White Hot

The eye never did fit right. It bulged out too far from the socket, and the iris was the color of dirt instead of deep mahogany like Odel’s real, right eye. She supposed she shouldn’t complain since it hadn’t cost her a cent, thanks to Medicare. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t come with a price, one she’d been paying since she was thirteen. Nothing in life was truly free.

Odel hadn’t inherited the physical attributes society used to define beauty, and a bulging eye certainly didn’t help the matter. Left up to her, she would never wear the damn thing. It just wasn’t natural for a person to have a glass marble stuck in their head. But people had a tendency to get squeamish around an empty eye socket. Not that she really cared what others thought. Most people were only interested in one thing anyway. Themselves. How they felt or looked, what they wanted or needed. Normally, the only interest they had in anyone else was what they could get out of them. It was one of the reasons she’d moved out of the French Quarter, where her family had lived for generations. Being the last twig from her infamous family tree, she’d grown tired of people always hounding her for one thing or another.

But Odel had special company coming tonight, and she wanted to look as nice as possible. She’d sensed him searching for her earlier, but it wasn’t until about twenty minutes ago that she got a sharp mental image of the guy. He looked good for a white man. Thirty-three or four years old, six feet tall, give or take an inch, with an average build and collar-length blond hair. His hazel eyes held a fire in them that excited her, as did the mustache that framed his full lips and ended at his strong, square chin.

Few people braved the woods and swamp to come here. Most who tried turned back long before they reached her house. The last man who’d made it all the way to her door had come about a week ago. Unfortunately, he’d made the mistake of underestimating her. A lot of men were like that, though, always thinking they were smarter and better than women. Never wanting to give ladies their due. Too much testosterone if you asked her. 

# # #

Bottom Feeder

It wasn’t so much the smell of pig shit that got Nina’s attention, as it was the size of the pig shitting. It looked like a Volkswagen with busted gas tank. A light breeze collected the scent of the brown stream squirting from beneath its looping trail and sent it her way. She slapped a hand over her nose but not quick enough to keep the putrid odor from drilling into her sinuses. It was like snorting a cocktail of warm rotted meat, vomit, and something metallic. She gagged, eyes watering.

The woman who’d introduced herself only moments earlier as Lervette Patin let out a hearty laugh, revealing pale pink gums with no teeth and a nicotine-stained tongue. Not a pretty sight on any woman, but paste it on four hundred pounds of blubber dressed in a faded green housedress and tattered sneakers and you were looking at downright gross. Lervette clapped her hands twice, and the rolls of fat on her body jiggled in every direction at once. When her guffaws finally calmed to mild snorts, she said, “Ol’ Maudwan’s been havin’ de drizzles for a coupla days. Don’t know how long dey gonna last, so you bes’ learn to breathe out you mout’ when you come ‘round to feed.”

Nina gaped, one eye on the animal’s thick yellow tusks and what appeared to be a quarter-size mole on the left side of its snout. What was a sixty-plus-year-old woman living alone doing with a creature like that? “I-I’ve gotta feed that . . . that pig?”