Fresh Flesh Read Online Free PDF Page A

smiling, waving goodbye to the guards,
that he smelled the coppery scent of blood.
    They let me out , he thought, whistling
the Marine song, and on such a glorious day .
    A sunny, hot Valentine's Day. He could
already see the pitiful young lovers, gathering like moss under the
shade of towering oaks, playing pussy-pussy, kissy-kissy games.
Husbands forced into buying chocolate sweets and long stem roses
(which died after two weeks anyway, so what was the fucking
purpose?). Wives acting phony when their surprise came or cuntish
when it didn't. Little boys and girls barely acquainted with the
birds and bees, passing out nonsensical Will You Be Mine cards.
Torque just couldn't understand the fascination. He knew the only
good thing about Valentine's Day was the color: red.
    The same color as blood.
    Satan's color.
    Torque sighed wistfully, looking across the
jammed parking lot for Baby Blue, his pick-up truck. It had to be
there somewhere, he knew, because Uncle Sal told him it was in his
last letter. Uncle Sal said he parked it and left sweet Sally under
the seat. Uncle Sal was a swell guy, he kept Sally all these years,
and took care of her like she was one of his own. Uncle Sal knew
Sally would be put to good use again someday. If not by Torque, by
him; Uncle Sal said his wife was getting too big for her britches.
If that came down, Sally would be pleased. She loved blood.
    But not more than Torque.
    There she was: Baby Blue, sitting next to
some red foreign piece of shit; what a disgrace. Uncle Sal must
have missed it, Torque was disappointed, and decided that as a
good, upstanding citizen of the United States he would slash the
tires and steal the stereo. The least he could do.
    Torque's birth name was Wally Adamson, but
those who knew that were either the law, dead, or as crazy as him
(Uncle Sal, for example). He'd gotten the nickname by the way he
torqued his mother and ex-wife's heads with his monstrous hands
until they snapped. After he torqued their heads, he let Sally do
the rest.
    It took him three minutes to reach Baby Blue.
Four more to fix the foreign jobby. It would have taken less time,
but he was a little rusty, and he would have felt wrong not slicing
the leather upholstery to ribbons.
    He climbed into the pick-up and looked
underneath the seat. The keys were waiting on Sally's sleek body.
He took them, jammed them into the ignition and let her rip. She
fired like she'd never gone cold. Now that's love.
    Looking back at San Quentin, his home since
he was eighteen, he felt a little sad to be leaving. He took a
moment and studied its beautiful figure. The cold, unforgiving
concrete and you're-never-going-to-leave-here barbed wire fences.
He couldn't have asked for a nicer prison home. He loved it and it
loved him.
    Before tearing out of the parking lot, he
opened the window and spit on the foreign jobby. It would never
park next to Baby Blue again. The road opened up, and Satan led
Torque's nose to the overwhelming scent.
    "Speak to me," he said crazily. "Tell me what
I must do. Tell me how I can join you."
    The wind brought him an answer. Another
smell. It was a weird, succinct odor that, at first, stupefied him.
He hadn't come upon that odor for quite some time.
    And then he recognized it was fried
chicken.
    Southern Fried Chicken.
    "Wonderful." He laughed happy as the day was
bright, driving toward the smell of chicken.
    And blood.
    On the way a few cars passed him too close on
the two-lane road. He could tell Sally was getting nervous and it
started bothering him. Back off , he gave them all dirty,
hateful stares. They obeyed and gave Baby Blue breathing room.
    The power of Satan. I have the power of
Satan.
    It took about five minutes to trace the smell
down. Torque was right, it was emitting from a Southern Fried
Chicken fast food restaurant. He pulled into the barely-filled
parking lot, passing the slowly revolving chicken logo. It was
their knockoff of Kentucky Fried Chicken's spinning bucket of
chicken.