The Sinister Mr. Corpse

by Jeff Strand

  "We're gonna let you get the bullet out," Chauncey explained. "But don't try using it on us or anything."

  "Thank you," Stanley said, forcing himself not to say any of the 18,719 smart-ass comments that ricocheted through his mind.

  "We're going to untie your hands," said Tom. "But we'll have a gun on you. If you try anything, I'll shoot you in the head again and drive that bullet in even deeper. You understand?"

  "I understand."

  Tom pointed the pistol at Stanley while Chauncey bent down and unlocked the handcuffs. He quickly jumped back as if Stanley was going to attack, but Stanley remained calm. He pushed himself to a sitting position and then scooted back against the wall. Though the wall was sticky, he didn't complain.

  He picked up the mirror, which was an extremely girly one with a pink flowered frame. He took a moment to brace himself for what he might see, and then looked at his reflection.

  It wasn't so bad. Yeah, there was a disgusting gash in his right cheek, but the bullet hole in his forehead wasn't as big as he would've expected. The lack of blood probably helped with the aesthetics.

  He picked up the tweezers, wondering if he should use them for a daring escape attempt. He could fling them at Tom. They'd lodge into his left eye, and in a blind panic Tom would fire the pistol, shooting his partner in the heart. Tom would pluck out the tweezers but then be so overcome by grief that he'd turn the pistol on himself.

  Stanley decided not to try it.

  "I don't suppose I could call my doctor, could I?" he asked. "He's a cool guy. You'd like him."

  "Just get the bullet out and shut up."

  Stanley checked out the bullet hole closely in the mirror. "Any chance you've got a flashlight? I know I should've asked sooner, but I wasn't thinking."

  "No flashlight."

  "Figures. Okay, here we go."

  A long silence.

  "So go," Tom urged.

  "I'm about to stick a pair of tweezers in my brain! A bit of lollygagging is to be expected!"

  "You need to do it quick, man," said Chauncey. "Like when you're tearing off a bandage or having a chest wax."

  "This isn't like a chest wax. This is surgery."

  "Do you want me to do it?"

  "Oh, sure, brain surgery by a twitchy-fingered drug addict. Sign me right the fuck up."

  "Hey, that was a gesture, man!"

  "How about you two give me some privacy?"

  Tom shook his head. "No way. You'd try to escape."

  "What am I gonna do? Scrape through the wall with a pair of tweezers?"

  "You might! Did you see that movie with Tim Robbins? The Shawshank Redemption?"

  "It was a rock hammer, and it took him, like, thirty years! The only way I'm gonna escape is to tie a message to a rat!"

  Chauncey nervously looked around for rats. Tom smacked him in the shoulder.

  "No privacy," said Tom. "You do it now or the bullet stays."

  "Fine." Stanley angled the mirror just right, and then very, very slowly began to insert the tweezers into the bullet hole.

  "Oh, man, that is nasty!"

  "Shut up! You're disrupting my concentration!" Stanley shoved the tweezers in deeper.

  "Did you get it?"

  "I said shut up!"

  "We should be taking pictures," said Tom.

  "I mean it, be quiet so I can focus." He shoved the tweezers in even deeper. "Okay, I've got something. No, wait, that's just brain."

  Tom and Chauncey both crouched down to get a closer look.

  "What does it feel like?" Tom asked.

  "It doesn't feel like anything. You don't have pain receptors in your brain."

  "But it feels weird, right?"

  "Enough with the questions! I'll give you a full report when it's done!"

  Chauncey poked at his own forehead with his index finger. "I dunno, man, I don't think I could do something like that."

  "Nobody's asking you to."

  "I didn't say that anybody was asking me to, but if I were in that situation, I think I'd just leave the bullet where it was."

  Stanley frowned and jiggled the tweezers a bit.

  "Do you have it?" asked Tom.

  "I'm not sure. I think so. I can't tell."

  "Maybe you should lean your head down and shake it."

  Stanley started to tell him to shut up again, but then decided that the advice was sound and took it.

  "Anything?"

  "Do you see any bullets dropping out of my head?"

  "No."

  "Then it's not doing anything!"

  "Don't be so goddamn testy, man. We got you the tweezers and mirror like you wanted!"

  Stanley raised his head, let go of the tweezers, and pointed at both of them. "If you don't stop talking, I swear to God, I'll beat the crap out of you."

  Neither of the thugs looked intimidated. Their lack of fear was probably directly related to the pair of tweezers protruding from Stanley's forehead.

  Stanley fished around for a few more moments in blissful silence. "Oops, there went high school Algebra."

  "No big loss," said Tom.

  Stanley pulled out the tweezers and shook his head. "No good, I can't get it. I'll need a medical professional to do the brain surgery."

  "That bites, man."

  "Yeah."

  And then Stanley realized that this was his big chance. Tom had lowered the gun, and both men were still staring at the hole in his forehead.

  He slammed the tweezers into Tom's chest. Tom screamed in pain as Stanley grabbed for the gun. He missed. Tom swung it toward his face, but Stanley threw a punch that struck the inside of his wrist. The gun fell to the floor.

  Stanley got Tom with a devastating head-butt that he was pretty damn sure hurt himself a lot more than the thug, considering that he already had a hole in his skull.

  Chauncey tackled him. They struggled on the floor, Man against Zombie.

  Zombie was getting his ass kicked.

  Chauncey bashed Stanley against the floor four, five, then six times until Stanley had to admit that he probably wasn't going to emerge as the victor.

  "Cuff him!" said Tom, groaning in pain.

  Chauncey rolled Stanley over onto his stomach and refastened the handcuffs. Then he bashed Stanley's face against the floor a couple more times.

  "What do we do with him?" Chauncey asked.

  "I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna make sure that the folks paying his ransom know good and well that this is the real Mr. Corpse. Go get a knife. Biggest one we've got."

  "Okay, that idea is really unnecessary," Stanley insisted, rolling over onto his back as Chauncey left the room. "I'm very recognizable."

  Tom plucked the tweezers out of his chest. "You can fake pictures. You can't fake an arm."

  "Aw, shit, c'mon, Tom--"

  "Did you just say my name? Did he tell you my name?"

  "No, no, you just look like a Tom."

  "This ain't good."

  "What difference does it make if I know your name? I know what you look like, too!"

  Hey, Stanley, how about you not say anything else that stupid for the rest of the day?

  Chauncey returned to the room, holding a butcher knife. "Did you tell him my name?" Tom demanded.

  "No."

  "How'd he know it was Tom?"

  "Oh. Maybe."

  "So, Hugh, how's it going, Hugh, did you get the knife like I asked, Hugh?"

  "What's the big deal? He's already seen our faces, and Tom is a very common name."

  Tom considered that. "Yeah, you're right. Give me the knife and hold him down."

  "Guys, you don't need to do this," Stanley said, not even trying to be manly and keep the terror out of his voice. "They'll pay the ransom. They've got too much invested in me. I'll tell the press that you were kind, generous captors and that we experienced that weird bonding thing that you hear people talk about."

  Tom shook his head. "You're losing an arm."

  "At least just take a th
umb. My thumbs are distinctive. They'll know it's mine."

  "Arm. It'll grow back, right?"

  "No! I heal, but I don't regenerate body parts!" Or did he? After all, he was a supernatural being...

  Nope, the arm wouldn't grow back.

  Hugh/Chauncey shoved a dirty tube sock into Stanley's mouth. It tasted like foot. Then he tied a gag around his mouth. Stanley screamed a few times to test it out.

  "Roll him on his stomach and hold him down," said Tom.

  Hugh rolled Stanley on his stomach. He struggled with all of his might, figuring that his situation wasn't going to get much worse for misbehavior, but within moments Hugh was kneeling on his back and holding him down firmly.

  Tom placed the butcher knife against Stanley's upper arm.

  And began to saw.

  It was a long, involved process, but fortunately for Stanley, he was insane for most of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Stanley sat in the darkness, hurting and miserable.

  He missed his arm already.

  They'd taken it away, laughing, and then packaged it up and mailed it off.

  He'd be okay. He was still alive, and Brant would pay the ransom. Maybe with an extra splash of virgin blood they could reattach his arm. Hopefully the thugs packed it carefully.

  No matter what happened, he wasn't going to get depressed. He might cry and scream and pound his fists (well, fist) against the floor, but he was going to remain upbeat. He'd get out of this. Project Second Chance knew about the injection deadline, so they wouldn't waste any time coming up with the money.

  Since handcuffs were somewhat ineffective on an individual with only one hand, they'd tied his remaining arm behind his back by wrapping the rope around his chest.

  He tried to think happy thoughts. After all, having only one arm wouldn't limit his lifestyle all that much. What would he miss out on? Push-ups?

  That was pretty much it. Push-ups. And really, you could do one-handed push-ups if you had enough strength in your arm, so he'd be losing out on nothing.

  He'd be fine.

  He could make a lot of jokes about his disarming presence, and he'd have an advantage over two-armed actors if they ever cast for a remake of The Fugitive, and maybe he could even get a really cool prosthetic arm, one with superhuman crushing abilities or a telescope built into the forearm or a laser or something.

  Then he'd be fighting some serious crime.

  He closed his eyes and wept.

  * * *

  He woke up, not sure if he'd actually been asleep. He knew that Tom had come in and said something to him, but he'd understood it to be something about lemmings and trampolines, which was probably not the reality of the conversation.

  He felt weak. He wasn't sure how long he'd been locked in the room, but it may well have been twenty-four hours or more.

  He wondered when the oozing would begin.

  He heard voices on the other side of the door. He couldn't make out the words, but one of them was definitely Tom. The other wasn't Hugh.

  The door opened.

  "Donald...?"

  * * *

  The scream had jolted Donald Mandigan out of a very nice daydream involving the new makeup girl. She'd been wearing a nurse outfit that would be unacceptable at any state-approved hospital, and she kept dropping her thermometer.

  He hurried out of his office and over to the source of the scream. One of his interns was pressed against the wall, pointing at the package she'd opened.

  Donald rushed over and glanced inside.

  An arm. A bluish-grey arm that looked a hell of a lot like the arm that had been formerly attached to Stanley Dabernath.

  "Everyone stay calm!" he announced to the other five people in the area. "Where did this come from?"

  "It was in today's mail," the intern explained.

  There was an envelope taped to the lid of the box. Donald pulled it free, opened it, and removed the handwritten letter inside.

  Donald Mandigan, we have Mr. Corpse. If you want to see him alive again, bring twenty million dollars to 313 East Arginine Blvd. at midnight tonight. Let nobody follow you. Tell nobody. If you disobey our instructions, the next package will contain his head.

  "Did anybody else see this?" Donald demanded.

  The intern shook her head. Donald looked around the room, and the rest of his staff shook their heads as well.

  "Okay, you're all under information lockdown. There are raises for all of you if you keep quiet. Nobody is to say a word to anybody, got it?"

  The members of his staff nodded their understanding.

  Donald closed up the box, returned to his office, and shut the door. He had to think about this.

  * * *

  Donald drove to the appointed address, a briefcase resting on the car seat next to him. It did not contain twenty million dollars. He didn't have that much. He did have enough hundred dollar bills wrapped around stacks of one-dollar bills that if the contents were not carefully inspected, it would pass for twenty million dollars.

  He hadn't told his producer because she would freak if she knew he was putting himself in this much danger and probably call the cops herself. Yes, it was a big risk, but the story potential was immeasurable. And he didn't think he was dealing with criminal geniuses, or else they would've mailed the arm to Project Second Chance, not him. Then again, they were the kind of sadistic bastards who would cut off somebody's arm, so he had to be careful.

  He spoke into his handheld recorder as he drove. "If these are the last words I speak, I want the world to know that I died to save a truly great American..."

  * * *

  He pulled into the driveway of a small, decrepit home. It was about ten minutes until midnight.

  He waited.

  A couple of minutes after midnight, a man approached the car, pointing a gun. "Come out with the money," he said.

  Donald picked up the suitcase and got out of the car. "I'm unarmed," he lied.

  The man grinned. "So is Mr. Corpse."

  "Funny. Where is he?"

  "He's safe."

  "How do I know that?"

  The man gestured at him with the gun. "Put the suitcase on the car and open it, slowly."

  Donald set the suitcase down and popped the lid.

  "I said slowly!"

  "That was slowly."

  "Slower."

  Donald very slowly opened the lid, revealing the bills inside. He picked up the stack on the upper right corner, flipped through it, and extended it to the man. "Do you want to count 'em all?"

  "Damn, that's a lot of bills. Why didn't you use thousand-dollar bills?"

  "Because they don't exist."

  "Sure they do."

  "No, actually, they don't."

  The man grabbed the stack of bills from Donald, flipped through it, and handed it back. "Is that the twenty million?"

  "No. Twenty million dollars would be two hundred thousand bills, which is unlikely to fit in this suitcase. This is two million. You get the rest when I see Stanley." Donald replaced the stack, one of six that was entirely made up of hundreds, and closed the suitcase.

  "That wasn't the deal."

  "The deal was vague."

  The man seemed to be thinking about whether it might be worth it to just take the two million and run, so Donald spoke up. "You take me to get Stanley, and then the three of us can go to where the rest of the money is hidden."

  "How do I know there aren't cops there?"

  "If a cop shows up, you can shoot me."

  The man considered that. "Fair enough."

  "Should I ride with you, or just follow you?"

  "You can ride in my trunk."

  Donald sighed. "All right. Let's go."

  * * *

  Donald looked horrified as Tom shoved him into the room. "My God, Stanley, what did they do to you?"

  "Shot me in the head, sawed my arm off, let rats nibble on me...but at least there was no mental torture."

  "Glad to see you've
kept your sense of humor."

  "Enough talk," said Tom. "Hugh, get the corpse guy up and let's get them out to the car. Mandigan, you're going to help carry."

  * * *

  "Stop shoving," said Stanley.

  "I'm not shoving, I'm being jostled. It's not my fault he can't drive."

  The trunk was not built for two, even with Stanley taking up less room thanks to his missing arm. Donald had protested the arrangement, but the gun that Tom pressed against his nose had apparently convinced him that the discomfort was worth it.

  "Were you awake when they did it?" Donald asked.

  "Did what?"

  "What do you think? Cut off your arm."

  "Sort of. The bullet is still in my brain. It makes me go kinda loopy at times. You took good care of my arm, right?"

  "I'm using it as a lamp."

  "Were you always this funny?"

  "No. I'm just trying to distract myself from the idea that they might open the trunk and riddle us with bullet holes. Ooops, didn't work."

  "Ha ha."

  "Your arm is in my refrigerator. It looks about as bad as it did before it came off."

  "So why'd you come to get me?"

  "Extra fame."

  "No, really."

  "Extra fame."

  "No bond of friendship?"

  "Nah. I always thought that you were kind of a jerk, to be honest."

  "I tried not to be, and look where it got me."

  "At least you'll only be able to flip people off half as often."

  "Yeah, there's that."

  "Don't worry, Stanley. We'll be okay. I've got a plan."

  "Good plan or shitty plan?"

  "Shitty plan, but that's better than no plan. I've got a gun."

  "You mean the one that fell out when you got in the trunk?"

  Stanley couldn't see Donald, but he was pretty sure that he wasn't wearing a smile.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah."

  "Damn."

  "Yeah."

  "I take it you don't have the rest of the money?"

  "I didn't have the money they think they've already got. There's not anywhere close to two million in that suitcase. But I've got a sniper ready and waiting."