Jasper Georgia - Cort Mandell swears that bad luck follows him around. Born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, he was almost declared dead until a nurse dunked his head underwater as a last resort. When he was 12 the car he was riding in blew a tire and flipped. Cort was thrown from the car and found himself laying in the path of an oncoming semi-truck.

"He managed to stop that truck an foot away from my face," says Cort. "To this day I can tell you exactly how many treads the front tire had on it."

But Cort now says that everything bad that happened to him as a child was just a precursor to getting married.

Cort Mandell's ass and the mother-in-law birthmark

"Me and Beth both lost our virginity to each other. Trouble was in addition to losing her maidenhood she gained my kid. I was forced into marrying her when I was 18. Since my Mom and Dad hated her and I didn't have any money, we had to live with her parents. I soon realized that was a mistake. Beth's mother, Lou-Anne was the most evil creature I had ever seen. I saw her beat Beth's cat half to death because it crapped on the carpet. Beth just stood there in the corner and didn't say a word to her."

Cort was given a job by his father-in-law at his casket manufacturing factory. His mother-in-law kept the books for the business so even going to work was no escape for him.

"Talbot (Beth's father) wasn't a bad guy but he had been hen-picked all his life and it was very clear who ran the factory. Lou-Anne would walk out onto the factory floor where her husband was and yell at him about spending too much money on wood or hiring to many guys and Talbot would just stand there and take it. I saw a picture of him when he played high school basketball and it said he was 5' 10" tall. When I met him he had been married to Lou-Anne for 20 years and I swear he wasn't but 5' 5" or 5' 6" at the most. Lou-Anne took the height right off of that man with her hate."

It wasn't long before Lou-Anne had turned her hate toward Cort. He suffered the abuse because in spite of the circumstances he was growing to love Beth and wanted to see his child into the world and raise a family. He was also trying to save money so he and his wife could move out from the in-laws.

A Modern Sucubus?

"I put up with that witch cause I didn't have any choice. I was saving a little bit every week but Lou-Anne knew down to the last penny how much money I had and she would make sure I paid my share of the groceries or helped on the mortgage. I thought things might get better when my kid, Sam was born but Lou-Anne all but ignored it. Finally I had enough saved up to move out and I broke the news to Lou-Anne and Talbot over supper one night. Talbot didn't say anything except nod his head but Lou-Anne looked at me like I was a delivery boy who had brought her the wrong kind of casket nails."

Needless to say Lou-Anne was against the idea of Beth and Cort moving out.

"She said I didn't have a lick of sense in my body. That there was no way I was going to take her only child away from her and put her in some run down slum of a building just cause my pride was too big to accept the Godly charity that Talbot and herself was kind enough to give me. That I was crazy if I thought she would let me take her grandchild to a shack so he could live in his own filth and get bit by a rat in the middle of the night. I admit I snapped that night and told her off good. I shouted back at her about every hate filled thing she had done to me over the last 13 months and when I was finished with my list I started in on her for Beth and Talbot's sake. When I stopped I thought maybe I had yelled some sense in her head cause she just said that if I felt that strongly about it then maybe something could be worked out. Maybe the casket factory could give me and Beth a small loan so we could get something nice. I'll never forget that when I thanked her for that she looked at me and said, 'You'll get what you need, Cort.' Man, I should have knowed then that she wasn't beat, not by a long shot."

Cort finished out the week at the plant and when he got his paycheck he went as always to deposit some of it at the bank. Once there he was told that his account had been closed by his mother-in-law. The bank's manager was apologetic but Cort sensed that Lou-Anne had brow beat him into doing it so he withheld his anger until he got home and confronted her.

"When I got home I saw the brand new sofa and chairs in the living room and I knew what she had spent the money on. Talbot wasn't home, I guess he knew what was up and decided it would be safer to spend an extra hour down at the bar. Lou-Anne refused to even stop making dinner as I yelled at her about it. She just kept saying that it was for the best and that I could learn to love it there. Just like Beth and Talbot loved it. Beth was sitting at the kitchen table with Sam but she wouldn't say a word back to her mother. It was just like I was her cat and was getting what was due to me for doing my business on the carpet."

But Cort grew angrier and angrier and decided that this was the final straw. He told Beth they were leaving right now and they'd use what money he had from his last paycheck to live on until they found something.

"Lou-Anne just laughed at me," says Cort. "She said I was a bigger fool than her husband if I thought her daughter was going to leave home to tramp around with me. I called her every dirty name I could think off and grabbed my clothes and packed a suitcase. I dragged Beth into our room and begged her to come with me but she just kept shaking her head and saying that I should do what Lou-Anne wanted. That it was for the best. Finally I just gave up and walked away from her. Lou-Anne was putting dinner on the table like nothing had happened and she had even set a plate down at my chair. Well I grabbed that tablecloth and yanked everything down onto the floor and told Lou-Anne that I hoped I would never see her ugly face again. Lou-Anne just looked down at all the broken plates and spilt food and just started laughing. Then as I was leaving she spanked me once on my butt, like I was a naughty child. She said 'Oh Cort you'll never forget me. And she was right cause I got the worst bruise on my ass where she had hit me and when it had cleared up I looked in the mirror and saw that I had a new birthmark in the shape of her face."

These days Cort makes a living by selling boiled peanuts alongside the road near Jasper Georgia. He has never heard from his wife, child or Lou-Anne since that night he left 3 years ago.

"I read a comic book when I was a kid," Cort says while he pours more peanuts into the boiling water. "You know one of those 'educational' comic books they give you in school. Anyway, in the story there was these evil women called Sirens who drove men crazy with their singing. Men would kill themselves when these women sang this magical song to them. Maybe Lou-Anne was like one of those Sirens. She just had a more direct approach to ruining men's lives. When I didn't follow her rules she left a little mark to remember her by."

sources

interview with Cort Mandell, November 5th, 1999

photo #1 (Cort's ass) by Derek Barnes

photo #2 (Lou-Anne) courtesy of Cort Mandell