Chapter 8: Night Chère

Chase stumbled away from the corpse. The alcohol in his system began to wretch up his throat. He spun around and let it all out, mostly a spray of alcohol, When he was able to regain composure, as much as a man face-to-face with a dead body can, he walked toward what remained of Evan. Evan was left face down and how he died was easy to surmise. Stab wounds, likely from the knife that Lenora followed Evan with numbered over a dozen. He’d since bled out, but the darkened stains were evident across his back. Lenora wasted no time in proving her threats.

“Holy shit. She killed him,” Chase said, jumping at his own voice.

“You sound surprised,” Chase stepped away from the body as Bridgette’s voice followed him from behind.

“You scared the shit out of me!” he snapped, and she laughed.

“Obviously,” she took a long pull from a half-empty beer bottle. She looked down at the body as a wry smile spread across her pretty face. “She wasn’t kidding now was she? You think she cut his cock off too?”

“I don’t know,”

“Well, you gonna help me or what?” Bridgette motioned to the water behind her. She took a long drag from her cigarette allowing for Chase to make up his mind.

“Help you? Help you do what?”

She gestured to the body. “I thought you city boys were quick on the draw?”

He looked down at the body and then back at the bartender. “We can’t move him if that’s what you mean. Just call the sheriff—.”

“So now after you fucked my sister, you want to put her in Rise End?”

Chase didn’t have to know how to find Arcadia on a map to have heard of the publicly mysterious Rise End Prison. The island prison, similarly notorious to San Francisco’s own island prison, Alcatraz, held just as many of the country’s worst criminals as Alcatraz had with one distinguishable difference. Where escape from Alcatraz was a reality, there had never been an escape from Rise End, nor had there ever been an attempt. If not for the stifling heat and mosquitoes, the three-meter venomous snakes and gators were a constant threat along with other creatures. “No. that’s not what I meant.”

“Good. Then help me get rid of the body.”

“Hell no! We can call the sheriff and say we found him like this, and—.”

“That ain’t gonna work. The sheriff comes out here, he gonna investigate and if he investigates, my sister goes to Rise End. Now, you did say you wanted to help her or were you just saying that to get a taste of her sugar?”

“I meant it, but I’m not helping you get rid of the body.”

She took a step closer to him. “You sure about that?” she asked seductively.

He stepped back not sure what Bridgette was capable of and not knowing what she had concealed. “Yeah,” he replied slowly.

She took another step his way. “Nothing I could give you to change your mind?”

He looked her up and down, feeling his cock start to rise. “Uh,” This can’t be happening again. Is sex all these people know? Feeling the excitement again rifling his groin he understood. Sadly, he understood. Sexuality was filtering through the air as water through the surrounding swamp grass.

He glanced down at his crotch, and she laughed. “No Chère. I don’t take anybody’s sloppy seconds, not even my sister.”

He couldn’t help but note that this is the same woman he’d only moments ago found fucking her sister’s boyfriend. The man whose corpse now lay between the two. A woman who didn’t flinch when her sister pulled a knife or when she came upon the body of that same man. Chase was in a tight corner; up a tree like a ‘possum and being barked down by Walker Hounds. “Then what did you have in mind?”

He watched her pull a single key from her shorts and dangle it in his face.

“I thought maybe you would want to go check out Bellafont. I just so happen to be on good terms with the current owner.”

He reached for the key, but she snatched it away.

“You help me; I help you.” She said.

He paused. “Is that the real key to the house?” He knew he couldn’t move to Arcadia anymore. He had to stay as far away as he could from this place. But—he licked his lips—he couldn’t exactly leave without getting a view of Bellafont. He had to know what it looked like inside. There was now no doubt in his mind. This cornered ‘possum had nowhere to go.

“Yes,” she answered. She moistened her lips. “There’s a room upstairs. How about after you eat, we share that shower and then go by there in the morning. Late in the morning.”

“Where are we going to bury him?” he asked thinking of Bridgette under him while he slid into her. It was a fantasy too hard to put aside.

“Oh, Chère.” She nearly giggled. “We don’t bury bodies out here. Not when we got hungry friends lurking around.

“Are you telling me that covering up a murder is common here?”

“You’re in Arcadia. Now, Chère, we got work to do. Give me your cell phone.”

“Why?”

“So, we can see. You have a flashlight on your phone right? You don’t want to get too close to the shore this time of night.”

“Yeah, I do. Okay, here you go.” He pulled his cell from his back pocket and found the flashlight app. He activated it and reluctantly handed her the phone.

She pointed at the corpse, and with a heavy sigh he bent down and picked up Evan’s legs. Despite being dead a good fifteen minutes, his legs were still warm, his pant legs wet.

“Just drag him over to the bank,” She directed, walking to the swamp.

Chase followed her, dragging the body easily and staring at her ass as she aimed the narrow beam into the water. A pair of eyes stared back, and Chase paused dropping Evan’s legs as he backed away from the water.

“Damn gator,” he sighed. “I hate the look of those things.”

“Oh, that’s old Pappy. You can tell from the scar running across the top of his eyes. We suspect a propeller hit him from a fishing boat. Poor thing. He has been ‘round here longer than me. He won't bother you any. Now pick Evan up and let’s be done with this.”

None of that seemed to matter to Chase, but he cautiously lifted Evan up by his shoulders and stood him up, before pushing him into the water. The gator seemed unfazed by the heavy splash, choosing to keep its steely gaze on Chase and Bridgette.

“How long ‘fore Pappy takes care of the body?”

“Aww, Pappy ain’t gonna eat him. Gators like to kill their prey. No, I got other neighbors to take care of old Evan. Plenty of critters out here for him. By tomorrow you’d hardly even know a body was left laying around here.”

“Doesn’t this guy have a family that’ll come looking for him?” Chase asked, his gaze not wavering away from the gators.

“Folks go missing all the time here in Arcadia. If anyone asks, they’ll just say a gator got him.”

“Wonder what that gator is staring at then?”

Bridgette brushed up next to Chase, reaching around and taking hold of his bulge. He closed his eyes and moaned knowing that Bridgette was about to give him the time of his life. “Why, Pappy’s looking at you Chère,”

Chase spun around just as the bottle Bridgette had grabbed from the bar crashed against his nose. He felt the crack as soon as the glass struck. The blood poured as a geyser, blinding him as he stumbled back. The liquor sitting in his empty stomach already had his equilibrium off, and he stumbled precariously toward the water.

“Wh-why?” he stammered.

“We could have been quite the pair Chère,” she said, sadly striking him again. This time shattering the bottle against his face.

A piece of glass lodged just above his left eye as he fell backward into the water writhing in pain. His screams echoed throughout the bayou, yet Bridgette was unfazed, knowing they would go on deaf ears—or at least ears that played deaf with the call of screams. Bridgette watched as Pappy sprung forward grabbing hold of Chase’s shoulder first. Chase’s body was pulled down in a gasp of bubbles. Seconds later he reemerged, trying to gasp for air. But, Pappy was only playing and took Chase by the neck. Within two minutes the tumultuous jostling of water had stopped. Bridgette shined the phone’s flashlight on the water. While the water was too murky to show anything of significance, she could see Pappy’s silhouette resting on the bottom with the darkness of Chase’s drowned corpse tightly clasped in the gator’s mouth.

Satisfied the events of the evening were now over and taken care of Bridgette tossed the remaining throat of the bottle into the water and pocketed the cell phone. She walked to the porch and retrieved her still-burning cigarette from earlier. It rested, politely waiting, along the window’s ledge. The soft orange glow only left a barely noticeable blackened mark on the wooden window sill. She placed it on her lips and took a long and relaxing drag.

“Lenora, why I always gotta clean up your mess?”

Lenora stood around the corner waiting for her older sister. “Sorry Bridge. I just can’t control myself.”

“I know you can’t. Come on inside. Let’s have a shot for the two dicks that will never fuck again.”

The two sisters held each other as they walked into the bar. Bridgette locked the door behind them. Enough had happened tonight.

"He dead?" Lenora asked.

"Yes. But, we still have a problem."

"What's that?"

Bridgette fumbled with the phone, "There's no doubt his woman is going to come down here. Who knows what kind of problem she'll start up."