantly, Jack knows the way out.
She finds the marker.
“Hello, Grams. It’s been a while.”
The gray granite slab is unremarkable, with simple lettering that reads “Mildred Matthews” and nothing more. The slab doesn’t respond to her words, and no rotting hands burst from the ground. No ghost rises from her grandmother’s grave to scold Mona for being a stripper or for the drinking. Or the goddamn drugs. Nothing happens.
But Grams is there.
“I would’ve baked you some cookies, but this was kind of a last-minute thing, so … you know. Sorry”
Still no response.
“I guess I’ve got a lot to be sorry for. And that’s kinda funny cuz I mostly thought you were the one who should apologize to me all this time. But I was wrong.”
Mona isn’t prepared for the flood of memories. Or the tears.
“Everything changed after you left. Ray--well, I’ve called him all kinds of names, but ‘Dad’ hasn’t been one for quite a while. Anyway, Ray changed. You know, he started … well, he did things I don’t wanna talk about. I think he’s just about the worst kind of person on this whole shitty planet. Maybe you see it from where you’re at now, so you can understand why I wished your son dead a million times over. But by the time I was old enough to pull the trigger, Ray had pretty much beat all the fight right outta me. In the end, I let him do those things … all of it … without any fuss at all. But secretly, I wished him dead. And I blamed you.”
There is no response from the grave.
“So, then this boy comes along. He’s all big and bad and he’s into me, and I thought he was my shining white knight, come to slay the dragon and whisk me away to some happy place. You might remember him from a few years back. We came out here and things got a little crazy and I’m real sorry for it now. For a minute there, I believed he was gonna save me from my monster.”
Except for a soft, distant rustle of brush in the breeze, the world is silent.
“Well, turns out there’s some monsters in the world even worse than your son. My life seems to be full of great big ugly monsters, Grams, and I’ve blamed you all this time.”
More rustling, but Mona hardly notices.
“But I was wrong.”
She wipes away the tears and smiles. “Grams, I got myself a one-way ticket out of that hell-hole town, and I’m not ever going back. So, I just wanted to apologize for blaming you all these years, when I should’ve thanked you for … you know, for showing me there’s more to life than just the monsters. There’s good stuff too. I wanted you to know I love you, and I wanted to say goodbye.”
A devil’s voice hisses from the shadows, one Mona knows intimately. “And where would you be going, little girl?”
#
“Shit.”
She nearly jumps out of her skin as he steps out into the moonlight, and Cutter loves it.
“Why Crimson, what big eyes you have.”
He raises the baseball bat in a slow arc, until the business end rests on his shoulder. He does this for effect, making sure she sees and understands.
The bitch stands there gaping at him. He knows this surprise appearance has unhinged her and she’s trying to wrap her head around it. Whatever hopes and dreams the drifter has ignited are dying out in this instant, and it’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Cutter decides he’ll keep her after all, and revels in all the creative new ways he’ll devise to punish her.
“And where’s that sexy little red cape and boots you’re so famous for, baby? I mean, if you’re gonna go out whoring, then you should at least dress the part.”
The bitch finds her voice again. “I left them back at the club because I don’t need them anymore. And I’m no whore! I’ve never been a whore.”
“Baby, you’re gonna be the hardest working whore in town. I’ll see to that.”
“I’m no whore!” she repeats.
Cutter shakes his head. She isn’t completely broken yet. But that’ll change soon enough.
“After tonight, that cape and boots are the only duds you’ll ever wear again, you fucking little cheating-ass cunt-whore.”
“Please leave me alone,” she says. It’s not exactly the scared, shaking, sobbing delirium Cutter expects, but it’ll do for now.
He doesn’t acknowledge her request. “And if the booze and blow and X ain’t doing their thing anymore, then we’ll just add some meth to your diet, get you real good and medicated. We’ll have you fried out of your fucking mind in no time. I swear to it, you goddamn fucking whore!”
“Just leave us alone,” she says, and her eyes dart over his shoulder, in the direction of the car, and her failed savior.
“Us?” Cutter chuckles. “I guess you haven’t read the news today, little girl. Seems your boy toy found himself a new home.” His arms spread wide and it’s all he can do to suppress the giggle of delight tickling his gut. “Right here in the ol’ Clemens Motel.”
That’s when the bitch realizes Cutter’s boys aren’t by his side where they should be. That’s when she figures out where they may be instead.
“Jack!” she screams out, and he delights in her rekindled fear.
She’s quick and lunges two steps forward, but Cutter has blocked her way and cocks the bat like he’s angling for a home run and her face is the ball. The bitch backs off warily and he beams with pride. This is going just as he hoped.
Until a shotgun blast explodes into the night.
Dammit, Tank and Pauly were to keep that piece of shit drifter at the car, and keep him alive. It’s important for Crimson to watch what they do to him and understand she’s to blame. This is the best way to break her. Plus, Cutter figures, it’ll be fun as hell.
There should have been no gunplay, at least not yet, and this changes the game. The cunt shoots by in a mindless panic almost before he has time to react, but Cutter’s bat catches her just behind the ear in passing.
Down she goes.
Shit. What to do now.
Even sprawled face down in the weeds like that, she’s a beauty. Those tiny denim shorts and tight little T-shirt hardly conceal a thing, and he stares down at her, lost for a moment in the flawless skin, how it glows pink and inviting, and how her silky red hair has spread itself like a halo around her head. Tonight, she is the only color in a shitty gray world.
And her color is crimson.
Cutter runs the tip of his bat up and down the insides of her legs. She groans in response, still alive. Good.
“I’m not done with you, little girl, not by a stretch.”
Then Cutter waits, and he listens. Unwilling to abandon his current project, he pulls the revolver free from the waist of his pants while watching the shadows and listening for clues. He’s a fearless motherfucker, ready for whatever it is he hears bounding this way, someone--or some thing--moving fast, coming for him in the darkness.
He aims his .357 in the direction of the approaching racket, and nearly takes off Pauly’s head as the weasel bursts into view. Pauly is spooked and running blind. He doesn’t know this place, so it’s pure dumb luck that lands him right in Cutter’s camp. Fucking dumb luck.
The weasel keeps on running too, nearly runs right on by and back into the shadows again. It’s Cutter’s voice that stops him.
“Pauly! What the fuck is going on?”
The words break Pauly’s spell of blindness and stop him in his tracks. “Jesus Christ!” he pants. “Jesus H. Christ!” The weasel’s eyes are bulging and his sweating skin glistens in the moonlight like he’s just finished a marathon. He stoops there, sucking air, struggling to speak. He points back the way he came, back where he must have left Tank and the drifter.
“What the fuck, Pauly?”
“Oh man,” the weasel whines. “This is bad, Cutter. This is so so bad. It got Tank.”
He realizes Pauly is all teared up and bawling like a baby, and wonders one more time why he keeps the spineless little fucker around.
“Stop being a pussy and start making sense.”
“It got Tank!” Pauly spits out in a kind of hissing shout. “The drifter. She called out and the drifter made a move and Tank shot it point blank. Dead center. Jesus H. Christ.”
“Tank shot the fucking drifter?”
“And pissed it off! He just pissed the thing off.”
“What thing? The drifter?”
“I’m trying to tell you it ain’t human, man. That thing took a belly full of lead and it hulked out. Just got mad and hulked out.”
“Where’s Tank, Pauly?”
“Tank’s dead. It was like a Pac Man with great big ugly teeth, just chomping away on him, tearing him into little pieces. Chomp! Chomp! Chomp--”
“Pauly--”
“We gotta get to the truck, Cutter. We gotta get the hell outta here now.”
“Pauly--”
“Just cut our losses, man. Let that thing have the girl and live to fight another day.”
“Pauly!”
The weasel’s face turns toward Cutter, but his eyes are still fixed in the direction of the car, where he ran like a goddam coward and left Tank to die and the drifter to escape.
“What!”
“Shut the fuck up.” The .357 puts one hell of a dent in Pauly’s face, and the subsequent silence makes Cutter wonder why he didn’t do it sooner.
Another groan from Crimson gets him back on track, formulating a new plan.
It takes two heartbeats of deliberation before he strolls over and takes aim at the back of her head. “Cut our losses? Fine. Let’s cut our losses, little girl.” He grins as he fingers the trigger. If he can’t have her--
“I wonder,” comes a gravelly voice from the shadows, “if you got enough lead in that piece for a fellow like me.”
Cutter grins into the night. This will do. Now, he can enjoy executing Crimson in front of her new boyfriend before they both take up residence together here at the Clemens Motel. Only he can’t look away from the trees, can’t stop searching for the drifter.
“Why don’t you come over here and we’ll find out,” he suggests, still grinning.
Pauly said the drifter had taken one in the gut and then ripped into Tank like it was nothing. Then again, Pauly said a lot of things. Pauly talked way too much, but Cutter has remedied that. And even if this drifter is the devil himself, Cutter will remedy him as well.
He knows this is a stall tactic. Crimson is shaking off the daze, struggling up on her hands and knees when he finally steals a quick glance. He plants his boot on her ass and sends her sprawling again, then levels the barrel at her head once more. No matter what he is, this drifter will not get the girl. Not alive.
“OK, here I am.” This time, the gravelly voice is accompanied by the coppery smell of blood, and a hot breath on the back of his neck. This drifter is one sneaky bastard.
Cutter doesn’t flinch. He’s a fearless motherfucker. Instead, he drops one shoulder and spins into a sideways dive, tapping his trigger twice before his mind fully registers the thing he’s just shot.
“Ouch,” it says.
From a crouch, he fires again and again and again. His revolver barks loud with each drop of the hammer until the clicks tell him it’s empty. But the thing just stands there, towering over him with a giant, hideous, toothy grin.
“Ya got me,” it says.
It’s still grinning when Cutter swings hard, splitting his bat in two over the edge of a gravestone. And before the surprised devil has time to react, he charges, driving his makeshift stake deep into its chest--which happens to be about eye level. The thing expels its bloody breath down into his enraged face, then it staggers backward, clutching curiously at the handle of the bat.
“Oh,” it says.
The monster staggers backward, then sways a little, but maintains its monstrous grin. And Cutter realizes the grin is not an emotional expression so much as a physical necessity for any creature with so many long, pointy teeth. This grin is the natural expression of a predatory animal, such as an alligator.
Or a wolf.
“Oh my,” it says.
But Cutter’s smile is one born of both predatory nature and emotion. “Fuck you,” he says with a sneer. “Fuck you straight to hell, you goddam piece of shit asshole, and any other big ugly motherfuckers like you who go thinking you can take her from me.”
The thing drops to its knees, still gripping at the weapon protruding from its chest. It does not reply.
“You think you can protect her from me? Shit, you can’t even protect yourself, not from me.”
“Jack,” she whispers, and Cutter turns to see Crimson has climbed to her feet, though she looks shaky and her long shimmering red hair hides her cowering face.
Even now, seeing what he is, she still calls to that freak. But it doesn’t matter, because he will medicate her until she can’t remember Jack’s name anymore, or why the pain and the punishment Cutter inflicts will never, ever end.
A wet sucking sound draws his attention back to the defeated devil, and he sees the bloody, splintered bat has been unsheathed from the thing’s chest. Cutter corrects himself. There is emotion behind the hideous toothy grin. And that emotion is…
Amusement.
“You’ve got it all wrong, friend.” The thing rises up again to its full height, where it looks down at him with grinning, gleaming amusement. “She doesn’t need my protection. Not from you. Not from anyone. Not anymore.”
Cutter has time to wish he had a chainsaw, because he’s the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker on the whole goddam planet, and would prove it if he just had the right tool for the job. He thinks a chainsaw might do the trick.
This time, it’s his own name she whispers.
“Cutter.”
He turns to face the bitch a final time, seeing she does have the tool for the job.
He feels her teeth sink deep into his flesh as she bites down, tearing the words “FUCK YOU!” from his neck.
He reaches for the bitch with hands that have nearly choked her dead countless times before.
Chomp! Chomp!
Only bloody stumps now.
“You goddamn bitch!” he spits out defiantly, before his jaw is ripped off and he never speaks again.
He glares at her, sees a flash of red and razor-sharp white teeth before his face and eyes are torn away.
Fucking bitch, he thinks--because he can’t say it--as she chomps down and rips through the crotch of his jeans and castrates him with one … big … toothy … bite.
And for the first time in his entire life, Cutter considers the possibility that he may not be the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker on the planet. Not by a stretch.
#
The windows are down. Cool autumn night swirls around her as Jack speeds his Mustang over paved country roads, back the way they came. There’s a final stop to make before their happily ever after takes her far, far away from this place. Her body is on fire, long red hair flickering flame-like in the cool breeze, and she feels she’ll explode if they don’t get back soon.
She can’t help smiling, thinking happy thoughts of this final reunion with dear old Dad. She wonders if he’ll recognize her now, after she’s grown so much, his sweet little angel. The girl who calls herself Crimson.
End
Bio: Jon Rollins is a writer hobbyist, short story enthusiast, and editor for Wicked Works Magazine. His written works have appeared in Down In The Dirt Magazine, DailyScienceFiction.com, Abyss & Apex Magazine, and a book of spooky road trip tales called Bumps In The Road, among others. He resides in Louisiana, but occasionally hops on his motorcycle and rides off in search of the highway’s end. He also vacations in the Twilight Zone, where he one day hopes to retire. Look for him there and in future publications.
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