The Hitnan: A Tale of Blood and Canes

by Wez Wallie

  Tilda thrust the door open and leapt inside with a huff.

  Dotty frowned. "Well, that's just spiteful."

  *

  The Hitnan was driving like a maniac again and had already been pulled over twice: once for speeding, and a second time for holding Tilda's head out the window in anger, after a song came on Peader's CD player and she happened to comment that Sammy Davis Jr. was "one heck of a good lay for a gay." (Not again, she thought.)

  Luckily, both times the ladies were able to get out of any tickets, simply by Tilda flashing her knockers at the coppers. (Not her scraggly bits mind you, but rather her K.N.O.C.K.R.S. - Kinetic Neutralizer (for) Optics Calibration Kindly Resetting Synapses - think the device in the Men In Black films, but on budget and wielded by a pensioner).

  "Eh!" said The Hitnan, speeding off down the motorway, after leaving the Fuzz blindsided and in a hazed stupor at the edge of the hard shoulder. "What did you just do to the poor blokes?!"

  "Whipped out my KNOCKRS, Dorothy. Desperate times and all..." She held them up to show Dotty, who took her eyes off the road for a good while to study the two cylindrical sticks which looked like Magicians Wands you get in a kid's magic set. "Don't worry, bang them together and they emit a quick flash, leaving the enemy stunned and confused for a few minutes. I think it wipes their short-term memory a bit too."

  "Well, why don't you use them all the time then?? Sounds like a bleedin' good gadget if you ask me."

  "Yeah well, I was waiting for the right time, like if Robert ever started paying attention to his credit card bill, or if Bluebell ever caught me putting Asda own-brand tomato sauce in the Spag Bol as opposed to those rip-off Dolmio jars. Those puppets can kiss my tooshie! So, you're welcome anyway, I used them to save your sorry arse."

  "Well, I'm flattered. And it's good to know you ain't 'alf as posh and poncy as you make out to be."

  Tilda shrugged. "Half the game is deception, Dorothy."

  "Though you could always use some of my tommy juice."

  "I fell for that line with Pamela Anderson in the '90s; I am not going to do so again!"

  "O....kay, well, I'm just baffled as to why Bognor didn't hook me up wiv somma them wizardy sticks. The fings I woulda used 'em for!"

  "My Robert made them on the sly. He's my gadget guy. Shame they only work twice." Tilda shrugged and flung them out the window, where the release of a tiny remaining charge dispersed into the face of a passing snail, and after slogging his way up the A2 for the best part of a month to meet his courting mate, quickly confused himself as to which direction he had come from and proceeded to turn back and go the other way. (He eventually made it home a month later where he was subsequently crushed under the weight of a toddler's jelly shoe and died sticky and gooey and without progeny.)

  Meanwhile, Dotty was back to bombing it down the motorway again. "Gawd, why you gotta live outside'a London for? It's very inconvenient, Tilda Maffews!"

  "Stop speeding, woman, I'm all out of flashy sticks! And because I appreciate not being choked to death by air pollution, and also not having to pay 1600 a month to live in a tiny cupboard whilst the Landlord says I don't have to pay the other 200 if I give him 'special favours' and such."

  Dotty went quiet. "Er, is there somefing you wanna talk about, Tild?"

  "No, it was just a hypothetical example. Anyway, it's not too far now is it."

  "Whatevver. So, how's ginger bollocks doing? Still in the land of the living?"

  "Just about. Can't believe I shot my own boyfriend. What's all that about? I become so unprofessional when I'm around you! Your amateurness rubs off on people, clearly."

  "Relax. You just did what every woman fantasises about doing to her bloke when he's acting like a prick. You don't need to worry about it - that's the one perk of not having a soul!"

  "Shut it, Dorothy."

  "So, is he gonna hold it against you when he gets out?"

  "I hope so. The docs didn't say anything about a hip wound causing impotency."

  Dotty looked puzzled as Tilda gestured to the window: "Oh look, we're here! Finally."

  Pulling into the Library car park, Dotty did such a piss-poor attempt at a reverse parallel that she somehow ended up parked in the pub garden across the road. "This'll do," she said with a stubborn confident air.

  Tilda unbuckled herself. "I don't even know how that happened, but now we gotta cross two lanes of traffic to get back over there!"

  "Shut up and let's get going - you need the exercise, look at'cha."

  "But you're always mocking me on the basis I'm stick thin!" Tilda countered, exiting the cab and slamming the door. "Your insult-game is getting sloppy, Dorothy." She employed the pop-up umbrella from her red beret, adjusting for prevailing wind conditions on the high road and joined Dotty at the pavement curb as it began to spit with rain. Dotty just looked at her with a cringe.

  "I ain't going anywhere wiv you wearing that monstrosity!"

  "Give it a rest. It's only 'til we get over to the building; some of us care about our barnets, Dorothy."

  Dotty shook her head with a 'tssk' and grabbed her arm, dragging Tilda into the road as traffic slammed their horns and swerved past the doddery old fools.

  Once halfway across, Dotty was shouting over the roar of the engines:

  "HEY TILD, WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?"

  "At this point, Dorothy, I would hate to conjecture..."

  "SO SHE COULD ESCORT THE OLD MUTTON TO THE LIBRARY!"

  The cackles of The Hitnan could be heard as far away as the Lidl, and Tilda gave her old mentor a good slap on the arm when they reached the other side. "Well, poultry may be an apt description of yourself Dorothy, given you've got the hairy bingo wings and the turkey neck to match!!"

  "Ooh, you evil git!" cried Dotty, clutching her throat with hurty feelings. "You really are a cruel wench, Tilda Maffews - a cru-el wench!"

  Tilda smirked in satisfaction and turned with a huff, heading up the slope and into the library.

  Inside, the main hall was empty and eerie quiet. It was just before the 5:30pm closing time, though this was usually when one saw a mad rush to stamp out the science books that the virgin nerds had been reading all day, and feckless dole mums would swarm the counter like they just made it in before some bomb went off in a Mission: Impossible film, all in order to avoid a 60p late charge.

  But not today. Only the two main staff members were droning around, which was odd given there were the familiar pair of bikes by the entrance, complete with fresh wheels meaning the usual pair of troublemaking youths should still be around somewhere. Bring 'em on, she thought. I'm in no mood for their shite today!

  "What's that smell," asked Tilda curiously and slightly worried, her thin and arched nostrils flaring in discernment.

  "Dunno, but it's certainly spicy," replied Dotty.

  "Can I help you, ladies?" asked the head Librarian. She had styled herself exactly how one would expect a library manager in her early sixties to dress: She wore a beige frock and worn black flats. Her grey hair was stringy and perpetually damp, and her square brown glasses magnified her cubic despondent eyes from years of trying to teach old fogies how to use a Windows 95 computer and getting absolutely nowhere. A petite lady, though with surprisingly large breasts and bottom, she had an air of musk and dust, and looked like that was her diet too.

  "No thank you, dear, we're just poppin' in to grab a few quick reads before heading off on our holidays," replied Dotty.

  "Ooh, anywhere nice, Mrs Walker?" she enquired, trying desperately to form some human connection, perhaps with people who weren't totally braindead.

  "Ms. And no, just Eastbourne." The lady nodded in reply.

  "Well, let’s hope the weather clears up for you. I've heard a storm is coming. Let me know if I can be of any help."

  The Hitnan smiled politely and made a beeline for the Biography section by the corner window.

  "Haha! They've replenished the stocks!" she said excitedly as she stared down at the
three-pack of poison darts within the back of the usual Chucklefission book. "Silly fools. With the equipment they provide to me I shall use to take 'em down! Oh, sweet irony!"

  Dotty tipped two in her handbag and slipped one into her coat pocket, just in case of emergencies, as Tilda perused the peculiar title beside her. According to the front-page stamp, the book had only ever been taken out once, (and that was probably by the bloke who played Mr Bean in the nineties to see what his comedy rivals were up to). "Oh, you use this one do you?" asked Tilda rhetorically.

  "Eh? What ovver weapons are there, then?"

  "Are you kidding? Loads, Dorothy. Scattered around the place, of course. You got poison pills in "Jamie's 7-Minute Meals"; Electric tasers in "Some Like It Hot: The Official Novelization", and you don't even wanna know what's hidden in the back of "Where's Wally." My favourite though is the fold-up Machete concealed in the "Cutting School Projects Down To Size" book over in the Arts & Crafts section! You just gotta know where to look."

  "Flaming Nora!"

  "Oh, that's a Molotov cocktail tucked away inside Gordon Ramsay's autobiog over there. It's pretty volatile though and requires assembly with your own ignition system so I wouldn't recommend it. One time I thought I'd give it a go; I had barely opened the book to retrieve it when the entire apparatus caught fire and the whole library went up in flames."

  "Yeah, that was only last year or so - was that actually you?! I read seven silver-tops went up like dry kindling - even the staff had to go to hospital for oxygen deprivation! Hang on, actually that would explain a lot."

  "Yeah, that was one thing I did feel bad about to be fair."

  "Wow. I might have to have a browse of all that ovver stuff then. To fink, all this time I've been stuck using the same boring poison darts over and over again!" Tssk!

  "Right, well I'm busting for the loo so I'm gonna ask Stephen at the counter for the toilet key and also take out this 'Chuckles and Fission' book. The back jacket blurb is actually quite humorous, and the picture pages in the middle of these two northern moustachioed chaps knocking over highly volatile Uranium cores with a stepladder in '80s Chernobyl has tickled my pickles."

  "What, you actually have an account here?"

  "Of course! I don't just take the weapons and gadgets from the item, Dorothy. I actually check out the book as well. I'm cultured like that."

  "Oh. I just dump the shit in my purse."

  "Well, that's selfish you all over, isn't it!"

  "Oooh, handbaaags!" said The Hitnan, with a mocking tongue poking out.

  "Whatever, Dorothy. I have no time for your immaturity - I need a big piss!"

  Tilda hobbled over to the main counter and handed over the book. Steve, the goatee-beardy bloke, just kept flipping it slowly around in his hands, perhaps trying to find the barcode, and perhaps trying to locate the fractal memory of life's total meaning which he once thought he had grasped during a late '90s LSD binge, but had solemnly lost over the years, the key to humanity's most cosmic question lost forever like a forgotten algebra guide down the back of a packed bookcase. Oh but an ode to this ponytailed forlorn chap, perhaps once a senior lecturer in a previous life; a world-class orator who once was down on his luck but finally managed to bag a gig at a library counter to get back on his feet, and yet by now all the semblance of sentience he could muster was...

  "Ch-ch-ch-chucklevision-ch-chucklevision-ch-ch-chucklevision-do-do-do,-do-do-do-do-do..."

  ...merely muttering the classic theme song under his breath, almost like he was still under one of the worst cases of stage hypnotism since Paul McKenna made Peader act like a sheep that one time in Southend. (How he ended up being arrested for blackface again Dotty still couldn't work out).

  "...Due back in free weeks, goddit?"

  "Three weeks, you mean?"

  "Yes-suh! Gosh."

  Tilda was losing patience. "Well, proper pronunciation is important, dear. Anyway, could I please have the key to the lav, Stephen, as I really need a tinkle, darling."

  "Customers only!"

  "Okay, great."

  "Nooo, I mean staff only!!"

  "Oh. Um... could you not make an exception this once?" she said, running a finger down her crotch, partially in an attempt to seduce him, and partially in preparation to plug a fountain which could erupt at any moment.

  "Hmm..." he scooped the keys out of his front shirt pocket and spun them around his finger, thinking. "...I will have to go and ask Ms fingy. Wait there."

  He put the keys on the counter and went to find the head librarian. Naturally, Tilda just swiped the fuckers and ran over to the bogs.

  She was halfway through turning the key in the lock when she noticed a shoelace sticking out between the hinges of the closet beside her. "That's odd," she muttered to herself. On closer inspection, the middle of the lace was dried red, and so were parts of the old white doors at the side. She put her eye through the hinge to get a better look at the contents within - "holy snuffballs!"

  She sucked her leaky pee back up into her pink venus and ran around trying to find Dotty. Stephen was busy getting admonished by the head librarian for his latest transgression, (probably slobbering all over the computer keyboard again), and so when she spotted Dorothy reading a copy of "A Hat In My Cat: Surreal Tales From Real Frontline Emergency Vets," she dragged her over from the Erotica section and placed her in front of the closet door.

  "What the 'eck are you doing, Tilda coontin' Maffews?! I was enjoying that one, and I couldn't wait to find out how they were gonna get that Taiwanese flag out of the Peregrine Falcon!"

  "Shut it, Dorothy! Look, if what's in there is what I think is in there, I want a bloody witness!!"

  "Alright, keep ya kecks on."

  The Hitnan twisted the key around and groaned to give it some welly in order to dislodge the door, which seemed to be jammed with bits of clothing and congealed remnants of PVA glue. "Bloody hell, 'ere, you grab the top and pull on three, ready...1, 2, 3!"

  Dotty and Tilda pulled the closet open and out fell the crumpled-up bodies of the bicycle louts plus the Saturday boy, all three dead and cold and strangely sticky.

  They jumped back with a gasp and looked at each other in shock - but before they could form a word their skulls were smacked together from behind and they fell to the floor unconscious, flopping over the teenage carcasses like the most fucked up game of bundles in history.

  The head librarian sighed and prodded the sleepy women with her foot, whilst whipping off her grey wig to reveal luscious long locks of cappuccino brown. "Damn it," said The Wife of Michael Fish. "You weren't supposed to see that."

  Chapter 21

  She awoke in darkness tied to a chair. A faint whiff of salty-sewage the only smell and snoring was the only sound.

  "Oh, this is not good. Dorothy. Psst, Dorothy?!"

  The Hitnan was fast asleep. Tilda's voice seemed to echo a little, implying they were in a wide space. She could just make out a roof high above, yet it was bitterly chilly enough to assume they may be in some type of partially outdoorsy place. (Or maybe someone had just left a giant window open.)

  Tilda couldn't move her limbs, and the rope around her wrists and ankles gave little slack. Suddenly, Dotty coughed her way back into consciousness after choking on a daddy-long-legs, bringing a whole new meaning to the old woman who swallowed a fly.

  *cough cough* - "Bloody 'ell, I just had the weirdest dream! I was a giant in the clouds sucking off an Angel. His wings were flapping all in my mouth... I gotta stop smoking before bed! Hold up... I'm not 'orizontal - and I'm not snugly tucked in in me silky sheets! Where am I??"

  "Do you hear yourself, Dorothy?"

  "Who said that?! Why I can't I see you? Oh gawd, I've gone blind! Oh Lord almighty, I always knew this day would come - there's so many devils in the world you've taken me sight to spare me from the torment! Bless you, Lord! Cor me head's proper frobbing though, ya could'a done somefing about that whilst you were tinkering wiv me senses."

  "Have
you got brain damage, Dorothy?"

  "Tilda?!? Oh no. Oh no, I'm dead aren't I! If I'm dead, and you're here, then that means I must be... I'm in the bad place!!"

  "You sure are."

  "Oh Lord! Why hast thou forsaken me! Why hast thou cast me to eternal damnation to spend a roasty eternity with this Babylon whooore?!”

  "Thou? Hast? You're from Peckham, woman! Gosh, you really are concussed! Snap out of it, Dorothy, we're in real trouble here!"

  Suddenly, Tilda heard a huge splash of water as Dotty yelped in shock and then went quiet for a second.

  "Ohh... The Lord has baptised me! Sodden me in his holy juices - I am REBORN!"

  "Is that why you smell like your mother's cu -"

  Tilda was then "baptized" too; an entire bucket of ice-cold water dumped all over her freezing body.

  "Christ alive!! Well, at least that's covered up my pissy-pants."

  "Oi - never take the Lord's name in vain, wench!"

  "Oh, give it a rest, you old bat. I've had just about enough of this and if I'm gonna die, I want it to be without some Bible-bashing phoney giving a poxy sermon!"

  "Phoney?! How very dare you! Stop despairing. I dunno where we are, but trust that the Lord is wiv us."

  "I can't believe it's taken a knock to the head for you to actually become a proper Catholic."

  "I've always been a proper Cafolic!"

  "Well, your diary videos for one are hardly orthodox."

  "She's me alter ego: Dotty the Liberal Luvvie. You gotta get in the minds of these demons to truly understand and recognise 'em."

  "You know, I've never once seen you go to Church."

  "Ya dont need to physically go to them places. A Church is just a holy place, and your mind can be a holy place if you pray properly and keep pure thoughts. Anywhere the spirit of the Lord fills you is a Holy Place, and the Lord is always with me."

  "Even Ikea?"

  "Even Ikea."

  "Well, I've heard a lot of women are filled in Ikea, to be fair."

  "Well, you don't have to tell me that. Hey, wait a minute stop mocking me!"