F is for FETISH
DiBetto’s face darkened at the very
mention of the name. “Whattaya mean you saw Slinky Malone?” he barked.
“Malone’s dead. I saw the body myself!
“Hell,” he snapped, “I made the body myself!”
“Look, boss,” his trigger man pleaded,
“I’m just tellin’ ya what I saw. When Sidecar and me went into the Widow’s Den
to get the dough, we went into the office and found McGinley dead. And the one
what was bolting out of there, looked a hell of a lot like Slinky Malone!”
“Well it wasn’t!” snapped Don
DiBetto. “Slinky Malone is a charbroiled corpse somewhere in the municipal
dump.”
Knuckles Duster, DiBetto’s current
right-hand stooge, took a step back and fidgeted with his tie. When DiBetto got
mad, things got broken. Occasionally the people who worked for him fell into
that category as well.
“So this goomba you thought you
saw,” DiBetto said, trying to return to his usual cool demeanor, “what did you
do when you saw him? Don’t tell me you let him get away after he plugged our
business partner.”
Knuckles swallowed hard.
“Well, it was…it was weird, boss.”
“How ya mean?”
“Well, Sidecar and me, we went into
the office and closed the door. Slin—this guy—he was trying to make like a
jackrabbit out the office window, onto the fire escape. Sidecar goes and grabs
the guy’s leg to drag him back into the office, and this guy pulls a hatpin
from somewhere and jabs it into Sidecar’s hand.”
“Then what?”
“Well, Sidecar lets go and this guy
slips out. I drew my piece to put a plug in the guy, but when I stuck my head
outta the window, he had vanished!”
DiBetto’s brow furrowed as he took
all this in.
* * *
In a shabby rooming house across
town, Slinky Malone sat cross-legged in his room. In front of his pretzeled
legs stood a tallow candle, its wick lit and dancing with flame. Slinky took a
wad of tissues from his pants pocket and unbundled the wad, removing a hatpin
from its folds. The prick of the pin was still slick with blood.
He began chanting a rhythmic string
of strange syllables, waving the needle over the flame as if he were using it
to stir the contents of a witch’s cauldron only he could see. Chanting done, he
turned and reached under his bed, retrieving a small mahogany box. He raised
the lid of the box and lifted a small burlap figure from inside. It was a
fetish doll, bound with a piece of twine that held a random assortment of
objects to it: a feather, a chicken’s foot, a gem stone. Slowly, Slinky positioned
the doll over the flame. He muttered some more arcane phrases, and jabbed the
needle stiffly into the eye of the face childishly drawn on the doll’s head. A
thin smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He withdrew the pin and jabbed
the other eye.
* * *
“There’s no way it was Slinky
Malone,” DiBetto pressed. “Get that through yer thick head right now. When I
last saw Slinky, he was a smoldering briquette. He wasn’t going to be going
nowhere, let alone hopping out of windows.”
“Yeah, boss,” Knuckled acquiesced. “Fine.
I got it, I really do,”
The tension was suddenly broken by
the sound of a car horn blaring from outside.
“Must be Sidecar,” Knuckles said.
“Well what’s he honking the damn
horn for?” DiBetto wailed, irritated. “Go tell him to shut up!”
Knuckles left the office and
hurried outside. Something was wrong. Sidecar was slumped over the wheel and the
car horn continued to go off without end. Knuckles hustled to the driver’s side
door.
“Hey!” he snapped in a tense but
muted voice, “what’s the matter with you? Car gone funny? You want to draw
attention to us or something?”
Knuckles yanked the car door open,
a gasp escaping his lips as he saw what waited inside. It was Sidecar. He was dead.
Knuckles tried not to vomit despite the sudden swell of bile and saliva in his
mouth. Sidecar wasn’t just dead, he’d been mutilated! Both of his eyes were
gone; just empty sockets with blood trailing thick and wet down his face and
painting the steering wheel and floorboard beneath it. His neck was twisted,
his mouth agape.
Knuckles forced Sidecar back off
the horn and slammed the door shut, running back inside.
“Boss,” Knuckles gasped, bursting
through the door.
“The dum-dum fall asleep or
someth–“
“He’s dead!” Knuckles gasped.
“It…it isn’t normal dead.”
DiBetto fidgeted as he saw the
chalky pallor of his hood’s face. “What do you mean ‘isn’t normal dead’?”
Knuckles replied, “His eyes! His
eyes are gone! And his neck is all twisted up!”
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