Tag: chuck wendig

Imported Goods

Pavowski6 Comments

Chuck’s challenge for the week: Begin with a body.

Usually I can tie the inspiration for these stories to something going on in my life, but for this one… man, your guess is as good as mine. It’s a little bit Soylent Green, a little bit The Matrix, a little bit Grapes of Wrath. And it’s a bit twisted, as usual around here, but … what can you expect, when you start with a body?

Imported Goods

“Got a shipment.”

He sits down right across from me, heavy boots and work gloves stained brown, putrid smell coming off his skin. I perk up. Hasn’t been a shipment in months, and the whole town’s running low. I look him up and down. He looks honest enough if a bit dingy, but who can tell? “They clean?”

He shrugs from under a floppy straw hat. “Does it matter?”

He’s got a point. Spot we’re in, we’d take ’em, clean or not. Technically speaking, it’s illegal to toss an illegitimate body in a harvester — that is, one that hasn’t officially been released by its claimants — but technically speaking, after just a few minutes, a harvester renders a body unrecognizable. Newer models don’t even leave behind usable DNA, they’re that efficient. The bio-nanites work fast, and they’re merciless, chewing up all the soft stuff and spitting out a softball-sized ball of bone and gristle. Used to be, we’d bury those as a way of payin’ our respects to the dearly departed who are now powering our garage doors and air conditioners, but that almost seems silly these days. The kids invented a new game with ’em and it’s taking off. Skeleball, they call it. Got uniforms and everything this year. My own kid keeps bugging me to come to one of his games. If I can make the time.

“So, you want ’em?” He’s looking at me from under the brim of that ridiculous hat, designed no doubt to hide his face, but nobody around here is going to look twice at a guy bringing in fleshy gold like this, not us, not here.

“Damn right, we’ll take ’em. How many you got?”

“Fifty or so.”

“Jesus. Where’d you come by ’em?”

“Big dope shoot-out on my block. Leader of the Wrecking Crew took out the families of a couple of Wandering Dogs. They hit back. Next thing, the block is engulfed in flames, and it’s bodies everywhere you look. Police cut back months ago, they still may not be there. And me… I was just trying to clean out my garage, and I happened to have a U-Haul handy.”

I dunno who referred him to me, and I dunno who might be chasing him. What I do know is that if I don’t move fast, he’ll take his haul on to the next town along. Time to make a deal. “How much you asking?”

#

Back in the day, I understand they used to have a guy who’d dress all in white with a goofy hat and bow tie and deliver milk to your door. Back before preservatives and whatnot, when you had to get it fresh from the teat. This is sorta like that, I guess. Preservatives of any kind screw up the processors, so the fresher, the better, and I’m driving a flatbed pickup door-to-door piled with the recently deceased. Some of ’em have bullet wounds, some have their throats slit, some are burned half to a crisp… all ages, too, and colors, a real smorgasbord. Some people are particular about what they put in their harvesters, like Drucker. He meets me on his sagging back porch and spits a brown stream of goo into a bush.

“Shit, are they all murdered?” He puts his hands on his hips and scowls.

“Earl, all I know is, I’ve got your ration for the month. Now, I came to you first, but what you see is what I’ve got. So pick something out that you like, I’ve got a lot of stops to make this morning.”

He decides on a younger girl, about sixteen, who might look at peace if the back of her head didn’t resemble an exploded sausage omelet. Tosses her in a wheelbarrow and nods at me as I pull the truck around.

“I don’t need to tell you to get that in your harvester right away. Never know who’s gonna come looking for ’em.”

Drucker gives me a smile and a wave, which I return. I flip my shades on and beat a little rhythm on the steering wheel. It’s a good morning. I never understood the law of conservation of energy in high school physics, but I sure as shit do now. You live your life, sucking up all the energy around you as you travel the world, or make your fortune, or push out a bunch of kids, or whatever you do. Then you kick off and end up supplying the juice for your neighbors to sit around microwaving processed burritos and watching old sitcoms. Nothing is wasted. The past becomes the future.

#

My last stop is at my own house. I back the truck up and slide the corpse right into the maw of the harvester. It’s missing an arm and the rest of the body is charred all over. Folks in town didn’t want it because it was unsightly, as if that mattered. But more than that, the missing arm means a couple days’ less juice we’ll get out of it. But I don’t mind scrimping a little bit. Comes with the territory.

My wife is making pancakes when I come in, absolutely gorgeous in that red polka-dotted apron. She doesn’t even wrinkle her nose at the death-smell clinging to me.

“Surprise delivery?” she asks, even though she knows already, since I texted her while I was making my rounds.

“Drug war or something.” I kiss the side of her neck, wrap my arms around her waist. “We lucked out.”

She beams at me and hands me a plate heaped with sweet-smelling flapjacks. The synthetic syrup is so authentic-smelling it makes me feel eight years old. “Well, then, guess it’ll be a quiet couple weeks around here, won’t it?”

I nod, sip some orange juice, and plunk myself down at the table. “More than a couple, if we’re lucky.” It’s been months since old man Jarvis killed his wife since he couldn’t pay his power bill, and it’d been almost a year before that. Today’s delivery will keep our community happy and healthy for a while.

The flapjacks taste like heaven, even better since nobody had to die to make ’em.

Well, nobody in our community, that is.

The Unholy Sands

Pavowski6 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: the Random Title Challenge. Always fun when it rolls around.

This challenge finds me just back from vacation at the beach, and it was a little hard to shake that from my mind, so rather than fight it, I used the image that stuck in my mind when I drew my title as the central gag in the story. Maybe it works.

The Unholy Sands

“I’m just not sure I see the need.”

Larry didn’t even hesitate, but launched into the next tier of his pitch. “See, that’s the thing. You don’t see the need, nobody sees the need. Your average vampire can overmatch a human without breaking a sweat, let alone a fine specimen such as yourself. Which is why this is the perfect weapon.” He pushed the bullet-sized glass vial into the vampire’s hand.

The vampire stared at the vial as if it were full of elk piss. “What does it do, exactly?”

“Good question. Fair question. So. The humans, right? Sure, some of them are accepting of your kind, some of them will even offer you a little of their blood if they’re really friendly. I know a few people like that, and I’m sure you do, too. I’ve even shared a bit of my own from time to time.” It was a lie, but not the biggest one he had in his bag.

Despite himself, the vampire found himself nodding along with Larry.

“But those are the good ones. Now, I don’t need to tell you that there are more than a handful of humans out there who would just as soon stake somebody like you as look at you, am I right? And these people,” he let his mouth curl around the word for disdain, and inwardly ticked a box on his mental list as he saw the vampire’s lips curl up likewise, “they have basements full of every tool they can possibly use in the fight against your kind. Closets full of wooden stakes. An armoire full of crosses. Boxes and boxes of silver bullets. I heard about a guy who became ordained on the internet so that he could bless all the water that came into the house, right there at the water main. Can you imagine? Invited a vampire over, had his wife spill some barbecue sauce on the guy’s face, offered to let him wash up, and blammo. Undead soup all over the bathroom floor.” It was a story spruced up from the truth through a hundred retellings, and it had the desired effect.

The vampire couldn’t help himself. “Ugh.”

“You’re damned right, ugh. Now, I could show you an arsenal of anti-human weaponry, and trust me, I’ve got some things in here that would make your cold heart skip a few beats.” Larry patted his sharkskin wheeled travel bag for emphasis, disguising the subtle click from within. “But there’s no need, because that right there, in your hand, is the crown jewel. May I?” He held out his hand to the vampire, watching for the sign of hesitation that would tell him the vampire was interested. It was tough to spot with vampires, but there it was, a flicker of doubt as he pressed the vial back into Larry’s hand. “Notice how it refracts the light from even the most meager of sources.” Larry held the vial aloft against the backdrop of the vampire’s moth-dingy porch light, and stepped back for full effect.

The shadow that Larry cast onto the front lawn stretched and expanded as you might expect from a solitary light source, but swirling around his shadow’s hand — the hand holding the vial — was an aura of swirling, contorting, faintly whispering blackness, blacker than the night or Larry’s shadow or the insides of the vampire’s eyelids. A hushed storm raging in the air about his hand.

The vampire blinked in shock, glancing from Larry’s hand, which grasped a seemingly harmless glass vial, to Larry’s shadow, which seemed to hold a pulsating orb of living darkness. “What is it?”

“Humans have their holy water,” Larry said. “Vamps have the Unholy Sands of Kelep’Met.” Larry held his breath for a moment. His last sale had been thwarted when his target had turned out to be something of an enthusiast in Egyptian lore, pointing out that Larry had mispronounced the word. He’d been lucky to escape with his life. This vampire, however, possessed no such knowledge, and simply gaped in accepting wonder.

Larry pressed on, edging closer to the vampire, though every instinct in him told him to keep his distance. Vamps might have been in the open, and most thought (rightly) that they had nothing to fear from humans, so they didn’t bother hurting people. But that didn’t mean you could trust them, and the illusion wouldn’t last long. “Far back, before recorded histories, before the dawn of the undead, great and terrible gods roamed the earth. One of them, Kelep’Met, drew the ire of his brothers for his devotion to the dark side of mankind, his demands for human sacrifice, his depraved games in which he would slaughter men in droves just to sate his evil lust for blood. His brothers met him in the darkest recesses of the earth and slew him, and there his blood seeped into the earth and mingled with it. This sand,” and here Larry held the vial out once more for the vampire to take, “is imbued with the darkest forces of evil that the world has ever known.”

The vampire’s eyes were locked on the little glittering capsule, icy orbs in an expressionless face. When he accepted the vial this time, he cradled it in his fingers, as if it might explode if turned the wrong way. Without warning, those cold globes snapped to Larry and he felt the frozen daggers of the vampire’s stare slice into his mind. “Tell me what it does.” The voice echoed in Larry’s head as if the night had parted and God himself had whispered in his ear.

Every pore opened, every hair stood on end, and he even felt a little tingle between his legs. Larry’s blood had been replaced with lava. The vampire’s spell would draw from him the truth, and the gig would be up. Already he could feel his mind spilling his secrets like an uncorked whiskey barrel, the thoughts cascading over one another in their rush toward his lips.

Worst it will do is annoy them, like sand at the beach. Get it down their shorts if you really want to give them a hard time. Or throw it in their eyes.

Kelep’Met is just some name I made up ‘cause I thought it sounded crazy and ominous.

Don’t look in my briefcase, it’s empty except for some silver bullets, some stakes, and the projector that makes the crazy shadows that fool saps like you into thinking this bullshit is legit.

But just as the damning truth began to rattle the air in his throat, the heart rate monitor in his ear registered the effects of the glamour and fired an eardrum-piercing shriek in his head, shattering the effect of the spell. He wanted to scream from the sound but kept his face slack, empty, a good little hypnotized monkey.

“Just let a few grains touch them, and it’ll feel like acid is burning away their skin, then their muscles, then their skeleton, like a bad acid trip they can’t wake up from. I’ve seen people tear their own flesh to ribbons trying to rid themselves of the curse. The ones that survive suffer in pain for the rest of their lives.”

Those seeking eyes flashed across his face once more, and then the vampire smiled, a horrible mask of fangs and handsome death. “How much?”

Larry licked his lips. “Twenty grand.”

The vampire smirked and then flickered — that damn moving-faster-than-the-eye-can-see thing they do — appearing now with a fat wad of bills in his hand. “I assume one such as yourself would prefer to deal in cash.”

It was Larry’s turn to grin. “Cash is great.”

Larry tucked his newly-acquired stacks of hundreds into his sport coat, then reached out for the vampire’s hand. The lifeless, chilling grasp — like shaking hands with a statue — never failed to turn his stomach, but he swallowed back the bile and smiled his winningest smile. It was easy enough, imagining the vampire’s shock and subsequent rage when he tried to inflict untold suffering on a human only to discover that Larry had taken him for a ride and vanished in the wind. He almost laughed. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” the vampire grinned, his dazzling eyes flashing in the night.

Larry turned and shuffled off. The morning would dawn in a few hours, and there were a hot handful of vampires in this neighborhood. Just a few more sales and he’d have the scratch to buy his way to Borra Borra, where the less politically correct natives still did the proper thing and staked any filthy bloodsucker on sight.

Dead Obvious

Pavowski11 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: the Subgenre Mash-up. My mixed up genre? Zombie Whodunit.

I can remember, once in my youth, reading an Agatha Christie book, and I am sure it was nothing like this.

Dead Obvious

It’s all anybody can hope for in this world, to leave it without knowing whence the end comes. A surprise, like breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day or something. Surprise! You’re dead. And in that way, I was fortunate, because I didn’t see it coming. Middle of a dinner party. Excused myself for two minutes, and then it was lights out.

But here I am. Dead. And Alive. Which means two things.

One, somebody I know is a zombie. And two, that somebody didn’t exactly do an outstanding job covering his tracks. Just a nibble, I’m sure he thought (or she, I guess, the virus doesn’t discriminate, but it just feels like a guy’s lack of consideration), and then a total failure to kill me properly. You know, to ensure I didn’t come back.

I can feel it now, the bite on my shoulder, burning like a brand, spreading out like a fiery web. My head could be splitting open for the pain I feel; somebody must’ve clubbed me but good, to try to kill me before I came back. Nice job, that. My heartbeat sounds like the thumping bass at a rave right inside my ears. The burn is spreading. Whole body on fire. On fire with hunger.

I find myself wondering: Why the shoulder? Seems like too much sinew and bone up there to really get a good bite. Somehow, I feel like an expert in anatomy. The thigh is what I’d target, lots of muscle and fat and blood, inches of it before you tangle up in bones. Nice and soft, too, chewy and moist and…

They’re staring at me. I know this because I can feel their heat, smell their blood, hear their hushed whispers and slightly panicked breathing. All of them shocked. How could this happen? At our dinner party, no less? Right before the dessert course? Well, guess what, idiots? I may be dead, but there’s another zombie out there waiting to get you, too. It could strike at any moment.

I open an eyelid with a tiny squishing sound and they all jump. Not astute enough to catch wise to the zombie in your midst, but you don’t miss me sneaking an eye open, do you? Bunch of short-sighted jerks.

Okay. Everybody’s here. The biter is hiding in plain sight.

Could it be James? The snot-nosed trust-fund baby who’s here in a suit that costs twice the average monthly salary for a blue collar worker? He’s clinging onto the waist of his date, Barbara, like he’s more scared than she is. And she, the daughter of a hotel empire, wearing more furs than a snowbound wolf, screaming vacuously into his ear, like I’m about to get up and eat her face. Actually, that sounds rather tempting. I try not to think about how her skin would disintegrate between my gnashing teeth, how her blood would cloy in my throat, how…

Man, the bug works fast. All of them look delicious, in fact, especially tubby Vera, who’s crammed herself into a dress three sizes too small to accentuate her curves for her date, a man she hopes to ensnare in order to rescue her from the one-bedroom flat she shares with her sisters. Too bad he’s gay. Tobias there, lending her his elbow in order to keep up the charade even though he keeps sneaking glances at Francis, stands to inherit millions if he’d only marry a nice girl like Vera and give his mother some grandchildren. Poor woman knows she’s got a better chance of being eaten by zombies now than of seeing her son breed — there’s not much hiding his condition with the spangly tie, the perfectly coordinated pocket square, and swooshing sashay of his walk — but it’s nice to hope. Much like I hope to suck the meat from his fingers, slurp slurp slurp like chicken wings, and…

I slam my eye closed again to shut out the visions of devouring my ex-friend, and collectively they sigh in relief. Dead after all, they say, and shuffle from the room. Francis, the one Tobias has been eyeing, comes over to check my pulse — I know it’s him because he reeks of his cologne, smelling like cut grass and musk and cognac and spinal fluid and… maybe I’m just daydreaming a little, but he smells intoxicating — and determines that I am, in fact, dead. He announces it to the rest of the guests and they sigh in relief and move the party to the parlor. No sense hanging around in here while I lie in a pool of my own blood, going bad like the hors de’ouvres, ruining the evening the way my murderer has ruined my three-piece suit and my skull.

But wait. Francis. He’s the internet dynamo who founded a dozen different companies before he was thirty, and has been married almost as many times. Could he be my killer? It’s almost too much to imagine: as much as he’s been in the tabloids for dating this or that supermodel, that he might be the country’s highest-profile zombie to boot. How salacious. Everybody knows you can’t tell if somebody’s a zombie by checking their pulse, after all. Well, everybody except the people at this party, apparently.

Or maybe it’s Carol, who, after everybody else leaves, stands in the door frame hugging herself tightly, like all the heat’s been sucked out of the room. That’s not the room, dearie, that’s me, going cold over here on the Spanish tile. She thinks she loves me — or rather, loved me — but everybody here knows she could have done better than a third-rate investments agent. I could have bought her the mansion and the yacht, sure, but not the vacation home on the coast that she really has her heart set on. But I don’t think she could have killed me. She’s too innocent, and sweet, and delectable, and her face just looks like it would melt in my mouth, and… And there she goes.

All of them gone. Maybe now I can sneak to my feet and…

Arnulfo. The butler, of course. Pretending not to speak English so that he can simply nod and serve our drinks without a word. That ever-so-subtle limp that we all assumed was a scar from his troubled life in the third-world country of… wherever he claimed to be from. He lingers by the door, his smarmy, faintly clouded eyes lingering on me, and wipes a drop of my blood from his lip. His lip falls off, and he quickly replaces it, tamping it into place with clumsy fingers. That sneaky son of a bitch. His face contorts like he’s trying to giggle at me, or maybe he’s just moaning with the eternal torment of the living dead; it’s hard to tell which. He slips out the door toward the others.

I have to stop him before he kills again.

Shit. Did my blood congeal into glue or something? My face is stuck to the floor with sticky crimson, my limbs feel like they’re strapped with lead sleeves. I haul myself to my feet, but I feel shaky, unstable, like my body is made of jenga blocks balanced on a rope bridge. I splay my legs unnaturally to better hold my balance, throw my arms out in front to counterbalance my ungainly torso. That works. I hobble to the next room, throw the door open —

They all gasp at the sight of me, even Arnulfo, that treacherous swine. In a flash, Carol collapses in the corner with Francis, Vera starts screaming at a high C with Barbara in perfect harmony, Tobias grabs a chair and brandishes it like a medieval greatsword and James draws a little pistol from his coat pocket quick as a cobra. But that’s okay, I’ve figured it out, and I can explain it all to them in an instant, and we can kill that prick Arnulfo together.

I hold up my arms, take a shaky step toward them, and state my case: “Grrraaaaaaaaaarrrgh. Uuuuuuuuhhhhh… HmmmMMMMMMMMaaaammmmfffff.”

That’s odd. I try again: “Rrrrroooooooooooorrrrrrzzz. Nnnaaaarrrrssssshhhhhhhhhhh. Ffflllllllleeeeeeeeeeeccchhhhhhh…”

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Out of the corner of one eye, I see Arnulfo’s hand fall off. I scream at them all to look (“Blaaarrrr, BLLAAAAAAARRRRRR”), but he grabs it and shuffles out of the room, unnoticed, while they’re all staring at me like I’m some kind of monster or something.

Everybody’s shouting at me now. The girls are crying, the guys are advancing on me with their weapons, and it’s all a big mess. Still, all I can think about is eating their brains to save them from their own stupidity. I figure it’s worth a shot, so I lunge at Francis, he of the sweet cologne and flesh smell, and that’s when I hear the meat of James’s finger tighten on the trigger.

I hope he hits my brain this time.

Search History Stories

Pavowski5 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: Tell a story using search terms.

Sounds weird; is weird; is also tons of fun. I wrote one, then while thinking of something completely different, another one struck me. So here’s two for the price of one, and I might just return to this format.

Make your own honey
Amateur beekeeping
Increase beehive productivity
decrease beehive productivity
controlling beehive population
webMD how many bee stings are fatal
webMD buzzing in my sleep
webMD urge to eat sunflowers
how to attract a mate through dance

meteor shower viewing
identifying a meteorite fragment
webMD strange rash on hands
webMD rash on entire body
are meteorites radioactive?
visions of the future are they real
biggest lottery jackpot america
private islands for sale

Collector’s Item

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Chuck’s challenge this week: Literary Mash-Up.

I’m not sure if I’ve properly grasped the concept… I end up literally smashing the stories in question together rather than combining elements of each story’s genre, but this is a fun exercise, regardless.

Anyway, my mash-up victims were The Great Gatsby, which I love, and Pulp Fiction, which I double love. Let that serve as a warning that here there be gratuitous violence (thanks Pulp Fiction) language (thanks Pulp Fiction) booze and debauchery (thanks Great Gatsby) and possibly a deeper meaning hinted at but not in the least delivered (thanks BOTH).

Here, then, is Collector’s Item.

Collector’s Item

“We should have Tommyguns.”

Bruce propped one hand on the wheel and leaned his other elbow against the door, letting his fingers massage his bald scalp. Against his better judgment, he answered. “How many are there?”

“Six or seven, what I heard.”

“Hmm.” Bruce didn’t know how he felt about busting into a room with six or seven guys hopped up on moonshine and god knows what else, but he trusted Mr. G., even if Fitz was edgy. He changed the subject. “Where’d you get those shoes?”

Fitz had on a pair of wingtips polished to a blinding sheen. He angled his leg to get a better look at them. “Gypsies.”

“Get the hell out of here. Gypsies.”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m cryin’, sport. Band of gypsies.”

“Where did you find gypsies around here?”

Fitz sniffed and leaned back in the bucket seat, cupping a match to a cigarette and taking a deep drag. “Couple miles outside of town. They have a camp set up out there. Well, had a camp. Moved on since then. Wherever the fuck gypsies go.”

“And how, if I may ask, did you get a gypsy to part with a pair of shoes like that?”

“Gave him my .38.”

Bruce fought back the urge to slap Fitz across the face. “You traded a gun for a pair of sissyfied leather shoes?”

“I traded my old gun for a pair of designer alligator-skin shoes. One of a kind.”

“One of a kind, made out of hundred dollar bills, I don’t care; you don’t trade a fine piece of equipment like that for some shoes.”

“You do, if you have any taste. Look at your feet, man. What are you wearing, dime store loafers?”

“I promise you this: when I’m dropping bullets into somebody’s head, the last thing they’re thinking about is what’s on my feet.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. A man looks good, he feels good.”

Bruce shook his head and wiped a trickle of summer sweat off his brow. Fitz would argue the point until the moon got tired and went home. “This is it.”

The lights of the Hilton rose up like a luminescent palm tree in the night. Bruce maneuvered the car around to the service entrance, and in minutes, they had taken the stairs up to the 12th floor. There was some big event in the ballroom keeping everybody occupied; nobody even looked sideways at the two men in black, or at Fitz’s alligator-skin shoes.

“What I don’t understand is,” Fitz continued, having hardly stopped chattering all eleven flights up, “how big G makes all that money in such a short amount of time.”

This again. Fitz was always asking questions about the big boss. Whenever he did, Bruce could feel snakes sliding along the back of his neck. Boss had eyes and ears everywhere, and you didn’t go talking bad about a guy like Mr. G. Not if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders.

“Do you get paid?”

“What?” Fitz wasn’t a child, but he could damn sure act like one.

“Do … you … get … paid?”

“The hell kinda question is that?”

“We’re on this job. Pays a couple hundred. Now, whether that comes from Mr. G. or from Sweeney or from whoever else, those couple hundred spend the same. Who cares where they get the money from? Long as I get my cut, I’m happy.”

“All right, all right.” Fitz spread his arms out wide, the classic gesture of a man showing you he’s unarmed and means no harm. The twin holsters revealed at his belt as his jacket flapped open belied the gesture somewhat.

Bruce flicked his watch up to his face.  “It’s time.”

Fitz knocked on the door. That damn “shave and a haircut” rhythm: tap, ta-ta-tap, tap… Thick door. Heavy. Maybe oak or something, Bruce didn’t know. Smooth green paint, numbers in gold, fancy carpets all lush underfoot. Nice place to spend a weekend, if you could afford it.

A blaring trumped assaulted their ears as the door swung open on a scene straight out of a … what was that word…

“Can I help you?” The smarmy-looking guy who opened the door leaned in toward them in a haze of booze and cigarette smoke. His eyes drifted in and out of focus as he swept his gaze back and forth across them. Guy was as hammered as a carpenter’s bench.

“Hey, we heard you all were having some kind of party or something,” Fitz said, turning on a positively magnetic smile.

“You heard right, partner! Come on in, the more the merr–” he hiccuped violently then, almost losing his balance. With a grand gesture he flung the door open and stepped aside to allow Bruce and Fitz in.

“Bacchanalia,” Bruce whispered, the word finally coming to him.

There were no less than a dozen people around the room, in various states of drunken disorder. In the middle of the room, one couple danced violently and out of time with the music. Near them, collapsed on the floor, was another couple ignoring the music entirely in their attempt, apparently, to devour each other’s face. The breathy sounds of their kissing and moaning could be heard above the penetrating music. One armchair held a woman drowsily staring at a spot about five inches in front of her face. The couch held two fellows in shirtsleeves passed out on each other’s shoulder. In a poorly-lit corner, one nervous, parrot-eyed man hung on the arm of a woman who looked as bored with him as she probably was with the world, given the clattering assortment of priceless jewelry adorning the arms folded across her chest. All of them, besides the unconscious ones, had that stumbledrunk heaviness to their movement.

The man who had greeted them beelined to the bar, a grand affair of mirrors and gold trim, hosting a litany of bottles with expensive-sounding monikers, all very English sounding. He uncorked a bottle of clear spirits and poured three glasses at once with a swirling of the bottle, splashing booze everywhere. He proffered one to Bruce, who waved it away with a curt flash of the hand.

“I don’t imbibe.”

Undeterred, the man shifted toward Fitz with the drink.

“Not tonight, buddy.”

“More for me, then!” With a mad grin, their host slammed back one of the glasses at one gulp, dribbling about half the drink down his rumpled shirtfront. Then he turned and sashayed back into the madness.

Bruce, meanwhile, had found the record player and dragged the needle, silencing the music with that unmistakable scratch. It was as if he had pulled the plug on a carousel; all the motion in the room ground to a jerking halt. Fitz, meanwhile, hit the lights, and the partygoers blinked in the sudden blinding whiteness.

“Don’t get up,” Bruce said, in a not-exactly-friendly tone, to one of the sleepers, who had woken and rose toward him. Wisely, the man sat down. Every eye in the room followed Bruce as he stalked like a panther among the drunks. He came to rest in front of the only man in the room who wasn’t drunk, a broad-shouldered affair with a weaselly look despite his lustrous blond hair.

“You must be Tom.”

“Who wants to know?” This the man said confidently, smugly, stroking the back of the woman sitting on his knee. Her hand rested daintily on his chest. If Tom wasn’t recognizable by his size and his stare, the woman was recognizable in that she looked as if the angels themselves had set her in the midst of this den of debauchery. Her golden curls tumbled past her shoulders, diamonds festooned her fingers, and her expression was flighty, bemused, and a little otherworldly. Daisy.

Bruce smiled, sliding his hands into his pockets; just chit-chat, here. “I thought so. Great party. Was that Duke I heard before?”

“I don’t know much about music. More important things on my mind.”

Bruce’s eyes glinted, and he pointed a knowing finger at Tom. “Like the way you think, Tom. Like your taste in booze, too, though I don’t drink myself. But I can tell you’re an individual who discerns. Only the finest.” He flicked his eyes momentarily at Daisy.

Tom nodded, cool, in control, but his mouth curled in a sneer. He didn’t care for Bruce’s eyes on his wife.

Fitz had glided soundlessly to stand with his back against the front door, hands resting lazily on his belt. Bruce glanced his way and Fitz nodded the most imperceptible of nods.

“Well, Tom,” said Bruce, “there’s no easy way to say this, but you’ve got something that belongs to my friend, Mr. G.”

“Who the hell is –“

Like a cobra uncoiling, Bruce drew his pistol and fired into the face of the man he’d asked to sit down. His brains and blood fountained all over the other man on the sofa, waking him up. There was an instant of cacophony in which everybody in the room began to scream, but Bruce shot the other man and things got deathly quiet.

“I don’t think we need to pretend, Tom.” Bruce grinned around his gun arm. “You’re smarter than that. We’re here to collect Daisy.”

“Over my dead –“

“Careful, Tom.” Bruce drew back the hammer on his pistol for effect. “She’s going with us. Whether you’re alive or dead when she does is up to you.”

Through all this, Daisy wore a horrified look pasted across her wispy features, but her eyes registered something else entirely, like she knew how she was supposed to act but couldn’t keep her excitement from bubbling through. She yelped when Tom swatted her on the bottom and nudged her up from her perch.

“I guess you’d better go on with… I didn’t catch your name.”

“Didn’t give it,” Fitz chimed in, smiling that winning smile from the door.

Dammit.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Tom spat, and his bulk unfolded itself, springing out of the chair and throwing Daisy aside. He reached for the pistol at his belt but three bright blooms erupted from his chest – BLAM BLAM BLAM – and he staggered back into the chair, blood and spittle flying from his lips.

The men in the room, who’d seemed a bunch of harmless drunks before, lurched into action, reaching for concealed weapons or diving at the assassins. Intoxicated, though, they were woefully slow. Gunfire thundered off the walls of the little room, and ropes and sprays of blood mingled with the abstract artwork, soaked into the plush white carpet.

Daisy, her blond hair now red with blood, her newly crimson gown clinging to her body, stood trembling in the midst of a mass of death. The few other women in the room were screaming, the shrill sound echoing and magnifying itself in the small space. A dull thwack thwack thwack pounded on the edge of his consciousness; his heart pounding in his ears. It didn’t have to be this way.

With a heavy sigh, Bruce holstered his weapon and looked around for Fitz. Fitz knelt, his weapons spent, pounding the butt of his pistol into the ruined shape of one man’s head.

“Fitz.”

Thwack.

“Fitz!”

Fitz whirled, his gun above his head, mid-swing. A manic glee boiled behind his eyes. “Yeah?”

“We happy?”

Fitz smashed his gun into the man’s head one last time and shoved himself to his feet, sniffing derisively. “Yeah, we’re happy.”

“Miss Daisy,” Bruce said, holding his hand out for her with a little bow. Dreamlike, she took it, and allowed herself to be led from the room.

Fitz shoved his gun back into its holster and cast one last appraising look around the room. “We should have fucking Tommyguns.”