Part 3 (2/2)

Brock had to counter Flo's quip. ”Hey lady, you have home field advantage when it comes to d.i.c.k sucking. You can take out your teeth. I still have mine.”

The old man at the front table named Ernest spun a metal cage by the handle, and like a lottery, he selected a numbered ping pong ball. ”I-8. I-8. One last time, I-8.”

Brock eyed Flo's card, then Mary-Jo's, and then his own card. All he needed was an 0-7, and he'd win. Brock had to keep them distracted. Maybe they'd forget to put down a chip over a letter. ”If you ask me, Ernest needs a bit of pep. It's like listening to King Tut in the tomb. Dust comes out of his mouth when he announces the numbers.”

Mary-Beth sipped from her apple juice and scowled at him. ”You're going to have to do better than that, boy. Your jokes are lame.”

Flo laughed, ”America sucks b.a.l.l.s, and who's the biggest c.o.c.ksucker?”

Brock turned his head in Abigail's direction at the head of the table, whispering, ”It's her. She sucks the biggest b.a.l.l.s.”

Ernest announced N-2, and Abigail flipped out, spinning once around in her wheelchair. She put her hand up in the air. ”BINGO! I have a bingo!”

Brock flipped his card upside down. ”Ah, I never win.”

”You won four weeks ago, remember?” Flo jabbed her finger into his arm. ”You got that pug calendar.”

”Oh yeah. ”Pugs In Wagons.””

Mary-Jo eyed Gloria from across the table. ”Gloria really wanted that pug calendar. She would've stuffed her old pug if her son hadn't cremated him first. The kid found the bug belly up on the carpet and he just took the body right to the vet clinic.”

Before Gloria could speak any further on subject, Ernest walked off the stage and held up the prize. What was a plug-in phone in the shape of a banana. Abigail pretended to talk into it, ”Hey everyone, it's my son. He's calling me for the first time in two years.”

The blue hairs laughed, and Brock laughed with them. He remembered being out-of-work, needing friends, and finding a posted flyer outside the St. Anthony Community Center announcing bingo nights. It was a forty dollar a year members.h.i.+p fee, but it was well worth it. These ladies were his mothers and foul-mouthed sailors wrapped up in one package, but most importantly, they were sweet people. He couldn't get enough of them.

Brock couldn't help but let it slip, ”I wonder what she's going to do with that phone later.”

Flo snorted, ”So that's why she's spinning in her chair.”

Ernest dug into the box trying to determine the next prize.

”He's thinking really hard,” Brock said aloud so everyone in the room could hear. ”This is going to be good, isn't it, Ernest? They didn't go to the dollar store for this prize, no they didn't.”

Ernest ruffled his bushy feathery white eyebrows at him, saying in an eyeful, 'You're going to set them off. Don't talk like that.'

He dug deeper, dissuaded to pick what he first had in mind.

”It better not be a scented candle.”

Ernest huffed this time, clutching an item and then releasing it again within the box.

Brock had everybody clapping, whistling, cheering, and then chanting, ”Pick something good!” ”Pick something good!” ”Pick something good!”

Ernest shook his head in frustration. After working hard, he located something he was pleased with and raised it up. It was a box of expensive chocolates.

”Decadent,” Brock announced, putting his chips into a pile and slapping down a cleared card. He whispered to Flo, though he purposefully spoke loud enough for everyone to hear him. ”My new lady friend would love those chocolates. I'd get some then, right ladies? You've been put to bed with chocolate before. Admit it. We all have. Even me.”

Flo, Abigail, Mary-Jo and the rest of the ladies gave him an interested stare, detecting juicy gossip ahead.

Flo was the first to ask as Ernest called out the first letter and number for the next game, ”Who is this girl?”

”Hannah. And she asked me to marry her.”

He mentioned Hannah on a regular basis.

”Oh Brock, it's about time. You've been shacking up with her. It's about time you stopped milking the cow for free.”

The game stopped in that moment, and Ernest called out numbers and letters to no avail. The women stared at him lovingly. Flo took his hand, smiling. ”We're proud of you, Brock. We've been rooting for you the whole time. We don't care what the tabloids say about you. You've changed for the better. Marrying Hannah would be another one good move. She's quite a dish.”

”I'm nervous. I've never been married before.”

”Fifty-two years old and not married,” Flo whistled. ”How did that happen?”

”It's hard to marry or develop romances when you're producing movies and working 24/7. And I was born into that environment. It sounds cheesy, but I didn't know anything beyond fast women.” He listened to his words and cringed. ”That sounded awful.”

”It is awful,” Abigail said from across the table, ”but I've been divorced three times, so what's worse?”

”Two times,” said Flo.

”Three times,” Mary-Jo chimed in.

”Never,” Ernest said, glowering at his wife, Edith, who offered him a conquering smile. ”Not once.”

Brock looked at them all and was so grateful for each of them. He said one last thing before the game re-commenced. ”Let's hope I get to be in ”The Ernest Club.” That would be ”The Never Been Divorced Club.””

BLUE HILLS MAYHEM.

Four Hours After Piedmont Cemetery Melted Gloria Albright had been postmaster general for ten years. She was now in the sorting room at the Blue Hills post office tearing open boxes and envelopes that were to be mailed. Her husband had tried to slit her throat in her sleep earlier this morning, but somehow, Gloria had instinctively defended herself. Kicking him in the b.a.l.l.s, Gloria fled the house and didn't turn back. She ran for four blocks, dodging the houses on fire in her neighborhood, the random popping of gunshots, the murdered dead bodies strewn about on the ground, and the riots that kept spreading across the town of Blue Hills.

Nowhere was safe, so when she caught sight of the post office, Gloria knew that was the best place to hide. Before she entered the building, Gloria heard the voices of the dead speak on the air. The smells of sulfur and death escaped from the earth in a yellowish fog, what were blasts of nasty air shoving up clods of gra.s.s and creating potholes in the streets and even cracking the foundations of homes. The pain between her shoulder blades, the need to survive, her surmounting fear, everything she was experiencing was slowly making sense.

She locked the door to the post office behind her and delved into the pile of unopened mail. She soon came upon a birthday card. Gloria pocketed the twenty dollars and tossed the card aside. Encouraged by the take, she kept on working through the hundreds of packages and envelopes unknowing of the heavily armed people outside who were waiting for her to come out to ambush her.

They were already here.

Those two b.i.t.c.hes are dead.

Dr. Steinke clutched a scalpel in one hand and Mrs. Birchum's purse in the other. The purse was useless. His two nursing a.s.sistants had already pilfered items from each of Blue Hill's Hospice Center's patient rooms. So there was nothing for him here. He threw down the worthless purse and moved on, skulking about the hallway again. He had trouble finding Barbie Belle and Jill Olsen, the two nurses, through the thick walls of yellow air that kept thickening. He coughed on the smells of death, though here, they were laced with the exaggerated odor of bedpans, baby powder, and loneliness.

Dr. Steinke entered another patient's room. He growled not in shock, but in anger, when he viewed the patient. Homer Winch.e.l.l had his throat and wrists slit. He lay in a supine position on his bed. His wallet and bag of personal items was sorted through and left strewn about the floor.

”d.a.m.n those b.i.t.c.hes!”

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