Wicked Prey

words all screwed up, “Black Betty got fat lips, Bam-a-Lam,” the “Bam-a-Lam” punctuated by a variety of impacts as he ricocheted around the two rooms and the bathroom that he could get at.
    They went back to the pipe again, and again, and again . . .
    * * *
    THEN LETTY called.
    Ranch got the phone again, because, again, it was under his head, as he lay facedown on the beanbag chair; he had death in a corner, and was pushing on it, hard. Then the phone rang, and his life was saved.
    “’Lo?”
    Whitcomb, the comet, hurtled out of the kitchen and shouted, “Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you . . .”
    Ranch listened for a moment, then said, “. . . this ain’t Randy . . .”
    He gave Briar a peculiar look and struggled to his feet, got in front of Whitcomb and caught the chair and when Whitcomb screamed at him, he put his face an inch from Whitcomb’s and howled back, until Whitcomb stopped, and then he said, “Bitch needs to talk to you, and you needs to talk to her.”
    “Yeah?” Whitcomb took the phone and said, “This is me? Who’s this?”
    He listened, then looked at the phone, and then at Briar, then tossed the phone in the corner and said to Briar, “Bitch says you been talking to Davenport.”
    “No,” she said, but there was a lie in her eyes, somewhere, and Whitcomb saw it.
    “Don’t tell me ‘no,’ bitch, I can see you lyin’.” Whitcomb’s face was purple with rage and the crank. “Get down. Get down, bitch. Ranch, don’t let this bitch out, she been talking to the cops . . .”
    They shouted at her, made her confess, though the confession didn’t make any sense, and Randy got his stick and made her get naked on her hands and knees like a dog and he beat her until she collapsed, her back red with blood, and then he said, “Ranch: fuck her in the ass, fuck her in the ass, fuck her in the ass . . .”
    “Randy . . .” She was in a haze of pain and blood, and tried to crawl away and felt a foot on her back. Not Whitcomb; Whitcomb’s feet didn’t work.
    “Fuck her fuck her fuck her . . .”
    * * *
    LETTY RODE up the hill, saw lights at the house, ditched the bike, walked across the yard past the van, and listened; and heard the screaming: “Fuck her fuck her fuck her . . . ,” ran back to her bike, down the hill and to the pay phone and she called 911.
    “I think somebody’s being murdered,” she said. “I can hear the woman screaming . . .”

    RANCH PULLED up his Jockey shorts and Briar crawled across the kitchen to her dress, and Whitcomb, exhausted, said, “We need to get George. Everybody in the van.”
    Ranch: “George,” and he started toward the door, but missed the door and cracked his head on the doorjamb and fell down.
    Whitcomb screamed, “Get up, you fuckin’ turd,” and Ranch got to his knees, and then his feet, and said, “You fuckin’ scrote,” and Whitcomb shouted at Briar, who was huddled in a corner, trying to cover herself with her dress, “Into the fuckin’ van; we find George again, into the fuckin’ van.”
    Ranch was all for it; $250 in crank all gone. He hovered over Briar, his insane face a half inch from hers, howling, no words, a dog howl, and she struggled into her dress, the blood on her back seeping through the thin cotton, and Randy marched them out the back door and down the ramp.
    * * *
    LETTY WAS there, bouncing her bike across the yard. They didn’t see her immediately, and she climbed off and dropped the bike: Whitcomb, Briar, and Ranch looked like some kind of surrealist parade, something from a masked ball, a man in a wheelchair pumping a stick like a drum major, screaming unintelligibly, followed by Briar, hurt, staggering, bloody, and then Ranch, in his Jockey shorts, holding on to the ramp railing, barely able to walk, still howling like a dog.
    Then Whitcomb saw Letty.
    He hit the brakes, and Briar stumbled, and one of the chair’s wheels went off the concrete at the bottom of the ramp. And the chair tilted and Whitcomb screamed at her, and she wrenched it upright.
    Whitcomb jabbed the stick at Letty and screamed, “There she is. There she is. Get her! Get her! Ranch, get her!”
    Letty crossed the yard and hit the button on the switchblade and the blade flicked out. “I’m going to cut your head off,” she said to Whitcomb.
    Whitcomb saw the knife and recoiled, then lifted his stick overhead with both hands and screamed at Briar, “Push me, push me,” and at Ranch, “Get her, get her,” and Ranch