Episode 3 – Finale, Part 3
CHARLIE MURPHY’S COOKING CRYSTAL METH BRATS!
OR
ME THINKS THERE BE A METHOD TO HER MURDERS
Mina Harker was not one for the sausage. Or, more properly, for the Greater Hayward Recreational Area, one for the brat. But her longtime boyfriend (of a sort) Johnny Seward, he loved them. A true born Wisconsonite, she knew he thought of the almighty bratwurst as something of a birthright–a comfort food of the highest order.
And they needed some comfort now.
Depleted and bereft of all tangible assets, they were down to counting nickels and pennies. The odious resort of the addict, they had long sold anything they could, mortgaged their home, their future, hocked their obvious possessions of value. Lastly, they’d sold, for ten cents apiece, their compact discs and their VHS tapes.
They were down to some venison bratwursts and a bag of old charcoal.
And they had themselves their meth.
It was Mina, ever the thinker–ever the dreamer, who had, in the frenzy of a meth fueled high, thought of what the loving couple would come to think of as the obvious–she had thought of the delivery system, the latest and greatest invention born of Mother Necessity’s genius.
They would put it in bratwursts–in brats.
The cooking, the formulae was not as problematic as one might assume at first–until one realized that meth is akin to the almighty pie in that one had to cook, bake, process it, as one liked.
It was just cooking, after all.
They had taken their cue, from certain…clowns…south of them. Kielbasas, were, after all, just a larger cousin of bratwursts.
And like kielbasas, brats would sell. Sell them where ye will.
Mina had cackled her cackle and Johnny had followed suit. There had been a good and earnest romping upon this idea, a romping which had induced more meth smoking–but not too much for–they had some meat processing to do.
The pig intestines were easy to find, this being Wisconsin–the land of ten thousand sausage shops! Once they had put the word out on the back roads, everyone had unaminously agreed that it was genius at work…genius, and tasty.
Mina had to admit, her Johnny was a bit of a chef when it came to bratwursts (had he been a clown from Boardman in a former life?). Taking great pride in not just the meth, but also in the select spices he put in his sausage “formula,” their product had been an immediate hit out in the darker corners of Hayward. It was a nice money maker and the loving couple was happy to know that it brought families together, grilling being quite popular in Wisconsin.
…
Murray supposed he had not seen his friend Lowell this distraught in quite a few decades. Had he seen this last during the witch hunt? He didn’t know. Again, he supposed (as he was wont to do), it didn’t matter. His friend was at odds with the world.
Lowell had thought hard about a bottle of vodka, sharing with Murray, that it would do him no good at this point, the temporary salvation so abstinent, so futile–just tremors and illness without the benediction of joy or absolution of ignorance which accompanied a real drunken spree–wasted time, wasted money, wasted energy.
“It won’t help anything,” said Murray, indicating a hand towards the see through bottles of poison.
“I know,” said Lowell, who, at this moment, did not know anything such at all.
For his favorite cousin Bethany had been the focal point of a terrible act in the local hospital–she had been high and injected with morphine and adrenalin and near dead–she had been sent to the hospital “for observation” and now, she had gone home.
But there had been additional, similar attacks, none of them proved–that poor night clerk, her “boyfriend.” Ghastly. And there had been others. All of the attacks bearing the same, terrible characteristics of meth and biting and blood and…perhaps…Bethany.
The problem was, she had, by the time the attacks were discovered–been rooted out, been lying peacefully in bed. A little unkempt perhaps, but always freshly showered, always blissfully asleep.
The attacks had always been carried out with such animalistic carnage that tooth prints or finger prints or any such evidence, was always obliterated. Meth, in all its power, had a subtle way of hiding, despite what the Bible might have said.
Murray, ever the counselor, ever the sage, nodded towards the French roast, offered his good friend a more humble, more manageable solution. Lowell, not an easy victim of circumstance, nodded, accepting the sacrifice: For one day, at least, and one day was always enough, he would forgo the pain of a more heinous addiction.
“Those mongrels,” he said to Murray, “Those mongrels are packaging it in bratwursts now.”
Pausing, his bright eyes blinking, Murray asked, “Where do these monsters think they are–Boardman?”
…
Mina and Johnny were not quite fools. Addicts are seldom the guileless, witless malcontents so often given portrait in popular media–in fact, like most addicts, they were quite clever, quite diabolical, quite the careful manipulators of pills and toxins, living right in the house next to your neighborhood school.
“I know she’s on something,” said Mina. “She has to be.”
“Her husband?” asked Johnny. He was high, and while feeling invincible, also felt unsure.
“Factory worker, solid, never misses a shift, is working towards retirement.” They laughed. They had graduated with him and knew retirement was almost twenty years away. The zombie apocalypse, a stray comet, the assured return of the dinosaurs, the insolvency of social security, all of these cosmic events would surely take place before any of their generation retired!
“So they have money?” he asked Mina.
“Oh yeah,” she said, wincing a terrible chortle. “Even worse, they both have insurance. Insurance, and…paid time off.”
“It’s settled then,” said Johnny. “Call Bethany, invite her to a cook out.” The stringent trees looked down upon their trailer. Belle Renfield was bitten and chewed and mystery surrounded her stupid pimp Chandler’s demise but the orange sun of the early winter shone strongly and football was being played. It was the climate, it was the season…for the grill. “Fire her up Mina,” said Johnny, “There’s some cookin’ to be done.”
Bethany Ward felt terrible. She wasn’t sure where Wednesday was or where Thursday went. She didn’t care. She felt the sick pangs of withdrawal crawling upon her back, she felt the loneliness of missing her wings as they sank back into her spine. Vomiting into her chest, she heard her phone vibrating against her breasts.
Snaring the flip phone with her receding claws, she answered.
It was a stranger, but who wasn’t these days? They promised her what “she wanted.” She knew what that was–she knew with all her wings. Looking out her black windows, she knew her husband had gone to work, she knew her tranquilizers had subsided–if just enough. A good and true vampire at heart, she knew she could not refuse this; could not refuse an invitation.
She didn’t.
She found Mina and Johnny’s trailer cozy, found it better kept than her own hair. She was falling apart. Her teeth hurt (and when had that ever been true?). Skinnier than ever, only her still pert breasts containing a hint of her former country girl charm, she was chagrined at the state of her body.
Her own house, normally a sanctuary of domesticated bliss, had turned into a harbor of scurrilous squallor. Spurious and capricious in her upkeep, she’d welcomed the unexpected invitation to Johnny and Mina’s barbecue. She’d understood the offer immediately. The meth code had been invoked, the promise of “prime brats” and “plenty of friends” had not gone unnoticed by Bethany.
She could smell the meth over the phone.
Spreading what little remained of her devil wings, she had taken flight, had flown to their plot of dirt, their trailer holding on the south of town, south of Hayward, just north of Hell, as far as Bethany was concerned.
Arriving upon clouds, Bethany had seen the usual strangers, men with eager eyes and an array of wardrobes. Some sick, some handsome and strong (still), they all wanted one thing of her, and she was more than willing to give it.
Mina and Johnny had sung her praises and had even called her by that horrible appellation (which she had heard, in every whispering at the local supermarkets), “Crystal Meth Beth.” Not funny, she thought. But also, not so untrue.
She would, she knew, demonstrate to all of them, just how true it was–for the moon had risen and a stark light shone upon them all, and she would add to its absolution. She would, in the paleness of their meth skin, in the coldness of the autumnal sky, provide them the wrath of the cornucopia–the harvest unleashed!
“Baby,” said Mina, approaching Bethany, “None of us believe a word of what that awful paper is saying.” Bethany grunted, not having the slightest clue to what the skeletal Mina was referring to–not being one to read the weekly local rag.
“I don’t know,” said a biker, clearly a mule, in the meth trade more for the sex than the drugs, “She looks like she might need a big, full, meaty…brat.”
Bethany, by now a practiced killer, smiled with a blush, her white skin pocked with red marks and yellow hues. She approached him and shyly said, “I could use a big one.”
The biker, no Socrates or Peter Fonda, swelled with lust and stuck out a meth laced brat in his burly hand. “Take this baby, it might just be big enough…to start.”
Her eyes bugged out, her claws wrenched the bratwurst away from him and she placed the sausage between her limp lips, sucking at the treasure within. “This is…nice,” she smiled. “But I’m sure I’ll want…more.”
Having been invited in, the vampire was at her full power. She noted, a bonfire of trash was billowing to the side of all of these strange people, the neat trailer lawn strewn with cast aside lawn mowers and dead flowers for Dwayne. She looked at the husky men and saw them tittering, their arms and hands giving off the tell tale signs and scents: They were all high on meth.
She beckoned her would be Romeo ’round the corner of the trailer, bade him take one or two more of the grilled meth brats with him. “This might take a bit,” she had said, taking him by his yellowed wrist.
“For you, I gots all the time on earth,” he had said, while being led to the darkness, his ponytail glimmering in the bonfire’s glow. He loved nothing more than a good round of meth sex, and this little kitten, she wouldn’t buck, wouldn’t buck too hard, he’d thought. It was true, she was skinny, but weren’t all the women at this party? He’d heard about this one though, and he was certain she would be his meal ticket. He had been mostly correct.
…
“An intervention?” hissed Lowell. “Murray, are you kidding me?”
“No, my friend, I’m afraid I’m not kidding you,” said Murray.
“And you know me better to even ask such a thing.” Murray was calm, but stubborn, an Irishman through and through.
“She killed someone, ate them. All for meth.” Lowell was incredulous. “And you’re telling me we need an ‘intervention.’”
“Well,” Murray mused, “I suppose we could just lock her up. But you know as well as I do, it’s even easier to get high in prison. What’s that going to do for your cousin–getting high while doing time?”
Lowell drank his French roast. There were no easy answers when it came to crystal meth cannibalism. Looking out the glass partitions of the Safe Haven, newly opened, and sure to be popular with all the late night denizens, he said, dolefully, “Her wings, we need to clip her wings.”
“I know my friend,” said Murray, who did not drink coffee but rather, sipped tea. “As long as she can fly…she’ll keep killing. We need Evan,” he said. “Van is the man.”
It was not meant to be funny, not in the least.
…
The biker Weston had been alive with the passion of possibility. The sprite of sex Bethany Ward carried with her was palpable and Weston was wired to the hilt. What he lacked in girth he made up for with exuberance and he was certain she was going to agree.
They’d ambled around the corner of Johnny and Mina’s trailer and he was awash with the lust of the serene moon as he felt Bethany take ahold of him, take ahold of his bratwurst.
“Don’t need a bun for that m’lady?” he asked with mock formality. “Or ketchup?”
“No,” said Bethany before inhaling the bratwurst whole with a gleeful sigh. Biting down into it, the meth exploded its package into her membrane. A true vampire, she sucked eagerly.
Watching her take the member whole, into her liver mouth, Weston could not help but moan.
By now, an expert of the game, a raconteur of the ruse, Bethany slyly asked Weston, meat bulging from her tongue, “Do you like what you see see?”
“God yes,” he answered, poetically.
“Good,” she purred, “Because I’m just getting started.”
In the blackness of the trailer’s shadows Weston saw Bethany Ward, the supposed “Crystal Meth Beth,” hike herself up onto his biker hips as she drew his groin up against her own. He was shocked by her thrusts, as if she were taking liberties with him! He fumbled with his belt and the zipper on his jeans as his mind spun with delrium–this was all happening much better than he had hoped!
Impatient with his meanderingly, juvenile clumsiness, Bethany ripped Weston’s zipper down. Fixing a target, she impaled herself upon him, and with her bratwurst high, screamed in pleasure.
Weston screamed too.
But he didn’t scream in pleasure, at least not for long. For as she felt him enter her, combining the high of the meth bratwurst with the thrust of his skin within her own, Bethany, as ever, scented that this wasn’t enough, scented that there was more–and so, as the biker thrust in between her legs, as she gripped and milked his pleasure, she started tearing the hairs of his red and silver and black beard out of his sanguine face, each hair being imbued with the loving hue of her beloved meth. She bit and ripped and chewed every hair off of Weston’s face as the hapless man thrust his self inside of her–and while he burst, she chewed and chewed, hair after hair, right down into his skin, pulling each bulb out, sucking so sweetly and then, once again, letting her yellowed teeth pierce his very flesh before ripping if off and swallowing it while her own floods echoing his in ecstatic response.
Bethany stood over his lifeless husk, breathing in and out, accordion like, pleasure and pain taking form as wings.
Davy Manners, a would be biker came ’round the corner, looking at Bethany, Weston’s torn face hidden in the shadows of the trailer. “Want to go for two?” he offered.
Bethany, still hungry, accepted.
…
She awoke, in white clothes and bondage, her wrists tied down. Some man named Evan was busy talking to her in even, measured tones. She didn’t know where she was–hadn’t a clue. Bethany just knew she was hungry–hungry for meth, for hair, for brats.
Where was she?
“It’s going to be okay,” said Lowell. God, he hated this place.
They were at The Aspen. He was not unfamiliar with it. A treatment center for all kinds of addiction, it was, he knew, Bethany’s last, best chance. “How are you doing?” he asked his favorite cousin.
“I’m hungry,” Bethany said.
“Do you remember anything?” asked a vaguely familiar voice.
Rotely she answered, “No Murray, I do not.”
Everyone sighed. It had been an orgy massacre–the kind no one talked about–not even here, not even in Hayward.
But they weren’t in Hayward, Bethany knew. She also knew another drug was pulsating through her veins–a sedative. Or two. She looked at Lowell, his fedora in his Michelangelo hands. Hummingly, she passed out.
“I think she’s gonna make it,” said Murray.
29 days and as many as 71 group sessions later, Bethany left The Aspen Treatment Center–her sins forgiven, she being a hapless victim. Her cousin Lowell had been called back to Chicago, work being work. Murray had picked her up, delivered her home from the insanity of living with addicts. Stepping off the Aspen’s clean, neat sidewalks, she had felt the nudging, her wings, tearing her shoulders. “I’ll fly later,” she said. And she would.