Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

    The Twinkie Killer
                                                   By Connley Landers



Christmas Eve was dark and just an hour old on a clear, Dallas morning. I was in the Scouts years ago, the last time I saw that eastern star, Sirius, line up with Orion’s Belt and point toward the next sunrise. Sitting in the car for three hours drinking whiskey, watching stars, and the old, red, barn-style house gave me the nervous gut-rumbles. I’m not under what they call the alcofluence of incohol.

Earlier a pizza boy had made a delivery to the house. The damned windshield kept misting up, keeping me from seeing clearly. Alternately wiping it and then my nose got snot on the glass. My eyes burned from lack of sleep and the strain of staring at the world through fog and phlegm—not exactly rose-colored glasses.

I cut my last Twinkie in two with my car key and licked the creamy filling out of its brassy-tasting grooves. I stuffed a Twinkie-half between whiskey-numbed lips and felt that sweet goo ooze. My final meal was perfect: corn syrup, flour, sugar, hydrogenated coconut or palm oil, salt and MSG—washed down with three loud slugs of Jack Daniels that started a coughing fit. The cake’s greasy, empty calories felt good coating the roof of my mouth and sore throat like Pennzoil 10w40. Why not? I was dead anyway.

The other half I handed over to a slobbering Duff, now, this man’s best friend. He sniffed it and looked at me as though I’d given him a turd. He eats his own, but now, he refused my offering. Rejection? “It’s okay Duff, your master is used to it.”

The two story house had a white cupola on one end of the metal roof peak and a rooster weathervane at the other end. My wife was in that vile house across the street having sex with my real estate business partner.

                                                                                *

Jimbo and I met in college when he was a jock and needed my help with his business math class. He was my best friend, at one time. They didn’t recognize the rental car when they pulled up two hours ago. I’d parked two houses down from them so they wouldn’t see me. Jimbo and Donna thought I’d be in Houston until tomorrow. I was going to kill them both and myself.

The six-shot .38 Special revolver came up for bid last month at a pawn-shop auction. The auctioneer promised loudly that, “The gun was brand new!” He half-grinned then said softer, “At one time.” Its past and future was mine for fifty bucks by outbidding a sleazy looking liquor-store thief. He didn’t have a nylon stocking stretched over his head, but his face and nose were mashed flat as if he did. I’ll bet that gun had some gory tales to tell. It’ll welcome one more.

Jimbo had said the week before, “You should carry one for protection on your trips to the bank with our company’s deposits. I always carry one.” Big Jimbo, they called him, former football great for the ‘Horns twenty years ago, Joseph James Dumar, Big Horny Moby Dumbo. He had a paranoid, guilty conscience for sure. No telling how many other people he had screwed.

The gun started to talk to me. For hours I’d thought of how to do it, what it would feel like, taste like, to kill them? Would it linger on my palate like a Twinkie? I shouldn’t drink any more—Novocained the taste buds—wanted to savor the flavor of my deed. First: one shot for each of Donna’s knees, then one for her treacherous heart, one for each of Jimbo’s scarred knees, and then one in his over-active, venereal wart-covered gonads. I’d reload while he bled out. Maybe, I’d put him out of his misery if he begged super-good. Maybe not.

A man catching his wife cheating with another man and killing them both in a fit of passion might earn a manslaughter conviction, not murder. In Texas, the buckle on the Taliban Baptist Bible Belt, there is profound sympathy for the cuckold and juries are notorious for coming down on his side with just a slap on the wrist.

But, of course, this wasn’t a fit of passion. It was slow and calculated. The gun made a point, “After all, in the Arab World honor killings of women who embarrass the clan were, well, honorable.” Now, on the dash my old gun whispered, “I’m ready.” Its cold, polished, blue-blackness glinted from a street light. Smith & Wesson winked, knew what we had to do, add a chapter to its history. “I’ll write some too with my next report when I speak loudly.”

                                                       *

“It’s time for me to go, Duffster.” He got up and wagged his tail. Feeling his velvety ears one last time, I said, “No, you stay here.” He sat down. I opened the window a few inches to give him some air, then thought better and put it back up so it would muffle the fatal shots. Duff liked Donna, still. He was just a dumb dog.

She bought the Springer Spaniel four years ago, right after we got married. She said, “Duff’s our surrogate child.” I didn’t want any kids. She did. But I’d always taken care of Duff, played Frisbee catch and went for walks. She was too busy. Philandering. If half the town is mounting you, there’s not much time for domestic…. Duff whined, got up, licked my face, and washed away the scene—for now. That image had ruined my slumber for weeks. I don’t care what thinkle peep. I just need a little sleep.

Cold air went down my damp collar when I got out of the car. I shivered, zipped my jacket, and closed the door quietly with my butt. Walking through the front yard of their next-door neighbor with the blinking, multi-colored, holiday house-lights, I almost stumbled over a nativity scene. Jimbo’s house had a gate to the back yard. It was open.

Why they didn’t hear me climb in through the unlocked kitchen window, I don’t know. Yes, of course. They were preoccupied like thirsty gazelles at the water hole. That’s how the lions get to savor them. Jimbo and Donna were quenching their animal thirst.

Two large pizza boxes were on the breakfast table. Big appetites. The hungry animals. Didn’t have to see what kind. Anchovy and onion. The oven had a turkey slow-baking. There were three stockings hung on the mantle of the still warm, stone fireplace. The fire was banked for the night. There was an odd, homey air to this hell-hole.

I could hear them down the hall. Their bedroom door was wide open, unashamed. The rhythmic, fluid sounds of carnal sex echoed, mocked, and made me want to puke. My jaws were achy as if those little sponge cakes had been cold taffy.

As I neared the bedroom, the sounds swelled with each step. They were like grunting pigs when I turned the lights on—surprised, sweating pigs. Donna gasped a big breath of air that sucked mine out and left me panting. She covered her face with both hands. Jimbo couldn’t see me at first, and then said, “Harold!” He squinted, focused and reached for the nightstand drawer.

“Stop right there, shithead!” I said. His erection made a tent with the sheet. Good. Makes my third shot for him a little easier—a lot easier. Viagra. He’ll bleed more on those bed clothes and make a fine Rorschach scene of a man getting nailed to a cross. There would be a Turin Shroud of the devil that museums would study for millennia.

“What are you going to do, Harold?” He kept looking at the gun with big, jerky eyes and then back to me. My gun was a separate, fourth thing—an added Special factor to our ménage a trois of Jimbo, bimbo and me. The fifth, I knew, was in that nightstand.

“What do you think? You think I’m here for a three-way, Shitbo—with you and Madonna there?” I pointed the .38 at the sobbing figure. The dull- yellow-colored blanket was pulled over her head as though that would make the boogie-man vanish.

“Now, Harold.” Jimbo held up his hand like a traffic cop. “You know you guys haven’t had a real marriage for years.”

“Filling you two assholes with some more holes was what I was planning.”

The turtle stuck her teary face out. “Shoot me then!”

Jimbo said, “Just hold on, buddy.”

“You’re not going to ever ‘buddy’ me again!”

Jimbo looked at Donna for long seconds and then back at me. “If you’ve made up your mind, then shoot me first. I couldn’t watch her get it.”

“It sounds like that would torture you—kinda like that idea.”

Donna said, “No, no. Shoot me now and get it over with! Leave him alone.”

“Is this the two love-shit-bird’s first fight, over who gets blasted last? How touching. I’ll put an end to this chapter of a sick story with a scarlet period in Hester’s chest—made with this.” I took a step closer.

Jimbo shook his head. “Don’t do it, Harold! She’s pregnant.”

I said, “You cheap, lying, filthy….” Jimbo pointed to the nightstand. There was a framed picture of them with tennis rackets, smiles and sunshine. Next to it was a wash cloth folded in half with something in it. My finger tightened on the trigger as he reached toward the nightstand. From the washcloth he pulled a pee-on-a-stick pregnancy test and threw it on the foot of the bed. It was positive. Donna and I hadn’t been having sex. We were on different paths.

“It’s Jimbo’s,” she said.

“You’ve been firing blanks all these years, buddy.”

“We’ll see.” I aimed the gun at his lying face.

“No, down there, down there!” Jimbo pointed to my crotch.

“No buddy. Buddy, buddy, buddy,” I said. “How do you know?”

“I saved some semen from a condom,” Donna said, “and took it to a lab three years ago when you wouldn’t go in to get checked out. I’m sorry Harold. But, I was desperate. I want children. You don’t, can’t. At thirty-nine, this is my last chance. We’re in love with each other.” Donna stood on her knees in the bed and the blanket fell off. There was a lump under her navel that she put her hand on.

I stared. I’d never noticed—life. Was I blind and dumb? She held out the other hand to him and he took it. Love. Who were these people? Me sterile? Firing blanks? They weren’t. Word-wounds burst my mind like birthing galaxies.

This wasn’t how I’d imagined it. They each wanted to go first. My plan was to snuff only three candles. A bitter taste filled my mouth. I couldn’t think clearly for the fog inside that couldn’t be wiped away.

The gun with a heavy past weighed forty pounds, and dragged my arm down. The mute .38 thudded on the floor. Staggering back, I found a wall for support and put both hands over my temples. I saw red fading to black nothing and started to scream, but just opened my mouth. My body was empty, leeched like the Red Cross took too much. She had—almost a smile on her face. Mona Lisa’s—flickering.

I had to turn my eyes away, but forced a quick glance, a last…. I don’t know. Donna was kneeling, had a Jumbo bun in the oven and was reaching out her hand. She was naked on the hay-colored blanket. A manger.

There was a long silence. Maybe Jimbo would go for the nightstand. We were frozen figures in a petrified portrait and he didn’t move.

Finally, my back still rooted to the wall, I got my voice and said, “I’m taking Duff.”

Donna said, “Okay.”

I locked the kitchen window and went out the front door with a piece of pizza. I’d left them their lives, the gun, and closed the window. Merry Christmas.

Duff made a big fuss over me. That last half-Twinkie looked like a murdered turd and I threw it out. The loyal Duff got a piece of cold anchovy and onion pizza. Starkle, starkle little twink, what the hell you are I think.