- Chapter 24 -
Fleet sat in his living room in front of a raging fire, Beauty sitting in his lap. He ran his fingers through her hair and raised an eyebrow as Calico and the other men stepped into the house.
Calico held the dead girl’s hand, bent down to her level and lifted her face by the chin. “Don’t be scared. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t wanna be here,” she whispered, her pupils darting around the room and taking in her new surroundings. “Please…take me out of here. Take me back to my brother.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Look, darling. Daddy’s home at last,” Fleet shouted. His voice bounced off the walls, hung in the air like a swarm of gnats.
“Nungh.” Beauty tried to wiggle free from Fleet’s clutches, but the old man held her there. Just seeing him touch her made Calico hungry for his blood.
“Tell you what,” Fleet said. “Walk that pretty little thing over here, and we’ll do an even dead bitch swap, yes?”
“What are you going to do with her?” Calico said. “She needs to be studied, she needs to be given to someone that can help her. She may be the key to changing everything.”
Fleet stood, held Beauty in his arms. His teeth were the color of melting butter between his earthworm lips. “What happens to this girl doesn’t mean a damn thing to you. Now bring her over here before I take a bite right outta your daughter’s neck.” He gave the crook of Beauty’s neck a long sniff.
As he walked across the room, pulling the dead girl along, a sinking feeling started to weigh down Calico’s stomach. The girl fought him now, tried to tug her hand out of his grasp, but seeing his daughter in the hands of Ted Fleet forced his feet forward until the men were face to face.
“Let me go! Let me gooo!” The girl pounded on Calico’s arm, but it felt like little more than a light breeze. Beauty had his attention, and she clicked her teeth, reached out for him.
“I’m here, baby girl. Daddy’s got you.” And then the men swapped girls. Calico stepped away from Fleet, squeezing Beauty’s bony frame in his arms, cupping the back of her head. He kissed her on the forehead, but stared at the old man. “Am I done here?”
Fleet was on his knees, doing his best to hold the girl still, but she thrashed, kicked at him. “Feisty little dead fuck, aren’t we?”
“Get away from me!” As she fought, there was a wet plopping sound as the girl’s viscera fell from under her dress and piled up around her feet.
“She’s…she’s damaged,” Fleet said. “Did you boys see this shit?”
Bunny Rabbit stepped forward. “Sir, she seemed okay when I looked her over…I must’ve…missed that. I apologize.”
Fleet flared his nostrils, his eyes like open flames as he stared at the tall, slender man. “Shit, we’ll just have to make due then, won’t we. Little bitch don’t need her guts anyhow.” He stood, waved Bunny Rabbit over. “Get your ass over here and take hold of her.”
Bunny Rabbit hesitated, then did as he was told. He picked up the girl, managed to pin down her flailing arms.
“Now hold her still,” Fleet said as he grabbed hold of her intestines like he was about to compete in a tug-o-war contest.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Calico said.
“Stay out of it. I seem to recall your daughter’s innards being scooped out too.” He pulled the slimy rope until it was taught.
“They were removed surgically,” Calico said. Beauty prodded at her stomach again. “You might damage her this way...”
“It’s not gonna matter one way or another.” And then he pulled, hand over hand.
Bunny Rabbit winced as he held the girl still. The girl watched her intestines unraveling from her stomach with an open mouth, and she never stopped kicking her legs.
Beauty grunted as she watched and Calico squeezed her even tighter.
When Fleet was finished, he licked his fingers clean, then waved over another set of Ughs and Grunts. “Take her, clean her up, get her to headquarters.”
The two men each took an arm and wandered off out of sight with the girl.
“Take Daddy and his dead fuck daughter back home,” Fleet said to Bunny Rabbit, then turned to Calico. “You’re shit for a dinner guest, you know that? I’ll see you tomorrow with some new jobs that need doing.”
“Don’t be stupid, Fleet. That girl should be studied. She could help—”
“Help who? Your daughter? Is that what this is about?” Fleet shook his head. “Suddenly the big bad killer gets a soft heart cuz he thinks the talking dead girl can cure his fucking rotting daughter? Is that it?”
Calico widened his eyes and ground his teeth. If Beauty wouldn’t have nuzzled him right then, he probably would have charged the old man. But he took a deep breath instead. “You don’t know. She’s special…you can’t—”
“I can’t what? Grind her up, sell her? Don’t worry, much bigger plans than that.” He kicked at the slimy pile of entrails. “I’ve got me a bidding war going. I knew there would be a high demand for something so rare, but I didn’t anticipate how much money would be offered.”
“A bidding war?”
“A brand new type of snuff. Something nobody’s ever seen, and probably never see again. A living dead girl as the star. Can you imagine? And I’m gonna make millions.”
“You what?” Calico said. Bunny Rabbit had a hand on his shoulder now. “You’re putting her in a movie? She’s…she’s a kid!”
“Yes, which makes it that much more desirable to my customers. Don’t worry, you won’t have to watch. In fact, you’re forbidden from the set.”
“You can’t…this is too fucked up!”
Along with Bunny Rabbit, a horde of cronies now circled Calico and Beauty.
“Behave yourself, or your pretty little daughter could end up a co-star.” Fleet turned his back to the drama and started walking away. “Get his ass out of here.”
An avalanche of strong hands fell on him and dragged him out of the house. The front door slammed, and Calico found himself propped up against the SUV. He felt something pop in Beauty’s chest and realized how hard he was squeezing her. The men backed away from him, but stayed close.
Bunny Rabbit’s face suddenly appeared in front of him. “Come on. Let me take you two back home. Try not to think about it too hard.”
Calico’s stare could have drilled a hole right through the man’s head. He didn’t say a word, let his eyes do all the talking. The SUV’s rear passenger door was flung open and he allowed himself to be ushered inside, still clutching Beauty to his chest.
Bunny Rabbit leaned into the vehicle. “I’m sorry, but I have to take this,” he said as he unstrapped Calico’s knife holster from his ankle. “You’ll get it back when we get home, but I don’t need a blade to the neck while I’m driving. You understand.”
Calico’s eyes said, “I could rip your throat out with my bare hands,” but his mouth was a straight line, his teeth grinding against one another behind his hard lips. But it was as if Bunny Rabbit read his thoughts through his stare.
“As a matter of fact…” He pulled a black plastic zip tie from his beltline, turned Calico around with the help of two other Ughs, and zipped his wrists together. “Just in case.”
Calico was ushered into the vehicle, and the door was slammed shut as Bunny Rabbit discussed something with the other men. Two men came walking from somewhere behind the SUV, the dead girl swinging between them. She wore a new dress, one that wasn’t stained black, and her face was covered in makeup. She looked like a living doll.
Calico tried to wiggle free from his restraints, but they were too tight. The girl had her eyes pointed toward the sky, as if she were begging some higher power to take her away from all this.
“Angunngh.”
He leaned toward his daughter and kissed the top of her head. “Almost time, baby. Almost time.”
The men carried the girl to another SUV and piled into it, pushing her inside with a hard shove. Cal
ico’s anger seethed as he watched the men exchange a laugh.
Bunny Rabbit entered the vehicle and started the engine. The same soft rock station was on. “Sorry about all this shit, man.”
“Are you?”
“I’ve got orders to follow, simple as that.”
“You motherfuckers disgust me.”
The SUV carrying the girl pulled away, and Bunny Rabbit followed. “Fuck you, man, all right? The man that chops people into pieces wants to give me a speech about morality? Please.”
“I kill the scum of the earth. Money-hungry meatheads that do nothing but spread despair. I take them out…pest control. I don’t kill little girls.” Calico watched as Beauty lifted her dress and scraped her nails across her belly. She looked up at Calico and he nodded, jerked his head toward Bunny Rabbit.
“She’s fucking dead! You get that? Dead!”
“What’s wrong with dead?”
Beauty plunged her hand into the cave of her stomach cavity, pulled the gun out.
“Don’t knock it until you try it, asshole.”
She aimed the gun at Bunny Rabbit and fired.
- Chapter 25 -
When the drug wore off, Paco found himself circling the bedroom. It felt like his body was covered with marching ants, and he scratched it, turning his skin a neon pink. A piercing throb inflated and deflated in the center of his brain, over and over.
Sophia…I’m so sorry.
The feeling that he’d let his sister down was like a rat gnawing its way out of his stomach. He didn’t know what the men were going to do to her, but he had to assume they were drug dealers, had to assume they were going to sell her for meat.
She could already be cut up right now, he thought. It could already be too late.
But he couldn’t give up, he knew that. Somehow, he would escape the Harrell mansion, he would find his sister, and he would kill anyone that tried to stop him. It wasn’t until his head cleared that he remembered the pistol in his bag. Images of Officer Southard crept back into his thoughts, the way his chest blew apart from the rifle blast, the way he writhed in the dirt as he clung to the last bits of life left in his broken body. Paco still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he had killed a man, but he was protecting his sister. And he knew as he squeezed the handle of the gun that he would have no problem doing it again, wouldn’t hesitate for a second.
All he could do now is wait for Jake to come back. Once the man entered the room, he would be greeted with a face full of firepower. And then Paco would go to Mr. and Mrs. Harrell’s bedroom, would make them beg for their lives before putting a bullet in both of their foreheads.
His gaze pingponged from the gun to the door and back again. He rocked in place, growing more impatient by the moment. Time was running out, he knew, and the longer Sophia was with those men, the more likely it became that Paco would never see her again.
Come on, goddamnit!
Then the doorbell rang.
The sound of it startled him, and he nearly squeezed off a shot. He jogged to the window and peered out, but could only see darkness. There was a possible gleam of something metal down in the driveway, a car maybe, but Paco couldn’t quite make it out.
The doorbell rang again, and this time he heard Jake’s muffled cursing as he moved down the hall. The bastard had been standing outside Paco’s door the whole time.
Though he’d already tried it, Paco ran to the door and jerked on the handle. He contemplated shooting at the lock, but he had to save his bullets.
Shit, shit, shit!
***
Jake stomped toward the front door, balling his fists into truck tires as he strode down the hallway. He’d been standing in front of the boy’s door for over an hour now, just like the boss told him to, but his knees ached from the task. He’d already eaten most of his supply, still felt the ecstasy flowing through his flesh, but he needed more, could already feel the shakes coming on.
Who the fuck could this be?
His nose still smarted a bit, but he couldn’t help but feel almost privileged for being punched by the most feared hitman in the city. He’d heard countless tales about Calico, the man of two colors, how he worked for the big man in town, Ted Fleet, and was the most dangerous man alive. A cutter, he had heard. Sliced open his own skin because he liked how the pain felt. Just thinking about it made Jake want to hit the gym. He was nearly out of juice too, and would have to re-up on that when he went to get more meat. Nothing like lifting weights with meat in his belly and steroids rushing through his veins.
The doorbell rang a third time, and Jake realized he was just standing in front of the door, contemplating his run in with the legendary killer.
“Answer the goddamn door!” Mr. Harrell’s voice was like a shotgun blast, and it shook Jake from his thoughts.
“Sorry, sir!” He opened the door and peered into the darkness.
Standing on the doorstep was a girl. She looked up at Jake and clicked her teeth, and it was then he realized she was dead. It was also in that moment that he saw the gun in her hands.
“What the—”
The bullet hit him in the stomach and he stumbled backward, his hand pressed over the wound as a growing oval of blood soaked into his shirt.
He looked back up at his attacker, but instead of the scrawny corpse, he was face to face, once again, with Calico.
“Can we come in?” Calico said. He twirled a long knife in his hand as he stepped closer to Jake.
“What the f-fuck are you doin’?” Each word was like a twisting spear in his gut. He winced, grunted, slipped on his own blood and crashed on his back.
Calico stood over him, plunged the tip of his knife into the palm of his own hand. The killer’s eyes flitted and he ran his bloody tongue over his thick lips, then the eyes burst wide and he bared his teeth as he rotated the blade so it was pointing at the floor. “I wish I had more time, but fortunately for you, it’s ticking. So we’ll make this quick.”
“F-fuck…fuck you!”
“Yeah, they always say that.”
Jake could only scream for a moment, his arms too heavy to lift, as he felt the bite of the blade at his lower abdomen. He let his head tilt back and he stared at the ceiling as he felt the knife yank up the length of his torso and open him up. The maids’ screams were muffled, and Jake couldn’t tell where they came from—he could barely make out the click-clacking of their retreating footsteps. Blood rushed from his mouth, choked him, ran over his face and coated his vision with dark red. He could just make out Mr. Harrell at the top of the staircase, staring down at him in horror.
When the hot pain reached his throat, when he could feel his innards pouring out onto the floor beside him, the red of his vision became black, and then there was nothing else but sleep.
***
Paco had his gun aimed at the door now as he heard the screams. His hands trembled more violently when the screams turned to gurgles and coughs.
Did the bad men come back? What if they’re here to kill all witnesses?
The thoughts swirled in his brain like a tornado, and he could do nothing to calm himself. It made sense. Sophia was one of a kind as far as he or the doctor knew, so maybe these gangsters didn’t want anyone to know she existed. And now they were here to clean up any loose ends.
I’ll shoot them…I’ll kill anyone that comes in this room.
Then he heard screams coming from upstairs, heard shouting and what was clearly begging. Mr. and Mrs. Harrell’s voices reverberated off the walls, and though what they were saying was indecipherable, the fear was loud and clear.
A hard stomping down the stairs.
“Show me where the boy is!”
Paco didn’t realize he had been backing up until his heels met the wall behind him. A shout erupted from his throat and he nearly dropped the gun. It became more difficult to hold it as his palms spewed sweat.
“Please…please don’t! We can pay you whatever you want!” Mrs. Harrell’s voice just outside the
door now.
“Yes…anything. Don’t do this…y-you don’t have to do this…” Mr. Harrell, his voice now high-pitched like some prepubescent schoolgirl.
And then the doorknob started to rattle.
Paco tried to swallow, but couldn’t. His knees began to wobble and his stomach threatened to empty itself. But he kept his gun pointed, kept promising himself he would kill anyone that walked into the room.
“Whoever’s out there, don’t come in here!” Paco shouted. “‘I’ve…I’ve got a gun and I’ll kill you, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ve killed someone before and I’ll kill you too!”
When the door swung in, the first thing he saw was the Harrells on their knees—Mr. Harrell in some kind of leather outfit and Mrs. Harrell wearing nothing but a neck tie and what appeared to be a blue plastic penis strapped to her groin. They both had twisted grimaces on their faces. Then a little girl walked past them and into the room—a dead girl. She looked at Paco, made some jerky movements with her neck, almost as if she were greeting him. A red light blinked from under her eye.
“Ungh.”
From behind the Harrells, gripping each of them by their hair, came the patchy man he’d seen earlier, the one that defended him, punched Jake in the nose. The one Jake said was a cold-blooded killer. The man’s hands and forearms were coated with dark blood.
It’s true…he’s here to kill me!
“S-stay back…don’t take another step or I’ll fucking kill you…”
The man nodded and gave a slight giggle. “And I don’t blame you, kid. But I’m on your side.”
“You, you what?”
“You and me, we’re going to save your sister. I can’t let those men do what they have planned. No way in hell.”
Paco let the gun lower to his side. He felt like running up to this blood-soaked man and hugging him. “Are y-you serious? Are you trying to trick me?”
“Yes, he’s lying to you,” Mrs. Harrell said, her emaciated body hanging from the man’s grip. “Help us, son. Please…”
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