Looking out at Magpie Dark, he saw a lithe woman in a black and white costume. The outfit's visual look was clearly modeled after the vigilante's chosen moniker. Dominated by black, the costume was cut with white highlights moving down her torso, arms, and legs. She wore dark goggles that reflected a dull white light from the round lenses, and the entirety of her face was covered by a black mask. A short cape (black exterior, white interior) fell to her waist.
Gordon's mind raced with possibilities. He could not tell the age, race, or even hair color of this woman, which confirmed the rumors he'd heard in the underground about her. What rang false, however, was her size. Though clearly athletic, Magpie Dark was neither as tall nor muscular as the whispers about her had led him to believe.
“You're smaller than your reputation,” he said, ignoring the dying Ms. Penster behind him.
“Aren't we all?” Magpie asked. Both of her hands shot forward and two shooting stars flashed in the moonlight on their way to sticking in Gordon's fat.
Grunting through the pain, Gordon Curtis pulled a star out of his left shoulder and absently flung it at the Magpie, who easily deflected the weapon to the side with the extended glove on her left arm. “You're not here to kill me or I'd be dead already,” he rasped, reaching for the second shooting star, which was imbedded in his gut. Gordon glanced down to find it, and as his hand grasped the metal, Magpie covered the distance between them. She held his wrist in place, keeping the shooting star inside of him. The smaller woman was stronger than he was and she pushed his arm into his body, sending the star deeper into blubber.
“What makes you think,” she asked, “that I'm here for you?”
Gordon winced in pain and his right knee wobbled. Magpie Dark let go of his arm and took a step back so that she could kick the heel of her flat-footed black boot into the shooting star, driving the entire weapon inside of the man who was convinced she was not here to kill him. Pain exploded in Gordon's stomach and he dropped to his knees.
The Magpie planted her left foot before him and placed her left hand on his head to leverage her jump around and over him. Her boots landed on the sofa as her right hand reached to her left wrist, where she pulled out a strong, black cord that she used to choke him back towards her, trapping his body against the back of the sofa.
Magpie Dark placed her head next to his and she whispered into his ear. “Stop struggling, my darling,” she said in a different voice than before.
Gordon's mind went into shock at the sound of her new voice, because it was a voice that was known to him.
It was the voice of his wife.
“Janice?” he asked. “Honey … you're the Magpie?”
The vigilante tugged back hard on the cord and Gordon's slightly pudgy fingers tried unsuccessfully to push it away from his neck.
“I prefer to be called Magpie Dark,” his wife's voice whispered behind him as she violently choked him. “It's more theatrical, don't you think?”
Gordon began coughing and sputtering, his face turning abnormal shades as it became nearly impossible for him to breathe. He didn't understand how this could be happening – his wife was ten years his junior, sure, but she had a hard time walking their Newfoundland dog, let alone having enough strength to overpower him.
Dark placed one boot on the sofa's back for leverage as she leaned her body back, determined to end Gordon's life.
“Hon-urk!” Gordon sputtered as he tried desperately to save himself. “Why?”
Magpie Dark didn't answer, but Janice Curtis did.
“Please, stop,” she said from the doorway.
Magpie Dark was as surprised as Gordon by the appearance in the doorway of the beautiful, leggy blonde. Mrs. Curtis still wore the sparkling, blue dress from earlier in the evening. Her right eye was swollen shut and deeply bruised from where her husband had punched her after dinner for complaining about being sent home. Angry at the interruption, the vigilante nonetheless let off just enough of the cord to allow Gordon's eyes to stop watering, allowing him a view of the woman who wanted him dead.
“Janice?” he choked. When he tried to push the cord away, Magpie Dark pulled back, letting him know that he was not in charge of his fate.
“My family rebuilt this city after the war,” Janice whimpered, holding her left elbow in her right hand. “We're royalty! And I gave that up to marry a thug,” she whined. “I was glad to do it, at first, Gordon. I loved you. I still love you, and the truth is that I don't care about all your shady construction deals. I don't care about the drugs you push. I don't care that you've had men killed. I don't even care that you fornicate with whores! All I care about is that you provide for our son.”
Magpie Dark let off just enough for the mobster to answer. “Hon, I would … would never do anything to hurt Gordy!”
Make-up ran down Janice's face. “You lie,” she said softly, glancing in the direction of the dying woman. “Madam Penster came to me last week. You've knocked up a whore, Gordon. A whore! Maybe more than one. How much are you going to have to pay those women off to keep them silent? I already pay for your expensive suits and your expensive car and your expensive house. Am I going to have to pay for your whores and bastards, too? Or have you been lying to me about wanting to be Mayor? A mid-level thug can breed black sheep, but the Mayor can't. Not in this city. Not if you're not a true Brahmin, and that's something you will never be,” she said, entering the room and walking purposefully to her husband. “Marrying me opened doors, but it doesn't guarantee your place.” Janice's face turned hard as she leaned down and kissed her husband on his forehead. “You have embarrassed me for the last time,” she said, and turned to leave.
“Wai-uurrrkkkk!”
Magpie Dark pulled back on the cord. Gordon's ability to breathe was cut off, and his eyes quickly watered. The last image he saw was the blurry form of his wife leaving him to die at the hands of a masked vigilante.
***
After killing Gordon Curtis, Magpie Dark emptied his wallet of several hundred dollars and added it to the pouch on her belt which already contained the $10,000 he'd given Ms. Penster. The vigilante checked on the madam, who was still breathing and still bleeding. Placing a boot against the madam's arm, Dark rolled her onto her back and knelt on her throat.
“Mommy?” Magpie Dark asked in a little girl's voice that caused Ms. Penster's eyes to pop wide in horror. “Mommy, why did you abandon me? Don't you love me, mommy? Mommy? Mommy?!?! Why are you leaving me, mommy?” she asked, pressing down hard with her knee. “Mommy, don't go! Mommy, please! Mommy! Why are you leaving me, mommy?!?!”
The unseen right hand of Magpie Dark came forward to sever the older woman's carotid artery, and she watched through tears of her own as life drained from the madam's body.
***
Magpie Dark waited on a nearby hill for the police to arrive at the Curtis household. After they had entered the house, she brought her black Sokol 1000 motorcycle to life and sped away from the scene. At times, she entertained the notion to point the Polish bike away from the Atlantic Ocean and leave Brahmin City behind, but where would she go? What would she do?
As dawn crept closer and the eastern sky began to lighten, Dark resisted the urge to drive to Pinochis for breakfast. They had been kind to her there, once upon a time, though they would not notice her now. Pinochis was a part of her old life, but her new life demanded she point the bike in the direction of the docks. Her eyes took in the distant image of the Lodge, located seven miles from downtown Brahmin City on an island. She saw the triangular prison on the right and the old castle that was now a mental asylum on the left. In less than twenty minutes, she pulled the Sokol into a nondescript warehouse, slowly weaving through the rows of crates containing items destined for sale throughout Massachusetts. Near the center of the building was a large metal container. Magpie Dark pulled the Sokol to a stop and killed the engine, then unlocked the container and pushed the heavy bike inside.
She shut the door and locked herself inside.
It was nearly pitch dark in the container, but her goggles had been adapted from technology stolen from a Hungarian physicist. They were infrared sensitive, casting the room in purples and yellows. With this technology, it was easy to spot the trap door in the metal floor, which she unlocked and opened before descending a cold metal ladder in a concrete column. Climbing down 94 rungs, Magpie Dark exited into an abandoned Civil War submarine repair dock.
A single pier extended forward. On the left side of the wooden walkway was a large military sub, but Dark's goal was the much smaller vehicle on the right. Barely visible in the low light, the long, slender personal submarine was her passage home.
***
“You're late.”
Magpie Dark said nothing to the handsome older man as she climbed out of the submarine inside a sewage plant.
“Get naked,” he ordered, holding up the orange jumpsuit of Lodge Prison. “Actually,” he said, changing his mind, “since you're late, we can't sneak you into the main building. Morning call's already underway. You'll need one of these, instead.” The Assistant Warden tucked the orange jumpsuit beneath his arm and reached behind a piece of steaming machinery to remove a bright red jumpsuit. He tossed Dark the official outfit of a patient at Lodge Asylum, and then waited in the hallway outside as she changed. He'd already heard the police confirm the two kills over the radio and would thank Mrs. Curtis for ratting out her husband when the turmoil of his death died down. Killing Gordon Curtis and Edith Penster would cause a vacuum in the Brahmin City crime scene, and while more scum would rise to take their place, in the short term the criminals would focus on each other instead of infecting the city.
Fifteen minutes later, the Assistant Warden closed the door to a padded cell behind a beautiful brown-skinned woman in her mid-20s who had been found seven years earlier standing over the body of six dead British businessmen.
No one had ever learned her name.
No one had ever heard her speak in her own voice, only those mimicked from other people.
When she came to the Lodge all those years ago, she had no identity.
The Assistant Warden had given her one.
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RAT-A-TAT
Edited by Frank Byrns, Tommy Hancock, Morgan Minor, Dave Brzeski, Jessica Fleming, David White, Logan L. Masterson, and Mark Beaulieu
Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions - Tommy Hancock
Submissions Editor - Barry Reese
Director of Corporate Operations – Morgan Minor
Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC Chief Executive Officer - Fuller Bumpers
Pro Se Productions, LLC
133 1/2 Broad Street
Batesville, AR, 72501
870-834-4022
[email protected]
www.proseproductions.com
Front Cover Art by David Russel
Print Design by Percival Constantine
E-book Design by Russ Anderson
Visit the Pro Se Press website at http://www.prosepulp.com for more New Pulp novels and short story collections
Pro Se Productions, LLC
133 1/2 Broad Street
Batesville, AR, 72501
870-834-4022
[email protected]
http://www.prosepulp.com
Rat-A-Tat: Short Blasts of Pulp Page 19
