[Sorrow] 1200 block of North Larabee Street
Imogen has been here before. It's the heart of another ethnic enclave, long dead now. Another casualty of white flight and the changing urban economy, urban renewal and decades of neglect. This is a block of modest brickfront buildings, once the commercial heart of the neighborhood, now this quiet backwater. Most of the storefronts are shuttered or shattered, papered over or broken into. The living quarters abovestairs have been turned into low rent Section 8 apartments - those, at least, that are habitable. Some fair number of the buildings have been simply abandoned by their owners, with no wish to pay taxes on property that returned nothing to their pockets, whose value - as the neighborhood died and the city changed - became a liability.
There is a bodega on the corner, selling cigarettes, cheap wine, cheaper beer, and cheapest: dollar-a-bottle mouthwash. The check-cashing/payday loan place on the opposite corner is surrounded by forbidding iron bars and closed down following some crime in the past couple of weeks. Until the owners can get someone in to replace the "bulletproof" glass, to paint over the blood.
Half-way down the block, though: Egglan's Butchery, Est. 1915, etched into the stone lintel over the front picture windows.
Some weeks later, the place is still open. Closed at this hour, but the building shows all the signs of thriving life. Since Imogen was last here, the hand-written REOPENED sign has been replaced by a red and white neon OPEN sign, shut off now. except for a handful of lights, the storefront is dark. The week's specials including HOMEMADE SAUSAGE and STRIP STEAK!! CHEAP!!! CHICKEN CUTLETS!!! PRE-BREADED!! GREAT FOR THE KIDS!!
Underneath, YES. WE TAKE FOODSTAMPS. announces another sign.
The street is quiet. The dealers have been chased off the corner for the last few weeks by the ongoing traffic of police and workmen in and out of the check cashing store. A pair sit now, on the stoop outside the bodega, but otherwise on this hot and humid night, there's no one out.
As before, there's no light seeping out from the living quarters above the boucherie, just a certain flatness that reminds Imogen of blackhout curtains. In the last few weeks, her contact has purchased different cuts of meat at different hours, different times, on different days. The steaks seemed to be steaks. The sausage, though. And the chicken cutlets -
Iron bars are pulled down over the front door after closing. The side entrance and the service entrance remainas as before. And the dumpster out back, where first she found her samples. There is that, too.
[Slaughter] She is alone, her car parked across the street in a patch of darkness, between two burnt out streetlamps. Innocuous and unimposing, it merely sits there, as Imogen, within merely sits there, watching the building. It is not the first time she's done this.
Tonight, it is slightly different. At some undefined moment, she opens her car door and gets out.
She is not quite as innocuous and unimposing as her car. She pays lipservice to the attempt, though, dull clothing, her hair pulled back simply. Her shoes are flat and brown, her jacket corduroy and dun, though tailored to her slight frame. Her jeans are not tailored, the cuffs rolled up to match her height, yet still long enough for her to fray the backs with the heels of her feet.
She is quiet as she crosses the street, and to the side entrance. She pauses there, still and quiet and listens.
[Sorrow] The side entrance is a wooden door, set down a bit from the level of the building. Maybe - Imogen might guess - the first landin leading to the basement. Once it might have had window glass set into the panels, but the glass has long since been replaced by a creative combination of plywood and metal panels riveted to the hollow-core door. The doorknob is rusted, and there's a small doorbell set into the wooden frame into which the door itself is set.
She hears the rush of traffic first, distant, ever present. This listens more closely. From somewhere within and under - the short, sharp sound of someone exhaling. One of those pained breaths she associated with effort, reaching. With pushing herself in the gym, or struggling for something just out of reach. That's under, lower somehow, and there is, sometimes, this faint and desperate edge to it, an animal keening more clear than anything else. And: deeper inside, floorboards shift underneath the weight of something. Maybe the clatter of metal against metal. The slick, sparking sound of a blade being sharpened.
And someone, whistling - just off key - fly me to the moon, let me sing among the starts. After a moment, the subtle, noisy crunch of a needle over the grooves of a record, amplified through scratchy antique speakers, and then Nat King Cole's velvet voice drowns out whatever she had heard from below.
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby kiss me
Fill my heart with song
Let me sing for ever more....
[Slaughter] She rings the doorbell.
[Sorrow] The music stops.
- with a long, jagged scratch of the needle over the surface of the record. Then, through the door - which is thin compared to the stout brick walls - the sound muffled voices from somewhere above. The final say is had by the lower of the two voices, a vicious, disapproving sort of grunt. A moment later, the needle, the record, again.
This time, though, there's a skip.
And a repeat.
And a skip.
And a repeat.
Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-
Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-
and on, and on, and on. Someone's turned the volume up. It almost drowns out the sound of footsteps coming down three steps from the first level to the landing on creaky basement stairs.
The door opens, a smidge. Imogen can hear the clatter of the chain lock, see its glint against the two-inch opening, somewhere near eye level. Then, into that wedged opening, the sliver of a face, a woman's face - dull blue eyes and crisp, strawlike blond hair, the uniform color of a cheap dye job. Those eyes glitter with a dull belligerence.
"The hell do you want?" she says, first, baleful.
[Slaughter] She has some time before the door opens. Time enough to pocket the camera she had intended to use; to undo the holster of her gun. The door opens an inch, two inches, and a baleful gaze glares out. Imogen strains to hear any sound through the music, inhales a breath to catch any smell of coppery blood.
"Sorry t'trouble you," she says, offering a smile. "I was wondering if I could use yer phone. I've had a bit o' car trouble."
Her accent may be embellished, ever so slightly; surveys say Americans find the British accent rather pleasing. She doubts it would help in this case, but all things considered: likely won't hurt.
[Slaughter] (perception+alertness! HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] There's a moment of hesitation on the woman's dull face. Her mouth is hanging just open. She has a piece of flesh-colored gristle stuck between the incisor and canine. After that moment of confusion - suspicion and confusion at war in her watery eyes, she leans back into the faint light beyond. Something heavy is moving inside the building, closer. Imogen catches the distinct scent of blood, sharply copper in the air, notes the rust-colored crust beneath the woman's fingernails, but cannot hear anything over the stutterstep of Nat King Cole's voice.
Let me see what -
There's a rumble.
"Says her car broked down, she does. Wants ta use the phone," the woman says, her head tilted up as if she were speaking to someone up the short flight of two or three stairs leading to the backrooms of the store proper.
There's another rumble, some deep voice underneath Nat King Cole's melting tenor. Then, the woman looks back to Imogen again, her eyes slitting with shrewdness. This weasel fact of it, both dull and sly. "You alone?" she asks Imogen, not yet opening the door wider. " - or you got peoples wid ya?"
[Slaughter] The question props Imogen's flagging sense of survival up. It is the slit eyes, the shrewdness. It is the very nature of the question. Now would be the point of decision. The point where she might step back, as she did the last time and turn away.
"I'm alone," she answers.
[Sorrow] The door closes.
It is shut directly in Imogen's face. There's a wuff of air that his her face and puffs out her hair, so fast does the woman on the other side of the door close it. The walkway between the buildings is narrow and dark. The scent rotting garbage overtakes the scent of rotting blood with the door closed, now, with the interior shut fast. She could still leave. Turn and run, dart out onto the street proper, angle toward the bodega and those kids on the stoop.
Hit some panic button on her phone.
Easy.
---
Then, beyond the door, the slick sound of someone undoing the chainlock. The door is closed for a handful of seconds, a half-dozen heartbeats before it opens again, wider this time. The slack-jawed, dull-faced dyed blond woman opens the door, pulls it back for Imogen to walk in. She has something stuffed into her lower lip, which reminds Imogen of the bulge of chewing tobacco. "'m Jo-Ellen. C'mon in." she greets Imogen, gesturing up the stairs with her chin. And eyeing her up and down. "My sons say they might be able ta see ta yer car, you tell 'em what kind 'n where ya done broken down."
Beyond Jo-Ellen, the basement looms unrelentingly dark. There's light from upstairs, though, spinning down handful of stairs. The suggestion of an old kitchen like area beyond. Linoleum and formica, wooden cabinets panted white, aged to Ivory.
A shadow against the wall.
[Slaughter] I'm Jo-Ellen.
"Mary." She lies without a beat. It's a familiar tune, and even, a familiar moniker.
She eyes the stairs briefly.
Imogen had time to leave, dart out out on the street proper. Time enough to dial a saved number in her phone and keep the line open in her pocket. Kora's phone has rung, wherever she is, and hopefully, it's been answered.
"I don't want to trouble you," Imogen says mildly. "I just want to call my husband and let him know where he can come pick me up, if you don't mind. Is it alright if I ask 'im t'pick me up at Egglan's Butchery on North Larabee? This is - what? 1230, 1232?"
[Sorrow] "Ain't got one of them cell phones, has you Mary. Mary. Mary, I like that name." The woman replies, stepping back, careful of the darkness behind her, falling into this rhythm of speech that Imogen has heard before. Some people just tal. Some people in her experience talk alot. This secretary or that victim's father or the former assistant DA. "Was gonna name me a girl Mary if I ever done had one. All I done had was sons, though. You c'mon on. S'1232 Larabee an' you get aholt of him you kin tell him we got the best country sausage you ever done ate in all yer life. Some people thank you kin git that kinda quality from tha market, but it ain't true. Ya need fresh meat an' good hands ta tenderize it." Jo-Ellen is looking up the steps.
The shadow against the wall shifts. It looks misshapen, inhuman though that could be a trick of the light. The position of the lights in the kitchen area - or some intervening structure, bulbous, broader than a human head An industrial mixer or -
Upstairs, the record changes. From Nat King Cole to Jimmy Wakely. The latter's voice croons long and lonely the way a lone wolf howls.
Mooooooon over Montana - as the needles sinks into th first crackling groove.
"Still, you c'mon in. Call yer husband, but in tha meanwhile you tell me what car you done got, 'n I'll send one of my boys out. It won't be no nevermind."
Half of Jo-Ellen's body is hidden behind the door. Her left shoulder and arm. She holds the door open with her right hand on the door frame, glancing from Imogen up the stairs, and back again.
"They like gettin' their hands dirty."
[Slaughter] Foolish, foolish - her mental tirade remains just that. Mental. "1232," she repeats, "No, I've not got a mobile phone," her gaze flicks toward the misshapen shadow. "I understand they gi' yeh brain cancer."
Her gaze flicks downward to Jo-Ellen, and she steps in, allowing her to close the door behind her.
of all the fool-hardy...
As she moves she shifts the angle of her body, half obscuring the lift of her hand to the small of her back.
[Sorrow] "I done heard that too!" the woman says, this sort of recognition sparking in her eyes, as if they were sisters. AS if they were more than sisters: as if they were tribe, fellow-travelers. "Told Sonny and said, Ma, that's horseshit. I said, it's them cell phones. And them music boxes everone carries 'round with 'm, what ruins tha meat."
The door swings closed behind her, with an assist from Jo-Ellen, who is pushing it forward. Now, Imogen sees that Jo Ellen holds a bloodied meat cleaver behind the door in her left hand. If Imogen's eyes touch on the weapon, Jo Ellen smiles around her mouthful of chewing tobacco. Or: whatever her has there, pushing out her lower lip., and says, "Cain't never be too careful, Mary Mary." - as she lifts up the meat cleaver to hang it from one of the hooks set into the wood framing visible between old plaster panels on the landing. "S'what I always say.
"Let me git them locks, now." Mary says, reaching around Imogen toward the door as she yells, "SONNY. YOU WANT HER TO USE THA PHONE UP THERE OR IN THE BASEMENT."
- from upstairs, underneath Jimmy Wakely's croon - rumbling back, " - you find out about her car, Ma? Like we done SAID?"
[Slaughter] A pause.
"It's an '87 Dodge Lancer," she says. Another lie. "About four blocks south."
[Sorrow] "IT'S AN NINETEEN AND EIGHTY-SEVEN DO - "
Jo-Ellen begins to shout, up the stairs toward the kitchen area. The shadow against the wall distens, grows wider and more grotesque, then resolves itself into the shape of a human man, maybe six feet tall, wearing a heavy rubber apron that reminds Imogen of the lead-aprons technicians wear in the presence of an X-ray machine, dark and industrial, with rubber boots and blood-stained leather gloves over his hands, which are fists, now, planted on his hips.
"I heard, Ma," Sonny says, with a snigglng snort at the end. Because his face isn't human. Because his head isn't human, and the distended shadow against the wall was not the shadow of some industrial mixer. Because Sonny is a man with the head of a pig, or a pig with the body of the man, a handful of fissures stitched together on his face - above the brow, over the snout, across and blow the lower lip - where the his pallid flesh, quivering with fat, has superated and been stitched back together again.
"You did good. Might as well send her up."
[Sorrow] Transcript!
to Sorrow
[Slaughter] Her gun had already been in her hand, half out of its holster, the cant of her body turned away from the woman, as if she were about to ascend the stairs. It occurs to her briefly to keep up the facade. To scream and crumple to the ground.
But if she is on her knees, she is in a position of powerlessness.
But if she goes to her knees, someone might come closer to drag her up, assuring the shot.
They're close enough now.
These thoughts take but an instant. Her gun is coming free of her holster, of her coat and lifting up to take aim, her thumb removing the safety, her finger finding the trigger like it had never left it.
A brief thought, before the squeeze of the trigger, the violent, deafening report. She hoped to - well, no-one - that Kora had picked up her phone, or the Skald would have a rather upsetting voicemail to hear the next time she checked them.
Imogen has been here before. It's the heart of another ethnic enclave, long dead now. Another casualty of white flight and the changing urban economy, urban renewal and decades of neglect. This is a block of modest brickfront buildings, once the commercial heart of the neighborhood, now this quiet backwater. Most of the storefronts are shuttered or shattered, papered over or broken into. The living quarters abovestairs have been turned into low rent Section 8 apartments - those, at least, that are habitable. Some fair number of the buildings have been simply abandoned by their owners, with no wish to pay taxes on property that returned nothing to their pockets, whose value - as the neighborhood died and the city changed - became a liability.
There is a bodega on the corner, selling cigarettes, cheap wine, cheaper beer, and cheapest: dollar-a-bottle mouthwash. The check-cashing/payday loan place on the opposite corner is surrounded by forbidding iron bars and closed down following some crime in the past couple of weeks. Until the owners can get someone in to replace the "bulletproof" glass, to paint over the blood.
Half-way down the block, though: Egglan's Butchery, Est. 1915, etched into the stone lintel over the front picture windows.
Some weeks later, the place is still open. Closed at this hour, but the building shows all the signs of thriving life. Since Imogen was last here, the hand-written REOPENED sign has been replaced by a red and white neon OPEN sign, shut off now. except for a handful of lights, the storefront is dark. The week's specials including HOMEMADE SAUSAGE and STRIP STEAK!! CHEAP!!! CHICKEN CUTLETS!!! PRE-BREADED!! GREAT FOR THE KIDS!!
Underneath, YES. WE TAKE FOODSTAMPS. announces another sign.
The street is quiet. The dealers have been chased off the corner for the last few weeks by the ongoing traffic of police and workmen in and out of the check cashing store. A pair sit now, on the stoop outside the bodega, but otherwise on this hot and humid night, there's no one out.
As before, there's no light seeping out from the living quarters above the boucherie, just a certain flatness that reminds Imogen of blackhout curtains. In the last few weeks, her contact has purchased different cuts of meat at different hours, different times, on different days. The steaks seemed to be steaks. The sausage, though. And the chicken cutlets -
Iron bars are pulled down over the front door after closing. The side entrance and the service entrance remainas as before. And the dumpster out back, where first she found her samples. There is that, too.
[Slaughter] She is alone, her car parked across the street in a patch of darkness, between two burnt out streetlamps. Innocuous and unimposing, it merely sits there, as Imogen, within merely sits there, watching the building. It is not the first time she's done this.
Tonight, it is slightly different. At some undefined moment, she opens her car door and gets out.
She is not quite as innocuous and unimposing as her car. She pays lipservice to the attempt, though, dull clothing, her hair pulled back simply. Her shoes are flat and brown, her jacket corduroy and dun, though tailored to her slight frame. Her jeans are not tailored, the cuffs rolled up to match her height, yet still long enough for her to fray the backs with the heels of her feet.
She is quiet as she crosses the street, and to the side entrance. She pauses there, still and quiet and listens.
[Sorrow] The side entrance is a wooden door, set down a bit from the level of the building. Maybe - Imogen might guess - the first landin leading to the basement. Once it might have had window glass set into the panels, but the glass has long since been replaced by a creative combination of plywood and metal panels riveted to the hollow-core door. The doorknob is rusted, and there's a small doorbell set into the wooden frame into which the door itself is set.
She hears the rush of traffic first, distant, ever present. This listens more closely. From somewhere within and under - the short, sharp sound of someone exhaling. One of those pained breaths she associated with effort, reaching. With pushing herself in the gym, or struggling for something just out of reach. That's under, lower somehow, and there is, sometimes, this faint and desperate edge to it, an animal keening more clear than anything else. And: deeper inside, floorboards shift underneath the weight of something. Maybe the clatter of metal against metal. The slick, sparking sound of a blade being sharpened.
And someone, whistling - just off key - fly me to the moon, let me sing among the starts. After a moment, the subtle, noisy crunch of a needle over the grooves of a record, amplified through scratchy antique speakers, and then Nat King Cole's velvet voice drowns out whatever she had heard from below.
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby kiss me
Fill my heart with song
Let me sing for ever more....
[Slaughter] She rings the doorbell.
[Sorrow] The music stops.
- with a long, jagged scratch of the needle over the surface of the record. Then, through the door - which is thin compared to the stout brick walls - the sound muffled voices from somewhere above. The final say is had by the lower of the two voices, a vicious, disapproving sort of grunt. A moment later, the needle, the record, again.
This time, though, there's a skip.
And a repeat.
And a skip.
And a repeat.
Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-
Let me see what spring is like
On Jup-
and on, and on, and on. Someone's turned the volume up. It almost drowns out the sound of footsteps coming down three steps from the first level to the landing on creaky basement stairs.
The door opens, a smidge. Imogen can hear the clatter of the chain lock, see its glint against the two-inch opening, somewhere near eye level. Then, into that wedged opening, the sliver of a face, a woman's face - dull blue eyes and crisp, strawlike blond hair, the uniform color of a cheap dye job. Those eyes glitter with a dull belligerence.
"The hell do you want?" she says, first, baleful.
[Slaughter] She has some time before the door opens. Time enough to pocket the camera she had intended to use; to undo the holster of her gun. The door opens an inch, two inches, and a baleful gaze glares out. Imogen strains to hear any sound through the music, inhales a breath to catch any smell of coppery blood.
"Sorry t'trouble you," she says, offering a smile. "I was wondering if I could use yer phone. I've had a bit o' car trouble."
Her accent may be embellished, ever so slightly; surveys say Americans find the British accent rather pleasing. She doubts it would help in this case, but all things considered: likely won't hurt.
[Slaughter] (perception+alertness! HAIL KAHSEENO!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Sorrow] There's a moment of hesitation on the woman's dull face. Her mouth is hanging just open. She has a piece of flesh-colored gristle stuck between the incisor and canine. After that moment of confusion - suspicion and confusion at war in her watery eyes, she leans back into the faint light beyond. Something heavy is moving inside the building, closer. Imogen catches the distinct scent of blood, sharply copper in the air, notes the rust-colored crust beneath the woman's fingernails, but cannot hear anything over the stutterstep of Nat King Cole's voice.
Let me see what -
There's a rumble.
"Says her car broked down, she does. Wants ta use the phone," the woman says, her head tilted up as if she were speaking to someone up the short flight of two or three stairs leading to the backrooms of the store proper.
There's another rumble, some deep voice underneath Nat King Cole's melting tenor. Then, the woman looks back to Imogen again, her eyes slitting with shrewdness. This weasel fact of it, both dull and sly. "You alone?" she asks Imogen, not yet opening the door wider. " - or you got peoples wid ya?"
[Slaughter] The question props Imogen's flagging sense of survival up. It is the slit eyes, the shrewdness. It is the very nature of the question. Now would be the point of decision. The point where she might step back, as she did the last time and turn away.
"I'm alone," she answers.
[Sorrow] The door closes.
It is shut directly in Imogen's face. There's a wuff of air that his her face and puffs out her hair, so fast does the woman on the other side of the door close it. The walkway between the buildings is narrow and dark. The scent rotting garbage overtakes the scent of rotting blood with the door closed, now, with the interior shut fast. She could still leave. Turn and run, dart out onto the street proper, angle toward the bodega and those kids on the stoop.
Hit some panic button on her phone.
Easy.
---
Then, beyond the door, the slick sound of someone undoing the chainlock. The door is closed for a handful of seconds, a half-dozen heartbeats before it opens again, wider this time. The slack-jawed, dull-faced dyed blond woman opens the door, pulls it back for Imogen to walk in. She has something stuffed into her lower lip, which reminds Imogen of the bulge of chewing tobacco. "'m Jo-Ellen. C'mon in." she greets Imogen, gesturing up the stairs with her chin. And eyeing her up and down. "My sons say they might be able ta see ta yer car, you tell 'em what kind 'n where ya done broken down."
Beyond Jo-Ellen, the basement looms unrelentingly dark. There's light from upstairs, though, spinning down handful of stairs. The suggestion of an old kitchen like area beyond. Linoleum and formica, wooden cabinets panted white, aged to Ivory.
A shadow against the wall.
[Slaughter] I'm Jo-Ellen.
"Mary." She lies without a beat. It's a familiar tune, and even, a familiar moniker.
She eyes the stairs briefly.
Imogen had time to leave, dart out out on the street proper. Time enough to dial a saved number in her phone and keep the line open in her pocket. Kora's phone has rung, wherever she is, and hopefully, it's been answered.
"I don't want to trouble you," Imogen says mildly. "I just want to call my husband and let him know where he can come pick me up, if you don't mind. Is it alright if I ask 'im t'pick me up at Egglan's Butchery on North Larabee? This is - what? 1230, 1232?"
[Sorrow] "Ain't got one of them cell phones, has you Mary. Mary. Mary, I like that name." The woman replies, stepping back, careful of the darkness behind her, falling into this rhythm of speech that Imogen has heard before. Some people just tal. Some people in her experience talk alot. This secretary or that victim's father or the former assistant DA. "Was gonna name me a girl Mary if I ever done had one. All I done had was sons, though. You c'mon on. S'1232 Larabee an' you get aholt of him you kin tell him we got the best country sausage you ever done ate in all yer life. Some people thank you kin git that kinda quality from tha market, but it ain't true. Ya need fresh meat an' good hands ta tenderize it." Jo-Ellen is looking up the steps.
The shadow against the wall shifts. It looks misshapen, inhuman though that could be a trick of the light. The position of the lights in the kitchen area - or some intervening structure, bulbous, broader than a human head An industrial mixer or -
Upstairs, the record changes. From Nat King Cole to Jimmy Wakely. The latter's voice croons long and lonely the way a lone wolf howls.
Mooooooon over Montana - as the needles sinks into th first crackling groove.
"Still, you c'mon in. Call yer husband, but in tha meanwhile you tell me what car you done got, 'n I'll send one of my boys out. It won't be no nevermind."
Half of Jo-Ellen's body is hidden behind the door. Her left shoulder and arm. She holds the door open with her right hand on the door frame, glancing from Imogen up the stairs, and back again.
"They like gettin' their hands dirty."
[Slaughter] Foolish, foolish - her mental tirade remains just that. Mental. "1232," she repeats, "No, I've not got a mobile phone," her gaze flicks toward the misshapen shadow. "I understand they gi' yeh brain cancer."
Her gaze flicks downward to Jo-Ellen, and she steps in, allowing her to close the door behind her.
of all the fool-hardy...
As she moves she shifts the angle of her body, half obscuring the lift of her hand to the small of her back.
[Sorrow] "I done heard that too!" the woman says, this sort of recognition sparking in her eyes, as if they were sisters. AS if they were more than sisters: as if they were tribe, fellow-travelers. "Told Sonny and said, Ma, that's horseshit. I said, it's them cell phones. And them music boxes everone carries 'round with 'm, what ruins tha meat."
The door swings closed behind her, with an assist from Jo-Ellen, who is pushing it forward. Now, Imogen sees that Jo Ellen holds a bloodied meat cleaver behind the door in her left hand. If Imogen's eyes touch on the weapon, Jo Ellen smiles around her mouthful of chewing tobacco. Or: whatever her has there, pushing out her lower lip., and says, "Cain't never be too careful, Mary Mary." - as she lifts up the meat cleaver to hang it from one of the hooks set into the wood framing visible between old plaster panels on the landing. "S'what I always say.
"Let me git them locks, now." Mary says, reaching around Imogen toward the door as she yells, "SONNY. YOU WANT HER TO USE THA PHONE UP THERE OR IN THE BASEMENT."
- from upstairs, underneath Jimmy Wakely's croon - rumbling back, " - you find out about her car, Ma? Like we done SAID?"
[Slaughter] A pause.
"It's an '87 Dodge Lancer," she says. Another lie. "About four blocks south."
[Sorrow] "IT'S AN NINETEEN AND EIGHTY-SEVEN DO - "
Jo-Ellen begins to shout, up the stairs toward the kitchen area. The shadow against the wall distens, grows wider and more grotesque, then resolves itself into the shape of a human man, maybe six feet tall, wearing a heavy rubber apron that reminds Imogen of the lead-aprons technicians wear in the presence of an X-ray machine, dark and industrial, with rubber boots and blood-stained leather gloves over his hands, which are fists, now, planted on his hips.
"I heard, Ma," Sonny says, with a snigglng snort at the end. Because his face isn't human. Because his head isn't human, and the distended shadow against the wall was not the shadow of some industrial mixer. Because Sonny is a man with the head of a pig, or a pig with the body of the man, a handful of fissures stitched together on his face - above the brow, over the snout, across and blow the lower lip - where the his pallid flesh, quivering with fat, has superated and been stitched back together again.
"You did good. Might as well send her up."
[Sorrow] Transcript!
to Sorrow
[Slaughter] Her gun had already been in her hand, half out of its holster, the cant of her body turned away from the woman, as if she were about to ascend the stairs. It occurs to her briefly to keep up the facade. To scream and crumple to the ground.
But if she is on her knees, she is in a position of powerlessness.
But if she goes to her knees, someone might come closer to drag her up, assuring the shot.
They're close enough now.
These thoughts take but an instant. Her gun is coming free of her holster, of her coat and lifting up to take aim, her thumb removing the safety, her finger finding the trigger like it had never left it.
A brief thought, before the squeeze of the trigger, the violent, deafening report. She hoped to - well, no-one - that Kora had picked up her phone, or the Skald would have a rather upsetting voicemail to hear the next time she checked them.
Post a Comment