Red Holler

Deep in the dense green woodlands of Georgia three twenty something’s bicker among themselves. Squeezing between trees, ducking low branches, wading through brush, and stepping over logs, they attempt to regain their bearings before the setting sun left them in darkness. The tarnished copper sky above was becoming increasingly dim, the full moon already faintly visible. At Aubrey Lawson’s insistence they had deviated from the designated trail and had been lost for hours. She, a petite brunette, hopelessly free spirited, and most noticeably of all, gorgeous. Aubrey was far and away out of her boyfriend’s league. Simon Watts knew it too. He had been dating her for almost a year. He saw the heads that turned and the looks she got when he was out with her. The men who checked her out weren’t so much undressing her with their eyes as they were fucking her with them. It had been a couple hundred days of white knuckling it under the weight of his painfully inflamed insecurity. He was exceedingly mediocre and a bit on the dork side. His thickly framed spectacles and Star Wars shirt told the world as much. Scrawny and short in stature, he was tastelessly average like plain rice with a forgettable boyish face. With them was a mutual friend, Craig Glover. He, a tall, fit, and ruggedly handsome specimen, was everything Simon wasn’t. A real life flannel clad Brawny guy. Still, they all got along well enough. Except for now. “We are lost Aubrey, Simon groaned brushing a spider web out of his face, “just admit it. We should have never wandered off the trail.” He went on, “it will be dark soon and.” Ooh lets go this way,” she interrupted. Aubrey crammed her curvy figure between two large mossy trees growing away from each other in their close V shaped coupling. Simon sighed in exasperation as Craig followed her, though with a bit more difficulty passing through. Aubrey gasped. “You guys its beautiful,” she squealed. Simon rolled his eyes and begrudgingly followed. They happened upon a large meadow of tall grass with islands of wild flowers. It spanned half the length of a football field. The flowers, orange, and purple, and yellow, seemed to imitate the coming dusk above. Simon glanced at his cellphone and frowned. No service. Aubrey dashed about picking flowers to the merry chorus of chirping birds. She ran through the sea of thigh high grass letting it tickle the palms of her outstretched hands. Simon pouted looking on with petulantly narrowed eyes. He saw Craig approach her with a handful of the colorful flowers then bow and present them to her. Miss Lawson,” he said in a cringey fake english accent. He sounded like john Lennon, if he was retarded. Simon thought as much and in addition, “he’s not even trying to hide it anymore.” Simon had long suspected Aubrey and Craig had a thing for each other. He squeezed his phone indignantly as she smiled that thousand megawatt smile and took the bouquet. “Aw Craig,” she swooned. Simon wouldn’t say anything though. To do so would only expose himself for the raw aching nerve he was. He had voiced his concern in times past, only to be met with looks of incredulity. Looks as though he were out of his mind. Jealous. Grumbling, he started pacing while holding his phone aloft searching for the dim prospect of a signal. “We should really be trying to find a way out of here.” “Look at that one over there,” Aubrey exclaimed running toward it and pointing. It was a wildflower with uniquely red petals. Craig cupped hands around his mouth and projected to Simon a good natured, “relax.” No sooner had the word reached him when a rusty chirp brought Aubrey vanishing down into the high grass. She screamed and a number of birds fled noisily from the treetops. Her scream was one of unbridled agony. “Holy shit,” Craig yelled bounding toward her, “oh my god dude it’s a bear trap.” Simon nervously waded through grass to meet them. “A bear trap,” Simon thought nervously, “oh this is so bad.” Indeed things had gone from bad to worse. Gazing down at her fetal form they could see the great teeth of the contraption burrowed deep into her leg just below the knee. It had practically taken it off. Blood dribbled steadily from the angry wound and soaked her form fitting denim. “Oh no Aubrey baby,” Simon cried out. She wailed clutching her leg. “Get this off me. Get it off get it off.” Her foot already tingled with numbness inside her hiking boot. “I can’t feel my foot Simon.” Craig knelt down and tried pulling the steel jaws apart. Simon yanked at his shoulder length mop of hair with both hands. “Oh what the hell. What the hell are we going to do?” Craig grunted and his muscular biceps bulged in their flannel sleeves, succeeding in only slightly parting the bloody jaws before losing grip of the sharp triangular teeth. Her bleeding made what little grasp he could actually get impossible to maintain. At this slip, the teeth squelched back into her from his slick crimson fingers and bit even deeper. Aubrey issued a voiceless yelp. Her body shuddered as she wept incoherently. Veins bulged in her neck and her face flushed red with anguish. Simon clapped his hands together and exhaled loudly. Now he was scared. The sun had fallen beyond the trees, throwing their tangled shadows at him. He gingerly picked up the heavy chain attached to the bear trap and followed it hand over hand about ten feet. “Shit,” he murmured. Craig moved to attempt freeing Aubrey’s leg again but she snatched his wrist and shook her head fervently. “No,” she whined between sobs. “I thought we could just pull the steak out or something,” Simon said grimly, “but the damn thing is cemented in.” Like a child’s swing set, the chain was encased in a cement anchor nestled out of sight under the flora. “No,” Aubrey cried, “I’m gonna lose my leg.” She was becoming horse with distress. “I think you need some kind of tool to open these,” Craig said rubbing his chiseled jaw. He wondered if the jaws could be pried open with a stick. “What tool,” Simon yelled in frustration, “there are no tools here. Off the trail god knows where. I told you. None of you wanted to listen. Now look at us.” “Look,” Craig retorted in a booming voice, “comfort your fucking girlfriend. I’m gonna go get wood to burn before its pitch black out here. Maybe we can pry this thing open with one of the sticks. Break the chain with a rock or something. I dunno.” Simon took a long deep breath. “Ok,” he said. Craig disappeared through the wall of ancient looking trees surrounding the meadow. Stars had begun revealing their twinkling selves with the blurry smudge of a vaguely full moon. Simon sat beside Aubrey and tried to somehow sooth her. She wasn’t having any of it. His attempts at distraction, his lame anecdotes, his tired jokes, his weak reassurances, they were all met only with annoyed groans of pain. Simon shivered a little in the breeze. The temperature was falling, passing through brisk and approaching cold. “What takes so long to get firewood?” Simon pondered this briefly before turning his head from the tree line back to Aubrey. She was a pitiful sight and suddenly he felt shame. The disagreeable feeling served only to aggravate his jealous insecurity. He always wondered if she would leave him for Craig some day. Simon couldn’t deny the playfully flirtatious tension between them. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? Craig was a confident man of action, cool and level headed. What’s not to like? “Here I am making a fool out of myself,” he thought morosely, “just beg her to leave why don’t you Simon.” He placed his hand gently on the back of hers. “I’m sorry for losing my head,” he said meekly, “that wasn’t cool of me.” “You’re an asshole.” The barb made him wince slightly and he withdrew his hand. It all but confirmed his suspicion she would dump him after they got out of this, if they got out. The idea of parting company with Aubrey bothered him more than being stranded in the woods at night, lost puppy dog that he was. They sat silently in the chorus of chirping crickets and croaking frogs. The buttery moon had taken over the blackened sky. It cast a soft pale glow on the world beneath it. Craig’s voice reverberated from beyond the meadow. “Simon,” he called, “that you?” Aubrey and Simon exchanged confused looks. The very next thing they heard warped their curious expressions into ones of stunned disbelief. Raised eyebrows and wide eyes transformed into leaking tears and mashing teeth. Craig yelled out in what sounded like pain. It was a surprised howl, the way one might having stepped on glass with a bare foot. His second yell was one more of terror. It’s frantic pitch gave Simon and Aubrey goose flesh. Craig only issued part of it, the rest abruptly muted. The subsequent quiet was unnerving and more than Simon could bear. He shot up from the tall grass and sprinted for the opposite tree line. Aubrey watched him disappear with watery eyed betrayal worn gravely on her face. She wanted to scream and almost did but thought better of it. Instead she got as low to the earth as she could. She wanted to be as small as possible, invisible. She thought that maybe whatever it was out there might not see her if she managed that. For a long while she lay there, motionless. A breeze swayed the tall grass concealing her. Aubrey’s heart was a pounding fist in her chest, as if a separate person inside demanding to be let out. It was so loud she was afraid it might be noticed. She tried to steady her frightened breathing and listen. Was that a twig snapping? A footstep? Yes, another, and then another. Something was taking slow deliberate crunching steps closer and closer. She squeezed her eyes shut and cried silently. Her fear heightened with every succeeding step and she urinated on herself. The dreaded leafy footsteps were upon her now and they stopped. “Well well well,” said a rasping country twanged voice, “ain’t this a treat.” The deeply voiced words cut into her brain like a scalpel and she hemorrhaged fear. Aubrey looked up from the ground and began to sob. Standing there in the moonlight was a tall burly man. He was shirtless and barefoot in filthy tattered blue jeans. His face was a confusion of obscuring jagged shadows and Aubrey could not discern his features. Hairy trunk like arms rested at his sides. In one hand, long meaty fingers gripped a glistening blade dripping with black blood. She stared at the ten inch hunting knife, her face stretched back into a grinning sob. “Please don’t hurt me,” she squeaked, “who are you?” The mysterious man stepped closer and squatted to her level. She saw his face and stifled a scream. The man was a horrendous sight. His head was like a thumb. His wild dark eyes were practically on the sides of his misshapen head. Aubrey noticed he didn’t have a nose. Just a malformed pit with snot dribbling into his scruffy mustache. His ears were similarly shapeless caverns. He smiled his lipless smile and showcased black rotting nubs for teeth. They glittered their wet repugnance in the light of the moon. A rivulet of black chewing tobacco dripped into his beard from the corner of his mouth. “Name a Cletus,” he breathed heavily. His breath was hot and fetid with decay. He leaned in close then swiftly seized a fist full of her long silky hair, startling her. She whimpered as he buried his face in it and inhaled deeply. He hooted his approval. Shuddering sobs racked her body. “Please don’t,” she whined. He released her and sat back on his haunches. He watched her for a long moment before bringing the bloody blade up to her breasts. He moved the tip, lightly tracing along her cleavage, to the thin shoulder strap of her top and flicked it off. It sagged limply around her upper arm. “You and me gonna have some fun tonight darlin’.” Aubrey shrunk away from the sharp point and scooted back, jingling the heavy links which tethered her to the trap’s anchor. “We gonna have a good old time.” She scooted farther and farther, until the slack tightened and pulled on her wounded leg. She pulled, and squirmed, and whimpered. Adrenaline rocketed through her veins and she could not feel the clenching teeth of the trap tearing muscle and whittling bone. She tried waking herself as if stuck in a nightmare. These things didn’t really happen. Not to her. Aubrey’s mind simply could not accept it. Cletus stood then raised a foot and placed it on the bear trap. He pressed down on it gently then gradually increased pressure. Bursting white stars flooded her vision and she passed out before vocalizing a single note of her excruciation. She awoke in a musky wooden room. On a dirty bare mattress she blinked the weary sleep from her eyes. Those eyes then darted rapidly about the room as her senses came galloping back to her. The room seemed to be one of some kind of cabin, shack maybe. A warm breeze whispered through a window, really a square shaped hole in the wall, and tickled her bare skin all over. That’s when she glanced down and took in that she was completely naked. That, however, wasn’t what truly horrified her. Aubrey’s left leg, the one gored in the bear trap, ended at a bundled mass of blood soaked rags and duct tape just below the knee. “I did loose my leg,” she thought sorrowfully staring at her incomplete leg. With that passing notion her heart took on its frantic cadence once more, pounding through her chest. “Why am I naked?” She wondered this for an instant and then she knew. “You and me are gonna have some fun tonight.” Those words looped endlessly in her mind like an abhorrent carousel. Pain from her amputated leg seeped back into her awareness. Aubrey winced and sat up and the worn old cast iron frame creaked in protest. It made her freeze up stiffly for a second or two, listening. Nothing. She could see she wasn’t bound to it and yet, she was. “Yeah how far could I even get,” she thought looking at the disgusting improvised bandage. Her head swiveled all about the room as she urgently attempted forming some sort of plan, a way out. That’s when her eyes fell upon it. Under the window across the dusty room was a table of warped plywood and crumbling cinder blocks and on that, a tarnished old revolver peeked out from behind a dented coffee can. Aubrey didn’t know if it worked, if it was loaded, she didn’t even really know how to use it for that matter. “But if I cold get to it,” she thought hopefully, “I just might have a chance.” She wondered if Cletus could really be so stupid. Then again he was reminiscent of incest spawn. “So maybe he could,” she thought. After all, he didn’t even bother with tying her up. Aubrey planted a foot on the gritty floor and stood. The bed creaked loudly as she did and she froze again. Nothing. Maybe he was gone somewhere, setting more traps possibly. The makeshift table was about four feet away and yet without the rest of her other leg, so much further. She hopped once toward it. A jolt of searing pain shot up from her stump. It made her light headed and almost lose balance. She could feel something oozing out from between her legs as she steadied herself. It trickled down her inner thigh. It was milky and thick. “He raped me,” she realized sickly, “that son of a bitch really raped me.” She wanted to cry, to wail, and to scream. The incomprehensible sense of violation weighed on her like a horrible wet blanket. Instead she furrowed her brow. “Now isn’t the time,” she thought intensely, “I want to live.” She was surprised by her nerve, then slightly relieved she could form no memory of the incident. She hopped again then a few more times, carefully balancing with her arms out, and glancing to the open doorway off to her left between hops. Relieved to have made it she wrapped her delicate fingers around the grip of the pistol. It felt heavy and powerful in her hand. She had hoped the coffee can might have bullets in it but she could see its purpose was as a spittoon. Stinking black sludge sat stagnant inside. She glanced up and out the small window. It was nothing but trees. Tall gnarled brown trunks in every direction. She wasn’t in any condition to climb through the small window. Aubrey never thought she was capable of taking a life but as semen inched down her leg and wandered past her knee like a grotesque pearly slug, she changed her mind. Presently she was filled with rage to the point of bursting. She could kill Cletus, kill him a thousand times. Maybe Simon too, that pussy. She hung in the doorway grasping the gnarled frame for balance and peered in. It was a mostly empty room with one door that sat crooked in its housing and window holes on either side.the floor was peppered with empty tins of chewing tobacco, and lengths of chain, and dirt. Three closed bear traps, crusted with dried brown blood, sat piled next to a stack of logs by a black wood burning stove in the corner. On an actual table against the right hand wall she saw something that suffocated her bloodthirsty rage with sour disgust. A large meat cleaver stuck out diagonally from the scarred old table it was wedged into. Next to that was her leg. It’s skin was greying and flies buzzed about the darkening exposed muscle surrounding gleaming white bone. The sight utterly decimated her newfound resolve like a wrecking ball through a glass house. Suddenly the front door slowly began squealing open on its rusty hinges. Aubrey fought against her body yearning to melt into a spineless puddle on the floor. Swiftly though, she raised the hand cannon and trained it on the door. “Don’t shoot,” Simon exclaimed throwing up his hands defensively. He was the last person in the universe she had expected to be standing there. She had a fleeting urge to blow him away anyway but decided against it. “This pant load is my only hope,” she thought bitterly. Aubrey lowered the weapon. “I ran to get help Aubrey,” he said rushing to her, “but I got lost. I.” She pointed the gun at him from her hip. “Shut up.” Simon tried to keep his eyes on hers. Desperate as the situation was, he’d never seen her naked before. Even with the freshly amputated leg, and the scratches, and the bruises, she was far beyond any of even his most imaginative beat off sessions. He blushed dropping his gaze down at her bandage drenched in dripping crimson and felt a weight of shame. What happened to,” he started. She instantly held up a tremulous hand. “Don’t talk,” she hissed, “just help me get out of here.” Simon nodded and took her arm over his shoulder. They moved slowly toward the open door, Aubrey hopping one anguished hop at a time. “Everything is going to be alright, he said softly as he scanned the floor for anything that might hurt her foot, “I’m going to get you out of here.” The lost puppy dog was really attempting to venture back from the unforgivable. She didn’t answer. With one foot from the threshold he turned to look at her. Aubrey’s eyes were intensely fixed forward. “I’ll shoot,” she exclaimed leveling the revolver. Cletus stood in the doorway grinning. He was even more hideous in daylight. His skin was a yellowed hue and his right eye a cloudy opaque. She squeezed the trigger. Click. The hollow noise was a devastating heartbreak to her ears. “Ain’t no shells in that there old thing,” Cletus rasped. She tried again. Click. The cylinder revolved and the hammer fell on empty space. Simon hollered and made a mad dash. He attempted to slip between Cletus and the frame of the door, abandoning Aubrey for the second time. Instead Simon crashed into him. “Take your shoes off boy,” Cletus chuckled flinging him back inside, “stay a while.” Simon sailed like a rag doll into Aubrey. She windmilled her arms wildly as she fell and the gun clattered across the wood floor and out of view into the only other room. Before Simon could get his footing to make another break for it Cletus was upon him. He took the young man fiercely by his shoulder length hair and bent him over the table with the rancid leg on it, slamming his face down on the wood. Aubrey’s empowering rage was all but extinguished in her fright. She scooted away on her bare ass. She had an idea where the pistol was, though she could not see it. Maybe it really was out of bullets. She ignored the notion, eclipsing it with her primal instinct to preserve her life. What other option did she have? That weapon was her only chance in hell. Cletus still had Simon pressed to the table. He was hunched over top of him with his horrible face pressed to Simon’s ear. “Boy you pretty like a bitch,” Cletus whispered gruffly, “bet I could fuck you like a bitch.” His utterance gave Aubrey mixed feelings. Amidst the stormy chaos of her panicked mind, a single passing thought leaped out to her. “See how you like it,” said the thought. She kept to inching her ass, blocking them out, in the direction of the firearm. Her smooth cheeks picked up splinters with every scoot. Cletus stripped Simon’s loose fitting cargo shorts and underwear with one harsh yank. They fell around his shaking ankles. “You can’t do this,” Simon begged in a quivering voice, “please. I’m sorry. Please just let us go.” His begging quickly devolved into incoherent pleading. Aubrey was nearly at the bedroom door. She thought she saw it slide over that way. Cletus was already erect when he dropped his own pants. Simon’s cries of protest heightened and he struggled but Cletus held him securely in place by the hair. Cletus spit a black glob of chew into his free hand and slathered it on his stiff member. Simon began to scream. Aubrey scooted, inch by painful inch. Cletus forced himself inside Simon and humped ferociously. Simon could feel himself ripping and his terrible shrieking rang Aubrey’s ears the way a fire alarm at home would. Her hand patted around desperately for the pistol but her eyes were inexorably locked on Cletus and Simon. The savage display of sodomy was a hammer that knocked her senseless. It shocked her, stunned her, and perhaps even satisfied her? It wasn’t arousal but revenge. She was parched for it ever since watching Simon abandon her last night, fleeing to safety and leaving her to her fate. All these feelings flew in the face of her character but her character as she knew it, died when she opened her eyes today. Simon feebly flailed his arms as Cletus raped him. “Ooh wee,” he yelled, “I like the way you scream boy. Go on now. Scream for me some more.” Aubrey felt her fingertips glide over something. She felt a little further. It was the hand cannon, she had finally found it. Cletus roughly lifted Simon’s head by his hair then squished it into the rotting leg beside him. Maggots wriggled out from its crusting wound, some of them on to his face. “Go on and scream boy,” Cletus roared. Simon only issued an agonized groan. “Please,” he whined, “please stop.” Cletus yanked the near by meat cleaver from the table and lifted it high overhead. “No,” Aubrey shrieked, “don’t.” She picked up the gun to take aim but it tumbled from her violently shaking hand. Cletus brought the cleaver down hard. It swished through the dusty air and planted itself deep in the back of Simon’s head with a meaty thwack. His skull was nearly split in two like a coconut. Simon spasmed and twitched and Cletus shuddered in orgasm. Blood poured from Simon’s opened skull and splattered on the floor as it rolled like a red waterfall off the table. Aubrey once again had hold of the revolver and leveled it at Cletus. “Get back,” she ordered boldly. Cletus spit then withdrew his organ from Simon’s gaping hole. He turned to her and stepped out of his filthy blue jeans. “I said get back,” Aubrey yelled venomously and squeezed the trigger. Click. “What are you doing out of bed darlin’?” She squeezed again, a tear cutting a trail through the dirt caked on her face as it fell. Click. He took another step toward her. His half hard cock was smeared in blood, shit, and chew. Simon’s lifeless corpse slid from the tabletop and slumped to the floor. The handle of the cleaver banged the ground with a woody knock and forced his head to turn. The corpse stared at her with lifeless unseeing eyes. Blood and little pink curdles of brain matter spilled steadily past the blade buried in his skull. “Open wide girl,” Cletus sang with a repulsive rotten grin, “you gonna clean this here mess off me. Then I’m gonna fix your little red wagon. Fix it real nice like.” He took another step and stood over her now. She wondered if this was the end. She wondered if she would die here in this place, die like Simon, never to be found. “Go on now,” he sang pointing at his repulsive swinging penis. He taunted her with it. She squeezed the trigger. Bang. A thunderous boom punched a dime sized hole in his immense forehead, blowing its contents out the back in a pink spray of gore. He stood for a second, as though registering the hit. A handful of grey matter hit the floor behind him with a wet slap and he collapsed, stone dead. Aubrey blinked still pointing the smoking revolver where it was fired. She couldn’t believe there was still a bullet in there, couldn’t believe it worked. Yet she felt nothing. Not relief, not joy, anger, sadness, not a single thing. She was a void. Something in her was now broken. Some intangible unfixable thing now shattered apart into a million pieces, never again to be whole and working. It was all too much for her mind. She was feeling tired. She wanted to sleep but she knew if she did, she would probably die. Aubrey thought crawling might be easier than hopping and it was. It was much less painful. Although with shock from catastrophic blood loss rapidly descending upon her, she wasn’t feeling much of anything anyway. If she didn’t get medical attention soon she would certainly parish. She crawled to the front doorway and peered up at the pale blue sky and the billowy white clouds. A tiny shape that was a commercial jet dragged silently across the sky. She wished it could see her. Even in all her naked horror, she didn’t care. She had no clue how she would escape. Her thinking was becoming fuzzy like memories of a dream. She forced herself to sharpen. “Come on,” she slurred. Her eyes shut and her head drooped limply. “That’s it,” she squeaked snapping her head back up. Simon’s cell phone. She shuffled with much effort through the river of blood, past the gaping fist sized crater in the back of Cletus’s head, and to the bunched up garment around Simon’s ankles. She dug around finally locating a pocket. Nothing. She tried another, completely unfazed by the gore. Her bloody hand came back holding a boxy Nokia cellphone. She grinned weakly then frowned. No service. She plopped back in the lake of blood making a subtle splash. She was too drained to be upset. She was more of a zombie simply going through motions of perseverance. Aubrey waved the phone about and scooted back toward the front doorway again. Nothing. “Gazing blankly at the screen she murmured a fuck you to it. No sooner had she said it when a solitary bar of reception appeared. Her puffy eyes widened slightly at this. A slight curl of her lips, a smile, struggled on her ghostly pale face. She dialed the numbers 9, then 1, and finally 1. She pressed send, with scarcely enough strength left to do even that. “Maybe I will get out of this place after all,” she thought dreamily. She was fading fast. “911 what’s your emergence,” a staticky female voice started to say. It was cut off before the last syllable of the word. The screen was black, the phone was dead.