Surrender

The endless miles of prairie slithered by in numbing brown and gold waves outside the bus window.

Time to settle in and relax.

By now the police would have found the bodies. Tomorrow she would be in the City safely anonymous in her new career as a the world's tallest midget porn star - there to disappear under a pile of pawing groping little hands and sweaty little bodies till she could re-emerge under an assumed name.

In the meantime it was work. Filthy work to be sure. But Dorothy, raised on a farm, was used to that.

She looked down at the ridiculously garish red shoes on her feet and cackled like a loon. Some farm girl she was. What a laugh.

Miss Almira Gulch, spinster busybody of the trailer court learnt different. Poor wet Almira. Drowned in her own kitchen sink. The old bitch's last words burbled out around the Sunday dishes were, "Wicked little girl. Oh what a world, what a world!"

What a world and wicked little girl indeed. If only she knew.

After rifling through old witch's meager possessions, she shoved the body into the crawl space under the dilapidated trailer. Thirty seven dollars and twenty eight cents was all she got for her troubles. That barely paid for the bus ticket.

Nothing seemed to be working out for Dorothy Gale. She couldn't even get the skinny bitch to fit under the trailer - even with the help of a chainsaw. Almira's long stocking feet ended up protruding from underneath the trailer for all the world to see. As an after thought, Dorothy snatched the ruby slippers off the old bird's cold dead feet, the only other thing the old bitch had that was worth stealing.

Well why not? she thought. She didn't need them any more and she wasn't just merely dead, she was really quite sincerely dead.

She clicked her heels together for luck.

Dorothy stared out the window at the endless cornfields rolling by. The sun peaked through the low hanging storm clouds bathing the landscape in an eerie yellowish glow making the cracked highway appear to be paved in dull gold bricks. Tornado weather for sure probably but who gave a shit?

Bored, she carved another swastika into her forearm. The feel of the penknife cutting into her skin made her tingle. Anything to feel - something - about anything.

"Fuckers," she thought recalling what the school psychiatrist Dr. Baum said about her. Tests, tests and more tests and then the bullshit concern. The words borderline personality disorder hovered in the air of his musty office as he excused himself.

Shadows moving across the opaque milky glass of the office door. Consulting with the principal in an agitated whisper outside. More words. Floating in the stale air. Seeping into the dingy wallpaper. words.

Deep seated psychosis coupled with narcissistic tendencies. 

A text book sociopath.

Dangerous. 

Involuntary commitment.

As if she'd ever give them the chance. She'd show them all.

Dirty, dirty fuckers.

She felt the crumpled postcard in her pocket from the Wizard. The Wizard. Another alias no doubt.  She'd heard him called all sorts of names: Professor Marvel, The Doorman, Cockney Cabbie, The Guard... now he was calling himself the Wizard. The knucklehead operated under the delusion that he could fool anyone by donning new clothes and slapping on a fake beard or mustache.

Wonderful. What a dipshit.

But Dorothy knew him as Bob, the man who had first turned her to hard drugs and prostitution. He ran a "gentleman's club' in a dodgy neighborhood on the eastside of the City. His real money came from the hookers and the cheap porno films he made with andfor midgets. 

She looked down at the crumpled card in her hands again - a grainy photo of midgets in an obscene daisey-chain spelling out the name EMERALD LOUNGE. The club's address was on the back.

She sighed. Hooking for Bob would pay for the drugs at least. Moral quandaries were not Dorothy's thing.

She sang.

A BJ here and a BJ there and a couple of Hot Carl jobs, that's how she'd pass the day away in the merry whorehouse of Bobs.

The singing was a nervous habit she'd developed on her first trip to rehab. Nothing like a bit of atonal warbling to annoy that bubble headed goody-two-shoes bitch of a counselor, Glinda.

♫ Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind Meeeeee!
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops,
That's where - you'll - find - meeeeeee! ♫

And if one of the new fish laughed at her in group, she'd beat the fucking shit out of them in the showers afterwards. Sweet.

Dorothy finished her song and reached for another cigarette. The old woman in the seat opposite studiously ignored the wild-eyed pig-tailed girl's off-key bellowing, sensing on an unspoken animal level the very real danger hiding behind the empty blue eyes.

Dorothy, on the other hand,  thought she had a very nice voice.  Though even she might admit, the rot gut whiskey and unfiltered Camels were beginning to take a toll.

The bus hit a bump. Dorothy rubbed absently at her crotch. 

The clap was a parting gift from the last guy she was with, the empty headed farmer who looked like a gangly scarecrow. Sweet guy really. Simple in his puppy-like devotion to her.  Always remembering to bring her nice things when came calling. Sometimes he'd come around the trailer park with his two friends, Hickory, an emotionless robot of a man who performed mechanically and Zeke, his hair-lipped bashful buddy too afraid to strip in front of her. 

Gah!

She had killed them of course. But of all of them, she thought she'd miss Scarecrow most of all. If he'd only had a brain he might have noticed the axe in her hand at the end.

She squirmed uncomfortably in the cramped seat. Just thinking about the crotch rot seemed to make her gingham thong ride up her ass crack. Punishment.

~

Fingers begin to twitch, to satisfy her itch. And suddenly her brains started to -- unhitch -- She sees - that witch! -- and chopping her to bits - and puking her bathroom slick while humming perfect pitch.
But oh what happened then was rich.

~

Her pocket book moaned. Toto, her mangy cairn terrier wheezed and gacked inside the pocket book on the seat next to her. Toto was the only thing she'd taken from the home of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry -- besides her bloody trophies. She'd sell the mutt for some rock when she hit the city.

---

Aunt Em & Uncle Henry. Uncle Henry was just the latest in a succession of "uncles" Auntie Em brought home from the truck stop bar. Drunken pawing uncles. There's no place like home. Yeah right! Thank god for that. She mused that she should have off'd them years ago. Especially that royal perv Uncle Henry.

Dorothy had come home early one day and found old Henry parading around in one of her old dresses. It was kind of funny really; to find out that this grizzled old farmer was a closet transvestite. But it went further than that. It turned out that Uncle Henry had started a trend among his cross-dressing pals and that there were actually competitions down at the local tranny watering hole to see who could do the best Dorothy impersonation.  On stage! She only hoped that this fad would die out soon.

---

The tab of acid went on her tongue washed down with a swig from a warm forty of Colt 45 wrapped in a paper bag. She belched up a blast of stale beer and the Bar-B-Q flavored pork rinds she'd eaten for breakfast. That coupled with the metallic taste of the LSD brought up the contents of her stomach. She pulled her bag closer and barfed loudly into it. Too late she remembered that Toto was still in there, asleep.

Oh well.

Fuck him.

Fuck Toto.

She settled back and waited for her trip to really begin. Swirling colors and kaleidoscopic images played under her eyelids as she slipped further from reality. Bloody corpses and flying monkeys: the happy dreams of a young soulless serial killer.

Dorothy was too far gone to notice when the bus passed over the bridge to the Missouri side of the river and it would be hours yet before she was sober enough to realize that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Photo by Annie Leibovitz