Free Fiction Monday: Jiggle Joint of the Damned

Originally published in It Came From the Trailer Park Volume 3

Johnny Ray Dauterive knew they were in trouble when the stripper’s head sprouted shiny black horns. 

“Was it something I said, darlin’?” 

He looked over at his assistant Davy, who was so engrossed in the lapdance he was getting that he hadn’t yet noticed all hell had broken loose at the Tits & Grits out on Route 9. Part of Johnny Ray wanted to run screaming in terror, while another part of him wanted to snatch back the twenty he’d slid into the dancer’s g-string moments earlier. 

The girl’s name was Lilith, and looking back Johnny Ray realized that should have been his first clue that some weird shit was going down. But then, Johnny Ray always did have a soft spot for redheads. It was always a mystery to find out if the carpet matched the drapes. And this woman or whatever she was had the prettiest red hair Johnny Ray had seen in a long time.

The demon stripper leaped off the stage and ran toward Johnny Ray, the black leather tassels on her pasties spinning like little propellers. She gripped his shoulders, her hot, brimstone breath in his face. She opened her mouth, revealing long sharp fangs. Her black-lacquered nails had extended into six-inch claws.

 “Fine,” said Johnny Ray. “Keep the twenty.”

Things had started out innocently enough. They had been called to the Tits & Grits to repair a faulty air conditioner, but when they arrived everything was working fine.“No problem,” Johnny Ray told his young protege. “We’ll stay for a show, maybe a lap dance.” And Big Marge would pay him a full day’s wages for ten minutes of work. Besides, Davy was a good kid and had been a big help to Johnny Ray the last couple of weeks, and didn’t they deserve a little R&R in the form of a little T&A? When Davy was eight years old, his dad had gone out for a pack of Marlboros and never returned. His mother worked the graveyard shift at the Waffle House over in Lula. Johnny Ray thought he might have a pretty good shot with her, so he took Davy under his wing. 

Davy was in his mid-twenties, young enough to make stupid mistakes, old enough to be expected to take responsibility for them. He was thin but wiry, with tan skin and brown eyes. He wore a Caterpillar ballcap shoved down over a crew cut, and his right arm held the beginnings of what promised to be a major tattoo sleeve, a skulls and roses motif. Johnny Ray had never been a tattoo guy, but to each their own.  

As for the strip club, it was pretty typical for such an establishment. There was a carpeted stage near the front of the room with black skirting and a pair of gleaming brass poles. The floor was covered in dirty linoleum worked in a dark green and light green checkerboard pattern that had seen better days. A few tables and chairs were scattered around holding ashtrays that probably hadn’t been emptied in a couple of days. A bar ran along the back wall with glass shelves full of liquor. It was inhabited by a bored-looking bartender who had seen the talent in action enough that it no longer did anything for him. A big guy in a plaid shirt and greasy Mack ballcap hunkered at the far end of the bar. Beyond him, tucked away in an alcove like an afterthought, was a pool table in serious need of re-felting. 

But the cherry on top was the club’s world-famous grits bar (it said so on the sneeze guard). Johnny was about to help himself to a nice, piping-hot bowl of the stuff when everything went sideways. 

His right eye caught the change just in time. It appeared as a smoky shimmer. Davy called it his magic eye. It was made of glass and was entirely for cosmetic purposes. He lost the real one long ago in an incident he didn’t like to talk about, even with Davy. But his big mistake was buying it in a voodoo woman’s shop in New Orleans. He only found out much later that the thing was cursed with the Second Sight. He learned that there was a world lurking at the edges of this one, and sometimes that eye would catch a glimpse. It was how Johnny Ray got his side gig.

He rocked back in the chair, sending it tumbling over backward and sticking his right boot in the dancer’s bare belly, which sent her rolling over and away from him. He struggled to his feet, regretting that morning’s extra helping of breakfast sausage, and picked up the overturned chair, smashing it into the demon girl’s face. Then he got a quick look around. 

Despite the wonderful grits bar, it was still a Tuesday morning, and the crowd was no bigger than it had been when Johnny Ray and Davy arrived. Everyone knew the nice-looking girls got the evening shifts, and this was the time of day when most of the club’s clientele was at work. The bartender had apparently hauled ass out of there, which left the stunned trucker and a few frightened girls, who stared in disbelief at their coworkers who had turned into demons. The poor trucker looked like he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, and sat frozen on his barstool. As one of the demon girls sidled up beside him and began lovingly stroking his cheek with a clawed finger. She was doing something to him. Through his glass eye, Johnny thought he could see a thin, whispy string rising up from the trucker and going straight into the girl’s mouth. 

“I know what we’re dealing with!” Johnny Ray declared even as he recognized the insanity of it all. Johnny Ray had seen some dangerous things in his time, even before being hired on as an exterminator of haints and hoojums. Venomous snakes. A crawlspace full of scorpions. A wall full of bees. And once, even an extremely territorial and possibly horny raccoon. But stripper demons buried the needle on his bullshit meter. 

 Glancing over at his assistant, he said, “Be right back” and ran for the door.

Davy fought back against one of the demon strippers, who was currently all over him like vultures on a gut wagon. “Hey! Where the hell are you going?”

Johnny Ray spun around as he pushed open the glass door. “Gotta get something from the truck. You’re doin’ great!”

Davy hurled a few choice obscenities his way, but Johnny Ray was out the door and gone. 

The strip club had seemed like a nice place, at least from the highway. It was separated by an acre of blast-cratered asphalt from a Love’s truck stop and the world-famous (at least according to their sign) County Line package store, where you could buy a t-shirt that reads “I crossed the line at the County Line.” A tall sign that could be seen from a mile down the interstate read TITS & GRITS OPEN 24 HRS.

The warzone-inspired parking lot was empty save for three or four cars, Johnny’s battered blue pickup, and the trucker’s red big rig, parked lengthwise a good distance away and hitched to a trailer. 

Johnny Ray made a beeline for his elderly Chevy, thinking of how much extra he was going to charge Big Marge for this job. It was one thing to go into a place expecting trouble. But to be caught off guard was–unprofessional. Big Marge was in for a major ass-chewing for not warning him of the danger, assuming Johnny Ray got out of this alive. 

He fished around in the bed of his truck, looking for implements of destruction. He had a fifty-pound sledgehammer, a set of post-hole diggers, and a broken ax handle. He considered each item, but decided that none of them was going to cut it. He rummaged some more, his short fingers finally latching onto the item he sought. He yanked hard, hauling the object out from under a warped two-by-four he kept forgetting to cut up for the fireplace. Satisfied, Johnny Ray hefted it and ran back inside.

It had been a gift from Big Marge “just in case,” she said.  

Johnny Ray didn’t know what a professional monster hunter would look like if there was such a thing, but he was pretty sure he didn’t look the part. He was in his early fifties, about five-six and weighing in at around two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, with a mop of curly brown hair imprisoned by a dirty ball cap with an American flag emblazoned upon it, and a natty beard shot through with patches of gray. His eyes were brown, both the real one and the glass one, and he wore an oil-smeared beige muscle shirt that barely held in his beer gut. On his feet were a well-worn pair of Wolverine work boots speckled and smeared with a combination of drywall mud, paint, Georgia red clay, and a recent dark oily spot that could only be blamed on the previous evening’s meal, a Beefy Seven Layer Burrito from Taco Bell. 

But Johnny Ray felt every bit the monster hunter as he strode back into the jiggle joint from hell, carrying the item like a boss. 

The scene inside the once quiet nudie bar had gone from bad to nightmare fuel in the two minutes Johnny Ray had been gone, and he had to pause and reassess the situation. 

The horned stripper demon he had sprawled out and hit with a chair had recovered, getting into a crouch and hissing in his direction. Davy was holding a pool cue like a Louisville Slugger, taking furtive swings at the girl-thing that had been giving him a lap dance earlier but now looked like she wanted to eat his spleen. The trucker was still held in thrall to his girl and looked like he had aged ten years in a few minutes. The three actual girls who worked the poles there were cowering behind the pool table. 

“You ladies are all right,” declared Johnny Ray. “It’s us they want.”

“What the hell are these things?” Davy cried.

“Succubi,” said Johnny Ray nonchalantly as he hefted the object he was carrying. It was a staff of iron about four feet long with strange symbols etched along its length.

“I don’t know what that is,” said Davy, giving his girl a good thwack with the cue. “But it has the word suck in it, so it can’t be good.”

“They suck out a man’s life force,” Johnny Ray explained.

“Ah,” said Davy, nodding with understanding. “Hence the suck.”

Johnny Ray rolled his good eye. Davy was a good, dependable handyman’s apprentice, but then he had to go and use words like hence.

When Lilith saw what Johnny Ray was brandishing, she flinched, taking a step back, her dark eyes narrowing to slits.

Johnny Ray fixed her with a crooked-toothed grin. “Yeah. You know what this is, don’t you? Now let’s try some of that sex demon shit again.”

He twirled it in his hand like a bo staff, feeling very much like actor Micheal Dudikoff in his favorite movie American Ninja. Only Michael never hand to tangle with a nest of sexy succubi.

The cold iron staff grew slightly warm in his hands, and he thought he could see the symbols on it begin to glow. He squeezed his good eye shut to confirm, and sure enough, the runic sigils were alive in his Second Sight with bright fire.

“Well holee shit,” Johnny Ray declared. “I’m beginning to take a shine to this monster hunter stuff.”

Distracted by the staff, Johnny Ray didn’t notice Lilith lunging toward him. She grabbed him in a tackle, knocking the staff from his hand to clatter and roll across the faded green linoleum to come to rest near the front of the stage. 

Johnny Ray felt like he’d been sacked by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker back in high school during the big Homecoming game against West Bledell. She slammed him into the wall by the door with enough force to crack the sheetrock and knock a framed photo of some Playboy bunny off the wall. 

Johnny interlocked his fingers, making a fat ball with his hands and driving them hard down into Lilith’s naked back.

“Big Mama Dauterive taught me to never hit a lady, but I don’t think you qualify.”

He repeated this three more times until she let go, but she thrashed at him with her razorlike fingernails.

“Davy! Get the staff!”

Johnny Ray’s apprentice handyman had been driven back behind the grit bar, using it as a shield to keep the other succubus from getting close enough to suck out his life energy, and he occasionally reached around it to attempt a swipe of the pool stick. “What?” he called.

“The staff! Get it!”

Lilith hissed a warning at Davy and kept trying to grapple with Johnny Ray. His glass eye burned inside his skull from all the magic it was detecting, and he would have popped it out and tossed it at the stripper if he thought it would do any good. But their only hope was the staff. 

One of the girls who had been cowering behind the pool table stepped carefully into the central room, her frightened eyes darting from Davy to Johnny Ray to the succubi menacing them. Johnny Ray caught her attention and motioned at the staff, which wasn’t easy while trying not to get one’s soul sucked out by a sex demon. 

The girl nodded and ran toward the staff, picking it up with two fingers as if it might bite her. 

“It’s not gonna hurt you!” Johnny Ray shouted. 

Lilith twisted her head in the girl’s direction, giving her a loud hiss. The human strippers were puta non grata to these she-demons, and there was no way either succubus would touch the staff if they could help it. 

Johnny Ray used Lilith’s shift in attention to his advantage, shoving her back as hard as he could and running full-tilt boogie toward the girl with the staff.

“Thanks, darlin’” he said as he snatched the staff from her. 

The girl got the hell out of the way as Johnny Ray brandished the staff at the succubus now charging toward him like the Philadelphia Eagles’ entire offensive line. 

The tip of the staff came to a point, and Johnny Ray held it out in front of him just as Lilith came close enough that he could smell her brimstone breath. 

The succubus ran onto it and kept coming, the staff going into her belly and coming out her back. Johnny Ray felt the thing pierce something soft and squishy and slide over bone as it toured her demon anatomy. 

Two things happened then that Johnny Ray would only talk about once you’ve got a couple of beers in him. First, the staff lit up like the neon Michelob sign hanging above the bar, blinding both of his eyes, the real one and the orb of witch glass. Then Lilith screamed. It was an inhuman scream, mournful and rich, like a cat caught in a tornado. It vibrated through the staff and into Johnny Ray’s hands and through his body until he thought his glass eye would rattle until it fell out and went rolling across the faded green linoleum.

Next came a thunderous rattling as something–actually several somethings–began pounding against the club’s metal roof. It sounded to Johnny Ray like a hundred skeletons fucking.

“It’s hailing!” Davy declared, pointing. “Big ones too. Like golf balls.”

“Dammit!” Johnny Ray swore. “My damn truck. I only got liability.”

Lilith writhed, impaled on the staff like a bullfrog on a stick, reminding Johnny Ray to take Davy frog-gigging one night when this madness was done. Then she began to smoke, turning black as a pig on a spit as she fell away into ash and dust.

“Well damn,” Johnny Ray said as he shook the stick free of any remaining demon stripper debris. He glanced up at the second succubus, who had pulled away from her own meal when she saw what happened to Lilith. “Anybody else want a ride?”

“You’ll pay for that, mortal,” the second succubus declared. 

She lunged at Johnny Ray, but she was keen to not repeat Lilith’s mistake and fell just short of impaling herself the way the other demon had done. 

Davy’s succubus was similarly distracted, and he took the opportunity to grab the still piping hot pan of grits out of the buffet and hurl it at her. The hot grits globbed onto her, burning her skin and lodging in her long blond hair. She spun around to hiss at Davy, who quickly smacked her across the face with the bottom, heavy end of the pool stick before dashing around the other end of the buffet and over to Johnny Ray’s side. 

“What now, boss?” Davy said, his ruddy features sweaty.

“Beats me, kid,” said Johnny Ray. “No repair manual for this. We’ll just have to wing it.”

Davy side-eyed him. “Like always?”

Johnny Ray shrugged. “Pretty much.”

The two remaining succubi took positions opposite Johnny Ray and Davy. Johnny Ray did the math. There were two sex demon strippers and two of them, but only one magic staff that could kill them. Davy’s pool cue probably wasn’t magical, and didn’t look like it would survive another good thrashing. 

Davy’s succubus raked a glob of cooling grits out of her hair as she stared daggers at him. “Next time, no more strip clubs,” he said.

“You got it.”

The clattering of the hail on the roof subsided now that Lilith was nothing more than a little kitty litter on the floor of the strip club. Johnny Ray reasoned that she must have been a powerful entity indeed for her death to disrupt local weather patterns. But he’d leave that up for people much smarter than him to cogitate over. He had a job to do.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s get back to our rat killin’.”

It was clear these two were not going to make the mistake their sister had made. If Johnny Ray wanted to skewer them like a couple of hellish marshmallows, he was going to have to go after them.

“Let’s divide and conquer,” Johnny Ray said with a grin. “Follow my lead.”

Johnny Ray let out his best approximation of a rebel yell and ran at the nearest succubus. His ululation seemed to catch her off guard, which is what he was counting on. He struck her once, twice, each time making the staff ring as it caromed off her demon noggin, causing each point of impact to blacken and turn to greasy smoke. 

It was then that Johnny Ray went in for the kill, running the succubus through, the staff impaling her just below the rib cage. She sagged against it as she turned to black goo, then drifted away as smoke.

“Johnny Ray!” Davy hollered.

Johnny Ray twisted around to his left to find Davy in dire straits. He had whacked his succubus with the pool stick, which had splintered into smithereens. Now the comely sex demon had him by the throat, long black claws set to sink into his skin. Johnny Ray considered his options. He’d never get anywhere with Davy’s mama if he let him get killed by a stripper demon. And he could forget about making a name for himself as a monster hunter. 

“Drop the rod or I gut your boyfriend like a fish,” the succubus spat.

“Actually, he’s not my boyfriend we just work togeth–”

“Do it now!”

“All right. All right. But you’re not getting another lap dance out of either one of us.” Johnny Ray hefted the staff, giving Davy a playful wink. He hoped the kid would get the message.

Instead of dropping the staff onto the floor, Johnny Ray tossed it to Davy, who let go of the stripper’s arm long enough to snatch it out of the air. In one deft move, he twisted it around so that the pointed end faced up and rammed it back right into the demon’s right eye. 

The succubus uttered an inhuman scream as she released him, clapping her right hand over the ruined eye as black ichor poured from between her scaly fingers.

“Go to hell,” said Davy as he rammed the rod straight into her chest.

The rod slid in just beneath her naked left breast. The result was more black ooze and more smoke, but no more meteorological disturbances that would make the parking lot even more cratered than usual. 

Davy tossed the rod back to Johnny Ray as if its touch burned him. For all Johnny Ray knew, maybe it did.

“Nice work, pardner,” he said with a smile. Davy was good people after all. Johnny Ray decided he’d be worth keeping on even if he didn’t get anywhere with his mama. “I like that go-to-hell thing at the end too. Nice touch. Everyone’s gotta have a catchphrase.”

“Thanks,” said Davy. “I think.” He was still staring at the wisp of smoke that had once been a stripper demon set on slitting his throat. After a long moment, he turned to Johnny Ray and said, “What now?”

 “Beats me,” he said. “First time I ever emptied succubi from a strip club. I guess we hightail it the hell out of here before the law comes and asks us a bunch of questions we don’t have the answers to.” Johnny Ray glanced over at the trucker who had been succubus chow. “Sound good to you, buddy?”

The man nodded. “I didn’t see a damn thing.” He was already starting to get some of his color and composure back, and Johnny Ray figured there was no permanent harm done. There could be nothing worse than coming back from a short haul to lower Alabama looking like you’d spent a decade on the road.

“Good answer,” said Johnny Ray.

“Sounds good to me,” said Davy, and the two of them moved toward the door.

Davy gave him a military-style salute as the truck driver hopped off his stool, fished in his pocket for his keys, and went out the back as the retreating strippers had done.

That’s when Johnny Ray heard the familiar, steady diesel thrum of Big Marge’s big white dually pulling up outside.

“Oh good,” he said. “Looks like we get to get paid first.”

Johnny Ray and Davy waited patiently for Big Marge to alight from her truck and push her way into the Tits & Grits. She was a formidable presence, and as big around as she was tall. She was around Johnny Ray’s height but outweighed him by almost two hundred pounds. She had dark wavy shoulder-length hair, a ruddy, freckled face, and bugging blue eyes. She was wearing blue jeans, dirty orthopedic shoes, an ill-fitting blue Carhartt t-shirt and a bright fluorescent yellow safety vest. 

Johnny Ray and Davy got out of her way as she heaved herself into the center of the room. She said nothing at first, just looked around for a minute before turning her attention to Johnny Ray, who stared at her expectantly, grinning like a mule eating briars.

“Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, what a mess. If I wasn’t already going to bulldoze this dump, I’d make you boys clean this shit up.”

“There were unforeseen circumstances,” said Johnny Ray. “Killing demons makes quite a mess.”

Big Marge chuckled at this. “Yeah. No shit.” 

She moved slowly around the room, taking in the damage, almost sliding on a glob of grits caked in the middle of the floor. “Goddamn. Who got grits everywhere?”

Johnny Ray pointed at Davy, who slapped his accusatory finger away. Big Marge ignored him.

“Well, all things considered, I gotta say you boys did a helluva job. There’s just one problem.”

Johnny Ray arched an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

Big Marge went up to Johnny Ray and snatched the rod from his hands, then went to stand in the center of the room close to the stage. “I sent you two morons here to get your souls sucked out. I knew a fat old horndog like you couldn’t resist a titty bar with a fucking breakfast buffet.”

Johnny Ray looked perturbed. “I thought you sent us here to fix the air conditioner.”

Big March scowled. “Like your dumb ass can fix an air conditioner.”

“Well,” said Johnny Ray. “That was hurtful.” 

“But turns out,” she said, ignoring him. “You did my dirty work for me. I needed these succubi out of here anyway, and you saved me from having to give ‘em their walking papers. They’re a real pain in the ass to banish. So I figured either they’d kill you and be all slow from sucking you two dry and I could deal with them, or you’d kill each other, leaving me with nothing to do but take a wrecking ball to this dive.”

“But why’d you want to get rid of me?” said Johnny Ray.

“Us,” Davy corrected. 

“I’m getting to that,” said Big Marge. “See? A few weeks ago I bought this place. It hasn’t made any money in years. Through no fault of the local talent of course.” She glanced at a couple of the girls who had fearfully stuck it out. “You ladies can leave now. Consider this your termination notice.”

They exchanged fearful looks as they quickly gathered their things and ran out the back door for their cars. 

“You’re all heart, Marge,” Johnny Ray said, sad to see the remaining talent go. “So what now? You’re gonna bulldoze this place and put in a Chuck E. Cheese? Maybe a Buccee’s?”

“Nothing so pedestrian. This is prime real estate, but not for the reason you think.” She tapped the staff hard on the floor. A last vestige of black stripper gore slid down the shaft and onto the linoleum to become smoke, and the ancient metal rod started glowing once more.

Johnny Ray’s witch’s eye grew warm in his skull again and he shivered like a possum just ran over his grave. 

“I’ll tell you something interesting about this staff. It’s old. Like older than the pyramids. Rumor has it, it’s the rod that Moses used to conjure the snake that ate Pharaoh’s snakes and part the Red Sea.”

“That is interesting,” said Johnny Ray. “So are we gonna get paid, or…?”

“See?” Big Marge continued, ignoring him. “There’s these things in the earth called ley lines. Know what those are?”

Johnny Ray thought of something dirty but had the good sense to keep it to himself.

“No, of course you don’t,” Big Marge said. “There are these lines of power in the earth. Places that, if you tap them just right, you can access that power. People have been building on them for centuries, sometimes without even realizing it. Stonehenge. The Nazca Lines. The Dome of the Rock. Caesars Palace.”

Johnny Ray chuckled. “So you’re tellin’ me the Tits & Grits is built upon some ancient mystical highway?”

“Not to put it so crudely,” said Big Marge. “But yeah. It’s what drew those succubi here. And this here rod can access that power, which you used to destroy them. And you tossed it in the bed of your pickup truck like a piece of rebar.”

“But why did the succubi suddenly attack us?” asked Davy. “Why not just feed on us slowly without us even knowing?”

Big Marge grinned at him. “Your protege here is the smart one. Good. Excellent question, Davy. That’s the usual MO for a succubus. But the reason they outed themselves was because of Johnny Ray’s eye. They knew what it was the moment you two schmucks ambled in here to ogle at their titties. It made you a threat to them, so they reacted.”

“And you were counting on that,” said Johnny Ray.

Big Marge nodded. “Exactly. That’s why I gave you the staff. I knew you’d use it, and I knew it could clear out the sex demons so I could have this dump all to myself. And get rid of you at the same time. Only that last part didn’t work out so well.”

She tapped the pointed tip of the rod against the linoleum once more, and it glowed even brighter. “Beautiful isn’t it? This rod has gone by many names over the centuries. None of which your dumb redneck ass could pronounce.”

“There’s no need to be condescending,” said Johnny Ray. “So what are you planning to do with that thing anyway? And why get rid of me and Davy?”

“Why, unmake the world of course. And then remake it. The way it should have been.”

“You mean where packages will be sold by volume, not by weight?” asked Johnny Ray. “I always hate when the chips settle to the bottom of the bag and leave you with half a bag of chips.”

“No, you idiot. I mean this.”

She tamped the floor with the glowing rod even harder this time, and cracks began to form, only not in the linoleum. They were long, black jagged scars that seemed to hover just above the linoleum. It was like looking through a piece of plate glass that had been cracked. Johnny Ray’s glass eye throbbed, and he didn’t know if it was seeing these things or if his natural eye was. He was new to all this haints and hoojums stuff, but he knew whatever Big Marge was up to it couldn’t be good. 

“The stars are right,” said Big Marge, and something about her voice had changed. There was a deeper lilt to it, like someone or something else was repeating what she said, giving her voice an otherworldly echo. Her hazel eyes filled with black like someone had poured ink down a couple of wells. 

She began to speak again in that full demon voice, saying a bunch of guttural, nonsensical words Johnny Ray had never heard and didn’t think human mouthparts should be able to say. The room filled with the tinge of ozone and the hairs on the back of Johnny Ray’s neck stood on end.

Johnny looked around. The place had emptied. Even the man who’d had a decade shaved off his life by one of the succubi had bugged out. Johnny Ray imagined him in his red Kenworth, gunning hellbent for home. He had been one of the smart ones.

“Johnny Ray,” Davy called from nearby. “What do we do now?” He was yelling, as there was now a roaring wind coming from somewhere, sending a chill up Johnny Ray’s spine.

“I don’t know, kid,” he said, crestfallen. “Way I see it, we’re screwed, blued, and tattooed. The best thing now is just to get the hell out of here while Big Marge is distracted.”

Davy looked around. The scene had not improved. The black cracks had spread and widened. One had spread to the stage and moved halfway up the pale far wall. The roaring sound they heard was coming from deep within the center of the fissure Big Marge’s magic rod had created. 

“Azathoth. Ammutseba, Devourer of Stars,” Big Marge said as she twisted the staff in a tight circle. “Amon-Gorloth. Chaugnar Faugn.” The crack widened, and Johnny Ray saw furtive movement from within.

“I don’t think there is anyplace we can get away from this,” Davy said. “Besides. We shouldn’t leave it like this. We can’t.”

Johnny Ray scowled at him, already backing toward the door. Outside, inky tendrils chased away the daylight. “Are you fucked in the head? This is above our pay grade, son. We’d need the Ghostbusters and the fucking Scooby Gang to fix this shit.”

He turned and hit the door, pushing all of his weight against the bar. But it refused to open. Johnny watched in horror as meaty tendrils began to grow up and around the bar on the door, sealing their exit tight. He could only assume that the back door was similarly barred.

“The hell?”

“Since you stupidly refused to die earlier,” said the thing that had been Big Marge, “You two imbeciles get to be my human sacrifice. We have a visitor coming. It’s been a million years since he’s eaten, and he’ll be very hungry.”

“Oh hell no,” said Johnny Ray, spinning around, 

  “Oh shit,” said Davy. “Say, that reminds me. I quit!”

Johnny nodded, hoping the kid was kidding even though he probably wasn’t. “Kid, if we get out of this we’re both quitting. This monster hunter business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“No kidding,” said Davy. “But…”

“But what?”

“We were hired to do a job.”

“To fix an air conditioner,” said Johnny Ray. “That wasn’t even broken.”

“I know it was under false pretenses,” said Davy. “But don’t you always say any job worth doing is worth doing well?”

“I think what I said was any job worth doing is worth getting paid well to do,” said Johnny Ray.

Davy scowled, shaking his head. “Whatever. Look around. Look outside. There’s nowhere we can run to get away from this. Big Marge is about to unmake the freaking world. Unless we stop her.”

“I don’t think that is Big Marge,” said Johnny Ray. “At least not anymore.”

Davy shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is what she said about wanting to kill us. She never said why. I think it’s because she knows we’re the only ones who can stop her.”

A grin began to play along Johnny Ray’s lips. “I like the sound of that. So what’s the plan, handyman? How do you wanna plug that drain?”

Davy licked his suddenly dry lips. “Well, for starters we need to get that staff thing away from her.”

Johnny Ray uttered sardonic laughter. “Well, why didn’t you say so? That’ll be as easy as knocking over the Empire State Building.”

But Davy wasn’t listening. He was too busy running toward Big Marge, his arms outstretched. He grabbed hold of the staff, but she twisted it and there was a pulse of ethereal energy that sent Davy flying over one of the few tables that hadn’t already been knocked over.

“You OK?” Johnny Ray ran to his side and helped him up.

“Yeah. That’s not gonna work,” said Davy. “Oh shit! We’re screwed.”

“Not yet we ain’t,” declared Johnny Ray. “Come on. I have an idea.”

Johnny Ray grabbed a chair and hurled it at the door, shattering the glass. Then he ducked beneath the bump bar and exited the strip club, Davy hot on his heels. Johnny Ray jumped in his truck, cranked it, and gunned the engine as he backed out, Davy’s feet still dangling.

“What are we doing?” said Davy when he had climbed fully inside and slammed the door. 

“We’re gonna bring down the house.”

A few yards away the strip club’s sign rose out of the macadam on a tall, rusty metal pole. Johnny Ray backed his pickup in front of it and hopped out, grabbing a big length of chain equipped with a hook from the truck’s bed. He flung the hooked end around the base of the sign. 

It didn’t take long for Davy to catch on, and he went to work securing the other end of the chain to Johnny Ray’s ball hitch while Johnny wrestled with the sign. He wrapped the chain around the pole several times and then stuck the hook through one of the links in the chain.

“Like I said about my third wife, she ain’t pretty, but she’ll do,” Johnny Ray said, admiring his handiwork.

“You really think we can pull this down onto the strip club?”

Johnny looked up at it, shielding his good eye from the sun. “It’s all enough to reach. If we can knock it down, yeah.”

The sky overhead was turning black, not a normal occurrence at two in the afternoon. They had to work fast. The trees on the far edge of the property swayed in a nonexistent breeze, and sinister shapes rose up from the shadows. All the while his glass witch’s eye burned in its empty socket like a live wire. 

Johnny Ray floored it. The old Chevy lurched as the chain pulled taut, and for a second Johnny Ray feared they had yanked the tow hitch and maybe even the rear axle out from under the old girl. 

Davy twisted around to look behind them. “I don’t think we budged it.”

“Hang on,” said Johnny Ray. He put the truck in four-wheel drive and stomped the gas pedal, the air filling with the screeching of tires and the smell of burned rubber. 

“You’re gonna break the chain before that sign budges,” said Davy.

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

Johnny Ray pressed the gas pedal as deep into the floorboard as it would go, and after almost another minute of spinning tires, they felt the sign’s pole buckle. 

“You yanked her up by the roots!” said Davy. “Now go go go!”

With nothing left to hold it back, Johnny Ray’s truck surged forward, heading toward the Tits & Grits at top speed. He swerved to the left, giving the establishment a wide berth as he got as far away from the toppling sign as he could, spinning the truck around just in time to see the big sign collapsing right on top of the now former strip club.

“Timber,” Johnny Ray intoned. 

There was a flash of pale light, and black, curling tendrils that looked a little too much like tentacles for Johnny Ray’s sanity. They spasmed before winding themselves back up and shriveling down inside the rubble. In another moment the sky had cleared and the trees stopped shaking.

“Oh shit,” said Davy. “We killed Big Marge.”

“I don’t think that was Big Marge,” Johnny Ray repeated, wondering if it had ever been Big Marge. She did know an awful lot about spooks and monsters for someone in her line of work. “But yeah. We Dorothy’d her ass.” 

They exchanged high-fives, then Johnny Ray shut off the Chevy’s engine and the two of them climbed out to inspect the damage.

Davy kicked at a broken chunk of wallboard. “You think we stopped it? I mean really stopped it?”

“Looks that way.” Johnny Ray wondered if they should try and crawl through the rubble to find whatever was left of Big Marge. But mostly he was thinking about the staff. Something that powerful and troublesome shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Not that he was exactly the right hands, but he was better than most. At least he knew enough not to mess with it. He’d take it home and stick it in a far corner of his shop, away from any ley lines and tentacled horrors from beyond space-time. Or use it as an aerator spike for his cucumbers. 

The center of the rubble started to shift, causing Davy to jump back. There was a groan as a section of the club’s roof shifted, and Big Marge heaved herself up out of the debris, splintered roofbeams resting on her back like a turtle’s shell. In her right hand, she held the staff, which she used for support as she freed herself. 

“I swear,” she said, and that deep echo to her voice was still present. “You bozos had one job.” Big Marge looked at them, her eyes glowing furnace red. 

Johnny Ray felt a wave of dizziness crash into him as he looked at her. It was like another image was being superimposed over her, this one hazy and indistinct. Johnny Ray suspected it was his glass eye seeing Big Marge for what she really was. He got the impression that she had too many arms, but whenever he tried to focus solely on any one thing, it went away, like certain stars when you looked straight at them.

“Do you two chucklefucks have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Saved the world?” said Davy. He turned to Johnny Ray and gave him a nod. 

Johnny Ray gave the kid a thumb’s up. “We did our job. The job you gave us. And I expect payment.”

Big Marge shook herself of the remaining debris like a dog shaking water off its back and began howling with laughter. 

“OK, fine. A rain check then.”

“Stop it,” Big Marge said as she calmed down. “You’re killing me. Or to put it more accurately, I’m killing you.”

She slammed the rod into the debris and it once more began to glow. A foul wind arose, and Johnny Ray thought he caught the movement of black tentacles chewing at the edges of reality with his glass eye.

In the end, it was Davy who saved the day, grabbing the length of chain still tied around the pickup’s trailer hitch and swinging it, wrapping it around the top of the staff. He pulled hard, yanking the staff out of Big Marge’s meaty grasp. 

Big Marge reached for it, her arm becoming a fat pink tentacle that writhed as it sought the staff. 

“Run!” Johnny Ray hollered. “Get it out of here!”

But Davy wasn’t fast enough, and the thing that had been Big Marge wrapped a wet tentacle around his right leg, pulling him down. 

Johnny Ray ran to him and grabbed the staff out of his hand, giving Big Marge a new target. She released him and went after Johnny Ray, but he was ready. At least he hoped he was.

“Let’s see if this thing works as well on whatever the hell you are as it does succubus strippers.” 

Johnny Ray held it out, tip first, then ran at Big Marge like a pole vaulter in the Olympics. Big Marge wasn’t as quick and agile as the sex demons, even with whatever was riding shotgun inside of her, and she couldn’t get out of the way before the staff pierced her flesh.

There was a loud boom like a blown transformer, and Johnny Ray smelled ozone, brimstone, and even worse smells. A shadowy black tendril slid up from the rubble, grabbing Big Marge by the leg and yanking her down face first in the debris before pulling her down into it. 

By this time Davy had gotten to his feet and came over to stand next to Johnny Ray as the debris began to slide and shift, and everything started drawing back toward the center of the debris. What was left of the Tits & Grits looked as if it was sliding down into an invisible sinkhole. Within another minute nothing was left, and the ruined jiggle joint, Big Marge, the staff, and even the club’s enormous sign were drawn into a tiny pinprick of darkness before even that was gone. Then there was a thunderous pop and even that too had vanished. 

“Well,” said Johnny Ray after a long moment. “That was something.”

Davy gathered up what was left of the broken chain and tossed it into the back of Johnny Ray’s pickup. As they drove away, Davy said, “It looks so empty now. What do you think they’ll build in its place?”

“Well,” Johnny Ray said, “We could always use another Buccee’s.”