02 Apr Mary’s Bridge

“Yea, buddy,” Jason Biggs shouted, smiled, and then gulped down the rest of his brewski as Bon Scott fabulously articulated that he was on the highway to Hell. He crushed the can and tossed it out of his open window. His gray chest hair fluttered in the wind. It had been a hot mother-trucker today, and I would have loved to have some A/C blowing, but that was busted just like everything else on this piece of shit.

Jason Biggs—a middle-aged, overweight, life-long bachelor–had gotten off from his slave trade as a band saw operator at the local metal manufacturer 4 hours ago. He had finished his tenth brewski and had 14 more nice cold ones sloshing around in the cooler in the back of his truck. There was nothing better than starting a weekend by riding around well-known gravel roads and barely used backwoods highways, listening to some good tunes, and getting on one.

He casually swayed back and forth through the lanes as he drove his raggedy ’94 Chevy Silverado southward down highway 37, heading towards his ramshackle trailer house (or was he headed down the next gravel road he came to?) Not even he knew the answer to that question. The speed limit was fifty-five, but Jason idled at ten. Thousands of tiny little eyes reflected back at him from his headlights. Rice fields bordered both sides of the highway. A mix of small lime-green tree frogs and large brown bullfrogs littered the asphalt, heading to and from prosperous breeding grounds. They did this every summer when the rice fields were flooded. You could set your calendar by it. Hell, maybe even your watch.

His hatred for them was obvious as he tried to drive over every last one of the creepy bastards. They gave him the willies, with their tongues that shot out, slimy skin, and bugged-out eyeballs. KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! He could hear big bullfrogs thump the truck’s underside as they tried to jump. The sound was pleasing. “I hope you knock your fucking brains out,” he said.

A raccoon appeared in his headlights. The little furry bastard was munching on a frog and had another wiggling victim in its hands. They were on the same team at the moment, but he knew the little trash panda son-of-a-bitch, had a mom, dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles that stole shit out of his vegetable garden every year, and so one less was one less to worry about. He smashed down on the accelerator. The truck’s cut-off tailpipes roared, and the back end lowered as the torque took to the wheels and jolted the truck forward. A nice hard THUMP and slightly raising his tires let him know he had found his mark.

He could feel his pants growing tighter as he began to swell. After the interlude, he continued weaving until a bridge appeared. A green metal highway sign labeled it MARY’S STREAM BRIDGE. Jason had made an intimate connection with this bridge in the fall of ’69. Back then, it had been wooden, and this highway gravel, but his memory was vivid and unchanged.

He stopped mid-way down the 50-foot bridge, switched off the radio, and put it in park. Getting out of the truck, he pulled at the crotch of his pants to situate himself. Thank God there are no jumpy freaks on the bridge, he thought. He stepped to the truck bed and took another brewski from his cooler. He popped the top, slurped the fuzz from the edge, and then turned it up. “Ahhh,” he concluded, smacking his lips together a few times. He wandered over to the concrete barrier covered in teenagers’ graffiti. There were many ‘so-and-she loves so-and-so,’ ‘this person sucks dick,’ ‘call this number for a good time,’ drawings of penises, smiley faces, and tags from surrounding area codes. He peered over. He couldn’t see the water and barely heard it flowing. The maddening rhythm of the frogs surrounding the area was damn near ear-shattering.

“Took them two months to find you,” he said to himself. “I bet you were bloated and all chewed up, had small creatures living inside you and shit, all nasty and decomposed, smelling like rot. I thought the current would take you down to the river and God knows where from there. Hell, it rained all that week so the water was up. Doesn’t matter now, though. That was a different age, no techno bullcrap. You were just another hippie wanderer anyway, with no linkage to me or anybody else around here. And now you’re just bones in a grave marked with a headstone with no name. I had a great night. I can’t say the same thing for you, though. Well, you enjoyed yourself up till the time I put a cord around your neck while you slept naked in my bed.”

Feeling his erection had withered, he pulled junior out of his black oxide-coated jeans and began urinating onto the barricade. “Oh yea, that’s the stuff,” he said and looked up into the star-filled night sky. Little did he know he wouldn’t be seeing the half-moon making its midnight assent tonight.

He returned to his truck and took a drink of his brewski as he shifted the truck into gear. He stomped on the gas, but then slammed on the brake as a figure stepped into the beams of his headlights. A pervy little grin came across his face.

A woman, who looked to be in her 20’s, stood 30-some-odd feet in front of his truck. Her mud-caked hands were held out in front of her face to block the headlights from her eyes. Her brown hair fell around her, dripping with water–small twigs and leaves were tangled among its chaos. Her pink spaghetti strap tank top was filthy and torn, obscuring and altering what was once shown on it. Her pale stomach displayed a small blue belly button ring. Her jeans were dark blue from the moisture they held. Her bare feet were coated in a glaze of mud.

Jason leaned his head out his window and called out, “you okay?”

She slightly moved her head to one side, trying to see past the glare of the lights. “I’m lost,” she replied, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the sound of his truck’s engine and the frogs that just would not shut the hell up.

“Come get in, and I’ll take you home.”

“I need to go to the hospital,” she called out, this time louder, but then said in a softer tone, “I’ve been lost for a long time.”

“Well, come get in, and I’ll take you.”

She stood there silent, unmoving.

“I’m not gonna bite ya.” Just yet, he thought.

Slowly she began to move toward the passenger’s side of the truck.

While she walked closer to the truck he watched her, eyeing her potential.

“Go for a late-night swim,” he asked her while she sat down. The light gray fabric of the seat turned dark as water soaked it.

Droplets rained off the tips of her hair that curtained around her lowered head. “Huh,” she questioned, not bothering to look up at him.

“Nothing,” he replied, turning the overhead light on. “The name’s Jason, by the way.”

“Mary,” she replied, still staring down at her hands folded on her lap.

“That’s a beautiful name,” he told her and reached over to place a hand on her thigh before saying, “I’ve always liked that name.”

She didn’t say anything as she slowly and gently placed a hand overtop his. She then slightly raised her head and asked, “can you turn on the radio?”

“Sure thing, baby.” He removed his hand from her thigh to turn it on. “I hope you like classic rock.” He placed his hand back onto her thigh. She placed hers back atop his.

Fading music gave way to an extremely cheerful disc jockey Jason had never heard before. “Hey there, fine folks! Your fav demon of the airwaves here on Rollin’ 107.5; the only place to get your classic rock here in the lower part of the Natural State. Hope you all had a lovely Friday and are cooling off from that afternoon heat because I know it’s not your friend. You all have simply adapted to it. Personally, I’m used to it. I was created in it, molded by it. I didn’t feel a cold breeze until I was a millenia, and to be honest, I hated it. Can you guess what movie reference I’m making? The first caller to phone in and get it right will win a prize. Hope you know the number because I sure don’t. Now enough with the dilly-dallying folks. I got some more hot hits headed your way. That was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Mr. Simon and Mr. Garfunkel, and now here’s Santana with Black Magic Woman. Oh boy, that sounds spooky, let’s give it a listen, shall we.” The high notes from the electric guitar began to scream out.

Mary began to giggle.

“What is it,” he asked, rubbing her thigh.

“That silly guy, and this song,” she replied, but couldn’t say more as her giggle had turned into a wild laugh.

Mary looked up. Her hair fell to the sides of her face before the strands began falling away. Her face paled, began to blister and then turned black before the rotting skin fell, leaving chunks of black clotted blood in its place. Her eyes slowly melted into yellow goo as maggots took up the voids of her eye sockets. A mixture of green, red, and yellow puss oozed from the opening of her nasal cavity. Her clothes faded and then began to wither away as the rest of her body swelled with gas and the rotting flesh beneath her bulging blackened skin.

Jason’s hand became warm and slimy. It was buried within a gash of Mary’s decomposing thigh. The strands of denim that were once her blue jeans barely covered her lower body. He jerked his hand out, bringing black chunks of meat clung to his fingers. He began to gag at the pungent smell radiating from her.

“Kiss me,” Mary demanded in Jason’s own voice, “make me squeal.”

He screamed as he yanked at the door handle that was no longer functioning. He reached out and tried from the outside, but still nothing. He tried climbing out, but she had an unfathomably strong hold and pulled him back in. He waved and screamed for help as a police car drove towards them. The pale blond-haired man gave him a big smile and an eccentric wave as he passed. “Hope you two love birds have a lovely time!” Jason heard him yell in the same voice as the disc jockeys.

“Use your tongue,” Marry continued.

Jason cringed as an impossibly long black tongue came out from behind the teeth of her lipless mouth. Small frogs were crawling out, some onto her tongue as she flicked it at him. He jerked his eyes down as he felt pressure on his lap–a bloated gray hand was trying to unbutton his pants.

“I’m going to take you home,” Mary told him and then licked the side of his face, leaving a bloody smear.

Jason felt water crawling up his legs as he battled with the hand, trying to go down his pants. Frogs were jumping around everywhere inside the cabin. Some of the bastards were even crawling on him.

“Kiss me, baby.” She grabbed him by the back of his head and forced his face closer to hers. He tried to resist, but her strength was overpowering. Mary’s tongue entered his mouth as he gasped at her sudden ferocity. He immediately began vomiting, sending a surge of brewski juice into her mouth and onto her corroded face. She didn’t relent to the force or the movements of her tongue, so he bit down. He could feel squirts of bile hitting the front of his face. He vomited again, sending the tongue into the water that was now up to his waist.

“Ladies, don’t bite,” Mary told him, still using his voice. Red and yellow puss flowed from her mouth and out the sides of where her cheeks used to be, though now only a few slivers of flesh remained. The hand struggling with his jeans ran over his fat gray-haired stomach and up his chest as she continued. “You feel so good. Play nice now, sweetie.”

He started hitting her, but his blows went unnoticed.

The water rose up his abdomen as Mary caressed his chest and continued to talk in his voice. “You like it, don’t you? I can see it. We’re going to have fun, you and I.”

Jason yelled for help as the water was nipping his chin. He thought the water would be pouring out his open windows by now or streaming through the cracks of his doors, but some invisible force was keeping every last drop in. He slammed his foot on the gas, hoping it would send them careening off the road into a light pole or anything so he could try to escape, but the truck didn’t budge. Tires squealing behind him as they spun on the slick concrete.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Mary told him, pulling a leg over to straddle him. “I’ll be real, real gentle honey.”

Jason screamed one last time before the water consumed him. Black smoke began rolling from his tires.

Mary’s hands were now wrestling with Jason’s to unbutton his jeans. He tried to stop her but quickly found his limbs weakening and his chest burning as he struggled to hold his breath.

“Calm down now, it won’t last long,” Mary’s muffled voice assured him. Jason felt a hand enter his pants. “I’ll slide it in nice and slow.”

He gasped in water as his body forced him to try to breathe. Before the darkness swept over him, he watched a frog slowly pass by his face, its legs pushing it along as it swam in the water.

Both rear tires exploded, sending rubber flying and exposing the metal rims to the concrete causing orange sparks to ignite as they continued their attack on the concrete.

The police car that passed pulled up from behind. Black Magic Woman was blaring over its intercom system. A man in a bright green suit with orange pinstripes stepped out. “This song ain’t spooky at all.” The lights on the roof began flashing green and orange instead of the normal red and blue. He bumped the car door shut with his hip and then started dancing in sync with its rhythm. His shiny orange dress shoes tapped silently on the asphalt.

#

“Good morning, everybody. It’s Willy here at Rollin’ 107.5, and just to assure you, yes, it is Monday, and yes, it does suck. Now get up out of bed, comb your teeth, and floss your hair because we all know you’re broke and need the money. Now let me get some news to ya. For today’s weather, it’s gonna be hot, and that’s all for the weather. In other news, a guy named Jason Biggs had himself a little too much to drink this past Friday night and fell off a bridge and drowned to death. Police said it would have taken them days, if not weeks, to find him if not for his truck parked in the middle of the bridge. That’s a reminder for all of you out there.”