Trashland a Go-Go Read Online Free Page B

all the while intoxicated by the vile aroma.
    Coco and Rudy stopped in front of the house. Coco tried to pinch her nose to avoid smelling it, but breathing through her mouth she could almost TASTE it; rotting meat. She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth in an attempt to find some happy medium and walked up to the front door.
    The hut was a small aluminum structure bent into a roundish shape and bound with baling wire. The roof of the hut was shingled with thick slabs of decaying meat, writhing and squirming with maggots. There were black patches vibrating with the buzz of flies.
    Rudy quickly scanned the crowd and ducked back into Coco’s mangled mane.
    “Friends? Enemies? Ex-lovers?” Coco laughed as she shook a finger through her tangled hair where Rudy hid, mocking him.
    “Shut up.” Rudy hissed.
    “Why not go say hello?” Coco pried.
    “I don’t want them to know that I am dying. They can’t know how sick I am,” he whispered.
    “This illness you have,” Coco said, through her fingers “It isn’t contagious, is it?”
    “I don’t think so. When the Queen banished the flies, we all came here. I slipped inside to visit the Oracle one day. She took one look at me and said ‘You’re going to die in a week.’ When I asked her what kind of illness I had, or what was going to happen to me, all she said was ‘This is the way these things happen.’”
    “Great.” Coco dropped the subject as Rudy had already been living in her hair and on parts of her face for the bulk of the day.
    Coco reached the front step and gagged. In place of a door was a curtain made from the intestines of some small animal. They were nailed to the wooden door frame, and hung like a beaded curtain—only instead of beads, ropes of thick, vein-riddled, rotting guts swayed in the putrid wind. Coco’s stomach lurched.
    Coco knocked on the wooden door frame with her free hand. The wood was soft and damp with rotting intestinal fluid that had rubbed into the wood. She smeared her hand against the side of her leg trying to wipe away the wetness. Since her dress was made of plastic bags, most of the gunk just smeared across the back of her hand and wrist.
    “Ugh. Hello?” Coco called through her hands. She heard the creak of a chair shifting underneath someone’s weight, followed by soft shuffling footsteps.
    Knobby skeleton fingers wrapped in thin, paper-white skin slid through the gut curtain. They curled around a piece of the draped entrails and pulled it aside, leaving a gap barely large enough for someone to peer outside. Only the hand could be seen beyond the shadows of the meat hut.
    “What?” croaked a voice through the stench.
    Coco was not sure how much more of the odor she could tolerate. She tried to breathe through the gaps between her fingers to filter the smell, but when she inhaled it attacked her senses full force. “I seem to be lost,” Coco said, trying not to gag.
    “Seems so,” croaked the voice, “no one comes around here on purpose.”
    “I can see why.”
    “But folks end up here for a reason. So you may as well come in. I’ll see what they have to say about you.”
    Coco was confused. “They?”
    “Come on in. I’ll make some tea.” Bony fingers curled under stained shirt-sleeves, hanging like potato sacks around dainty, frail wrists, gesturing for her to come inside.
    Coco could only imagine what could possibly be inside the meat hut. The stench was tremendously appalling outside, even at a distance. She’d already nearly vomited at least three times. Inside the hut? She thought she might revisit the trail mix she’d eaten. And it wasn’t exactly delectable the first time.

The hand disappeared inside. The voice said, “Please, come in. I’ll put the kettle on.”
    Coco heard slow, shambling footsteps drifting deeper inside the hut. She stood on the porch and breathed into the palm of her hand repeatedly. She stared at the curtain but did not make a move to enter.
    “It’s not solid,”