THUGLIT Issue Three Read online

  THUGLIT

  Issue Three

  Edited by Todd Robinson

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in the works are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  THUGLIT: Issue Three

  ISBN-13: 978-1481880961

  ISBN-10: 1481880969

  Stories by the authors: ©Todd Robinson, ©Nathan Pettigrew, ©Hector Acosta, ©Rob Brunet, ©Paul Heatley, ©Terrence McCauley, ©J.D. Hibbetts, ©Ed Kurtz, ©John Hodgkins

  Published by THUGLIT Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Author(s).

  Cover photo by Jason Bylan

  Table of Contents

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  The First Day of Hell Week by J.D. Hibbitts

  Redemption by Terrence McCauley

  Red-Eyed Richard by Paul Heatley

  Doing The Job by Hector Acosta

  In The Neighborhood by Ed Kurtz

  Peek-a-Boo by John Hodgkins

  Lucky For Me by Rob Brunet

  Wakey Wake by Nathan Pettigrew

  Hard Bounce Preview (part III)

  Author Bios

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  Sweet Jeebus, it's been a helluva couple months since we last checked in, Thugketeers.

  Let's see…We:

  A) Survived a hurricane.

  B) Survived three holidays (the last of which is also the trickiest, considering how our names are not only scribbled on the "Naughty List" in permanent ink, but also underlined several times with a pen filled with reindeer blood)

  C) Survived that really, really angry Trannie…but that's a story for another day.

  That said, hope you made it through the same with all your bits intact and are ready to rock the New Year along with us. So dump that last fifth of whiskey into the remaining dregs of expired egg nog you got sitting in the fridge and dig yourself into some Thuglit.

  IN THIS ISSUE OF THUGLIT

  ---- This is another fine meth you've gotten us into…

  ---- Sometimes old dogs can teach new tricks.

  ---- This "bang-up job" isn't what you think it is.

  ---- These wrestlers have some killer moves.

  ---- I'll have a large pizza, hold the vicious beating.

  ---- Daddy's going back to work, and it ain't as a Wal-Mart greeter…

  ---- Luck can go two ways—sometimes at the same time.

  ---- Respect the dead.

  See you in 60, fuckos!!!

  Todd Robinson (Big Daddy Thug)

  12/28/12

  The First Day of Hell Week

  J.D. Hibbitts

  Wyatt feels his sweat bubble out and run down his back when the glass doors of county lockup close behind him. At the end of the parking lot, his father Quay idles a rusted calico dodge with a woman Wyatt has never seen before. He’s sure his father stole this car, but he doesn’t ask questions. Just opens the door and tosses his plastic bag of clothes in beside her. The heavy mascara under the woman’s eyes bleeds down her cheeks, almost touching the edges of her smeared lipstick. Wyatt tightens his grip on the rolled-up release papers, slams the door behind him. The interior reeks with the salty musk of fresh sex. His father grunts the car to life.

  "This here’s Mandy, Wy,” he says. “And I gave her three hundred dollars to let you do whatever the hell you feel like doing with her when we get back to the house."

  "I'd like a cold pop and a hot shower before anything else."

  "Think we got a few back there still don't we?" his father asks Mandy.

  “You know good and well all we got is a bottle of Old Crow. And you drank most of that.”

  “Go ahead and reach what’s left up this way then,” he says. “My boy's a free man today.”

  Mandy pulls the bottle out of an ice chest and wipes the neck between her breasts. She saddles it between his legs, runs her finger up Wyatt’s neck. Sucks hard on his earlobe until it feels like it’ll touch the back of her throat. "You can fuck me back here if you want, shug," she says. "Got plenty of room. Just tell your old man to turn the AC up this time."

  "Wait til I clean off the shithole smell of that place." Wyatt slides the bottle over the seat, lets it plop onto the floorboards at her feet.

  His father opens the car to fifty. "Mandy’s a real peach slice of a girl, Wy. She does some secretaring over at the cattle market. What was that you told me you fooled with the other day child?"

  "A horse," Mandy says and sprawls out in the back, wiping the wetness off her chest. "I wanna be a Vet some day. The old lady who runs the place lets me do whatever I want with the animals." Her voice cackles. She leans forward, rests her chin between them. “Don’t go taking that wrong now.”

  Wyatt’s father throws his arm over and rubs Mandy’s thigh, moves up to her tits. Snorts out a laugh. He twists a handful of her hair, pulls her face in close. Licks a line from her chin to the top of her forehead over her nose. The car weaves between the gravel shoulder and pavement. When he finishes, Quay pushes Mandy over to Wyatt, nods for him to follow. Wyatt birds her one on the cheek. Pats the side of her skull.

  “Hear that Wy,” his father sniffs. “Girl likes her some animals. Sounds like you picked the right gig after all." Quay adjusts the rearview to wipe the black lines of mascara from his face, but keeps looking back at the road as though he’s expecting someone to be there.

  "Yeah," Wyatt answers, but he stops listening to both of them after that. He knows that the gates behind him will be opening again soon enough if he hangs around Mandy and his old man long. Everyone on the inside said the first week back on the outside would be the hardest. Too many old familiar names trying to get you to celebrate the way you used to. Too many ghosts coming back for a couple of free haunts.

  Hell week.

  Wyatt hated narking his sentence down, but he always had piss-poor luck in spades when it came to the law. His only fortune was that he had six months of probation to wait out before he could leave the commonwealth of Virginia for good. Having to fill a plastic cup once a month in front of someone seemed better than the nickels-worth vacation they were going to stick him with. Quay would not be as easy to shake—worse than two doses of clap.

  Wyatt sits quietly as his father drives them out along a gravel road owned by the Stuart Land & Cattle company. Mostly dead patches of crabgrass with enough cedared hills to keep secrets contained. Hiding this far out from town is unlike his father. Maybe he’s still cooking, but not likely. Too much risk. And even the thickest cedar won’t hide the acidic smoke from a meth lab. Nothing will.

  The air is fetid from cowshit, but Wyatt welcomes this warmth. It’s natural. Mandy starts identifying the cow breeds spilled out around them. Brahma. Texas Long Horn. Black Angus. His father continues yepping and nodding his head until they come to a bridged culvert that twists down to a slat cabin.

  “Welcome to the Holiday Inn Express,” Quay says. “Got you a cot out in the back room right next to the porch you can sleep on once you’re through with Mandy.”

  “Already told you that can wait,” Wyatt says, then looks back at Mandy. “I’ll bet you ain’t got a meter running down there, do you hun?”

  “We’re settled up far as I’m concerned,” she answers w
hile looking out the window,“unless you want something extra.”

  Wyatt glances over at his father. “Where’d you find this one at again?”

  “Market,” Quay says. “Better than that bull calf I was getting us to butcher.”

  “I’d prefer the steak.”

  Quay parks the car in an edge of field hidden from the road, says he’s running back out for pop and snacks. Wyatt knows this code. Tells Quay to take Mandy with him so he can shower in peace. Pussy is one thing he’d never split between family. Drugs and bloodletting had once been an expected given, but fucking fell on the threshold of holy. Quay and Mandy stay in the car while Wyatt finds the footpath leading down to the property.

  The cabin’s foundation sinks to the left and the tin roof is tumored with rust. Wyatt recognizes his generator tucked under the porch, an industrial extension cord running up the rain pipe and through a front window. This makes sense once he’s inside. Someone gut the wiring from all the rooms—a quick copper hock to stave off the need for the next fix. That somebody tore the veins of life from this place in order to shock their own with dope does not surprise Wyatt. Seeing his TV from the house he was living in during the raid does. It’s blaring a mostly-static ballgame in the corner, his old sheets tacked up around it to keep the light out.

  The bathroom walls have more holes than sheetrock. There’s no tub. Only a Tupperware bin sitting on a stool with a washcloth draped on the side. He wets his face with some of the dirty water, notices a padded silhouette wedged between the frame in one of the larger holes. He unzips the top and sees a compound bow, fully quivered with broad heads. And then Mandy. Stepping barefoot through the doorway, peeling out of her spaghetti strap and shorts. She moves towards him, her hips cocked to the side as she glides one hand up her trimmed pubic hair. She is thicker in the hips than Wyatt realized and has a fruit bat tattooed on her ribs.

  The first few times she pulls him towards the daybed in the living room he resists. But he’d been hoeing a long row of sorrow in his cell and the soft shape of her against him grates him down until he breaks.

  “You ain’t kissing me,” he tells her. Wyatt picks her up by her ass and buries his head between the tits his father had groped a little while before. She strips him faster than any Corrections officer did, loosens his cock from his underwear. With a fast moan, she takes all of him in right away. But that’s the last sound she makes. Wyatt works hard and slow at first. Then finds his rhythm. Their pelvic bones grind like cogs. Mandy stays silent under his last grunts of effort. Drums her fingers on the pillow and watches the commercials.

  Quay takes his time returning. He’s got a grease-spotted bag of hamburgers rolled up in one hand and a case of Mountain Dew in the other. He tosses the bag on the bed beside Wyatt.

  “It ain’t steak, but your belly can’t tell the difference.”

  Mandy has already washed and dresses herself while Quay slides an end table over to the edge of the day bed. For a moment, Wyatt thinks he sees steam rising from the sheets as Mandy twists her bra around, draws it up over her breasts. Sloppy seconds with his father’s whore has set a sour hunger inside him, but the thought of eating with both of them in the room makes him wretch. His hands still feel clammy from resting on Mandy’s damp thighs, but the cold pop shakes that quick. He walks to the back porch to wolf down two burgers in peace.

  Wyatt looks back long enough to see Quay hotdog a twenty and slide it down the front of Mandy’s cut-off denim shorts. She pulls at her nose a few times and Quay reluctantly lays a small rolled-up bag of pills in her palm. Thumbs the air towards the road.

  “Ya’ll ring me up again soon,” Mandy says. Then saunters down the steps towards the road and her cattle.

  Wyatt keeps chewing, leans against the doorway. “You ain’t even gonna offer her a ride are you, old man?” His father, removing one of the buns to smear on some duck sauce, wipes the excess on the bedspread and studies the front of a water swollen TV Guide.

  “Hell, she’ll be sitting on another swinging dick before sundown. Just you wait. Besides, I just gave her about eighty bucks worth of Oxys for that rodeo ride she just gave you. Let me know the next time you feel like sharing some feelings and I’ll find you a head shrink. Probably be cheaper.” Then Quay twists the bun back on his burger and, with one bite, rips it in half. His mouth working like a stray dog on a gift bone before he swallows.

  Wyatt sits across from Quay on the other bed and takes his time unwrapping his last burger. For the last week of his incarceration, he rolled and flopped on his bunk. Told his cellie about all the restaurants he planned to eat at as soon as something steady surfaced. Even thrown-together shit hamburgers off a value menu tasted better that anything he’d had in county. When he finishes, he laps off the drops of mustard from the wax paper.

  Quay flips the TV to a game, fastens the door closed with the brass chain. Takes off his shoes and leather jacket. Both glare in the light from the worked-in baby oil.

  “Got you something else,” he says, pulling out another clear plastic bag. There is just enough white powder to fill the triangle edges. Quay turned the plastic inside out and salts out the remains on top of the TV set.

  “Stuff you see here is the last of my doings. Tried to pawn this off on Mandy too, but she was having none of it.” He rows the substance into two fat lumps.

  Wyatt levels himself. “I ain’t got no desire to shove that shit up my nose again. You like your dick to shrivel and your damn teeth to rot go ahead. I seen too many people in that jail walking round looking like death warmed up. One guy down from me was bankrolling some of the women for their used tampons. You believe that shit? People sucked them like cherry popsicles to get the meth out.”

  “You ever try one?”

  Wyatt hesitates. “Once.”

  “I’ll bet it didn’t taste like no damn Popsicle did it?”

  “Sure as hell didn’t,” Wyatt says. “Gives you a lot to think on. Was the last time I tried that shit and I don’t plan on going back.”

  Quay shrugs. “I’ll leave you some for when you change your mind.” Then, with a few huffs and throat clearings, he vacuums the lines clear. His face glows pink and white. He stumbles against the bed and the backs of his knees cave like they’ve been snapped off. He coughs out “Jesus, feels like somebody cut this shit with Pop Rocks. Think it tore a hole in my nose.” Two slim red streams rain onto his shirt, spill over onto the comforter. Quay clamps the thick tips of his finger and thumb over his nostrils. Spins around until he looks up at the ceiling.

  “Serves you right,” Wyatt says. “You never used to mess with that stuff before.” He reaches down and picks up the wadded hand towel he used as a cum rag, barrels it at Quay’s face. “Don’t tilt your head back or you might choke on your own blood.”

  Soon the powder drip seizes Quay, switches his legs to vibrate. He leaps up with the towel masking his face. Combs over the carpet and tile, keeps peeling off the cloth to check for leaks.

  When the bleeding halts, Quay smoothes out a spot on the bed beside Wyatt, says “Looks like I tried to snort one of those tampons you were talking about,” then fastballs the soiled towel at the TV. He grits his teeth while he scrapes away the dried blood from around the inside of his nostrils. Wyatt glares at the TV, watches the fuzz light up the red spot like a lampshade. Picks up the remote and powers off the box.

  Quay says “First thing I’m gonna do is put a hole in that bastard who sold me this.”

  “You ain’t chasing down nobody. I’m not playing Pony Express with you old man. Have to meet my P.O. in a week and I don’t want to lie about what I’ve been doing.” Wyatt finds his shirt on the floor, stuffs his feet in his boots. “You can shit in the woods and fall back in it far as I’m concerned.” He jerks the chain on the door hard enough to loosen the screws. Quay doesn’t notice.

  Wyatt’s half a mile down the road, heels screaming and nearly raw in his soleless boots before his father swerves in front of him, brakes hard, then reverses unti
l metal taps knees. Wyatt buckles forward, palms lizarding down the rear glass. From fights on the rec yard, he’d learned to hush his breathing to hear the pop of bone breaking. He doesn’t hear this, but he feels them move further than they should. Looking up, the sky is wider now without the sixteen-foot fences with their two-foot cap of razor wire. His father leans over and taps his jowls as if he’s just won a race.

  “Car’s got shitty brakes.” Quay cradles his neck and sits Wyatt upright. Pain’s steaming out into his muscles when he stands. Wyatt’s thinking it’s the worst charleyhorse he’s ever had. His father feeds him four or six familiar pills. Mostly Xanax. It feels like he’s swallowing his own teeth. Some of the heat in his legs cools. The sky dulls more gray and narrow each time he blinks. Quay flops him in the back seat, bottle-feeds him some of the Old Crow.

  He wakes in a culvert. It’s mid-evening dark. Swathed in field grass, his father’s leather jacket under his head, Wyatt feels his face slide through the oiled leather like fried ham. Already he’s thinking of ways to clean the pills out of his system. He’s got enough feeling in his legs to move, but his insides are too weighted down for him to run. Looking around, he sees the car twenty yards up from him at the road. Dense smoke shadows the trees.

  His knees feel snarled and loose by the time he makes it up the hill. The opened bow case sits upright in the front seat. No keys. Wyatt sprawls out on the hood to rest, watches the wide cloud of hay smoke rising over the hill and knows who will be sitting at the base of it. Quay taught him how to hot-wire before he made it to high school, but this car wouldn’t carry him far enough away from this. When the pain sting softens, he finds a low cattle trail around the hill, follows it until he sees the source of the fire.