This is Episode 5 and we follow Deerman down a dark cave into a den of sin. Will it be the end of him? Listen and find out!
Cover art was done by @solarbroccoli who happens to be my cousin. He asked to be credited as his Twitter handle.
Hey! I've been reading some great stuff lately. You should check out Quizzleboon by John Oliver Hodges. It's a hilarious redneck fairy tale about a one eyed outlaw who takes orders from a moon guy named Quizzleboon. If that doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what the hell I can do for you. I just re-read Joe Lansdale's Dead in the West which is a quick, easy read that is as funny as you'd expect from the master Lansdale himself. I also read some Robert E. Howard weird west short stories which are just incredible pieces of Americana. Why weird west? Well, there's an announcement coming down the pike soon enough, y'all. I'm currently rereading Grady Hendrix's Horrorstor which is a nice satire and take on the haunted house story. You can support Deerman on Patreon here. I'd sure appreciate it.
All month long we are celebrating the Hell-est of all months with the Spooktacular! These are scary stories you can tell around a campfire and laugh at, fart with, or pee your pants in.
This particular recording was done a few years ago at the Whip In in Austin, TX. My friend, Francois Pointeau, asked me to read something gross and fucked up. I decided to go with my take on the haunted house story, Flesh House.
Today's guest is Zach Chapman and he, like me, prefers nuggets to wings.
Wings. That's for cavemen! Give me the industrialized pink slime! Give me the easily chewed, easily digested, panko-breaded nonsense over fully intact limbs of some dead bird!
For the entire month of October, I will be posting spooky stories unrelated to the Deerman saga because Halloween fucking rules. You'd know that if you grew up in a extremely conservative religious cult that thought Halloween was evil. THE DEERMAN SPOOKTACULAR. So, October is going to be full of content. Why not support the project on Patreon?
If you can't do that, it's cool. I understand. But you likely use Amazon, right? Why not click here to purchase something on Amazon. I recommend Rios de la Luz's debut novella, ITZA. It adds nothing to your cost but gives me a sweet kick back.
Deerman, Episode 4: Pee Pee Circles
Andrew Hilbert
The Sheriff had sniffed around his fair share of pee-pee. Sometimes it was a sexual thing. Other times, it was for a case. Not often, it was for both but he kept those off the books.
Human piss ain’t a damn thing. Unless you’ve got a diabetic, the piss is always the same just more or less watery. Always smells like ammonia. Gets cold pretty quick. Doesn’t kill your grass.
Dog piss kills your grass. The stink lasts forever.
Deer piss. That’s something else entirely.
If you’ve ever had the bad fortune of sniffing out a pussy’s pee-pee, imagine that scent with an eye-burning quality to it too. I didn’t mean lady pussy. I meant kitty. Feline. Meowers. Deer piss is the worst.
“Father Daddy, I think my nose has been down to the ground for too long. My eyes are starting to itch.”
“If not for the light of the Lord, my son, you’d have no eyes with which to see.”
“Yeah, uh-huh, I guess so.” Sheriff Maddux lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose. His eyes were oozing viscous boogers, they were bulging out of their sockets, and they were blood red.
“Son, you must rest. Had I known the severity of your claims, I would not have made an observation chastising your for laziness in your pursuit in the shadows of our God.”
The Sheriff tried to roll his eyes but they would’ve fallen out. “Father Daddy, I must say, I’m starting to regret enlisting your help. Your flapping gums just ain’t doing it for me.”
But Father Daddy was steady in his resolve. He pulled out some herbs and potions from his pocket. “I learned to bless this salve on my walk between Austin to San Antonio. I was lost, you see. I was an atheist. A proud one at that. With an ounce of weed in my back pocket and my passport in my sandals. I was off to convert believers into non-believers and grow the Army of Lucifer. But I was struck.” Father Daddy rubbed the herbs together as he poured alcohol into a small canteen. “A deer hit me. It had bluetongue. It was raging. It was bloated. It was death on four legs. He knocked me over and slobbered on me. My skin was burning and I was blinded. But as soon as I awoke…” Father Daddy got out some bluebonnet wildflowers, “I saw that huge yellow sign just outside Schertz. It said, ‘REPENT FOR JESUS IS THE LORD AND HELL HAS INFINITE VACANCIES BUT HEAVEN IS FOR THE FEW!’”
“I’m going fucking blind!”
“An EMT rubbed my eyes with some alcohol and bluebonnets and some other assorted herbs. He told me I was lucky to have been pissed on in this season. Bluebonnets carry a combination of chemicals that put your eyes back in their eyeholes.”
Father Daddy splashed the alcohol into the sheriff’s eyes.
“Hold still. God is Love.”
“Agghhhhh!”
Then Father Daddy rubbed the bluebonnets.
“Hush, my child, God is good.”
The sheriff balled up his fists and rubbed his eyes until he saw little purple squigglies flying everywhere. When he opened his eyes, the world was spinning in neon.
“The bluebonnets, son, also have a slight hallucinogenic effect when rubbed directly into the eyes. Oh, praise be to Jesus.”
“Father Daddy, I’ve got a confession,” the sheriff said as he examined his hands as they morphed in and out of existence. “I’ve never done drugs.”
“You are forgiven, son. Let me be your guide. Take my hand.”
Sheriff Maddux grabbed onto Father Daddy’s hand. It was bleeding from his stigmata wounds. The blood felt like sand and was hot as hell.
“Father Daddy, I think I’m going to puke.”
“Don’t be silly, infidel. I know your secrets. I know your pursuits. I am the great 666 tattooed on every asshole of every angel of every desire to fall from heaven and kill the Lord Himself. You will be led unto a path, programmed as an algorithm to do my bidding, and together, we will take Heaven and rebuild it in our image.”
Maddux fixed his gaze upon the trinity of black holes on Father Daddy’s face. They were spinning in different directs and eating his face until his skin ripped apart to reveal the sinew and veins clasping onto his skull.
“I AM THAT I AM,” Father Daddy yelled into the sky. The sky turned black. Father Daddy snapped his fingers and Sheriff Maddux heard the echoes banging around in his skull. The colors were gone. The world returned to its original palette.
The sheriff took a look at his hands. They were normal. He looked at Father Daddy’s face. It was its normal character: serene in its own stupid devotion to God. Maybe his eyes were more vacant than usual but the sheriff wasn’t too keen on staring too long in a man’s eyes anyhow. Unless he was fixing to put a bullet between them. Maybe that’s why he was transfixed on them now.
In between the thinking and shaking the hippie dust out of his brain, the sheriff tripped on a pile of sticks. They rearranged themselves into upside crosses.
“There is evil trickery afoot,” Father Daddy said and pointed into the distance. “Look.”
A man had a deer on a leash and led him into the woods.
“White tail doe,” the sheriff said. “The sluts of the animal kingdom. If she’s in heat, we might be in luck.”
“I have no sense of your carnal pursuits. Praise be, praise be.”
“You’ve never… never mind, Father Daddy. It’s just that…”
“The name Father Daddy is inherently sexual? God is good.”
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” Maddux stared into those vacant eyes and visualized how just minutes ago they were eating his fucking face. “All I know is that the deer piss trail went scentless as soon as we see some guy dragging a doe by a leash.”
“The trail heats up. Hallelujah. I must return to my flock.” Father Daddy turned in the other direction. The sheriff trudged forward.
About a mile into the woods was a small rickety cabin. There were three or four trucks parked around it. Atop the door was a set of bloody antlers. The sheriff draped himself in the shadows of the trucks and peered into the windows.
Four men wearing bloody deer heads danced around the doe as the leash holder made patterns in the floor with the mixture of blood and sand. There was a crowd of regular looking people, men and ladies, surrounding the dark ritual with red Solo cups in hand. Maddux got closer and put his ear to the wall. He caught snippets of conversation.
“It’s like a live painting show, man. Like what they do out in Austin. But this is better because it’s not in Austin.”
“The glasses make you look smart but I know it’s just an affectation.”
“I can be smart.”
“Yeah?”
“The government sucks. Sucks big time.”
“That’s not smart.”
“I hate seat belts. It’s none of their business what I do in my own damn car.”
“Okay.”
“You think any of these guys are going to take off their pants?”
“Probably not.”
“I hope it’s over soon because I gotta get back to Austin tonight. There’s some food truck that blends burritos with sandwich wraps that I want to protest.”
The sheriff took his ear off the wall and peered in. Sure enough, the four men took off their pants and started dancing around the doe some more. Then the leash holder stood up, unhooked the doe, and let her run away through the front door.
The crowd got up and cheered. The sheriff slunk back into the shadows again. He noticed hoof scratches in the paint of the truck he was hiding behind. It was Earl’s truck.
“That fucker’s been fucking with deer. No wonder they’re after him.”
“Hey!” Earl’s voice boomed from the front door. “Who the fuck’s that by my fucking car?”
The sheriff’s sphincter tightened so hard that it nearly cut his prostrate out. He put his hand on his gun.
“Bro, bro, bro, bruh! Get back inside and meet some of the crowd. They loved how you took off your pants first and everyone was forced to follow. That’s some passionate stuff, man. Did you come up with the concept?”
Earl looked for a second into the darkness but followed the admirer back in.
“I first got the idea to take off my pants because it gets pretty sweaty in there,” said Earl.
“Some artist,” said the sheriff as he snuck away on his tippy toes.
The white tailed doe was ahead of him, running like a chicken with its head cut off if the chicken was a deer and still had its head. The road right in front of her, she ran for freedom. She didn’t see the bright lights of the eighteen wheeler. She didn’t hear the honking. She was hit. She was dead. She was in pieces. They were free pieces, though. Liberty is worth something, you see. You wouldn’t know anything about that if you weren’t alive for World War II.
From the other side of the road was a plump shadow that looked both ways before it crossed the street to grab the remains of the deer and drag it into the brush.