“But what if he insists on seeing it first?”
“Knowing every second counts, that would take balls.”
“He’s still got those,” Greg pointed out.
“What about you, Sammy?” Von asked hopefully. “You got an extra one stashed around here someplace?”
“Oh yeah, sure, just check the candy bowl on the refrigerator. Of course I don’t. I don’t kill guys. What do you think I am, a gay?”
“No, but—” Von paused. “Wait a minute now. Me and Greg’s killed us a few dudes before. You trying to say that makes us rope smokers?”
“Not necessarily—”
“Because Greg’s the one who did all the killing, so he’s the damn queer.”
“Hey, you’re the one who had you a handful of Rochester’s pork sword,” Greg pointed out.
“Shut the hell up, Greg.”
“Yeah, Sammy, he was asking Von to use his teeth and everything!”
“Shut the hell up, Greg!”
“Both of you calm down,” Sammy interjected. “And it’s actually good that you remember these details. You’ll be able to prove beyond a doubt that you’re the ones who did it.”
“Oh right, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of cranks lining up to take the credit for it.”
“Would you just hand someone three million dollars because they claimed to have your most prized possession? If it was me, I’m not sure I’d take the word of a dick thief at face value . . . especially one who’s a closet homo.”
“Hey, I thought we were getting—” Greg began.
Von cut him off with remarkable subtlety. “Shut the hell up, Greg!”
Sammy might have noticed, but a succession of thumping noises overhead mercifully distracted him and grabbed his attention. “I’ll be right back,” he offered and stormed up the staircase.
When he was out of earshot, Von grabbed a handful of Greg’s shirt. “Do you need a written invitation before you’ll use your brain?”
“What?”
“What were you just about to say? That you thought we were getting five million dollars, not three?”
“Well, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. And how much money do you think Sammy’ll want if he finds out?”
“He don’t deserve any of it . . . you and me are the ones doing all the work!”
“Exactly. But a man with Rochester’s money can pay to create a lot of problems for us. Like . . . hell, I don’t know, ninjas and shit.”
Greg gave this possibility a moment of reverent silence.
“So we might need his help after all. And we need his house to arrange the ransom. We don’t want to be seen anywhere near our homes, just in case.”
“But what could Sammy do against ninjas?”
Von considered this and shrugged. “This is Doctor Butcher we’re talking about, Greg. Those invisible bastards could be pissing throwing stars for the rest of their lives, which probably wouldn’t be very long if they try to get between us and that money.”
Greg looked up the stairwell, listening for Sammy. When he didn’t hear any sign that he was returning, he said, “I’ve got a better idea.”
Von was skeptical, to say the least.
“What if we kill Sammy?” Greg whispered, so quietly Von almost didn’t hear him.
“Say . . . that ain’t half-bad,” Von considered. “We get Sammy, we can cut him off and have a replacement dick. Rochester won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“Hey, that didn’t even occur to me,” Greg admitted.
“Then we can have his house at no charge, and we don’t have to share any of the money with him.”
“I didn’t think of that either! That’s even better!”
“Then why the hell did you suggest it in the first place? You must like killing other guys and dominating ‘em. Sammy’s right, you probably are gay.”
“The hell you say! I was thinking with Sammy out of the picture, we’d have Slut Necro Lambda and all those whores downstairs all to ourselves! That’s just as good as five million dollars, you ask me!”
“Slut Necro Lambda,” Von repeated with earnest reverence. “Man, I could certainly use some more of that backdoor action, no doubt about it.”
Greg grinned. “Now who sounds like the damn queer?”
At that moment, they heard more noises overhead and what had to be Sammy’s voice, the words inaudible but apparently forceful.
“Did he move all those twats up to the attic?” Von asked.
“I doubt it. I think I can hear ‘em crying in the basement.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should go find out, don’t you think? He shouldn’t be keeping any secrets from us. We’re supposed to be partners.”
Greg nodded. “You got that right, son. We can’t abide by no traitor. I’ll tell him that when we slash his throat for him.”
Von gestured to follow and began to quietly ascend the stairs.
Horace followed the Nova to a secluded two story home on an unmarked and unpaved road off Connelly Trail. The woods were thicker here, and it looked like the kind of place where toothless bumpkins would command you to squeal like a pig before bending you over and breaking you off. At this point, he was quite confident that the worst that could possibly happen to him had happened to him, and any subsequent cuts, bruises, and ass-poundings would be trivial at best.
When you had to crack the window of your Rabbit because the mephitic fetor of your crispified cock stump was nauseating you virtually to the point of unconsciousness, you didn’t have much further to fall. It triggered a very old memory from his childhood, an evening when his mother had melted a plastic ladle in the dishwasher, creating an overpowering olfactory assault so abominable that he’d had to seek refuse in the basement to keep from puking.
He stopped a hundred yards from the house, his headlights extinguished. He’d go the rest of the way on foot and hopefully get the drop on them. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust, although it still didn’t afford much definition to his environment. Out here was the kind of true darkness of night unknown to the city, away from all the street lights and neon, with even the stars blotted out by the heavy canopy of the trees overhead. The orange glow from the windows ahead was his only guiding light.
Was this even their house? Was his manhood being utilized in some form of ritual satanic abuse? Were they perhaps religious fanatics exacting the vengeance of their god on the “impure” heathens who sought the earthly pleasures of the flesh?
If so, it might be time their little sect learned the doctrine of an eye for an eye . . . and a life for a cock.
They found the Divided Man midway through the ascent. Greg saw him first and stopped cold. His hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it reached out and tugged at Von’s sleeve, never turning his head from the sight. Von was more eager to get upstairs and find out exactly what was so secretive that Sammy couldn’t tell them about it, and almost pulled a “Jump back, boy, you’re botherin’ me,” on him. Greg, however, was insistent, and Von finally peered back around the corner of the room they’d just passed on the way to the attic stairs.
“The hell?” Von asked. In that moment he wouldn’t haven’t been able to say why they had been so determined to get to the attic, or what the hell an attic was in the first place. Greg was still stretching his sleeve to get him to look, but he didn’t notice (neither, for that matter, did Greg).
It was the parents’ bedroom. Von always assumed Sammy’s mom and dad were both dead, especially considering the extent of their son’s homicidal forays into surgical possibilities. The evidence on display didn’t disprove his theory, but initially it appeared like a locked room aficionado’s wet dream. Cast randomly on the carpet were a lady’s undergarments (pock-marked with dried droplets of menstrual blood) and a tube sock with no equal. Beyond those, statuesque against the far wall was the upright body of a man. A network of wires had been run through an eyelet from the ceiling to keep the body in a standing position. The wire work had turned him into a puppet of flesh, bone, and organs. His torso had been cleanly divided from throat to stomach, the corner flaps of the skin held aside by surgical clamps. This strategic sculpting allowed for a view of the man’s entrails, which remained stationary against the demand of gravity due to its slightly slumped position, unmolested by any incisions or perforations. Their arrangement seemed as aesthetically-conscious as the objects in a still-life drawing, a measured integration of reds and yellows.