Tag: books

“You start with your mark…”

In the back of one of those extra large, extra creepy white work vans, a young man tapped his foot rapidly while talking on the phone. His forehead glistened with sweat, so he wiped it with his hand. The sweat rematerialized just as soon as his hand passed, like the rain following a car’s windshield wiper during a downpour. On the side of the van was the logo for a fake security company; a cartoon mouse caught in a cartoon mousetrap, its eye bulging out the sockets while it still struggled to eat the cheese that led it into a trap.

“Yeah, I got it dude, don’t worry.” the young man said into the phone, while looking out the tinted windows at the  mansion. It was covered in creeping vines crawling up the reddish brick exterior. The windows wobbled images through their thick, aged glass. A light concrete gray trim bordered the windows and facade and was mottled with small growths of moss. There was a giant faded crest on the house of an osprey carrying a fish in one talon and a small, crooked branch in the other. The mansion had trimmed bushes and extra thick, extra green grass. It looked out of place, towering above the other small catalog houses that made up the neighborhood.

“Find someone a little greedy…”

The young man sighed and rolled his eyes at the person on the other end of the burner flip phone. His short black hair was disheveled from combing his fingers through it. His boyish face illuminated by the bright screen of his other, personal phone as he thumbed through some pictures of motorcycles on a secondhand auction site while hurrying the conversation along. He was short and thin and was often mistaken to be much younger than he was. He used this to his advantage, to make people trust him or underestimate him. He thought he was doing this to his current client.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s dark and all the lights are out, no one’s home, I’m sure,” he said, hurrying the person on the other end along.

“A little stupid…”

A scratchy and garbled voice pesters him for further status updates. “Yes, dude, I’m alone!” he said, covering his eyes with his hand and pinched fingers, and then tilting his head back in disbelief. “I’m a professional. No, I brought my own tools.” 

One last question from the other side. The naive man scratches his head and scrunches down his forehead. “No, I don’t carry a gun…should I have?” He chuckled. He checked through the window at the target one last time. “Alright man, let me go. Don’t worry, I’ll get you that statue. Yeah, monkeys, I got it. But anything else is mine, right? Right!” He snapped the phone shut and immediately removed the SIM card and battery, muttering at the pain in the ass client. He whispered to himself “There’s gotta be some good stuff in there.”

“And a bit desperate…”

The robber checked his smart phone one last time, caressing a picture of a motorcycle as if to say goodbye. He dismissed it and did a final check on his lock picking kit. He rolled it up and put on the red baseball cap the client supplied him with, nice and low to hide from any cameras. The client gave him a full uniform for the fake security company composed of a gray work shirt with a large logo patch stitched on, gray slacks, and for whatever reason, a non-matching red baseball cap. The van door slid quietly into place and barely made a click as he eased it closed.  

The robber glanced left and right, and jogged across the cobblestone road toward the mansion. As he got closer, the towering house looked down on him, its four giant windows and massive red door forming a disapproving face. Not of a human, but of something cosmic and dark, with gaping, toothless mouth and barbed ivy scars across its red brick face. The robber knocked without hesitation though, and loudly. Confidence and blending in warded off suspicion. He waited with his breath held, unintentionally, and let loose a series of five more forceful knocks. No answers means nobody’s home.

Another quick glance around and he got to work on the lock. It didn’t take long to shimmy the lockpick in and hear that tactile, satisfying click as the deadbolt snapped back. His heart fluttered a little with adrenaline as he pushed the door open and entered. Just like his client said, there was no alarm. 

“Then you set the trap.”

He opened the door just enough to rotate his body and slip inside. It was dark and smelled  like old wood and dust. He barely shut the door behind him when a calm voice called out to him.
“Hello,” a man’s distant voice raked the still air, with an unsettling wavering.

The robber heard a gun cock, which drew his attention down the hall to the source of the voice, a shadow of a man standing down the entryway hall, pointing a shotgun at him.

“What the–”

“Good bye,” the voice uttered, barely above a whisper.

The robber’s ears rang from a brief but loud noise, and immediately went mute. He looked down at the basketball sized wound in his chest. His hands were already involuntarily there, pressing firmly on the wound. With what little control he had of his body, he pulled them back to look at them. They were wet from warm blood. He felt his body wobble and the sensation of falling as he slumped to his knees and then forward, face first to the floor. A stream of blood formed into a puddle, a black and red streaked pool with splatters of pink around it. He could hear his attacker emptying the shells from the shotgun onto the floor while calmly dialing a phone. 

“Yes, I need to report an intruder.”

—

Several months later, at the windowside table of the only upscale restaurant in the small town, two men are seated. The restaurant overlooks a river, its brownish gray waters lit with moonlight, making the waves look like Perlin noise from old TVs. Just out of view, the muddy bank of the river is scattered with trash and debris; plastic six pack holders, styrofoam bait containers, and fishing line bundled in low branches with hooks and sinkers. 

Smith, the broker, is a middle aged man with a suit delicately tailored to his thin frame and gym rat physique. His thick, short hair is sculpted into a traditional side part, a few shimmering grays allowed amongst the mostly dark brown volume. The other man, the customer, is a much older man, hunched over like a giant pale green egg in a suit. Straggly wild hairs protrude from untold spots, intersecting like Spanish moss dipped into glue and dried. Smith is pitching the thing money can’t buy to a man that can buy anything.

He hammed up his sweet tea Southern accent, “I tell the mark, some two bit criminal with a two bit criminal history, when and where to find something nice and shiny…” Smith smiled, slightly revealing his straight and bright white teeth. His left eyebrow raised up above his thick rimmed square glasses. He lifted his index finger and leaned forward to make a point. “Make them an offer they can refuse… most street smart people know ‘too good to be true’ when they hear it.”

“You give them too much credit,” the old man croaked. His voice was audible mucus, with some faint, confusing southern draw. He looked down at the river and added “They are trash, littering the river down there, that is all they do…” 

Smith reached for the bread basket between them and offered it to the old man, who refused with a dismissive hand wave and head shake. Smith ripped off a piece of warm bread, held it up just inches from his face and buttered it, as if studying it. He then abruptly popped it in his mouth and fluttered his fingers to kick off any excess crumb dust.   

While still chewing, “Trash or not…” Smith swallowed hard, “They’ll take the bait and you’ll be waiting for them, weapon of choice in hand.” He gestured an imaginary shotgun, aiming down the sights at his guest across the table, and pumping the invisible weapon. The old man hunched down and smiled, lowering his neck like a vulture hovering above a carrion feast, and raised his hands, surrendering to the mimed shotgun. The two men shared a laugh. 

“So what do you tell them to steal?” the old man questioned, his words seeping out through a crooked tooth grin.

Smith replied “Nothing really. A small statue…of the Three Wise Monkeys, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil–”

“I have no such statue,” the old man interrupted.

Smith took a deep breath and fought back an eye roll. “The thief doesn’t know that nor will they live long enough to steal anything…”

“Wouldn’t have anything so hideous in my house either!” the old man added, raising his voice.

Smith opened his mouth to explain further but stopped himself, catching the old man fighting back a mischievous smile that just barely twitched through his attempt at a poker face. 

The old man let out a ghastly winded laugh, not proportionate to the small ruse. Smith just looked down and laughed. He pointed at the old man with a pistol finger, flipped his thumb down as if he was shooting, and winked. After the bout of laughter died down, the old man cleared his throat. It sounded like something gross had crawled out.

The old man folded his fingers together and twiddled his thumbs, delighted. He leaned in toward the broker and wiggled his gray wild bushbrows, joined at the top of his nose and traveling halfway down it. 

“Sounds merry, but what’s to stop me from setting this up myself? Seems I could throw a stone and hit seven junkies from my window. I’ve got money, I’ve got connections–”

“Connections ‘connect’ to you,” Smith interrupted. “I don’t. If anyone gets suspicious, they’ll get suspicious of me. I’ll disappear. People will forget. The police and lawyers will be paid off and you’ll be painted a hero. If whoever is suspicious of me is still suspicious, they’ll disappear too.”

“Alright,” the old man said.

Smith grabs his glass of wine and lifts it, nodding his head, “Alright?”

“Yes, but one last thing…” The old man whipped his arm out with sudden, shocking speed, and snatched a nearby passing waitress. He dragged her close to him, maintaining eerie eye contact with Smith, looking like a snake with a rodent in its mouth, about to swallow the waitress whole. He pulled her even closer and tilted his head up.

“I’ve changed my mind, miss. I’d like my steak to be…” he licked his lips and his eyes fixated above Smith’s head, as if he was looking at the word he was about to say written on an imaginary billboard. “Bloody.”

The waitress was shaken up, but used to the rudeness of old men. “Right away, sir!” she forced through a clenched smile. The old man released her and she hurried off to the kitchen. He raised his head and inhaled deeply as she walked away, taking in her scent. 

Smith removed his glasses and began to clean them with his handkerchief. “Sir, I don’t make assumptions, but wouldn’t you prefer your steak be medium?” he said while eyeing through his glasses to make sure they were clean.

“You’ll figure it out, or I won’t pay. I won’t pay and I’ll report you to the police. The ones I bribe, not the ones that dilly dally on their phones all day. Now excuse me, I’ve got to squeak out some piss, that waitress got me a little excited.” The old man then reversed back from the table in his motorized wheelchair and cruised off to the men’s room.

Smith sighed, fixed his glasses into place, and remembered why exactly he never did business with billionaires. He noticed a scuffle near the kitchen doors. The old man had driven into the waitress purposefully, knocking the tray of food she was carrying onto the ground. He feigned sympathy and mimicked helping her, only to grab her breast as she bent down. He squealed with delight as she slapped him. The kitchen manager called out her name loudly, and the whole restaurant was witnessing it now. She stormed over to the manager, arguing a few words, but his posture was firm. She untied and threw down her apron and stormed out of the restaurant, crying.

“Psychopath,” Smith whispered to himself.

The “menu” was how the clients specified what type of would-be-robber they wanted to have sent to their house. The main course was always steak, the type of cut indicated the gender. Prime rib for men and filet mignon for women. The sides and dessert were used to further break down everything from race, age, height, and weight, all the way to sexual orientation and hair color. Prime rib with sides of roasted red skin potatoes, buttered carrots and peas, and a warm bread pudding for dessert indicated a young to middle aged man with blonde hair. Filet mignon, a salad with no dressing, extra yeast rolls, sides of mashed potatoes and gravy, and bacon infused brussel sprouts with no dessert indicated a short, heavy set brunette woman.

How the steak was cooked indicated the manner in which the victim died. “Well done” meant the robber would be electrocuted. Smith had a method of tampering with a gray market taser that would allow it to be lethal. “Medium” meant the client would use a gun, Smith’s preferred method. Most clients already owned guns, and it was much easier to explain away as self defense.  For the most adventurous, or most sadistic, “Rare” indicated that they would attack the victim with a knife or blade. 

Rare was generally only requested by fit, youngish types, tech bro millionaires that engaged in crossfit and charity marathons on the weekends. Smith liked a challenge though, and began planning. 

He sourced the criminal through his usual channels, the local corrupt police. There were good cops and bad cops, and then there were worse cops. The worst were easy to find, bribe, and squeeze for low rank junkies and petty thieves. The old man egg indicated he wanted a young white woman, and the corrupt cop gave him a short list of parolees, criminal informants, and second chancers. Smith pressed the cop for the best of the worst, asking if they had any debts, how many priors, and if they had any family. The cop scrunched his eyebrows together at the last question and Smith almost thought he had been too forward when the cop pointed his index finger at a name on the list. “This one right here, ain’t nobody gonna miss her.” He tapped his finger a few times on the name “Bridgette Weederman.”

The cop told Smith that she would spend most of her evenings inhaling shots at “Hook, Line, and Drinkers,” the local dive bar that attracted lowlifes and criminal types. The bar was dark and dank, like a dungeon that served drinks. When the door opened, an annoyingly dissonant chime played and perpetual barflies winced as it briefly let in a flickering fluorescent exterior light. It had a pool table, leaning and with the felt worn and torn in multiple places. Almost all the stools wobbled and had lesions on their brown and stained leather tops. The bartender was a surly middle aged woman named Trish, with short hair, faded tattoos covering her neck and chest, and a perpetually dirty towel over her shoulder. She greeted regulars with a brief grunt and a pour. She didn’t greet strangers.

Smith saw Bridgette parked at the bar, her head resting on her balled up fist with her elbow bent into a sideways ‘V’. She was thumbing through her phone. She looked bored, tired, and restless, all at once. He made his way near her, but not too close. He didn’t want to be too forward in seeking out a criminal at the local criminal bar, so he signaled for the bartender to come over to him. She ignored him, even though she saw him out of the corner of her eye. 

Without looking up, Bridgette mumbled “Trish.” Then repeated without waiting a beat and increasing the loudness of each repetition “Trish, Trish, TRISH, TRISH!!”

And finally the bartender slammed down a glass and replied with a flat “What?”

“Customer,” Bridgette replied, down to her normal mumble. For the first time, she looked up at Smith, and immediately became a flirtatious cat. “Buy me a drink?” she said with a wry smile, tapping her empty glass.

“Sing me a song?” Smith replied, quoting a Tom Petty song.

“What?” Bridgette replied with a confused smile.

Trish thunked down a glass in front of Smith and poured brown liquid into it. Without tipping the bottle back up, she dragged the bottle over to Bridgette’s empty glass and refilled it, spilling alcohol on the counter. “It’s the lyrics to that Tom Petty song…with the dead girl?”

“Take me as I come cause I won’t stay long?” Smith offered another line.

“I don’t know what ya’ll’re talking about. Ya’ll’re OLD.” Bridgette said with a mocking laughter, and promptly downed her drink all at once. She made a non-audible “woo” with her mouth, inhaled sharply, and looked Smith up and down. “You wanna get out of here, Tom Petty?”

It didn’t take much convincing to get the poor girl to plan to break into the old man’s mansion. She always needed money for something and didn’t mind breaking the law to get it. She smelled money on Smith and she liked the smell of it.

—

With the old man so weak and frail, Smith set up some insurance. He liked to work as alone as possible, but he had a guy just in case. An old army buddy who was a little too greedy for the army. Barkley was a huge and generally pleasant bear of a man. His muscular biceps, large shoulders, and trimmed chest showed that he never stopped his PT from the army. He was doing nighttime security at an old warehouse now, but the extra money offered by Smith for ventures like this helped fund his off-the-grid lifestyle. 

The old man, Barkley, and Smith met up at the impressive mansion of the old man to walk through the entire process. 

“Who’s this massive bastard?” the old man pointed an ugly, crooked finger at Barkley. Smith warned him that the old man tended to speak his mind, loudly and rudely. 

Barkley responded with no offense taken. “I’m just insurance. I won’t get in your way, and if it goes alright, you won’t even know I’m here.”

“Well I don’t need insurance, and I don’t need help,” he said as he swung and swiped the air in his wheelchair, ending with a finger pointed right into the soldier’s six pack. Barkley feigned like he had been stabbed brutally, and the two laughed.

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have someone on sight in case I get too crazy!” he said, laughing and then sputtering into a single loud cough. 

“And he’ll help move the body,” Smith pointed out.

“I will?” Barkley questioned in jest.

“If you want to get paid,”  Smith said without hesitation. He smirked and continued, “She’ll arrive between nine pm and two am.” 

“Nine pm to two am, does she work for the nocturnal cable company!?” he laughed at his own joke and eyeballed Barkely to laugh with him. Barkley looked down and snickered, but not at the old man’s joke. “It’s too damn late,” the old man added.

Smith crossed something out on his tablet and scribbled a few notes. He thought for a second and then adjusted. Arguing never worked with the wealthy. He never intended the original time frame anyway. “Alright, we’ll do eight pm?” Smith asked, like the idea just came to him.

“Good. Better. Good boy,” the old man was more compliant when he felt his ring was kissed.

“So she’ll arrive then and attempt to break in. Your house lights should be how you would keep them if you were away on vacation.”

“I don’t take vacations,” said the old man.
“That’s fine, IF you did, how would you keep your lights?” replied Smith.

“My butler would–”

Smith interrupted, having enough of the old man’s stubbornness. “Ok, keep all your lights off except for exteriors. Turn any alarms off and leave the gate unlocked. But lock your front door.”
The old man looked at Barkely, familiar with his new friend. “This one gets a bit bossy, yeah?”

“I don’t mind, he knows what he’s doing,” Barkley replied. He stood like soldiers often do, with his hands clasped together behind his back and straightened posture, legs spread far apart.

“Oh yeah then, I’ll listen up real closely,” the old man said with a hint of sarcasm.

Smith continued with the final question, “And what are you going to be using for the weapon?”

“Ah see, yes! In here,” the old man waved the two toward the massive kitchen. The kitchen knife was already laid out, pulled from its wooden block and displayed. It was a polished eight inch chef’s knife, with a few words engraved on it. Smith and Barkely bent down and stared at the knife intently, like two highschoolers about to dissect a frog. 

“Excellent. Is this knife used frequently? By your staff?” Smith asked.

“My father gave it to me. The chef. He never made a single penny off–” the old man trailed off. 

Smith quickly got him back on subject. “She’ll arrive, you’ll be waiting, in the entrance way.” Smith thumbed towards the entrance and ushered the others there. “With the lights out and you hidden, she won’t see you–”

The old man had maneuvered into an enclave and charged out again with his invisible knife, fake stabbing Smith this time with a wide eyed sense of glee. “And I’ll stab her just like this! And this! and that! and like this!” The old man swiped and poked at Smith who merely flinched a little, not playing the old man’s game like Barkley. “You see? I won’t have a problem taking her down,” the old man muttered, winded.

Barkley added, “And I’ll be here just in case anything goes wrong.”

“It won’t go wrong,”  the old man muttered.

—

Smith was at “Hook, Line, and Drinkers,” seated with a glass of sparkling water he had to fight Trish to pour. He dropped his burner phone on the table after another non answer from Bridgette. She wasn’t picking up, which meant that she probably got high or arrested or wasn’t coming through for whatever reason. Smith clenched his fist tightly and released it and reeled as if he had just swallowed something bitter and awful. This was going to cost him a lot of money. He was staring at his burner just as it vibrated.  

Smith answered the phone and immediately laid into the other end. “Look, if I tell you to be somewhere, you better be there, dammit.”

It wasn’t the mark, it was Barkley. “She hasn’t shown up,” he said.

Smith checked the time on the wall clock behind the bar. “I’ll be right there,” Smith said, and began to hang up.

“There’s something else,” Barkley’s  voice crackled through before he could hang up. 

Smith jerked the phone back to his ear and gritted his teeth, “Don’t…not over this line!” Smith flipped the phone shut quickly and with more force than he intended. He shot up, finished his drink and slammed it down, threw several dollars next to it and got up to leave.

As he opened the door to exit, he ran into none other than Bridgette, entering the bar with her face in her phone. She bumped into him and they simultaneously exclaimed, “Where do you think you’re going!?”

“Jynx, you owe me a Coke!” Bridgette said and punched Smith on the shoulder. She snorted with laughter, her hair disheveled and her forehead misted with sweat. She sniffled hard, collected herself, and lowered her voice to a whisper and began to fix his collar. “You got any? I can make it worth your while…”

Smith recoiled from the obviously intoxicated woman. “What the hell are you doing? Aren’t  you supposed to be…” Smith caught himself and immediately lowered his voice, “…somewhere?”

“Mmm, yes, I am somewhere, I’m right here baby,” she said.

“No! I mean, don’t you have a job you should be doing!?”

Bridgette scoffed and wobbled her head, with a look of desperate confusion. “Honey, you’re the one that texted me to meet you here. I thought we were gonna have another go ‘round.”

“Another go–, NO, you idiot. I didn’t text you and I didn’t want to have another GO ROUND.”

“Then who sent me this?” She said with a smirk, flipping her smartphone to his face and revealing a text conversation between her and him. Smith couldn’t believe it, but it had a picture of him sitting at the bar. The text said, “Change of plans, get in here so we can get outta here!”

Smith whipped his hand at the image, knocking the phone out of her hand. She picked it up while a torrent of curse words poured out of  her mouth, but he was already driving off in his car. 

—

As he drove the short distance to the mansion, a heavy storm moved in. Rain poured relentlessly and occasionally went sideways as lightning danced from the clouds followed by rumbles of thunder. In the time it took to walk from his car to the door, Smith was drenched. He expected an obnoxious angry billionaire, but only found Barkely at the entrance way. Barkley fidgeted with his hands nervously, like a child that had broken an expensive vase, forced to tell their parents of the accident. 

“Where’s the client?” Smith said.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you. He’s dead,” Barkely said, his face pale and sweating.

“He’s dead!?” Smith repeated. “What do you mean, where…where is he?” 

Barkley raised his hand slowly, it shaking like a marionette whose puppeteer was on their seventh cup of coffee. He forced his hand to point, finally, to the large, open study at the end of the narrow hallway. Smith moved there immediately, giving Barkley a look that conveyed both disappointment and frustration. Smith entered the room and exclaimed several successive expletives, alternating between whispering and yelling. Barkley stayed behind, not wanting to see the mutilated body again. 

Smith called out angrily, “Would you get in here and tell me what in God’s name happened!?”

The big man followed quickly. He entered the room and saw Smith leaning over, holding back a retch it seemed, and breathing heavily. The old man was there, just as Barkely left him. His eyes were cut out and removed, the sockets left leaking blackish red coagulate now half dried on his pale face. His ears were cut off, leaving behind fleshy lumps of gore. And finally, worse than those missing items, the old man now had a hideous skeleton smile, his teeth protruding out in a hideous manner, no longer able to be hidden behind his missing lips. 

“His tongue is cut out too,” Barkley added.

“You checked?” Smith immediately questioned.

“No…no, I found his tongue…here,” Barkley gestured to a small statue on the table. It was a crude, small black stone statue of three monkeys perched on a branch next to each other. Each monkey had a different pose; The first had its hands over its eyes, the middle one had hands over its ears, and the last had both hands placed over its mouth. And in front of each monkey, a part of the old man.
“Three wise monkeys,” Smith whispered to himself. “What happened?”

Barkley dashed toward the entrance way, moving with a frenzied enthusiasm. “There was a knock at the door…” He pounded his fist repeatedly into the air repeatedly as he said this. “I thought it was the mark. So I got the client into place,” he motioned by raising both arms and then bringing them down in front of himself to gesture toward a spot adjacent to the door. He then walked backwards with a giant, exaggerated stride into a small closet across the hall as he whispered loudly “and I got into place and we waited.” 

Barkley closed the closet and said something muffled. Smith rolled his eyes and said,  “I can’t hear you.” Barkley replied again, behind the closed door, a single muffled syllable with a question mark at the end of it.

Smith grabbed the closet’s handle and jerked it open to see Barkely hunched down in a childlike posture. “I can’t hear you, idiot!” Smith barked, and reached down to help Barkely to his feet. 

Barkley repeated what he said while in the closet. “And we waited,” he looked around the hallway entrance slowly, the lightning flashing on his wild eyes. When the thunder followed a few Mississippi seconds later, he shuddered with crazy in his eyes. “We waited…” he trailed off. Smith leaned in, waiting for a continuation of the sentence. 

“And you waited for what?”

The power went out followed by a gunshot caliber thunder clap. Dim light poured in from an exterior street light, just enough for the two men to see each other, once their eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Barkley snapped his fingers and pointed a thick index finger straight up, not even acknowledging that the power went out. “The old man saw it!” he exclaimed and then rushed through the hallway, like he just solved the mystery. Smith hesitated. Something was off about his partner. 

He looked around for clues himself, the lightning occasionally lending a helpful flash. Smith saw vague splotches of mud and several dead leaves on the ground of the entrance, blown in from the storm. There were shoes in a messy pile, possibly broken glass, and something strange and organic, like a beating heart. He began to focus on this when he heard a commotion down the hall. Smith spun and looked towards the noise, as it felt like it was right behind him. 

As he turned, he yelled. “Barkely, could we get some lights–” 

He stopped himself, seeing a dripping wet shadow in front of him. It looked like a small human with bright orange glowing eyes and a red baseball cap. He only saw it for a half second as the lights kicked back on and the mansion flooded with yellowish orange light.
“…On?”

With the lights on, the figure was gone. Smith’s heart was beating hard as he looked around the hall for evidence of it. He didn’t see any, in fact, the leaves and muds were gone. The shoes were all carefully aligned next to each other. He felt a haze overcome him, pulled back only by Barkely’s chattering in the room next to him. Who was he talking to? Smith swore he heard another voice and rushed to investigate. As he entered the room, Barkley faced away from him, hunched over, just a few inches from the corpse’s face. He had the old man’s collar gripped with one hand, and he was shaking his other fist.

“Oh good, I’m just about to get him to talk!” Barkley exclaimed without turning to acknowledge Smith.
Barkley casually asked “Just hand me his tongue…”

Smith froze in horror.

Barkley added, with a singsong-like voice “Just hand me his tongue, he can’t speak without his tongue, DUH!”

Smith couldn’t move.

And then Barkley’s head sank, like the weight of it was too much for his neck to support. He then slowly turned his face to Smith. His eyes were cut out. His ears were gone, now just two lumps of flesh. His lips were missing, and his tongue cut out. Smith could see this because his mouth was wide as it could be. Even with no lips or mouth, Barkley was still talking, the words just echoing from the ghoul’s cavity of a mouth, now distorted and menacing. 

What was once Barkely stumbled toward Smith, grabbing his collar and raising him up into the air. It could barely stand, but had more than enough strength to hoist Smith up. It looked with no eyes up at Smith’s face and with its death smile, gaping hole of a mouth, upchucked a hot black steaming liquid into Smith’s face, with the force of a garden hose, but when you put your thumb over it to throttle it. The goop smelled like sewage and pieces of twigs, dead leaves, worms and maggots came with it, slapping Smith in the face and forcing into his orifices while he tried to hold his breath AND scream. The monster collapsed and Smith fell onto him. 

The lights flickered, timed with the increasingly loud and close thunder outside. The power went out again, and Smith could only see in lightning flashes. He tried to gather himself when he heard a strange voice in the distance, outside this current room, outside the mansion. Then, he saw the little man, with the red baseball cap and bright orange eyes. When lightning flashed this time, he didn’t go away, but Smith could see who he was. He had a giant blood red chest wound in his fake security uniform.

“You start with the mark”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT!?”

The man took something from his pocket and slid it across the table. It knocked into the statue, making a loud ‘ting’ as it hit. Lightning flashed and the statue was gone, replaced with a bright, shiny revolver. 

Thunder roared and almost disguised the loud pounding at the door. Smith’s vision fluttered black with each hammer, it was so loud. Voices continued to yell from outside, but Smith wasn’t listening to them. The man moved silently and slowly toward the door.

“Find someone a little greedy…”

Smith grabbed the gun and pointed at the man with orange eyes. He held it with both hands. He realized at this moment he had never held a gun before.

“I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD”

“A little stupid…”

The man with orange eyes and the blood red chest wound slowly raised his hand at Smith, gesturing with a finger gun of his own. He cocked his thumb back and took final aim. 

Splinters cracked loudly as the door was bashed down. The shadows entered the entrance one by one, shouting angrily. Smith pointed the gun at them and pulled the trigger as fast as he could. Nothing happened, just clicks of an unloaded gun. He heard “He’s got a gun!” as the uniforms spilled into the mansion and opened fire. Each bullet shoved him back, but he was surprised to find that none of them actually hurt. He dropped the gun, and began to lose his balance, falling to a single knee and wobbling like a drunk. This must’ve been a dream, nothing hurt him now. He just couldn’t stand up anymore. As he fell down, he didn’t feel that either. He gazed at all the cops gathering around him, looking down at him. He looked up at the faces. The young man with the red cap bent down with his hand stretched out toward Smith. Suddenly, Smith could feel every bullet.