Literotica edition © 2013 Guy Bailey
*
At twenty-four years of age, Boy stood two metres twelve centimetres in height and weighed one hundred and fifty three kilograms. He ate anything his mother cooked for him but found the greatest enjoyment in the flavour and texture of human flesh. He preferred female, and young. It was almost all gone though, and he was in the back shed mincing up the last of the stocks from the freezer; the arm of a mature man, the father of the last female. He had cut the flesh from the bone and was feeding the strips into the meat grinder Papa had bought from a catalogue with his new credit card.
Boy chuckled slowly to himself. Soon there would be another female come to stay in the caravan with the $25 a night sign painted on it. He had made the sign much brighter by adding a fresh, lime green outline to the letters earlier that day. He figured girls liked pink and green letters and numbers, and pretty dollar signs too.
***
Isabel checked her purse: a twenty dollar note and a few coins. She looked at the lip-gloss again: two dollars fifty. Her father's Peter Jackson cigarettes were sixteen dollars ninety-five. She grabbed a cherry bomb lip-gloss and put it on the scratched glass counter beside the smokes. "And three snakes," she said to the fat service station attendant. The big jelly snakes were fifty-five cents each.
The guy smiled. His teeth were different shades of grey and his puffy cheeks were red with burst blood capillaries. There was a nerve or something twitching his right temple, or maybe he was about to wink; a thought that made Isabel feel a little queasy.
She grabbed her lip-balm, snakes and her dad's smokes and took off out the door, leaving behind the chilly air-conditioning and feeling the heat from the concrete driveway hit her like a nuclear powered spotlight. It was early afternoon of a scorching summer day.
The tiny roadside village of Kangaroo Flat consisted of the one service station, a post office come general store, and a pub. There were seven houses. The highway was bitumen for a hundred metres either side of town then gravel for a couple of hours east and west beyond that. It wasn't really a gazetted highway but the number of road-trains carting cattle in recent years had forced an upgrade in the standard of the gravel surface.
There were no tourists of any description to be found at Kangaroo Flat. The pub catered to the few people in town and those from surrounding farms. Early afternoon it was pretty quiet. Isabel found the bar empty and just two men playing pool. She sat at the bar. The two men looked over and smiled.
"How you going, honey?" It was the taller of the two who had spoken. He would have been around thirty. He had dark eyes and a slightly pointy nose. The shorter guy was bald, or shaved bald. He had a familiar face. He had been in town the last time Isabel was there, she decided.
"Buy you a drink, love?" the tall man asked amicably enough.
The barman had approached. Isabel had only a few coins left; not enough for a drink, other than ice water, which she had hoped to get for free. She considered what accepting a drink from the two men would perhaps lead to.
"Could I have a glass of ice water, please?" she asked the barman. He was a grey haired man with sparkly green eyes. Isabel had seen him and exchanged smiles many times before. He scooped some ice and opened a bottle of mineral water. "I don't have any money," she said to him. "Usual water will be fine."
"That's fine, miss." He placed her glass of water on the bar mat in front of her and returned to a back room where there was a golf game on television.
The tall guy approached and leant back on the bar quite close beside Isabel. "It's rude you don't answer a man when he talks to you, sweet cheeks." He had bad breath. His eyes lowered to Isabel's cleavage then lifted to meet her gaze.
"Sorry. No thank you," she said.
The bald guy had edged closer. He sat on a stool along the bar a ways, leaning on his pool cue and looking towards the doorway where the barman had gone. He nodded to the tall guy, signalling that the barman was occupied, it seemed.
"Come play pool with us, eh?" The tall guy's breath was really bad. Isabel found it stifling.
"No thank you."
Isabel looked beyond the tall guy to another man who had suddenly appeared in the pub doorway. He was a complete stranger to her, and she hoped, to the other two men as well. She smiled and waved to him. "Over here, Kenny!" she called out cheerily. "This is my boyfriend Kenny," she informed the tall guy, who stood, backing up a bit.
'Kenny' was nicely built, Isabel noticed. He had on Levis and a white t-shirt that clung to the definition of muscle in his shoulders and chest. His face was lined with the maturity of a man in his mid-thirties. His hair was dirty blond. He was twirling a set of car keys around a finger as he looked over in confusion. His hands were huge.
Isabel glared at him, rolling her eyes sideways at the sweaty oaf that was harassing her.
'Kenny' smiled. "What's up, Lois?"
***
'Kenny' (Brad Oakshot) was lost. He had left the city at 3am in a company 4WD with a tractor part for urgent delivery, and a mud map of where to find some place called Dalton. He had been driving for nine hours with the mud map having let him down about three hours ago.
This was merely another in a line-up of days that had not gone well lately. The reason he was delivering some stupid tractor part to a farm in the middle of God knows where, was that he had been shifted sideways. He had been kicked out of the office, where he enjoyed an air-conditioned thirty-eight hour week with an early knock-off every Friday, and shoved into sales and deliveries. He was picking and packing orders and driving a damn delivery van in city traffic every day. Often until six or seven at night.
"Hey, Brad—you're single right? You've got nothing planned for tomorrow eh?" his new boss had asked, smirking. "Got this delivery that has to happen!"
This was tomorrow; a Saturday. His old job had been in accounts receivable, in an office that didn't even exist on a Saturday.
He eyed the girl who had called him Kenny. He got that she was asking him to step up and help her out with the two sweaty looking farm boys. She looked a bit like Lois from the Superman TV series that he used to like. She was in a short sundress and boots. He could see why the farm boys were trying their luck.
"You okay there, baby?" He shifted his gaze to the guy sitting at the end of the bar then to the one edging back away from his 'girlfriend'. "How ya going, buddy—you all good?"
Brad worked out and did a bit of Karate. He was confident, and could see a lack of that in the eyes of the other men. 'Lois' stood and slipped her arm within his as he approached. She smelled like lollies. The feel of her fingernails digging into his bicep sent a warm tingle through his chest.
The farm boys left the pub and sprayed gravel as they took off in their rusty tray back utility. The barman pulled Brad the beer he ordered then returned to his television in the back room.
Brad took a long swig of the cold ale. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. Just a pair of dickheads. Thanks."
Brad pointed to himself. "Brad."
The girl smiled. "Isabel. Although Lois is a nice name. What made you call me that?"
"Popped into my head."
Brad took his mud map from his back pocket and opened it on the bar. "You heard of a place called Dalton around here anywhere, Isabel?"
