First published in Bare Bone #5
Available at ProjectPulp.com

PRE-ORDER Bare Bone #6

I’ll tell you what happened, but I need a cigarette first.

I don’t give a shit about that, man – just give me a smoke if you want me to talk.

Well, fuck the government’s non-smoking policy! Like you assholes don’t light up when there’s no one in the tank, right? I can smell smoke in here…

Thanks.

You wanna know what happened tonight, or do you wanna hear about Theresa first?

Okay.

Theresa.

She started working at the Boat maybe a year ago, but I didn’t know her real well at first. She wasn’t real easy to get to know, if you understand me – kinda standoffish, but not like she thought she was better than the rest of us. It was more like she was always off somewhere in her own head, and the only time she noticed the real world was when she was dancing.

Drugs? Probably – I don’t know, though. With some of the others, it’s obvious. Hell, you’ve seen ‘em, tracks up and down their arms, eyes unfocused. I know you’ve had a few of the girls down here before – I’ve heard the stories, and I know that there’re a couple of you that’ll let a girl go if she’s nice to you in the back of the police car…

Yeah, yeah. Are we on tape? Is that why you don’t want to…
Okay, dammit. Never mind, then. Theresa. I was there when Rick hired her, you know. I was behind the bar, talking to Mona, it was probably three, four in the afternoon, and there wasn’t anyone in there but us. Most times, the customers don’t show up ‘til after five, but sometimes you get a couple of guys who don’t have normal work schedules, construction workers and such, show up at noon for the early bird special…

Oh. Nachos, two bucks and Oly stubbies for a buck each. Goes on from twelve to three.

Anyway, Theresa walks in and stands by the door, blinking. The Boat’s a regular cave, you know? No windows, only the beer lights and the lamp over the pool table – it takes you a few minutes to get used to it, especially if it’s sunny outside. Gives the bouncers a chance to check you out for a minute, you know? Plus, ‘cause it’s so dark you lose track of time in there – you see guys get all confused when last call comes; they figured it was only eleven, twelve…

Theresa was a goth chick, even before she started dancing. She was wearing all black, had the dyed hair and the black and white makeup, you know? But it looked good on her – some of those chicks, you figure they’re going for the vampire look ‘cause that’s about all they got left to try. They’re ugly, I mean. But not Theresa – you could tell from the get-go that, even under all that mascara and crap, she was a pretty woman. Beautiful, actually. Later on, when we were pulling shifts together, I got to see her without any makeup, and I’m telling you, she might’ve been a model, she was so pretty…

Anyway, she comes up to the bar and asks are we hiring. So Rick says yes, and he takes her into the office for the audition, and Mona and me are having a Pepsi and a smoke, arguing about whether he’s gonna hire her – Mona said she’s too young, I said no, she’s legal…

Huh. Really? Well, if she’s eighteen now, she would’ve been seventeen back then – I guess Mona was right. ‘Course, she’s a bartender, isn’t she? She’s supposed to be able to tell how old people are. Theresa must’ve had some pretty damn good fake I.D., though, ‘cause otherwise Rick wouldn’t have hired her.

Oh, come off it. Rick’s okay – he runs a legal place, anyway. And, yeah, he tries to get into our pants every once in a while, but it’s not like he’s holding our jobs over our heads. You say no, that’s the end of it. And not everyone says no…

Uh-uh. Not Theresa. Far as I could tell, she didn’t swing that way very often. Yeah, she was a bisexual – but she wasn’t a dyke, you know? She never hit on any of us, never got all political about it. But I saw her once making out with another gal at a bus stop downtown, so that kinda confirmed it. But I got no problems with AC/DCs – hell, sometimes I’ve thought of giving it a shot. You get a little tired of men when most of the ones you see are drunks and perverts, you know?

Anyway, she was a big hit from the first night. It was that look of hers, the goth thing – the guys ate it up. Pretty soon, after a month or so, we started getting a younger crowd in there, college boys and such, and we all figured it was ‘cause of Theresa. She called herself Morticia, like from the Addams Family movie? And she had this deal where she’d stare at you while she danced, but it wasn’t a ‘come
on and fuck me’ stare, like the rest of us try to do – it was more like she hated you, like you disgusted her. And the idiots couldn’t get enough of it. She’d be stripping, pulling off her vampire shit, looking at some asshole like he’s a bug she wanted to squash, and you could see the hard-ons start. She made a lot of money off those college boys…

No, tonight’s the first time I’ve seen her in, what, two months. I was trying to figure it out earlier, while you had us in the dressing room, and I think she left right after Christmas. Like I told you, I was never very close to her – we’d go out for breakfast sometimes, after work, but it’s not like we sat around talking about philosophy or shit; we’d smoke, and have coffee, and bitch about how stupid the customers are, then I’d drive her to her place, and go home.

Yeah, she lived in one of those little craphole apartments offa Kilgore, over in Hippie Central. I think she was shacking up with some other chick, but I don’t remember for sure – hell, you go to some of those apartments, you got eight people sleeping on the floor, next to all the bongs and Pink Floyd crap, and that’s where they all live, you know? Theresa mighta been crashing with friends, she mighta been paying rent on her own. God knows she could’ve afforded it – she was pulling in about thirteen bills a week before she left.

I don’t know. People just up and leave, you know? Hell, I’ve been there two years, and I’m the grandma of the group. The Boat’s not the kinda place you give two weeks notice and fill out your time – sometimes the gals’ll fall in love and move in with some asshole, and that’s the last you see of ‘em. Some of ‘em OD. Some of ‘em move back home with the folks. It was like that with Theresa – she just didn’t show up one night, and Kelly and me had to take over her spot in the rotation…

Yeah, I’d heard about the Ripper. We all had. But it’s not like we were scared, you know? Most of the chicks that dance at the Boat are tough mamas, and we didn’t figure we were stupid enough to get ourselves killed by some freak job. And Rick and Neil and Milo’re real good about making sure everyone’s got a ride – they’ll wait ‘til you get to your car and start it up, wait for all the gals to get picked up, then Rick’ll lock up and go home himself. I just figured if one of us got hit by the Ripper, it’d be because we deserved it…

So, the Stripper Ripper. Cute name. One of you guys come up with that?

Some newspaper guy, huh? Figures. I don’t read the papers, myself, but Kelly would bring in the articles about the killings, and Rick posted warnings and stuff on the bulletin board. Like I said, though, I wasn’t worried. I don’t do stupid things, so I figured I was safe. Yeah, I know some of the girls turn tricks, but I don’t do that shit – I don’t need cash that bad, you know? But I can understand how it can be tempting – pick up a quick fifty for a hand job in the alley behind the bar? Why not?

I said I don’t do that shit, you asshole. You smart off to me, I’ll shut up, and you can just fucking arrest me if you want me to talk any more…

Yeah, gimme another smoke.

You know, I never connected it – Theresa leaving, that is, with the Ripper. I just figured she went out, got herself another job somewhere…

No, I pretty much stay at the Tuna Boat, but plenty of the dancers have rotations at other places, too. Kelly works Tuesdays over at the Kitty Kat, and Melanie’s got four different places she goes – the Tap, Marco’s, the Parthenon and the Boat. And no one had heard squat about Theresa, so we just figured she’d got out of the life, moved out of town, maybe. Who knew?

So that guy tonight – he was the Ripper?

Yeah, yeah – officially, you can’t say shit. C’mon, though – was he?
Jesus.

Okay, tonight. I was finishing up a set when I saw Theresa walking in. The place was pretty packed, and we were shorthanded because Melanie never showed, so I was doing my second shift, and poor Kelly’d been there since noon.

Hell, I don’t know – ten o’clock? A quarter after? You’ll have to ask Mona or Milo. You can’t see any clocks from the stage, and I was pretty freaking tired by that point. All I know is, I was damned glad to see her…

I finished up the song, picked up all the bills and smiled at the customers, then I hauled ass to the dressing room. Theresa had walked right there from the front door, moving kinda slow, not looking at anything, like she was high – but so fucking what, you know? You can dance stoned, all right, and sometimes you do better that way. And no smart-ass comments from you, Boy Scout, or I shut up…

Anyway, I get in there and pull on my jacket, and there’s Theresa looking at her old locker like she can’t figure out why all her shit’s gone. I mean, it’d been a few months, you know? Everyone else had scavenged the stuff, and what was left over was in the big box in the office we use for emergency clothes. I said ‘Jesus, Theresa, where you been?’

She turned around, and I had to step back – the look in her eyes was something I’d never seen before, ‘specially from her. Every once in a while you see someone in the bar, been tripping on some serious shit, and their eyes get all unfocused and disconnected, you know? Eventually, you just know that Milo’s gonna have to drop a bat handle on their head to get ‘em out of the place. Theresa’s eyes – well, they were worse than that. First of all, you gotta understand how she looked when I saw her, there in the dressing room. She was all messed up – her hair was sticking out like she’d been sleeping on it for a week without washing it, and some of the dye had faded some, so that you could see her roots. She was blonde underneath, something I’d never known before, ‘cause she was always shaved down below, you know? And she was wearing street clothes, which meant sweatshirt and cords and those army boots all the hippies wear, but they were fucked up and dirty, too – real dirty, like she’d been in a mudfight. Her makeup was smeared all over the place, and her hands were filthy, broken fingernails with mud under ‘em – the
whole shebang. And those eyes in the middle of all of it – they were like fires, you know? Like torches, shining out of her face.

She says to me, ‘where’s my stuff?’ and I say ‘most of it’s gone, girl. You got some shoes in the office, I think’ – ‘cause, you know, Theresa wore a four or five, and none of the rest of us could fit into the damned things. Then I said, ‘what the hell happened to you?’

She just keeps looking at me, not angry or anything, but I’ll tell you, I had to look away – it was like staring at the sun, you know? Painful. I said, ‘you here to work, or are you just trying to collect your shit?’

‘I’m going to dance,’ she says, and I’ll admit I was happy to hear it – we were awful shorthanded, like I said, and me and Kelly needed some rest. But the way she looked…she needed a shower, and we ain’t got one at the Boat. The Parthenon’s got one in their dressing room, but no one uses it ‘cause it ain’t been cleaned in about a hundred years.

‘Glad to know it,’ I says, ‘but you can’t go out there like that. Whyn’t you clean up a little bit in the bathroom, we’ll work you in in a half hour or so?’

She just keeps looking at me, and I can hear Kelly starting her set out there in the bar – Guns n’ Roses, ‘Paradise City’. It doesn’t look like Theresa’s gonna head towards the can, and frankly I don’t know what to do – she wasn’t talking, answering any of my questions. She just kept looking at me with those bright, burning eyes.

‘Hell, Theresa,’ I say, ‘you’re fucking filthy. Go clean yourself up.’
Instead, she gives her head a little shake, and it’s a slow shake, you know, like she’s completely high. Then she starts walking. She goes right past me, and I step back again, ‘cause now I can smell her…

I had a boyfriend once, right outta high school, and he and another one of his friends had an apartment for a while, but they were fuck-ups, you know? They’d use their money for beer and video games and shit, and push all the bills back until they were paying everything late, and eventually they had the electricity shut off for about two weeks. I’d go over there, they’d have candles going, smoking pot and drinking beer, trying to play quarters in the dark. Anyway, they didn’t open the fridge for those two weeks, and when they finally did, I happened to be there, and they had about five pounds of hamburger in there. You can’t even imagine the fucking stink…

I caught a whiff of that when Theresa passed me, a whiff of that rotting meat smell. It wasn’t powerful or anything, but it was there – and all of a sudden, I was scared. So I stepped back, leaned against the wall to stay out of her way, and watched her go back out to the bar.

You talked to people – you know what happened next.

I need a fucking drink.

No, I ain’t asking for one. I’m just saying I need one. I imagine, you guys ever let me go, I’ll go home and get shit-faced.

Yeah, I followed her out, and I watched. Kelly saw her coming, too, and Rick was just coming out of the office, talking to Mona and some guys at the bar, and when he saw her, his mouth dropped open. The stage was clustered up, every seat full, and they all turned to look at her, too.

Kelly stepped down. I don’t know why, but she did. She was halfway through her blouse, and the song was almost over, but she just stopped and walked off. Theresa moved onto the stage and went to the pole and just stood there for a second, looking into the big mirrors on the wall, scanning everyone in the front row. Some of the regulars were there, of course, but there was a good mix of new guys, too, and people I’d only seen once or twice in the past, including the guy she eventually fixed on…

I’m sure I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know him. Maybe a few months ago he came in, sat with his buddies, tipped a few bucks, drank some beer – I think. Like I said, I’ve seen the guy, but I can’t place him.

Well, he probably was at the Boat the night Theresa took off, but I can’t tell you for sure. I wasn’t there that night, far as I can remember. I came in the next day, she didn’t show, and we covered for her.

Poor girl.

Yeah, yeah. C’mon, you had to have heard all this from everyone else, right? Not all the customers took off when she…

Fine. The next song came on – ‘Rag Doll’, by Aerosmith. Kelly likes the old rock and roll, and that’s a good one for the middle song in a set – lotta action, you know? But it was Theresa dancing, now, and she wasn’t moving to the music at all. She was just kind of swaying, there in her dirty street clothes and fucked up mascara, staring right at that guy in front. I was behind her, so I could see the guy’s face, and it looked whiter than hers – like he was terrified, you know?

I’m thinking, oh shit, she’s fucking things up for the rest of us. She’s gonna scare off all the customers, and there go the tips for the rest of the night. Pretty selfish of me, right? Worrying about shit like that, when, all along…

She starts moving, and no one’s leaving dollars up. There’s a few there from Kelly’s first song, but she ignores ‘em – she’s completely focused on the guy at the bar in front of her. He’s a good-looking guy, sandy hair, brown eyes, drinking a Skyy and tonic, and he’s been tipping fives all night. When he came in and sat down tonight, before all the shit went up, I thought he was a keeper, you know – try to make him happy, walk away with some good cash at the end of the shift. Just goes to show you, doesn’t it? He probably started off that way with Theresa, back in December…

She got to him, and he was sitting there like he was paralyzed, you know? She stopped and stared down at him, and I’m glad I couldn’t see the expression on her face, because when I saw everyone at the bar scootching away from her, everyone except for the sandy-haired guy, I could imagine what it looked like.

She started to peel off her sweatshirt, doing it slow, bunching it up a little, then pushing, bunching, then pushing, and I knew something bad was gonna happen – I just fucking knew it, okay? You can ask Kelly, she saw me coming out of the hallway, heading toward Theresa. Hell, everyone saw me. Everyone except for the Ripper, I guess – he was still staring up at Theresa with those big, wide eyes, like a deer in the headlights.

I got there right as she was pulling the shirt over her head, and I saw her stomach and breasts…shit, do I have to do this? You fuckers saw her…

I reached out to her, but I was too late. Her guts spilled right out onto the guy, blood spattering into his vodka, onto his face, those ropy things – intestines – unlooping, hitting him on the head, and that smell smacked me, that rotten-meat smell…

I guess I screamed. I know Kelly did, and I could see the guys sitting at the stage just fucking take off, you know? But not our boy – not the guy Theresa was still staring at. She threw away the shirt, shook off my hand, and reached into her chest – I was sick, I was gagging, puke trying to come up, you know, but I kept watching. I could see that one of her tits had been removed, and the other one was hanging off to the side by a flap of skin. Her ribcage had been cut open, and it was bloody and empty inside, and Theresa reached both hands in there and pulled the bones even further apart, and I could hear a cracking sound, and I guess I lost it, then, fell to my knees and started sobbing…

Yeah, she was alive, you morons. I mean, she was dead, of course, but she was definitely moving around. I know it sounds crazy, but you can ask anyone…

Well, that’s not my problem. It fucking happened. Too fucking bad if you don’t believe it. You saw the body, didn’t you? Didn’t it look like it’d been underground for a long time? Didn’t it smell like it?

Whatever. I’m just glad it’s over, and that fucker got what was coming to him. He never moved, you know – he just sat there, blood and guts shining all over him, looking up at Theresa with those scared eyes, watching her rip open her chest and lean down toward him. I was on the floor, now, puking, but I could still see the two of them, and I could hear Theresa…

Huh? Oh, yeah, she talked. It was hard to hear her over the music, but I was so close…

She said ‘you took my heart, asshole.’

Then she said ‘and I want it back.’ And she dove on him.

They thrashed around a minute or two, then both of them stopped moving.

Gimme another cigarette, will you?

Thanks.

So what’s gonna happen now? The Ripper’s dead – I saw you guys in the parking lot, searching his van, and I saw you putting stuff in coolers. What was it, body parts?

Did you find her heart?

Thank God. You know, after you’re done with all the investigation shit, when you bury her, put the heart in there with the body.

I’m just saying. She dug herself up once, looking for the thing. You don’t need her showing up here some night, do you?

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