“YES,” Aunt Patti screamed.“You know what we do when people like you—city folk—come and degrade and abuse our hospitality?When you fuck like beasts, you get treated like beasts.”
She was heaving with emotion.Whatever had taken her over, she was totally different than the woman I’d met in the kitchen.There was some sort of mania in her eyes, a weird feeling to the air like static.She felt deranged, and it oozed from her sweating form as she panted.
“Stacey,” Brother Al said.“When I make the signal.Run.”
“Aunt Patti, don’t you hurt them none,” Carol Anne called from the hallway.
“Get out of here little girl!”Aunt Patti snapped.“Go away.I’m doing this for your own good.Ain’t nothing good comes of when a man and a woman get together and moan like beasts like this.”
“Hey now,” I said.“Just calm down.This is a long story, and… ha, I’m sure we’ll all have a big laugh about it when it’s done, but I just need you to dial it back a few notches.”
“And you,” Patti said, her voice hard.Her head tracked over to my voice like a snake’s, and her eyes didn’t seem to look at mine.“You.Coming in here.Seducing my JJ.With your breasts and your breathy voice.You’re so thin, you’re so healthy.I’ll make sure you ain’t never gonna come in contact with a man again.”
She moved forward, but Brother Al had transfigured into a putrid beast—a batlike green form, almost demonic.He lunged forward against her, and the cleaver went flying.
“Go,” he howled at me.
He wrestled her to the ground, and they rolled over to the knife.Aunt Patti slapped for it, grabbing it, and hacked at him with the cleaver, and he howled and hissed, throwing her against the opposite wall.While she was stunned, I ran past the two of them.Carol Anne saw me in the hallway, and her eyes were wet.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“My cousin’s out front,” she said.“He’s good people.He knows how sick everyone’s got.He’ll take you somewhere safe.”
We ran through the kitchen corridor.The metal shutter was open.A rack of ribs lay bloody on the table.They looked, well, like a human’s.I pushed Carol Anne on, and we burst through the lobby and into the front yard.
“Tyler!”Carol Anne called.
He jumped up from where he was leaning on a truck on his phone.
“What is it?”he asked.
“Aunt Patti went crazy again.She’s trying to get them.You need to take her to town.”
Tyler seemed normal.Other than being shocked and scared, of course.
“Come on,” he said.“I’ll drive you back to the city.”
“What about my friends, though?”I asked.
“We gotta go before they get you,” Tyler said.“Come on, Carol Anne.It’s time we all left.”
He started up the truck, and we jumped in.Aunt Patti came bursting from the door, hollering, covered in blood and threw her cleaver.It landed and stuck in a tree, vibrating.
Tyler pressed on the gas, hard, and we sped away.
“I’m sorry,”he said, as the headlights illuminated the dim highway before us.
“What’s going on back there?”I asked.
“Long story,” Tyler said.
“You better find a way to tell it quick, then,” I said.
He bit his lip, merged into another lane, and then considered where to start.
“My Momma’s kinfolk with Aunt Patti.I got sent here after the first of the year.I screwed up a bit back home.Of course, Momma thought some good old-fashioned farm work would beat the stupid out of me.She was right, but not the way she was thinking of it…”
“Tell her how it started, Tyler.When Daddy passed a few months back,” Carol Anne said.
