"Ha! Oh, fuck me we were on fire!—On fire, Mark!—He had actual antiques in the house, you know that? Just-in-case. You never knew—no, you didn't—you never knew who might be monitoring things, never knew if Dirty Harry and the boys might come busting in to check things out, so he had 'em, genuine antiques all over the place—a lot of them were chests and cabinets that didn't come with keys and you sure as hell didn't want to damage their resale value by messing up the locks—Grendel got himself a key-making machine and even showed Arnold and me how to work it and make keys—what the hell did he worry?—it wasn't like we could get to the important keys, the special keys, no—those were on his very important, very special, terribly personal über-extending keychain that was always hooked onto his belt—only the thing is, there's a scene in the movie where Lesley-Anne Down has to get the impression of a key off of some skeezy-ass fat slug-of-a-slob—not the most attractive man in the world, is what I'm trying to convey—only he's always wearing his keys attached to his coat, so what she does, see—this is terrific—is she gets him alone and make like she's gonna seduce him—just ball his brains out until him and God are touching noses—and she starts taking off some of her clothes, then some of his, then a little more of hers, and pretty soon the guy's so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe—Lesley-Anne Down could make impressions of all his keys twice before he'd take his eyes off her truly spectacular breasts all bouncy-bouncy in the corset getup she's wearing—so Rebecca and me and Arnold and Thomas, we made sure to be on our absolute very best behavior at the next meeting because we had a very special, very important "One Day" list, right—like with Play-Doh on Thomas's and wax paper on Rebecca's—to wrap things in to make 'em easier for me to swallow—easier to get 'em back up, too—and lubricating jelly on mine—put a little of that on the wax paper and whatever's wrapped in it will slide down your gullet easier than a bag of White Castles—that got a smile out of him—my asking for the lube—me and Rebecca had been letting on we were doing the dirty-bunny bop on our downtime—and Arnold, he asked for a small box of cookie cutters because he wanted to bake cookies for the next meeting and when Grendel heard that, well, he just beamed like a proud papa on his kid's first birthday and never once asked about anything—he even said that we deserved everything on our lists because we had been so 'exceptional' lately—that was the word he used, 'exceptional'—and when he came back from town that day—he took Denise with him because Connie retired—when he came back, he brought us everything on our lists and some little extras—first time he'd ever done that—you'd think I'd remember what they were, but I don't, go figure—and then it was like breathing while you were asleep—hell, we probably could've done the whole thing in our sleep, we had it down so tight—we waited until after he'd had enough of his red wine that he was feeling all warm and chatty—then Rebecca, she asked him to watch her do this dance she was working on for the meetings—she thought it might be sexier for the group if she put on a little show for them—and while she's dancing—one of those
sloooooow and nasty stripper dances with lots of teasing and touching—while she's doing this, Arnold is playing waiter, bringing Grendel snacks from the kitchen and always making sure his glass of red wine is full—and Thomas, he's sitting there on the floor beside Grendel just swaying from side to side and humming like he always does—off-key, naturally—did I mention he still had his legs at this point?—oh, yeah, he hadn't 'disappointed' the Big Ugly One yet—anyway—Thomas is humming and Arnold is pouring and Rebecca is dancing and me—I'm standing off to the side keeping an eye on everything because when this starts to happen, it's got to be fast and it's got to be smooth—Plan B is for me to do a Houdini and make myself suddenly vomit and between you and me, I'd rather not do this—but at the exact moment as we'd planned it, Rebecca hikes up her skirt and because she's not wearing underpants—like we'd planned—she gives Grendel a shot of the moneymaker and Arnold pours a little more wine and Thomas, he sways way over and uses this piece of Play-Doh he's been palming to grab a quick impression of both sides of the first key and that's it, one down, four to go, and the next three go just as easy as you please—Thomas can palm the Play-Doh with the best of them—and Grendel's getting pretty toasty but he's not about to pass out—the man never passed out, I don't care how much wine he drank—and I think maybe by this time we'd started getting a little cocky and careless because when Rebecca gives him the NC-17 pink bits this time around, she's a little too close and Grendel makes a grab for her—he almost gets her, too—but he's just far enough away that he misses and loses his balance and almost falls out of the chair—Arnold, he's slopping some wine over the edge of the glass—and Rebecca, she's a little off-balance, too—Thomas, he's got the Play-Doh palmed around the last key, but when Grendel slips forward, Thomas doesn't have enough time to un-palm the key—it pulls out of the Play-Doh and it's got a little bit of the stuff stuck in one of its side grooves—the impression of this one will be for shit, we all know it—but I'm thinking maybe we can make it work, anyway, if Donald Sutherland can do it, we sure as hell can—and Grendel, he's applauding, and Rebecca, she's curtseying, and Arnold, he's daubing up the spilled wine—but Thomas, Thomas is sitting there scared shitless because he can see—right—he can see that little itty-bitty bit of Play-Doh that's on the last key, and I'm thinking, It's all right, kiddo, it's okay, we'll deal with this, we'll manage, just put that last one down the front of your shirt—but he doesn't, he just sits there—I'm getting a tad concerned now, you might well imagine—really truly very deeply concerned—anxious, bothered, troubled, and vexed, even—that song, 'Don't Worry, Be Happy'?—not my favorite tune in the world right now—but still Thomas just sits there like Jabba-the-Lean-To and my concern—my anxiety—is reaching critical proportions now—I'm closing in on downright ruffled—when Rebecca grabs Grendel's arm and pulls him to his feet and says, 'I wanna dance on your face!'—I could've kissed her right then, really I could've—so now she's leading Grendel upstairs to his bedroom to keep him happy—and to keep him from going to Denise's room—he never went to her room the whole time she was there—and as soon as they're up those stairs me and Arnold are on Thomas, getting him to his feet—he's scared, he thinks I'm mad at him—and we get him into the kitchen—I was right, that last impression is mostly for shit but at least we got the others—and we know we gotta work fast because Rebecca can only do so much for so long and eventually Grendel's going to realize it's time to chain us up for the night and listen to his bedtime story—so Arnold and me head down to the sub-basement—there's a blowtorch down there that Grendel thinks I don't know about, right—he used it to cauterize the messier wounds—like when he sliced off Rebecca's breast then made her sauté it and eat it in front of us—oh, the happy days, what memories they leave—anyway, we grab that baby and fire her up and start melting down the cookie cutters—they melted real fast, they were just the right kind—and while we're doing that, Thomas is up in the kitchen using the oven to harden up the impressions—yeah, not the greatest way to make a mold but it works in a pinch—I saw it done once on MacGyver—I miss that show, don't you?—see, we'd had the oven on the whole time—whenever Arnold left the room for more snacks or another bottle, he'd increase the temperature a hundred degrees, that way when things started getting a little warm Grendel would figure it was just from all the dancing and wine, right—so the oven's at, like, 575 degrees and it was going to take fifteen, twenty minutes for all the molds to harden—I know what you're thinking—why not just steal the keys off Grendel when he's sleeping, right?—well the thing there is that those goddamn keys are never off his person, except maybe when he's sleeping or taking a bath—but that's out of the question because he locks his bedroom door at night and isn't exactly unconscious during his bath—sorry, I get a little scattershot when I get excited—where was I?—right, the cutters—now Arnold and me have got all the cutters melted down—this is maybe twenty minutes into a plan that's supposed to take forty, forty-five, tops—and God bless him, here comes Thomas holding the tray filled with the molds—the Play-Doh cooked up well enough—the trick now was to make sure that both the molds and the liquid from the metal cutters cooled enough so that one wouldn't damage the other—I figured about ten minutes—so we use the oven mitts Thomas has grabbed to hold the containers and the tray and I poured everything into the molds—we have just enough—and then it's upstairs and through the kitchen to the back room where the freezer is—we'd already dug a hole in the ice in the bottom—Grendel never checked the freezer unless he had some body parts in there—didn't have any right now, lucky for us—and we bury the molds, then make sure the oven's turned off and the mitts and pans are back in place—Grendel knew the exact spot where every item in that house was supposed to be—and everything's looking good, looking real good—and we're on our way back into the living room to wait for Rebecca and the Big Ugly One to come down so we can all be tucked in—we're all shaky from the adrenaline rush of the last forty minutes, it's been great but it's been rough—it's the first time in years any of us had any hope for anything at all—you have no idea how that felt—raccoon…"