Contributor: Robert E. Petras
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His name was Urick, but he called himself the Stomper, and the Stomper was in the woods stomping snakes, one of his callings in nature. Why else would evolution endow some badass with size Double D feet other than kicking punk ass and killing snakes?
He was heeling the head of a two-foot snake with Army surplus boots, snuffing it out like a cheap stogie. It stopped wriggling. The Stomper scooped up the stupid looking snake by its tail and whipped it, flinging the head off, barely missing a dove resting upon a tree branch.
The Stomper pumped a fist and then slid his ass-kicking hand into a back pocket of green canvass pants and pulled out a notebook. He thumbed through his notes: how many punks whose asses he had kicked, their names and ages, the women he had banged and dumped and, finally, the snake ledgers—black snakes, copperheads, racers, rattlers, garters—the pages dotted with hundreds of checks. He scribbled a new entry: “wussy gray brown two-foot, black hourglass on head looking like birthmark by Missy Stewart’s left tit. Missy Snake? No. Pussy snake, no fight in it.”
Pen and notes pocketed he whirled around and tripped on what appeared thick knots of tree roots except at this spot in the woods these rooty things sprouted too far from the trees. “Looks like the hair of some hippie punk I beat the shit out of years ago.” he wrote, and then leafed through his notes, finding a check by “Hippie punk. Knocked him out. Cut off his hair.” “Tangle Wood” he jotted a new entry.
The Stomper stared at the sky, graying as a cloud slid across and swallowed it, casting the forest in complete afternoon shadow.
He stomped into the woods, tallying three more checks next to “Pussy snake.”
The deeper inside the woods he stomped, the denser and broader the patches of tangle wood grew, now woody ponds the Stomper used his size 16 Double D’s like snowshoes to navigate across.
Two more of the pussy snakes and heads checked out of life and checked into his record book.
Like thin ice, the viney tangle wood collapsed to his Double D’s. He tried to pry his feet free, thrusting and tugging, but toppled on his ass. He stared at the gray-brown sky.
The first snake Urick noticed slithered along his wrist, the black hourglass head mark gliding by the luminous digits of his watch. He snapped the snake behind him and then another and another while they swarmed him, and he could feel their collective body heat, warm like an electric blanket, massaging, except where they bit him. He could feel them boring into him, feeding upon his flesh as they bored deeper and deeper. He thrust, kicked and twisted, the tangle wood seeming to bind tighter around his ankles. All he could do was fight, killing as many as he could with his hands, with his teeth, biting several heads off.
They cocooned him, a writhing mass, made him a Medusa from head to foot, some even squirming inside his boots. The front of his shirt was saturated with his spit, his sweat, blood, snake blood and his. Urick could no longer move his arms, not even will his hands to choke. He could see only the blank black cloud in his mind made by the mass of snakes before they bored inside his eyes.
Nothing worked any longer except his mind. At least he could chalk up the kill tally in his mental notebook. He had to have killed six of those little punks, maybe seven. Even eight. But the only thing Urick could see inside his head was a check beside his own name.
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Robert E. Petras is a graduate of West Liberty University and a resident of Toronto, Ohio. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Yesteryear Fiction, State of Imagination, Death Head Grin, Burial Day Books, Phantom Kangaroo and Heyday Magazine.
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His name was Urick, but he called himself the Stomper, and the Stomper was in the woods stomping snakes, one of his callings in nature. Why else would evolution endow some badass with size Double D feet other than kicking punk ass and killing snakes?
He was heeling the head of a two-foot snake with Army surplus boots, snuffing it out like a cheap stogie. It stopped wriggling. The Stomper scooped up the stupid looking snake by its tail and whipped it, flinging the head off, barely missing a dove resting upon a tree branch.
The Stomper pumped a fist and then slid his ass-kicking hand into a back pocket of green canvass pants and pulled out a notebook. He thumbed through his notes: how many punks whose asses he had kicked, their names and ages, the women he had banged and dumped and, finally, the snake ledgers—black snakes, copperheads, racers, rattlers, garters—the pages dotted with hundreds of checks. He scribbled a new entry: “wussy gray brown two-foot, black hourglass on head looking like birthmark by Missy Stewart’s left tit. Missy Snake? No. Pussy snake, no fight in it.”
Pen and notes pocketed he whirled around and tripped on what appeared thick knots of tree roots except at this spot in the woods these rooty things sprouted too far from the trees. “Looks like the hair of some hippie punk I beat the shit out of years ago.” he wrote, and then leafed through his notes, finding a check by “Hippie punk. Knocked him out. Cut off his hair.” “Tangle Wood” he jotted a new entry.
The Stomper stared at the sky, graying as a cloud slid across and swallowed it, casting the forest in complete afternoon shadow.
He stomped into the woods, tallying three more checks next to “Pussy snake.”
The deeper inside the woods he stomped, the denser and broader the patches of tangle wood grew, now woody ponds the Stomper used his size 16 Double D’s like snowshoes to navigate across.
Two more of the pussy snakes and heads checked out of life and checked into his record book.
Like thin ice, the viney tangle wood collapsed to his Double D’s. He tried to pry his feet free, thrusting and tugging, but toppled on his ass. He stared at the gray-brown sky.
The first snake Urick noticed slithered along his wrist, the black hourglass head mark gliding by the luminous digits of his watch. He snapped the snake behind him and then another and another while they swarmed him, and he could feel their collective body heat, warm like an electric blanket, massaging, except where they bit him. He could feel them boring into him, feeding upon his flesh as they bored deeper and deeper. He thrust, kicked and twisted, the tangle wood seeming to bind tighter around his ankles. All he could do was fight, killing as many as he could with his hands, with his teeth, biting several heads off.
They cocooned him, a writhing mass, made him a Medusa from head to foot, some even squirming inside his boots. The front of his shirt was saturated with his spit, his sweat, blood, snake blood and his. Urick could no longer move his arms, not even will his hands to choke. He could see only the blank black cloud in his mind made by the mass of snakes before they bored inside his eyes.
Nothing worked any longer except his mind. At least he could chalk up the kill tally in his mental notebook. He had to have killed six of those little punks, maybe seven. Even eight. But the only thing Urick could see inside his head was a check beside his own name.
- - -
Robert E. Petras is a graduate of West Liberty University and a resident of Toronto, Ohio. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Yesteryear Fiction, State of Imagination, Death Head Grin, Burial Day Books, Phantom Kangaroo and Heyday Magazine.
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Author:
Robert E. Petras
