by Trever Palmer
'Where are you taking me?'
Richard looked through the windshield and could see the neon lights of a bar illuminating the inky darkness. He spotted a sign towering out of the gravel parking lot which was animated with a pair of dancing cowboy boots.
‘Bob’s Country Bunker,’ Steve replied. He was singing along with a Buck Owens tune on the radio (i thought the day i met you you were meek as a lamb) as he turned into the parking lot.
‘How in the hell did you manage to find this place?’ Richard asked. He was embarrassed to find that he couldn’t help but continue to stare at the twinkling cowboy boots, or that he was beginning to tap his foot to the infectious ‘Tiger By The Tail’.
Steve laughed. A kind of laugh that was more an eerie heh heh than jovial comradeship.
‘Give it a chance,’ he said. ‘You might like it.’
Richard shook his head and gave a weak smile.
He should have known by the way that Steve had been acting all week that they would end up in such a place. It had started Tuesday evening when he had shown up at Richard’s apartment for their weekly game of chess dressed in a John Deere baseball cap and cowboy boots, followed by an overdose of country music which had poured from his Mercedes speakers (it had run the gamut from warhorses like Merle Haggard’s ‘Mama Tried’ to the current Top 40 dribble which masqueraded as country).
You have no one to blame but yourself, Richard weakly mused.
Ever since Tabby had left him, Steve had been taking more and more chances to find ‘the real me’, as he liked to call it. Past trips had included a canoe adventure down the Cumberland River – which Richard had been sure would end with a Deliverance-style finale (squeal like a pig!) – and climbing the shadowed topography of the Appalachian Mountains. But this, a venture into the backwoods to a redneck bar, might be going just too far.
‘Now the pace we’re living takes the wind from my sails,’ Steve sang in a warbly voice as he pulled the car to a halt inside a choking cloud of gravel dust and turned off the ignition. ‘And it looks like I’ve got a tiger by the tail!’
Richard shook his head as Steve sat in the driver’s seat and gave him a wink.
As he stepped out of the car and stretched, Richard couldn’t help but steal another glance at the neon sign. Beneath the silhouette of line-dancing footwear, he read where a band called the Good Ole Boys had just played here the previous night.
‘Looks like we missed the entertainment,’ he said.
Steve moved around the car in a shuffling gait. He lit a cigarette – closing his Zippo lighter with a telegraphed snap of his arm – and glanced up at the billboard. ‘Looks that way,’ he agreed. He exhaled a plume of gun-metal hued smoke. ‘But from the way the parking lot is jammed, we must be in for something tonight.’
‘Yeah, but what?’ Richard asked, and followed Steve toward the front entrance to the bar.
Inside, amidst the strains of country music and throngs of people milling about the sawdust floor (they reminded Richard of cattle waiting for the slaughter), the two men began to work their way towards the bar. Steve left Richard to look at the chicken-wired cage that wrapped itself around the bandstand; obvious protection for any musical talent which didn’t live up to the expectations of the Country Bunker crowd.
‘Hope the Good Old Boys knew how to do “Rawhide”,’ Steve laughed. He was singing rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ as he motioned for the bartender.
‘Howdy,’ the bartender announced. A man of average height with a ducktail haircut which shined from the oils run through it, he toggled a toothpick around inside his smiling mouth. ‘I’m Bob and this is my country bunker. Name your poison.’
‘Beer,’ Steve ordered.
Reading the tattoo which was scrawled in fading green letters across Bob’s right knuckles (L-O-V-E), Steve suddenly realized that he hadn’t heard Richard place his order. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed him standing at the far end of the bar, inspecting a wooden box which sat by its lonesome in the shadows.
‘Make that two,’ Steve winked at the bartender.
Richard was still looking at the box when a glass of beer was placed in front of him. Startled, he looked up and saw Bob staring at him with a grin slicing across his haggard face. Instantly, he took notice of the man’s oiled haircut.
‘What you got there?’ Bob asked, motioning toward the box.
‘Not sure,’ Richard replied. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
The box was made of plywood and roughly measured at 3x5’. Across the top, stenciled with a black marker, was the inscription: Property of Horlicks University.
Richard picked up his beer and took a drink, relishing the cold which washed through his body as the alcohol raced down his throat. He licked his lips and motioned towards the box with his glass.
‘What’s inside the box?’ Steve called as he moved down the bar. ‘Pandora?’
Richard looked at him and smiled, acknowledging the bad joke, while Bob raked a thumb alongside his nose and just stared. He appeared to be annoyed by the interruption.
‘A little contest we hold each Saturday night. In fact,’ Bob said, checking his watch, ‘you’re just in time to catch the festivities.’
Richard glanced at the box and then at Steve, who was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
‘That so?’ Steve asked. ‘What kind of contest? Can anyone enter?’
Bob held up a finger and turned his head. ‘Sally?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Could you come out here, hon?’
From a doorway adjacent to the bar, a lady appeared beside the bartender. Her red hair was displayed in a ponytail that leaked down her shoulders; naked against the backless crimson dress she wore. Her breasts, which strained against the tight outfit, shone outward like North Korean missiles aimed towards the allied powers.
All three men watched as she walked away and began to take drink orders from the waiting customers.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ Bob said. He began to ring a bell that he pulled from beneath the bar.
Richard and Steve looked at one another and shrugged. Taking their beers, they disappeared back into the crowd. They watched as Bob waited for the jukebox to play out its final sad note (Patsy Cline ‘I Fall To Pieces’) before he began to speak.
‘It’s that time of the week, folks!’ he called. Bob held out his arms and stepped back from the bar. ‘Time for some lucky man or woman to step up to the bar and “Go Fish”.’
Richard continued to look at the box as Steve punched him in the shoulder. He was laughing as Bob pulled the box up from the bar and exposed what was lying beneath it.
A sudden silence suffocated the barroom.
The box had been covering a small aquarium. Inside was a severed head. It was that of a male, eyes bulging as they stared into the clear liquid of the tank. If one were to look closer, they might discover that the eyes seemed to follow their every move, like a graveyard statue of Jesus or a painting with the eyeholes snipped out to conceal a murderer in an old mansion. The neck was buried into the turquoise rocks which littered the bottom of the aquarium; obviously to hold the head from drifting to the top.
‘Jesus,’ Richard muttered.
‘Jesus ain’t got nothin’ to do with this, son,’ an old man sitting at a table next to Richard and Steve said. He hid his eyes behind an upturned glass of beer as Richard turned to look at him.
‘The rules are simple,’ Bob continued from his perch behind the bar, acting like a carnival barker inviting kids into a covered tent to view the Bearded Lady or Three-Headed Cow. ‘For only twenty dollars, you get one chance to come up to the bar and “Go Fish”. Blindfolded, you’ll have to stick your hand into the aquarium and inside the head’s open mouth. There, you’ll find a diamond ring worth more than ten thousand dollars.’ He smiled sheepishly into the crowd. ‘Sound easy? That’s because it is!’
There was a collected amount of discussion among the crowd as everyone began to talk about the contest.
Neither Richard or Steve thought anyone was going to take up Bob’s offer until a man from across the room spoke up.
‘I’ll do it!’ he shouted. Holding up a crumpled twenty dollar bill in his fist, the man began to make his way towards the bar. The crowd moved to allow him to pass, separating as calmly and smoothly as if Moses were again parting the Red Sea. He was halfway towards the aquarium when a woman ran up behind him. She grabbed his arm and tried to hold him still.
‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s not worth it!’
Her boots made tracks in the sawdust as the man pulled her along behind him.
‘Stop!’ she begged. ‘Please, don’t do it!’
The man stopped and shrugged his arm out of her grip. He glowered down at her and smirked.
‘I’m only doing it for you, Peg’ he said. ‘What the hell am I going to do with a diamond ring?’
He smiled and placed a hand on the woman’s cheek as the crowd cheered him on.
‘Then you’ll do it without me,’ the woman said, smacking his hand away from her face. She raced toward the ladies room, disappearing inside as she was chased by another woman who frantically yelled ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ at the top of her lungs.
What are we doing here? Richard thought to himself as he listened to the crowd laugh at the exploits of the two women. Where did they get this severed head? This is insane.
He was about to tell Steve it was time for them to leave when he noticed the look in his friend’s eyes. It was a glazed, excited stare. Directed towards the bar and the head in the aquarium.
Richard forgot about it and turned to watch, too.
At the bar, the man had been blindfolded and was gingerly sticking his fingers into the water. He allowed his hand to sink into the tank. Stopping as he reached the gravel floor, his fingers began to crawl forward like a lobster on the ocean’s bottom.
They reached the severed head and gripped the neck.
The man stopped there. He was profusely sweating, as evidenced by the dark stains in the armpits of his T-shirt, and breathing rapidly.
‘I don’t think he’s going to make it, folks,’ Bob announced. An eerie smile raced across his face as it was bathed in the fluorescent lights of a Budweiser sign hanging above the bar.
‘I’m thinking!’ the man barked. The aquarium water sloshed around his submerged arm as he jerked toward the sound of Bob’s voice. ‘Just give me a second.’
Steve laughed and nudged Richard. ‘If he thinks too hard he’ll give himself a brain hemorrhage.’
Everyone in Bob’s Country Bunker – from Bob to Richard to Steve to Sally to the old man sitting at the table, everyone except for Peggy and the woman who had chased her, were watching as the man’s fingers slowly began to move up the neck. They reached out and blindly fumbled along the chin. Then, as they strained forward and pulled at the head’s bottom lip, the man jerked his hand free of the water.
‘Shit!’ the man said. He yanked the blindfold from his eyes and scanned the crowd. He seemed to be looking for Peggy and, when he didn’t instantly spot her, began to make his way towards the exit. He wiped his hand against the plaid shirt he was wearing and was joined by two other men as they disappeared into the parking lot.
‘Maybe next time?’ Bob called as the ‘exit’ door swung closed. He shrugged and smiled as the crowd laughed. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Me!’
Richard watched as Steve began to push through the crowd. He wasn’t surprised. When he had earlier seen that look in his friend’s eyes, he had known Steve was going to test his skills, too.
‘Good luck,’ he called.
Steve didn’t hear him. He was keeping his eyes magnetized to the head in the tank. He didn’t really want the diamond ring, but he urged to have some excitement in his mundane life. This would be a good story to tell at work on Monday.
Besides, he thought, this won’t be much harder than being at work. As a mortician, he touched dead people nearly every day of the week.
Bob took his twenty dollars and was about to tie the blindfold around his eyes when Steve shook his head. He nodded at Sally and smiled as she began to move down the bar towards him, her hips gyrating to the roar of the approving crowd. Steve could smell her perfume – a scent of vanilla tinged with spilled beer – as she covered his eyes and positioned him alongside the fish tank.
‘How’s that for swimmin’ with bow-legged wimmen!’ Bob asked the crowd, laughing as they responded with a chorus of hisses and boos. He leaned next to Steve and whispered into his ear. ‘Time to go fish.’
Steve didn’t know why, but he suddenly went ice cold. Goosebumps ran up his spine and felt like a nest of spiders had been unleashed onto his flesh.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and pushed his hand into the water.
As soon as his fingers were enveloped by the warmth of the aquarium, Steve could feel the momentary feeling of dread wash away. He immediately felt his way along the gravel bottom and found the neck stump. Then, without taking a second to think, began to work his way up to the waiting mouth.
‘Looks like we might have us a winner,’ Bob announced.
Steve could feel the lips beneath his fingers. Grabbing the lower one between his forefinger and thumb, he pulled back on it and could imagine the way it exposed the head’s ghoulish mouth. He smiled.
Too bad Tabby left me, he thought. She could’ve been wearing herself a diamond ring home tonight.
He plunged his fingers into the skull’s mouth and began to feel around for the ring. He probed its teeth and beneath the layer of its fat tongue.
Her loss, he smiled as his fingers felt the ring bobbing about on the floor of the mouth beneath the tongue. Besides, if she hadn’t left me I wouldn’t even be here tonight. Maybe I’ll give this ring to Sheila and make Tabby jealous. It’ll be great to see the look on her face when...
Steve began to scream as the mouth shut down on his fingers. He could feel the teeth rip his skin and bite through the bone.
Richard, watching as the clear water began to turn a bright pink, remained frozen as he watched his friend dance spasmodically at the aquarium. He wasn’t sure what was happening. Only that something had gone terribly wrong.
He began to move toward the bar when a heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder. Turning around, Richard stared into the glowering eyes of the man who had earlier tried his luck at the fish tank. He hadn’t seen the man, or his two friends, who still stood on either side of his massive shoulders, return to the bar.
And why would I have? Richard suddenly wanted to laugh. I was too busy watching my friend get himself hurt! A sick feeling rolled through his stomach. And I was loving it!
‘You aren’t going anywhere, little buddy,’ the man said. He grinned and exposed a row of rotten teeth which peered out through his thick beard.
‘Let go of me,’ Richard said. But he couldn’t shake the man’s grip. He was reminded of the time when he was ten-years-old and had been attacked by the neighbor’s German Shepherd; a beast with the ludicrous name of Cheese Whiz. Its powerful jaws and sharp fangs had left a scar on his ankle from where it had bitten him and wouldn’t let go. It had kept biting him until Mr Foreman, the next door neighbor, had come to get the dog off him.
Maybe Mr Foreman will show up again, Richard joked. Or I can buy these guys a beer and show them the scar I got when I was ten-years-old? We can all be buddies and go hunting this fall for deer.
From behind, he heard Steve’s screams slowly fade. Richard knew that his friend was dead and felt his bowels run cold.
‘You didn’t have to kill him,’ Richard told the man (Cheese Whiz?) holding him. ‘We wouldn’t have said anything.’
‘He’s not dead, yet,’ Bob said, suddenly appearing behind Richard. He nodded for the man to let loose and stepped back as Richard sprawled into the sawdust.
Richard pushed himself up onto his elbows and stared around the room at the faces which were peering at him. For some odd reason, he was hoping he would see Sally. If anything, for the comfort that the woman’s body seemed to bring him whenever she was close.
‘Where is he?’ Richard asked. ‘What’s keeping him?’
‘Pretty soon, formaldehyde,’ Bob winked. ‘We’ve got him out back right now. Have to tenderize the meat first, you know? Makes it easier for Albert to “go fish”.’
Richard looked up at Bob.
‘Albert?’
He grimaced as the bar erupted into laughter.
‘That’s the head of Albert Fish in the aquarium,’ Bob told him. ‘The cannibal.’
Richard knew little about Albert Fish, but from what he could remember (having been kept by an aunt when he was young whose main interest was true crime magazines seemed to have finally paid off!) the man was a sadomasochistic monster who stalked young children. And who, when he wasn’t eating their tender flesh, enjoyed the ritual of self-inflicted pain. So bad was Fish’s preoccupation with torture that when he was caught and sentenced to death, the electric chair into which he was strapped short-circuited (twice!) due to all the needles Fish had planted in his groin.
Richard couldn’t believe his ears. He couldn’t believe that a severed head in an aquarium could be alive. He couldn’t believe much of anything.
‘You’ll never get away with this,’ Richard told him as he was pulled from the floor by the man (Cheese Whiz?) with the hard grip. He didn’t try to fight as he was directed towards the aquarium.
‘We always have and we always will,’ Bob said. ‘You aren’t Albert’s first victim and you certainly won’t be his last.’
In the back of his mind, huddled with the memories of Mr Foreman, Cheese Whiz and the misadventures shared with his friend Steve the Mortician, Richard could hear the song that had been playing on the radio when they had first arrived at the bar earlier this evening.
Well every night you drag me where the bright lights are found
There ain’t no way to slow you down.
I’m about as helpless as a leaf in a gale
And it looks like I’ve got a tiger by the tail
Bob slipped the blindfold over Richard’s eyes. He leaned close and whispered into his ear.
‘Time to go fish.’
© 2003 Trever Palmer
Trever Palmer's mother was watching 'Creature From The Black Lagoon' when she went into labor and gave birth to him on April Fool's Day. He has worked in the film industry, as a bartender (where his claim-to-fame was serving a drunken Woody Harrelson), hotel auditor and Jim Beam site supervisor. He now lives with three cats who talk to him and tell him what to write.