Stephen King's Box Page 6

  ‘Damn it! This heat is going to kill me!’ he said while he looked around the hundreds of gravestones in the graveyard.

  A dog came out of its lair shaking its tail like a broom sweeping the floor. It barked a couple of times and came close to his master ducking his head. It had its tongue hanging out one side and it had flees. Not even Jack Jones knew what kind of breed that thing was. He had found it when it was just a puppy, for crying out loud. It was abandoned at the graveyard’s gates at dawn. It was crying because it was getting wet under the rain, Jack Jones took him in. and the damn dog was three years old now. Sometimes, Jack Jones would give it some beer to see what would happen. Nothing. The dog kept asking for more. But he could stop to notice that its eyes grew bigger and it moved its tail just like now.

  ‘Hey, Timbo! It’s so fucking hot today,’ and he scratched its head with a hand.

  And somewhere on the other half of the world, the sun was lying behind the mountains and the temperature was lower, that’s what he thought. The two of them walked towards the red, rickety, rusty Ford pickup. At least, the wheels had more air and the damn thing could start.

  ‘Let’s go get some more beer,’ he told the dog, like it would understand him. The animal wiggled its tail, now sitting on the front seat. Maybe he did understand him. The exhaust pipe of the pickup spitted a huge black cloud and the engine roared like if there were dozens of tiny men hammering all the metal in the engine. He went backwards, turned to the right and then, he went straight to the graveyard’s exit.

  ‘I’ll die one day,’ he whispered while crossing the metal gates. And he continued driving holding the greasy wheel. Inside the cabin, it was even hotter and he grumbled again.

  2

  Tommy didn’t let Jack Jones pay him later anymore. If he wanted more beers for him and the dog, he had to pay a part of his debt. But Jack Jones promised him again and again that he would pay him. His pay check was generous, but the damn old man was an alcoholic. He drank every single penny and then, he would piss it out. Both of them entered Tommy’s store.

  ‘Jack, I’m sorry. If you want anything, you would have to pay me something...’

  ‘I know, God damn it!’ interrupted Jack Jones. ‘I’ll pay you one of these days. The fucking dog eats more every day and with this heat, I have to drink more. One of these days, you’ll find me lying stiff on the graveyard or in my truck.’

  Tommy shook his head and in that moment, she came out to the counter. The “boss”, the one who wore the pants in this house. A fat woman named Lindsay. A name that didn’t suit her. She took a step after the other, at the time her big belly touched the counter from behind. She had short hair, painted in red and she wore lipstick like a cheap whore. She looked like a clown. Three or four pimples decorated her rounded face. Her eyes, dark as the night, without any special feature, spun inside her eye sockets like marbles. She was cross-eyed. She placed her hands on the counter and showed some fingers like sausages.

  ‘We ain’t got nothing!’ she screamed with a harsh voice.

  After that, there was a long silence. The three of them looking at each other and the damn dog kept wiggling its tail and showing its tongue. Its breath stank and Lindsay made a gagging gesture. She raised a hand to her mouth and Jack Jones pointed at her.

  ‘I’ll pay you, God damn it. I’ll pay you next week!’

  ‘You better’

  ‘Fuck. How much do I owe you? A hundred, two hundred?’ his skinny body bended to one side then to the other. Like so many times before.

  And like so many times before, finally, Jack Jones left the store with a sac of fodder and a couple cans of beer. The fat woman wrote twenty more dollars to Jack’s account and the she disappeared through the door behind the counter, the same she had come out.

  Like so many times before.

  3

  That night, Jack Jones drank one beer after the other while watching a baseball game: the Red Socks against who knew because “that didn’t matter, because his favorite team, the Red Socks, was playing”. There wasn’t any professional team and he had to draw upon Boston’s. He burped and lifted his right foot to fart that sounded like a mechanical saw and the fucking dog noticed. It smelled the air and hid its face in the couch. Jack Jones drank more beer.

  The night fell upon them.

  ‘I’ll die one day,’ whispered Jack Jones and he burped again.

  4

  At midnight, he got up and went to the bathroom. Once there, he pulled down his dirty briefs and after holding his flaccid penis with both hands, he took a long piss. A very long and loud piss. The dog was by his side, showing its pink tongue. After a few more drops of piss, he put his penis inside his briefs and went back to bed. And the fucking dog went after him.

  And before he went to sleep, he thought of all of them again.

  5

  They must have been around thirteen or fourteen years old when the bloody leeches happened. Jack Jones had had the idea of going to a river in Boad Hill for a swim with his friends. Nicotero, Norton and Robbins jumped to the river without even think about it. They left their briefs on the edge. They played for a long while, splashing water to each other. They were screaming and laughing. Jack Jones was one of them, the tallest one. Robbins was the blonde one and Nicotero was the funny one. Norton, on the other hand, was the fattest and the most quiet. It was curious, of all the fat people in the world with the self esteem as tall as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado; he was the only one who wasn’t like that. He was the reflection of what he ate: giant hamburgers with lots of sauce and French fries and ice creams, lots of vanilla and chocolate ice creams. But Norton didn’t have a good time when it came to walk in front of girls at school and now, he was naked in a river playing with the other. Foreign to his thoughts and sunken up to his belly button.

  When the sun moved and the shadows were longer, Jack Jones and the other guys decided it was time to leave. When they stepped out of the water, one of them screamed with fear. It was Norton.

  ‘Ahh! God damn it! What is this?’ and with his hands he tried to remove a “stain” that he saw on his chest. A long and puffy stain. There was blood around it.

  ‘It’s a leech!’ screamed the blonde guy while pointing a finger and laughing at the same time.

  Norton ran to the edge like if he had a rocket on his ass.

  ‘Ahh!’ he screamed again. Once on the edge, he tried to rip off the fucking leech while screaming with his eyes wide open.

  Nicotero laughed out loud and ended it all of a sudden when he felt something in his ball sack. Something was moving down there. He bent over and looked down. A damn leech was moving there, black as dog shit. It was stick to one of his testicles! Jack Jones pointed with his index finger. He had another in his belly button.

  ‘Fuck! Take these off!’

  The result was that everyone had three or four leeches stuck to their bodies (and his balls, remembered later Nicotero) and they ran out of there, screaming and splashing blood to the ground. One of them left his briefs in the river.

  They didn’t care about it.

  6

  But now, they were all dead. Jack Jones had buried them himself one by one in the graveyard where he worked. Norton died of lung cancer. Robbins, the blonde one, died in a car accident. And the last one, Nicotero, died of a heart attack at the early age of 56. And Jack Jones, the only survivor, left a rose in everyone’s gravestone on their anniversary. He drank a bottle of whisky and talked to them for a while. Then, he cried.

  ‘I’ll die one day.’

  7

  Jack Jones’ work was comforting after all. He dug holes with a little excavator. He cleaned the gravestones, swept the flower’s leaves out of the path, looked after the house in there, and even sometimes, he moved the remains to another hole in request of the relatives. Besides, he killed the damn rats with a ball rifle. A Crossman M4-177 compressed air rifle with a huge resemblance of the famous M4 assault rifle, the one that the army of the U.S.A. uses. It shot 4, 5
in balls after loading a charge of compressed air. The gun weighted almost 2 kilos.

  And all of these while he drank a box of beers. That summer of 1983 he thought for the first time when will he die and who would bury him. Which hole would he take in the graveyard that he knew very well? And for the first time, he felt chills in the back of his head and he also felt dizzy.

  ‘I’ll die one day!’ he said at the same time he spat on the grass.

  And the fucking dog licked Jack Jones spit.

  8

  He would retire in exactly six months and he hadn’t died yet. After forty years of working in the local graveyard, he never ad suffer any disability except for the hangovers and a couple of alcohol induced comas. He was happy to retire and at the same time, he thought if that was the case, he’ll die outside the graveyard and could meet the new burier. That made him nervous.

  Until two weeks later, he buried Donald McKinley, one of the most wealthy business man in Boad Hill. He had had a stroke while counting a wad of bills.

  9

  He had dug a hole with his noisy excavator and had already a hole so big that three people could fit in it, or so he thought and smiled pleased. It wasn’t funny. The dog barked a couple of times when the first relatives got nearer the spot and Jack Jones told the dog to shut up. Two women with few clothes, black clothes of course, were reaching the place with puffy eyes after crying so much behind black veils. Behind them, the priest and the hearse covered with crown flowers were walking towards the places, followed by a line of obedient ants, walking slowly; the rest of Donald McKinley relatives and friends. Among the crowd must be Donald’s lover, thought Jack Jones while he turned away from the place in his excavator.

  The funeral lasted about half an hour and some people threw dirt on the coffin. His widow had tried to jump to the hole with her legs open in a weird position. A hand held her on time. Her daughter threw a rose and blew a kiss to his father, like a sad goodbye. And the sun fell on all of them with all the strength of an August afternoon.

  After that, everyone left the place and Jack Jones came back to the hole with his excavator and the dog running around it, while barking and wiggling its tail.

  It was his turn to throw dirt on the coffin and the sun had hidden behind the mountains to stop bothering for the day. But the sunset was sticky and hot.

  Jack Jones moved the shovel and threw the first lot of dirt on the coffin.

  10

  ‘I’ll die one day,’ he said once more from his little vocabulary of persistent ideas. Who wouldn’t die? We all die at the end of our short lives! Even the fucking dog will die! And the damn rats. His concern was getting bigger until it became a delirious idea in him. He drank the beer in one swallow and he burped. There wasn’t anything interesting on TV, except for his thoughts. When will I die? He grabbed another beer and this time, he gave some to the dog who took out its tongue without hesitating. Its tongue was long and harsh as Jack Jones’ hands.

  All of a sudden, he heard a noise that came from outside. From the graveyard. Like a bunch of branches breaking. His eyes moved looking for the source. The dog barked.

  Something was happening outside.

  11

  He walked with caution but he was stumbling due to the beer he had drunk. The dog followed him silently smelling the ground; Jack Jones turned the lantern on. It was dark and the moon light didn’t shine enough to distinguish shadows on the gravestones.

  ‘Is someone there?’

  Ridiculous. If there was someone there with the intention of killing you, he would answer “hey! I’m here!”, which meant his question was in vain. For a moment, the most overwhelming silence surrounded the night. Then, a “clack clack”. He moved the lantern towards the noise. He didn’t see anything, except for the light of the lantern hitting a gravestone that read “John, I’ll always be here”.

  Then again, the noise of something dry crawling on the ground. Jack Jones moved the lantern and the dog barked once. He looked at what the lantern illuminated for a moment, but didn’t see anything, except for the gravestones. Then he heard a rass rass, like if someone was limping when walking. Then, the sound of some heels. Jack Jones was so drunk that he just kept turning around the lantern. Nothing. And the dog moved forward smelling the ground and its tail was stiff as a dry branch. Then, Jack Jones decided to move forward too. He walked for around thirty seconds before he ran into something. He fell to the ground. He let go of the lantern, and this broke into a thousand pieces and the light was off. He noticed a flow of a hot liquid on his forehead. He touched it with a dirty hand and he guessed it was blood. The dog barked and licked his master’s forehead, moving its tail.

  Rass rass...

  Jack Jones had stumbles into the open coffin of the late Donald McKinley, and he wasn’t inside, according to the results of sticking a hand into the coffin. In the middle of the moon light, he could read: “Donald Mc...” and on the ground there were spots that lined the ground until they got lost.

  ‘Fuck! Bodies’ thieves!’ screamed Jack Jones licking his own blood that fell to his lips.

  The coffin was unburied, on the grass and a bunch of dirt, or that’s what Jack Jones assumed. The thieves would have unburied the coffin and stolen Donald’s body, but it wasn’t like that.

  12

  The silhouette was moving towards him now, rass rass and it was getting bigger and bigger. “Maybe it’s the thief” thought Jack Jones and then, the silhouette turned into a figure. It was him. Donald McKinley himself! Jack Jones heart started betting fast, like a race car. On his side, the dog was barking furiously and leaving Jack Jones deaf.

  ‘It’s cold,’ whispered Donald holding out his hand. He was purple and puffy and smelled worst that Jack Jones himself with his dirty briefs. The dog backed off barking and then, Jack Jones heart stopped. His eyes were wide open and he thought, in a millisecond, “I’ll die one day” and he fell to the floor, unconscious. The dog ran out of there.

  13

  Before he died, Jack Jones knew who would bury him and he saw the exact moment of his death. If he would have known, he would have written in his gravestone “I’ll die one day”, but it wasn’t like that.

  Donald McKinley buried him. He put a rose on top of the dirt and kept walking around Boad Hill’s graveyard.

  He was the burier.

  The A girl

  Stephen King has always put a little of sex and romantic descriptions, almost erotic, in all of his stories. You can tell that he enjoys the divine pleasure. If we interview Steve about this story, The A Girl, he would say that the woman with voluptuous breasts and curves is not what she seems. He would probably keep an as on his sleeve. He would delight us with explicit scenes and would enjoy writing about it, always remembering his beloved wife. And he would write: “And the thigh lace peeped slightly, under the mini skirt and her legs were as long as California highways. I see it, for sure. What we do not know is in what kind of monster would eventually become this A girl. Would she become a psychopath, a killer on the loose, an unscrupulous spy or a giant rat like he already did for the story NONA? That, we will never know and we have to conform to that.

  A married man has several affaires with different women, until one day, the A girl presents to him. A sculptural beauty of long legs and big green eyes. He is euphoric because until that moment, he had only slept with big, fat women, who are usually alone and have no partner. Richard is excited to make love to an A girl. They booked a hotel room and the nerves started kicking. Once in the room, the A girl told him she had to shower first.

  Richard waited sitting on the bed, but noticed something that took his concentration from the girl. A dark and moldy spot appeared after the girl’s steps. He didn’t pay to much attention to this, because he thought the girl might have stepped into some spit on the street. But when she came out of the shower, naked, in front of him, she started to get naked again. This time, she took of her skin. Instead of long arms, she had claws that look like spatulas and she
opened a huge black mouth full of teeth dripping a gelatinous gel, and then, she made love to him.

  1

  She was there, leaning on her elbows placed in the bar. In the center, between her hands, there was an almost empty bottle of champagne. The champagne reached the edge of the glass.

  And Richard was there too. He kept a prudent distance from her, but didn’t look away. His tired sight watched all her beauty. He had a glass of whisky in his hand; the ice had already melted due to him watching her and not drinking. Watching that perfect girl with curves.

  The girls hid her face behind her hands and complained of a strong headache. That was it, because the girl put her hands in her temples and her long, wavy, reddish her flew for a moment. She wrinkled her forehead and closed her eyes. And she thought she had enough for today.

  Richard moved from his chair to the other side of the bar and his ass slipped on the red velvet. Richard was fat and the seat cracked under his weight. He was tall, extremely tall. He was 6, 3 and weighted almost 308 pounds. A big fat belly stopped him from watching his dick when he went to the bathroom. Besides that, the belly was an obstacle for him to make love to all those fat women that now covered his memories. But he came, that meant that the pleasure was guarantee.

  The girl in the bar had green eyes like jade diamonds, and long eyelashes that complemented the beauty of her eyes. Her cheek bones were pink and stood out. When she smiled, some holes were visible on both her cheeks. Her lips were full and covered in a thick layer of red lipstick like the carpet of a hotel. They were shining, specially the upper lip. Her tongue showed itself now and then between her perfect set of teeth. Her tongue was pink and soft, like wet silk.