by J. S. Volpe
* * *
Bored and annoyed with trying knob after knob and finding every door locked tight, Brother Wisswick was about to ask Brother Tantora if they couldn’t just call it quits and torch the damn building already, when the knob he was trying to turn actually turned, and the door popped open.
“One’s open!” he called, his boredom and annoyance distant memories now that he had actually gotten results.
As Brother Tantora and Sister Moshi came running, Brother Wisswick raised his lantern and gasped at the sight of the figure in the dentist’s chair.
“What’s wrong?” Brother Tantora said, hurrying up behind Brother Wisswick. “What—” He looked over Brother Wisswick’s right shoulder, saw the moaning figure strapped to the chair, and said, “Ah. I see.”
“Let me see,” Sister Moshi said, stretching up on her tiptoes in a futile attempt to see over the two men’s shoulders. Alas, she was only five-foot-one and they six-foot-one (Tantora) and six-foot-three (Wisswick), so nothing but black fabric met her gaze. “Come on, let me see.”
The men ignored her.
“Could this be the work of a fellow Pawn?” Brother Wisswick asked Brother Tantora.
Brother Tantora stared at the thing that had once been a man as it twitched in the chair, then shook his head. “This is the work of one who enjoys inflicting pain, not one who wishes to cleanly and simply bring about blessed entropy.”
“The Snowman?” said Brother Wisswick.
Brother Tantora nodded. “That would be my guess. A vain, selfish fool concerned only with his own pleasures. He is as far from being one of us as is a Nünite.” He stepped into the room for a closer look at the body. Brother Wisswick and Sister Moshi followed him in.
“Wow,” Sister Moshi said when she finally saw what remained of Bastard Jack. “Somebody put a lot of work into hurting that guy.”
“Because it amused him to do so,” Brother Tantora said, his lips curling back in a disdainful sneer. “That is all. The Snowman is a low-minded fellow.”
Brother Wisswick stopped in front of the dentist’s chair and peered at Bastard Jack, turning his head this way and that, examining him from every possible angle.
Bastard Jack emerged slightly from the pain-haze in which he had been floating for untold eons and became aware of the figure looming over him. His remaining eye wobbled about until it found the area of fuzziness that most resembled a face. “Kill…nge…” he whispered.
“Poor little man,” Brother Tantora said. He pulled his dagger from its sheath on his belt. Its keen blade gleamed in the lantern’s light. He turned it back and forth in his hand, eyeing it closely as if assessing its sharpness, then glanced up at Bastard Jack and in one swift motion swept the blade across Jack’s throat.
Blood sheeted from the gash while Jack stiffened in the chair, arms and legs straining against the leather straps that held him. A faint sighing sound escaped his open lips as his blood coursed down his torso and pooled across the seat of the chair. Then he went limp, head drooping, single eye now fixed on the floor but seeing nothing anymore.
Brother Tantora turned and headed back to the hallway. Sister Moshi followed. Brother Wisswick remained in place staring at the corpse for a moment.
“Hm,” he said. He sounded almost disappointed for some reason. He watched Jack’s blood dribble off the front edge of the seat and onto the floor, then grunted and joined the others in the hallway.
“What now?” Sister Moshi asked.
Brother Tantora pursed his lips, then looked up and down the hallway, brow crumpled in thought.
“I have heard stories that the Snowman collects weapons of various kinds,” he said. “If we could find these weapons, we could put them to better use than this.”
Brother Wisswick grinned and nodded, his eyes bright and eager. “Yes! Yes! Think of the great works we could accomplish with guns!”
Brother Tantora gave a small laugh. “The stories say the Snowman has ferreted out weapons far more powerful than any guns. I have heard that he has dynamite, bombs, lasers.”
Brother Wisswick’s face went slack for a moment, and his eyes took on a dreamy, distant cast. He looked like a man in the midst of an expert blowjob.
“Bombs…” he said, his voice a barely audible whisper. “Lasers…”
Brother Tantora chuckled. “Indeed. Now, come, let’s look for them.”
“But most of the rooms are locked,” Sister Moshi said.
“Not all,” he said with a gesture at the room they had just exited. “And if need be, we will find a way into those that are. There is no door that will not become rubble and dust with the right tools.”
The three Yellow Pawns turned and headed back the way they had come.