Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

shit and struggled up into his mouth. The wolves chuckled as they watched him puking. They were nibbling David’s fingers like chicken wings when Jared’s liver plopped onto the dirt floor. It shook itself off, then hopped up the stairs.

The coy wolves watched with their mouths hanging open. They stood as if frozen, as if they’d turned into statues.

Jared heaved and heaved and, in between spurts of blood, further organs plopped in the dirt. He told them all bon voyage and they rolled to the stairs and hopped up like skinned, bloody, limbless bunnies. As they wiggled themselves under the steel doors, Gun Guy ran to the stairs and then realized the other two weren’t following. “Get after them.”

“Why bother? We’ve got most of him,” Porn Watcher said.

“He’s our ticket out of here,” Gun Guy said. “Do you want to hang around for the rest of the Anthropocene? I don’t.”

The other two coy wolves scrambled past Jared up the stairs and pitched the steel doors open. Jared crumpled to the dirt. He heard a crack as if someone had banged a hammer on the steel door. Followed by a couple of double taps. Kicker tumbled down the stairs, headless. Then came some distinctive pings, higher and quicker.

In the sudden silence, David moaned. His arm flailed and the stick came loose, knocking over the deep fryer, which sighed as the oil glooped a few times and spread onto the floor. The shackle fell off, taking skin with it, and David came to consciousness screaming and screaming and screaming.

Jared’s mom came down the steps, scanning the room with her AK-15. Richie followed with a Glock. She stopped in front of David, safetied her automatic and slung it so it hung against her back. His mom took her hunting knife and, with a few graceful steps forward, slid it between David’s ribs, angling upwards, giving it an extra push until he gurgled into silence.

She glanced at Richie, who said, “Clear,” and then the two of them went through all the dead guys’ pockets, removing the cash from their wallets. Finally she came over and knelt beside Jared, and took the charm off his neck.

Georgina was in his head instantly, raging incoherently.

I hear you, his mom thought. You dumb cunt.

You’re going to pay, Georgina said. I promise you suffering. I will bring you to the bowels of hell.

Your morons won’t last the week, his mom thought. Sophia Martin. You killed her son. She’s a Halayt. Did you want a war with a Halayt? ’Cause, oh, baby, she’s gonna hunt you all down. And anyone she misses, I’m going to give the Old Yeller treatment to, you rabid idiots.

Georgina left his head. He could feel his organs scattering in the compound, romping free. He heard the distinctive shriek when his ex-girlfriend Sarah saw his liver, and he registered that his liver was offended.

When Richie cut Jared’s wrists free, he fainted on the dirt, dirt nap, nap of dirt. His hands tingled painfully to life, waking him up.

“Call your organs back,” his mom said.

We’re separated, Jared thought at her. Just wasn’t working out. Sometimes you grow apart, but it doesn’t mean you don’t care. If you love your liver, set it free and if it comes back to you, it’s yours. You can’t force love.

His mom sighed. “Dumb-ass.”

9

SARAH

Maggie put some dogs down, in her words. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen anyone killed. She’d made you stay in the truck, but she’d let you ride her mind so you’d know what was happening. You’ve only seen shootings in the movies, so your brain is trying to tell you it’s just a movie, but your adrenal glands are pumping out hormones that say, Yeah, no. This is not shit you need in your life. Find an exit, please. Now.

So you think that watching Maggie and Richie’s murder spree is as bad as it’s going to get, but then you descend into a deeper level of hell. A root cellar that smells of deep-fried meat.

David, the stalker who tried to kill Jared, is tied up in a chair. His hand is missing and he has a bloody stain on his chest. Dead men are tossed to the side as Maggie bends over Jared and tries to slap him sober.

“Get up,” she says.

Jared doesn’t move and doesn’t seem to be planning on moving. He sounds very faint, like a fridge in another room, and that is not good, you gather from Maggie’s flood of worry and also from the organs running around outside. She’s not a sharer unless absolutely necessary and only after she asks, and she doesn’t like that you know what she’s feeling, so she stops. She never rides into your brain unannounced like some rude people you could mention.

Sorry, Jared thinks at you. But you’re thinking about me and it’s hard to ignore.

You see yourself from his eyes for a moment as Richie carries him past you. Short black tulle skirt and black angel-wing T-shirt with black tights and sneakers. A homage to an anime character that Maggie didn’t know or care about when she handed you a knife before you got into the truck and told you to cut off the red flowers because she said red was a bull’s eye.

You chose your outfit to give you courage, but it wasn’t meant for comfort and you shiver, soaked to the bone, watching Richie wrangle Jared into the truck.

“Don’t just stand there,” Maggie says.

Worst Easter egg hunt ever, you think.

Jared’s organs hide in the crawl spaces and untended thickets of the hellhole Maggie calls the compound. Slippery things, ecstatic to be free. You can’t imagine touching them. Maggie whacks the grass with her AK-15 and you see this getting out of hand easily.

I’m cold, you say to Jared. And I’m scared. Please call your organs back.

Fine.

You watch the organs roll through the long grass and the weird conglomeration of random buildings towards the SuperCab of the dark-blue truck that