Free The Brothers Crunk by William Pauley III Page B

ostrich. He gulps and Reynold can see the bulge in his throat traveling south as he swallows the orb whole.
     
    “ Goddamn it! Tell me this isn’t happening!” he yells, grabbing the bird’s long neck and choking him with both hands.
     
    “ Fack—” the bird manages to say while gasping for air. Reynold loosens his grip.
     
    “ Did you just curse at me?!”
     
    “ You were choking me! What else was I supposed to do? I don’t have any facking arms!” yells the ostrich. Reynold gasps and stumbles backwards, falling onto the sand.
     
    “ My god . . . Divey? ”
     
    “ Who else would it be, you turd? Ziggy facking Stardust?”
     
    Reynold’s eye nearly bulges from its socket. “Oh my god, Divey! It’s really you!” He jumps up and runs over to his brother, taking his breath with the squeeze of a giant bear hug.
     
    “ Alright, alright . . .” Divey says. He’s just as happy to be reunited with his brother, but was never much on all that touchy-feely stuff. “So, where do we go from ’ere?”
     
    “ Shit . . . anywhere, Div . . .” Reynold says, wiping the tears away from his eye, “we don’t have nowheres in particular to go.”
     
    “ It’s not about that, Rey, it’s about fate. Where is fate taking us? Where do we go from ’ere?”
     
    Reynold unfolds his hand. The coin is resting on his palm tails-side up. “We go West.”
     
    Divey bobs his head and smiles from behind his beak. “West it is then, brother!”
     
    Reynold smiles and climbs up on the saddle on Divey’s back.
     
    “ One thing, though—could you stop waving that bag of meat in front of my face and feed me already! I’m facking half-starved ’ere!”
     
    Reynold laughs and pulls out a dried slice of meat for each of them.
     
    “ Oh, that reminds me, Div . . . I came up with this facking brilliant idea while you were away.”
     
    “ Oh yeah, what’s that?”
     
    “ How’s about instead of brackfas burritos, we sell brackfas jerky? It’s easier to manage and best of all, we wouldn’t have any competition.”
     
    Divey thinks for a second and nods his head. “Yeah, Rey . . . that really could work!”
     
    The sun begins to duck down behind the horizon, painting the sky a brilliant shade of hot pink, just before total darkness.
     
    Where one day ends, another begins.
     
    ● ● ●
     
    The Damned Dirt Devils huddle around a mound of freshly dug earth, silently paying their respects to their fallen leader. They stand there in the hot desert for hours, saying nothing, just staring their sad, lonely eyes at the grave. Only when the sun begins to set, do they walk away, each in their own separate directions.
     
    Krebb is the last to leave. He picks up a bucket of paint and marks the grave with a splash of purple. He raises two fingers up to his brow, salutes his leader one final time before walking away. He doesn’t know where he is going. None of them do. It is the first time any of them have truly been free.
     
    ● ● ●
     
    Ten feet away, half buried beneath the cool desert sand, the eyes of a mutilated cyborg carcass begin to glow a sinister red.
     

 
     
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    William Pauley III has spent the majority of his life looking for his car keys. When he isn’t wandering around mindlessly, he usually writes . . . mindlessly. He writes for a local newspaper and is the author of the books Doom Magnetic! , Demolition Ya-Ya , Mr. Malin and the Night , and If You Don’t Sleep, You Don’t Dream . He can be found walking the hills of Kentucky. If found, please return him to his wife and two children. No reward.
     
    He would like to thank you for reading his book.
     
    For all things III,