Free Bedbugs by Rick Hautala Page A

her back, unsnapped her costume top, and shrugged it off her shoulders. After swinging it around a few times in the air, she tossed it backstage. Now freed from confinement, her heavy breasts bounced to the rhythm of the music. When Dennis shifted his gaze downward from her eyes, all he could imagine was his own, trembling hands, gently caressing and squeezing those magnificent globes.
    As LaBelle continued to twirl and spin on the narrow stage, Dennis was swept away by her motion. Slowly, she peeled away the rest of her costume, sloughing it off like snake skin, but he barely noticed, so lost was he in the whirlpool of her dance and her flashing, golden eyes. When—at last—she slinked off stage stark naked, and the crowd exploded with cheers and whistles, Dennis felt himself only partially pulled back out of the spinning daze he had been in. Another dancer followed, but Dennis, his groin aching as if he hadn’t found release in years, got up and stumbled out the nearest exit.
    The sudden burst of sunlight and the blaring sounds from other carnival booths and tents was like a cold, hard punch to the gut. Dennis walked on legs as stiff as broomsticks as he made his way over to the kiddie rides, where he had left Sally and Dennis Jr. When he saw his bloated, pimple-faced wife, the last vestiges of the illusion LaBelle had cast disappeared like smoke. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, after he and Sally and Dennis Jr. had left the carnival, that Dennis got an idea of what he could do about it all.
     
    S unday morning dawned bright and cold as Dennis tiptoed to the back door, clutching a bartered suitcase in his hand. Every floorboard seemed to creak as loud as a gunshot with each step he took, but he slowly made his way through the kitchen and out the back door without waking either Sally or Dennis Jr. Closing the door quietly yet firmly behind him, he started down the road without a single backward glance.
    What the fuck difference does it make? he thought.
    He had a wife he didn’t love—maybe had never really loved. He had married Sally right out of high school only because he had gotten her knocked up. He had a threeyear-old brat who was driving him crazy as it was, and now another one was on the way because Sally said she “forgot” to take her birth control pills. And now, on top of everything else, he didn’t even have a lousy job. So there was nothing to keep him here in Hilton. But none of that mattered. If there was even the slimmest chance that he could—somehow—get to spend a night—just one night— with LaBelle, it would be worth leaving all of this behind!
    The night before, after Dennis Jr. had been tucked into bed and Sally was dozing in front of some lame-brained show on TV, he had gone down to the river again and watched as the roustabouts dismantled the carnival, packing it up for the trip to the next town. After Sally had gone upstairs to bed, he had quietly packed a few changes of clothes into his old suitcase and hidden it in the downstairs closet.
    The morning air was crisp, with just a hint of actual springtime warmth. The woods were damp with dew and filled with birdsong as Dennis made his way quickly down Marsh Street to the bridge that would bring him by the most direct route to Moulton’s Field. As beautiful as the morning was, though, it all paled beside the burning memory Dennis had of seeing LaBelle, the Voodoo Queen, dance . . . dance just for him!
    He hoped, he prayed that no one from town would see him. It wouldn’t take a powder keg mind to figure out what he was doing, walking down the road with a suitcase in hand. In some ways, he felt the same stirrings of freedom and joy he had felt when, as a boy, he had run away from home because of the whopping his father had given him for some long-forgotten offense. But the image that drew him onward now—the sensuous beauty of LaBelle the Voodoo Queen—was something no ten-year-old could even conceive of. He no longer wanted