Enzo Stephens: Afterlife

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Afterlife Collusion

By Enzo Stephens

Sammy Haggerty thundered his big ole self through the deep, dank forest in the middle of the night; breath swooshing in and out of his laboring lungs that were covered by countless pounds of excess flesh.

Sammy was not cut out for running, in any manner, shape or form.

Sammy was cut out for one thing; beating on stuff. ‘Stuff’ in this context applies solely to people, which is what landed him in this predicament in the first place.

He surged on, even though the urge to just stop and drop on his butt in the middle of the burgeoning forest in the middle of the night with some creepy-assed fog blowing out of who-the-hell knows where, hoisting his lumbering feet and legs over tree roots and through scrub brush.

A dim and distant part of him seriously hoped there were no venomous snakes hanging out, just waiting for some big, fat and overripe piece of USDA Prime Eyetalian Meat to sink its fangs into.

That thought punctured the encroaching mental fog that came with sustained over-exertion and lent speed to his headlong flight through the thick forest during the darkest hour of a moonless night, which in and of itself was sheer insanity. As in, why in the hell would anyone want to do something this crazy?

Because it’s better than doing time.

And that is a sobering enough reason to grow wings on his feet like Hermes.

His toe felt the protruding root before it snagged his foot to send him flying, only to come to an abrupt stop shoulder-first into an unyielding bole. His clavicle snapped and he cried out, not sure which was louder, the snap of the bone or his big-babyish cry.

In either case, paranoia had Sammy firmly in its grasp and he struggled to his feet, left arm dangling uselessly; each shambling step an episode in blinding, blistering pain, and yet he pressed on.

To where? Who the hell knew. Just… away. Away from the cops who were surely by now swarming over the wreckage of the prisoner transport vehicle. Away from those suits who were studying the corpses of the two guards in said prison transport vehicle. Sammy’s last two ‘vics’ (although he felt justified in removing them in order to ensure his freedom).

Sammy was being transported from Camp Hill State Corrections facility, which is a medium-security prison, to Frackville Maximum Security. It would be hard time for a very long time for Sammy, though it would be a much longer and harder time for the family of the 16-year old girl he raped, enslaved and then eventually killed in a ritual that was reminiscent of a Satanic ceremony.

Sammy pleaded temporary insanity due to ‘evil voices’. His attorney managed to scrounge up professional witnesses that testified to Sammy’s suffering from multiple-personality disorder and a whole host of other letters that sounded really, really bad. 

And while Sammy greatly enjoyed the fruits the young lady had to offer, finishing her off was the ultimate. 

Still, he was awarded with 18-24 years in a medium-security facility with prescribed psychiatric care, and things were going swimmingly for a while, until Sammy grabbed a guard one night, knocked him senseless, stabbed him between 60 and 80 times and then pleasured himself at the expense of said guard’s lower anatomy.

That stunt landed him on a high-speed transfer to Frackville, and pretty much Sammy’s death sentence. He’d heard stories…

So, as he bounced and jostled about in the back of the transport truck, complaining of how painful the tight handcuffs were, the transport vehicle came full-on to several huge deer that were strolling down the state route as if they owned it, sending the transport careening into a guardrail and over the side of an embankment and into a tree that seemed to be as wide as a barn.

The impact blew Sammy into the front of the van a split-second after both guards slammed forward with concussive force. The driver looked as though he was flattened against the seat, pinned there by an exploding airbag, while the other guard smashed his head off the windshield and was now lying sprawled in a wash of blood that flooded from his ruptured head.

Sammy dug keys out of the passenger guard’s belt and fumbled around for like forever until he opened the cuffs. And then he stopped to think about the downed guards, eventually coming to a conclusion, especially when the radio squawked.

Sammy would show the guards mercy by not letting them suffer. He removed a nightstick from the belt of the passenger, then pried his mouth open and rammed the end of the nightstick into his open mouth, pushing until he heard a loud crack. The guard’s eyes opened suddenly in an unseeing panic, and then they slowly glazed over and his head fell limp.

Sammy smiled. That was fun. He turned to the driver who groaned at that precise moment. Their eyes locked; the guard seemed to know what was coming and he began to struggle, albeit weakly. Sammy didn’t bother prying the guard’s mouth open; he just rammed the end of the nightstick into the guard’s mouth, shattering teeth along the way, and then levered his prodigious strength behind the nightstick until he heard another loud crack and that guard slumped dead.

Sammy was breezy good; his guards were deaders, his cuffs were el-gonno, and a whole wilderness lay open before him.

It was a gift. A gift of freedom!

And then the radio squawked again. “Prisoner Transport 203, we have your location. Please report status of vehicle and the prisoner. I repeat; we have your location and we have vehicles on the way now. What is your status please?”

Hurriedly Sammy located a key to his ankle-cuffs and freed his feet. He then punched his way out of a crumpled van door to stagger to his feet along the side of the elevated and empty road.

It was time to hightail it. Beat feet. Sammy turned this way and that, trying to decide the best way to go. He reasoned that left was west, which was farther away from Frackville, and so that’s where he set off, veering away from the road and into the deep forest at a trot that he hoped didn’t exhaust him.

It did. But he pushed on, afraid of getting caught, terrified of that ominous place called Frackville.

To now. There were no noises from the road; Sammy hoped it was far distant. He had no idea how long he’d been barreling through the forest, but he reasoned that he had to be pretty far off. Sammy hoped like hell he didn’t leave a huge trail too.

His entire left side was in a throbbing agony he’d never experienced in his thirty-odd years of life and he heard himself talking out loud to himself and he wondered what the hell he was saying. 

The darkness was thick, the air was wet with fog that felt like vegetable oil coating his skin; his thirst was a ravening animal in his head, in second-by-second combat with the pain of his shattered clavicle. 

But he pushed on nonetheless. What else could Sammy do?

And then he spied it. A light, glimmering far ahead through the forest. Sammy stopped, blinking, wondering if he was imagining it, if it was a delusion. 

It wasn’t, the light was still there. Sammy bowed his head, took a deep breath, then another, then pushed himself to move toward the light. Branches slapped his face and arms, but Sammy didn’t care. 

Time crawled, his world was nothing but one step after another, then unyielding darkness, the stinking fog, and that glimmering light in the distance. Often the steps were uneven, jolting his abused shoulder, the sudden pain snapping his attention back into laser focus.

Finally Sammy made it to a small clearing and the light that called to him from so far away now washed over his broken, ruptured person, and it felt glorious. It felt warm and cleansing and Sammy dropped to his knees, muttering something that he supposed was a form of prayer.

It emanated from a second-floor window of what looked to be a house. In the middle of the forest?

But Sammy was well past asking questions. He needed to slake his thirst and tend to his injury and then he needed to sleep. He stumbled around the perimeter of the house, searching for a door, and then finding it, he then located a doorbell and pushed it… and received no response.

He jabbed it again and again and… nothing. He tried the knob. Locked!

Sammy opted to pass on the courteous approach and use the gift that God gave him — his brute strength. He took that doorknob in his right-hand fist and squeezed. Hard. He poured every ounce of power he had into it and he felt the metal of the knob begin to crumple. He wrenched hard and the knob came off in his hand. Sammy dropped it and pushed the door, stepping into a dark room. 

He pushed the door closed and crept his right hand along a wall and was rewarded to find a wall-switch. He flipped a toggle and a soft yellow glow grew out of the far corner of the room.

It was a larger room and had the feel of a basement. Sammy spied an end table and snared it, using it to block the door closed. He listened closely and heard nothing. All was silent in the house; as silent as the deep forest outside.

Who was the light on for? Where were the occupants?

Deep questions that Sammy abruptly pushed out of his mind as he made for a flight of steps and tried to climb those steps as quietly as possible, though there was an occasional squeak.

Another door at the top of the steps that Sammy pushed through boldly. Still no one in sight, and the place didn’t look as if it were occupied. Sammy forged ahead; up into a kitchen that looked to be well-equipped. The light that beckoned Sammy from oh-so-far away beamed in an adjoining room, which Sammy strode into.

Not a soul was evident. He spied a timer plugged into a wall outlet and surmised that the light was programmed to come on and go off at certain times.

Gee, ya thought of that all by yourself, didja?

Sammy moved from room to room; all dark, all unoccupied, and the dust on the hardwood floors indicated there hadn’t been a body there in quite some time.

Sammy went to a bathroom and turned the water on, sticking his face under the tap, drinking greedily.

Thirst slaked, Sammy was momentarily staggered by both weariness and pain; he stumbled into a bedroom, located a bed and fell onto it and was asleep in seconds.

^^

Sammy stared at himself in the mirror as he dragged someone else’s razor over his grizzled cheeks. His eyes were surrounded by shadows and he looked as if he were haunted, and in a way he was.

Always wondering when the cops would arrive at the house, pounding on the door, pointing their guns at him, then slapping cuffs on him and taking him to Frackville. 

But weeks and weeks had gone by — though Sammy didn’t exactly go out of his way to measure how much time had elapsed — and still the owners of this house were non-existent.

It was like it’s a gift from God!

He pulled the makeshift sling off and tried to rotate his shoulder. The sudden pain dropped him to his knees and he gingerly replaced the sling with tears in his eyes.

Sammy made his way to the kitchen. The larder was very well stocked with canned goods, and Sammy took advantage of that. He popped open a can of Dinty Moore, threw it on the fire, finished it off, opened an Iron City and made his way into the TV room. He snapped on the 75-inch Samsung and thumbed his way over to Netflix. He pulled up a crazy show called ‘Happy’ and set himself to laugh uproariously.

Sammy had no thoughts of dead guards, nor of a dead 16-year old girl. He was all about the food, the beer and the nutty show.

The doorbell rang.

Huh?

Panic assailed him instantly — COPS! 

Sammy crouched his way to the windows looking over the gravel drive and saw…

Nothing!

What?

Slowly he made his way downstairs to the door he damaged long ago. He peered through the glass of the door and saw…

Two girls?

Oh it had been soooooo long since he’d been with a woman and he wanted IT. Bad.

He opened the door. “Yeah?”

There were two girls there, maybe 16 or 17. “Hi!” they said in unison, and with a whole lot of cheer and bright, shiny teeth.

“Hi. What can I do you for?”

One of the girls curtsied — unbelievable! “Well, we’re selling Girl Scout cookies.”

“Huh?” And yes indeed both girls were wearing Girl Scout uniforms, or at least that’s what they looked like. But the skirts…

The other girl piped up, “Sure mister, want some cookies?”

My goodness, he thought. Those short skirts…

“Come in, come in,” he invited, stepping aside to allow the girls to come into the house.

“Thank you,” one of them giggled as they brushed past him and into the basement room.

“C’mon up,” Sammy invited them as he moved to the stairs. “What are your names?”

More giggles. Then, “I’m Sasha, and this is Sonya. We’re twins!”

“Really? Twins? You don’t look alike.”

“We’re not identical, you doofus, but yeah we’re twins. Twins don’t have to be identical, you know.”

“Well come on upstairs so I can see what you have to sell.”

“What’s your name mister?”

“Call me Sammy.”

“I like that, Sammy. It’s easy to remember when… you know…”

Images of carnal delight flooded Sammy’s head. “Are you two girls too young for a glass of wine?”

Sasha looked at Sonya. They nodded to each other. “No, I don’t think so. We’d love a good glass of wine.”

“So would I,” laughed Sammy.

^^

The two girls laid out a large, colorful catalog of a variety of delicious-looking cookies, but Sammy was having a ‘hard’ time keeping his mind focused on the catalog. The girls were on either side of him, and Begorrah-be-damned if he wasn’t actually licking his chops at the prospect of diving into the little lassies.

“So lemme ask you girls a question; do you have this psychic thing where you can feel what each other is feeling?”

One of the girls nudged Sammy’s thigh as he perched on a stool at the kitchen island. “Now why would you ask such a silly question?”

Sammy had his reasons. “Well…” he drawled.

“He wants to know if one of us would feel pleasure if the other was getting pleasure!”

“You mean, like cumming, sis?”

“Yep. That’s zactlee what I mean.”

Both girls looked at Sammy who took on a sheepish expression. “Well, c’mon girls, you both are gorgeous and I’m just a simple single guy here—”

And as he finished that sentence he looked from one girl leaning on the kitchen island on his left, to the girl on his right who was swinging a huge cast-iron skillet toward his head.

The resounding clang echoed in Sammy’s head long after the lights went out.

^^

Light gradually crept into Sammy’s clouded vision. He groaned, his head pounding like a fat man on a treadmill. Even his frikken eyes hurt!

“Well now there you are big boy!”

And the vision of a beautiful teenaged girl swam into view; her luscious blond hair cascading down from her silky soft shoulders to tickle Sammy’s cheeks and neck, and then his chest, and Sammy was in heaven, even if he couldn’t put two and two together to make four. 

Another girl laughed; a tinkling sound like an angel. “Look at his little willie, sis!” And the vision turned away, then turned back, a look of scorn on her angelic face.

“There’s not much going on there Sammy.”

Sammy begged to disagree. He felt the onset of some serious wood going on down south of the border.

The other girl laughed. “Is that all you got? But damn dude, you’re not a small guy!”

“Just small in the package department!” And both girls laughed and fire raced up Sammy’s neck to flush his face in shame. He opened his mouth to speak—

But he couldn’t because there was something stuffed in his mouth. 

The girls took turns slapping his gear around. It was uncomfortable — hell, it was painful, but somehow Sammy was enjoying it, and he felt himself growing excited. He pulled at his arms, but they did not move. He turned his wobbly vision to the left and then the right to see that his wrists were cuffed to a bed. He raised his head to look at his feet — which also refused to move, and found his ankles cuffed to the bed.

And a gag in his mouth; Sammy was in the shit now! The girls were on either side of him, taking turns smacking his erection around and laughing at him, and of course, he was completely naked.

“Hey Sammy.”

What girl was it that called him?

“We know whatcha did.”

Sammy stammered, “What do you mean?”

The other girl piped in, and she wasn’t looking so hot anymore; her skin taking on a pale, pasty white pallor. “You tore that poor girl up. Her name was Mary.”

Sammy cried out. “Yeah it was Mary, but I’ve begged for forgiveness…”

“This is your forgiveness, and you lose, assclown.”

And right before his eyes, the two stunningly gorgeous girl scouts with the array of super tasty cookies…

Disappeared.

Leaving Sammy cuffed to a bed, stark naked and alone.

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