Chapter One

Written and edited by Tisha Garcia and David Strickler

David,   For you, I was a chapter. For me, you were the book.

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” Edgar Allen Poe

Earl woke up and lay in bed for a very long time. His head still fuzzy from a dream.A ray of sun made its way across his arm. Overhead a fat grey daddy long legs dangled a short few feet above Wendy’s face. It slid down a long spindle of web as if it might fall and scurry across her face,it lowered itself down inch by precarious inch, little puffs of the air blowing in around the old window caused it to sway , it seemed to be trying to make its way back to where it had come from , but it was pretty iffy. Earl blew at it, an watched it rock back and forth, loosing its grip on its delicate life line. He was a betting man, an he was pretty damned sure that thing was fighting a loosing battle. It inched closer to his all to still slumbering wife an his old heart beat a happy little dance. But, whatever held that thing up did its magic. If she would have known it was so close she would have bolted from the house screaming into the predawn hours, slapping at herself cursing an a’ shouting. His uneven broken smile spread wide, would certainly serve that dumb bitch right. Wendy was the kinda cunt who thought a Hoover was one of them fancy sports cars the rich folks in magazines drove around. Cleaning and dusting, like a woman should, was a foreign fucking concept to the old gal. A creepy crawly landing in her mouth as it hung open, filling what could be a peaceful morning, instead with the god-awful sounds of rusty chainsaws and hurt cows, would only serve it right. He glanced at her and then back at the spider and willed it to slip and fall, plummet down an lodge itself deep down in her throat, making her wake up and sputter and choke, maybe her hand curling at her neck, but instead, it made its progression up an up, until it was safely back at the ceiling, where it scurried into a dark corner, disappeared into a cobweb and watched him with its hundreds of eyes.

He muttered a small curse under his breath, nothing good ever happened for him. Earl hoped that damned thing made the mistake of finding its way under his boot sometime, soon. He hoped even more that Wendy would see him doing it, she would grimace and get all fainty. That also, made him smile. A few weeks ago she’d opened one of the kitchen cupboards an a whole slew of roaches had fallen out, a few of them big ones had made their way into her hair. Oh, how she lost her shit ! Pretty much shit the bed so to speak. Her insanely loud shrieks had just about left the fat old bitch without a voice most of that week, which had suited her husband just fine! He laid there in bed with a semi an thought to climb up on her and work her flannel pajama bottoms down around her massive hips and do his business all the while imaging her face if she should have woke to find that bugs legs dancing across her pudgy lips.There wasn’t a lot that could do it for him anymore unless it involved Wendy being miserable.

He reached down into his drawers and rubbed at his pecker trying to coax the old bull out of the corral, he was mid stroke when she farted. It wasn’t even a veiled attempt at being lady like. The room was instantly permeated with the horrendous stench of three day old cabbage and fermented boiled eggs. The sounds emanating from under the thin sheet sounded an awful like Donald Duck weeping. And just like that the moment was gone. It had been fragile to start with, then she’s ruined it for him. He nudged her hard with his knee hard enough to leave her bruised, "stop it you fucking cow!"

She made a hurt sound and scooted away from him as far as she could, but she couldn’t put a whole lotta distance between them, her body was mammoth with a capital M and it spread out like hot tar,and the bed was nothing more than a king. The old bed springs groaned in protest as he pulled himself up an away from her. He scooped up his overalls and stepped out into the hallway where the air was only about a dozen times sweeter. Falling this way and that he balanced on one leg then the other working himself into his pants, it was liking wrestling a horny octopus. Finally he succeeded, plumb out of breath he snapped his faded black suspenders smartly over his bare chest and made his way through the old farmhouse, dodging garbage meant to be burnt, but for whatever reason always forgotten, so that it seemed to be expanding into mountains of refuse. He skirted the stacks of magazines long, long out of date, now rusty. Beer cans an empty food containers only to trip on one those fucking feral cats that Wendy kept letting in. He kicked one out of his way, a giant orange tom with a monstrous head, sure that was the one that kept spraying on everything so that the old sofa stunk with the smell of cat piss.

His bare foot made contact and he felt something snap under his heel. Or so he hoped, and the animal shot out of his way and jumped out a window long since missing a screen. He excited the farm house not bothering much to catch the old screen door before it slammed causing an awful racket. He couldn’t remember the last time he had caught the door so that Wendy could get a few extra winks of shut eye. Maybe... it was when he realized he wasn’t ever going to get a solid meal that wasn’t burnt, or possibly it was that night a few years back that Wendy declared that she couldn’t suckle his old cock- not even one more time! Cause the reverend had pretty much explained it at a Sunday sermon, that it was a blasphemes act. Earl had wondered what it was that he was getting out of the deal, that was marriage, if he couldn’t get it the way he wanted .That every time he felt like taking his wife, rough and dirty, the only way he really enjoyed it at all, he had to make it like it was for a procreation reason, when him and her both knew that her parts didn’t work like they was supposed to from the get go! Why, if them ovaries of hers worked they would have had a whole litter by now.

He sure knew it wasn’t his plumbing to blame. No Ma’am, his parts worked just fine, and then some! Back in his prime he could rut an fuck all the little hens in the coop and they would call him just begging for more. Just begging an a’ pleading! He knew his baby maker worked just as fine as well. There’d been that girl he’d made time with Barbara Sue or something like that who’d been sent away to an aunt’s house after she found out Earl had gotten her into that married way. She never came back and word was that she had met up with the pointed end of a coat hanger, which was a whole lotta relief to a nineteen year old Earl. That was more then enough proof that his seed didn’t need a map to get from point A to point B. In that particular instance it was getting to point C was the problem.

The morning air was already humid, and the grey sky overhead was confirming that it would be a hot summabitch. Rain was what they needed, it had been teasing him ,elusive for days, but it was just the right tinge of bruised sky to finally give it up. He swiped at his neck rubbing away a fine veil of sweat and made his way across the short expanse of nearly dead grass to the hog pens. Not much to look at as hog pens go. A corral of about twenty feet by twenty five feet, which housed seven giant ladies in varied shades of pink and black. Breeders. Most of them coming in at two hundred pounds or so, every one of them a few years old. They milled about creating a dust storm, they knew who he was and what he brought with him. One them the oldest , Wendy pressed her large, black wiry snout through the slots and snorted.

The others gave her a wide clearance, she was the biggest and meanest out weighing his other ladies by at least fifty pounds. He should have carved her up sometime ago, but she was his best producer. She had birthed him dozens of Christmas hams. Shit when he really thought about it, she had earned her right to be alive more than her namesake did. At least, he thought as he hefted the slop bucket up, she has paid her dues. He threw the slops - a mish mash of old rotten turnips, bad fruit and oatmeal into the small puddle of mud and watched as Wendy gobbled the choice remnants first while the other gals snuck quick bites. He knew if given the chance, she would take it all for herself and the others would grow weak and starve. He didn’t need that, so he hefted another bucket of slop in another corner so the shyer ones could wedge in and get their fill,too. He dug his hand around in the stinking swill at the bottom of the tin drum till he found what felt like an a solid apple, he tossed it over in the opposite corner and shouted at It to catch.

It did, and he knew that it was glaring at him .He didn’t need to see its eyes, it had been like this between them for years. He stared it down and knew that if he didn’t turn away from its small huddled , ragged shape he would find himself with much more than just a semi. Cause lately... more an more... when he comes out to feed the hogs and its there, he’s been thinking about dragging it out, kicking and screaming from the barn, and fucking it roughly from behind, his giant calloused hand wrapped around its mouth an nose until it grew dizzy with lack of oxygen. Something in him had been thinking how satisfactory it might be to have both Wendy’s, watching as he did it. Course that was crazy thinking right there. He wiped his mouth, yep, crazy thinking.

A cloud passed and a thin shaft of sunlight framed It and briefly they made eye contact an as if it was privy to these thoughts it turned away to its fruit. He reached over the fencing and slapped the closest hog on its fat ass and it backed away emitting a piercing scream that made it jump a little. He stood there a long minute as the clouds gathered overhead and somewhere off over the blue mountains of the Ozarks he could hear thunder. Happy that his girls had all eaten, he turned and walked funny out towards his heavy farm machinery, rain was coming and he needed to get it all stored, an if he wanted to openly admit it or not do something about his now raging hard on. Some girly magazines he had hidden away filled with young skinny pickaninnies would do the job. He put a little hustle in his step. Real soon he would be rockin’ with the rain.

When off in the distance the sound of the main barns doors slammed shut, a small figure emerged from her little corner of hell. She set the apple high up on a beam to keep it from the sows. Soon the heavens would open up and she would climb over and out of the corral , and down to a dry crick bed on the back of the property that would bulge and overflow when the rain came. She would strip and bath in those chilly waters and scrub the filth from her apple and enjoy her first real meal in days.

She made sure to stay away from the biggest sow who was a bitter. His favorite girl, she had seen him do things to that old sow that would turn a grown mans stomach. She had cried herself to sleep hidden in the hay, hundreds of times to imagine if he ever grew bored with the farm animals and turned his full attentions on her. A fat drop fell and then a few more, and suddenly the air smelt thick with wet dirt an ozone and the thing named Alicia raised her head cloaked in a filth encrusted potato sack to the sky and opened her mouth letting it fill with rain drops.