by Mark Henry
And then it was torn away from me, flopping against the kid’s back as he inexplicably ran with the crotch of his jeans binding his knees together. I had to resist the urge to charge at the little G, feel the weight of my lower jaw drop into my cleavage and tear at the back of his neck until he collapsed, paralyzed.
First impressions and all.
What if someone were to see me? That would have really fucked up my cabbage patch for the signing. And, to be honest, I wasn't terribly hungry—don't get me wrong, I could eat, but my skirt would probably rip apart like the Hulk had gone tranny.
“Tommy Doyle!” a voice cried from behind me, reinforcing my decision. “You bring this nice lady's bag right back or I'll put another hole in your ass with this here pea shooter.”
Tommy stopped still and stomped his foot. “Oh, come on! Mrs. Swinton!”
I followed his glower to find a tiny woman in a tweed skirt and jacket, her messy hair in a bun, glasses askew. There was nothing off-kilter about the pistol in her hand though. She was locked and loaded.
“I'm not fucking around, you little idiot.” She warned, cocking the gun she brandished, the click echoed across the intersection. The woman leaned close in to me and whispered, “I knew I should have sold his parents some of those recalled magnet toys when he was a kid. Let Darwin have him.”
The boy shuffled over, pouting and held my bag out in front of me. I snatched it, twisting it in a circle to inspect for damage—and to determine the degree of torture Tommy Doyle would be in for—and, finding none, tossed it over my shoulder. He let a cocky snicker escape and I couldn’t resist clutching his arm and jerking him close to me. “You’re lucky there’s a witness,” I hissed.
He yanked his arm away and scowled. “Whatever, lady. You’re the one who’s lucky.”
“Always,” I agreed.
He glanced back at the woman who’d intervened and winced when she stabbed the gun in his direction. “Go clean out your boxers, Tommy. Don’t let me catch you harassing my authors again.”
The boy stumbled into a run and disappeared around the corner of the theater.
“Thank you. I owe you one,” I said jogging toward the theater and then stopped, remembering her comment. “Mrs. Swinton? The bookseller?”
“Yes. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow!” She caught up to me and rubbed my arm with the kind of familiarity I don’t usually care for. “But tonight is Miss Sandflea!”
Mrs. Swinton hurried past and into the theater.
Chapter 5
I wedged my foot in the slowly closing door and trod inside the theater, searching, inexplicably, for the kind of rude-ass friends that don’t wait. I caught sight of Gil backing out of the main floor door and shook my head. He merely shrugged in response, and slipping his hand into mine, pulled me up the side stairs after he and Wendy.
“Ground floor is packed,” he said. “Hurry, they're doing a musical number about toxic debris from Japan!”
“No?” How was that even possible? It seemed to fly in the face of the human necessity to be offended by everything.
“Oh yeah. This shit is crazy ass backwards.”
We squeezed into the last few seats up in the nosebleeds and took in the pageant with growing horror...also delight. In my world, the two are so tightly woven, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, especially if you’ve been drinking—which reminded me. I produced a flask of bourbon, screwed off the top and gulped.
“That one,” I said, pointing to one of the contestants. “Really should have rethought the proportions on that trawler costume, she looks massive.”
“Sh,” a rodent-esque redhead chided from their left, her lips clinched tight. “She's only sixteen.”
I leaned over the aisle and hissed. “Then she should know better.”
Abandoned rusty ships collided with pagodas, remnants of the Japanese tsunami having made their toxic way to the shores of Las Felicitas—“Aren't pagodas Chinese?” Gil muttered. The shimmying “sea” of cardboard waves propped up by girls dressed as deformed jellyfish, sharks and even a manta ray that looked more like a spatula.
“This is magical,” I had to admit, but should have waited for the two-headed Kaiju headdress and the dancing California Roll before making my final judgment.
The singing was exactly like a choir of angels, if they were the fallen kind and had picked up an illiteracy problem on their way down or smoked two to three packs a day. What I'm saying is: Jesus Christ, pass the Q-tips and gauze, my ears were bleeding.
As the finale drew near, three girls dressed as sand, a pier and what must have been the Felicity Theater itself with a single curved clay tile on her head, bore the brunt of a tidal wave of nuclear garbage, and somehow remembered to spring back for the final bow.
Our entire row of seats shook violently as silent laughter finally exploded outward, hidden underneath the cheers of the well-meaning or impressed or possibly drunken townsfolk until then. But was quickly covered up by a raucous standing ovation which really did fuck up my whiskey buzz.
When Miss Sandflea was finally crowned—my fingers were crossed for Moonglow Featherberry (not her real name but she wore a foundation that was two shades too light and some odd contraption in her hair that looked like she'd been slaughtering chickens in a cranberry bog, so you do the math on the nicknaming)—I nearly choked when the scepter arrived topped with a golden sandflea replica. A name was called, Becky Swinton, perhaps—it doesn't matter, I suppose because it wasn’t Moonglow—and a pretty blond girl strode forward, smiling feebly and nodding. The lack of personality in the winner was staggering and I began to pray that someone had had the wherewithal to jerry rig a bucket of pig's blood to dump on her and strip away my disappointment—as only a telekinetic massacre could rescue this non-event.
“Boo!” Wendy and Gil shouted through cupped hands. When the rat-faced woman inevitably turned to scowl in judgment not just one, but both of them pointed that I had done it. I simply flipped all of them off including Mrs. Frisbee. The townie's gasp of horror was oddly heartwarming.
I did glance at Moonglow, the runner-up, wondering what she might be thinking…also what she tasted like, but that’s beside the point.
A strange sensation spread across my face. I caressed my jaw and the upturned corners of my mouth. A smile. That’s going to be sore tomorrow, I thought. It’s like when you’ve neglected your body for a long time and then go to the gym. Those smile muscles were going to hurt like a motherfucker tomorrow.
What more can you ask of a poorly produced beauty contest with no actual beauties? Nothing. It was perfect. The only thing that could make it better? A dirty martini. “Let’s beat it out of here and grab a drink.”
“Now, you’re making sense,” Wendy said, buttoning her jacket.
As the cheers faded, we slipped down the back stairs and into the lobby. The crowd gushed out of the center aisle doors; chattering about the spectacle as though they lived in North Dakota or somewhere and not a few hours drive from Seattle and some actual cultural offerings. Gil scooped our hands up in the crooks of his arms and led us out a shady side door and up a short alley to an impassable chain link fence.
“This emergency exit leaves a lot to be desired,” I said.
We turned to peer into the darkness that seemed to absorb the back end of the alley and were greeted by a gust of wet, salty wind. The flavor of it caught in my mouth, lingering there like an unwelcome spritzing of perfume in a department store make-up department.
I opened my mouth to remark but was silenced by a high-pitched shriek that echoed against the bricks and stucco. If I had a beating heart it would have stopped dead—the organ is in there, but I’m certain it’s a shriveled piece of jerky by now. I flattened myself against the door, reaching for the knob and found nothing but flat splintery wood.
“Listen,” Gil whispered.
Wendy’s mouth dropped open, her eyes saucering cartoonishly.
Another sound rolled toward them from the far end of the
Theater. The top of a fence was silhouetted by a streetlight, turning the shadowed end of the alley into a treacherous cavelike hole in the night. The tone was familiar.
A gnashing of teeth against flesh. Sinew stretching and snapping. Entrails flopping onto gravel.
You know, the usual.
But there was something alien about the chomping. An absence of pleasure. No ecstatic murmuring. You know what I mean. For a zombie, I’ve been told I’m a dainty eater. I don’t leave much of a mess, if any, and I rarely need to change clothes. I’m a professional, after all. I’m also, apparently quiet, which I certainly couldn’t say about Wendy or any other zombie I’d ever met. Wendy’s moans were legendary; she really gets into her meal. I mean, if you didn’t know it, you’d think she was having sex for the wailing and panting.
What was happening at the end of the alley did not sound like sex. You know that awful comedian whose entire act is splattering watermelons with a sledgehammer? It was loud and clumsy and gory—if a sound can be gory.
It was also none of our damn business.
I crept toward the front of the building, not wanting to draw attention or disrupt what was obviously a very private, and dare I say intimate, experience, intent on scaling the fence.
“Chain link,” Wendy whispered. “That’ll lop off your failing digits like a cheese slicer as soon as you put your full weight on it. Plus, your Louboutin’s will be devastated.”
“Then,” I said, looking back over my shoulder at the feeding ground. “We have to hold our heads high and walk on by, just like a strike scab.”
“But?” The whites of Wendy’s eyes grew large as they turned toward the feeding frenzy. “What if that’s a mistake back there? Patient zero of an outbreak?”
“That’s why Gil’s going to go first. Right, Gil?”
The vampire had disappeared into the shadows, but his drawn out sigh placed him a foot from the door. “Let’s just wait until it’s finished. We don’t want to be rude.”
I ground my teeth. Shaking my head at his cowardice, I dug in my bag for the tiny flashlight I kept for door locks or sussing out a hiding victim’s location. Clicking it on, the low beam lit the far end of the alley in a grainy blur, but what we saw there caused a collective gasp.
Monstrous and gray, but slick as oil. The thing retreated rapidly, revealing flesh that was undeniably fin-shaped despite mammalian characteristics. It crouched on two muscular haunches and as it slipped out of sight, like a great white disappearing with its meal secured, I caught a glimpse of a smooth human ass and something else.
Dangling.
“That thing was huge,” Gil said, completely awestruck.
“I barely got a look at it,” I shrugged, disgusted at his sexual avarice. “Of course, you’d notice.”
He narrowed his eyes, glancing at Wendy for support. She shrugged.
“How could you not? It was clearly some sort of a shape shifting shark thing. It was enormous.”
“Oh yeah, that,” I tried to recover, embarrassment blossoming on my cheeks. “Yeah, huge. Absolutely. Scary.”
Wendy strode past. Never one to let sleeping dogs lie, she muttered. “Amanda was talking about its dick...because she’s a pervert.”
Gil busted up laughing, hands on his knees for support.
“Look at that bite radius.” Wendy whistled. “Enviable, even.”
I shambled forward, taking in the mess that was obviously a girl’s torso—don’t make me tell you how. Dread filled me as I noted the contestant’s sash coiled around the thread of her dislocated spine like a cancer all the way to her pristine oddly viscera-free face. Relief flooded over me, then elation. From the look of things, Miss Sandflea would be seceding her crown to the runner up. The dazed beauty queen stared up at me with only slightly deader eyes than she’d had in life.
Wendy and Gil crowded in around me, clucking their tongues in a confused way.
“Huh,” Wendy said, absently fondling the Twix I’d given her earlier. “She’s an odd choice. I would have pegged her for being a tough meal. Chewy.”
“She seemed absolutely bloodless.” Gil crinkled his nose. “A definite pass in my book.”
“Well.” I pushed them back and rubbed my throat in preparation. “It’s time to make a scene.”
I opened my mouth and cut loose with a blood-curdling scream—not really, blood doesn’t curdle unless it’s been sitting out in a bowl too long. You can’t scream your milk into chunks, why blood? It just doesn’t make sense.
“Well,” Gil said and paused, chewing on his lip as though he were about to say something naughty. “At least we didn't catch that shark fucking her.”
A fan of chocolate spittle sprayed from Wendy. “Ph-what?”
“Sharks have two dicks,” Gil said, matter-of-factly, as though that kind of thing were common knowledge.
“What are you talking about?”
“It's true,” he said. “I read about it in an article on Davenport.”
I sighed. Gil was obsessed with the web magazine Davenport, an online gossip and propaganda network catering to the pencil-moustache set and offering up obscure musical acts, bizarre food and style tips that they pulled straight out of their assholes. Apparently, these things are all important for mingling at parties where Pabst Blue Ribbon is served exclusively. In other words, useless.
“The article was called Making the Beast with Two Backs...and Cocks. It chronicled one stallion of the sea's journey from aquageek to porno predator. Ugly thing, it splits and grabs the lady shark in unmentionable ways. But no, seriously, two dicks.”
“That just seems excessive,” I said. “Most of the time you don't even want the one that's there. I wouldn't know what to do with two.”
“Troof,” Wendy said, palming the now empty Twix wrapper and acting like no one was the wiser.
“Luckily you guys aren't sharks then. But if you were, you'd be slapping both cheeks.”
Gil pantomimed what could only be the breather between a shark blowjob spectacle. Shaking his fists next to each cheek.
I let out a second scream, less enthusiastic this time. “Help! Someone. Come on.”
Finally, footsteps pounded around the back and the door from the theater burst open into the alley. These people were not used to emergencies, clearly.
“Call the police!” I screamed. “There’s been a murder!”
Wendy nodded, agreeing with both my ploy and that there had indeed been foul play. Gil, too. Every supernatural knew that when in a strange place, surrounded by humans and an incident happens, you better do your best to act like one of the crowd or you’ll be suspect. More suspect than you are regularly, I mean.
We escaped the initial questioning by the police by blending back into the crowd and making a lot of exaggerated horrified expressions and nods at what a tragedy it all was, including a brief exchange with the soon to be new Miss Sandflea, Moonglow Featherberry, who, I have to say was absolutely glowing in the weird brilliance of the streetlight or, at least, the circle of off-color foundation surrounding her face did, the rest just faded away like a school dance wallflower. A white haired reporter roamed through the crowd jotting notes onto a little pad—even more reason to bolt. The only thing worse than being questioned by the police was the goddamn media.
The crowd thinned near the opposite end of the building and we simply backed away as the police cordoned off the scene with their bright yellow streamers like it was party time.
Mrs. Swinton made her way toward us. Her stare trained on me.
I gasped, finally making the connection between the carcass in the alley and the bookseller—Becky Swinton, the announcer had said. The dead Miss Sandflea was the woman’s daughter.
Jesus. This was going to be a clusterfuck.
Mrs. Swinton pushed attempted mourners out of her way, spinning them in place by their outstretched hug-needy arms like she were rushing to catch a subway train. She reached out and clutched my forearm, her face a quivering mask of emotion—normal
ly this kind of thing turns my stomach, but something told me, I needed to be nice to Mrs. Swinton...and that something was a royalty check.
It didn't make sense to piss off booksellers.
“Oh Mrs. Swinton,” I said, wrapping her in a tight hug, using muscles I didn't even know I had. “I'm so sorry about your daughter.”
She shook her head, as though she wasn't interested in hearing that kind of thing and instead twisted her mouth into something that I felt much more comfortable with anyway: the clenched expression of vengefulness. “I've been hearing that you saw the guy that did this.”
“Who told you that?”
“So it's true?”
“It was dark and mostly shadows, but there was something down there, yeah. I mean keep that to yourself—”
“I'm not gonna tell the police, you idiot. That is, unless you and your snotty friends…” Mrs. Swinton gestured to Wendy and Gil, both had their arms crossed with the horrified faces of a pair ill equipped to deal with a toilet blockage. “Unless you produce the killer. If you don't, you're going to be spending a long time in Las Felicitas. You wouldn't believe the bureaucracy here, you’d probably have to rent an apartment.”
Wendy stepped forward. “We couldn't do that. We've got somewhere to be after the signing tomorrow. It won’t wait.”
In that moment, Wendy had reverted to a drug dealer with a vendetta. Her eyes cut across me like daggers.
“Well, then,” Mrs. Swinton's eyes widened maniacally. “I guess you’ll be puting those powers of detection you bragged about in Happy Hour of the Damned to work for me.”
Wendy growled and I could have sworn I heard the initial clicks of her jaw ratcheting open, ready to chomp—never a good sign when diplomacy was in order. I stepped in between the two and nodded.
“Yes, of course we'll help you, Mrs. Swinton. And we'll do it quick. You’ll have your killer by tomorrow night to do with as you see fit. Tie him to a metal bed frame and electrocute his nuts for all I care. I just want to see you get the closure you so desperately need.”