Free Wormfood by Jeff Jacobson

monkey with one arm and bent down, disappearing in the darkness. He reappeared suddenly, swinging his Maglite around and stabbing it into my eyes.
    I squinted into the glare and asked again, “What’s that smell?”
    It didn’t just smell like something had died and been rotting slowly. No, this was something much, much worse. It was the kind of smell that seeped into your skin, your hair, your soul.
    The light bounced around for a moment, vaguely illuminating the edges of a large pit near the back of the truck. It looked like it had been dug in the middle of a deep, wide ravine. The sharp edges of the hole were about fifteen feet in diameter and the bottom was shrouded indarkness. I leaned forward, one hand on the truck, desperately trying to breathe through my mouth.
    Junior joined me on the other side of the truck and finished the Old Grandad with a satisfied gasp. “Makes life worth living,” he breathed, indicating the bottle, and then tossed it into the darkness. It landed with a loud splash. “Sounds full,” he said.
    “What is this?” I whispered.
    “Our hot tub,” Junior whispered back and the flashlight found his grinning face, filled with deep, black hollows.
    A low whine split the darkness. I looked up to find a large meat hook welded to a cable dangling in front of me. It hung from the thick steel arm that jutted out from the back of the truck. The cable was attached to the winch near the cab. Bert moved to the back of the truck, waving the flashlight in front of him. The mud in front of me and Junior suddenly leapt into sharp focus, and the light spilled into the pit.
    Ten or twelve dead cows and several dead sheep floated lifelessly in the rancid rainwater.
    “Told you it was full,” Junior said.
    Some of the livestock had been there a long time. The water in the pit looked thick, like some sort of tomato and meat soup that had gone bad. “Holy shit,” I repeated to no one in particular.
    “Me ‘n’ Bert like to come out here and soak in it. Makes our skin all soft and snuggly,” Junior said. “Toss me that hook, Bert.”
    He grabbed the swinging hook and turned to me. “Get a fresh one, okay?”
    I took a step backward. “What?”
    “I can see two new ones down there. We only need one, although both would be fucking great.”
    “Wait, hold on just a minute. You … you want me to go down there?”
    “You catch on pretty quick for a fucking idiot.”
    “You gotta be kidding,” I hissed. “No way. No.” My voice rose to a shout. “Ernst ain’t paying me enough for this shit!” I started to say somethingelse but caught a flash of Bert’s cast out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly a sharp explosion went off inside my skull. I collapsed into the mud.
    The darkness was soft and quiet. It felt almost comfortable, but then I heard someone say, “Pussy.” I wanted to say something, to shout, scream, something, but nothing seemed to be working right. Something cold slapped my face and just as I realized it was mud, something tugged at the back of my shorts. I had a strange sensation of being lifted. My fingers brushed against something that felt vaguely familiar. Shoelaces. Shoelaces with knots tied in them. My own shoelaces. I figured out that I was somehow bent nearly double, suspended in midair by the back of my shorts.
    I blinked furiously and shook my head. Synapses fired at random in my brain, misfiring and sparking in strange patterns. I kept shaking my head and, suddenly, my vision popped back into place, except that it was rolling back and forth as if something were wrong with the vertical control.
    I realized I was looking at the pit as it slid to and fro underneath me.
It’s just a dream, this is just a dream
, I decided. Some sort of panic attack. I just gotta get control of myself. Everything’s gonna be okay. Everything’s just—
    Something at the back of my shorts popped, and I dropped eight feet into the water.
    Right before I hit, I could hear Junior and Bert