Edward Lee - Creekers

“I’ll be out in a minute,” she replied, all the bite gone from her words. Yes, she knew. One last glance in the mirror, and she nearly broke out into tears.

Who did she hate more? Natter, or herself?

She swiftly put on her jeans and blouse, and left.

Druck waited outside, cracking his strange doublethumbs. “Yessir, yer shore lookin’ mighty perdy tonight, Miss Vicki.”

“Where’s Cody?”

The smile on the warped face looked like two fat worms lain together. “He’s on back in the office.”

Druck’s uneven red eyes gazed at her bosom. The smile squirmed. His gaze felt like a molestor’s hands freely kneading her breasts.

Scumbag.

She went down the hall, her stiletto heels ticking, and entered the back office. At once she noticed two of the less-defected Creeker dancers, nude save for their g-strings, standing against the wall. Their ebon-haired heads were bowed as if in the presence of a deity.

Which, in a sense, they were.

Cody Natter sat at the desk.

“So lovely, so beautiful,” came his familiar, creaking voice. “And how was your night, my love?”

“Peachy. Druck said you wanted me for something.”

Natter sat half-cloaked in darkness, which somehow made his twisted visage even more terrible. “Merely a minor arrangement; it shouldn’t take too long. But there are three gentlemen who would very much like the pleasure of your company.”

She looked aghast. Three bigshot rednecks, no doubt, chock full of cash from a recent dope deal. “Aw, Cody, come on, I don’t do groups anymore. I hate doing groups.”

“Well, certainly I’d never expect you to engage upon such a task on your own. You’ll have some assistance.” And with that disclosure, Natter’s dark blood-red eyes looked across to the two Creeker girls.

Vicki gaped at them, then gaped back at Natter. “What? Them?”

Natter’s crooked brow rose. “What of them?”

“They’re Creekers!”

The room fell silent. Vicki knew she shouldn’t have said it, but it slipped out. And there was no taking it back.

Natter stood up. He seemed to do so in increments, more or less unfolding to his nearly seven-foot height. The dark office corner released him; he began to walk forward.

“Cody, I didn’t mean it,” she rambled. “I—”

His long, three-fingered hand blurred, reached out, then snatched her throat.

And his voice seemed to flow, like a brook full of dark water. “Yes, my love, you are right. They’re Creekers. But then…so am I.”

His hand felt like an iron cuff. His face was hideous, a gaunt framework of pocked and lined flesh, the enlarged head and uneven ears. Lumps could be seen beneath graying-black streams of hair, genetic protrudements of his cranium.

And, of course, his eyes.

The huge blood-red eyes…

“And…” The eyes slid down to the V of her blouse. “What have we here?”

The long thumb and forefinger of his free hand plucked up the pendant about her neck.

Oh, no, Vicki thought.

“Who gave you this, hmm?” queried the cracked voice.

“Yuh-you did, Cody,” she lied.

His lips stiffened. “I did? Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, don’t you remember? You gave it to me before we got married.”

“Hmm. Well.” He jerked the pendant away, snapping the tiny gold chain. Then, right before her eyes, he rolled the gem and mount between his fingers. Eventually the mount broke, and the diminutive diamond fell to the floor.

His big booted foot ground it into the dust.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to buy you a better one.”

This secretly infuriated her, like everything else she’d made her life subject to. His eyes slid back up to hers, boring in like drill bits.

“You have a job to do now. Are you going to continue to make a nuisance of yourself, or are you going to do as you’re expected?”

Something happened then, something dangerous. Some remote part of her psyche seemed to snap like a dry, tiny twig. Her terror shook her, and the deeper she stared into the corrupted face, the more she saw the ruination of her own life. A simple wave of his stonelike hand, she knew, could send her to the hospital.

He could snap her neck at will.

But suddenly, if only for a mad, exploding moment, she didn’t care.

“You son of a bitch,” her throat rasped the words. “You want me to be in a six-way orgy with three redneck dope peddlers. I’m your wife!”

“Indeed, you are.” His grasp about her throat tightened. “And why is that? Tell me, my love. Why are you my wife?”

By now she couldn’t answer. Her eyes began to swell forward as her husband’s twisted hand exerted more pressure against her windpipe and the arteries leading to her brain.

He answered for her. “You’re my wife only because I allow you to be. Yes? Am I right?”

Vicki’s fear returned in just one beat of her heart. She forced herself, tremoring, to nod in the affirmative.

Natter’s black voice flowed on. “Yes, you’re my wife. But there’s something else that you are, yes? And what is that?”

The cuff of Natter’s hand lifted, squeezing tears out of Vicki’s eyes like water from a rag. Her heart squirmed in her chest…

His hand was lifting her off her feet.

She gasped, choking to get the words out. “I-I’m a—”

“Yes?”

“I’m a, I’m a—”

“Hmm? Tell me, my love. You’re a what?”

“I’m a whore!” she finally hacked out.

The clawlike hand released her. Vicki fell to the floor.

“You’re a whore,” he repeated. He loomed over her, dizzyingly tall. “Yes, a whore. You always have been, and you always will be.” Then his voice receded to its absolute darkest pitch. “Now go and do what it is that whores do.”

Vicki wheezed air back into her lungs, coughing. Suddenly Natter was leaning down.

“But one more thing, my love. Isn’t there something, you need?”

Vicki squinted up, her head reeling. She’d barely heard what he said.

Something… I need…

“Hmm?”

His misshapen hand opened right before her face.

Her eyes widened.

She gulped.

In Natter’s queer palm lay a baggie full of cocaine.

— | — | —

Twenty-Three

“Jesus Christ, man,” Eagle observed. His eyes looked peeled open. “The guy’s been skinned.”

“It’s a tough piece of work,” Phil said.

“Shit, who knows how much we missed ’em by.”

“We didn’t miss the guys who did this; they’re miles away by now, Eagle. Ain’t no way they did this here.”

“How do you know?”

“Take a look, man.”

The corpse lay sprawled, scarcely even resembling a human. It was the same job they’d done on Rhodes. The thing at their feet appeared coated with clotted blood, its complete surface showing sinuous crimson muscle. Flies, hordes of them, pecked over the corpse.

“There’s no blood,” Phil told him. “If they’d done this here, there’d be a lake of blood on the floor. There’s almost nothing here. The guys who did this, they did it somewhere else, then brought Blackjack’s body back here and dumped it.”

Eagle straightened out; he looked confused. “But that don’t make no sense. Why go to the trouble? Why didn’t they just bury him somewhere, or dump him in the woods where he’d never be found?”

“Why do you think? They want him to be found,” Phil said.

“Why?”

“To send a message out, man. The people you’re dealing against know what you’re doing. They left this here so you would see it, and get the gist quick.”

“To lay off,” Eagle said.

“That’s right. They want you off their turf, and they left this little reminder here to give you good reason.”