VI. Of Wrath and Roadkill

Gun-crazy deer, a drunk bear, and people with knives.

I felt like I needed a change of scenery. Taking the luxury sedan to Limbo might be just the thing for it. Nine out of ten theologians agree: Limbo's not that bad. Plus, there was talk of a mansion. They say money can't buy happiness but guess what, neither can food stamps. And poverty can't buy anything.

And goddamn, this is a nice car.

"You like it?" he asks, beaming with pride. "Custom made. This baby was all painstakingly hand-crafted and assembled in Lee Iacocca's secret underground auto shop. Best child labor money can buy. She's one of a kind. Beautiful, isn't she? She's solid platinum with a reinforced titanium frame, polished to a mirror finish. All the windows are diamond coated. Completely unbreakable. Even got my family crest engraved in the rims."

"Wow, that's really--"

"She runs on plutonium." He talks over me, obviously not finished with the speech. "The design came to me very vividly in a dream. She's enchanted by demon forces. I bathe her in the blood of virgins twice a month."

"Yeah, okay."

"I left very specific instructions in my last will and testament to be buried with her. Knew I'd be coming here so I made some calls to the other side, greased a few palms and dropped a few names. Had to get all the proper arrangements in order. They know me here. I'll be well taken care of."

"Uh huh. Well, it certainly is a nice car."

"Her name is Sheila!" he snaps in a bizarre Jekyll-and-Hyde fit of unprovoked rage. He then fidgets with his tie and lets out a forced chuckle in an attempt to regain his composure.

"I mean, that's what I call my car. For fun. Oh yes, that reminds me, I haven't properly introduced myself. My name is Francis." He extends his hand in greeting. His smile is vacant. His words are cold and hollow, wrapped in an eggshell-thin layer of politeness.

"Nice to meet you Francis. Name's Jack."

"So, if you could just point me in the right direction?"

"Yeah, I should probably just ride with you. There's a lotta tricky hidden backroads and dead ends. You might get lost." I intend to milk this for all its worth.

He gives me a wary glance but just says, "You're sure it wouldn't be any trouble?"

"Not at all," I assure him.

I have no f*****g clue how to get to Limbo. That's only a minor setback as far as I'm concerned. So what if we get lost? The plush interior of the ride with its precision climate-control and gently vibrating reclining seats alone make it worth the risk. Hell, I could live in this car if I had to. Naturally I'd have to kill Francis for food. Or maybe just on general principle.

Not even the most eloquent and knowledgeable purveyors of consumer electronics could properly put into words the divine grandeur of the stereo system. The very air around me throbs with Mozart's Symphony no. 40 Molto Allegro. It fills my head and courses through my veins.

Joy is not the right word for what I feel. I feel...pretentious. Raw unadulterated pretentiousness. And that's an incredible feeling, my friend. A despicable character trait in others, maybe, but that mostly stems from the common man's bitter envy of the carefree snobbish lifestyle.

"You're...certain...that you know the way there...right?" Francis eyes me suspiciously.

"Yeah, sure. Take a left here."

Gravel road. Barren black trees with twisting branches like the limbs of a contortionist. A haunting bluish-gray fog floods the road ahead and the dead forest all around us. No moon. No stars. Just the spectral glow of the mist.

We're probably going the right way.

"We're going the wrong way, aren't we?"

"Relax Francis. Just keep straight, we'll be there in no time."

"Hmm. You know, it's strange," he says, studying me closely. "You don't strike me as Limbo material. It's a very...exclusive community."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing. You just look poor, is all. You smell poor, too."

"I'm an eccentric billionaire. I like slumming. Got a problem with that?"

"No need to get defensive. I'm sure you come from good stock. Every family has a few black sheep in it."

"I'll have you know that my father owns five Death Stars, and my grandfather is the King of Switzerland." I should really learn to make my lies less outlandish sometimes.

"Ah. My mistake," he says with a mocking smile. He drops the subject and we ride in silence.

Staring out the window of the car, I see an animal scurrying from tree to tree. It's obscured by the shadows. Looks like a deer. I see more ahead, hiding and watching. They're standing on their hind legs, in hunched poses. Then I get a closer look at one of them. It's mangled and bloodied. Half the skin has been carved away from its face. Split torso. Exposed ribs. A walking carcass, cast aside by some poacher. Resurrected and pissed off.

Oh s**t. He's got a gun.

The first shot cracks from the rifle and bounces off the bulletproof windshield. The mutilated hunters begin to come in full force, each taking a shot at the car. Their rifles are useless. Francis hums cheerfully to himself as bullets harmlessly ricochet left and right. He doesn't speed up. He doesn't swerve. His only real reaction to the situation is to switch the song from Mozart to Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. I presume it was for dramatic effect. I have to admit, it was a nice touch.

Seems like we're not in too much danger, all things considered. It's going to take a lot more than an angry herd of gun-crazy venison to put down the platinum cruiser.

But not a hell of a lot more.

A chain whips out in front of us from behind a tree. On the end of the chain is a bear trap. It clamps down on one of the front tires in a spring-loaded death grip. Holding the other end of the chain is...

Oh, f**k me. A BEAR?! Seriously?

Welcome to the Forest of Retribution. Yeah, I get it already. Call off the f*****g bears. I can't take any more ironic vengeance today. I don't know if Mother Nature had a hand in this, but if she did she's being a real c**t about it. Sure, animal rights is a great idea in theory, but passing out a stockpile of loaded firearms to oppressed woodland creatures? That's just a bad idea. Now don't get me wrong--if this were happening to anyone else but me, I'd be laughing my a*s off right now. But I ain't laughing.

The bear walks right in front of our car. We hit him (or her, I guess...not gonna dig through its crotch fur to make a genital scan) like a safety test crash into a wall. Good news is the airbags work.

The bear is wailing on the hood of the car like a bi-polar ex-girlfriend in a drunken menstrual hysteria. Only without all the tears and the screaming. And maybe a bit less terrifying. Hell, we might even stand a better chance of reasoning with it.

"You there! What do you think you're doing?" Francis, stupidly enough, actually is going to attempt to reason with it.

Wow. Now's he's getting out of the car. Brass balls.

"Do you have any idea how much this vehicle costs? Any idea at all? You don't, do you?"

The bear lets out a roar that makes no attempt at guessing the answer.

"Quiet for a minute, I have to make a phone call!" he tells the forest beast with a level of arrogance reserved for suicide bombers and immortals. Then again, we are technically dead. That's not too far away from being immortal.

I hear tapping at my window. It's a rifle barrel. Oh, right. The stags. Forgot about them. One of them is staring right at me and grinning sadistically.

"Okay, fine...what do you want?" I begin to gripe, "I don't have any money. Christ, we're leaving your stupid forest, already! Damn!"

"Not good enough. You have to suffer!" says the talking deer. Talking deer? Eh. Whatever.

"Come on, Bambi. Put the gun down. I know you're upset about what happened to your mother."

"Quiet, you murderous scum! Step out of the car so we can skin you and wear your pelt!"

"Man, you were a lot nicer at Disneyworld." Never been pulled over by angry roadkill before. First time for everything, so they say.

Francis is wrapping up his phone call. "Well just get out here! What? No, no...there's no time for all that. We both knew there'd be risks involved. Well what about the other one? Fine, let's just go with that. Look I have to go, I'm at gunpoint. That sounds fine. Just get it taken care of. See you soon."

"I really hope that was a call to someone about rescuing us," I say to Francis as the bear shakes the car violently.

"Hmm? Oh, that? That was my stock broker. Had some pressing matters to attend to. I doubt you would understand."

"Well...guess that's that, then. I'd say see you in Hell, but...here we are."

*

The old dry-rotted ropes are too tight and itchy against the skin. The stags finally got the fire going. Water in the cauldron's coming to a boil. We'll make a fine stew. How did Bugs Bunny always get out of this situation?

I count a total of seven corpse-stags, all brandishing hunting rifles. They have mangled human hands grafted to their front limbs to compensate for lost or amputated hooves. Which means only one thing--opposable thumbs. The evolutionary ace-in-the-hole.

We've been dragged into a small secluded clearing deep in the woods. There's a termite-infested wooden shack about fifty feet ahead of us. Sounds of a struggle coming from inside...

"THIS POURRIDGE IS F*****G COLD YOU B***H!"

"Please Papa Bear, you're drunk!"

"You think I don't know that?! Why the hell you think I've been drinkin' all day!"

The bear's paw smashes the flimsy wooden door into a million splinters. A sobbing white trash nymph crawls outside in haste. Her hair is golden like sun, setting on the midnight sky of her roots.

"Did you even cut up the carrots and celery for the stew, yet?!"

"I was going to but--"

"SHUT UP! YOU'RE F*****G USELESS!"

Me and Francis are bound back-to-back and suspended from a gnarled tree branch just above the boiling cauldron. The battered cabin-wife walks over to the picnic table in front of us and starts chopping vegetables. She's a pretty girl...in a plain, slightly trashy way. She's meek and quiet. Very jumpy. Nervous.

"HEY! You guuyss wanna hear a sstorry?" Papa Bears asks us in a slur. Jesus, that b*****d is hammered.

"Once upon a tiiimme...theeerre waaass a W***E!!! Naaammed Goldilocks."

"Papa Bear please don't--"

"SHUT UP! Where was I? Oh yeah...so there's this bear...in the woods...one day he comes home from work...an' there's this s**t...with the clap...she's in bed...covered in honey...my wife left me...no dinner on the table...lost my job...I didn't kill that goddamn dwarf...but they don't listen...I was just...where am I?"

He passes out with a loud crash. One of the stags, feeling an awkward need to explain the scene, quietly stammers to us, "He...he just sorta gets like that...sometimes. Well...most of the time, really. He's not a bad guy, he's just, uh...under a lot of stress."

"You know, " I tell the deer, "you could just let us go. You don't have to take orders from him."

"Oh, no...it's not like that," he chuckles. "We want to do this."

I tell Francis, "If you've got a plan, I'd love to hear it. I'm fresh out of ideas."

Francis just says, "Any minute now. Wait and see."

"Okay. I'm waiting."

They sprang from the shadows so quickly I almost didn't see them. Strange men in black hooded robes sidestep in from the darkness, one behind each of the seven stags. Seven blades slit seven throats in a lightning speed display of synchronized assassination.

An eighth man rides in on horseback--a black demon steed with long sharpened horns and eyes white with blind rage. Its six legs gallop on razor edged hooves. Blood trails from its mouth like a flash flood pouring out of a rain gutter. Intricate spiral patterns are branded into the horse's flesh, marring its coat. The rider throws a canvas sack over Goldilocks. In the blink of an eye he abducts her and rides unseen into the night fog. The seven on foot scatter out of sight in every direction and back into obscurity. Who the hell are these people?! Druids? Ninjas? Freemasons?

"Friends of yours?" I ask Francis.

"I told you I was well taken care of here."

Bloody Hell. I might actually have to pretend to be nice to this prick. He hangs with some strange circles.

I ask Francis, "So how do we get down?" He's got no answer for that one.

Without warning the rope snaps and unravels. Francis lands in the cauldron. I bounce off the side, hitting my shin. The bear is beginning to stir from his intoxicated slumber. Francis is screaming. Something about pain and boiling, I think. Wonder if he left his keys in the car. I should go check.

"Wait in the stew, I'll go for help."

Reviews

[roarke]

Sounds like Jack just met Jim Baker or Prescott Bush....
I think Jack needs to take Goldie along for the ride, ya never know when a s**t covered in honey might come in handy.
Unfortunately, the advent of cell phones ruins the "I'll go for help." excuse.... I can pretty much tell at this point the story doesn't end, "and the lived happily ever after." then again, that would be sadly ironic in hell............. kinda like my first marriage....