CRUCIFIED, LAID, & BURIED

"Crucified, Laid, and Buried"

An epic-length, bone-crunching feast of sex, murder, and cult religion.

     BACK COVER BLURB

     Two pretty, adolescent girls -- virgin, black, tomboy twins -- discover a personal diary in an abandoned dynamite shack. Between its covers they find a lurid testimony of torture and rape hand-written by the victim. Vainly describing herself as a long-haired, pregnant, Christian woman who is still young and beautiful, she says she is being forced to write down every, gory detail of her ordeal -- day by day -- or be killed.
    The audacious twins, delighted but also terrified by their find, soon determine that they are in the very spot where the woman's captivity and repeated rapes took place. And recently.
     And they think they know the killer!
     Have they already been discovered?
    As the girls realize they are now prey themselves, they accidentally find another diary. And another....

     Prologue

     Scattered throughout the United States are commercial junkyards so vast that even the original operators would be hard pressed to account for everything that lies there. Some of these rust-farms span hundreds of acres and are fenced in -- with the gates chained shut -- and are no longer open to the public.
    Although most can be seen from nearby highways, who can say what is unfolding in the heart of these graveyards of metal and scrapped dreams? The following apocalypse tells of one such place, located just fifty miles north of Florida's "Emerald Coast" on the Gulf of Mexico.

     Book 1 - "CRUCIFIED"
     Chapter One

     Leesa squinted her eyes in the semi-darkness of the abandoned dynamite shack, trying to read -- to comprehend the horror -- of the first page of the diary she had just found:

He told me I have to start this at the beginning, and if I write everything down he will feed me and won't kill my little one.
My name is Rachel. I am a Christian and I am pregnant with my first baby. I have long, straight hair which falls all the way down to my...

    The lunch bell began to ring and Leesa had to catch her breath. The dynamite shack was strictly off limits and even though the walls were thick, Leesa could tell by the extra clamor of that big bell that her mother was letting her know her father was home. Glancing through the next few, handwritten lines, Leesa reluctantly slipped the book back where she'd found it and poked her head out the door. Her eyes scrunched down from the brilliance of the noonday sun and she waited until she could see. White people had the ability to appear out of nowhere, she believed, and before she would go any farther she peered from side-to-side. Leesa was a dark, pretty fourteen, and a good girl except for these little trespassing adventures which pumped up her adrenalin -- a natural high. Nothing to feel really guilty about if you didn't get caught....
    Satisfied that the coast was clear, Leesa dashed through the crisp, winter, North Florida air to the fence. She had to hunker down and get on her back to crawl through the opening underneath but she did it without getting snagged or scratched. After a quick brush-off she ran down the path which cut through the woods to their cabin. Leesa was light and petite, and usually, when she was in the presence of others, she would affect a cool, slow glide of a walk -- nothin' don' bother me! But she was running easily now, the discovery of the diary giving wings to her feet, the white Reeboks flashing a storm through the dead leaves on the trail. She slowed when she neared the cabin, though, so her parents wouldn't realize she'd been so far away. Soon the woods would be thicker, and green with the growth of spring -- she would be able to come and go without being seen so readily. And with summer vacation she wouldn't have to limit her exploring to weekends. In the summer Brenda would come to visit sometimes, too, and they could spy around together.
    Leesa was hungry, and after giving her father a quick but genuine hug she plunked down at her place at the table. Her parents just sat there for a moment with looks of wonder and satisfaction, and watched her tear into her food. When Leesa had finished the bacon and eggs, and was scraping up the last mouthful of grits with her fork, she finally spoke.
    "Daddy? I love it when you're home for lunch. This sure beat peanut butter an' jelly!"
    "Dinner," May Belle corrected.
    "Mama, mos' people have this for breffis'!"
    Leesa's father stared at her with his cold eye, as they liked to call that particular look. Then he laughed. "Leesa, your mama didn't know I was coming, so you would've had eggs and grits anyway."
    "Uh-huh. 'Cept you always come on Saturdays. So we both knew."
    "Not every Saturday."
    "We see you ain't wearing chains," May Belle said.
    Leesa's father was tall and very black, with shiny muscle rippling along his arms. May Belle would frequently remind him just how handsome he was to her, too, and also just how old. "You're old, blue-black, and pretty!" she would tell him. And she would invariably add: "'Cept for that scar." Then she would laugh and hug him, mashing her friendly, opulent body against his. He would always hug her back, laughing with her until she screamed for him to stop. He was a confident man -- a logger who made a fair living -- and even though he never finished high-school he was proud of his accomplishments and happy about himself. He liked for each of his two wives to remember all of that.
    The scar, a livid and jagged pink river, ran down from above his left cheek all the way to the underside of his jaw.
    "Daddy? Please bring Brenda over tomorrow, okay? Drop her off? Let her skip church this one time? It's important."
    There was a long silence. Brenda was Leesa's half-sister. They liked to think of each other as twin sisters because they both had the same features, the same dark, coffee-with-cream shade, and were the same age. Brenda had been born on Christmas Eve and Leesa on Christmas Day. Both of them had very light-skinned mothers but that's where the maternal similarity ended. May Belle was plump and usually jolly while Brenda's mother was slender like a model, and had this air. Brenda's mother was also into the social life of the church -- something May Belle didn't give a hoot about -- which is why Leesa had Sunday mornings free and Brenda didn't. But the fact that the man took the other woman to church was an old wound in May Belle's soul which never seemed to heal.
    Even the names of the sisters' mothers had a rub: May Belle, and Peaches.
    "It's important, huh?"
    "Yes! Please, Daddy?"
    John Simmons turned his eyes on May Belle. "Has she been coming straight home from school when I'm not here? Minding her birds and bees?"
    "I so no to everything, Daddy!" Leesa shrank back into her chair, hoping her remark didn't sound too fresh.
    But John Simmons was smiling, the pink scar crinkling back around the corner of his mouth. "You both are so pretty.... So pretty! When I see you two together I can hardly stand it. And you're filling out so fast. Just the thought of some dumb-ass, crack-head boy with his hands all over you.... Just thinking about it, it's like a knife stabbing right into me. You hear?"
    "Yes, Daddy."
    "You remember my promise."
    May Belle chuckled. "You didn't mind having your paws all over me when I was fourteen."
    "My babies are going to college," John said.
    Stay pure and clean, and I'll put you both through college. That was the deal.
    "I'll bring Brenda over tomorrow. After church. But you mind what I said about the old Norris place. Okay?"
    "What about the Norris place?" May Belle said.
    "I told Leesa no more trespassing. The girls have their treehouse over there -- I'm knocking it down tomorrow. The for-sale sign is still up on the road but I keep on seeing this fancy, black van parked down in the drive. The treehouse isn't safe if there's going to be new owners. It's on the forty acres that go with the house and the barn."
    Leesa tried to think fast. The dynamite shack was just across from the Norris place and the treehouse had been a good excuse for hanging around there. She needed to show Brenda the hole she found under the fence, and the diary -- without their father getting suspicious.
    "The new people might have kids, Daddy! Think how happy they'd be to find that treehouse!" Leesa watched him think about it. "I promise we won' go back to the treehouse until you tell us it's okay. Okay? 'Cept to get the rest of our stuff out."
    "That's a deal, little fox."
    "What about the powerline? That's still okay, right?"
    Not far from the cabin, a high-voltage transmission line ran straight as an arrow for miles. It also neatly separated the old Norris farm from the huge, fenced-in junkyard nearby. Several times a year the rural electric cooperative would mow the right-of-way under the lines, and the wide corridor was a favorite place of Leesa's. It was great for exploring and you could see forever (for there were woods everywhere else around them). John liked it, too, for hunting on his Saturday afternoons off -- sometimes Sunday when he needed to put Peaches in her place. But the powerline also crossed two county highways several miles from either side of his property and one never knew what trash would be coming down the right-of-way to do a little hunting or scouting of their own.
    "What's Rule Number One?" John said suddenly.
    "Daddy, everything is Rule Number One! Okay.... If I see a stranger comin' I don' let him get close. I don' ask him who he is or nothin' -- I jus' run for it."
    "He?"
    "He, or she."
    May Belle laughed. "They both as good as gold."
    John nodded his head. He worried constantly that his daughters might be easy prey. "They're both tomboys, too. They roam in the woods too much. Leesa, I'm thinking you and Brenda should sign up for the new self-defense class at school."
    "Oh, Daddy.... That program don' start till nex' year."
    John slammed his fist down on the table and grinned when Leesa and May Belle jumped.
    "Doesn't start," he corrected. "When they have sign-up, you both sign up."
    "Yes, Daddy." Leesa got up to clear the table and start the dishes. She couldn't wait to get back to the salvage yard and the dynamite shack there, and that lady's diary. Rachel. And she could hardly wait to show Brenda tomorrow.
    "Hurry up with those dishes, little fox," John said. "We're going to town when you're through. Put on a dress."
    "Daddy!" Secretly, Leesa loved to wear dresses, and her father always seemed to have enough money for her clothes even though he was usually short on cash for other things. But she kept quiet about her thing about dresses because it would be just another reason for everybody to think she was Peaches' daughter and Brenda was May Belle's. Sometimes their parents made no bones about their suspicions that the hospital nurses had played a trick on them, switching babies in the nursery on Christmas Day fourteen years back. They would teach that uppity nigger John Simmons and his two wives! They would know it but he wouldn't -- not for the rest of his life!
    Leesa and Brenda made a pact after they found out that their parents had always suspected a switch. They would stay with their present mothers, even if John decided to resort to the latest DNA tests to find out. Besides, it was never too late to nail him for bigamy -- he could never sue the hospital -- so the testing was probably not going to happen. Neither girl looked like either of the mothers, anyway. The girls were smaller, both probably fully grown now at five-foot five, small-boned with straight noses and high cheek bones. "Indian blood in me somewhere," their father would repeat often enough until one day May Belle told him that "...every nigger in the U S A thinks he's got to claim Indian blood".
    Even though strangers often assumed the girls were twins, Leesa weighed exactly one-hundred pounds and Brenda one-hundred and two. Leesa could eat everything put in front of her but Brenda felt she had to be careful. May Belle, however, allowed herself to gain a few pounds each year, knowing that John's continued interest depended on the contrast between Peaches' lean, hard body and her own warm opulence.
    "Will we be back before dark?" Leesa said.
    "I doubt it."
    May Belle closed her eyes. "There be plenty of money for this?" She couldn't stop herself. "I can just see Peaches tearing up WalMart last night." May Belle tensed, her eyes still closed, her head back.
    "Oh, last night? We went all the way to Panama City." John laughed. "We went to J. C. Penny, and Gayfer's, and... Now let me try to remember. Pier One. And the International House of Furs!"
    May Belle opened her eyes and smiled. "I'm ready for that!" She heaved herself up and chunked some firewood into the heater until it was full. She shut down the stove's air vent. "It's supposed to freeze again tonight," she mumbled. "Well, a light frost, they said." When they would get back home she would open the air draft and the heated wood would burst into flame. It was a good heater. And she had a good life, compared to some....
    Leesa hurried with the dishes, thinking about what coat to wear, what dress, what shoes. Lately she'd only been allowed to wear dresses when her father was along, or for special school functions.
    She decided to tough out the chilly weather and wear the red dress that showed a little of her new cleavage.

     <end Chapter-1>

Humanism with attitude!