He spent most of the next six hours putting paper through that little scanner. Judy fetched him when they brought in the Chinese and was nice enough to sit with him for awhile. He chipped in $5.00 to their coffee fund. In the lunchroom, they all seemed like nice people, but he had been listening to their chatter out in the cubicles and these insurance people were monsters too.

Every claimant was not only deemed a fraud until proven innocent, they were mocked among the cubicles and over the phone for insulting the adjusters' intelligence by either faking their injury entirely, or misrepresenting the cause.

Even if there was no doubt that the claimant had been injured in the course of their employment, the adjusters still had to try and minimize the insurance carrier's exposure by getting the person back to work as soon as possible or negotiating the smallest acceptable settlement.

All this fake injury talk reminded him of another monster named James Cravner, an old Navy buddy of her father's. He had been injured in the war and had lived with them for awhile. Some of the eight kids still referred to him as "Uncle Jim". She didn't remember the exact nature of his injury, just that he spent alot of time in bed or in a wheelchair although he could indeed walk if he wanted to.

He was also healthy enough to father her sister Janet and sexually molest at least four of the eight kids. Boys and girls alike. This coming out in bits and pieces over the first ten years of their relationship. She never used it as an excuse, it just appeared in private conversation between a husband and a wife. It did help explain some things though.

Like the way she got physically ill before going over to her mother's house. She'd drink a couple glasses of wine or later, smoke half a joint and be OK at Thanksgiving or Father's Day, but there was one room over there she never went into. Even 45 some odd years later.

Her hating her mother to this day. When he had finished with her the first time, she told her mother and got her eight year old face slapped for saying such dirty things, followed by a stern warning that it would give her father a heart attack if he ever heard her talk that way.

It helped explain her brother Wayne cutting the cat's tail off with the pruning shears, nobody thinking too much of a six year old doing such a thing, other than it was kind of funny the way he brought it in and gave it to his mother while she was making cheese sandwiches. And Wanda never married. A beauty in her day, living out her life holed up in her room with her books and videotapes dry as a bone.

The other girls...He remembered a conversation during one enormous gathering of the clan, retreating out to a car with his brother-in-law for a drink.

"There's just one thing missing here."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Well usually in a family this size there's at least a couple slutty nieces to flirt with. Where are they?"

-a long pause and then - "We married them."

another pause - "Good Whiskey."

He asked her once if she had any good memories in that house. Her eyes lit up and her hands got all animated as she told him how her dad got paid twice a month on Fridays. Twice a month he'd bring home a few big bags of McDonalds Hamburgers (the little cheap ones) and BBQ potato chips and they'd all sit in the living room and watch Fright Night on TV.

"Oooooo I remember Fright Night, it was awesome!"
And they'd spend the next hour or so talking about old movies like "Them" and "I Walked With A Zombie".

She loved and revered her father as did almost all of her sisters and brothers. It was his last wish that she would care for her mother when he was gone. He knew she hated her mother everybody did, but he made her promise. Asshole.

He always wondered if the guy was go great, how did he let uncle Jim get by screwing his wife and kids for so long without having a clue? He even broached the subject with her once very carefully.

She explained that her father was a very busy man. He had his custodial job at the school, then he was also the (unpaid) music director at their church and that took allot of time away from home. And then he had his real passion, a Southern Gospel quartet called The Christianaires featuring Sister Hazel on the piano. He just wasn't around all that much and furthermore he always thought the best of his wife and old war buddy.

He wondered (to himself) how many sponge baths uncle Jim got while her dad was across town with his group working out the harmony parts for The Old Gospel Ship
Anyway he figured it out eventually. One day when she got home from school, uncle Jim just wasn't there anymore. Nobody ever said anything about it. They weren't that kind of family. They just climbed out of Godzilla's rubble and tried to rebuild their little city the best they could.

Back in the car now driving north and west. Watching all that paper go through the scanner, listening to the adjusters getting paid to screw people, uncle Jim... It had all left him mad, sad and now tired or maybe it was just the lyrics of an old song playing on the car stereo "they pump so much shit into this river, the river flows into the sea...."

That damn uncle Jim was like one of those monsters on TV. Sonofabitch had been dead for 25 years but he just kept coming back, she couldn't kill what he'd done to her and her family. He couldn't. Nobody could.

It was getting dark now out by Woodlake. Again he drove by Ray Dominguez' house, this time from the east. This time there was another, newer Ford Truck in the driveway he also saw a group of young men back by the garage, it's door open now and the light on. He kept driving and thinking.

He drove a couple more miles into Woodlake. A tiny town at the very base of the Sierra Nevada foothills. He'd always liked it out here but recently the small towns of Eastern Fresno and Tulare counties had become shooting galleries. The cops had chased many of the F-14s and Bulldogs out of Fresno and the ones that didn't run back to Mexico usually ended up out here. He got a bad feeeling from those guys back at the house.

He stopped by the Rexall Drug on Valencia, went in and grabbed some gum and just as he approached the register, a DVD display caught his eye. There in the $5.99 bin was Earth vs The Spider /War Of The Colossal Beast. Two Cult Classics! One Low Price!

"Well color me sold!" he said to himself as a plan began to formulate in his mind. He ran back into the snack aisle and grabbed a big bag of BBQ potato chips. After he paid for everything, he went back to his car and called his wife over at her mother's house.

"Hey what are your plans for dinner tonight?"

"Oh I guess Wanda will probably open up a couple cans of soup again"

"How about I bring over some takeout and we can watch a DVD?"

"I don't know...it's Friday night, Wanda usually watches that Ghost Whisperer show."

"Christ I've got to get you out of there... Look I'll pick up some food, come over and smother your mother with a pillow while you and Wanda and Dwayne watch the movie."

"OK. What movie is it? Wanda will want to know."

"Tell her it's some movie with that Hugh Jackman guy she likes."

"She's seen all of those"

"Tell her it's an old Australian one before he got real famous. Tell her he's naked."

He could tell she was smiling now as he listened to her relay the news to Wanda. Wanda even giggling a little bit.

"I'll see you in about an hour, I'm out in Woodlake and have to serve one more summons."

"All right, drive careful."

"I love you babe."

"I love you too...bye."

He started the car and even had it in reverse before he remembered why he'd pulled into the dark parking lot in the first place. He put it back in park, and grabbed a satchel out of the back seat. Inside he found his old Springfield .45 in it's holster.. He got out of the car and shoved the holster inside his waistband just behind his right hip, securing it to his belt with the two snap straps. Then he drew the pistol and racked the slide to chamber the first of eight 230 grain hollow points. Safety on, back in the holster cocked and locked, he put on an olive green windbreaker to keep everything on the down low.

Driving back to Ray Dominguez' house he caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. Scary monsters are everywhere.