The buzzards, six, seven of them, continued to circle. Lovemaiden reached into his patrol car for his slicker and slid into it before he carefully walked onto the worn path down into the mess. There were whole rusted-out cars and trucks, even a bass boat and a pile of steel barrels. As he high-stepped through the dead kudzu, the wilted brown leaves crunched underfoot. He walked careful, trying not to get any mud or deer entrails on his new boots.

From up the ravine and on the road, he heard the sound of a rambling truck engine and then the crunching of tires on gravel slowing to a stop. Lovemaiden looked up and squinted at all those circling buzzards. Just what the hell were they all excited about? He got close to a rusted deep freezer, and with a little hesitation, opened up the lid, looking inside. Nothing but some stagnant water. But as he closed the top and turned, he lost his footing and tumbled downhill, sliding deeper into the ass crack of this shithole and rolling into the far side of the hill, where he came face-to-face with the side of an overturned blue oil barrel. Son of a damn bitch.

Lovemaiden used the side of the plastic drum to stand, knowing he’d twisted the holy shit out of his ankle. The contents of the barrel had spilled loose down into the weedy patch of ground, and at first Lovemaiden didn’t make sense of exactly what he was seeing. Something in his mind seemed to have been jimmied loose. What he saw looked for all the dang world like a human jigsaw puzzle, parts of a storefront mannequin spread out to be snapped back together again. The first thing that hit his brain was that he was looking at one of those Japanese sex dolls perverts buy on the internet for hundreds of dollars.

He hobbled closer, knocking the dirt and leaves off his uniform, unable to take his eyes off a clump of flesh set down near a upside-down vinyl recliner. Lovemaiden toed at it with the pointy tip of his Tony Lamas until he flipped the damn thing and saw he was looking at the severed leg of a human being, as clean and white as a slab of marble.

Lovemaiden felt his lunch rise up in his throat while he hopped on one foot away from the body parts, not being able to make it five feet before he fell onto his ass, crawled, and started to vomit. The vomiting wouldn’t stop until he’d purged himself of every damn morsel Momma Jo had fed him. All the greens and cornbread and chicken dumplins he could stand. Damn that woman to hell.