- Polite Fictions

“Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ!”’

The intruder forgot himself as he gaped stupidly at the upturned recliner, the smashed glass, the blood. Slick stumbled as another wave of nausea hit. Focus. Focus. Focus. Pants you’d call slacks, a permanent crease. Sensible shoes. Hands on hips. The face? Unknown. Treat all as though contaminated.

“A fuckin’ fork? A fork. You can’t be for real. A fork? Jesus Christ.”

Slick spat on the floor, swaying from one foot to the other.

“Who the hell kills a dude with a fork?” The man answered his own question. “Your mother. Dammit, I fuckin’ knew he’d come up here after you. Had to break cover but not because I thought you’d stick a fuckin’ fork in his head. Jesus Christ.”

His shoulder was on fire, the metal cool in his hand. The man, still gaping, put one foot into a puddle of fresh vomit and recoiled, diverted. Slick felt an electricity rise through his feet, a rush up through his chest that urged now now now and he wound up, hurling the tin as hard as he could at the man’s head. His tenderized shoulder shrieked. Everything collapsed at once. The dispenser, with a crack. The visitor, with a yeowl. And all that was left of whatever had kept him upright. Done. Done. No more.

“Dickwad!” the man howled, bracing himself on a table with one hand and pressing his other palm to his eye.

Dickwad? The visitor’s apparent menace shrank. Slick backed up until he felt a chair bump the back of his knees and sat down, resigned, his head in his hands.

“I come up here to keep this… this…” the man gestured redundantly to the corner. “…sorry-ass forked fucker from goin’ after all we got and… christ, you hit me in the eye with a fuckin’… what the hell was that?”

The man cursed and rubbed his temple, pacing between his assignment and the dead man in the zoot suit.

“You go chuckin’ shit at me and—” he winced and knuckled the hole of his eye. “Alright. Fine. So you’re an asshole. And you look like fuckin’ ground beef. But if we don’t show up at the station in ten minutes in his place, they’ll know somethin’s up.”

The visitor paused, his eyes narrowed in assessment. What was he looking for? Remorse? Affiliation? Readiness. The man nodded to himself, his mind set. Slick faded into fog, blur, spinning. He felt himself propped up on his feet, pushed towards the door.

“Sorry,” Slick leaned drunkenly as they stepped through the doorway and into the dimly-lit hall. ‘They told me someone’d meet me here but that guy… I couldn’t…”

“Yeah. You’re an asshole. And I’m Doug. And I don’t give a shit about that letter in your pocket.”

“What…”

“Yeah. I know all about it already," the man sniffed. "That girl ‘o yours, she’s been bakin’ more than buns.”

My pants are wet. My pants are wet? Jesus Christ.

“They say she did it for you,” he added, as they broke into blinding light. “Fucked if I know why.”