C. LaSart - Ad Nauseam - 13 Tales of Extreme Horror

“Anyway, Frankie’s legs were so fat, he had to keep them spread all the time, and he had these big, purple patches of growths on the calves. The skin there was as rough and pebbled as an old cobblestone path, splitting open and weeping a thick yellow fluid that constantly had to be wiped away. I know it pained him, but I couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Not after he pissed in my face, anyway.

“Twice a day we would wipe the slime off, wash the crusty edges of the growths, and smear a thick salve over the entire area. Was kind of like rubbing Vaseline on a gator. Just touching his legs made my stomach churn. I came to hate Frankie like I’ve never hated anyone in my life. When the other inmates misbehaved, we shot them up with drugs or put them in solitary. But there wasn’t much we could do to Frankie. We had to take care of him.

“The guards weren’t the only ones who hated him. He wasn’t there a day before the other inmates wanted him dead. It wasn’t his disgusting nature that offended them. It was the noise. We had our fair share of wailers there, and the nights were few and far between when you couldn’t hear the echo of someone sobbing himself to sleep or calling for his mother.

“But once again, Frankie was different. From the time he was secured in his cell that first day, he bellowed. Morning, noon and night it went on. I’m starving! Feed me! Good God, I’m wasting away! Where’s my food? And so on. You could hear it no matter where you went, the cell block, the showers, even in the kitchen. The men we kept weren’t compassionate on their best days, so it didn’t take long for Frankie’s whining to grate on already frazzled nerves. We had a kind of rapport with the prisoners. They acted up sometimes, but mostly we kept it under control. But Frankie’s constant wailing riled the others, and unable to take it out on the actual object of their misery, they took it out on us. Work went from merely hard, to almost intolerable. I can’t even blame them much. It was difficult for me to cope with, and I had all my faculties about me to begin with.

“After weeks of the commotion, we had all reached the end of our ropes. Like I said, this was back when prisoners were still treated like prisoners, not like now when they have more rights than I do. They didn’t get pampered like they do now, and I’m not proud to say that guards could pretty much get away with whatever they wanted back then. I myself tried to always treat the inmates with dignity, but I knew plenty who didn’t.

“I can’t justify taking part in what we did to Frankie that day. I’m not even going to try, but I was awful tired, and just plain fed up with the man. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but we did it anyway. And being sorry never undid anything.

“I’d been teamed up with another guard named Eddie something-or-other, his last name slips my mind, but we were partners when it came time to see to Frankie’s needs. Eddie wasn’t a bad man, but he had been dealing with the same crap I had for a lot more years than me, and it made him hard. Sometimes his idea of blowing off steam was to taunt the prisoners. I never condoned it, and had never participated until that day, but I never really held it against him, either. We weren’t exactly running a daycare.

“So Eddie gets it into his head that we’re going to screw with Frankie a bit and I go along with it, and we go to the kitchen and find the biggest, juiciest looking fried chicken leg they had. Then we went into Frankie’s cell and showed him what we had. I swear that man burst into tears when he saw it, having lived on nothing but average-sized portions of the blandest, healthiest fare we could provide. He begged us for that chicken. Sobbed like a child and literally begged, his big face folding up as he blubbered, but Eddie just held that meat up out of his reach and waved it around, making sure nothing but the smell got within Frankie’s grasp.

“Well, Frankie had been losing weight, and I guess he thought maybe he had lost enough, or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. But I’ll be damned if that big man didn’t pull himself up from his bed. It took a long time and we both laughed at his struggling, but that stubborn fool got to his feet for the first time in five years.

“We weren’t really sure what to do. I was a bit scared when I saw the look of triumph that lit up his face, but it faded the second he took his first step. Those legs of his weren’t used to supporting any weight anymore, let alone his massive girth, and his shin bone split with a crack I can still hear, shooting out the front of his leg like a jagged, white sliver, all bloody and gooey on the inside. The worst part of it was—and just thinking about it makes me want to puke to this day—lumpy globs of fat splattered out of the torn skin and plopped on the floor. I heaved when I saw those yellow wads marbled with delicate red veins laying there on the gray tile.

“Frankie screamed and hit the floor, his leg still oozing fat and blood while Eddie and I ran for help. It took five of us over an hour to muscle him back into bed and push him to the infirmary, but by then he was unconscious from blood loss and shock. It was the first time he’d been quiet since he got there. I guess it nearly killed him, but no one ever asked why he had decided to stand in the first place. Eddie and I sure as hell weren’t offering any details. They kept him for two weeks, and it was the most peaceful two weeks of my life. Even the other inmates seemed subdued, just enjoying the silence without Frankie. I think maybe it was the silence of his leaving that made them do what they did when he came back.

“The riot happened that Friday morning, maybe a week after Frankie returned to his cell and started his caterwauling again. It’s a bit murky how it came about, but I can tell you those inmates held the institution for two whole days before they finally just gave in and got back in their cells. There wasn’t much damage done and no one was badly hurt, but when all was said and done, Frankie was gone.

“There was some blood on the floor of his cell, but otherwise not a trace of the big man. The guys from the State came swooping in, trying to do an investigation, but no one was talking and they didn’t have much science like DNA back then. To be honest, I don’t think they really cared all that much. A lot of interviews were done, and photos taken, but in the end they really didn’t try that hard. Frankie had no family left to complain, and his disappearance saved them the trouble of having to figure out how to execute him. They still used the electric chair in those days, and I’m sure those boys were sweating over how to fit that big tub of guts into it. Over the next few months, the prisoners were all transferred out to different institutions and the place was eventually closed, forcing all of us staff to look for other work.”

“And that’s the sad story of Frankie Hanson.” Papa sat back, folded his hands across his stomach, and smiled widely, revealing his ill-fitting dentures.

“ Papa!” the kids cried in unison.

“What?”

“You didn’t finish the story. Tell us what really happened to Frankie.” His grandson complained.

“And tell us the truth this time.” His granddaughter agreed with her brother, a rare occurrence.

“Now there’s a funny thing about the truth, sweetheart. Sometimes it has just as many layers as a lie. Papa always tells you kids the truth, but sometimes when we love someone, we have to decide which layer to peel. Cuz believe me, the truth can be much uglier than a lie.”

“Please, Papa.” The boy steepled his hands.

“Papa!” The girl was exasperated.

“Okay. I’ll tell you the rest. But you have to remember, a lot of it is supposition. No one who really knows what happened during those two days has ever been willing to tell the facts.”