Part III
Loopy didn't know much about geography, but he knew Louisiana was shaped like a
boot and that Arkansas sat atop it on the map. But they were in the toe of the
boot, which stuck east under Mississippi. So he figured they would have to go
generally northwest for a while, before turning north.
He stuck to back roads because he figured the cops by now had discovered the
carnage in Room 106 and were looking for him and Elsie. Mainly for him. They
would assume he had killed Irv and Joe Joe. Why would they think otherwise? How
could they know that this babe sitting beside him, humming some strange song
he'd never heard before, was actually The Thing, The Blob and Godzilla, all
rolled into one?
They passed a dilapidated store with a couple of gas pumps in front. Loopy
looked at the fuel gauge. They were running close to empty.
He slowed, pulled to a stop, then backed into a gravel driveway.
"Where are we going?" Elsie asked.
"Back the road a little. We need gas."
Elsie pondered this. "Gas is what you put in this vehicle for fuel? But it's a
liquid. Why do you call it gas?"
"Short for gasoline," Loopy said. "You really don't know shit, do you?"
He pulled the truck up to one of the pumps, stepped out and looked around. No
one was outside, so he went into the store. It was cooler than outside, thanks
to a wheezy window air conditioner. And it was dark. It took a moment for his
eyes to adjust. Then he saw a thin man in bib overalls standing behind a
counter.
"Howdy," Loopy said. "I need some gas. Do I pump it myself?"
The man behind the counter looked past him at the door and said nothing. Loopy
turned and looked behind him. Elsie was standing in the doorway. She had shed
his shirt, so her bloody tank top, filled with her magnificent breasts, was on
full display.
"What happened to her?" the storekeeper asked, suspiciously.
"Nothing," said Loopy. "We was cutting up some meat. Now how about the gas?"
"Ain't got none," the man said. He leaned down and reached beneath the counter.
"All out until I get a delivery tomorrow."
"Okay," Loopy said with a sigh. He turned to leave, but the man said, "Wait a
minute, you ain't going nowhere."
Loopy turned back and found himself looking at the business end of a
double-barreled shotgun. Twelve gauge, as best he could tell.
"Get over here," the man said, looking at Elsie. "Get over by your man, and no
funny business."
"What the fuck!" exclaimed Loopy in exasperation. "I've walked in on a stickup
before, but I never been stuck up by a store owner. What the hell you want with
us?"
"I don't rightly know," the man said. "But there's something funny going on
here. "Her with all that blood all over her. And that pickup truck. They said on
the radio a little while ago that the cops in New Orleans were looking for a big
man and a woman who rode off in an orange pickup truck. You're a big man, you
got a woman with you, and you got an orange pickup. Plus, all that blood. I'm
calling the sheriff." He held the gun with his left hand and punched a
three-digit number on the phone with the other. Then he held the receiver to his
ear and waited.
It took a long time before anyone answered. Loopy began to wonder if 9-1-1 had
reached the backwoods yet.
Finally, the man said, "Yeah. This is Stevenson over on Longwood Road. I got a
man and a woman here I think had something to do with them murders in Jefferson
Parish."
He paused, then said, "Jesus Christ, don't you people even listen to the goddamn
radio and TV. There was two men beaten to death in a motel outside New Orleans.
Cops are looking for a man and a woman -- aw, the hell with it. Just send a car
over here and take a look."
He hung up, then motioned Loopy and Elsie to take a seat on a bench along the
back wall.
"Well," said Loopy, as he sat down. "I guess this is where all us earthlings
learn just who you are, honey. The law is going to be here in a few minutes, and
tough as you are, I don't think you're going to fight your way out of this one."
"Is that a gun he's holding?" Elsie asked.
"Yeah, honey, that's a gun. A shotgun. Two barrels. Would make quite a mess of
you. So I'd just sit still if I were you."
But Elsie didn't sit still. She walked slowly toward the man behind the counter,
her eyes on the gun.
"Sit down, miss," Stevenson said. "Don't make me use this."
"But I want you to use it," Elsie said calmly. "I want to see how it works."
The man backed away as she approached, but there wasn't much room behind him.
"I'm warning you," he said. Then, to Loopy, he yelled, "Tell this crazy woman to
get back."
She lunged for him, and he pulled the trigger. The first blast hit her in the
left shoulder, spinning her around. The second hit her in the small of the back.
She landed face down on the floor, a big hole in her back where the load of
Number Two shot had ripped into her.
There was silence for a moment, then Loopy said in amazement, "Jesus, you killed
her."
"Didn't mean to," the man said. "But she kept on coming at me. You saw it. You
saw her coming at me."
Loopy leaned down and touched Elsie's cheek. She was motionless. He thought
she'd be writhing around, at least for a while. She must really be dead.
He felt strange, a mixture of relief and sadness. He was glad she couldn't beat
him up again, but he was sad because he had liked her more than any other woman
he'd ever met.
He looked up. The man behind the counter had reloaded the shotgun, and it was
again aimed at him.
"Get back on that bench 'til the sheriff gets here," the man said.
Loopy stepped back and sat heavily on the bench. He felt tired and resigned. He
heard a siren approaching. They'd send him to prison for killing Irv and Joe
Joe, and this son of a bitch would get off scot-free after blowing Elsie all to
hell. It wasn't fair.
A car with flashing blue lights skidded to a stop in front of the store, and two
men in tan uniforms and Smokey the Bear hats came into the store, guns drawn.
They looked down at Elsie, and one of them said, "Aw shit."
"Who shot her?" the other one asked.
"I did," Stevenson said. "I didn't want to, but she came at me."
"You couldn't have just slugged her or pushed her away," the first deputy said.
"No," said Stevenson. "I was afraid the big guy would rush me if I got to
tangling with the girl."
"Hey," interrupted Loopy. "We just come here for gas and this son of a bitch
pulls a gun and shoots my girlfriend."
"Shut up," said both deputies simultaneously.
One of them reached down and felt for a pulse in Elsie's neck. "Still pumping,
but pretty weak," he said. He put his gun in its holster and unhooked a radio
from his belt. "We're over at Stevenson's on Longwood," he said. "Got a woman
down with a gunshot wound, but still alive. Get an ambulance here quick."
The other deputy approached Loopy and told him to stand, face the wall and put
his hands behind him.
"Why you gonna cuff me?" Loopy asked. "I didn't do the shooting."
"Yeah, and you'll probably be released as soon as we clear up this mess," said
the deputy. "But it ain't cleared up yet."
They brought Loopy outside, and Stevenson joined them, minus the shotgun.
"I guarantee he had something to do with those killings in Jefferson Parish,"
Stevenson said. "It all fits together."
"Yeah, maybe so," said one of the deputies. "And maybe you were too goddamn
quick on the trigger."
"Fuckin' A," said Loopy.
"Shut up," yelled both deputies and Stevenson.
Then they were interrupted by a very loud bang, and the deputy standing next to
Loopy jerked backward and fell to the ground. The other wheeled just in time to
take a face full of pellets from the gun Stevenson had left in the store. Elsie,
standing bare-breasted on the porch, was the shooter.
Stevenson and Loopy looked at her in stunned silence. She aimed the gun at
Stevenson and again pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Stevenson bolted
to the road and started running.
"Get me out of these cuffs," Loopy yelled. "The keys are on the deputy's belt."
Elsie walked unsteadily over to the fallen deputy closest to Loopy and bent to
search his belt. Loopy looked at her lower back, which a few minutes ago had a
big, bloody hole in it. The hole was gone. In its place, there was what appeared
to be a mass of white, bumpy scar tissue. When she found the keys and stood,
Loopy saw similar tissue on her shoulder.
"You're fuckin' indestructible," he said, with a mixture of fear and admiration.
She gestured to him to turn around, then unlocked the cuffs.
They heard a siren in the distance.
"That'll be the ambulance," said Loopy. "Either that or more deputies. Get in
the truck, quick."
He got in, cranked up the engine, then remembered he was still almost out of
gas. They could take the deputies' cruiser, but that would make them even more
obvious a target, and besides, the truck could at least go off road, if the
going got rough.
He pulled out into the road and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The
ambulance came around a curve and barely missed them. A hundred yards later,
Loopy saw Stevenson jogging wearily along the side of the road. He was headed
the same direction they were, so his back was toward them.
Loopy guided the truck onto the shoulder. Stevenson turned just in time to
recognize the danger but too late to do anything about it. The impact threw him
far into the air, and he landed in a broken heap next to a sycamore tree.
Loopy gunned the engine and the truck swerved back onto the road. Elsie seemed
uninterested.
"You okay?" Loopy asked, after a little while.
"This adventure is quite exhausting," Elsie replied softly. She didn't seem to
be in pain, just tired.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but your body had better be ready for some pretty
hard work. We gotta get off this road. Then when the gas runs out, we gotta go
overland on foot and hide out somewhere for a while. Every sheriff and cop
within fifty miles is going to be looking for us."
"I'll give it the old collagen try," she said. "Maybe it will be fun."
Loopy turned onto a gravel road that branched off to the left. They went through
a pine woods for a mile or so, then the gravel road ended and they were on a
dirt track that ran through tall grass. Half a mile ahead of them was a clump of
trees and a vine-encrusted barn that was leaning precariously to the left.
The truck sputtered and came to a stop. Loopy tried to crank it up again, but
the motor wouldn't catch. The needle on the fuel gauge was so far to the left he
could hardly see it.
"This is where we start walking," he said. He got out, opened an aluminum chest
behind the driver's seat and pulled out a blanket, a hunting knife in a sheath,
a canteen with a strap, and a plastic first-aid kit.
Elsie's knees buckled as she got out of the truck and she fell face forward into
the grass.
Loopy came around and helped her to her feet. Her body was still tantalizingly
sexy, but she seemed to have lost all her strength. He reckoned if they fought
again, he'd whip her ass without breaking a sweat. But he didn't want to fight.
They were in this together. They should be allies, not enemies.
***
Inside Elsie, the Visitor was also doing some calculating. The big question was
how long Elsie's body would hold out. Killing Carlos, Irv and Joe Joe had taken
a lot of her; so had the battle with Loopy. Her body, though athletic, wasn't
designed for such exertions. Now there was the damage done by the shotgun. The
repairs that the Visitor had made were only a patch-up affair. Inside, Elsie's
spine, kidneys and several other organs had been shattered. They were now held
together with a DNA glue that the Visitor had synthesized from other tissue. The
repairs would fail soon, and the Visitor wanted to be ready to move to a new
host. Loopy was the obvious candidate. He was big and strong -- and male. It
would be interesting trying sex as a male Two-Leg.
But he didn't seem very intelligent, and if the law enforcers he was so worried
about caught up with him, they would no doubt shoot him, the way the man in the
store had shot Elsie.
Nevertheless, there weren't many other potential hosts around, at least not of
the two-legged variety, and a return to insects or something even more
insignificant would be a letdown.
***
They circled the barn, making sure no one was nearby. They needn't have worried.
There wasn't another building in sight, and whatever might once have grown in
the fields around the barn had long ago been replaced by tall grass and taller,
broad-leaf weeds. Loopy had had to pull away vines to create an opening big
enough for them to enter.
"Fuckin' kudzu," he snarled, as he ripped the twisting green sinews. "Goddamn
vine doesn't belong here. They brought it over from Japan or Java. It's a
fuckin' alien invasion."
He paused, looked nervously at Elsie and said, "Sorry. I didn't mean no offense.
But it is an alien. I mean, it isn't American."
"Yes," said Elsie, "I understand. What isn't American is alien. And Louisiana,
is that American?"
"I'm not sure," said Loopy, as he stepped back to admire his work. "Here, we can
get in now."
It was hot inside, and they were overwhelmed by the smell of rotting wood and of
some kind of wild animal, raccoon perhaps, or possum.
Loopy was dying of thirst. He opened the canteen and drank deeply. Then he
offered it to Elsie. She declined.
"You better drink something," he said. "You're going to get dehydrated."
He drank again, but he needed more than water. He was dizzy with hunger. He
hadn't eaten since ... he tried to remember when. The night before? No, that was
when he brought the pizza to the motel room and got the shit kicked out of him.
It must have been lunch at Joe Joe's cousin's place, the alligator farm, over 24
hours ago.
But he was even more exhausted than he was hungry. He spread the blanket on the
decomposing straw on the barn floor and sat so suddenly that the whole barn
shook. Then he lay back and spread his arms and legs.
"Come over here, honey," he said. "You must be pooped, too."
In the dim light filtering through the kudzu and some missing boards in the
walls, Loopy could see Elsie's pale body, but it was just a vague form, like a
ghost. She didn't answer him.
"Okay, but I ain't staying up to keep you company," Loopy said. He closed his
eyes and immediately felt dizzy. But the dizziness passed, and he fell into a
deep sleep.
*** *** ***
Loopy was puzzled. His buddy Jake, who had disappeared months ago, was at a
microphone at the head table of a big banquet. Irv sat next to him. Hundreds of
other people were in the big room, and waiters were moving back and forth among
the tables. Loopy was at a table near the front, directly facing Jake, who wore
a white tuxedo. Loopy couldn't figure out why he was there -- and why Jake, of
all people, had been invited to speak.
"It's not enough to kill the bitches," Jake was saying. "It's certainly not
enough just to fuck 'em. They want to be fucked. What we gotta do is eat them.
We gotta turn their energy and their femaleness into nutrients. Just like babies
suck milk from their tits, we gotta get the nutrients we need from their meat.
We gotta drink their blood. We gotta learn the best ways to cook 'em."
Two burly waiters approached the head table carrying a big wooden platter with
handles at either end. The platter was covered by a big silver bell. They placed
the platter on the head table and removed the cover.
Lying on the platter was the steaming body of a woman. She lay on her back, with
her knees bent and her arms folded over her chest. She appeared to be asleep.
Jake, who now wore a chef's hat and held a huge carving knife in his right hand
and a two-pronged fork in his left, looked down at the woman, then looked up at
Loopy with a crooked grin.
"White meat or dark?" he asked.
The scene shifted. Loopy and the woman who had been on the platter were sitting
next to each other on a bench in a wood-paneled sauna. She looked vaguely
familiar but he couldn't remember where he had met her. She had blonde hair and
a slender body, which was wrapped in a white towel.
"You tried to kill me," she said softly. "You twisted my head and broke my
neck."
"Naw," said Loopy, "I never did that. You're thinking of somebody else."
"No, it was you, Louis," she said.
Then she was gone, and something prompted him to look up. The ceiling of the
sauna was high above him, and the light barely reached it. Sitting in the dark,
on a rafter, was a large pair of eyes. They were watching him.
"Who are you?" Loopy asked.
"I am Uggla," said the eyes. "I live in the dark, and I know the darkness. Soon
you will be in darkness, too." Then the owl spread its wings and flew into the
starlit sky that had been the sauna's roof.
*** *** ***
Loopy awakened with a start. At first, he didn't remember where he was. Then the
smells of the barn brought him back to reality. It was still hot, but not as hot
as it had been. And it was dark. It must be nighttime, he thought.
He reached out and felt for Elsie. She wasn't there. He sat up, shook the
cobwebs out of his head, and carefully got to his feet. He was afraid of
stumbling in the dark.
"Elsie," he called softly. "Elsie, where the fuck are you?"
"I'm out here," she called back. Her voice seemed to come from far away.
He groped his way to the doorway where he had pulled away the tenacious vines
only a few hours earlier. Already, they had begun to close in again, and he had
to force his way through them.
It was cooler outside, and a half moon provided enough light for him to see
Elsie in the distance, standing next to a leafless tree.
As he got closer, he saw that she was completely naked.
"You couldn't sleep?" he said.
"I don't sleep."
He stopped a few feet from her. She was beautiful, in the moonlight -- beautiful
but frightening.
"Come closer," she said. She knelt and beckoned him with her hand. "I want to
take your magnificent prick in my mouth and suck it dry."
Loopy didn't feel very sexy, but the invitation was hard to turn down. He
unzipped his pants and pulled out Big Tom. It was flaccid but already beginning
to pump up.
"I don't know, Elsie. I don't know if this is a good idea."
"It's a wonderful idea," Elsie said softly. She walked on her knees until her
face was only inches from his penis. She took it in her hand and fondled it.
Then she leaned forward and enveloped its head with her lips.
"I don't know, Elsie," Loopy said in half-hearted protest.
She sucked him gently at first, then more vigorously. He breathed heavily,
closed his eyes and could barely keep his balance. Then, just as he was ready to
cum, she released him, stood up and backed away.
Loopy opened his eyes in surprise. "What the hell are you doing? What kind of
game is this?"
"Not a game," Elsie said. She bent down and reached for something in the grass.
It was Loopy's hunting knife. The blade gleamed in the moonlight.
"I'm going to cut your dick off," Elsie hissed. "Then I'm going to split you
open like an overripe watermelon and eat your innards."
Loopy stuffed his dick back in his pants and zipped up. "You're fuckin' crazy,"
he said. "What happened to you?"
She rushed at him and swung the knife at his head. He stumbled backward. The
blade barely missed his face.
He tripped her as her momentum carried her past him. She fell face down, then he
jumped on her. His weight knocked the breath out of her. He got on his knees,
straddling her, then grabbed her hair with his left hand and pulled her head
back.
"Looks like you're not Super Bitch anymore, honey," he yelled. "How about this?"
He punched the side of her face with his right hand. Then he stood, raised his
right leg and slammed it down into the small of her back. She moaned, and her
body jerked wildly.
He slipped his foot under her and flipped her over. He reached down, grabbed her
throat with both hands, and lifted her off the ground.
She reached up and tried to break his grip, but her strength had evaporated.
He held her so that her face was inches from his, and her feet didn't touch the
ground. She looked at him, blinked, then her eyes rolled back. Her hands fell to
her sides.
He squeezed even harder on her throat, then tossed her from him. She landed on
her back on a rotting log. She lay there, her belly exposed, vulnerable.
He stepped backward and felt something hard under his foot. It was his knife.
He picked it up and looked back at Elsie. Her legs were spread and her pelvis
was slowly rising and falling. It was as if her body was asking to be fucked --
or ripped open.
He stepped closer to her and heard her voice. She was whispering. He knelt
between her legs and leaned forward.
"Fuck me, kill me, eat me, fuck me, kill me, eat me," she said. Her eyes were
closed, but she kept on whispering. Inside Elsie, the Visitor was running the
show. It was time to abandon this female whose body was now damaged beyond
repair. Beyond repair, but not beyond usefulness. It would provide badly needed
food for the big male who soon would be the Visitor's new host.
But Elsie wasn't cooperating. Her mind had never completely disappeared, since
the Visitor needed it in order to negotiate with the other Two-Legs. But her
will should have been destroyed long ago.
It wasn't.
She said what the Visitor made her say and moved the way it wanted her to move.
But the Visitor could detect growing resistance. Elsie, the personality who had
been absorbed and transformed into a network of malleable neurons within minutes
of being taken over by the Visitor, was reasserting herself.
Loopy, of course, was unaware of all this. What he saw and heard was a plea by a
beautiful, naked woman to be fucked, killed and eaten.
He was now ready to fuck. He enjoyed killing. And he was very, very hungry.
"You asked for it, baby," he said, drawing back the knife and eyeing the spot in
her belly where he would plunge it in.
Suddenly, Elsie sat up. She gave out a bloodcurdling shriek as she plunged her
thumbs deep into Loopy's eyes.
He lurched backward and covered his face with his hands. Blood poured from
between his fingers, and he made strange sobbing noises.
Elsie jumped up and moved away from him. The Visitor was perplexed and furious.
This Two-Leg female - what had they called her, this "bitch" - had ruined its
plan. The big male was now blinded and useless. Elsie herself would soon
collapse. And there were no other Two-Legs around to serve as hosts.
Elsie staggered, confused and weak. The struggle for control of her body caused
her to jerk and twitch, as if an electric current were running through her.
She stumbled into the mesh of kudzu growing on the side of the barn. Her hands
gripped the vines to steady her. Inside, the Visitor saw an opportunity. This
vine was vigorous, fast-growing, almost like an animal. The transfer was
instantaneous.
Elsie's body stiffened. Suddenly, she was whole again, a body and a mind united.
She turned, looked out at the moonlit countryside and leaned back, relieved and
exhausted, into the vines.
They opened, and she fell further backward than she expected. Tendrils wrapped
around her neck, her waist, her thighs and ankles. Other tendrils grabbed her
wrists and pulled her arms behind her.
Barely had she been freed from the Visitor's possession than she was again in
its grip. She cried out in anguish, but the vines tightened around her neck and
turned her cry into a ragged gurgle. Other tendrils were pressing between her
legs, pushing into her crotch. Much to her disgust and dismay, she felt a rush
of pleasure as they massaged her clitoris. Others were kneading her breasts,
brushing across her nipples. The vines were incredibly powerful, lifting her off
the ground and wrapping her so thoroughly that she no longer could see the
countryside and the sky. She was enveloped in a cramped green cage.
And so she remained, hidden in the kudzu, her erogenous zones repeatedly
assaulted, as the sun rose and a new day began.
***
Two coon hunters wandered across the field, headed toward the vine-covered barn.
Their dog trotted lazily a few yards ahead of them, seemingly uninterested in
the hunt, or anything else.
The men stopped short when they saw a big, blond-haired man stumbling though the
tall grass, his hands waving in front of him. He was bare-chested, and his flesh
was covered with welts. Bug bites and poison ivy, they presumed. One of them
called out, and Loopy turned toward the voice. They saw that his eyes were shut
and caked with dried blood.
"Help me," he cried. "Help me, for God's sake. I'm blind. The bitch blinded me.
Help me. Help me. Help me."
****
A car from the North Felicity Parish sheriff's department bounced over the open
ground to the barn. The hunters rushed up to it, talking fast.
The driver, a big man with a black mustache, got out and waved the hunters
aside. He put his hand on the 9-millimeter pistol at his belt and cautiously
approached Loopy.
"Louis Overton?" he called out.
"Yes," said Loopy. "That's me. I surrender. I surrender. For Christ's sake
arrest me. Get me to a fuckin' hospital. The bitch blinded me."
Another deputy joined the first. "Is that him, Mack?" he asked.
"Yeah, that's him. No sign of the girl."
They handcuffed Loopy and pushed him face down into the back seat of car.
Then the big deputy, Mack, turned to the hunters.
"Did you see a young woman with him? Dark-haired. Good looking."
The hunters said they had seen no one but Loopy.
"Let's look around before we bring him in," Mack said.
He and the other deputy walked all around the barn. Mack pulled back the vines
and looked inside. He went back the car, got a flashlight and returned to the
barn. He entered carefully. There was a blanket on the floor, and next to it a
first-aid kit. He shined the light into every corner. The girl wasn't there.
***
In fact, she was only a few feet away, wrapped in kudzu. She could hear the
voices of the men, but when she tried to call out to them, the vines tightened
around her throat. The only sound that came out was much too faint to be heard,
even a yard away.
The Visitor was enjoying Elsie's predicament. So close to salvation, yet so far
away. What delicious frustration. And so much worse to come.
The Visitor had had several hours now to tinker with the kudzu's DNA. It had
found a way to force the vine to produce long, sharp, hollow spikes. Dozens of
these were now poised to strike.
Even as the deputies and the hunters talked and occasionally laughed a few feet
away, the spikes plunged into Elsie's breasts, her buttocks, her belly and
crotch. Her scream was stifled in her throat. Then the ultimate punishment: two
especially long spikes jabbed into Elsie's eyes.
***
The hunters' dog suddenly sat up and moved to the vines. It sniffed the kudzu,
then growled.
Mack saw the dog and told the others to be quiet. "He's found something," he
said quietly.
But the Visitor was already two jumps ahead. The vine released a vile-smelling
liquid that seeped from the leaves closest to the dog.
The hound whimpered and backed away.
"Guess he smelled a skunk," one of the hunters said. By now, they all smelled
something repellent. They moved from the barn and resumed their conversation.
***
Inside the kudzu, Elsie was dying. Her blood and other fluids were being sucked
from her through the hollow spikes. The fluids were rich nutrients for the
vines, which swelled and grew even tighter around her.
Finally, Elsie's body shuddered and became quiet. Her heart stopped pumping. A
thick tendril slid up her belly, and a nodule on its end opened to reveal a
hard, black, curved blade, as sharp as a hunting knife. It slit her belly open,
and dozens of other tendrils squeezed into the opening, feeding on her internal
organs. She made a rich and satisfying meal.
***
Loopy was taken back to Jefferson Parish, to be arraigned for the murder of
Elsie Genisse and as a co-conspirator in the murder of a stripper who was
identified only as Lulu.
He was placed in a hospital, where doctors determined that his eyes had been
irreparably damaged. He would be blind for the rest of his life.
Loopy was never convicted of any of the charges against him. A videotape found
in the motel room he shared with two other men showed the young woman named Lulu
being devoured by alligators, but there was no conclusive evidence that he
planned or played an active role in her death. In fact, authorities never
determined precisely where the crime was committed.
As for Elsie Genisse, her body was never found. No body, no murder. And nothing
came of the idea of prosecuting Loopy for the murders of Joe Joe Boudreaux and
Irv Moscow and of the two deputies at Stevenson's place. The fingerprints on the
murder weapons - the TV set and metal stand at the Stay Awhile motel and the
shotgun at Stevenson's store - weren't Loopy's. In fact, they were those of
someone quite small, perhaps even a woman, which didn't make any sense at all.
As for Stevenson's death, that was probably murder, but it looked like an
accident, so prosecution was problematical.
So Loopy ended up in the forensic unit of a state mental hospital in North
Felicity Parish. There, he was routinely abused by both staff and other
patients. It was fun tormenting someone so big -- and so blind.
*****
Two and a half years later, when autumn had brought a chill even to Louisiana, a
pair of LSU students out on a photo expedition wandered down a country lane that
led to an old, dilapidated barn. It had been covered with kudzu, but most of the
vines had died and turned brown. They were shooting the barn with a wide-angle
lens when one of the students, a young man named Hank, spotted what looked like
bones behind the dried leaves.
"Patsy," he said in a tense voice. "Look carefully at the vines on side of the
barn. What do you see?"
Patsy, an attractive young woman with long blonde hair and an easy smile, looked
where her partner was pointing. Her mouth fell open.
"See what I mean?" Hank said.
"My God, it's a skeleton," Patsy said. "A human skeleton."
She moved closer, then reached out and touched the wrist bones of what was left
of Elsie. The hand fell off the skeleton, and Patsy jumped backward.
"Don't touch it," Hank said. "We need to go to the police."
***
The discovery of Elsie's remains reopened the legal case against Loopy. But by
then he was determined to be hopelessly insane.
Patsy was never the same after finding Elsie's bones. She began talking and
acting strangely. Her conversations were sprinkled with fragments of books she
had read and songs she had heard. Hank found he constantly had to apologize to
friends for her odd behavior.
On the other hand, as he put it in a song that he recorded in a Baton Rouge
studio and that enjoyed brief local notoriety, "Her fuckin' is out of this
world."
THE END
~~~~~~
