Wolverine: The Masochist, Part II

I don't sleep at night. I get a bad rap for being a grumpy old man, but the truth is, if anyone else-healing factor or not-got as little sleep as I do, they'd be a little pissy too. Lucky for me that being pissy doesn't get in the way of what I do best. I do some of my best work on very little sleep.

I can't say why I don't sleep in general. I know why I don't sleep in the mansion. It's been knocked down and blown to hell too many times. I don't worry about myself, and if that ain't clear then you don't know me very well. I worry about the kids, even the annoying ones. I remember when I first moved in, and when I first met Bobby. He froze more cans of beer than I can count; half the time he froze them to my hand (he wasn't as precise back then). I could've killed him. I've never had time for a sense of humor. It's a luxury people develop when they don't have enough to worry about. It's easy to laugh at danger when you can only hear echoes of it, howling in the distant night; it's a different thing when it's tearing at your throat, drinking your blood.

Now Bobby's one of the most dangerous mutants on the planet, maybe one of the most lethal heroes in the galaxy, but I still worry about him. I can take a missile to the face, but Bobby, as powerful as he is, has got to see it coming to do anything about it. So I don't sleep in the mansion. Jean used to say that I act like a momma bear around her cubs. I had to hide a smile. Jean could always do that to me. I had time for her sense of humor; call me a hypocrite.

As with most things, Jean was right. I hear every creak and groan in the mansion. I can smell every corner of the grounds. I once-in a state of drunken insomnia-made the mailman piss his pants. He was an hour earlier than the schedule, trying to get done early for Christmas. Before I knew what I was doing, I was down the stairs with my claws to his throat. Lucky for the postman, Charles likes to get up early, too. He shut me down and apologized to the mailman. I woke up in the bushes two hours later with frozen feet and a hangover.

So while the mansion feels like home, it's anything but peaceful. God help the soul that breaks in while this bear is home. Chuck had me on a short chain; Scott doesn't care anymore. I never did. I'd rather paint the walls with blood than watch another one of our kids get dragged outta their bed by some zealot freak-show with another agenda.

Scott knows how, um, strongly I feel about this, so every now and then he taps me out and lets me hit the road for a while. I've had less trouble letting Scott guard the place since he became a little unstable. Before I couldn't trust him to do what's necessary, but that was before he singlehandedly blew a sentinel and half the trees on the property to hell. I'm not going to say he's as good at guarding the place as I am, but I will say that the guy who breaks in on his watch will be every bit as sorry when all that's left of his sorry ass is a smoldering crater. I've been hit by those blasts more times than I can count, and though I'd never tell Scott this, they hurt like a sonofabitch. And that's when he's holding back.

Scott and I, in more recent years, have come to an understanding about one another. He doesn't ask as many questions, and I don't give him a reason to. He catches up to me before I leave.

"There's no smoking on school premises," he says. I take one step out the gate towards the street. He laughs. "Can I bum one?" I hand him a smoke and light it for him.

"Never thought you were the smoking type."

"I never thought you were the lullaby type."

"Shit, you heard that?"

"We all did. Hank almost cried."

"She couldn't sleep, so I..."

"You don't need to explain yourself. I'm just glad you didn't give her a beer."

"I will next time."

"Emma thought it was...quaint."

"What is it you see in her, Scott?" He smirks.

"The same thing as anyone else." His face twitches a bit. He rubs his temples. "That's the bad thing about dating a telepath."

"You're a braver man than me."

"Have a good trip, Logan." He finishes his cigarette and flips it to the curb. I start the bike. "Don't forget your helmet." I laugh at him and knock on my skull a couple of times.

In an hour I'm outside the city, in the open air, where a man can get some sleep.


This trip is south. I never plan where I'm going, but I do work with a direction in mind. This time the nose points south. Where I end up is a surprise every time. This time it's West Virginia. Most people can't find much good in a place like this. I can't say that I blame them. It's untamed, unapologetic, and in some ways, disgusting. I fit right in.

On trips like this, I spend most of my time in the hills, hunting and sleeping. Most people couldn't sleep in country like this, but most people can't re-grow their arm when a cougar gnaws on it. Don't laugh; I woke up that way. I didn't kill the pitiful creature. It was a young thing and looking for a bigger kill than it could chew. I showed it the claws and told it to scram. It hissed and ran away with its tail between its legs. I held the skin and bone in place and let it regrow. It always takes longer when I'm tired.

During my hunting I find an old cabin next to a freshwater spring. From the smell, four people live here: an old man, a woman, and two children. I can't tell if the children are boys or girls; as sick as it sounds to polite company, children smell different after puberty. That's as far as I'll explain.

I watch the cabin for a while. The woman hangs clothes to dry. No one else is around. A gun cocks downwind. I couldn't smell him. I do now. Brut aftershave, damp flannel, menthol chewing tobacco. Arthritis in the right hand. Slow trigger finger. Cut the barrel off, deal with the fallout. A little buckshot in the face never hurt anyone. Hell.

I swipe behind me and cut the barrel off the front of the gun. The man (older than I thought) stumbles backwards over a tree stump and fires the gun over my left shoulder. There is a sharp pain on the side of my head, and my ear is hanging next to my shoulder.

"Sonofabitch..."

"Aw jeezus mister," he yells, "I didn't mean to..."

"Stop yelling. It hurts my ear. The one you blew off." Blood seeps through my fingers and down my arm, but I can feel the skin start to regrow over the hole in my head. When the lobe is attached, I take my hand off my head and let the healing factor finish the job. It must be something different, watching a man's ear reattach to his head.

The man turns white, vomits into a bush.

"What in god's name are you?"

"A hiker. Do you shoot all hikers in the side of the head?"

"None that got back up." He smiles. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Nope." I help him to his feet. "You got anything to eat?"

"We got plenty to eat," says the woman. "But you're gonna have to leave your knives outside." I sheath the claws. She takes a step back.

"Maybe I should eat on the porch?" I ask.


We have rabbit stew with mountain vegetables. It seems there's all kinds of plants up in the hills that you can eat that won't kill you, but that doesn't mean they taste good.

"How is everything?" she asks.

"Wonderful," I say.

I take a look around the room. Modest setup. One room house. Three beds in the corner. Stove. Probably an outhouse in the back.

"It's not much," says the man. "But it's home."

"It's nice." Truth is, it's a hellhole, even by my standards. I know there are those without, but living like this is a choice. Maybe the man reads the look on my face, or the tone in my voice.

"You don't have to lie. It's a dump. My grandfather lived here when my family first moved south. He'd lost everything, and this shack is what he managed to scrape together for shelter. We've since put the oven and the outhouse in. My grandfather used to shit in the woods."

"Papa!" the woman yells.

"It's okay. I did it just yesterday," I say. The woman turns bright red.

"Well, there's a difference between what one needs to do, and what one wants to do. If Papa had his way, he'd relieve himself where he pleased, and be naked as the animals." She brings the pot of stew over and refills my bowl. Yum.

"So why do you all live here?" The looks on their faces change. They pause a moment, exchange a glance or two that I'm not meant to see, then the old man speaks.

"We're here because we have to be." The woman exhales, her heart rate increases, and her face becomes flushed. "No other reason."

I don't even need my senses to figure out they're not telling the whole story.

A bit after dark, a boy and a girl walk in from the porch carrying more rabbits and vegeta...plants. The boy is a head taller than the girl, and his jeans are torn above the left knee. I can smell his deodorant, his shampoo. The girl is blonde with a smudge of dirt across her cheek. Her face and shoulders are freckled, and her eyes are a cold gray.

"Who the hell is this?" asks the boy.

"That's no way to talk to company, boy," says the old man. The woman just glares at him.

"Don't gimme that look, ma," says the boy.

"And that's no way to talk to your mother, either." The boy shuts his mouth, reluctantly, and mumbles something unflattering under his breath. "This man here is a guest of ours. His name is...well, I actually don't remember getting your name, son."

"You got anything to smoke?" I ask. The boy hands me a pack of cigarettes. It's kiddie stuff, but it'll do. I light a cigarette, inhale deeply, and let the smoke swirl around my lungs as the healing factor tidies up after it. "Name's Logan."

"Nice to meet you, Logan," says the kid sarcastically. He reaches to take back his cigarettes, but his mom intercepts them.

"You shouldn't be smokin' anyway."

"God, mom, don't gimme that bullsh-"

"She's right," I say. I take another drag. "It's not good for you." The boy rolls his eyes and walks to the back of the room. He sits on his bed and listens to an iPod.

"I'm sorry," says the old man, "but we never introduced ourselves. I'm Buck, and this is my daughter Shelby, and my grandson Jack and my granddaughter Scarlet. We're not much to look at, but we're family."

I put the cigarette out on my leg, which startles the girl. She hasn't made eye contact with me since she walked in the house. "Is she..." I stop to gauge their reaction, but I don't get anything so I just ask. "Is she...you know."

"She's fine," says Shelby. "She just hasn't been the same since we left her father."

"Now Shelby, we don't need to get him involved, this is a family matter, after all."

Shelby stops for a moment, then thinks better of it. Her heart rate has increased again. She looks at me for a few seconds. "Scarlet doesn't talk much. That's all."

I'm not much for asking questions, mostly because I hate answering them. I decided I didn't want to push the issue, and that I didn't much care anyway. A small group of extended family living in the hills and acting all paranoid and private just isn't that unusual in West Virginia.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to stay," Buck asks.

"I'm only asking you for two things: one, a place to sleep. That can be outside, that can be on the porch, or it can be in the surrounding woods. I don't care. Second: you all seem like honest people. That's because you're shitty liars. So do me a favor: if you're going to lie to a man, don't invite him into your house, and don't pretend he's too stupid to know something's wrong." The room is dead silent. "Now if you wouldn't mind too much, I'd like a couple more smokes. I'll be on the porch." The woman hands me the cigarettes and a box of matches and I leave the house.

I can hear them whispering from my chair on the porch, but nothing they say is worth listening for. When the whispering stops, the old man comes outside.

"Buck," I say, "I didn't mean to intrude. But something's obviously wrong up here."

"How'd you know?" he asks.

"I can smell it." I smile, and he gives me that look that I get a lot, like: is this guy serious? Can he really smell fear? I like that the question stays unanswered. Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but that doesn't change the fact that before I smell the fear, I smell people's piss as it soaks their pants. Call me clairvoyant.

The man pulls a board up from the front porch and removes a jug of liquor from the hole. "Don't tell Shelby. Her ex-husband was a drinker. Me, I don't need the stuff, but it aint ever hurt me neither."

"I'll toast to that." He hands me a glass and we drink together. The stuff is strong. The man coughs a bit.

"Jeezus that burns."

"What burns?" asks Shelby from inside the house.

"Nothing, nothing. I just dropped my cigarette in my lap. Damned arthritis!" he says. He gets really quiet. "Like I said, her husband Mikey was a drinker, and the subject of her husband is a bit...well, touchy."

"What happened to her husband?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," I said.


Buck got really drunk that night, and slept on the porch where he sat. I don't sleep well when there are people around, so I listened to the wind in the woods and the sounds of predators approaching, and then leaving when they got a whiff of me. The night gave me a long time to think about what I'd heard from Buck.

As it turns out, Buck's son-in-law joined a snake-worshipping cult about two miles away in a small, mined-out coal town. Blah blah blah now the men are all acting like snakes and biting people and making them snakes too, or worse, dead. Before Buck passed out, he said: "You probably think I'm crazy."

I said: "I've heard worse."

The family hadn't been here all that long. I had figured this much, what with the boy wearing new deodorant, the iPod, the fact that under the girl's bed were magazines and other such feminine necessities. They didn't have the hillbilly look about them at all really. Other than a slight drawl, they were nothing more than a group of townies with few dirt stains.

They'd come up to this cabin to avoid Shelby's ex-husband. I had guessed that he didn't know where the cabin was; otherwise these people were either stupid, naive, or both.

As the sun comes up, I walk into the woods to take a piss. The wind is really whipping around through the trees, and a light rain has started to fall. I find the perfect pissing tree, just wide enough to cover the spray, but small enough to avoid splash back. In mid-relief, a slimy hand slams my face into the tree.

"Where are they?" it hisses.

My face (shattered) slides down the tree bark (burns) and into my own puddle o' piss (smells). I think about asking him who he is and to whom he is referring, but he smells like snake skin, is super strong, hisses when he talks, and smashes my face further into the ground with his heel. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he's Mikey.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're Mikey."

"How do you know my name?"

"Because I'm going to kill you."

"What?"

I slice through his left leg, causing him to stumble backwards and roll down the hill. He's screaming, but I don't hear it. It's like my ears are filled with blood. Hell, they might be. But then something weird happens, and when I say weird, consider the context. This sonofabitch slithers away, slithers, on his belly back into the woods. His lower leg and foot starts to twitch. I kick at it, and then it slithers in the same direction as the gimp-snake. Maybe some sort of healing factor? I don't know, but it's nasty as hell.

My arm starts to itch a bit. I look down, and the freak's blood is eating at my arm, almost faster than the healing factor can rebuild the skin.

I walk a quarter mile back to the cabin. Buck's still asleep on the front porch.

"Buck," I yell down the hill, "I think we've got a bit of a problem. You see, you failed to mention that Shelby's ex, Mikey, is a half-snake, half-man, super-strong, slithering, lispy, acid-bleeding, creepy-son-of-a-bitch."

Buck doesn't move. He must be hungover.

"Buck," I yell. As I get closer I realize just how quiet it is around the house. "Buck," I say again, but I know he won't answer me. If I weren't so damn distracted I'd have smelled it from up the hill. Buck is dead, with the same shit that ate up my arm dripping from his face into his lap. With pieces of his face, also, dripping into his lap. It's an awful smell, and I really can't believe I didn't notice it before. I put his hat down over his face. Goodbye, Buck.

The door is open. A different sort of smell comes from inside the house. I can't recognize it at first. Is that...cotton candy? Before I realize why a backwater shack in Shitsville smells like cotton candy, a two by four cracks me over the back of skull. My ears ring like a bell. I used to wonder if anyone else could hear the sound, but I've since realized that it's just one of the many drawbacks of 1. super-sensitive hearing, and 2. a thick, metallic, resonant skull. The engineers at Weapon-X didn't really think that one out. Of course there's lots of things they didn't think out, which is probably why they got cut up so damn bad.

The two by four is cut in half and a girl is huddled on the floor begging for her life. I'm not saying I'd cut up a little girl; leave that to Creed. But for an instant, while the ringing is still in my ears and the pain is still shooting down my spine, for one feral second, my jaw is locked and I'm screaming with my mouth shut and I swear to god I'm going to cut in half the person who hit me in the head with a goddamned two by four. Then I realize who hit me and why she did, and I feel all gosh-damn bad that I popped the claws at her and I hope she didn't wet herself.

"I'm not a snake monster," I say.

"My dad's not a snake monster!"

"Uh. Okay. I'm not a slithery, creepy motherfucker. Not that your dad is a creepy motherfu-"

"He's not!"

"Right, right. Why don't you come out here in the light where I can see you." She inches out of the corner and the shadows. She's not hurt, but she's scared as hell. I don't push the point about her dad being a slimy, slithery, creepy, sucker-punching sonofabitch. Even though he is. "Where's your mom?" That sends her over the edge. The waterworks, the wailing. I try to think what to do. I take off my shirt and offer it to her. The way she looks at it reminds me of how dirty it is. I almost remind her that my shirt wouldn't be caked in mud and piss if it weren't for her dad. I decide to let it go and put my flannel back on.

When Jubilee cries, I usually tell her to stop. Then she laughs, punches me in the arm, shakes her fist because punching me in the arm hurt her fist and was, generally speaking, a bad idea, and then I grumble something and she looks at me like she's my own daughter, and if I ever cried-which I don't-I'd cry in that moment, caught up in all the joy and shit.

"Stop it," I tell her. She doesn't stop crying. "Crying about it won't help." She gets louder. "Aww for the love of god, we'll get your mom back, and if she's already dead, we'll kill every last sonofabitch snake-freak that laid his scales on her." The look she gives me is somewhere between disgust and horror, but you know what? She's not crying anymore.

I tell her we're going hunting, and that she needs to wash of the stink of that lip-gloss.

"I think it smells good," she says.

"Yeah, if you want to get shot in the head for smelling like clown shit."

"You don't have many friends, do you?" she asks.

"No. I don't." She washes her face and puts her hair up. I make her put on "stinky" boots so her feet don't rot. I don't know how far we've got to hike, but I'm not stopping for blisters and toe-aches. "Look, I didn't mean it smelled bad. It smelled fine if you're, you know, into that. All I meant was..."

"All you mean was that if we're going to sneak up on somebody, it's best not to announce ourselves with our 'clown-shit' stink."

"Yeah...uh, yeah." She's more talkative than I thought she'd be. So talkative in fact that I have to ask: "When I first met you, you didn't say a word."

"That's 'cause my stupid brother never stops cussing, and my grandpa tells the most boring stories."

"That reminds me. When we walk outside, I'm gonna need you to not look to your left."

"Why?"

I explain to her gently what about how her grandfather's face is more in his lap than on his face. She takes it well, considering the fact that her mother and brother are also missing, probably taken by the people who turned her grandfather in to face-paste.

"We need to get moving," she says.

"Agreed." We walk outside and I smell the air, moist and dank. "We need to go north."

"I know. That's where the church is."

"The what?"

"The church. It's where my dad got turned into that whatever he is. I think it started there. They play with snakes during their services. Some religious deal." She stops for a second. "Wait, could you smell them?"

"Yep."

"All the way down here?"

"Mmm hmm. Why, how far is it?"

"On foot? Probably two hours. That's some sniffer you've got." We walk for a bit. "Wait, what's that like in the bathroom?"

"You don't wanna know."


It takes us every last minute of two hours to get to the church. It's the goddammed scariest place I've ever seen. The windows are completely boarded up. The foundation is growing black mold, and there are vines growing up nearly ever inch of the exterior. The steeple is leaning to the east and the only window, a circular, red stained-glass window, has a picture of some saint holding two snakes. This is the holy church of the satanic poltergeist.

The red window flickers like an open flame. This scene belongs to a dark and stormy night, but it's a mountain sunset without a cloud in the sky, the rain burning away in a sweet smell that makes me forget I'm in a hillbilly hellhole.

The girl and I are watching the place from behind some bushes. She keeps trying to peak over the bushes to find her mother, and maybe her brother, though she doesn't seem to like him too much.

"He can become one of those snaky-nastoids," she says. "I just want my mom back." I'd rather not have one more snaky-nastoid to kill, so I tell her to sit still while I check the place out. As I cross the dirt road, one of them comes out to smoke a cigarette. He waves at me just as cordial as a southern gent. I wave back. He asks me about the weather as I walk towards him. I tell him the mountains are beautiful this time of year. He agrees. He offers me a cigarette when I reach the porch. I thank him, and stab a hole straight through his reptilian, sonofabitch, inbred head. Virginia Slims. Goddamn, what are you, a woman? I put the cigarette out on his face, and even though the freak is dead, the skin heals up over the burn. Looks like I ain't got a corner on the healing factor market anymore. Now any damn freak that wants to can put his face or legs back on. It's a shame really. There are just some folks that should stay dead when you put 'em that way. Wade Wilson for example…I don't have time to go into it. He's a cockburn.

I wave the girl over from across the street. When she gets to the porch, she's all revved like she's going in with me.

"You're not my sidekick, and you'll die." She's disappointed, but she gets the point. I tell her she can have a real special job. "You stay out here, and after I go in, make sure you jam this door shut." I break her off a piece of pipe from the gas meter and hand it to her. "You shove this in the door just as soon as I shut it. Do not let anyone out of here, you understand?" She nods. "Because if you come in here, you won't like what you see, and I hope you don't have any special attachment to that dad of yours." She shakes her head. "Good."

"What about my mom?"

"Well, if she's not blindfolded, she may be scarred for life, but that's better than being dead or a snake mutant from hell."

"Agreed."

I ask her if she's ready and she tells me yes. I tell her that as soon as she bars the door she should run and hide in the same bushes that we came from.

"But what if you need help?" she asks.

I chuckle. "Darlin'," I say, "you don't know me very well."

I open the door and she quickly shuts it behind me, a little too quickly. The bar screeches against the metal door. Every last one of their yellow, reptile eyes turns and looks at me.

The larges of the snake-men is standing at the pulpit. His face looks like a cobra, and he's holding maybe ten rattlesnakes in his hands that just keep biting him. He should be dead ten times over, but he looks like a lumberjack that's hungry for pancakes. Of course he's a slimy, snake-lookin' lumberjack, but you get the point.

"My brothers," he says, waving his hands around all mystical like. "It seems we have a new believer."

One of the snakes, missing a left leg, hobbles out into the aisle on a stump that's started to re-grow.

"Father Aapep, I have seen this man before," he shouts. "This man is the man who cut my leg off."

"It's re-growing. Don't be a pussy."

"Enough!" yells the priest, preacher, snake-faced-dude-guy. "If he truly wishes, he may become one of us, as our other converts have so chosen." A crimson curtain opens behind him. Scarlet's mother, Shelby, and her son Jack are tied to crucifixes. Both have been stripped to their underwear. Jack is skinner than I thought he'd be, and his mother is…well, that's probably inappropriate to say given the situation.

I let the claws slide out slowly.

"Well now, it would seem our new convert is not what he seems, either."

"Yeah Father! That's what I was gon' say! He's got them claws, and they's what cut my leg off!" says Mikey.

"You don't say," replies Father Pep or whatever. "Well, let's give our convert a taste of what's to come." The priest slides, or slithers, or glides, or whatever the hell you call it, over to Jack and bites him on the neck. His ten snakes bite him too, on his head, his face, his chest. "And they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them!" He wipes Jack's blood from his face. As he does, Jack starts convulsing, turning green. I've seen enough. I walk down the middle of the aisle, cutting off any hand that's stupid enough to touch me, and let me tell you, you ain't heard screeching until you've heard a half-man, half-snake hiss and screech after losing a limb. I like the sound so much that I keep doing it.

"I'll kill him Father Pep!" shouts Mikey. He leaps at me from behind his pew. I stab him in the gut and lift him up high enough to let him look down at me. I want him to know that the shot he landed earlier was lucky, and that I don't ever, for no goddamned man or snake man, fall face-first into my own piss. When I feel like he's gotten the point I cut his head off and let that acid-shit drip all over the floor, some of it dripping down my claws and eating into my skin, some eating away slowly at my face.

Scarlet hears the screeching from outside and opens the door to look in. I look back at her with half of my face melted off.

"You shut that goddamn door." She obliges.

For the next thirty minutes I go to work, slicing and dicing limbs that keep crawling back to their masters, reattaching and healing and all the while spraying acid all over me. It burns like hellfire, but I keep cutting and they keep dropping. Finally half the floor is melted, exposing the basement. It's full of snakes. Yeah, it's fuckin' clever.

"You butchered my congregants."

"Um, yep."

"That I cannot abide." He slides up next to Shelby. His snakes hiss and bare their fangs at her. "I guess I'll just have to start from scratch." Before he can bite her, Jack wakes up and bites a chunk from his neck. Acid sprays everywhere, and Jack hisses as it drips down his face. Shelby screams.

I take this opportunity to sink my claws into Pep's face real deep. This is my favorite part, of the claws that is. I love watching people watch them hit their face. They get all cross-eyed and goofy, and they all make that same face, that "oh hell, he just stabbed me in the face" face. I dig it man, I'm not going to lie.

He takes a couple of swipes at my gut with his talons, and tears off some meat. That just pisses me off. I twist the claws and watch his face bend to match. I throw him in the basement with his snakes.

"They won't kill me, you know!" he yells. "They are my children, one and all!"

Jack helps his mother down from the cross. "He's right," Jack says. "He'll just sit down there until he heals and finds a way out. Those snakes aren't going to kill him."

"I figured as much." I walk out to the gravel parking lot where there are nothing but pickups with confederate flags for rear windshields. Jack follows me, helping his mother walk out the door. Scarlet hugs her mother and stares at Jack.

"Jack, you're…uglier," she says.

"I'm what?"

"You're a snake…thing."

He finds a mirror on one of the trucks. Part of his face is scarred from the acid. The rest is green and scaly.

"Well, I guess it could be worse," he says. He doesn't see, but Scarlet shakes her head in response. She's right: he's one ugly sonofabitch, but he ain't dead. Not like ol' Pep's gonna be. I find a spare gas can in the bed of one of the trucks. "What are you gonna do?" Jack asks. I hold the gas can in my hand and stare at him, then the gas can, then him. It hits him. "Oh, fire."

Fuckin' hillbilly.

I walk past the dead guy on the porch, grab his lighter and one of his pussy-ass Virginia Slims. When I get to the hole, Pep's already started to heal a bit. He's even wiggling about; well, writhing really, but you could really tell that his brain was almost back together. Another couple of minutes and he'd have been walking.

"You'll be sorry, mister! You should've joined. There is nowhere to hide from the almighty. His judgment will be final, and by heaven, he'll cleanse this world with fire."

"It's funny you say that, there Pep. I had a real similar idea." I pour the gasoline in his face. The snakes next to him hiss and scurry away from the gasoline.

"What are you doing?" he screams. "I'm a man of god."

"Say hi to him for me. Tell him I'll be awhile coming home."

"Rot in hell!"

I really want to say 'you first,' but that'd just be tacky. Instead I say: "Okay. I'm gonna light you on fire now." I take out one of the, choke, Vagina Slims and light it up. I take me a nice, long drag, then drop it onto his snake-face. The flames engulf him, and in a last desperate attempt, he leaps and catches the edge of the hole with his hand. He shrieks like a demon, hisses and writhes. I punch my claws through his hand and cut his arm off at the wrist with my spare hand. He falls back into the hole and the fire and the snakes that hiss and die with his ugly ass.

Outside the family is together. Shelby goes to thank me with a kiss, then thinks better of it. It's only then that I run my hand over my face and realize that between the fire, smoke, and acid, there's not a whole lot left.

"Your face," says Scarlet.

"It'll heal."

"Mine too?" asks Jack.

"Probably not." His shoulders shrink and he slithers off towards the cabin. "Did I say something?"

"No," says Shelby. "He'll get over it. Of course, it'll take Scarlet and me awhile, but we'll be able to look at him sooner or later."

"Take care, and get the hell out of these hills," I tell them. The family walks away towards the cabin. I realize as I'm hotwiring one of the trucks that I forgot to tell them about Buck being all dead and still on the front porch, getting ripe. I start to drive in that direction to tell them. Banjo music starts playing on the radio, and I think better of it. I ditch the truck and walk my happy ass down the mountain towards a town where I can get a cold beer and maybe a bus ticket back to New York.