The man from demon somewhere
“Darlin, you must behave your interest on my matter; for what time has worth to some, I’m limited for but a few fragments. My purse has been bitten by hunger and left my mouth dry with thirst for your earnestness in my complication.
With her long slender legs crossed and bobbing nervously, a beautiful woman with fair blonde hair continued desperate and anxious in her claims of distress.
You see, I’ve killed a man and with that honesty I wish to hold, but by God must I live…for if I don’t the world will be beset by another of his kind…and I’m the only one which can see them for what they are.”
Mr. Quigley’s lips sweat with Louisiana Ice Tea, soggy up to the cigarette filter—a puff of smoke rolled into his wandering eye, laying upon the woman’s breasts and pinched it tight.
“That’s a directly queer claim, Ms. Claries. How might I take that from you? Is it that you need a boat to the Gator Bend to…dispose a man’s shell?” Quigley rubbed at the smoke burn upon his eye and sank into his rocking chair.
“Oh Heavens no Mr. Quigley, I desire no less than to rid the world of this man’s shell, but I will not harm the wildlife of Gator Bend with his damned flesh. I call it upon myself to the duty of eating that evil shell myself. It is why I need to be in Gator Bend during that act prior mentioned, for if I’m not far away from others than I may be given an act of illness upon them.”
“I see…” Quigley was bored with life, nothing seemed to surprise or have meaning to him anymore—last year a man visited his boating service and asked if he could rent out his basement for a night, the man was known to Quigley and his town as a sexual offender recently released for a series of accounts of rape; So long as you clean up and all is fair on your end, that being the money, if so I got no will to stop a man from having himself a time. During that long night of screams, Quigley sat on his rocking chair and smoked, curling gray clouds and not one word left his mouth.
The town of Gator knew Quigley as such a man that never opened his mouth to the law so long as he was given his due and many people gave Quigley his due.
Quigley knew she was crazy, but this woman began to spark some interest. Something inside of him said to ignore the woman’s reason and deliver a transaction; instead he found himself inquiring further as his eyes returned to her breasts.
***
Quigley had waited for Ms. Claries to take the boat out for thirty minutes before he followed—still to this moment he didn’t know why. There was something about her that carried his curiosity this far, even so far as to lend her the boat for free. She had no money to offer him, so as payment he took a blow job. The blow job was awkward for her, he had thought during the time, because he was completely limp—unable to get it up since he was in his fifties; still he enjoyed pretending like it did something for him.
Night turned fast from the day and a small light in the distance guided Mr. Quigley to her whereabouts.
He parked his boat a ways behind her rental and made his way upon a patch of land to where the sound of a cleaver chopping into something had muffled the insects babble.
He squatted and watched her cutting the limbs off of a small tree; she placed the branches in a pile underneath the dead man and then fastened a rope around his neck to where the other end of the rope tied around her naked body.
Fire from her lighter licked the sky and caught a mosquito; she had trouble lighting the branches so she tore a piece of her dress off and used it to begin the flame.
As the man burned, Quigley swore that he could see the man trying to speak and as he tried, Quigley saw her pull upon one of the overlapping ropes between herself and the dead man which tightened the noose. While the dead man burned, the woman spoke words Quigley was unfamiliar to; the only comparison his memory could conjure was a time at church with his mother during his tenth year, where a woman his mother calmed him upon his surprise was ‘talking in tongues’.
It was as though she were blind; with her eyes closed she led herself by the rope to the dead man’s body. The man was only semi burned when the fire had gone out, mostly his lower half—bubbling red and black goo popped and oozed out from within the cavern of where his belly once sat, it was within this cavern that she began to gorge herself.
Quigley felt himself becoming sick and without realizing it as a reflex to his nausea he pulled out and lit a cigarette.
Ms. Claries head rose in surprise and before Quigley could piece together his mistake she was crawling toward him on all fours.
Her eyes were open now and heavily dilated—within the deep pockets of her skull they seemed like shiny obsidian pearls within a dead rotted clam.
She was slow to reach him because of the dead man’s weight upon the other end of the rope dragging behind her; Quigley was able to make it to his boat and get it moving down the bend just as Ms. Claries entered the swamp. She thrashed with her limbs like a wild drowning beast as the dead man’s weight pulled her under the mossy waters; a few incoherent words muffled by the bog slime she was swallowing were the last things Mr. Quigley heard as he returned home in a cold sweat.
***
The cigarette he lit was one of the finest smokes he could recall; Mr. Quigley looked out at the moon from his porch and rocked back and forth, he watched the gray smoke encircle the moon and felt himself drift off to sleep.
The cigarette burned its way down to mark his fingers and startled Mr. Quigley awake—before he could cater to smooth out his burn, he noticed in the distance a man walking towards him from the swamp.
The man was naked, with a gaping wound on his abdomen, his eyes glistened, dry yellow in the moonlight and his skin where it wasn’t charred by fire was cooled milky white.
The man leaned against a support beam on Quigley’s porch and adjusted what genitals he was left with.
Quigley’s hands shook their way into his cigarette pocket and on the third attempt managed to get one of them lit.
“Mr. Quigley, I must advise you on all rational causes to maintain your health to light up more than just one cigarette.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve just had a pseudo witch burn a hole into my belly and mangle my pecker n’ goose eggs; don’t you believe a man in my state deserves to ease his mind on a few smoke rings?”
Mr. Quigley handed the man his lit cigarette and stared into his wound. He knew this was the man from Gator Bend, the same man Ms. Claries took out to dispose of, though Mr. Quigley’s mind could not comprehend how this man was standing before him.
“Don’t be surprised now Mr. Quigley, I know you’re a man of business, always have been and so have I. You see my business is survival and that counts on men like you, men who allow others to continue a chain of corruption; men who are so corrupted themselves that they become numb to rape, murder, incest, hate.”
“What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is when a man becomes bored with life as you have, he loses his soul and well a soul can’t just go nowhere, now can it? So that there little soul, it becomes something else.”
“Does it become…whatever you are?”
“Oh hell no, the soul becomes an angel and do I look like an angel to you boy?”
“No…”
“Damn hope not, I hate those riley bitches, always trying to take me away from my fun. They become what your spirit became Mr. Quigley an angel, your angel was Ms. Claries—the catch is when your angel dies you become a Demon, like me.”
“A…demon?”
The man cut the burn of the cigarettes end upon his innards with a hiss and flicked the butt upon Mr. Quigley’s lap. “I just thought I’d congratulate you before I’m on my way. Oh and thanks for the cigarette.”
Mr. Quigley watched the man walk back into the swamp and sink beneath the bog.
He stared at his hands while they softly trembled, then turned his gaze back to the moon; a thought passed through his mind that he should be crying but instead he lit another cigarette.
