Rodney walked into Gilly's gas station
slowly. It was a stop he had made many times while going out to his uncle's place to
hunt. It was also the only place off Route 40 that was on the way back home and away
from as many people as possible. His body ached form head to toe as if he had just
went twelve rounds in a boxing match with the heavy weight champion, but that was not
so. He felt the sharpness in his legs, the stabbing pain ripping through his
muscles, tearing at them and trying to reach to the bones. He didn't know why this
was happening to him, he just knew he had to get somewhere and hide—and
fast.
The old gas
station off Route 40 in South Carolina seemed just as good a place as any to hide out at,
though he wasn't really hiding. He was dying and he knew it. He was just
trying to get away from people he knew and cared about. If he didn't he knew they
might suffer what he was suffering through at that moment. Rodney didn't want
anything like what he was going through to happen to any of his loved ones. He
wouldn't have wished this fate on even his worse enemy.
He could feel his
right leg losing strength. He could also feel the blood running into the sock on the
foot. He stood in line for what seemed like hours to him. The only other
person in line was an elderly man buying a pack of cigarettes that he undoubtedly didn't
need. The old man's skin looked ashen underneath the heavy tan that made his skin
look too dry. His corneas were a light yellow and deep black and purple patches sat
just underneath his eyes. He was painfully too thin and a strand of drool seemed to
run down one side of his mouth. The old man slowly counted out what looked like
several hundred pennies by placing them on the counter and pushing them into little groups
of ten.
"Excuse me,
sir," Rodney tried to interrupt the man behind the counter as he watched and counted
along with the elderly man buying smokes. "Can I. . "
"Hold yer
horses, son," the man behind the counter said impatiently.
"But,
sir," he started again.
The man behind the
counter, a big burly man with a tattoo of a skull with roses coming out of the eye sockets
and the words "I Love Mom" underneath it, put up a hand as if to tell Rodney to
wait his turn.
Rodney felt his
head swoon as he took a step backward. He braced himself on one of the candy racks
to keep himself from falling down. The candy rack shook and the man behind the
counter looked at Rodney.
"Be careful
there, son," he said. "Yah break it, yah buy it."
Rodney felt sweat
start to bead on his forehead and under his arms. The old man continued to count his
pennies. He was now up to 256 pennies and only needed to count out about another
dollar in order to buy the cheap cigarettes.
Rodney lowered his
head for a moment, looking down at his feet. He could see blood start to seep
through the leg of his jeans. Pretty soon it would be pouring out and onto the
floor. If the big guy behind the counter was testy about him holding onto the candy
rack and making it sway just a little bit then he would surely spit fire at Rodney if he
spilled blood on his precious floor.
"Excuse me,
sir, but I really need to go to the bathroom," Rodney finally interrupted. He
was now just a few steps from the counter and barely managing to stay standing.
The guy behind the
counter looked at Rodney with dark angry eyes. "Didn't I tell yah to wait yer
turn, son?"
Rodney nodded at
the man.
"Then yah
best do it if yah want any service from me."
"Sir, if I
don't get to the bathroom, soon, I'm going to throw up all over your floor," Rodney
said in an almost exhausted tone. "Please, can I have your bathroom key?"
The old man took a
step back and looked at the big guy behind the counter. "Give him the damn key,
Bobby, before his hurls on one of us," he said with a look of disgust on his face.
The big man behind
the counter, whose name must have been Bobby, reached under the counter for the key to the
bathroom. He pulled it out and placed it on the counter. It was one single
dull brass key on a chain and attached to a piece of carved wood. Rodney thought the
wood was carved into a crude shape of a woman.
"It's out the
door and ‘round the corner in the back," Bobby said.
Rodney grabbed the
key quickly, making it scrape across the counter as he did so. He turned and started
toward the door as quick as he could. As he reached the door he heard Bobby yell to
him: "Don't you puke on my floor."
Vaguely he heard
the old man complaining that he had to start over with his counting. Rodney pushed
out the door and made his way around to the back of the building until he reached the
men's bathroom door. There was a sign on the door that someone thought would be
humorous that read, "NO JERKING OFF ALLOWED."
Rodney ignored the
sign and pushed the key into the key hole. He turned it one way and then the other
until the tumbler let go and the door popped open with a click. Pushing the
door open Rodney stepped into the dark and slammed the door tightly behind him. He
reached for the light switch, found it and then turned the light on.
Rodney leaned
against the door, his leg screaming at him. He held his eyes clinched shut for
several long seconds. When he felt he could move again without throwing up he opened
his eyes and looked into the bright white light of Gilly's bathroom. He looked away
immediately and saw little white and yellow dots swimming in his vision. As the dots
began to fade from his sight he began to see the blood on his jeans was now seeping
through and running out of his boot and onto the blue linoleum flooring. Bobby was
going to be pissed for sure now.
"Oh,
man," Rodney said as he slid down the door, his leg sliding out in front of
him. He could feel the pain in the other leg as it began to bleed. He raised
the pant leg of his right leg and looked down at it. His eyes grew wide and he felt
a scream trying to escape his throat. He clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle the
scream as it came. The blood was now flowing from his leg as he watched skin and
muscle tissue slowly get eaten away. He could see the bone of his ankle and down
into the boot where the sock was soaked and clinging to the bones of his foot.
Tears stung his
eyes as they began to fall and run down his face. He cried for several minutes, his
sobs catching in hitches of breaths. Finally, he composed himself long enough to
move over closer to the toilet. He pulled himself against it, his back to it and
reached into his pocket. He pulled out a knife and unfolded it's blade. It was
an old buck knife his father had given him. He kept it very sharp for gutting
animals when he went hunting.
Rodney looked at
the blade for several moments. Slowly he placed the razor to his wrist and pointed
it down. Pain ripped his legs as he sat there with the blade across his wrist.
He was going to end the pain once and for all. For a long while he sat there, pain
coming and going in his legs and beginning to go up into his knees now. His jeans
were soaked and he could see white bone on the right leg where he had raised the jean to
see it.
Rodney thought for
a moment about what had happened, how he had gotten to where he was in Gilly's bathroom,
dying and contemplating suicide. He had been hunting on this Sunday morning, just as
he did every Sunday morning during deer hunting season. He had gotten up at four
a.m. and made his way to where his Uncle Trip's land was out in the country. When he
arrived there it was still dark and cool. He thought it would be colder than it was
so he had worn a heavy coat. He tossed it aside and left it in the truck.
Thinking back now he wished he had kept the heavy coat. It might have kept him from
being in this situation.
He had been in the
stand for several hours. Dawn had come and the sun was starting to rise higher in
the sky. He saw the buck and laid his aim on him. He pulled the trigger and
saw the buck go down. It crumpled to the ground, dead. Or, so Rodney thought
he was dead.
Rodney climbed
down out of the stand and started to run for where the deer was. By the time he had
gotten to where he thought the deer had went down at the deer was gone. He cussed
several words that if his mother had heard him she would be very disappointed in her only
son's choice of vocabulary. Then he saw the trail of blood. He smiled as he
began to follow the trail. He knew with the amount of blood the deer had lost that
it was only going to be a matter of time before it collapsed. I must have nailed
him pretty close to his heart to get a blood trail like that, he thought as he
followed the trail.
Rodney reached the
edge of a small gully and stopped. He looked down the gully and saw the deer lying
at the bottom of it.
"Damn,"
he said aloud as he looked around the gully. It was going to be rough getting the
buck back up the hill. He though for a minute to just give it up and leave the dead
buck at the bottom of the gully. But, man, that was the biggest deer he had ever
managed to bag—there was easily a dozen points on his antlers.
At least just
go look at it, he thought. Rodney looked around the edge of the gully and found
what looked like a safe way down into the gully and maybe a safe and easy way back up with
the deer. Rodney slung his rifle over his shoulder and slowly began to make his way
down the path-like passage down into the gully. It took him a little away from the
buck but to Rodney that was no big deal. Once he reached the bottom he could walk
right up to the deer without the worry of falling down the hill.
When he reached
the bottom of the hill he looked up to where he had been. It didn't seem that far
down when he was at the top but now, looking up it looked a lot further up than he had
once thought. Maybe getting the deer up might not be as easy as I thought.
Rodney looked away
from the hill and toward the deer. He started to walk toward the deer and realized
the bottom of the gully wasn't as safe as he thought. He had to step over rocks and
tree branches as well as avoid holes that seemed to be wide enough to hold a body or two
in. For the first time in his 38 years he felt a bit of discomfort being on
his Uncle's property. He felt as if he were being watched by something or someone he
could not see. Rodney began to look around to see if he could find anyone watching
him. A vivid image appeared in his mind of someone with a rifle trained on him,
waiting for just the right moment to pull the trigger and take down his kill. He
could see himself lying by the deer, half his head missing and blood pooling around what
remained of his head and soaking into the ground.
Rodney picked up
his pace toward the deer. When he reached it he looked down at the dead buck.
He felt a shudder run through him. The deer's faced-up eye was red with blood and
staring up at him. He wished now that he had brought his coat with him instead of
tossing it back into the truck. Covering the deer's head would have been a good
thing right about then. There was a gaping hole in the deer's neck where he had been
shot. Rodney could see the bright red blood was starting to cajole and cake around
the wound. He could also see the weird coloration of the deer's muscles and the
tissues surrounding the bone of the neck that was clearly exposed by the gunshot.
The muscles and tissues looked as if they were gray bordering on black. It looked
like the meat was rotting in front of his eyes. The coarse fur and skin seemed to be
receding and the muscles looked as if they were being eaten away by some sort of acid.
"What the
hell?" Rodney said aloud as he slowly bent down. He grabbed a large stick from
off the ground and leaned forward toward the deer. He poked at the wound of rotting
flesh and watched as the meat melted away in tiny bites by something Rodney could not
see. He poked at the deer several times until the deer flinched at him.
Suddenly the
deer's head jerked up, one of its large antlers catching Rodney's pant leg. The
deer's head snapped up and pulled Rodney off of his feet before he could stand all the way
back up. Rodney fell to his back, his leg hanging in the air from the deer's
antler. The buck yanked his head back, pulling Rodney with it. He jerked his
head to the side, pulling Rodney off of the ground and flinging him into a tree, releasing
Rodney's pant leg.
The buck stood
slowly, its head swaying back and forth on it's rotting neck. It staggered at first
then gained it's footing. As it looked at Rodney with its blood red eyes it kicked
one of its front legs as if it were a bull about to charge. Rodney could see that
one of the eyes was rotting away, seemingly having burst and was now seeping a white and
red puss from its socket.
Rodney stood up
slowly, trying not to make any sudden moves. It was clear to him the dear was mad
and with very good reason. As he stood the dear began to charge at him. Rodney
spun around then dipped behind a tree. The buck crashed into the tree with its head
and antlers. There was a loud crunch and the buck went limp. Rodney looked
from behind the tree to see the deer had sunk several of his antlers into the tree and was
hanging from them.
Taking a deep
breath Rodney stepped from behind the tree. He stayed several feet from the deer for
fear of what had just happened to him. He tried to take a closer look at the wound
without getting any closer. When he did the buck blinked. Rodney jumped
backward, tripping over a fallen tree branch and landing spread eagle on the his
back.
"Oh,
shit!" he yelled as the deer began to thrash his head from side to side, trying to
get loose of the tree.
Rodney quickly got
to his feet and just as quickly fell back to the ground. He felt a stabbing pain in
his right ankle. He looked down at his leg, seeing his pant leg raised up to his
shin from where the buck's antlers had caught him. He could see a large cut that
didn't look too deep but was still a cut none-the-less on his leg.
Pushing the pain
aside, Rodney stood up and limped to where his rifle was lying on the ground. He
bent down and picked it up, wincing as he put the weight on his right leg. He stood
straight up and looked back at the deer. He had pulled one antler free and was
steadily working on the other one. Rodney raised his rifle, shook the dirt off of it
and put the site to his eye. He trained the crosshairs onto the deer and waited for
him to pull free.
The deer finally
pulled the other antler loose of the tree with what sounded like a growl to Rodney.
He turned and faced Rodney with his one bloodied eye still intact. Blood was seeping
out of his mouth along with a pink fluid that Rodney was sure was a mixture of blood and
foam. Blood dripped out of its nose and his neck was exposing more bone than muscle
or fur or skin. The rotting flesh was getting worse and Rodney felt the sudden urge
to lose his breakfast.
The deer lowered
his head and began to charge at Rodney. He swallowed hard as he pulled the trigger
of the rifle. The rifle recoiled, harder than normal Rodney thought, as it
discharged. Everything seemed to slow down as Rodney fell backward. He saw the
deer's head explode in a spray of blood, bone and fur. The deer collapsed to the
ground, its antlers making like spikes and digging into the dirt, flipping him hooves over
head. It landed with a sickening crunch of bones with its antlers still dug into the
ground and its head snapped back.
Rodney collapsed
to the ground, dropping the rifle beside him as he did so. He felt the pain in his
leg as sharp bolts ran through it. He looked down at the still raised pant leg to
see the wound growing. The wound was bleeding only slightly so far but he could see
a touch of black around the wound that made him think of the deer's wound. He looked
back at the deer. It's neck was completely broke in half, his head lying to one
side, decapitated from the whip snap motion its body had made after Rodney had shot
it.
A stench started
to fill the air as the head of the deer started to rapidly decompose. Flies began to
buzz around it as it rotted. A strong stench of decay began to fill the air as if
something had died in the summer heat several days ago instead of just minutes
before.
As the body of the
deer decomposed and the stench of the decay grew stronger Rodney saw what he thought was
the cause of the rapid rotting. From out of the torso from the hole left by the
missing head of the deer came a shiny black bug. It was unlike any bug Rodney had
ever seen before. Its shell seemed to shine with the crimson of the deer's blood
that was on it. Eight long legs with what looked like bright white tips spread out
from its sides giving it a grotesque spider-like appearance. A stinger, long and
very sharp looking peered out from its hind side, giving it the appearance of an angry
wasp. Its head was small with many bright black eyes sticking out from it. A
tarantula, Rodney immediately thought. But, it was no tarantula. Its body
was easily bigger than the average tarantula, being about the size of a softball.
The spider
stretched its legs, seeming to squat like a cat before pouncing on an unsuspecting
mouse. Rodney watched as it bounced up and down on its legs as if trying to shake
something off of it. Then he could see that the spider was trying to shake
something off of it. Or, from under it.
Tiny spiders,
hundreds of them, it looked to Rodney, began to drop to the ground and scurry about like
roaches trying to hide when the lights come on. They were big enough to see that
they could be dangerous, but not too big to step on. As the spider continued to
shake its babies out of it Rodney raised his rifle once again. He trained his
crosshairs on the spider and took a deep breath. He braced himself for the recoil
and pulled the trigger. The spider exploded, leaving only a couple of its legs lying
on the ground and several hundred baby spiders bouncing around.
Rodney ran over to
the baby spiders and began to stomp on them. He could feel their hard shells
cracking and popping underneath his boots. It made his skin crawl up and down his
body, swimming as if the spiders were on him. He began to scream as he stomped on
the spiders, crushing as many of them as he could see and get to. He continued to
scream and stomp until he saw no more of the spiders. He looked around on the
ground, spinning, eyes darting from side to side searching the area for anymore of the
damnable eight-legged creatures.
Breathing
laboriously and sweating all over Rodney stopped looking for the spiders. He was
still not convinced he had gotten them all, but he had gotten all the ones he could
see and probably a few he couldn't see. He looked back toward the buck had shot and
finally killed. Its body was almost completely gone, now. With the exception
of plenty of blood on the ground and a little bit of fur the deer was now just a skeletal
frame of its former self. In the center of the deer's remains were several more of
the larger black spiders. They looked as if they were eating up the last of the
deer's fur. Rodney thought of one of the documentaries they had on a cable network
about pirhanas, how they fed in a frenzied manner. Sometimes they actually took
bites out of each other while feeding on whatever was the unfortunate meal that happen to
step or fall into the water the pirhanas occupied. The spiders were doing
that. They seemed to crawl over one another, trying to get whatever meat they
could. He could see one of the spiders lying, dead he thought, on the ground as the
others clamored around him.
Rodney shook his
head in disbelief as he watched the spiders. Quickly, without thinking he raised his
rifle and aimed toward the spiders. He ran the bolt action and pulled the
trigger. The deer's skeleton shattered like a pane glass window as broken pieces of
bone scattered. Several of the spiders disappeared with the blast. Rodney ran
the bolt action again, pulling the trigger without really aiming. He was screaming
again. Bones and spiders disintegrated. He ran the bolt action rifle again and
fired again. He did this several more times until the rifle was empty of its
bullets. He ran the bolt action again and pulled the trigger again, this time only
getting a clicking nose as the hammer came down.
Rodney was no
longer screaming as he stared at the thousands of pieces of bones and ruptured spiders on
the ground. He still held the rifle to his eye as he looked on, unaware that he was
still standing in the firing position.
"Owww,"
he yelled loudly as a pain stabbed into his leg. He looked down and saw his exposed
leg. On it was one of the small spiders—one he had apparently missed when
trying to stomp them all out. He reached down and swatted it with his hand.
The spider bounced off of his leg and fell to the ground. He raised his foot and
quickly stepped on it, its body crushing with a crunching sound underneath his boot.
"Damn,"
he said as he looked at the stinging bite mark right at the edge of the cut on his
leg. He could feel a tingling sensation begin there. Rodney looked around for
any more of the spiders. He saw none and decided he wasn't sticking around for
anymore of them to decide to bite him. Rodney began to run up the hill to get out of
the gully he was in. He grabbed at tree branches and rocks and shrubs on the way up
until he reached the top. He continued to run, not looking back for fear of seeing
one of those damnable eight-legged creatures behind him.
When Rodney
reached his truck he unlocked the door and tossed the rifle inside. He got in and
cranked the car up. He could feel a dull pain in his ankle, one that seemed to run
down into his toes and up into his knee. There was another sharp pain in his other
leg. Rodney reached down with one hand and swiped at it, as if hitting the pain
would somehow make it better. He felt something under his jeans give way and then
the warmth of what he was sure was blood and possibly guts of one of the small
spiders. He had been afraid he didn't get them all. Now, he was sure after the
second one had bit him that he could have never gotten them all.
Rodney drove as
fast as he could to get off of his Uncle Trip's property. He thought about stopping
to tell him that there was something horrible happening on the land, that he needed to go
in and kill everything on it. He thought better of it, deciding to leave Uncle Trip
alone just in case there were any other spiders on him or in his truck. I'll just
call him later, Rodney thought as he drove past Uncle Trip's house and hit Route 40.
He felt the
stabbing pains in his legs begin to worsen. At one point he pulled over to the side
of the road and got out of the truck. He lifted the pant leg of his jean to look at
his right ankle. Terror struck him as he saw the skin being eaten away along with
tissue and a part of the muscle there. He could see the black on the skin around the
edges of the wound.
Oh my God,
they're in me, he thought as he slumped against the truck, his body suddenly
weak. He grabbed hold of the door of the truck to support himself. After
several moments he finally decided to get back in the truck and drive on. He would
find somewhere to hide, somewhere to die. After all, that is what was happening to
him, wasn't it? He was dying.
It was when he was
a few miles from Gilly's Gas Stop that he decided the bathroom there would be a good place
to go. Very few people stopped in at Gilly's and most of them that did stop did not
stop for the use of the rest room.
So, now he sat, his buck
knife to his wrist and his right leg missing everything but the bones from the knee
down. He no longer felt the stings of tears in his eyes as they had dried up from
all of the crying earlier. He steadied himself for the pain that he was about to
inflict on himself. It will only last a couple of minutes, he thought. Only
a couple of minutes.
From outside the
door there came a heavy knocking. It was Bobby, the heavy man that had been behind
the counter waiting on the older guy counting out his pennies for a pack of death sticks.
"Hey,
buddy," Bobby yelled through the door. "Are you coming out anytime
soon?"
Rodney said
nothing. He just stared at the door, fear in his eyes, his heart hammering in his
chest. He bit his lips to keep from screaming as another bolt of pain ripped through
his legs. He could feel his left leg being eaten away now, trying to catch up with
his right one.
"Hey,
Buddy?" Bobby yelled through the door again. "Are you in there?"
Bobby started to
bang on the door louder, trying to get Rodney's attention. He kicked it a couple of
times and even tried the handle, jiggling it at first, then tugging on it hard. The
veins in his neck were starting to stand out as his face began to boil over with
anger.
"Open up the
damn door," he yelled. He turns to the old man who was now puffing away on one
of his newly acquired cigarettes and looking intently at Bobby. "Ray, did go
call the cops," he said and motioned with one hand for the old man to move along and
do what he was told, as if he were a child in some sort of trouble.
"Ayup,"
Ray said as he took a deep drag on the cigarette and turned and walked away.
"Ray's going
to call the cops, kid," Bobby said, trying to convince the kid to come out.
"You need to just come on out of their before they get here and we'll just forget
about it."
Rodney could hear
everything just fine on the other side of the door and shook his head. What the
hell have I done wrong? he thought to himself. I've done nothing wrong.
"Come on out,
son," Bobby was yelling again.
"Go
away," Rodney yelled back weakly. He looked down to his legs and could see that
the jeans no longer held the form of his right leg in them below the thigh. He could
see there was very little left of the leg. He could feel his life draining from him
with the severe loss of blood. Slowly he raked the buck knife up the length of his
arm from wrist to elbow. He closed his eyes and waited for death to take him.
"What's
wrong, Bobby?" the officer said when he walked up behind him behind Gilly's Gas
Stop.
"Some punk
went in there several hours ago and hasn't come out yet."
"Are you
certain he is still in there?" the officer asked.
Bobby looked at
the officer and shook his head. "Paul, I just heard him in thee. I asked
him to go ahead on and come out and the boy just told me to go away. So, do yah
think I'm certain or not?"
Paul nodded, then
stepped forward. He rapped on the door with a knuckle. There was no answer
from the other side. He knocked again and waited. Still, nothing. Bobby
and Paul exchanged long looks.
"Do you have
an extra key, Bobby?"
"If I had an
extra key I wouldn't have had to call yah out here, now would I have?"
"Well, then I
guess we'll just have to jimmy it then," Paul said with a smirk on his face. He
walked away, leaving Bobby behind him. He whistled as he went.
When Paul came
back Bobby was standing back away from the door. He was holding his stomach and he
looked as if he was going to be sick.
"What's
wrong, Bobby?" Paul asked.
"D'yah smell
that smell?" Bobby asked and then sniffed the air. Again he looked as if
he was going to be sick.
Paul sniffed at
the air and gagged at the smell. "My God, it smells like something died and is
rotting in the summer sun."
"Smells like
a dead skunk."
Paul went to the
door, trying to hold his breath as he did so. He placed the jimmy in the doorjamb
and then stars sliding it up and down until he felt the lock give way. The door
popped open with a loud click.
As the door slowly
opened the stench became stronger. Paul backed away from the door, gagging. He
turned as quick as he could, running to a bush a little way from the building. He
threw up, retching loudly. When he was done he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and
started back to the bathroom. He saw Bobby throwing up also, not bothering to try
and get away so no one else would see or possibly step into it if they were passing
by.
He walked to the
bathroom. Pulling out his nightstick he stepped up to the entrance. He pushed
the open door with his nightstick, pushing it as far open as it would go. His eyes
grew wide and his mouth grew dry.
"Mother
Mary," he said in a whisper.
"What is
it?" Bobby asked, his voice hoarse from throwing up.
"That
kid," Paul said as he backed away, "that kid you saw—how long ago was
it he went in there?"
"This
afternoon," Bobby said.
"Are you
sure?"
"Yeah, I'm
sure, why?"
"There's
nothing left of him but bones and clothes, Bobby."
"What?"
Bobby asked as he stood up.
"I'm going to
go radio this in—don't let nobody in there."
Bobby nodded and
watched as Paul ran off. He was still holding his stomach as he began toward the
door of the bathroom. He poked his head in the bathroom and felt his stomach
swim. The bones and blood of Rodney's body was lying on the floor, no flesh
anywhere.
Above his body, on
the ceiling were several of the bright black shelled spiders. Their eyes trained in
on Bobby as he stood in the door. One of them dropped from the ceiling onto Bobby's
back. Bobby looked up and saw the spiders, His eyes widened as they started to
drop onto him.
Bobby screamed as
the spiders began to bite him.
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