The Lofters
by Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc

   He looked around. God his head hurt. How long had he been asleep? He was alone and his head was throbbing. It wasn’t like he had never had anything to drink before. He used to get sloshed with his frat buddies all the time, but whatever this powerful stuff was that he had drank the previous night, it made him feel as if he had been crushed under a steamroller!

   The last thing he remembered was, he and his cousin fishing in the swamp, and the woman they had met. Jack had always hated Louisiana, and the only reason he came, was because his cousin had promised him as much pussy as he could stand. Not that he was desperate, or anything, but who was he to pass up free pussy? Besides, Larry was the only living relative he had left. He needed to keep some kind of contact with him. Other than that, he loathed his cousin. Brainless, fat and completely stupid, he was disgusting. Especially to someone like Jack, who came from a nice, middle class, urbanized, American family. The sad thing was, Larry had always been normal, just an everyday guy and Jack used to like to hang out with him. That was, until he went fishing that weekend about 10 years ago in the swamp, the same swamp Jack was at now. Larry had come back from his excursion strangely and disturbingly different. No one could understand the change in him. He went from being a college pre-med student and football jock, with a great body, to the pathetic waste of skin he was now. He stank, his teeth were rotted, and why did he insist on talking like some backwoods, inbred, hick? Jack thought it was pitiful, but he was still his cousin and pussy was pussy.

   He couldn’t move and his entire body felt as if it had exploded. Where was Larry? This wasn’t Larry’s home! He looked around and the room began to look familiar. He was still in bed, the bed he had shared with the woman they had found. He thought it was strange that a woman would be out so late at night, fishing, and that she would want anything to do with Larry, but she did. Not that Jack thought he was so hot looking, but freak show inhabitants looked good, compared to Larry! But she had been out in the full moon light, and she had wanted a good time. They had done their best to show her one. First he had fucked her and then Larry did. She squealed in delight as he drove deeper and deeper into her. Larry was clumsy and the very thought of watching him fuck, made Jack sick. He left the room for a smoke while Larry did his thing. Once done, they had both taken her, at the same time. The last thing Jack remembered was the woman on top of him, riding him, hard, as his cousin fucked her in the ass.

   His nose itched. He tried to scratch it, but couldn’t move. Had he been drugged? "Larry! Larry! Where are you?"

   He heard thudding, the normal, clomping of his cousin’s heavy footsteps. "Hey, you awake so soon cuz?"

   "Yeah. What the fuck happened? Where’s that girl…Babette, was her name right?"

   "Yep, She’s gone. I fucked her again after she was done with you, and then she left."

   "You’re sick Larry."

   "No sicker ‘n you are. At least I didn’t fuck her in a pool of her own blood."

   Jack shrugged and grinned. "It’s not my fault I was too much man for her."

   Larry laughed and then came and sat down on the bed. His nearly toothless mouth made Jack sick. Just don’t breathe on me, he silently pleaded.

   "How you feel?"

   "Like someone ran me over. Why can’t I feel anything?"

   "Well, let me see if I can help you with that."

   Larry got up and dragged the large, oval mirror that sat in the corner, over to the bed. Jack tried again to sit up, but couldn’t.

   "Aw come on Larry, give me some fucking help here! Whatever that shit was you gave me was potent! I can’t move!"

   Larry chortled. "That would be some of the good Loozeana moonshine, It’s good stuff, ‘aint it?"

   Jack grunted. "Yeah, that is some good shit all right, good for making me unable to move!"

   Larry chortled again. Jack hated to hear him laugh. It always sounded like his fat cousin was choking on something.

   "Well purty soon cuz, you won’t need to worry about it any more."

   Jack scrunched his forehead in question.

   "What the hell does that mean Larry? You got some magical swamp cure for a hangover?"

   Larry slapped his knee and bent over, but not very far, because his big belly got in the way.

   "Here, I’ll show ya."

   With a grunt, Larry reached down toward Jack’s head and Jack felt his hair being pulled.

   "Ow! What the fuck Larry?"

   Soon, the pain of his hair being pulled would be the last thing he would be concerned about. Jack’s shock gave way to revulsion, as what he saw, horrified him. He was staring into his own eyes, but that wasn’t what bothered him…what bothered him was the fact that his body was gone! His head was sitting on the bed…just his head!

   "What the fuck? What happened to me? What the…how the…Larry!"

   Jack fought the urge to panic.

   "Purty cool huh?"

   "Purty cool," Jack said in an obvious attempt to make fun of his cousin’s manner of speech, "you miserable fuck? What the hell kind of shit is this?"

   Larry’s fat belly jiggled as he laughed.

   "That ‘aint no shit cuz! It’s magic! That’s just what weeuns do!"

   Jack’s head swam. What did Larry mean by, "that’s just what weeuns do?" He tried to compose himself.

   "How did you do this then? Is this some kind of trick?"

   Larry shrugged. "I been doin’ this for years! You know ma and pa? Hell, they was the ones that got me started doin’ it! You know…your ma never died when you was little, well, at least not the way my ma told you she did."

   Jack tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t breathe! He didn’t have any body, any lungs to breathe with!

   "What the fuck do you mean, you bastard?"

   Larry slapped him on the head. " ‘Aint no need for name callin’ there Jack. If’n you behave, I’ll let you in on a little family secret. My ma, yore ma, yore pa and my pa, you and me both, weeuns all part of this swamp."

   "What the fuck do you mean part of this swamp?"

   Larry rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for Jack to understand what he was telling him.

   "I means we is part of this swamp! We came from this swamp and when it’s time for us to go back, then we’s has to go back. It starts with the body ya see, and always under a full moon. Soon, yore head will disintegrate too, and then ya will go back to yore ma, well, so to speak; back to yore ma, the swamp!"

   "You inbred, backwoods motherfucker, what the hell are you babbling about?"

   Larry frowned. "You’s pissing me off with that name callin! Stop that! I’s tellin’ ya, that weeuns is all part of this swamp! Look, come with me ya ignorant oaf and I will show ya."

   Jack’s head was jerked off the bed.

   "Ow, you punk bitch! Do I have any choice but to come with you?"

   Larry slapped him. "Shut up boy and ya may learn sumpthin."

   Jack wanted to be afraid, he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He was confused and upset. He just wanted some answers. He didn’t fear death, but death like this, was unthinkable! He hoped that whatever Larry was going to show him or tell him, that he could make some sense out of it before his head died.

    Jack felt himself carried outside and his head was set up on the railing of the decaying cabin.

   "Look out there! That’s yore kin!"

   Jack looked, but all he could see was trees and the stagnant swamp.

   Suddenly he heard a voice and he strained his eyes to see where that voice was coming from.

   "Oh, it’s you. I don’t need yore help tellin’ Jack what weeuns is all about."

   "Shut up cocksucker. I don’t know who’s sicker, you or this bastard," she said thumping Jack on the head. "I have never had stuff done to me like the two of you did! And I thought you were civilized!" She thumped Jack on the head again.

   "Stop bitch!"

   Jack was ready to die. God, anything would be better than having to listen to these two idiots prattle on for the rest of, whatever his life amounted to now. He felt sick, and silently begged for his head to do whatever it had to do, so he could just get the fuck out of this life.

   "Ya liked it and ya knows ya did cunt."

   "Think; yeah like you can anyway, you lowlife, what you want, I couldn’t care less."

   "I aint no low life, cunt!"

   "Yes you are! You’re a piece of shit and this bastard is no better."

   Jack was upset, well, he was more than upset, but he had no way of doing anything about it.

   "Hey, both you assholes! I don’t know if you are aware or not, but I am still here and I want to know what the fuck all this is about!"

   The woman shook her head.

   "Let me see if I can do a better job than your stupid ass cousin has, of explaining all this to you."

   "Yore his cousin too cunt."

   "What?"

   "Yes Jack, it is true, I am your cousin. Babette is my name, my real name. I didn’t make it up. I was named after your grandmother."

   Jack knew she had to be telling him the truth. He, at one time, did have a grandmother named Babette, his father’s mother, but she had died when he was very young. He nearly didn’t remember her.

   "I know we have never met…I am a distant cousin. When Larry told me you were coming to visit him, I knew I had to meet you."

   "Yeah, and I guess fucking relatives is ok with you too, you sick bitch?"

   The woman shrugged.

   "It’s not like Larry and I see a lot of people around here and he’s too dumb to take into town. I promised his mother when she died, that I would take care of him. I am a woman of my word, if nothing else."

   Jack snorted incredulously.

   The woman tossed her head.

   "Look, I really don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not, I am going to tell you the story of your heritage and you can believe it or not."

   She paused. Jack listened. He needed to know.

   "You see, it’s like this…we are creatures of the swamp, The Lofters we are called. Many eons ago, our families, yours, mine and Larry’s, all decided that they were weary of the living in the dismal swamps, and wished to live amongst human kind, have families and do what people do. The humans that have always come to these swamps intrigued our ancestors. They always looked as if they were having so much fun when they would come here in their boats, drinking, fishing…they became envious, all of them, so…they decided to become human."

   "How?"

   Jack wasn’t sure he believed any of it, but he was interested. He could at least die in peace if he knew something about why he could talk, without a body!

   "They had to kill a number of humans mind you, but after they did, they realized what they needed to do to become human! They were able to take their flesh and their blood and make themselves human. They simply drank all of a human’s blood and then stretched the skin over themselves. The tree inside them shrank and seemed to mesh and blend with the skin, allowing them to look human. It’s said that these swamps hold a magic, a magic far older than any man that has inhabited it, so they just thought that whatever magic they had been exposed to over the years, worked for them. Larry and I will do the same when it is our time to go, as you will be doing now. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not. We have lived, or I should say, our kind, have lived this way for decades. Most of us can blend with society if we so choose. Then there are others, like Larry who are just dumb trees; no matter what he does, there is no hope for him, he’s just ignorant and a throwback to our most primeval days."

   "Fuck you cunt."

   "I think you had enough fucking last night Larry."

   "So now Jack, do you understand why you’re not dead?"

   "Yes, this is all majorly fucked up, but at least I understand why I’m not dead. What now?"

   "Well, that is the difficult part."

   Babette sighed.

   "It was supposed to be Larry’s time to go back, not yours, so he tricked you into coming out here so you could take his place."

   Larry shrugged.

   "I aint ready to go yet."

   "You’re a bastard Larry."

   Jack once again wished he could cry. He was furious that his life should be cut short, so some piece of worthless garbage like Larry could live.

   Larry shrugged again and picked Jack’s head up, holding it to look into his eyes.

   "Well it was fun cuz, and at least ya go to yore death knowin’ that ya aint human. A man aint should die and not know the truth about hisself."

   Larry carried his cousin’s head to a low hanging cypress tree. He set his cousin’s head in the tree and waved at him.

   "Take it easy Jack. I’ll see ya sometime, but not no time soon I hope!"

   He chortled and walked away.

   Jack closed his eyes. Whatever was going to happen to him, he hoped it would happen soon, before someone came by and found his disembodied head. He would hate to upset anyone. If this really was his fate and his heritage, then he would accept it. That didn’t mean anyone else had to be involved.

   Jacks slowly opened his eyes. The sun was just coming up and pale, orange slivers of light were trickling across the murky, black, water. He looked in the direction of the cabin, where he had spent his last days with his bastard cousin and the pretty, but just as fucked up woman, who was a cousin he had never known. Jack blinked and then blinked again, hard. The cabin wasn’t there. In the place where the cabin had been was just a patch of land with grass and small brush on it. But that couldn’t be! There had been a cabin there! There had to be! He didn’t imagine all this! He couldn’t imagine something like having no body and seeing his cousins and them being trees and his fucked up heritage! He couldn’t have!

   A boat was coming toward him with two men on it. Great. He hoped they wouldn’t see him. The boat got closer, and Jack could see that it was a police boat. A man got on his radio.

   "Sarge, we have another one."

   Soon, policemen surrounded Jack, and his head was lifted form the tree. He tried to talk, he tried to tell them to put him back, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything but listen to every word they said.

   One man, a burly, big man, who Jack assumed to be the "Sarge" spoke up.

   "We’re going to have to close this swamp off men. It seems every full moon we get this. We can’t keep finding disembodied heads in this swamp. It’s got to stop."

   "It’s witchcraft sir," one timid officer offered.

   "That may be son, but this has to stop."

   Jack felt his head gently lowered into a burlap bag and then it was cinched closed.

   "Should we look for the body Sarge?"

   "Why should we bother? We’ve never found any of the others."

   Babette ate hungrily. The meat was good. She licked her lips. Larry stood by the table and watched. He looked around the small cabin. Human organs lined the shelves, and body parts hung from the ceiling like grisly flypaper. Larry couldn’t tell his cousin’s organs from anyone else’s now. The smell of cooked human flesh didn’t bother him anymore. It used to, but he had seen too much over the years for it to bother him now.

   "Did I do well again Mistress?"

   The woman looked up.

   "Yes Larry, you and your family have served me well over the years."

   "I have no choice but to serve you."

   "That is for certain. Now that you have run out of family members, you must find new flesh for me."

   Larry hated this bitch of the damned, but he had no choice but to do what she commanded. He thought back to the night he had met her. It was night much like the previous nights…a full moon hung overhead and he was fishing. That was back when he still looked and acted respectably. He saw her at first, like in a haze, and then she was there, right beside him. He thought her beautiful. With long, blonde hair and deep green eyes, she had enchanted him, literally. They talked and she fished with him. He couldn’t believe his good fortune at meeting a woman such as her, out in the middle of a dismal swamp! But before the night was over, as he lay on the floor of her cabin, he realized what she was. In a panic, he offered her anything she asked, if she would simply spare his life. Her request was simple, his body…and his soul. He readily agreed, not knowing what he offered her or how she would use him.

   Overnight, his body contorted and bloated until nothing resembling what he used to be, was left. She also made him feeble minded. Every scrap of knowledge he had worked so hard to gain was lost in mere moments. Her price for sparing his life was also that he bring her members of his family, at each full moon to feed her dying body. Over the years Larry had had to become cunning in his conquests, seeking out long forgotten and oftentimes elderly members of his family, anyone from his bloodline that could satisfy the bitch’s hunger. One by one, grandparents, Uncles, Aunts, cousins, and distant cousins had been lured to the swamp, only to meet with certain doom, a doom that no one deserved. Babette forced him to tell her everything about his family and looked through photo albums and family records, so she could glean the knowledge she would use to concoct those fancy and convincing stories about their "heritage." Jack had been the last member of his family that he could lure to the swamp.

   Larry hated that he had to kill off his entire family, his bloodline, but he had no choice. It was that, or a fate that was worse than death. Babette had promised him that if he ever disobeyed her, his fate would make the lowest plane of hell seem like paradise. Larry never doubted her.

   Barbette’s voice startled him back to the cabin.

   "You’re still here? Go; go back to where you should be. When I need you again, I will summon you."

   "As you wish my queen."

   Larry closed the door of the cabin and stood on the porch. He hated cypress trees and he hated the swamp. He wished he had never come here, but what was done was done. What could he come up with now, what kind of story could he tell the newest batch of "blood," the newest bloodline he would be forced to wipe out? The swamp tree story only worked for his bloodline. He would think of something. He would have to.

   The sun was becoming stronger. Larry could feel himself stiffening. He got in the small, rickety boat, and rowed his way out to the spot he had chosen. He had to hurry; as the sun rose, he was becoming stiffer and stiffer. He jumped out of the boat and into the shallow water. No sooner did his feet touch the water, than he felt them take root, then his arms stiffened and his body stretched. It wasn’t painful, just boring and tiresome, after so long. Leaves spouted on his face and his body became covered in dark, slimy, bark. He realized, as the last of the bark covered him, that here he would remain trapped, like he had for so long, until he was called to her again. Maybe one day he would die. He wished he could die. He wished for anything that could bring him peace. He could only hope.

©2003 Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc

Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc is a published author of Goth/Macabre Erotica and has been a published poet for many years. Her works have been featured both on the Internet and in print, in many anthologies. Andrea has most recently had her short story "Michael" accepted for publication by Evil Book publishing and her newly published novel, "The Grounds of Nachmasheeghan," is available for immediate order through her publishing company, The Rose Crystal Publishing Company,
http://www.angelfire.com/goth2/mypersonalpage/The%20Rose%20Crystal%20Publishing%20Company2.htm
which is a unique, eclectic and innovative type of publishing venue. Andrea hopes to change the future of publishing with her unique style of publishing works, and will be accepting works for publication within the next few months. Andrea hopes to be published within the coming months through a major publisher and will keep everyone informed through her website.

Andrea is, in her spare time, an aspiring Gothic Model, and enjoys visiting old, historical cemeteries, and engaging in cemetery photography. Andrea lives in Tampa, Florida.