Mama's Moonshine

Murder always worked up Simone’s appetite.

And every profession (illicit or not) deserved a lunch break, right?

That’s why she stopped at Lester’s Loose Meat Sandwiches fresh off a kill. The sandwich shop’s name sounded vaguely perverted to her, but what other options did she have in this backwoods shithole of a town?

Simone had made her way through this town before, eons ago. Shoving dark recollections of that time from her mind, she shivered, despite the dingy sandwich shop’s oppressive heat.

Lester seemed like a sweet old man, but his trembling hands and cataract-clouded eyes made him a lousy sandwich artist.

“I hope those aren’t sweet pickles,” Simone bemoaned, the third time he reached for an ingredient she despised.

Seconds later, a bone-jarring sound reached her ears: the familiar roar of her 1965 T-Bird’s engine starting in the parking lot. Her heart stopped.

By the time she raced outside, into the humid Virginia night, its taillights flared like flipped birds in the distance.

Fear bulleted through Simone’s blood.

-----

How could she have let this happen? How could she have grown so sloppy, so cocky?

Speaking of sloppy, this sandwich was the pits, all tumbling crumbs, botched ingredients, and greasy drips.

The bastard had even added Worcestershire sauce. She could taste the sauce’s nauseating tang now, as she shoveled the shit sandwich into her mouth.

“Worthless sonuvabitch,” she hissed, both at Lester and the car thief. Sticky crumbs expelled from her mouth, spraying the dashboard.

Simone was a neat freak in her T-Bird, but the pathetic excuse for a car she currently drove didn’t deserve the same dignity.

She steered her boyfriend Dennis’s economy car with her free hand, puttering through aimless, winding country roads.

Where are you, Lorraine? Her eyes scanned the barren countryside, seeking her sweet, cherry-red painted baby. That T-Bird had stayed true to her through peaks and valleys of her career, and performed her duties with as much style and panache as The Pussy Wagon in Kill Bill.

For anyone to touch her Lorraine — her beloved T-Bird — much less kidnap her, seemed a damnable sin.

And the fact that a fresh body sat stowed in the T-Bird’s trunk? Simone’s stomach turned at the prospect of the car thief stumbling across her long-kept secret, mustering enough conscience to alert the police. Or maybe she felt sickened by the revolting ingredients Lester had added. Mustard, too??

“I’ll kill that sonuvabitch,” she whispered.

She hadn’t caught a glimpse of the car thief, but felt determined to imprint her face on his brain as the last thing he’d ever see.

Simone discarded remaining, dissembled bits of sandwich onto Dennis’s lap, and he rolled them into nearby aluminum wrapping without a word.

Thank goodness her normally passive boyfriend had insisted to travel with her for work this weekend.

He’d waited dutifully behind at their run-down motel while she’d gone off and performed her hit. Then, when she’d phoned and told him about Lorraine getting taken, he’d predictably suggested they alert the police. But when she told him NO, and to get his khaki-covered ass to the sandwich shop, he did so with no questions asked.

Now, they drove blindly into the night, with no way of tracking Lorraine except faint traces of exhaust occasionally lingering in the air — which Simone sniffed out like an animal on the hunt.

They passed a sign that originally read “Welcome to Deville’s Triumph”, but now read “Welcome to Devil’s Dump” via strategically sprayed fire-red graffiti in flame shapes.

Determined to live up to its nickname, the thick woods flanking the road gave way to meadows littered with every variety of trash imaginable.

Chills scattered across Simone’s skin like spilled marbles, and shadowy memories threatened to take shape from the garbage heaps.

She swore she’d never return to this godforsaken place, and yet here she was. A full moon shone down upon her, and while she might normally take a moment to admire the breathtaking sight, it seemed like an omen tonight, a full circle.

Simone pushed her superstitions aside, refocusing on locating her prized T-Bird.

The stench of desperation and decay clung to the night air.

And mottled with it, the smoky, tantalizing perfume of exhaust slithered in; Lorraine had been here recently.

Simone’s unsettlement dissipated, and she sniffed the air, inhaling the sweet scent of her baby. Her mouth watered, despite being laced with traces of the unappetizing sandwich.

She rounded a bend so sharply Dennis’s bleach-white knuckle somehow turned a shade lighter on the center console.

“Slow down, Mona.” His request came slight, barely a whisper. His teeth clattered, even though he wore a cashmere v-neck cardigan on this hellishly hot night.

She shook her head. Poor sap had no idea what she did for a living.

But he was going to find out tonight.

-----

An empty soup can crunched beneath my sneakers as I backed away from the trunk’s gaping maw, my jaw a similar shape.

A twig snapped nearby, and I shot a paranoid glance into the woods’ shadowy gloom. Nobody came to this secluded, trash-strewn turn-out at night, unless (like me) they also had something to hide.

Satisfied enough I was alone, I turned back to the Thunderbird’s open trunk, and the horrors and treasures inside it. I’d pulled over due to an alarming, meaty-sounding clunk in the trunk not a minute ago, audible above the roaring engine. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

Crickets chirped and cavorted in the surrounding forest, blissfully unaware of my predicament. Or perhaps, mocking it.

I gulped in a shaky breath, puckering my nose at the surrounding stench, a signature of Devil’s Dump. Not to mention my own stench — I still reeked of bacon grease, stale coffee, and the cigarettes my co-worker Cookie had been trying to kick.

And let’s not mention the body odor I’d accumulated on my walk home from my thankless waitressing job, my armpits as sticky as the diner’s syrup pitcher handles, sweat pearling beneath my boobs.

Even standing in this desolate turn-out, I still wore my hideous, skirted uniform, its mustard yellow shade the same hue as mysterious stains on a mattress discarded nearby.

When I’d spotted the fire-engine red 1965 Thunderbird in Lester’s parking lot not five minutes ago — on the way home from work — a familiar, long-suppressed urge had filled me.

My skin had flickered with electricity as I neared it, as if approaching a skilled, long-lost lover.

I’d ached to breach its gleaming red facade. To screw loose the steering panel, exposing the coiling, copper-brown solenoid, technicolor wires twining through it. To snip the right wires, twist them together with hasty yet meticulous precision. To rotate the screwdriver in the ignition, hear the motor fire to life.

After all, I always carried the tools in my backpack — the gloves, wire cutters, screwdrivers — the way a recovering meth addict might a glass pipe. I’d long ago tried to convince myself they served as a reminder of where I’d taken wrong turns in my life, like my juvie stint for auto theft nearly a decade ago.

But in reality, I knew I kept the tools with me because I’d give in again to my long-buried craving one day. Yes, I always sensed I’d steal another car. Though I had no idea such threats and temptations would reside inside its trunk.

My gloved hand slunk toward the moonlit bag gleaming in the trunk, but I recoiled it seconds later, guilt gliding along my limbs.

Careful, Maggie.

I shook my head. What would Mama think?

Her face materialized in my mind. Kind yet world-hardened blue eyes, rimmed by sun-crinkled skin. Hair gleaming as gold as a cloudless day. A perpetual smile, even through the most banal of childhood games I made her play.

She was a mountain of a woman, and her personality spanned a similar size, larger than life. She wielded an ineffable fiery spirit, the country in her burning like the moonshine shots she could throw back, like the Virginia summer sun beating down on the brim of her leather cowboy hat.

Would Mama have ever stolen a car for me?

My eyes misted, because it wasn’t a second later the answer came loud, insistent.

YES.

I’d kill for you, Magpie, she’d once told a six-year-old me, seconds after hurling a cottonmouth into oblivion when it tried to bite me down by the swimming hole.

My father never took up for me the way she did. He never possessed the same spark, warmth, capacity for love — qualities Mama clung to even as cancer tried to whittle her into a shell of herself, a husk.

She had fought back hard against the illness’s cruel grip. But it finally pulled her under — into the unsettlingly still state I found her in when returning home from school one winter afternoon at all of eight.

Her normally sun-tanned complexion had gone a ghostly grey; she wore a white nightgown of all things, and clutched a bottle of unopened moonshine in her sprawling lap, perhaps clinging to the hope she could one day drink it again without fear. The IV beside her had still dripped away, as if it could do any good at that point.

Such a common, unremarkable way for such a fiery woman to get extinguished. Besides, she’d exhibited such a tenacious fight against the beast — the cancer — it’d seemed she would beat it.

Gravel shifted beneath my sneakers. My throat tingled. My eyes glided skyward, toward the full moon.

I closed them momentarily, savored its shine. And could almost sense Mama’s eyes twinkling like the stars from afar, appraising me once more.

I hoped she had found happiness and health in the next life — if nothing more, she was at least physically spared from the squalor of Devil’s Dump.

Yet, I swore I sensed her ghost sometimes, swore I smelled the sharp, unforgettable scent of Mama’s moonshine lacing the summer air, swore I heard my ramshackle abode’s eaves creaking beneath her cowboy boots.

“Maggie,” I whispered our shared name, chills scaling my spine. Some even claimed me the spitting image of her, but most days, I didn’t see it, couldn’t hope to fill her shoes.

My gloved fingertips brushed the Thunderbird trunk’s lip, my eyes still shut.

Should I do it, Mama?

I opened my eyes again, their new focus The Shenandoah Mountains, which carved stark, shadowy outlines into an otherwise sparkling sky. They hunched and huddled together like miserable elders, bitter at their lot in life, and that this infernal place is where the world had planted them.

Oh, how I’d always longed to drive beyond those mountains and never look back.

Mama wouldn’t want me to die in this town, to befall the same fate she had. Yet I supposed a piece of me had languished here so long in hopes I could sense her close to me.

I’ll stay with you, Magpie.

I blinked back my tears.

Even if I headed West, wouldn’t Mama’s spirit always remain near? And wouldn’t she want me to seize this opportunity to hightail it out of here?

My jaw locked, gaze fixated on the gaping trunk. My head nodded once with the sharpness of a made-up mind.

I reached inside the trunk, grabbed the clear plastic bag stuffed with cash, stowed it in my backpack, my hands still gloved.

Try as I might to avoid eyeballing the trunk’s other contents, I couldn’t help myself. A little black book as small as a passport sprawled open, names struck through on different pages with the banality of a grocery list.

And beneath the book? A large gray garment bag, the unmistakable outline of a human form within it, tufts of red hair peeking from a gap at the bag’s top where the zipper didn’t close.

Waves of nausea roiled through me, but I swallowed them.

Whatever had happened in this car before I’d stolen it measured up to crimes far more reprehensible than mine. I planned to plant an anonymous tip with the sheriff tonight.

And tomorrow? Why, I’d head West, break the lease on my shack of a house.

After all, I could now afford to.

On my way out of town, I’d pick up, pour out some moonshine in Mama’s honor — even though I didn’t have a taste for the stuff.

I slipped into a black hoodie and dark jeans I kept in my backpack, ready to stomach the additional heat for extra visual cover they would afford me.

I would make my way through the woods to get home. After all, I knew them like the back of my hand, thanks to Mama. I’d only stick to trails the moon shined most brightly though, wary of errant trash.

However, no sooner had I changed from my waitress uniform than a jarring sound rang out behind me: colliding wood, glass, plastic.

I whirled around, heart pounding.

-----

Simone rounded another bend too hard in her boyfriend’s glorified go-cart, and didn’t spot the ghostly figure standing in the road until too late. Her stomach plummeted.

“Mona!” Dennis’s voice had never contained more bass.

She hated that nickname.

She slammed on the brake, furiously spinning the wheel in a desperate attempt to avoid vehicular manslaughter. The car barely missed the nightgowned bull of a woman standing in the road’s dead-center.

Simone heaved a sigh of relief, but it proved too soon. A shocked gasp left her next at sight of the lone telephone pole they now careened towards.

CRACK!

Bursts of color exploded in Simone’s vision, her body thrashing like a rag doll caught in a bicycle wheel.

Meanwhile, metal crunched, glass shattered, wood splintered beyond the technicolor blur blotting her eyesight. Something bulky, log-like smashed through the windshield glass, pinning her fast to the driver’s seat.

Haze gradually faded from Simone’s gaze, revealing the crash’s aftermath.

The airbags had apparently deployed amidst the accident, bunched like crushed testicles beneath the telephone pole neck that pinned her in place.

Simone longed to release a nervous laugh at the sight, but instead emitted a pained, labored cry as physical agony belatedly bloomed within her.

She stared ahead, into the wreck’s twisted mass. Soggy sandwich bits splattered the windshield’s shattered glass, and beneath the wooden pole protruding through the windshield, her boyfriend’s glasses laid forlorn, squashed like a bug.

“Den?” she wheezed.

He hated that nickname.

She dared not turn her head, for fear she might break her neck. Or witness a death she’d never intended.

He didn’t respond, sparing her. And scaring her beyond measure.

SO CLOSE.

Although she couldn’t see Lorraine, she could sure smell the her exhaust’s smoky perfume; the T-Bird was achingly near. They’d gotten so close to her baby, she could almost sense the engine’s throb within her, a second heartbeat.

Her head pounded, and something warm and viscous snaked along her collarbone, like death itself preparing to coil around her throat.

She began to close her eyes, hoping highlights from her life would flash behind them, and she could savor her final moments, if these were those.

But a flicker of motion caught her attention, and anger flashed into her gaze. If this was the rogue woman who’d caused the accident, Simone felt ready to commit murder for the last time.

However, her anger retreated upon sight of who approached. Her scalp prickled as she gazed into a hauntingly familiar face outside her splintered window — convinced she witnessed an apparition come to taunt her on death’s door. The figure even dressed in what looked like a black cloak, as if borrowed from The Grim Reaper. A ghost (or demon) from a past job, one she’d rather forget.

She’d never forget the job though, try as she might. It had taken place here, in Devil’s Dump.

“She’s taking too long to die,” the cold, stern-eyed man had lamented his terminally ill wife’s tenacity, keen on pocketing her life insurance policy, and sour that her cancer hadn’t finished her off yet — he feared she might pull through. “Too much of a fighter,” he grumbled, furrowing his brow. “So, let’s take the fight out of her.”

The request’s coldness had sliced Simone like a knife, cutting dangerously close to her heart. Simone’s own mother had passed of cancer, so who was she to snuff out someone grappling with it so ferociously?

Then again, she also wasn’t one to turn down a paying customer.

So, she’d made it look like an accident, via a single pentobarbital injection into the woman’s home IV while she slumbered. It had been seamlessly clean, smooth, even humane — yet had also represented one of the rare jobs that rattled Simone’s bones.

And this apparition before her? Why, it could be the woman’s clone. Broadly built, big-boned. A sympathetic yet weary gaze, hair golden enough to put sunbeams to shame.

“Maggie?” she said, nearing delirium. Hadn’t that been the woman’s name?

The ghost gasped, eyes widening

Simone shook her head, fighting tears. It hurt to speak, but she had to unburden her conscience, especially with the uncertainty of where her life would land tonight.

She took as deep a breath as her failing lungs could manage. “I’d take it back if I could.” She tried to point at the crook of her left arm, but it was twisted behind her. “It didn’t hurt, right?” More useless words piled into her throat before making an appearance. “The...the injection?”

The girl quivered with haunted realization, her visible skin ghost-white — as if learning a crippling truth for the first time.

She almost dropped the phone in her trembling hand, which Simone had only now noticed. It was queued to the emergency screen. And she wasn’t wearing a black, tattered robe of death, but rather, a hoodie.

Shit. This was no ghost, no matter how much she resembled one of Simone’s hit victims (and damn did she ever).

Simone internally cursed her pain-spurred hallucinations. She strained forward, every broken bone screaming, blood streaming down her scalp, sternum, spine.

“Call for help!” she wheezed, regaining shreds of lucidity. “PLEASE.”

She could hunt down the car thief later, could worry about if her illicit career would get exposed later. She wanted to live so badly it ached, this primal desire pressing like the splintered telephone pole into her chest.

The girl’s expression flattened, and her shock evaporated. Her jaw clenched, eyes hardening. A swell of rage seemed to well within her, making her broad shoulders rise. She didn’t let it externalize though, as if doing so would let Simone win some unspoken game.

She unzipped her backpack, deposited her phone inside it. Before she zipped the bag back up, Simone’s eyes widened upon sighting all the cash stashed inside, in a plastic bag.

THE CAR THIEF. This bitch had not only taken her Lorraine — her sweet T-bird — but also the $20,000 she’d made off her last hit, one of her most lucrative jobs ever.

Would she alert the law about the body in the trunk, the little black book beside it?

Did it even matter anymore?

The girl lifted her eyes, which scanned the nearby woods — or perhaps, the mountains behind them. Her nostrils seemed to billow, as if catching scent of something in the breeze. Resolve solidified within her sky-blue eyes.

Curses gurgled within Simone’s throat, but she could only choke on them as the girl disappeared into the forest.

As blanketing blackness encircled Simone, she contemplated: Was this karma for her sins?

To die in such an unspectacular fashion — and in Devil’s Dump of all places — was truly the pits.

She swore she’d never return to this godforsaken place. And now, she’d likely never leave it.

Plus, to be encased in Dennis’s flimsy, pathetic excuse for a vehicle truly represented the dingleberry atop a shit cake.

Sadness swept over Simone, overshadowing the pain’s screams. What would Mom think of where her life had led, all her abandoned dreams?

Would she take pride in Simone’s relative success — despite the seedy ways she’d acquired it? Simone shook her head, before cringing at the associated pain. She would never know — because she sure wasn’t headed the same place her mom had ended up.

A dark swell of giddiness prickled within her. She tried to release one last crazed, maniacal laugh, make the moment cinematic. But she could barely spare a breath, her lungs like balloons deflating for the final time.

As Simone drifted into the deceptively comforting embrace of impending death, a scent that would normally alarm her hit her nostrils: the foreboding chemical tang of gasoline spilling onto the open road.

And overriding it? An aroma equally sharp, though far less expected.

Simone closed her eyes and expelled an incredulous huff, certain she was losing it once and for all.

Why else would she so vividly smell moonshine?