Dem Nudie Books

I “sold” this story to a very small micro-press anthology – Darkened Horizons 4 – as "My Brother's Keeper" very early on. Think I was “paid” 2 dollars a page, which amounted to $15 dollars. In any case, I actually have a much more nuanced version of this story somewhere in my files, adapted to a failed novel, but I failed to find it my searching. In any case, it's a very early Bassler House story which is rife with clichéd characterization, flawed point of view, a character whose first and last name rings with alliteration; and it's a story which lacks logic, purpose, or an actual plot. And I offer it to you, with minor tweaks to its style, and nothing more.

Fifteen year old Jed Jensen flopped down on the crumbling front steps of Bassler House, pouting like a little girl, although no one would ever be able to accuse him of being one with his thick, bulbous neck, small beady eyes and round, turtle-like head covered by a shaggy mop that only distantly resembled cared-for and trimmed hair. A sticky sheen of sweat covered his thick hide, reflecting the sun. Dark circles loomed under cavernous arm-pits on his stained white T-shirt. Sweat dripped off his nose and beaded his forehead, and he huffed and chuffed like a strained locomotive that was far more loco than it was motive.

“There ain’t no nudies here,” he rumbled; a deep and phlegmy sound gurgling in the back of his throat. “Looked ever’where, an I didn’t find nothin’. I t’ink Buford’s lyin to us.”

Bud Jensen, fraternal but not identical brother, stretched his leaner, slightly more muscled form out on the steps, chewing a dry weed stalk and rolling his eyes. With a longsuffering sigh that clearly marked him as the wiser one, he said, “This is Brett Buford we’re talkin about, Jed. T’aint nothin ever come outta his mouth but lies.” He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched again; adding sagely, “Don’t know what yer so surprised about, anyhow. Those stacks of nudie books ain’t nuthin but a stupid story.”

Undaunted, Jed shook his head like a stubborn bloodhound, his nostrils actually quivering, as if they detected the faint scent of glossy paper lust on the breeze.

“Uh huh,” he grunted, “Buford ain’t t’only one who said there here. Jesse Kretch said he heard the stories too, an was plannin on checkin it out later this summer.”

Bud shrugged, looking off into the hazy summer distance. “Jesse Kretch’ll b’lieve anythin anyone tells him. He prob’bly heard it from Buford, too.”

Jed shook his head with a bulldog’s tenacity. “There here,” he muttered, unconsciously licking his lips, “an I’m gonna find em.”

It’s fair to say that of the two Jensen boys, Jed wasn’t the ‘sharpest tool in the shed.' Neither bright nor hard working, unconcerned about the surrounding world, Jed possessed a minimal amount of social etiquette. He majored in picking his nose and farting as loud as humanly possible, and minored in hawking messy, globular ‘lugies’ whenever the desire arose.

Bud was slightly more refined. He didn’t have nearly the same problems with flatulence that his brother did, nor did he excel in the nose picking department – though when it came to lugie-hawking, he was second only to his brother Jed in his rather dubious honor.

In another universe, life could’ve been much different for Bud. There had been a time when he’d been quite the uncommon Jensen. Though never an avid student, he used to enjoyed reading a book now and again. Before he was old enough for his father to make him too busy with chores and odd jobs around the Commons, earning spare booze change, Bud liked to skip school, find a quiet place by Black Creek Creek, and enjoy a Hardy Boys adventure, or perhaps a good Encyclopedia Brown if he felt up to it.

Both Jensens had been bracketed as ‘learning disabled’ from the start of their academic careers; Bud lumped right in with Jed. Passively anti-social, almost terminally quiet, they rarely, if ever, talked to non-Jensens. Not on the school bus, in class, in town, or around the Commons. Even when accepting illicit flasks of liquor and packs of cigarettes from Brett Buford or Jared Simmons, they usually did so with a casual grunt, perhaps maybe a nod.

Their peers, especially the townies, excluded them because they were from the Commons, and of course, folks from the Commons were dirty, smelly, and weird, as Sally Jerkins always liked to tell Monica Sowthidge on the bus as they stopped to let the Jensens off every night.

However, Bud and Jed excluded others just as much as they were excluded. Quite honestly, they didn’t give two farts in the wind that everyone snubbed them, because as far as they were concerned, Jensens snubbed everyone else, instead of the other way around.

Today, Bud and Jed were doing the same thing they’d done for the past week after the bus dropped them off: poking around the crumbling, decayed foundations of Bassler House. For about thirty minutes, they'd done as boys always did at abandoned houses: threw some rocks at the windows, trying to break what little glass there was left. They'd poked around the foundation, brushed back cobwebs and dust from basement windows, peering with mild interest into the murky dark, which, as always, revealed nothing. Finally, they'd retired onto the front porch, sharing an old, battered silver whiskey flask they’d gotten from Buford.

There were looking for those nudie magazines, of course. The stacks of old nudie magazines, rumored throughout all the junior and senior high as left behind by years of football parties and other “social” gatherings. According to the rumor, with every party, the mythical treasure trove grew until it filled one whole room of the house with nudie magazines of every kind and variety, from the standard to the most depraved, stacked from floor to ceiling. This veritable pornucopia of adolescent lust was brushed off by most as being a legend and nothing more. For others, however – like Jed - the enticing myth of the room full of nudie books burned like hot, fiery slivers in the mind.

The story of the Jensen family was long, tedious, and mostly unremarkable. No great downfall had led to their mundane existence. Pa’s injury at the lumber mill four years ago was almost anti-climactic, nothing really to talk about. One day, after years of heavy work, he found one morning he could hardly get out of bed without blinding, burning pain running along his spine. When it was all said and done; his disks were shot from working in the mill. He couldn’t afford the expensive surgery to correct them, (especially because the insurance company refused to cover the cost, deeming it a “pre-existing condition), and he couldn’t work, so he went on disability.

There was no great tragedy. No cruel twist of fate; save that it had always been this way with the Jensens and would probably always be this way, for the Jensens simply never changed. They neither wanted it nor feared it; neither hated it nor strove for it. They were who they were, and things would always be that way.

That‘s all there was to it.

The tale was as old as it was stale, but true throughout the Commons of the world. Station determines standing, standing determines treatment, treatment determines reaction, reaction damns destiny.

In other words, the Jensens, like so many others, had learned they were different; and that being different meant being ridiculed, marginalized, and ignored. Step out of line with what the world expected of you; damned if you do. Toe the line to make those close to you happy…damned if you didn’t.

Of course, as far as the Bud and Jed were concerned, at the moment it was all about the nudies, and nothing else.

Bud leaned back on the sagging front step of the Bassler House, took a brief drag of his cigarette, and then exhaled. He’d started smoking last summer, and even though he was past the hacking, eye-watering and vomiting stage, he still wasn’t a veteran smoker like Buford or Simmons, so he never held in the smoke very long. Just enough to get a buzz.

Sitting next to him, Jed grunted before taking a swig from his flask. “There ain’t no nudies here. Buford’s fulla shit.”

Bud shrugged and kept smoking as if it was of no consequence to him. “Buford’s ‘lways fulla shit.”

Jed took another swig, wincing as he swallowed the biting liquor. He replied in an almost wistful tone, “Yeah, but I wanna see’s me some nudies.”

Bud gave him what he imagined was a wise, knowing look, (he was the smarter one, after all), and said, almost a touch tartly, “It’s just a big story. Ain’t no room full of nudies or nothin like that. The seniors just tell it to see how many asshole's come out here.”

Jed looked at his brother and scowled. “Gotta be some nudies around here somewheres, with all them football parties they have here alla time. Buford said so hisself. Said he saw a bunch of ‘em last time he’s here.”

Bud shook his head as he took another modest puff, exuding the air of a parent talking to an innocent child. “Buford’s full of shit,” he reasserted, “he’s always been full of shit.”

“Well, wadda we doin hangin out here then if there ain’t no nudies? I got plenty at home I could be lookin at.”

The same careless shrug. “Dunno. You wanted to come, not me.”

Jed scowled. “S’not true. You wanted to come too.”

“Whatever.”

Bud took his last puff. He wasn’t an advanced enough a smoker to finish the cigarette all the way to its butt, so he dropped it on the ground and crushed it in the dust under his shoe. “Are we stayin or goin? We got chores to do, Jed.” This was true, and nudies or not, Bud hoped to get done with his chores so he could get back to his latest Hardy Boys book, volume number 30, The Wailing Siren Mystery.

Jed scowled, took one last swig, and jammed the top of the flask on as if the dinged up, dented container itself had offended him. He handed it to Bud, who accepted it with sanguine calm. “Gimme one last look round the back. I came here for some fuckin nudies. I want me some nudies.”

As he accepted the flask and laid it in his lap, Bud gave his infamous shrug once more - the same he always gave his tutors at school when he refused to do schoolwork - saying, “Whatever” again, with the equanimity of a Buddhist monk. He had no aversion to looking at nudie books himself. He was always up for a good show, and that was why they’d come out here for a whole week, wasn’t it?

But the show was starting to wear thin. The most they’d found had been a moldy old Sears catalogue with an underwear section, and unfortunately that had not lived up to their torrid aspirations.

About the chores he hadn’t been fibbing. About all the nudie books that could be found out at old Bassler House, someone had. The show; if there had been any, was over. Far as he was concerned, it was time give up the search and go home. And of course, there was The Wailing Siren Mystery to consider.

Jed, however, wasn’t about to give up so easily. His fat form lumbered away “’round back” as he’d said he would. Bud reflected that, Hardy Boys or not, he didn’t really care either way. If there were no nudie books they should go home; but the longer they took in getting home, the more chores they would miss, and that suited him just fine. He could always skip out of school Monday and catch up on his Hardy Boys reading.

He reached into his breast pocket distractedly for another cigarette to light up, because after all, he was still a beginner yet, and he needed to build up his tolerance so he could smoke like Buford and Simmons and all the other older boys.

*

Jed, for his part, was intent on one thing; and that was the nudies that Buford had promised were out here. He shuffled his way out around the right side of the house, kicking dust up along the way; fat hands shoved into his pockets, shoulders hunched, muttering to himself in a grunting, puffing voice something along the lines of, “Fuckin Buford scumbag, lyin about them nudies…”

Considering that eating, drinking, smoking, skipping school and picking his nose encompassed his most significant life experiences, Jed wasn’t prone to introspection. Therefore, his mysterious attraction to nudie books was just a fact he accepted without much thought. Unlike Bud, Jed was too fat and lazy to be of any use to his father for odd jobs, and the most attention he received from his mother was at breakfast, lunch, and supper – feeding the already overweight boy seemed the only way Martha Jensen found validation in her motherhood.

And feed the boy she did, with a vengeance. Unless it was time to eat or Jed was hungry, his mother found him just as useless as well.

As a consequence, over the years Jed has found value in himself only when feeding. When he felt like skipping school; he did so. When he thirsted for a stiff belt from Pa’s whiskey cabinet he quenched it enthusiastically. When he craved tobacco, it was flick yer Bic and off to the races. What Jed hungered, he fed, because he’d learned over the years he was worthwhile only when feeding.

It was much the same with the nudie books, which he’d discovered three years ago while rummaging through his father’s things for a pack of Pall Malls, one Saturday afternoon while Bud and Pa were scrounging for scrap metal along the interstate with Cletus Smith.

Breakfast already past and lunch several hours off, Jed was essentially below his mother’s radar and left to his own devices. A tobacco fit caught him, and with no spare change of his own – being a typical hot, muggy Adirondack summer day, scrounging for redeemable cans wasn’t an appealing thought – he’d snuck into his parent’s room in hopes of scoring a few free smokes.

Ironically, he’d found the nudies accidentally, as if Fate – bored and looking for a little sport at the expense of weak willed humans – gifted him in Its twisted way. After a fruitless fifteen minute search turned up nothing, Jed turned around at the head of his parents’ bedroom, ambling his fatness out before he was caught for snooping and got the snot whaled out of him for it.

As he’d swung his gigantic hips around to leave, his left ass-cheek connected solidly with a stack of newspapers and magazines piled haphazardly on his father’s nightstand. With a sliding, rustling crash, the mound slipped to the floor with several muffled thuds.

He’d frozen immediately; sure the tumult would bring his mother into the room, “swingin and swearin”, as Pa always liked to say. But after several seconds of silence stretched into minutes, he figured he was safe. In that space of time, he’d dared let his eyes linger on the pile of magazines at his feet, his lustful orbs zeroing in on the four or five magazines that had been discretely tucked away in the middle of the pile before he dislodged them.

Jed had no memory of the magazine’s title. In truth, he paid about as little attention to those as he did the sports articles and horoscopes. All that mattered was the image greeting him from the most revealed nudie magazine cover. A sight he’d never before seen, and up until then had subconsciously been convinced he’d never see.

The soft, sensuous curves of femininity unbound. Long, luscious brown hair falling in sensuous waves of curls that made a small part of him want to curl up in them and get lost in forever. Full, pouting red lips parted slightly in an exhalation of lust and desire, curved upwards at the corners in a knowing, demure smile. One hand down below barely covering the bastion of all that was womanhood; the thing whispered about by junior high boys across America, and the other hand and forearm only slightly covering the biggest, roundest, fullest breasts he’d ever seen.

Though he remembered none of the magazine titles he’d devoured in the years since, or the models’ names, or which issue printed that famous Stephen King short story in it, that moment – the instant his hand reached out, shaking and trembling in barely understood desire – would be forever burned into his brain. Some slumbering and dormant hunger had awakened that day. Over the years, he fed it with reckless abandon.

Deep inside, where the dark things screamed and crawled and cried, the root cause for Jed’s blossoming love for nudies lay deep beneath years of emotional malnourishment, festering there like acid. Though the object of his mother’s almost ritualistic force feeding, Jed had never been the object of love; rather the recipient of lackluster tolerance, casual acceptance. He knew he was heavy, perhaps what after school television specials called obese. Though he’d never seen fit to discuss the matter with Bud or anyone else, he knew what others thought of him – girls especially.

They thought he was fat.

Sweaty, smelly.

Ugly, chubby, even “scummy,” as one girl had whispered to her best friend on the bus ride home not long ago.

The only important female figure in his life showed him affection by cramming food down his throat. Not with kisses, hugs or snuggles, so physical expressions of intimacy were foreign things. Jed recognized deep in a place he couldn’t touch - much less understand - that girls loathed him, and perhaps always would. Reinforced at home, enforced by his female peers with wrinkled up noses, smiles and giggles hidden behind demure little hands and eyes that always looked away, Jed had learned that human contact and emotion were never to be his, and that more than likely, the nudie magazines were all he’d ever have.

When the girls in the nudie magazines smiled with that alluring, knowing look, they smiled at him.

When they reached out and beckoned with soft, silken hand, they beckoned to him.

When they cast leg-quivering looks over curved shoulder, licking their lips, they licked them at him.

He knew this unconsciously only, but it was there nonetheless, burning, twisting, and driving his hunger into something obsessive, greater even than his love for food, whiskey, or even smokes. Nudie books had become his life – for in them, he found respect, devotion, and desire.

Ignorance is the greatest bliss of them all – or so some have said - so Jed continued blissfully on his way, kicking up little dust plumes with his fat, plodding feet. As he shuffled along Bassler House, the fires of his lust burned brighter, as something old and ethereal coiled within Bassler House’s dark bowels, stoking the fans of his carnal flames until they roared into an all-consuming crescendo of lust, desire, and need.

*

As he passed the outside entrance to the basement, whose wooden storm doors lay propped up against the house, pulled from their hinges long ago, something flashed in the corner of his eye. A glint of light reflecting off a shiny, glossy surface that could only be…

Jed pulled up short, huffing and puffing. He stood at the top step, shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun, peering down the cracked concrete steps. Though there were plenty of bright hours left before twilight fell, the sun had passed its highest peak, and the bottom of the stairwell before the basement door was hid in dark shadow.

However, when looked at it just right, he could catch the edge of something peeking out of the darkness on the very first step, reflecting rays of sunlight. A glossy, shiny cover, the kind that was only on a magazine…and not the kind that adorned Women’s Day or Ladies Home Journal.

Jed’s mouth split into a wide grin. A slight film of saliva covered his upper lip, and a little line of drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth and down to his chin.

“Shit yeah,” he whispered fiercely, even hungrily, “nudies.”

He licked his lips a little as he eyed the lustful grail at the bottom of the crumbling concrete steps, and lifted a heavy foot to lumber downward into the shadowed depths below.

As Jed’s foot slowly descended, several jumbled, chaotic images flashed through his mind, giving new meaning to the tired cliché. They flashed by quickly, jerkily, like an old-fashioned film-strip reel that’s jumped its track. He saw flashes of semi-clothed and naked women in poses that’d make a robust Roman blush. He imagined the content of the boon Fate had granted him, lying in and out of the shadow on the floor at the bottom of the dark, dank, earthen smelling steps. The images flashed by quickly; nothing clear, only vague, tantalizing glimpses of flesh and skin that quickened his breath and made his heart pound against his ribcage.

As his foot continued to fall forever slowly, Jed imagined the feel of his fingers pressing against the slick, glossy cover of the magazine. He cherished the thought of that first, revelatory moment of discovery, a bizarre consummation of a sad love. He saw this inside his head; imagining the scope and breadth of the depravity he’d find within its pages. His foot continued to descend….

A sharp pain flashed in his temples.

He saw himself, lying dead at the bottom of the steps; fat and bloated by the sun, maggot-filled blood streaming copiously from his nostrils and eyes and mouth, flies buzzing in the hot, humid air…

Jed gasped as the pain lanced through his head again. He jerked in fear at the spectral image of his grisly corpse, and his foot came down at an awkward angle. It twisted, sending his heavy, unwieldy body forward. With a scrape of gravel and a grunt of surprise (and fear) Jed plummeted into the darkness below.

His fall was short and painful, though his large, rubbery girth protected him from the most serious injuries. He rolled and bounced. Sharp edges of broken rock and concrete dug into the soft folds of flesh around his belly, arms, and shoulders, drawing blood and hot explicative, even a few cries of pain.

With a thump, a shower of dislodged chunks of concrete, rock, and dirt, Jed slammed to rest at the base of the stairs. He rolled upright unto his ample buttocks and winced in pain as dozens of rock cuts and bruises protested loudly, testifying to his painful fall.

Before him, however, lay all that he’d sought.

He reached for his carnal prize.

And the door to the basement creaked open ever so slightly, revealing darkness within. So focused was he, Jed didn’t pay it a second thought. With an almost audible smacking of his lips, Jed reached for the magazine, its shiny, glossy cover screaming out the promises of fleshly delights beyond his wildest dreams. He reached, leaning forward, ignoring the stinging protests of his bumps, bruises and cuts from his fall, fingers twitching, itching in anticipation…

A soft wind, like the murmuring, rapturous sigh of a contented lover, brushed past him. The door to the basement swung open even further, creaking on its hinges, revealing the yawning darkness inside. Almost instantly, Jed’s nostrils filled with the sickening sweet, rotten smell of bloated decay; of long ago turned food rotting in the sun.

Jed stared into the darkness.

Something twitched in there…writhing, coiling, slithering. An invisible, psychic hand reached out coyly, caressing his thoughts. His gut swirled with conflicting emotions. He felt thrilled and frightened all at once. His heart leapt with anticipation, his stomach quivered with sick nausea, his limbs trembled in hungry awareness.

There was something behind that door.

Jed narrowed his eyes, peering into the darkness, but the sliding form refused to take shape. It was something and nothing, all at once. There was something there, there was nothing there, and his heart raced inside his ribcage.

Jed. Jed.

A soft, sweet, yet somehow sickening voice issued quietly from beyond the dark door, so quietly Jed had to wonder if he’d heard it aloud at all, or imagined it in his head.

His jaw snapped shut and he jerked slightly. He was stiff from sitting in one position for so long, and stinging pain flared in the cuts and bruises from his long tumble down the stairs. “Huh?” he stuttered sluggishly, trying to shrug off the warm stupor stealing over him. “Whozzat?”

A friend who just wants to see you happy.

You want to be happy, don’t you?

Jed nodded his head slowly, not entirely of his own volition. “Yeah …sure,” he slurred, his fat slips sticking together, “sure I do.”

Do you like my gift?

Jed’s forehead crinkled. He cast his eyes downward at the nudie magazine. It was still laying half in and half out of the shadows, its full depravity cloaked by the dark, but Jed could see just enough to promise a lurid fulfillment of his most carnal dreams.

A slow smile spread on his lips. He reached out, just as he had imagined at the top of the steps, and touched, almost petted the exposed corner of the magazine.

So…do you like it?

“Yeah,” he muttered breathlessly, “yeah…it’s like…totally boss.”

Do you want it?

“Yeah,” Jed’s needful voice whispered, “I do.”

Plenty more where those came from. Stacks and stacks; rooms and rooms. We’ve got all sorts of things in here, Jed. All SORTS of things.

Do you want them?

The moment hung in eternity; Jed blissfully unaware of the hanging guillotine whispering in the air above him.

“Yes,” Jed whispered, the pupils of his eyes rapidly shrinking into pinpoints lost in the swirling darkness, “I do.”

*

Bud leaned back against the front steps of the Bassler House, tossing back a quick nip of the flask his brother had given him with a hardened experience that would pain us if we were actually there to witness it. We could go into the background of Bud’s pre-manhood drinking, but much like examining the Jensen family history, it would do us little good to do so.

Bud took another casual sip of the flask, wondering what the hell was taking Jed so long to get his fuckin nudies. He could understand how a brief peek at a nudie would be enough to get anyone’s blood pumping. Even he liked a good spread now and then.

But over the last few years, Jed had grown obsessed with them; scrounging and hording his old man’s left-over nudies, collecting bottles and cans for their deposit so he could pay Buford to buy them over in Boonville, even stealing Ma’s old Sears catalogues for the underwear sections. It was getting to the point where Bud wondered if his brother was wrong in the head somehow.

He grunted, re-capping the flask and shoving it into his back pocket with one hand while he rummaged in his front pocket with the other for another cigarette. It was probably because Jed had been getting so fat the last couple of years. That had to be it. While he had been messin around a lot with the likes of Jenny Tillman and other girls around the Commons, (he liked Jenny the best, though), Jed hadn’t been messing around with anyone. No girl would get near him on account of him being so fat and all.

Bud shrugged to himself as he lit the cigarette. He supposed it made some sort of sense. If Jed never got a chance to mess around with girls, he’d probably want to look at the nudie magazines real bad. All he’d been able to think about lately was messing around with girls, and at least he was able to. Must suck to be fat like Jed, with no one wanting to mess around with him because of it.

Whatever. It don’t fuckin matter, does it? He’s a Jensen, I’m a Jensen, an we’re just gonna dump school pretty soon and work at the mill anyway. What the hell does it matter if he likes to look at his nudie books?

Yet…it did matter somehow, didn’t it? In some small way he couldn’t put his finger on; there was something about the inevitable Jensen fate that nagged at him. Like the tiniest sliver under the skin, a lingering idea floated around in his head that things didn’t have to be that way. He didn’t have to be the same as all the other Jensens. Things could be different somehow …

…he just didn’t know how.

In some ways, Bud was worried about Jed. He didn't just look at his nudie books a lot; lately, it was all he did. He needed them like a person needed air. It was almost like Jed couldn’t even live without the them anymore. That bothered Bud deeply on a instinctual level.

He sometimes wondered what would happen if Jed stayed fat and never got married (like Aunt Tilly on his Ma’s side, who lived over in Boonville with all her fuckin cats stinkin up the place), or even messed around with anyone. Bud figured one day he'd get hooked up with a girl he really liked, who wouldn’t let him mess around with her anymore until they got married, and by then he’d probably be too old to start messing around with anyone else, so he’d go along. But Jed….

A thought struck him. Jed had never said anything, but was his brother mad at him or jealous because he got to mess around with girls and Jed didn’t?

The thought was bad enough to actually make him pause for a moment. However, the moment passed, and Bud took another drag on his cigarette, wishing that his brother would just the hurry the fuck up.

*

Jed touched the magazine. As his fingers slid across the smooth, slippery surface, an electric jolt ran through his whole body. He shivered from head to toe. He licked his lips loudly, never once considering that his reaction was out of proportion to what it usually was. Slowly, almost sensuously, he pulled the magazine out into the broad daylight, picked it up, and held it in his quivering, shaking hands.

He looked at the cover and drew in a sharp breath. He gagged in revulsion. He saw a picture of himself, lying at the bottom of the stairs like a bloated whale, throat slit and gouted with red, clotted blood. Festering white maggots squirmed and twitched in the jagged tear in his neck…

His burning lust dissolved rapidly into sickened disgust, which in turned morphed full-blown terror. His stomach cramped cruelly with nausea. He wanted to throw the magazine far away from him but he couldn’t. It was as if his hands were fastened to the pages themselves. He fought to drop the magazine because his skin was burning. Burning like acid, but he couldn’t drop the fucking magazine!

The dead version of him on the cover craned his head, almost twisting its neck off, and winked at him. A fat, blood red tongue flopped out of the garish caricature of a mouth and slobbered all over the swollen, fat lips.

Nudies, Jed, the picture hissed, filling him with a dread coldness from beyond the grave, we got all the nudies you could want in here Jed, so many nice things…

Jed opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Nothing but a mewling gurgle.

The door to the basement flung wide open. The scent of death and rot filled his nostrils, driving his panic to white hot levels. He scrabbled backwards on his hands and fat buttocks, gravel and sharp pieces of rock digging into his skin, but an invisible hand reached out and latched onto his fat form. It dragged him towards the yawning darkness of the basement.

At the last minute, he was somehow able to spread his hefty legs wide and plant his feet on the opposite sides of the doorframe, arresting his descent into the musty darkness below. For just a moment, hope flared in his heart, but in the next instant, it was crushed into a spiraling maelstrom of darkness and despair.

YESSSS, Jed! WE HAVE SO MANY WONDERFUL THINGS TO SHOW YOU! WONDERFUL, DELIGHTFUL THINGS!

The pressure increased tenfold. Sharp, stabbing pains shot through Jed’s legs as they buckled and gave way. He tried to cry out to his brother Bud; tried to scream, shout, anything, but his fear was so great all he could manage was a weak, rasping, inarticulate whisper.

YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE IT HERE. I PROMISE.

The force gave a mighty, overwhelming tug. Both of Jed’s legs snapped at the bone like dry twigs. He screamed, finally, but the darkness that swallowed up his body smothered the scream.

The basement door slammed shut.

All was quiet.

The magazine, a mere dusty copy of Ladies Home Journal, lay where it had fallen, undisturbed.

*

Bud started, coming out of his daze with a grunt. He sat up, stretching because his body was stiff, having dozed in this reclined position for too long. Looking around, slightly confused, he noticed that the sky was considerably darker than only moments before. He glanced over the row of treetops lining the road and sure enough, the sun was already starting to sink below them. He’d fallen fucking asleep while waiting for Jed to go get his damn nudies!

The thought of Jed and his whereabouts struck him just then. He slipped to his feet quickly, feeling just the barest twinges of alarm at the preternatural quiet of the impending night. The only thing Jed liked more than his nudie books was eating. Judging by the drop of the sun, it was just about dinner time. One thing Jed never managed to miss was a meal of any kind (in some redeeming fashion, Minnie Jensen at least was an excellent, down-home country cook, as Jed’s burgeoning girth can attest to).

Bud dropped his eyes from the sky and looked all around him. Nothing stirred, save the tops of the goldenrod swaying lazily in the evening breeze.

As far as he could tell, there was no one out in this field but him.

Annoyance crept in, partly because he was thinking that maybe Jed had been an asshole and left without him, and partly because he needed to feel annoyed in an instinctual way, to cover the crawling sensation of cold fear in his belly.

Being mad was always the best defense against fear. Jensens didn’t feel fear. It wasn’t their way, so getting mad at Jed for ditching him was much better than getting spooked out by shadows and sighing wind…

Something moved behind him.

The grass rustled.

The porch creaked.

The wind murmured.

He glanced quickly back over his shoulder at Bassler House, which suddenly seemed to loom large in the sky behind him...but there was nothing there. All at once he decided it was time he got his ass home, before his father gave him a whipping he'd remember for days.

And still, there was that house, towering above him.

He narrowed his eyes, peering into the darkness of the empty windows, which, if looked at from just right, looked like empty eye sockets in a skull. Let the imagination roam just a little more, and Bud could see in his mind’s eye the front door slamming open as his brother Jed stumbled out, neck twisted and broken, blood running from his ears and nose and eyes as shambled his way toward him, dragging one limp and impossibly twisted foot behind him, idiot’s grin slathered on his face because he was gonna eat Bud’s liver for dinner…

This is stupid.

Bud shook his head. The image faded. He kicked the ground in a sudden burst of sullenness that was partly feigned to push the encroaching feeling of wrongness away and partly genuine, because this wasn’t the first time Jed had ditched him. It also wasn’t so hard to imagine his fat old brother sneaking away in the woods, arms full of the coveted nudie books, off somewhere to his little hiding place out by the dump that he went to all the time to look at all his other nudie books. He could just see that fat gimp stumbling away, sweating, the magazines slipping and sliding around in his arms, him smiling like a dumb cow, enjoying all the nudies in the world without even letting his brother take a peek or two.

Bud

Slowly, Bud felt his eyes drawn back to the house. The top window in particular, where the attic must be. He looked at it hard for several seconds, as the blackness there swirled and spun in a pattern of colorless nothingness that was entrancing, enticing…

We’ve got so many things here, Bud

Nudie books, and more

Jed likes them, that’s for sure

Suddenly, he knew the voice in his head spoke the truth, in a way. All the nudies in the world could be found just by lifting his feet, putting one in front of the other and ambling up the stairs and through Bassler House’s cavernous front door, which apparently the wind had blown open while he dozed off, because now a yawning blackness beckoned beyond its opening. Nudie books and far more wondrous and delightful things lingered just beyond the doorway. All he had to do was go in, and they’d be his for the taking.

His brother waited in there for him. This he knew also. Somewhere deep in the dark, Jed Jensen was now enjoying all that was degraded and carnal, all Bud had to do was move join him…

One foot lifted off the ground, robotically, outside his volition, and stepped forward. His back foot started to follow suit, when a strange thought –never before considered – froze him where he was.

I don’t have to do this.

It was a strange concept. When Pa had an odd job he wanted done so he could afford groceries, smokes, booze, his own nudies and the occasional lotto ticket, Bud did it without question. When Steve O’Hara or Scott Kretch or his brother passed him a flask or a cigarette or even a joint, he partook without a second nod. Dimly, he also realized he’d eventually consign The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown to the back of his closet to collect dust for the same reason.

It had been Jed’s idea to come prospecting for nudies, and Bud’s only response was a shrug and a lax, “Sure. Whatever.”

He didn’t have to go into that house.

It didn’t have to be this way.

He didn’t have to be a Jensen.

C’mon, Jed, his brother whispered in his mind, it’s fuckin awesome in here. You’re a nothing, just like me. We’re Jensens, an’ that’s all we’ll ever be. It’s so much better in here. So much warmer, with all the nudies and booze and joints we could ever want.

You’re ma brother. Ya gotta come with me.

Something made him turn and look over his shoulder and away from Bassler House. He did it stiffly, his neck muscles creaking as if they hadn’t been used for ages. It took great effort for him to look away from that dark, looming doorway. He managed it, somehow, and what he saw set his skin a-tingle, his mind burning with deep thought.

Goldenrod blew in the wind.

A dusty brown path led away, beckoning towards destinations unknown. Lining the road, Adirondack pines swayed slightly in the breeze; their branches and leaves rustling and whispering, a harmonious cacophony of nature and beauty he’d never noticed before – barely had the vocabulary to codify, even.

If he walked into Bassler House, where the dark things screamed and crawled and cried, he’d never see such trees or hear their whispering ever again.

Who cares? We got lots better things in here.

Bud’s eyes traveled past the trees, out to Bassler Road. He flicked his eyes to left, which lead back into town, and then with slow realization, he found himself drawn to the right, which led away from Clifton Heights and eventually led to the Interstate… away from Bassler House, Clifton Heights, Jed, Buford…

….everything.

Going into Bassler House meant he’d never get to walk that road away from everything that made him a Jensen. He’d die like a Jensen – everyone nodding and then going about their way like nothing happened.

NO! You can’t leave, you goddamned little fucker! You’re a Jensen, and Jensens are what they are! Jed is mine now, and you’re going to be mine, too!

Another voice spoke, and it was so forlorn, Bud slowly felt his slack-jawed gaze pulled back to the house. C’mon, Bud. Whaddya thinkin? There ain’t nuthin better for us out there. Ya might as well just give the hell up. C’mon in, cause I’ve got nudies and all sorts of wonderful NASTY stuff to share with you…you ain’t better than me Bud.

You AIN’T.

Don’t even think it.

The cigarette clamped between his teeth burned his lips. Bud jerked his gaze away as he spat the used up weed to the ground. He snuffed it out with his booted toe, cursing mildly because his lip throbbed with pain. The phantom words faded away like the last wisp of smoke from his cigarette.

“Piss on this,” he muttered.

He pivoted on one foot smartly and struck off across the field towards Bassler Road. When he hit the pebbly, backcountry asphalt, he stopped for a moment, hands on hips…

…and the turned right and walked a path that would eventually lead to the Interstate and something –anything -else.

Behind him, Bassler House stood large and still, a dark monolith of horrors untold, as silent screams heard by no mortal echoed from its earthen foundations, to the lament of spirits above.