Hammer and Plaster by Robert Tuohey

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Hammer and Plaster
©2006 Word Count: 3400

It was just past noon, and, with an admirable energy, Roy was pounding his Mona. Indeed, the boy’s passion was of such a depth that the entire bed shook with “love’s old, sweet song”, and the knickknacks on the nightstand danced in delight. The lassie expressed her pleasure with wildcat hisses and a python-like coiling of her sweet sixteen legs about her beau’s bouncing waist.

O happy couple!

Imagine, however, the unhappy shock of Mona’s poor mother as she witnessed her errant schoolgirl daughter thus engaged ~ and in momma’s own bed.

O disaster!

Momma’s quite unconscious shriek was counter-balanced by her weapon-of-choice, the traditional broom (fortuitously at hand). With this sturdy object firmly in her enraged grip, the good woman began to flail away, pell-mell, at the violently interlocked pair before her.

Now, what with themselves, not to mention their adrenaline, pumping at such a rate, it took more than a couple of blows to get the couple’s attention. Once roused, however, Roy’s reaction was instantaneous.

“You old bitch!” he bellowed, furiously wrenching himself loose from Cleopatra’s Grip.

He stood and turned, towering above the two women - one glowering, one gaping - still precariously perched on the unsteady, still-quivering mattress. His cobra, unhooded and fully inflamed, seemed for a moment to dance in ominous mockery directly before momma’s outraged eyes.

Predictably, momma took dead-aim at the offensive beast, and let fly: the broom’s stiff bristles connected with full stinging impact on Roy’s bobbing knob.

With a horrific howl of pain, he dove from the bed, full-body tackling his attacker. Incredibly, momma managed to struggle. She rolled over him. He rolled over her. They rolled over each other. We rolled over them.

As we have just seen, tools left lying about can lead to nasty accidents. Such again was the case when Roy’s groping hand chanced upon a mislaid hammer. (“Loose Drawers Can Be Murder!”)

Thwack!!

The greater part of poor momma’s skull was instantly crushed to a gooey mush. For a moment, her eyes, wide with horror and hate, stared up into those of the lady-killer. Then the body convulsed, twitched, and sagged beneath him.

Panting, Roy stood, gazing down at his gruesome handiwork.

Behind him, still agape and all a-tremble, perched in the kitchen door like the very Bird of Paradise, stood Mona.

“Cool!” quoth she.

With a leap, he went at her. He rolled over her. She rolled over him. We rolled over them. We all rolled into one.

~

“You’ve done it now!” said thoroughly vexed Mona. She looked down at the dead form of her mother, a bloody sprawled mess on the kitchen floor, and then at Roy, standing beside her, still buck-naked, and now placidly sipping at a can of beer.

Receiving no reaction from her stolid mate, she let out an exasperated sigh. “Ya think this is gonna be easy to clean up, ya bonehead?” Her voice was edgy, rising in irritation.

Roy let go a fart and then scratched his hairy ass.

“Old bitch shouldn’t have whacked my weasel like that,” he said with a simple shrug of his thick shoulders.

Mona pursed her sweet lips in childish sympathy, agreeing that it had been a nasty thing to do. She gave the offended organ a playful caress and lisped, “”Did Mona make it all better?”

Roy grinned, the late afternoon light through the kitchen window attractively glinting off his chipped teeth.

“Friggin’ straight!” he extolled. Roy stepped over the corpse between them and, with his free, non-beer holding hand, copped a generous feel of Mona’s heart-shaped backside while planting a sloppy smooch on her waiting lips.

Feebly, spasmodically, momma kicked.

Mona started, baby-blues suddenly wide, gripping at Roy’s shoulder. Roy, however, seemed unperturbed by the momma’s persistence and merely set down his beer can with a grunt.

“Like a turd that won’t flush,” he said. He knelt, retrieving the incarnadine hammer.

Let readers imagine, etc., etc.

Job now surely, if messily, complete, the hammer was dropped, clattering loudly to the linoleum floor, and Roy plunked himself heavily into a comfy kitchen chair.

“Got another beer, Mona?” he asked.

Mona pulled a face, her young, shallow heart annoyed to its very depths.

“Balls for brains!” she spit out. “Is that all you can think of?”

“Uh, no,” replied deadpan Roy, “I’d kinda like a sandwich too.”

With a violently dramatic exhalation, Mona controlled her rising wroth. Indeed, the cross she bore was not only heavy, but also hung low.

“And what about her?” she asked with pointing hand and biting sarcasm.

Roy glanced down at the carnage and shrugged.

“She ain’t hungry, I guess,” he replied with a chuckle.

Mona paused, then sputtered with uncontrollable laughter. You just had to love the lunk-head.

Taunt figure still contracting with merriment, she sauntered to the refrig, yanked open its door and plucked a cold one from its chilly interior. With just a half-glance backward, to keep the dumb ox on his toes, she tossed the beer over her shoulder. Sure-handed Roy made the catch, popped the top, and knocked back a good guzzle.

“Ahhh!” he moaned as the brew hit the spot. Kicking back in the pleather-covered swivel chair, Roy took a good gander at his gal’s backside. Mona was still standing in front of the open refrig, now fanning herself with the door.

“Hey, babe!” went out the request, “bend over an’ crack ol’ Roy a smile!”

With trite, ironic wiggle, Mona complied.

“Ahhh!” again moaned the good fellow, taking yet another greedy gulp.

Well, he may have been as backward a big bull’s balls, but at least he had a set (and, besides, the girl was hungry herself). Thus, the pre-fab sandwich ingredients (plastic encased and ready sliced bread and ham, super smooth mayo, and tomatoes like babies) were flipped onto the gleaming Formica counter.

Whilst slapping said parts into the standard form, Mona said rearward, “We need to do something with this body, ya know.”

As has been, no doubt, observed, robust Roy was not of the “micro-manager” type, but rather concerned himself with the essential elements, or meat, of the matter. In the present case, this meant the en route ham sandwich.

“Uh…” he breathed, glancing eagerly toward the delights to come, “backyard her.”

Mona spun, hurling an unprintable curse, and nearly the mayonnaise-dripping knife, at her beloved.

“Like nobody’ll notice that!” she yelled contemptuously.

Roy grinned. Actually, he rather enjoyed it when Mona got her temper up; somehow, it showed her best side. But, still, he was hungry right now, and besides, she was holding that knife…

“Mona, honey, you’re right. The neighbors are nothin’ but a bunch of busy body bastards.” Helplessly, in boyish innocence, he shrugged. “But, I mean, I can’t kill all of them…”

Still, it was a happy thought, and the mere image warmed his good heart.

“But I’d sure like to!” he brightly added.

Striking a familiar femme fatale pose (weapon-holding hand on seductively tilted waist with smirk on cute mug), she rhetorically asked, “And I s’pose you’d bury’em in the backyard?”

“Whatever ya want, babe!” came back the instant, sunny reply.

As if reluctantly, Mona smiled (you did have to love the lamb). She grabbed the thick sandwich from behind her and stuffed it into his grinning maw. Merrily, wolfishly, Roy began to devour the morsel.

Mona glanced uneasily from her munching man to the disgusting mess on the floor. No, this would take a trick or two to clean up… First, the body would have to be gotten rid of… Then some story told to mom’s work…

Well, the thing was already done (spilt milk, and all that). The thing was done…and they’d have to manage somehow…

Roy’s vibrant below-the-equator eructation (or backdoor burps, as he preferred to style them), brought Mona back to herself. Blankly, she looked at Roy; with his hairy forearm, he was wiping a big gob of mayo from the corner of his mouth.

“Got another?” he asked.

“You pig!” she responded, catching up her breath and about to launch into yet another invective locating Roy’s intelligence in his testicles, when a sudden thought stabbed her.

“I was watching Doperia the other day…” Mona slowly began.

Roy slapped his thick skull in mock despair. In a battle of wits the boy may well have been sadly low on ammo, but even he could see that shooting the shit about the latest fad from some chick-chat show was a no-fire solution.

“…or maybe it was on Dr. Science…” she continued.

Roy spoke up. “Look, babe, ya can watch all the boob-tube ya want later. Right now, I need another Sammy, then –“

“Plaster!” she said with a violent turn, “dissolves bodies!”

This abrupt non sequitur threw Roy’s smooth, if lumbering, train of thought into utter disarray. He screwed up his features, not sure whether Mona was speaking some foreign language, or maybe he’d bumped her noggin too hard against that headboard.

“Huh?”

“A batter of plaster,” she said slowly, “eats away at flesh and bone.” She scanned the broad, dull, but rather well formed, contours of his rugged face, but there was no glimmer of comprehension. Ok, the lights were on, just nobody was answering the door…

Rapidly, she translated to Ox-lish (as she termed it), “Put meat into a kind of wet cement and it disappears!”

Even under the best of circumstances, simple Roy would have been at sixes-and-sevens with this intellectual leapfrogging (i.e., from idiot-box to wacky science class project), but what with being hungry as well… Still, a man has his pride, and so he felt compelled to take a swing at it.

“The cement?” he essayed.

“No, you moron,” she enunciated, “the meat!”

“Oh!” With a grin, Roy leered down at the woman he had killed.

~
Thus, the party (or, better said, parties) began. Funding was secured via momma’s (long compromised) ATM card. The generous lady herself was said to be visiting her sick aunt Ida, in Idaho. For the nightly throngs crowding into 123 Lawn Street, not much more than the booze and the blare mattered.

Of course, minor problems did crop up. For example, amidst the “lovely canned music and lovely canned beer” (as one great writer has phrased it), one might note that every bursting bladder in the joint was being eased in the backyard (something was wrong, apparently, with the toilet).

Then there was the bagatelle of the bounced check to Meeker’s Hardware Store: two fifty pound bags of plaster ain’t cheap, and, as Roy had sagely advised Mona, Dom at Gallows Liquor only took cash. So the rubber check ran its course eventually finding its way to the Collections Department…

A further annoyance was found in the aforementioned “busy-body bastards” who were busy nightly, if not daily, dropping dimes to the PD complaining of wild parties, street fights, triple-parked cars, etc., at 123 Lawn Street.

Now, discerning reader, take this down: while the elements adumbrated above (“out-of-order” toilet, rubber check, noxious neighbors) certainly admit of a certain vague relation with the present context, it is exceedingly unlikely that any combination thereof might yield an aesthetically pleasing, a spinally-satisfying, denouement. And yet, with but the addition of a single, synchronizing catalyst, that bliss was to be had.

What then was the axis upon which this tale would turn?

Succinctly put: a fat-assed high school girl.

~

I am now faced with the disagreeable task of introducing into this, so far, pleasant little tale, an unpleasant necessity named William Weisel. This waste of space was a minor employee at the Stone Heart Collections Agency. Specifically, Mr. Weisel (aka Bill Wise, aka Willy Weasel, aka that dirt-bag) was engaged in the business of squeezing a few unpaid bucks out of deadbeats, the poor, or the hard-pressed. His modus operandi, as might be expected, was as various as it was unsavory. In short (which he was), slick Willy would cash-in anyway he could.

Thus, when the thrice-bounced check of one Ms. Mona Kay to Meeker Hardware had finally landed in Willy’s hopper, our boy hopped to. You see, even with a mere paw-ful of facts, the thing, at least to one of the Weasel’s ilk, had a certain odor to it…

How did the Weasel arrive at this olfactory conclusion? Well, his commission (10% of $123.45) wouldn’t amount to squat even on a muddy day. Certainly the personal data and credit history of this Kay woman (one major card, every store card in town and owed on them all, house and car payments, etc.) was as pedestrian as rotting garbage. It was only, rather, when the computer cross-reference correlated the name on the bounced check with the address of so many recent complaints to the police…

~

123 Lawn Street was quite easy to locate: it turned out to be as brightly lit as the numerous visitors who stumbled and staggered thorough its premises. In fact, the entire scene, something akin to a cheap carnival on its last legs, presented the discerning eye with an immediate trip up: it was difficult to determine whether the proper contrast was to be held in the staid, grim glow of the surrounding homes, or the endless black night enveloping all.

This fine point of aesthetic discrimination, however, never entered the mind the Weasel. It was rather with a confirmed sense of potential profit that that he viewed the debauch in progress.

As was his wont, Willy had parked some blocks from the target so as to be able to casually creep up upon it. Here, however, his customary caution was quite unnecessary: it would have taken something along the lines of a burning clown driving a bulldozer to attract notice here. So much the better.

Willy wended his way through the litter of vehicles and bodies strewn about the lawn, and made his entrée, unobserved, through the half-open front door. De rigueur, the music blared and the guest weaved about, or lay collapsed (aka “partied out”). At once espying and making his way toward the obligatory Styrofoam beer container, Willy’s dark eyes gleamed with a relaxed alertness. It was simply a matter of what and how… A matter of opportunity…

From the very bottom of the obviously new, though already irredeemably cracked, Styrofoam box, Willy ferreted out, beneath a dripping pile of beer can corpses, a last live one. The top was popped, dropped to the filthy carpet, and the ambrosia given a quick quaff.

“Ah!” Smilingly, Willy continued to survey the scene.

When momma’s away… Well, of course, they’ll be hell to pay when the old bitch turns up… Until then, eat, drink, and grab what ya can…

The kitchen proved to be a veritable cornucopia of refuse – paper, aluminum, human – and it was with a snort of mild derision that Willy acknowledged that the empty pizza boxes were nothing more than that. His desultory poking did however provoke an initial scuttle from a fat cockroach. But there was no need: instinctively, the insect knew it was with a friend. Comfortably, it resettled itself in the crusts and swill.

Willy nodded to his compatriot. “Hello,” he intoned quietly.

“Hello, baby,” slurred a female voice from a dark corner behind him.

Unperturbed at this unforeseen essay (he was, after all, well within his element), Willy merely turned, nonchalant, slitting his eyes toward the shadowy recess.

There sat collapsed, barely visible within the sundry debris and dark, a thoroughly skunked high school girl of perhaps 16 or 17, and weighing just as many stone, to boot.

That’s a whole lotta girl…and cooked to the gills…

Willy’s eyes brightened, immediately, if vaguely, sensing some possibility or other. He cocked his head to the side, obtaining a full gander at this flesh-on-the-bone.

Francine (for such was our girl’s name) tottered herself forward onto all fours, casting a dopey, drunken look of lust at the creature now standing before her.

“Wanna give the doggie a bone?” she blurrily lisped.

Was this it? Le Grand Moment? This minor, if abundant, pot-of-flesh indecorously dropped at the end of this sordid bagatelle?

Well, perhaps it was best not to look a gift doggie too closely in the mouth. With a last backward glance over his bony shoulder, Willy slid a stealthy step forward, free hand traveling zipper-ward.

Whereupon, with a house-shaking roar, a horde of returning barbarians, heavily laden with fresh supplies of pizza and spuds, tumbled, rumbled, and rolled into the trembling, gloomy little kitchen.

Regarding the foul oaths and epithets invoked by all parties, let readers imagine, etc.

In prevention of the prize being snatched, noble William here extended manly hand to fair Francine who, thereby, was permitted to regain her feet (something the good girl had misplaced some hours previous). In the dim daze of the moment, more tasty sport having occupied the invaders, the incipient lovers were forgotten.

Load of love in-lean (to coin a phrase), Willy lumbered from the kitchen in-quest-of-nest (ditto).

But where within that den of iniquity, haze of smoke above with slime of puke below and zombies all a-wander in between, where was impatient Willy to find an unmolested nook, cranny, or corner where the dirty might be done?

The well-worn backseat of Willy’s jalopy would have made an ideal location for this illicit (if not actually illegal) tête-à-tête were it not parked some several blocks away. Indeed, lugging the hefty heifer from room to room was almost more than she, and he, could stand.

And so a tour of the house was made. The chaotic, booming living room was traversed; the dark undergrowth of the backyard (infested) inspected; while the two bedrooms, and two closets as well, were found to be beastly occupied.

O dull disappointment! O petered out passion!

“I’m gonna be sick!” suddenly wailed a heaving Francine.

It was just then that Willy caught sight of a door they had not checked. Located at the end of the hall, a rude 2x4 had been rudely nailed across it, barring entry. With a shove, Willy pushed off.

Splashed across the door in red paint, in large, child-like block letters, was written:

OUT OF ORDER ROY!

Willy rolled his eyes in utter disgust as Francine dry heaved once more. Convulsively, she pulled herself up from her hunched position, frantically gripping Willy’s lapels. Her eyes were glassy and dilated to the size of shot-glasses.

“Uh…Uh…” she violently belched, now obviously having slid onto Hurl Highway. She opened her maw toward him, ready to drop the bomb.

“Aw no!” Willy yelled. With an aggressive twist, the Weasel disengaged himself, shoving the mass of shaking blubber away from him.

Crash! Bang! Slap-a-da-slap-a-da…

The 2x4 had given way under the sudden onslaught, and now lay busted into two raggedy pieces, each broken half still hanging by a resilient nail, the pieces forlornly waving like the hands of a dilapidated clock. The door had flung back – Open Sesame! – and fanned weakly, as if in welcome. Francine’s natural cushioning had been her saving grace: she had merely roly-polied her backward way into the dark bathroom, and now lay, no worse for the tumble, on the dusty, tiled floor. Bravely, she was struggling back to all fours.

Willy caught his breath, peered into the darkness, and then shot quick glances up and down the hallway. Predictably, no one gave a rat’s tiny ass. With a smile and a shrug, he entered the bathroom.

I love it when a plan comes together…

Indeed. Francine, precariously poised on one stout leg, was now drunkenly attempting to pull down a pair of jeans that would have set Omar-the-tent-maker to wonder.

Now, truly, whether the young lady intended to hump or dump did not matter too much to Willy. No, it was time to act.

He kicked the door shut behind him (plunging all into a merciful darkness), and rushed forward with an impassioned pull at the over-stretched fabric.

O unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster…

OH!

Splat!

He rolled over her. She rolled over him. They rolled over her. We rolled over them. We all rolled into one.

(“Lusty grip lead to slip! It was Murder!)

From his bruised knees, Willy groped about in the pitch black. The toilet… The sink… The light switch…

Click. And the following scene was revealed.

Francine, dazed and sprawled from the bounce off the tub, was still gamely and inanely pulling at her defiant drawers. The force of Francine’s falling fanny had shattered the plaster-of-Paris that, inexpertly, had been poured into the tub.

Reaching upward, in “a clasping gesture of horror and supplication”, extended a thin pair of feminine arms, flesh still quite intact.

~The End~

Author Bio: Robert T. Tuohey was born in 1961, Danbury, Connecticut. He has studied psychology at the State University of New York in Albany (1988), and California Coast University in Santa Ana (1993). In the U.S., Bob worked in the field of mental health; for the past ten years, he has lived abroad (in Japan and China) teaching English at the tertiary level. His current position is Foreign Expert in the Languages Department of Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, Shanxi, PRC.

Bob’s published works include an introductory textbook on English literature (From Beowulf to Joyce, Taiyuan University press, 2001), several short stories (some to be found on the WWW), his home page at
http://jadedragon.250x.com/welcome.htm
and his bimonthly chess column, Past Pawns, at
chessville.com.

Besides writing, blues guitar and martial arts take up a good deal of his time. Bob’s e-mail is
jadedragon61@hotmail.com.


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