Tell Me Another One
Flash Fiction Short Story by Lou Raymond
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The short story contains mature themes and is intended for adult readers.
It was a crisp fall morning, and, of course, Uncle Josh had another story. Kacey Toussaint hated her uncle’s stories as much as she hated lectures from her 9th-grade teachers at Brookfield High. Once Uncle Josh launched into a narrative, there was no going back, you just had to wait it out. But Kacey couldn’t complain. After all, she was the one who offered to join him for a walk every Saturday morning since his prognosis took a dive down the shitter.
These are her little good deeds, her Mom assured her. Her Dad would want her to be nice to his brother, she knew, who spent most of his final days worrying Uncle Josh would be lonely.
On that particular occasion, Uncle Josh was explaining to her the origin of the small park (more like a patch of grass with one park bench on which they sat) in the middle of downtown Brookfield, among old apartment buildings and empty mill buildings on the banks of the Saco River.
“This park wasn’t always here,” he said. “And the story is kinda nuts. Kinda sad.”
Kacey picked at her cuticles. “Oh shit, what’s the story?”
“Hey, kid, don’t curse,” Uncle Josh scolded. He lit up a cigarette—his second of their walk. Ever since Kacey could remember, the smell of burning Marlboro Lights reminded her of her Dad and Uncle Josh playing cribbage in the garage, listening to the Red Sox on an old stereo.
“Where we’re sitting used to be a house,” he said. “And that house belonged to a guy named Roland Boucher. He was a tall man; must’ve been six-five. His face looked like some kind of hawk: hooked nose, piercing eyes. Always wore a long, gray trench coat. But get this: he was one of these guys that was mysterious as hell, you know. His family? Not a single Brookfield Boucher claimed he was theirs. His job? Well, he had a sign outside his house that said, ‘Oysters - 25 cents,’ but who knows? Anyway, he’d show up everywhere—town hall meetings, a church fish fry, Brookfield basketball games at the parish hall—watching. He wouldn’t talk to anyone except himself under his breath with his signature deep, evil mumble. He’d just stare, mumble, stare, and stare.”
“Fucking creepy,” Kacey said.
Uncle Josh elbowed Kacey. “Cool it with the f-bombs.”
“Sorry, sorry. Go on.”
“Right,” said Uncle Josh. He flicked his cigarette. “So the only thing people knew about the guy was that he was a devil worshiper or something.” He turned and coughed into his shoulder. “That was the rumor, anyway. People said the mumblings were curses and shit. Bob Miller—you remember my good friend Bobby?—well, his mother swore she drove by his place, and in the top window, he was standing there drinking blood.”
“And so they got Buffy to stake him in the heart?” Kacey asked, chuckling. “Oh no, I got it! The town summoned a werewolf to take him out?”
“Wise ass.” Uncle Josh hocked a wad of thick spit. “Shut up and listen, will you?”
“I’ll stop, I swear.”
Uncle Josh took a long drag of his cigarette. “Anyways, certain Brookfield folks loved messing with him. Torturing him, really. For example, someone spray painted a devil star on his fence. But the worst was that a group of punk shits that’d take it too far—even hucking rocks and shit at him as he floated past on his walks. For the record, I knew some of these kids back then, but I always felt for the guy. I wasn’t gonna stand up for him, but nobody deserves to be so taunted and tortured, not even some devil freak.”
Kacey knew something about not deserving shit. Uncle Josh took a drag. He blew out the smoke upward as if expelling his soul to the clouds.
“I am a man of God, you know that,” Uncle Josh said. Since his last and most successful attempt at a twelve-step program, Uncle Josh had become something of a born again Catholic. One night Kacey went to bring him a tourtière pie her Mom made and found him half asleep in his bathrobe, with Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories resting on his gut.
“As a man of God,” Uncle Josh continued. “I am thankful for what He’s given me, even the shitty cards in my hand. So, believe me when I say I don’t support that devil shit. But I also believe that my lord is our creator, and though I don’t always understand his ways, even men like The Butcher are somehow my God’s children.”
Kacey tilted her head, intrigued. “The Butcher?”
“That was his nickname. Well, it became that after what happened in October.”
“What happened in October?”
“I’m getting there,” Uncle Josh said. He flicked his cigarette. “So these two boys, twins, the Beauvais boys, got wicked hammered one night. They were at a party down the beach. There was a raging bonfire and a bunch of half-in-the-bag teens, many shit-faced as all hell, impersonating old man Roland. Then these two Beauvais boys decide they're gonna fight that satanic pedophile, they kept saying. So they find their way back to town—Brian Couture, the soberest, drives them—and the boys start chucking rocks at the man’s window. Piss-drunk, yelling things like ‘Come out, you fucking child rapist,’ and shit like that. And then, The Butcher? He wakes up.”
“Duh duh duh,” Kacey said, chuckling.
“Listen,” Uncle Josh said, turning to exhale smoke. His voice dropped and became serious. “His face appears in the dark window. That long, hawk face. Can you imagine? But these two drunk dummies aren’t scared, they think it’s hilarious! And they start dying, laughing! All three of them, even Brian, were in the car! But they weren’t laughing all that long. Because The Butcher came back with a rifle and leaned out the window.”
Kacey went wide-eyed. “Oh shit, are you for real? He killed them?”
Uncle Josh nodded. “Old Roland leaned out the window, and…bang! Bang! Bang!” He pantomimed, firing a gun. “Three bullets, and those boys were just meat sacks on the concrete.”
“Holy fuck,” Kacey said.
“That cuss was justified, I suppose,” said Uncle Josh, with a cackle that turned into a cough. “Anyways, the town’s suspicions of old man Roland were true: he was evil to his core. As for Brian, he became a sort of local hero for getting away and calling the cops. Nowadays, he’s a big-shot realtor, I think. Sells houses down Old Orchard Beach and goes to St. Joseph’s church with his family.”
“And The Butcher?” Kacey asked. “Please tell me he’s in jail in Alaska or something.”
“The Butcher? Well, when the cops found him, he was crouched over one of the boy’s bodies, trying to carve his heart out with a steak knife. When they arrested him, they found he had one of the boy’s eyeballs in his coat pocket. He scooped it out with a grapefruit spoon. So obviously, they locked him up for life cause in Maine, we don’t execute. Well, prison folks don’t take too kindly to people that mess with kids, so about three months into his time, Roland was beaten to death. Word is: prison guards got so tired of stopping dudes from jumping ol’ Roland that one summer day, a bunch of Nazi skinhead types pummeled him to a pulp while the guards watched Roland laying there, helpless, looking up to the sun, arms out, his jaw agape.”
Kacey looked past Uncle Josh, trying to imagine where in the street the boys were standing, taunting The Butcher. She was a sucker for listening to true crime podcasts. She and her Mom would split a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and listen to episode after episode, and she always tried to visualize the scenes: the blood-stained sheets, the twisted bodies, the contorted look of horror on the faces of those who stumbled on the scene. And for a reason that was unclear to her then, she grabbed Uncle Josh’s non-cigarette hand—something she hadn’t done since she was nine and he took her to ride Splash Mountain at Disney World. She was so scared back then—not of heights, but of the crooning animatronics that reminded her of villains in video games that an older cousin showed her. So Uncle Josh held her hand the whole time and told her how at night, the robotic animals were actually friendly, like guardian angels, and that they came to life in the park to give kids who were afraid of them presents. And the next morning, in their hotel, she woke up next to a Minnie Mouse plush keychain she’d been eyeing.
Uncle Josh’s hand felt calloused and cold.
“You tell the wildest stories, Uncle Josh,” she said.
“You used to hate my stories.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your dad told me once.”
Kacey rested her head on his shoulder. “Used to,” she said. “Not anymore. Tell me another one. Please?”
Uncle Josh took a final drag, dropped his cigarette, and stepped on it. “Thanks, kiddo,” he said, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it. Kacey shifted closer, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the cigarette stink as Uncle Josh racked his brain.
“I got one,” he said, pointing across the street to a blue apartment building. “See that house. Across the way? You know what it used to be?”
Kacey opened her eyes and chuckled. “A funeral home? A morgue? Oh, a crematorium?!”
“No, nothing like that,” said Uncle Josh. “This will be a happy one.”
Lou Raymond, hailing from southern Maine, is a writer and educator based in the vibrant city of Boston. With an eclectic body of work published under various pseudonyms, he currently refrains from maintaining a social media presence or personal website, but who knows what the future holds?
Good ending.
Doug Hawley not Sharon