Sex and Death in Television Town Page 2

  “You got me?” Battle Johnny shouts. Oxy stabs himself in the leg. Then grunts. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Sharp asks Battle Johnny.

  Battle Johnny cracks his knuckles at her.

  “We’re lucky I’m the one in charge,” he replies.

  Sharp pauses at him. She drops her guns and kisses him deeply, wraps her wrist tight against the back of his neck and pulls his tongue into her mouth.

  They speak to each other with eyes and the interweaving of their bodies. Words have never been an adequate expression for them. They are only lovers when there is silence.

  The banshee-screams outside become like white noise.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The train churgles into view:

  “That’s no train . . .” Nixx says.

  It is like a train, but it’s something alive. A giant caterpillar-shaped steam engine crawling up the track. Decorated with bones and shiny black insect shells, greasy liquid drain- ing from pores and leaving a wet trail across the landscape.

  Oxy chuckles at it.

  The meaty machine moves fast and squishy, red-gargles when the whistle blows, bubbling a rotten odor.

  From behind:

  Metallic squeals from pickled throats as the creatures emerge from the darkness. Buzzy rabbit-hopping creatures that move so twisty-fast that they are hard to make out.

  “Christ,” Nixx mutters as the desert below them fills with the crispy insect-things.

  Battle Johnny raises his guns and screams, “Go for the train, the train!”

  Random grabs Battle Johnny by the wrist, pulling his gun out of the window. He can feel water droplets slipping down his itchy cheeks.

  “Wait, we can’t go on that,” Random cries. “It might be full of those things!”

  Battle Johnny tears out of the young man’s grip and spits at him.

  “The entire desert is full of those things,” he says.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The stagecoach races along the train track. The horses gallop wildly, finding a second wind. They don’t even need Oxy’s whips of encouragement. The train gets to them before the creatures do.

  Battle Johnny sends Cry to the caterpillar/train first.

  “How do we get in?” Nixx asks Cry.

  There aren’t any openings.

  The steam engine is close enough to touch. They can

  smell its thick meaty aroma misting from its sweaty exterior. It really is something alive. A flexing of fatty tissue as it chug-churgles beside them.

  Cry smooths her muscles and pulls a handleless samurai blade from beneath her thigh skin.

  “We’ll make an entrance,” she says.

  With cat-like movements, Cry slashes the caterpillar/ train, cutting into its warm flesh. Black blood oozes out of the wound, soaks her fists and runs down her snakeskin tattoos. She licks her fingers and slashes again.

  Down below, Random is twitching at the window. Hugging his knees and making sure he is sitting in the exact center of the coach, away from both windows.

  “Why aren’t you firing yet?” he cries to Battle Johnny.

  “They’re not close enough to aim,” Battle Johnny says.

  “What do you mean?” Random screams. “They’re at our heels!”

  Battle Johnny grinds his teeth. He tries to aim at the shifty black creatures but they are too fast. They run from side-to-side, spiraling, twisting from one place to another.

  “Not close enough,” he grumbles.

  Above, Nixx has eight guns lined up evenly by his legs. They are all exactly two inches apart, four inches from his knees, and centered. The two rifles are in the middle. Three pistols are on each side of the rifles, placed according to size. All barrels of the guns face east, in the direction of the black creatures, except the two tiny pistols on each end which face west just in case one of those things tries to sneak up behind him.

  The gnarling beasts are very close now, almost within shooting range. But Nixx isn’t ready to ruin his gun setup.

  Maybe when they get a little closer, he thinks.

  So Nixx turns his attention to the woman next to him, who whimpers as she slices into caterpillar fat. He notices one of her hands on her upper thigh, squeezing fingernails tight into her tattoos as she opens up the train.

  “Hurry up,” Oxy says. “I don’t know how long the horses can keep this speed.”

  Cry is masturbating now. Ripping into herself as she digs through the blubbery wall.

  The hole is big enough to climb through, but Cry is too electrified to stop. She hacks at the sausagey meat violently, trying to bring herself to orgasm.

  “Get in there!” shouts Battle Johnny’s head, poking out of the stagecoach window at her.

  She wheezes. Doesn’t speak. Still masturbating as she climbs up the train’s meat and slips down into the hole. Disappearing inside of the monstrous insect.

  Nixx suddenly feels alone. The thrashing black things are closer, fizzling around the coach. Just below him. And he’s supposed to be holding them off.

  “What’s in there?” he screams at the hole.

  He doesn’t see Cry. It is hollow and quiet inside.

  “Is it safe?”

  Nothing. Empty.

  Just a gooey hole staring back at him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You go next,” Battle Johnny yells to Nixx.

  Nixx stares at his organized gun display and wonders if he should start using some of them. He can feel the warmth radiating out of the train’s hole. It beckons him, the comfort- able moisture, a vagina opening its lips to him.

  “Hurry up, hurry up.” Oxy rips at his sideburns madly.

  The green-faced man ruins his gun display by taking the three shiniest pistols, and stuffs them in his belt. He quickly fixes the remaining ones into a pattern that is tolerable enough. And slowly reaches out for the edges of the hole, squishes fingers into the meat and leaps away from the stagecoach. His body presses against the sweaty caterpillar machine. Oil soaks through his shirt.

  One hand after another, he pulls himself inside, careful not to lose his grip on the slippery flesh.

  The last thing Nixx sees before going in is a blistery figure crawling up the back of the stagecoach.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The interior:

  Nixx gets to his feet and whips a pistol out of his belt with artistic perfection. He holds it at a 45 degree angle (his mental compass tells him it is exactly 45 degrees) and scans the area for Cry.

  No sign of Cry.

  He is in a dark and wet place. Empty and loud with chur-churgle sounds.

  It is light enough to realize he is in some kind of passenger car, full of seats made of bloody rib cages but nobody to sit in them.

  “Cry?” Nixx calls, he can hardly breathe in this steamy thickness.

  Fluids dribble from tiny holes in the ceiling.

  Crying... Nixx hears whining, slippery cunt sounds. He steps through fishy blood puddles to a mohawk of spikes peaking out from behind one of the morbid passenger seats.

  “Cry,” he says, relaxing the angle of his arm by 10 degrees.

  She is squatting in a pool of slime, fucking some kind of leg bone turned dildo. Wrapped up in the blanket-like shadows. Her claws extend from her fingers, she curls her body outward and sniffs the air in Nixx’s direction.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Outside:

  Jesus Christ is standing on top of the stagecoach, calm and balanced, easing bullets into the twisty forms that charge the coach. He shows no emotion, uses no energy. Just empties his guns into black bodies like he’s dealing cards in a poker game.

  Crusty skulls explode into smoke as they reach the back of the stagecoach. Bullets rip through them like paper. They are hollow inside, and full of ash.

  One leaps at the stagecoach door and shrieks its pimpled face through the window at Typi. Her eyes flicker at it until she comes out of her trance and finds herself screaming back at the wai
ling figure.

  “Get out of the way,” Battle Johnny yells as he pulls the girl to the floor and fires a bullet into its skull.

  The creature explodes into clouds of soot, coating everyone in a layer of charcoal.

  Typi hugs Random’s feet, cries, drools all over his shoes. Random flicks his fingers at her.

  “You two go next,” Battle Johnny says to the young couple. He spit-cleans black dust from Sharp’s glasses.

  Random doesn’t move.

  “Get the hell up there,” Battle Johnny says.

  Random blinks rapidly. “But I don’t think . . .”

  Battle Johnny raises his finger at Random. The young man flinches, as if the hermaphrodite was about to slap him instead of raise a finger. He helps his wife off of the ground and sits her on the seat across from him. He examines her with squinty eyes.

  “Are you okay?” He pets the dirt-curls of her hair. The girl explores him. She half-smiles and kisses his hand.

  “Don’t leave me,” she cries.

  He shakes his head and scrunches the plumpness of her shoulder.

  “Get going,” Battle Johnny croaks.

  Sharp boosts Random up first, who stumbles, climbs up sloppily, and roll-bashes into Death’s thigh. The gunslinger doesn’t move. His legs are rooted to the coach’s roof like nails. He doesn’t even look at the young man as he pollutes the desert with black corpses and dust.

  Typi comes up easier. She is very light, even for a sixteen-year-old. And though lacking in muscles, Random effortlessly pulls her to the top.

  The girl bends to her knees, curling up into a safe ball. She rubs her bloody bare feet and gazes out at the landscape full of devils.

  “What are they?” she asks.

  Random is busy looking for the hole in the train.

  “I used to have nightmares about this,” Typi says to Death, her tiny kitten face looking up at him.

  Death glares down, only for a second, long enough for his white pinhole eyes to pierce through her, molest her.

  “We’re slowing down,” Oxy says. He chuckles under his breath. “The horses are losing steam.”

  Random sighs through his eyes as the train’s hole drifts farther and farther from his reach.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Below:

  Sharp and Battle Johnny are holding each other again. They breathe each other’s breaths and drink from each other’s lips.

  “Up,” Battle Johnny says.

  Sharp kisses him one more time then slithers out of the window and onto the roof.

  She sees Oxy trying to drive the horses faster. He whips them, throws empty whiskey bottles at them, but he can’t seem to get them going again. He is full of giggles while whipping the horses, excited by the futility of his actions.

  “What are we going to do?” asks Random, folded over Typi’s body.

  Jesus Christ’s arm twists backwards, popping out of joint, and three shots are fired at the ground near the horses’ feet. They go from trotting to galloping speed. A crack-snapping noise when Jesus adjusts his arm back into its socket.

  “Get ready,” Sharp tells the couple.

  She puts her hand on Typi’s delicate back. “We might only have one more shot at this.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Oxy gets them back to the hole in the train.

  “Bring the supplies with you,” he shrieks to the girlish hermaphrodite.

  Sharp and Random don’t waste a second. They grab all the equipment stacked up on the stagecoach and toss it through the opening. They are both awkward people and not at all skilled at throwing items into holes. So much of their belongings thump against the side of the train and scatter across the landscape.

  Sharp goes first. She doesn’t even warn Random that she’s going and leaps at the train, crawls up into meaty darkness.

  Random turns around and Sharp’s gone. His nerves crawl up his spine imagining one of those things ripping her off of the roof in a single stroke. He looks at Jesus for answers, but the gun-slinging messiah is busy working shotgun miracles.

  “Come on,” Sharp says from the train, waving at the young man.

  Random oozes some relief and goes to Typi, still curled up next to Death. He pats her back, caresses her on the clean part of her wedding dress.

  She quivers at him and rubs her cheek against his ankle, purrs.

  “I want to wait here for a little while,” she says.

  Random shakes her and whines something incoherent.

  “You go,” Typi says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Random doesn’t know how to argue with her. He buttons his collar and tucks in his shirt, then takes a running jump at the train. Sharp catches him by the wrists, helps him in. The pretty young man nearly collapses from the smell. His red velvet tuxedo is instantly covered in a smelly slime.

  He goes back to the opening.

  “T-typ-Typi,” he calls out, but she is still scrunched up in a ball and isn’t moving.

  Death looks down on her with a crude frown.

  “Am I a pretty bride?” she asks the man/shadow.

  He goes back to firing his rifles.

  “Girls are supposed to be their prettiest on their wedding day.” Her voice sweet and distant. “That’s what momma said. She woke me up at the crack of dawn so she’d have plenty of time to pretty me up for my wedding day.”

  “Get up here,” Sharp screams.

  “It was such a nice morning.” She smiles and twirls a lock of blood-caked hair. “Momma and I wasted most of the time chatting. We just talked and talked. About when she was a young woman and how she met Pa. About her wedding day. About what I’ll be doing on my wedding night.”

  Random squeezes the rim of the flesh train, scream- ing, but Typi’s off in her own world.

  She continues, “Momma wants to make sure I’m gonna have kids right away. I keep trying to tell her that Random isn’t ready to be a father but she says,” impersonating her mother’s voice, “never mind you that, just get yourself preg- nant. Don’t give him a choice. Trick him if you have to. The boy’ll have nine months to get himself ready. That’s all a man needs.”

  Jesus stops firing and leans down to the young girl. He places a black-gloved finger over her scabby lips and goes, “Huusshhhhhhh.”

  Oxy screams out with cackles, hooting and yelping with amusement. “Here it comes,” he cries.

  Jesus looks up to see a horde of black creatures coming in from the north, cutting them off up ahead.

  Oxy is hollering with glee, whipping the horses so that he’ll get to the demons even sooner. “Faster, faster!”

  The black creatures wait, ready to spring.

  Just a few more seconds before they converge . . .

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Oxy shrugs. He steps out of the driver’s seat and dives smiling with gooey sideburns as he twists into the train’s slit.

  The horses barrel out of control toward the devil creatures, some trying to break free of the coach. Death doesn’t have time to grab the reins. He picks up the young woman and throws her out of the way, at the train, and Random somehow catches her.

  Two black widow six-shooters slip from Death’s trench coat sleeves into his palms. His arms outstretched and ready for impact.

  Random has Typi by the wrists, just barely. She is dangling in the air, screaming at him, kicking her legs. She can’t get inside. Her bare feet try to push off against the side of the train but it’s too slippery. Thick grease collects between her toes. And Random can’t get a good grip on her with all her thrashing.

  The stagecoach hits the horde of creatures with such an impact that it flips into a violent tumble.

  Death is sent flying through the air.

  He is still calm. He glides like a hawk over the deformed army, shooting them as he flies. The bullets from his black widows are composed of jade and onyx. They make plastic-hum noises as they shower from the heavens onto the rancid creatures below.

  The horses wail as the demo
ns graze into them, shredding their flesh with electric blender mouths. Random diverts his eyes from the horses, trying to block out their high- pitched squeals.

  He doesn’t yet realize that his young bride has been cut in half.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Random notices that Typi is suddenly lighter for some reason and can probably be lifted into the train now. When he looks down at her body, his jaw goes slack.

  Everything below her waist is missing, her insides spilling out all over the desert. He sees her blood splattered against the side of the caterpillar train, mashed pieces of her legs clinging to the wheels.

  And she is still alive.

  She is still clinging onto Random’s wrists, trying to pull herself through the hole.

  Random cries out. He just watches as the halved teenager struggles in her wedding dress, blood exploding out of her mouth.

  “Randi . . .” she wheezes at him.

  An intestine is uncoiling rapidly out of her torso like rubber yarn, leaving a trail that stretches all the way back to the stagecoach wreckage.

  She pulls herself up to the edge of the hole, looking Random in the eyes. He smiles at her. He doesn’t know what else to do.

  The pain is like millions of wasps. She can feel every inch of her intestine lying across the desert. There must be half a mile of it now. She can even feel all the way back to the stagecoach as something begins to gnaw on her intestine with metal teeth.

  Typi wraps a convulsing arm around her groom’s neck and pulls herself up to his face.

  “Forever,” she whispers into his lips.

  Her eyes close and she kisses him, slides her tongue and large globs of blood down his throat. Random doesn’t know how to stop her.

  Before she is finished, her body goes limp. Her tongue droops to the side of his mouth.