©®2006

Mr. Susan

The local papers wrote that Susan had inherited Sullivan Taxidermy from her late father, who had traveled the world with his riches, hunting various beasts and even discovering a few.
My old friend and fellow college dropout Henry worked in the shop and got me a job there. It was good gig and paid very well as the owner, Susan, besides being a manly bitch – was filthy rich.

She was hardly ever around, which allowed Henry and I to screw around the majority of the time. Don’t get me wrong, we worked hard, it’s just when we finished we had lots of fun with freeze dried animal parts, and shared many jokes at Susan’s expense.
We teased her manly features and deep voice.
We’re sure she’s a man.
That’s why we called her “Mr. Susan” when she wasn’t around, which was all the time.

About a year into my job, Henry said he had a surprise to show me.
He took me to a nearby barn where we used to have lunch, before it was labeled off-limits by Mr. Susan.
He pulled back a tarp on the ground, which was stapled to plywood, revealing a hidden chamber, with stairs that vanished into the darkness below.

What I saw I’d never forget.

“I call it Mr. Susan!” Henry said as he flung a dusty blanket away from a figure.
Before me stood a marionette made entirely from animal parts. Most of it was a deer, somehow made to stand upright. A pig’s snout was stiched to its smooth deer face. The arms were also a pigs - crudely attached like and old wound.
Henry laughed at my discomfort, “Looks like you’ve seen a Ghost!” he teased.
He grabbed the deer’s dead lips and pretended to talk like Mr. Susan,
“Jake! How many times to I have to tell you to tan the hides before applying the glue!” He hit me in the arm to snap me out of it.

He’d been collecting animal parts from unclaimed jobs for three years now, but I had no idea this was what he was doing with them.
“When the hell did you make this?”
“It’s not done yet,” he said, ignoring my question, ‘we still gotta put the Mr. on it!”
He laughed and turned the flashlight towards its loins. “See what I mean? It hasn’t been christened yet.”
It had obviously been a female deer when it was alive due to its absence of flesh.

Just then Henry smacked me in the chest with something soft and large.
It was a horse penis, nearly as long as my arm.
We attached the penis to Mr. Susan in the days that passed.
We’d created many animals for past pet owners and hunters, but this just felt wrong.
“Mr. Susan’s” ink eyes made me nervous, they reminded me of doll eyes.

In Mr. Susan’s absence, we started having lunch with our Mr. Susan back in the old barn.
We would throw darts and money at it. Henry would load his slingshot with pennies and shoot at its penis from outside the barn.

We ate lunch with it daily, sometimes splashing our drinks in its face.
One day Henry broke a bottle over Mr. Susan’s hoof and threatened it like an old-school gangster with the shards of glass. He stuck the bottle in the front of its face, slicing into the freeze-dried pig snout we had attached to the deer’s face weeks before.

We started going to the barn on weekends, where we’d stage mock employee reviews venting our frustration by spitting and pissing on Mr. Susan.

“You manly bitch!” I’d shout at it in a twisted sort of therapy session. Looking back, there was no reason to be so mad at Susan, she paid very well and wasn’t really a bitch, still, I think we were jealous of her easy life and wealth.

Then, one Saturday morning, Henry didn’t show up.

I went to the barn hoping to find him. I wish I hadn’t.
When I got there I heard rustling inside.
Someone was grunting.
I peeked inside one of the many cracked boards supporting the old barn…

Henry had crossed the line.

I quietly walked back to my car and drove home.
Monday came much too soon and I felt as if my face was giving away the freak show I had witnessed days earlier. Henry had changed - he even looked different, the outer shell was the same but inside he looked, what was it…tired?

“Let’s go to the barn.” He said.
“This early?”
“Not like there’s any business. Flip the sign, c’mon.”

Henry had an entire 12 pack with him, “You want breakfast?” He joked, tossing me a beer. We drank as we walked in silence towards the old barn.

Mr. Susan had moved.

It was lying on a bed of hay - posed to look comfortable.
Henry sensed my uneasiness.
“Relax dude,” he was already drunk as he fell next to Mr. Susan.
I took a drink, a big drink.
“How’s my special lady feeling today?” He laughed as he nuzzled close to it, whispering something into the deer’s dead ear.

Mr. Susan responded with a feral grunt.

Henry bolted upright, terrified.
“FUCK!” he shouted already a dozen feet away from the beast, “How the fuck…?”
I shook my head in slow motion, “I didn’t make a sound.”

We both stood staring at it. Its stomach rose and fell, as if breathing.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Henry screamed.
We bolted from the old barn like scared children. When we reached the shop we sat down, still trembling.
“That’s fucked,” Henry said between labored breaths.
“Probably mice or something inside or underneath it…”

We both knew it wasn’t.

Days later we finally gathered up enough courage to venture towards the barn once more, this time holding guns instead of beers. The rural surroundings were dead quiet.
“We’re crazy,’ I whispered as we approached the barn, gesturing towards our shotguns.
“You want to put yours down, go for it,’ Henry said, eyes fixed on the barn door, “I ain’t takin’ any chances.”

Something had closed the door.
Using a dead oak branch I pushed open the door from a distance, while Henry stood ready with the shotgun.
I took a deep breath and held it.

Empty.

After our initial fear lessened, we searched the barn inside and out. Mr. Susan was nowhere to be found, but we did find something.
A sticky pink liquid was splashed about the hay where Mr. Susan had laid days earlier. At first glance, we thought it was a piglet, the snout was bright pink, but its body was all wrong, too thin, and too humanoid to be a pig…

“BAM!” The sound waves of the shotgun blast deafened me, everything slowed.

There was a salty liquid on my face. Blood.
Henry had immediately shot it.
Before I could react to either his haste or the disgusting taste on my lips we heard wailing from just outside the barn.

It sounded like a goose screaming.

I’d like to tell you that I confronted my fear – and that I stood my ground like a man, but I didn’t. I ran for my life…crying.
“BAM!”

I froze. Legs refusing to listen.

Fear held me so tightly I didn’t dare to blink.
Something primitive inside warned me to stay perfectly still.
My tears had stopped.
Everything had.

Something approached me from behind.
Its’ motions were labored. Clumsy.
The breath that exhaled on the back of my neck held no warmth.
The inhalations were labored and lifeless.
I didn’t dare look.

Hours passed. My sunburned face was the only reference to time I had.
Risking everything, I turned slowly, my body was stiff and slow to respond.
Deer tracks led away from me, much too deep to be four footed. The tracks were brown with blood.

The End.