Shane ed. - A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre - Halloween Is Going to Be Jealous

Matt’s chest felt tight and his arms and legs tingled. His ankle was forgotten. Nothing made sense and he didn’t know what to do. Everyone he loved, everyone in his entire family, was hurt or dying.

Finally, Dallas’s cries cracked through his shock. Matt’s eyes truly opened and all he saw was red. Blood covered the earth and pounded in his ears as he raced forward to scoop up his baby sister. She lay on the ground, one arm bent awkwardly behind her, rolling back and forth, screaming.

Ants covered her feet and legs like stockings. Matt remembered the searing pain he’d felt when the ant had bitten him earlier, and his stomach rolled with the thought of feeling the hundreds covering Dallas. Fighting back the urge to be sick, he snatched her off the ground, flinching when she bellowed louder than before. A quarter-sized hole had been under her body, ants exploding from the earth in droves. He stumbled away, trying to escape the clicking mandibles. Dallas’s arm flopped uselessly, Jell-o in a plastic bag. He beat at her legs, trying to wipe away the clinging insects and ignoring the familiar burn as their mouths bit deep into his skin. As they fell away, he saw her feet had been flayed, leaving raw meat exposed. Matt couldn’t contain the nausea anymore. He heaved. Bile, hot and scalding, burned his throat and mouth.

Dallas’s screams beat against Matt’s ears, but the forest grew quiet. Standing on shaking legs, he looked around at what was left of his family. Tucker had been smashed to a liquefied pulp covering the pathway like a puddle. His mom was a bundle of bruises. Every one of her limbs lay snapped in the wrong direction, sometimes two. Her face was slack, a large hole in her head. A gray substance leaked into her hair, clumping it together. Matt couldn’t bring himself to think of it as her brain; it was just gray. Turning back to look in the direction they’d been heading, he saw the rabbits were gone. So was most of Brooklyn. What lay on the ground wasn’t his sister, but scraps from a ravaged meal.

Matt couldn’t get any air as the images pressed down on him. Spots danced before his eyes. He was going to pass out, and it would be a relief. He had to get away, anyway he could, even if it was through unconsciousness.

No. He couldn’t let that happen. There was nothing he could do for Brooklyn, his mom or Tucker, but Dallas was still alive. He had to get her help. Matt stumbled up the path, his gut clenching every time he jostled Dallas and she whimpered.

“It’s okay, baby. Bubby will get you out. I’ll get you out.” Hot tears poured down his face. Everything had gone so wrong, so quickly.

Matt heard the branch before he felt it. A sharp whistling, then his arms went numb. Dallas fell, and as he watched her, tumbling in slow-motion, he looked down and saw the branch protruding from his chest. A red stain blossomed outward, soaking his shirt and dripping down his stomach in hot rivers. With a groan, his body slid forward, falling toward the ground. He tried to roll away from Dallas, but found he couldn’t move, could only watch as he crushed her already tortured legs. She shrieked.

Matt could feel himself growing weaker. The branch had punched a geyser through him, letting his life pour onto the ground. Dallas struggled to sit herself up, pulling at her legs, trying to get them out from under him. Finally, slippery with blood, she managed to break free. She crawled forward till she reached Matt’s head. His eyes kept sliding closed.

“Bubby. Bubby, get up. I go you.” She patted his face. He jerked his eyes open and wanted to cry. Dallas was sitting right there. He needed to get her out of the forest, but he couldn’t. There was no way. The only thing he could do was watch over her until death took him. Watch over her and watch out for the tree still moving behind her. It picked up the sapling Brooklyn had dropped, and then gouged a small hole in the earth a little ways from its trunk, placing the sapling in it and gently pushing the soil around the smaller tree. Seemingly satisfied, it was finally still, the only sound Dallas’s pleading and the only movement her frantic patting on his cheek.

“Pease, Bubby. Pease. I go you.”

TACO MEAT

by John McNee

When the explosives in Pedro Piss-Pants’s colon went off, they blew nearly his entire left ass cheek some 137 yards southwest, to land on the corrugated iron awning of Za’s Tattoo Parlor. It was found and eaten by a stray cat later that same evening and is the only notable piece of Pedro to remain officially unaccounted for.

When Pedro spattered himself across the back lot of the TP Auto Company, showering the rusted scrap metal wig-wam in a toxic rain of blood and effluent, his antagonists did the predictable thing. They ran. Eyes streaming, ears ringing, and mouths screaming (though of course they couldn’t hear themselves) they ran, away from each other, away from the scene of the crime and, they might hope, to safety.

Blake Rawlinson, 14, ran West, to nearby Elmer View and the warmth and comforts of the Rawlinson family trailer.

His younger brother, 12-year-old Kuger, might have been expected to follow, but he didn’t. He ran East, to the dry riverbed, in hopes of finding a ditch to crawl into.

Gary ran furthest of all, clean across town in fact, to Victoria Square, on the South Side, where the newly strung fairy lights had just been lit. The Mariachi band was already in full swing and his cousin, Officer Dabney Tibbs, was busy persuading Hector Nunez to slide him an apple empanada on the house. Perk of the gig, after all.

Dabney’s partner, Tony Hierra, was, as ever, the one who asked all the pertinent questions. “What you mean he exploded?”

“What do you think I mean?” Gary sobbed, snot dripping from his nose. “He blew up, okay? He exploded!”

“Hold up,” Dabney said. “Who’s Pedro Piss-Pants?”

“I heard of this kid,” Tony answered, grimly. “Homeless, messed up in the head, lives out by the freeway. Easy pickings. That it, Gary? That what you and your messed-up little buddies were doing? Nothin’ on TV, so you thought you’d go pick on the local retard wet-back?”

“Why they call him Piss-Pants?” Dabney asked.

“’Cause he’s always pissing his pants,” Gary said.

“Damn it,” Tony said. “What did you do to him?”

Gary squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “We tied him to the fence and then…we stuck a bunch of fireworks up his ass.”

“Jesus,” Dabney said.

“Momma’s sick little puppies,” Tony said. “He dead?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Gary cried. “He fuckin’ exploded! Everything but his arms and his head blew up into a billion pieces! Looked like…like taco meat.”

“Jesus,” Dabney repeated.

“It was just a joke, okay?” Gary said. “It was meant to be funny! It was just a fuckin’ joke!”

DABNEY DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTAND what the play was. Even when he and Tony had left Gary behind with a warning “not to go far” and taken the patrol car up to 14 thAvenue with the lights off and not a word to anyone who might want to know, even then he didn’t quite get it. But when, as they pulled into the TP Auto forecourt, he turned to Tony and said, “You want I should call this in?” Tony was quick to set him straight.

“Hell you mean call it in?” he barked. “We’re not calling anything in. You nuts? We’re handling this shit. Understand?”

“Clean it up? Aw, no, Tony. Man, I don’t…I don’t know about that…”

“No? Then what? You tell me. Tell me! Never mind making it through the cluster-fuck and managing, somehow, to keep your job. Never mind that. Suppose you do. You really want to stick around for the shit-storm when you’re the cop who was on watch the night a retarded little Mexican got ass-raped with M-80s and blown to hell by a bunch of white kids? One of whom—need I remind you—is your little cousin? Huh? On Cinco defuckin’ Mayo? Huh? You think about that. Even if you’re still alive at the end of it your life won’t be worth living!”