Lobo
Julie Aaron
Hell is in Texas. At least a portal to it is. Right in the town center of the dying community of Lobo; previously the gateway to the west, sole aquifer for over 100 miles, and depot to the Southern Pacific Railroad. Currently, it’s a gnarled opening in the concrete where it’s been cracked and torn away for the raw stench of flambéed skin and sulfur to permeate the hard late October air.
It’s always dry in Lobo. Ever since the wells dried up and the town’s population of founding families began to die off leaving no one to feed to the underground gods to keep their deal with the devil intact. If I had known the hiring ad for postmaster general was as good as signing your soul away when I circled it in the Houston green book I wouldn’t have ever left the city.
Unfortunately for me, I delivered mail six days a week 6a to 4p for the last ten months so between that and being the newest resident of Culbertson County I’m more than qualified to be hog-tied to the founder’s statue on Main Street. Amongst the brown dehydrated grass, across from the merry-go-round, down the street from the gas station, my hands are bound behind my back as I’m bracketed around the waist with frayed natural rope.
“I’m so fucked” I say to myself dropping my head against the hard leg of the statue I woke up secured to against my will.
“Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up! Don’t talk don’t breathe and don’t look. I’d tell you to pray and wait for heavenly light to absorb you but,” He says eyeing my attire. My haircut. To most I look like a tomboy, maybe a girl raised with brothers, or without a mother in the house to model femininity after, but in this small nowhere town, they see right through me. “You were never going to reach God’s heavenly kingdom. I’m sorry. This drought is killing us and He demands more than cows blood this year. Thank you for saving our town.” The pastor finishes not meeting my eyes before he does the holy cross and turns to climb into the running Ford Pinto parked to the left of us.
Personally, I think the preacher and this whole town are doomed to an eternity burning in fire and brimstone but coming from the queer currently offered up like a potluck lunch after church I don’t think it means much. Technically, Lobo, Texas is a ghost town. Population 50, soon to be 49 it seems. Right now, it’s a fucking curse. The earthquake shook any new developments from the earth in ‘29 and by the 60’s the water that had barely kept the town on the map had all but dried up. Apparently, even a deal with the Devil has an expiration date.
By the evening of October 30th the lifetime residents knew the drill. Shutter your doors and windows, lock and barricade every available entry, draw the curtains, and ignore the noises of the outside world. By duskfall, year after year, on this day the families would already have chosen this year’s offering. The arrangement, once comfortable when there were liveries, a hospital, and new construction to draw in inhabitants, had begun to sour in the 1940s when the population began to tread downwards with no sign of saving. Passers through, however few and far between didn’t have to know that the founder’s statue would soon have a cow’s blood pentagram drawn around it or goat horns placed over its head or a sacrifice strapped to it. Turns out, water is worth its weight in souls and the Devil is hungry.
Squeezing my eyes shut in panic I repeat over and over “It’s not real, it’s not real” until the loud squelching of inside-out skin rubbing against the destroyed ground grows stronger. The first demon to crawl from the earth is tall, over seven feet, their six eyes roam the area through the oncoming twilight glow. The noise it makes is a drowning one, like air escaping from a gaping wound. Their jagged horns are decorated with wet tendons and mangled veins hanging haphazardly as it whips its head around looking for me. Sensing me out.
My father always wanted a son. Instead, he got an outcast; an abomination, but he did what he could with me. I remember being barely seven and running the blade of his hunting knife across an injured buck’s velvety soft throat before dragging it by its hind legs to the truck by myself to start skinning and draining it. He taught me everything short of starting a fire in a bucket of water, so getting these ropes to snap under tension and friction should be child’s play.
So I lean forward, keeping my dark eyes squinted through the falling night on the demon I can see, and I shift my arms taking turns to rub the cord together. Faster and faster I move my arms till they burn where the rope sits against my wrists. Eventually, I feel the tension lessen slightly and drop forward a hair with the give in the rope. I know if I work harder I can reach the thin switchblade that rests in the deep pocket of my men’s work pants and slice the rest of the way out of here. I shift leaning forward more wiggling my arms faster filled with a dire need to get the fuck out of Lobo once and for all. Sweat collects against my hairline, the curls soaking in preparation in the dry west Texas heat. Even on the cusp of November, the dryness is like a gag in my mouth. I grunt with frustration, my father would be so disappointed I haven’t escaped my binds yet. I wiggle faster, leaning all of my weight forward. The rope slackens behind me, stretching under the pressure I’m putting on it.
The first chill of the season is mine. Heavy thudding footsteps rattle the ground shifting the earth around me just right to aid in loosening the ropes enough for me to slip my body out from under them with seconds to spare. As I hit the torn ground the red-bodied demon wraps its long arms around the marble statue squeezing the hard stone against its body and turning it to dust, sending debris outwards into my face. The demon straightens with a visceral, angry roar gurgling from the black hole set in the middle of its threatening face. A barbed tongue escapes the flesh in a flash to make a broken chittering whistle noise.
Eerie quiet settles through the stagnant air before a cacophony of screeches rises from the cavern in the concrete. Two more sets of claws grip the edge of the pit so hard rubble breaks off and clatters against the earth’s crust in its long fast descent into Hell. The two new demons stand intimidating and terrifying. Each as tall as the other, all of them with one desire: drag me to hell to fulfill Lobo’s Devil deal. I won’t sit as an idle sacrifice if only to spite that bastard heretical preacher.
Covered in grime, dust, and sweat I push my short hair back and shake my nervous calloused hands out bouncing on the balls of my feet for a moment before I take off in a dead sprint. My lungs ache from the pack of cigarettes I had finished a few hours prior. The white and red cardboard box sits empty in the passenger seat of the Pinto the preacher just drove off in. Smoke rattles around between my ribs taking up usable air. It feels unnatural to run this fast in such a long bout but I feel the ground move with every foot strike knowing what’s coming behind me.
Reaching the chained double doors of the self-service gas station I waste no time grabbing the heavy, white rock that the owner uses to prop the doors open for a breeze during business hours and hurl it through the left side watching the clear panes of glass shatter and rain. I step through and immediately hop the counter grabbing a pack of menthols and unwrapping them with my teeth. I beat the pack against my hip to set the tobacco as I use my free hand to turn all the pumps on and grab a hot pink lighter from beside the register. Quickly I slip back out through the broken door and squeeze the handle of both pumps freeing gallon after gallon of bitter gasoline. I walk towards the opening of the store, I douse myself in it, I drench everything nearby in 10% ethanol petroleum, leaving the pumps running to glug out even after I dropped them to the dirt.
Standing, waiting, opening my pack of camels I flip the first cigarette I touch upside down and tuck it back into the box softly. The lucky one. I pull the next one and place it between my lips rolling it from side to side. Enjoying the brief solitude and orange sunset I let the minty flavor overtake my tongue. When the smell of eviscerated skin and burning bones permeates the air around me I know it’s time. The pack of sinister demons slithers up the driveway approaching me slowly, menacingly, staring me down with their empty black eyes as if to say “Welcome to hell.”
I turn the lighter over a few times in the palm of my hand before rolling my eyes as if I had any other real choice. Thanks to Lobo, Texas I can’t even decide on my own course of action, there’s only one way now.
“Fuck it. Go to Hell!”
I mumble around my cigarette raising the hot pink lighter to the edge of the tobacco-filled paper and strike the spark wheel for perfect friction igniting myself and quickly everything else around. If I scream I don’t hear it, I don’t feel it, I don’t recognize permitting my mouth to make the noise. All I know is heat; blinding, white-hot heat. Before my eyeballs, cones, and rods of vision burn out completely, I see the demons being engulfed in flames, the fire overtaking the gas station and the trees behind it, and the dead thirsty grass down Main Street. I see the library and post office being swallowed. I hear the houses that were just boarded up for safety try to claw their way from the fire consuming the town. I see complete ruination.
As I take my last gulp of conscious air a smile dances across my melting face. Fuck Lobo.
I’m dead now. A girl can just tell. I feel lighter, despite being burned to ash.
“Shitty hand you got dealt back there. I got a bargain that would fix that for you. If you’re interested.”
A deep, velvet voice sings through the nothingness. Suddenly I’m corporal again, my eyes shoot open, ash puffing out from behind my eyelids until I can see again. I sit up in fright before relaxing at the sight in front of me. She’s sat on a throne of bones and flesh, her stilettoed feet crossed at her ankles, long red nails tapping impatiently against her naked thigh seductively like she already knows what I’m going to say.
“Where do I sign?”