Uschi! (34 page)

“I hope all your children are born retarded!”

“Get ass cancer!”

“You lick dog pussy—and enjoy it!”

“I hope one day Jesus Christ finds the decency to kill you with a steak knife!”

That last one yelled by none other than the one and the only Denny Gleeth. His ass was out of his seat and he very well may have been the most rancorous spectator in the whole crowd.

The stink in the auditorium’s atmosphere was a vile miasma of corn dogs frying at the concession booths, watery cups of beer as far as the eye could see, testosterone unchained, methane produced from a high volume of popcorn flatulence, and fat people sweat. The faces of the riled crowd were twisted and malformed by their animosity into something better suited for Halloween fright masks. Some of them started to throw things into the ring—trash and spit and even a shoe.

Denny was so caught up in the moment he didn’t want to be left out. He tossed his two bites taken out of it chilidog with impressive accuracy. It hit the big grappler in the back of his lampshade, shit brown and greasy chili sauce splattering and sure to leave a prominent permanent stain in the fabric.

But still the Lampshade Maniac’s atrocities continued. Done with the chops, he now took a seemingly barely conscious Thongor Bronson by an arm and Irish whipped him out of the ring corner and into the one on the opposite side of the four-cornered circle. Thongor went into the turnbuckles at a vicious velocity. His head was brutally whiplashed forward and his tongue protruded from his mouth as if he were a victim of a hanging. He backwards staggered on spaghetti legs a few measly steps from the ring corner, theatrically wobbling and unsure, then collapsed ass first onto the center of the canvas mat, apparently dead to the world.

Around three weeks had passed since the vampires and other such malicious nonsense at the Mapache Thicket, and, truth was told about it, Denny was doing pretty good. Real ninja killing cool awesome good in fact. His broken rib continued to mend along right nicely and the rest of his health tip-top perfect.

Denny’s psychobilly greaser’s ducktail hair choice was sharp and sexy; half a jar’s worth of Hep Cat hair pomade currently kept him slick and in place. Under his lady’s urging, he was going bearded these days. A full and neatly trimmed goatee circled his mouth and chin. Time in the sun and not in a trailer house all day gave him a glowing tan. Denny was looking quite the Michael Ansara in the “Day of the Dove” third season episode of the original
Star Trek
.

His fear of the needle was gone, and his arms now were sleeved in multiple colorful tattoos. The left one was dedicated to the Universal classics. There were prominent portraits of Frankenstein’s monster, the Bride of Frankenstein, a mole man from
The Mole People
, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Kharis the mummy, and the Metaluna Mutant all starting at the shoulder and not stopping until reaching the wrist. The right was more of a free for all, horror and sci-fi characters ranging from several different decades and varying popularity. Blanketing near every available inch of skin on this limb was the tar zombie from
Return of the Living Dead
, Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless,
Fright Night’s
own Peter Vincent, Dr. Zauis, Dr. Phibes, Godzilla fighting Rodan, that little girl with the top half of her face shot off from
The Beyond
, and a Morlock from George Pal’s interpretation of
The Time Machine
.

Denny’s clothes were brand new Converse All Stars, clean and crisp blue jeans with the rolled up cuffs on the pants legs and a dark T-shirt with a shotgun holding Michael Cain in his
Get Carter
tough English bloke period emblazoned across the chest. He looked Mark Hamill in
Corvette Summer
cool, knew it, and wasn’t at all bashful about flaunting it.

The inner Denny was these days nearly as solid as he was looking on the outside. The boy had found confidence and an assured attitude in himself that he once believed he could never have. He now could talk to people and make eye contact with anyone of them. And he was no longer so afraid to go places and try new things.

There was still the occasional bad days, times when he’d get frustrated or scared and would slip and allow insecurities and worry to take advantage of him. Depressive mood days when he wanted nothing more than to puncture his thighs into a bloody mess with a staple gun. When those days would roll around he required calming and reassurances and needed reminding he was loved and was better than this bullshit behavior.

Even with small setbacks like that, it was clear this was not the same milquetoast frightened looser in the days before hot zombie romance. Here was a man who could handle himslef. He was living loud and proud in the widescreen presentation format.

“Goddamnit, why isn’t anybody doing something about this!” he screamed in angered futility.

“I don’t see an anchor tied to your ass.”

That was Uschi making the observation. She was unbothered with what was going on in the wrestling ring, staying in her seat beside Denny’s, all zombie doll erotic and eating from a box of popcorn she had salted with dead mice and roaches. Her too much of a good thing big fake titties jutted out so proudly from her ribcage under her Sado County Auto Show T-shirt she could easily be confused with a suspect attempting to shoplift bowling balls. The rattlesnake skin pattern mini skirt around her hips was loosing the battle in covering her moldering ass. Platinum hair was done old school 80’s valley girl “Gag me with a spoon!” ponytail up high on one side of her head. The StarKist can of tunafish embedded in her forehead was still with her. She had come to accept it, even show it off and fashionably accentuate it with accessories. Currently a plastic rooster fridge magnet was attached to it, cocked at a stylish angle.

Denny turned his attention to her. The screaming throngs of wrestling fans surrounding them never bothered with acknowledging the two of them. Uschi turned in her set and spread her legs enough to remind him she wasn’t wearing any unmentionables under there. Flashed him some A number 1 dead gal pussy that was only for him, she did. William Gaines would be thrilled to know that Alfred E. Neuman was still there, goofy looking as ever.

As her festering sex gave him a vertical wink, she gave him a saucy grin that told Denny to go for it.

His mouth split open in a considerable in size smile, exposing pert near every crooked and discolored tooth he possessed. The eagerness to cause some havoc was obvious in the way his great big Steve Buscemi eyes lit up. Denny practically radiated aggressiveness and an appreciation for violent mischief. This was the face of a man who didn’t apologize or put himself down or think of himself as weak and ineffectual or some hapless asshole.

Next thing you know Denny Gleeth was beating on his chest with his fists and letting loose with a Tarzan yell. Then he was bolting down the aisle and headed straight for the wrestling ring.

“Whosoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!” was his battle cry.

He picked up a metal folding chair before he headfirst slid under the bottom ring rope. The Lampshade Maniac was just coming off the ring ropes and dropping an elbow across Thongor’s breast when Denny reached him and swung the folding chair at his head. The blow struck with a big metallic sounding
whack
!

The crowd of pro wrestling fans immediately went dead quiet and still. No more trash was thrown into the ring. The ring announcer fell silent and the bell ringer finally stopped.

Shitfire, that looked real. And painful. And good enough to cause honest to God authentic damage on a body.

But not painful or damaging enough to put the Lampshade Maniac down for the three count. The wrestler grunted like a bad tempered bull and shook his head a few times as if he were warding off something as simple as a sudden chill, and then he was getting to his feet and turning himself in Denny’s direction.

The lampshade that concealed his whole head and face was turquoise in color and matched well with his navy blue tights and laced up boots. The hit to his skull had smashed and crumpled one side of it in a fair share. He now from the shoulders up looked lopsided.

This up close, Denny could make out the two little eyeholes the Maniac looked through. That unblinking stare he was giving him didn’t appear to be all too tolerably sociable. The red and puss-fattened body acne from years of steroids and other growth hormones abuse was everywhere on his shaved smooth and tanning salon bronzed monstrous physique. He was slimed in a heavy coating of dripping sweat and smelled of ass and feet.

There is an unwritten rule in professional wrestling that only a select few fans of the sport ever learn firsthand. That rule is if you get in that ring uninvited, then you’re taking your life in your own hands.

Fuck the script and the rehearsals, this shit just turned real.

The Lampshade Maniac, twice the size of scrawny Denny, came for him. This didn’t seem to trouble Denny, who held the chair below his waist and pointed down to the mat. He kept on keeping on with his smiling and didn’t give an inch before the giant wrestler’s approach.

“I’m gonna pop you like a dog tic, boy,” the wrestler growled through his lampshade.

When he was in range, Denny abruptly struck out with the chair. He swung with an upward backhanded motion, too fast for the Lampshade Maniac to raise his arms in hopes of defending himself against, and connected inside the lampshade and directly under the chin. This headshot was even worse than the original one was.

The auditorium crowd collectively cringed and cried “Oooooo!” at the moment of devastating impact. The Lampshade Maniac’s teeth were slammed together, many fracturing and shedding enamel shards, and profuse bleeding from the mouth was quick to start pouring out from behind the lampshade. His head was batted back and he teetered on the heels of his wrestling boots.

Denny didn’t give him a chance for any recovery. As he was reeling, the metal folding chair came back around and slapped against his chiseled six-pack abs with all the loving compassion and tenderness of a head on collision between two garbage trucks. That took the air from him and doubled him over. He was laid wide open for Denny’s patented finishing maneuver.

Up went the chair above Denny’s head. The crowd was back into the action, cheering and stamping their feet. Denny’s tattooed arms brought it down as hard as he could work it across the rear half of the Lampshade Maniac’s head.

BAM
!

Knocked the ever-loving and living shit out of the muscle-bound jabroni and left him laid out flat on the mat.

Denny quoted the late great Gorilla Monsoon. “’Stick a fork in him. He’s done.’”

Denny stood victorious over his foe and basked in the appreciation of the audience. He never saw the huge and hairy knuckled fist coming at him.

Again the wrestling fans cringed and cried “Oooo!” when they witnessed the severity of the punch to the side of Denny’s face. Down he went, hurting and bleeding from a cut beneath an eye and harming the integrity of his ducktail hairstyle. He was able to prop himself up on one elbow and try and look up. Through the pain fog that distorted his eyesight, Denny was just able to make out the shaggy and savage form of the modern day barbarian, Thongor Bronson himself, towering over him and set to really get started with the high caliber ass kicking.

“Dude,” Denny moaned as his face throbbed, “it’s cool. I’m here to save you.”

Long strands of brownish-red hair ran down past Thongor’s troglodyte prominent slopping brow and hung in front of his eyes. He was breathing hard and heavy with the occasional booger blasted from a nostril and redeposited into his bushy wildman beard. It was Thongor Bronson, in his furry tights and needing no one to save him. He sneered and said, “Fucking pencil neck geek.”

He raised a booted foot, intentions to stomp Denny’s face in, but Uschi and her extraordinary feminine curves entered the ring in time to prevent that from happening.

Wrestling fans weren’t too sure how to react to the arrival of a voluptuous green woman with barbed wire running through different parts of her figure and a face so decomposed it barely at best could any longer pass for a human being’s. So they for the most part remained neutral. A little polite applause from some and a few jeers coming out of others.

As Thongor was standing balanced on a single foot, she came up on the modern day barbarian from behind and sucker punched his ass in the kidneys. He hadn’t ever been hit that hard before. And God willing, he never would be again.

Thongor couldn’t keep erect after a turd walloping such as that, the strength just all of a sudden evaporating out of his barbarian physique. He collapsed like melting butter to his knees. His face flushed with humiliation as he listened to the sad and long-winded pitiful weak man’s moan that escaped past his lips. A line of sloppy drool began to unspool from his slack mouth. The ruined kidney made him unable to stop his bladder from voiding. The front of his fur-covered tights became a sopping wet mess of blood and piss.

Reaching out at him from behind, Uschi took hold of his face with her hands. The smell of advanced corpse decay and insect repellent wafting off of her almost drove him to vomit. Uschi, in-between sucking at the popcorn kernels and rodent hairs and roach carapace shards caught between her teeth, politely but firmly informed Thongor, “Excuse me, sir. I represent the estate of the late Lin Carter. This is your cease and desist order in using the copyrighted name of Mr. Carter’s beloved Lemurian barbarian character.”

Her fingers dug in like steel hooks in a side of beef, ruthlessly piercing facial matter. Thongor commenced screaming. Uschi hardly noticed any resistance from his pliant flesh as she pulled the two sides of his face in opposite directions. Skin was stretched, became taut, and finally reached the limit of its elasticity and snapped.

The face ruptured open with a rich spew of gore that darkened a fair majority of the canvas mat and managed to blood spatter freckle the first three rows of wrestling enthusiasts facing Thongor. As she continued to pull, it split in two down the middle. Skin and muscle and all other things facial came away from the bone.