mirror of https://github.com/nealey/Horrors2
134 lines
4.5 KiB
TeX
134 lines
4.5 KiB
TeX
\chapauth{King Plum the Nth}
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\chapter{Flow My Tears, the PI Said.}
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The kids from the neighborhood pooled their money to hire me. All
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the kids on that street in the Bronx, in New York. One slow day I
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was getting ready to leave the office a bit early when a kid pushed
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open the door with my name, Luke Bavarious, and my job, private
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detective, painted in neat black letters on the gray pebbled
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glass.
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``Mr.\ Bavarious?'' he said.
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``That's what it says on the door, kid.'' He looked
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like he was about 12.
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``My friends and I need to hire a private detective to find
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Mikey.'' He walked across the room trying to look brave,
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shoved a hand in his jeans pocket, pulled out a wad of crumpled
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\$5's and \$10's, and set them on my desk.
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I eyed the dough suspiciously. It looked sticky and damp. I
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can't remember ever not wanting to touch money before. I
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reached out gently and poked at it. Maybe \$45 bucks. Maybe less. It
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wasn't enough to pay for the time it'd take me to take
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a piss all over their sorry case. Whatever it was.
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``Your mother know you're here, kid?''
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``Mister, Mikey's been missing, and all our parents and
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the cops say he ran away, but we know he got taken.''
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``Taken by what, kid?''
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``Taken by a nameless horror, sir.''
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I looked at the dough again. ``I charge a hundred and fifty an
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hour, kid. In this traffic it'd cost ya another two fifty
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five just to get me to set foot in the Bronx.'' The kid looked
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like he was going to cry. I swore under my breath, stood, and
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grabbed the cash from my desk. Shoving it into my pocket I said,
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``Never mind. I'll bill this Mikey's folks for the
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difference if I find him alive.'' The kid started sobbing
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then. Really hard. While he got it out of his system, I opened my
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desk drawer, pulled out my trusty Beretta and checked the
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magazine.
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Once I got to the Bronx it didn't take me long to find out
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what had happened. Sometimes my job calls on me to fight monsters
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of a supernatural nature. Sometimes I find myself buried neck deep
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in the blackest culture, the world of the gothic and occult. But
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sometimes the monsters are more horrible than monsters because
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sometimes the monsters are men. And this monster was a man. He was
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a homeless pedophile. Mikey wasn't his first but, by god, he
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was going to be the last. I pulled my revolver and pointed it at
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him,
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``This is the end of the line, hobo.''
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``You won't kill me, Bavarious! I used to be a cop. Like
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your father. It's against the law to kill me no matter how
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many kids I raped and killed.''
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He had me. I knew, and he know, and my father --- god rest him
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--- had known, no matter how many kids you rape and kill it
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only warrants murder in certain states and then only after a
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lengthy judiciary process. But, looking at poor Mikey's
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broken, rotten corpse, I just wasn't sure if any of that
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really mattered.
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The sick hobo followed my gaze to the body of his most recent
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victim.
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``Oh, him? Don't worry about him. He liked
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it.''
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And that's when I snapped. Everything became crystal clear. I
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wasn't sure what was right or wrong anymore but there was one
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thing I knew for damn sure. Mikey didn't like it.
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I pulled my trigger. My Beretta belched hot lead. The shell hitting
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the warehouse floor made a sound like a polite cough afterward. A
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ragged, bloody hole exploded in the monster's gut. He
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stopped, stared at his gory wound and began to vomit. Vomit flowed
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from his mouth and, after a second, shot from the bullet wound in
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his stomach too. I pulled the trigger again and again, each time it
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was less for anger and more for mercy. I perforated his neck. He
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kept vomiting. The vomit flowed from his mouth and gut and the hole
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in his neck. I put a hole in his head --- right between the
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eyes --- his eyes crossed looking up trying to see his death
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wound. His body heaved again and again, and vomit poured from his
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forehead too. Torrents of blood and bile and breakfast pouring from
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four holes on his body, three of them man made.
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Finally, I could take it no more, my stomach surrendered and I
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vomited. As I vomited, my eyes slipped back to the body of the
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monster's latest victim and I wept and my tears commingled
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with the vomit. There we stood, the two of us, vomiting. The psudo
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mythical hero and the psudo mythical monster over the poor broken
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body that had so recently vomited a child's soul into the
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afterlife. In a way, we were brothers, in vomit. He fell to his
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knees. He died. And, although I stopped vomiting, eventually, I
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could not stop sobbing. I cried so hard the flow of my tears washed
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the vomit away.
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\illustration{Part of Everything}{Bullet Barf}{art/Part_of_Everything-Bullet_Barf.png}
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