“Here you go,” said Winky, pulling back the blanket a little. A brown, hairy skull peeked out from behind the folds of crimson-stained cloth.

“Okay, okay,” said Brittney, waving her hand hurriedly at the bundle. “You can put it away now. I believe you. Can you please go … put it out in the front yard with the body. Maybe hide it behind a tree or something?”

“Sure. You coming, Bryn?” Winky asked casually, as if she weren’t carrying a bloody baby head in her arms.

I nodded dumbly, feeling like I’d been transported to another dimension. I didn’t know whether I wanted to leave the hell that was down here or stay away from the hell that awaited me up the stairs. I was so confused.

“I have to tell her about her boyfriend first.” Brittney grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the cot, forcing me to sit down.

Winky continued up the stairs and disappeared.

“Okay. First … there are a group of Amazons who are keeping him nearby. You know the house down the street that was owned by Chancery Crouch, that movie star? We’ll, they’re there. And they’ve got him and a bunch of other cute guys, and they’re doing a ceremony tonight where they all get tied to a group of girls for life. Isn’t that cute?” She grabbed my arm and wiggled it a little. “No, you probably don’t think so. But except for him being your boyfriend, it is pretty sweet if you ask me.”

I held up my hand, feeling almost tired over the barrage of nutty illusions she was vomiting all over me. “What now? Did you say Amazons?”

“Yeah. Amazons.”

“As in, from the rainforest?”

She giggled. “No. As in, from Palm Beach.”

“Amazons. From Palm Beach.” I shook my head. “Why did I think I was going to get a straight story from a fucking lunatic?” I was pissed now. All this time I’d thought she had something to tell me. And Winky had killed a damn baby over it.

“Don’t call me a lunatic,” she said angrily. Then her expression changed immediately to one of a happy prom queen. “Seriously. They’re all tall and gorgeous. That’s part of the rules, you have to be gorgeous or they kill you. And they’ve captured a bunch of gorgeous guys. And they’re going to make them bond with their tribe members and then have orgies with them or whatever.”

I felt sick. She seemed serious, if not totally batty. “You aren’t kidding, are you?”

“No, silly. But like I said, you’d better hurry if you want to stop them. Once the ceremony is over, they’re going to screw the hell out of him. And then he probably won’t even want to leave.”

“He won’t do that. He won’t sleep with any of them.”

She frowned. “Oh. That’s too bad.”

“How so?”

“Because they’ll cut off his penis and let him bleed to death. They’ve done it before.”

I stared at her, horrified about the idea of that happening to anyone, let alone Bodo. “How could you possibly know all this?”

“They were friends with Loco. He told me everything. He thought they were funny, plus they had sex with him too, so he considered them friends.”

I gulped down the hysteria that tried to rise up in my throat. Bodo’s about to get his wiener chopped off or he’s going to cheat on me with a harem of canner-fuckers. Time to go.

“Okay, well, it’s been real fun and all, but I guess I have to go save my boyfriend’s private parts.”

Brittney stood immediately and held out her hand, smiling like a politician. “It was so nice to meet you. Please tell Winky goodbye for me. I’m kind of tired, so I think I’ll take a nap. Would you hold my baby for a while for me, before you leave so I can just shut my eyes for a few minutes?”

I shook my head at her, not knowing what to say.

She looked around the room. “Where is that baby anyway?” She walked towards the other room. “David Junior? Sweetie? Where aaaaare yoooouuuu?”

I ran up the stairs as fast as my feet would take me, shoving the cabinet back down as soon as I reached the top. I flew out of the bedroom, down the hallway, and halfway down the stairs before I started yelling, not stopping to consider whether I actually wanted to help baby-murderers or not.

“Winky! Rob! Go!” I jumped over the holes in the last five stairs, falling to my feet at the bottom and scrambling around the bloated body on my hands and knees before I could get upright again.

I was at the front door and running over its blackened threshold when I heard the first gunshot ring out.

***

Rob and Winky were already pedaling away, back in the direction we’d come from.

“No!” I yelled, grabbing my bike and jumping on, slamming my crotch uncomfortably on the hard seat before being able to move the wheels with the pedals. “This way!” I knew Brittney the Lunatic would be firing at us for sure out of her bell tower window if we went out the back. Her collection of firepower was too impressive to hope she didn’t know how to use any of it.

Winky and Rob wheeled around to face me and followed me out the front gate. That’s when I saw the bloody blanket tied to Winky’s front.

The look of horror on my face must have clued her in to what I was thinking.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said breathlessly as she pulled up next to me. We were bumping crazily over the long driveway, almost to the gate now. “I didn’t kill her damn baby. It’s right here.”

A little white hand chose that moment to come out and wave around before it clasped the edge of the blanket and stopped moving.

“Oh, thank God,” I said, heaving out a sigh of relief that was nearly accompanied by some stomach fluids. “For shit’s sake, Winky! I thought you really did it!” I was literally shaking, overwhelmed with emotion.

Another gunshot came from the house, but I didn’t feel anything hit me and Rob and Winky kept going, so I ignored it in favor of pedaling like mad. Two seconds later we were around the corner of the front gate, out of our sniper’s sights.

“You really think we’d do something like that?” asked Rob. “That hurts, Bryn. It really does.” He smiled at me mischievously.

“Shut up, Rob. How was I supposed to know? That friggin’ blanket is covered in real blood. What’d you do? Cut yourself?” I looked over, trying to find evidence of a slashed vein or artery on him, but his clothes had no stains that I could see in the dim light of the overhead sky. There was enough blood on the blanket that it would have had to be a pretty bad injury.

“No, of course he didn’t,” said Winky. “Don’t be ridiculous. The blanket is covered in blood just like the spot on the front lawn where Rob killed that damn pit-bull that came after him while he was waiting.”

“That’s dog blood?” I asked, mystified and a little upset about how easily I’d been fooled. “But what about the baby head? How’d you find a damn baby head? Did a rabid baby attack you? Was that in the front lawn too?”

Rob laughed. “It was a stupid coconut, dumbass. You obviously didn’t look very hard.”

“You used a … no way.” I shook my head. “That was a friggin baby head. I know what coconuts look like.”

“You saw what you wanted to see,” said Winky. “You thought I was a baby-murderer,” she said accusingly.

“I was afraid she’d come out to check what was taking us so long,” said Rob. “Do you know how hard it is to open a coconut husk without a machete?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I’ve never been able to do that. How’d you do it?”

Winky answered. “Slam it onto the concrete enough times and eventually it cracks and you can peel the husk off and get to the hairy baby head underneath.”

Rob held up a hand with bloody fingers. “Fingernails are pretty much gone, but I’ll live.”

“You took one for the team,” I said smiling, finally letting myself believe my friends weren’t baby-murderers. I looked at the bundle strapped to Winky’s chest. “What in the hell are we going to do with a baby?”

“Have it for lunch?” Winky asked, her voice pure innocence.

I swerved my bike almost into hers, shocked out of my gourd she’d actually said that.

She laughed her butt off and kept right on pedaling down the street. “Just kidding!” she trilled over her shoulder.

“So where are we going?” asked Rob, a smile in his voice.

“Bodo’s being held prisoner by some Amazon chicks.”

Winky laughed, dropping back to join us again. “That’s funny. No seriously, where are we going?”

“I’m not kidding. That’s what the nutcase told me. He’s being held at a celebrity’s mansion up the road. Someone named … uhhh … Chancery something?”

“Chancery Crouch?” asked Rob. “That’s just up there.” He pointed a few mansions up from were we were currently riding. “I went on a tour around here once where the guide was pointing out all the rich and famous people’s places. Crouch’s mansion has a couple of gigantic pink lions on the gates out front. You can’t miss it.”

“Hold up, guys,” I said, coming to a stop and dropping down off the seat to straddle the bike. “What’s our plan gonna be?”

Winky and Rob stopped and walked their bikes backwards until we were three abreast, Winky’s bundle moving a little as the baby tried to kick its legs.

“I don’t know. What do you think?” he asked.

“I think we just need to go in there and talk to them,” Winky said. “Maybe they’ll be normal. Or kind of normal.”

I shook my head. “I think they had some sort of relationship with the canners. One that didn’t include them getting eaten and allowed them to live down the street without being killed.”

“Damn. That means they’re probably nutjobs too,” said Rob.

“Chances are good,” I said, at a loss for what to do now.

“Let’s do a little recon,” said Winky. “We’ll leave the baby down on the beach and sneak around a little, see what’s what.”

I frowned. “I was never one for babysitting much, but isn’t that like … poor form, leaving a baby on a beach?”

Winky shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Rob coughed and said, “Uhhhh, it could get eaten by a pit-bull? Or a canner? Taken away with the tide?”

“Oh. Yeah, right. Better not leave the baby on the beach,” said Winky.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Seriously, though, guys. I’m freaking out. Bodo is, like, just over there, maybe. I need to see if it’s really him. I know the chances are not good, but I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t do everything I can to find out for sure.”

“What else did the crazy girl say about them?” asked Rob. “Try to think of everything. Maybe she told you something that would be helpful.”

I searched my memory, sifting through the lunacy for any actual facts she might have shared. “Well, she was talking about Eden and a ceremony and sex and cutting off dicks and …”

Winky held up her hands in front of her, palms down. “Hold up! Hold. The hell. Up. Cutting off dicks? You mean, like, Bodo’s dick?”

A little fear trickled into my mind. “Yeah, but … I mean … she’s crazy, right? That was part of the crazy talking, not the facts.” I looked at Winky and then Rob. “Right?”

“Don’t you know anything about Amazons?” asked Rob.

“No,” I said. “Missed that in history class, I guess.”

Winky was shaking her head too.

“Well, let me enlighten you. It was a group of female warriors from ancient times that invaded places and were pretty vicious about it, too. Some say they cut off one boob so they could shoot arrows without it getting in the way. And once a year or something they’d go and find a bunch of guys and screw them. If they got pregnant they’d kill the boy babies and keep the girl ones. Any guys that weren’t on the to-be-screwed list, were on the screwed list.”

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