Soothing the Savage Swamp Beast

Copyright © 2019 by Zakary McGaha

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Bizarro Pulp Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Print ISBN: 978-1-947654-89-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947654-90-7

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date: April 12, 2019

Interior Formatting: Lori Michelle

www.theauthorsalley.com

Edited by: Sean Leonard

For Sweetie. Love, peace, and the understanding type of quiet are all synonymous.

BOOK ONE:

WHEN PASSIONS CONFUSE

PROLOGUE

Cadesville is an interesting southern town. Its outermost edge is right on the ocean, yet the people are no different than Appalachian rednecks. It’s filled with brush trees, greenery, and, within the trees and greenery, swamps.

One of these swamps is called the Holy Snake Swamp.

People don’t go to there, typically.

Currently, something large and scaly breaches the surface of the swamp’s mucky water. Suddenly, a rodent of some kind is projected upward. It flies through the air, then lands on soft ground. Green sludge drips from its mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.

Within the rodent is a burning need to kill.

***

Hicks Galore: Southern Proud. That’s the name of the show. The crowd is yelling for more. They want to hear Junior Hicks’s inventive-ass fiddle go through the rounds a second time. They want that guy with the hat to pick the hell out of his banjo. They want that dude slapping the fuck out of the upright bass to slap it some more, slap it like he would his sister’s sweet ass.

Unfortunately for them, the show’s over, and Junior Hicks exits the Baptist church, humming his favorite of all his tunes. The gig tonight went well; decent bit of cash to spend at the music store.

He gets in the band’s van, ignites the engine, and hums softly to himself as the rest of the players enter, set down their equipment, and get buckled in.

On the drive back, he continues humming, not saying a word.

Eventually, tired of the silence, Hicks’ banjo player says, So, you think we’ll be goin’ back there a lot? They seem to really like us.

They’re nothin’ but stupid yokels. They’ll eat anything up that has ‘South’ stamped on it.

I guess you’re right.

Damn right I’m right.

Junior Hicks is proud of himself tonight. Yokel after yokel times three was basically handing him money, saying, Here, give us some of your fiddlin’ magic, and he’s taking the dough, thinking to himself the entire time: I hope you meant ‘magik’ with a ‘k,’ for Junior Hicks is a man who’s found something in life: beauty.

A special kind of beauty that he intends to eventually share with the entire world. If you find something out, share it, don’t be selfish; being selfish is the worst thing an enlightened person can do. If Junior Hicks is one thing, it’s enlightened.

Most people think it’s the music he plays that’s magic, but they’d be wrong. He, himself, views his music as simply derivative. It speaks to a dead culture that’s now entirely composed of wannabe young’uns putting on their ancestors’ clothing. The whole redneck thing is a step back in time; a devolution (one that’s way too proud and smug). However, it’s proven to be profitable. Meet the demands. Take the funds. It can’t hurt.

Junior Hicks doesn’t know how his players see it, though. They’re probably serious about this shit.

But more power to ’em because, if they are serious, that only helps him get more money.

He drops each player off at their respective abode, then heads to his small shack near the Holy Snake Swamp. He’s never taken anyone there because, quite simply, normal people can’t (and shouldn’t) go there. You need to be more than human to bask in the glory.

When he arrives at his shack, a new pet is waiting on his doorstep.

***

It’s storming, but Harold is perfectly content under his RV’s awning, picking on his guitar, getting ready to sing a song of slaughter.

A loud MOO breaks his concentration, and he notices a cow that somehow breached the old, dangerous looking barbed fence separating the slaughterhouse’s property from the campground’s.

I gives you my loves. Does you gives me yours?

Well, I’ll be damned, says the old man, rising from his lawn chair. He heard the mind-voice. No doubt about it.

He walks to the cow, disregarding the downpour of rain. He gives it a fatherly pat on the head, scratches behind its ear, and says, I gives you my loves.

The cow licks his hand.

It looks like it’s smiling, but it probably isn’t.

CHAPTER 1

Vogel and Aldert

The taste of Wintermint gum is in her mouth, and she’s watching him through the grimy, greasy window. He’s digging next to the house. His skinny back is no doubt cracking and popping with every hard shove on the shovel. Beside him lie three dead dogs, wrapped in a white bedsheet.

She can tell it’s driving him crazy: he’s a lover of animals. She wants to calm him down, pat his back, fetch him a bit of tea, something, anything to get him feeling close to well.

When he starts grabbing at the rolled-up corpse-pups, she looks away. Blood stains the dingy white of the bedsheets. She can’t bear to see those pretty, happy, doggy faces, forever frozen in time, soon to decay away and transition into skeletal beings.

She retreats to the darkness of the house, clasps her hand over her mouth, and thinks about times when things were going right.

Things were going right once. When she was a graduate of a state college, set to be married to the man who’s now outside burying dead canines.

It wasn’t too long ago.

The man’s name is Aldert.

Her name is Vogel.

And together they’re going to face this, this thing called adult life. But they probably won’t win.

***

He packs the dirt tight and vows that tomorrow he’s going to plant something there. They were good pups; they deserve some sort of grave marker. What better than a sweetly scented flower?

He wipes away his forehead sweat with his arm, but it doesn’t help because his forearm is sweaty, too .

He needs a shower, yet he’s afraid to leave Vogel alone, even for just a minute. Back in his youth, all the old Dutch men would tell him things: they’d tell him to make sure his woman was taken care of at all times.

A solution: tell her to use the bathroom while he’s showering. Everyone has to go, sooner or later; it’s not pretty, but it’s a fact of life.

No, that’s crazy.

You can’t live in fear, fool.

Images pop into his head. It’s a sunny day; he’s back in his old schoolyard. The pups he just buried are chasing him and his friends (all of whom he hasn’t seen since high school). The pups are decayed and whatnot, but there’s a ferocity about them; they’re strong; they’re fast. Oh hell no says one of the kids, just before a dog jumps him and begins tonguing his ear with a snotty, rot-drenched licker.

Aldert shakes his head, slaps his temples, tries to make himself stop dwelling on this shit. Suck it up; it’s a fact of life (things are fucked the hell up), deal with it, because if you don’t, the world will screw you over and over again, then you’ll be butt-hurt, disenfranchised, and depressed as an edgy, Millennial film student.

Men suck it up; that’s what men do. Aldert, he’s a man, and he’s going to let it be known to all the people in this small, rural-ass town: men take care of their women.

Those puppies, though. Those puppies were so sweeeeeet. Yet, he had to kill them, had to bloody their bodies, wrap them from view, and shove them into the ground. They were all sweet creatures, all so great. They’d get giddy when he arrived home from work, and they’d lick him and then lick him some more. And the yapping, oh, the yapping was sooooo cute.

No more yapping; things can’t yap, especially if they’re just beneath topsoil.

***

She assured him she’d be okay while he was washing digging-grease from his pores. She’d stay inside, perhaps go to the darkened living room and read that really old book they found.