Life is Short: The Collected Short Fiction of Shawn Inmon

by Shawn Inmon

  “I’m Dave. Dave Kool.”

  “A fortuitous name for someone in the entertainment business. Was it a birthright or did you choose it later in life?”

  “No, no… it’s my real name. I’ve been Kool all my life.” Dave smiled a bit, but the man had no visible reaction.

  “I see. Well, let’s get down to business, shall we? Please, follow me.” He turned and glided toward a double side door without bothering to look to see if Dave was coming or not. Despite his slight stature, Dave had to jog a little to catch up to him. They walked past a dining room with large round tables draped in white tablecloths, then turned down a hall that went past an industrial kitchen full of stainless steel countertops and commercial appliances. After what felt like a hike to Dave, they finally came to a door with a sign outside that read: FRANCIS BASTIEN, DIRECTOR, BULL LICK LODGE.

  Mr. Bastien retrieved a key from his pocket and slid it into the lock, turning it with a smooth, metallic click. He opened the door to a large office with an oversized window that looked out on a rolling green lawn lit by spotlights that merged into the surrounding deep forest. He stepped inside the office and pointed to a leather chair facing the desk and said, “Please, sit so we can talk.”

  Dave walked between the chair and the desk and sank down into the plushy cushion. Just as he opened his mouth to comment, he felt a stinging pain just behind his left ear.

  “Ouch! Goddamnit!” Dave slapped at his neck, but there was nothing there. He struggled to turn around and see what was behind him in the overstuffed chair.

  Mr. Bastien stepped around from behind and smiled at him. He held a still-dripping hypodermic needle. His smile held the warmth of an arctic sunrise.

  “What the hell…?”

  “There’s no need to excite yourself unduly, Mr. Kool. The faster your heart beats, the quicker the sedative will work. Either way, you won’t be conscious for much longer.”

  Dave tried to get to his feet, but the strength had drained out of his legs. Using mostly his arms, he finally managed to hoist himself upright. Bastien gave a quick, powerful jab to his breastbone with the cane. Dave collapsed back into the chair, unable to summon enough energy to try again.

  As the room spun around him and his consciousness faded away, Dave had only one thought. He screamed “Beth!” but his voice echoed only in his head.

  Bastien sat down at his desk, picked up the phone and dialed a number written on the notepad in front of him. After a few seconds, he said “Hello, Mr. Kool? This is Francis Bastien from Bull Lick Lodge. You were scheduled to provide musical entertainment at our event today. Our agreement was that you were to be here no later than six o’clock. It is now half past seven, you are not here and I fear you are not coming. We paid you a deposit and will expect that to be returned to us since you seem to have cancelled your appearance with no notice. Good day.”

  He pressed an intercom button. A male voice answered, “Yes?”

  “This is Bastien. Our guest is subdued. Bring in the gurney.”

  When Dave’s senses began to return, his first thought was that the whole scene in the office had been some outrageous nightmare. He must still be safe at home, cuddling Beth and her baby-belly to him. A faint, relieved smile was starting to play against his lips when the cultured voice of Francis Bastien pulled him back to consciousness, reminding him that the nightmare was not only real, but still unfolding. He tried to move, but found that he was strapped quite securely in place, flat on his back.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Kool. I’m pleased you are with us again. As the guest of honor, we couldn’t start without you.”

  Dave forced his eyes open and looked straight into Bastien’s cruel green eyes. What the hell is happening? If I ask that, I’ll only sound stupid, and probably won’t get an answer. He kept his mouth shut and tried to focus.

  “I’m sure you have many questions…” Bastien paused expectantly, got nothing, then continued: “…and they will all be answered shortly. For now, let me introduce you to my associates.” He reached out and pushed a button beside Dave’s head. Dave raised his head up so that he could see his surroundings. He was surrounded by Bastien and six… seven… eight other old men, all smiling at him as if he were a well-liked business associate. All Dave felt was the urge to get up and run, but the heavy leather straps binding his chest, arms, thighs and ankles suggested otherwise.

  “I won’t introduce them by name, but I will say that as a group, these are the co-founders of the Bull Lick Lodge.” He chuckled slightly. “I know, I know. It’s an unconventional. It’s an anagram necessitated by society’s pressures. We could hardly call it what it really is: The Kill Club.”

  Dave shook his head in an attempt to clear it. No success. He had heard no humor or irony in Bastien’s voice. A group of old guys, some bent with age and three of them using canes to hold themselves upright, calling themselves “The Kill Club”? Reminds me of a bunch of privileged white kids in the suburbs, making bad rap and calling themselves gangsters.

  The old men each took a step forward, closing the circle around Dave like a nest of vipers closing in on an unsuspecting mouse. One even leaned close and laid a hand on Dave’s knee before he brought his cane up and drove it down with a hard stab against his thigh, causing an explosion of pain. Dave cried out in pain, then clamped his mouth tight.

  “Demetrius,” Bastien said mildly. “Let’s not be impatient. You remember what happened last time. It took much of the fun away for the rest of us.”

  Chastened, Demetrius stepped back and bowed his head, mumbling to himself.

  “As you’ve no doubt noticed,” Bastien continued, “we are all men of a certain age. We’ve been at this a very long time.” His eyes took on a dreamy, far-away cast. “Originally, there were more, but time takes its inevitable toll on all of us, whether hunter or hunted. Once, we were true hunters. We gave our prey a chance. Now, in our old age, we’re more like patrons, shopping for suitable guests. It’s not ideal, but we find that our age has not dulled our appetites. Even though we’ve lost the thrill of the hunt, we still can enjoy the kill. That, my young friend, is where you come in, of course. I’ve already called your business line and lodged a complaint with you for not showing up. Before the night is over, we’ll dispose of your van at the bottom of a very deep lake, and the world will think you’ve simply disappeared.”

  Dave finally forced out some speech. “I… I have a wife. She’s pregnant, about to have our first baby. It’s a girl. We’re going to name her Lucy after my grandmother…”

  Bastien interrupted, “So, you really have every reason to want to live, is that right?”

  “Yes, of course…”

  Bastien’s smile was glacial. “Good.” He and the rest of the men moved slowly away, breaking up into small knots. “Come, gentlemen, let’s satisfy our thirst before we gorge ourselves on the main course. Everything is better when the anticipation is keener.”

  Dave watched as they walked away toward what he knew was the dining room. He struggled briefly against his restraints, but the leather straps didn’t yield a bit. He stopped struggling and laid his head back to conserve his strength, in case a time came when he could use it.

  The last remnants of the sedative pulled him back toward unconsciousness. He drifted away for a few minutes before an urgent whisper startled him back to alertness.

  “Mr. Kool, Mr. Kool… if you want to live, you’ve got to wake up.”

  Francesca. Dave opened his eyes and waited for his vision to stop swimming. “What…?”

  “Shhh. You’ve got to be quiet and use your head, or you are going to die. When I chose you to come here, I didn’t know you had a wife and baby on the way. I’m so sorry.”

  “Can you help me?”

  Francesca paused. Even in his drugged state, Dave could see the internal conflict raging within her. She tapped her index finger against the restraint on Dave’s chest.

  “Please. I want to see my daughter born. I want to be there for her while s
he grows up. I love my wife…” Dave felt tears running down his face.

  Francesca took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. If I help you, he’ll kill me. They’ve already done so many terrible things to me...”

  “I’ll take you with me. I’ll take you away from here. I’ll…” he said, desperately.

  She reached out and covered his mouth, shaking her head. “There’s nowhere for me to go. There’s nowhere they can’t find me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Dave heard her running away. Instead of clicking heels, he heard only the pad of her bare feet fading away. As hard as he fought to stay awake, he slipped beneath the waves once more.

  While Dave was unconscious, Francesca slipped back to him and loosened the industrial Velcro that held all four of the straps. Not enough to free him, but enough to give him a chance.

  Dave next awoke with a scream of surprise, pain, and confusion.

  He clamped his jaws together, trying to stop screaming. The intensity ebbed and he caught his breath. He didn’t want to look down , but he had to know what they were doing to him.

  He expected to see his skin flayed open, blood everywhere, but instead saw that he had been stripped naked. Electrician’s tape held small electrodes against his inner thighs, and wires ran behind him as well. His legs were jumping and quivering.

  “Good evening again, Mr. Kool.” It was Bastien, standing over him, smiling, always smiling. He was holding a small wired box with three knobs on it. “I thought of just shaking you awake, but then I realized that this would be so much better.”

  “You sick son of a bitch,” Dave said between clenched teeth. “Is this what you do? Torture people? Is that how you get your jollies? You really are sick.”

  “Sick? No. I am quite healthy. I have taken care of myself all my life because I knew the secret that so few do… that this life is all there is. There is nothing but blackness beyond. A belief in anything else is for those who lack the courage to accept our reality – that we live, then we die and we are dust, nothing more. I realized when I was very young that morality and rules are for others, for the sheep. Not for me and my kind.”

  He gave a knob a half-turn and Dave felt a cramp deep inside his legs and belly that intensified until it burst in an explosion of pain beyond any previous concept of pain he knew to exist. His muscles tightened until they were so knotted it felt like they would snap asunder or explode through his flesh. It lasted less than thirty seconds, but felt like an eternity.

  When his vision cleared enough to see, Dave looked down to see if his muscles had actually blown through his skin. He saw blood, but it was on his chest. He had bitten clear through his lower lip, and the blood had run down his chin.

  At the sight of blood, the old men closed in, surrounding him, drinking in his suffering. Several of them reached out and poked his quivering muscles with their canes, causing fresh ripples of pain.

  “I suppose,” Bastien said, as if discussing philosophy over a glass of tawny port, “that there are those who understand the truth of life and death and still choose to lead a life the world perceives as good. I do not understand them. They have clarity and yet they choose to live as sheep. We have chosen to be what we are: the wolves who eat those sheep. Now, Mr. Kool, I’ll give you a chance to beg for your life. Tell me what is dear to you. Tell me all the reasons you want to live.”

  Dave tried to work his jaw but was unable to speak. Blood pooled in his mouth. He gathered his strength and spat a long thick cord of it directly into Bastien’s face. The elderly man calmly wiped the blood and spittle away before licking his fingers clean.

  “I see. Well, I’ll give you another opportunity in a few hours. Let’s get down to business.”

  He turned the knob a full turn.

  The previous pain had not, as it had seemed at the time, touched the limit of what Dave’s mind could absorb. It had been only a prelude to this, which shattered his consciousness and caused every muscle in his body to expand and contract in vicious bursts. His vision blacked out and he hoped for the release of unconsciousness, but his mind continued to work. He felt his back and neck arch, pushing against the restraints. They slipped away. As the pain began to recede again, he realized that he was sitting up.

  For a moment the scene was a frozen tableau: Dave, still blinded, sitting up with blood running down his throat and onto his torso. Bastien, mouth agape, holding the remote and staring at a prisoner now unexpectedly free of his bindings. The group of old men, frozen in shock at seeing the rabbit suddenly freed from the snare.

  Then chaos reigned.

  The men moved forward as quickly as ancient men could. Bastien turned the knobs on full, and Dave screamed again as cataclysmic pain wracked through his body. Liberated from the leather straps, he began thrashing and flopping on the gurney. His right arm whipped out, connecting with the nose of the man standing closest to him, crushing old cartilage and spraying crimson. His left leg spasmed, sending his foot into another man’s sternum with force that would have punted a football seventy yards. That man flew backward and fell, hard. A brittle hip snapped with a sharp crack.

  Dave’s thrashing ripped off the tape and electrodes. The flopping and gyrations stopped, but five of the men grabbed and held him against the table. “Hold him, hold him,” Bastien hissed. “Let me strap him back down.”

  Dave’s head lolled from side to side as many gnarled hands bore him down. Through the mental aftermath of the anguish, he knew he needed to sit up, to fight for his life, to run…but all the circuits that ran from his brain to his body had shorted out. He couldn’t make his limbs do what he wanted. He finally managed to arch his back, but the men pushed him back down.

  Bastien re-attached the straps at his feet and said, “Hold him still, damn it. I can’t secure him when he’s flopping around like that.” He moved up and started to re-attach the heavy strap across the when the circuitry in Dave’s brain finally rebooted. He lifted his head and felt a burst of will-to-live strength surge through him. Twisting free of the clammy hands, he sat up and yanked his legs out from straps that were not yet retightened enough to hold him. Gnarly fists beat feebly against his body, but he felt the blows only as an echo of the pain he had known.

  He flung himself off the table. Pain exploded in his brain again as his tortured muscles slammed into the hardwood floor. His breath blew out and he lay stunned for a moment.

  The man Bastien had called Demetrius raised his cane above his head and brought it down as hard as he could across Dave’s back, bringing fresh agony. The blow threw the old man off balance and he fell head first across Dave’s back, smacking his head against the floor. He lay still.

  Dave finally managed to draw a breath and felt fresh stabs of pain in his ribs. He rolled over and saw that the rest were closing in, some brandishing canes. Dave slid out from under Demetrius, grabbed his cane and managed to get to his knees. When the first of the old men reached him, Dave swung it viciously against the octogenarian’s knee, feeling a satisfying crack as it broke the kneecap and sent the ancient fellow crumpling to the floor in heap.

  Dave used the cane to stand up and brandished it like a weapon, swinging it in a wide arc around him. Those who were still mobile backed away.

  “Just get the hell out of my way. I’m leaving this nuthouse,” Dave said, though it came out more like a bloody gargle than actual words. He took a few limping steps toward the door, then heard the distinct chunk-chunk of a pump shotgun chambering a shell. He turned.

  “That’s far enough, Mr. Kool,” Bastien said. He held an expensive Austrian 12-gauge leveled from the waist, ten feet away. “I will not let you leave this lodge alive. I brought you here to kill you and now I’m going to do it.” He raised the gun to his shoulder. It wavered a little, but it was a shotgun; Dave knew he couldn’t miss from this distance.

  There was a sharp BLAM!, then an echoing BOOM! as the shotgun went off, blowing a hole where the wall met the ceiling over Dave’s head. Bastien crumpled forward. Dave looked fir
st down to see the entry wound at the base of Bastien’s spine, then up to see Francesca behind her father. She gripped a small pistol in both hands.

  She leaned down to her father, put the barrel against his temple and pulled the trigger. Brain, blood and bone blasted into the wood flooring.

  I should get away. Goddamn my legs! Why don’t they start working again? Francesca turned her back on Dave and looked toward the members of the Kill Club that were still gathered around the bloody gurney. They wore expressions of shock and fear. One man seemed about to have a cardiac arrest.

  Francesca walked steadily toward the nearest man, pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. She waited a moment for him to collapse, then added one more shot to the head. She moved on to the next, and the next, first killing those who were still standing. Some stood frozen with fear, one seemed resigned, others made weak efforts to evade her. When all the standing men would never stand again, she began to execute the injured ones writhing on the floor. Dave watched in horror.

  When she got to the last man, the gun gave an empty click. Francesca released the clip from the pistol, reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out another clip and slid it home. She added a third eye between the pair the last man had been born with.

  She turned to Dave and said softly, “Go.”

  Dave had forgotten his own pain and injuries while she dismissed the final meeting of the Kill Club, but now came to his senses. He limped naked to the huge doors at the entrance, swinging them wide open.

  When he looked outside, something was very wrong, disorienting. He had arrived at the lodge just around sunset, but now it looked like the sun was still setting…no, not quite right. I must have been inside, strapped to that gurney for the entire night. This is sunrise, not sunset. His van was now parked right in front of the lodge with the driver’s side door open. He could hear the motor idling.

  He limped as quickly as he could manage down the steps and into the van. He winced as he pushed the clutch in and shifted into first gear. He glanced up into his rear view mirror and saw flames coming out of the upper windows of the lodge. Smoke was coming out of the open door he had just exited.