by Kirk Alex
What if some of Perez’s goons were in the alley waiting for him? A few of them were bound to be there. What’s the concern? Why sweat it? If he’d wanted to die all this time, had wished for years that the ceiling in his room would come crashing on top of him, as he’d stated so eloquently to the wannabe shrink at the VA that time, why even consider trying to save himself now? What did life mean to him anyway? Not much. Other than that his work remained unfinished, incomplete, the body count not high enough. His biggest regret, felt it deep in his bones: he hadn’t crushed enough of them; the numbers anemic, way too anemic for what he knew he was capable of and what he’d promised himself that he would accomplish.
It troubled him enough so that he couldn’t shake it from his head. He hadn’t tortured enough victims, hadn’t collected enough trophy heads. Other than that, what was life supposed to mean to him?
Nothing.
Only more buzzing in his ears, the sound of those buzzing flies, images of that backyard picnic and his parents’ druggie parasitic losers chowing down on his and Mr.Turnbull’s beloved Parfrey; painful flashbacks of Sergeant Steele, his pet Rottie, being hammered to death by John Joseph; his mother made happy by his subsequent anguish: he hadn’t the right to love/have feelings for anything like a pet, let alone a dog or an oinker, which she hated with a passion. She had hated dogs, hogs, cats, hamsters. Anything with four legs, whiskers and/or fur was her mortal enemy. As far as she was concerned, her child’s love should have been hers exclusively. Never mind that she didn’t have a clue what any of it meant and was about, and neither did the repressed and sadistic homo she had hitched her wobbly caboose to; memories of the jackhammer and Charlotte Yvonne getting slammed by that truck that hot summer day in East LA, and then finished off by the sedan and the ditch digger’s jackhammer. Never mind that the jackhammer bit probably never happened, that it had been the meds putting in some overtime, the recurring wet dream going off on tangents on its own. No matter. Because the ghetto whore had stepped in front of the truck. No matter, because that part of it had been real, and so had the rest: the dog catcher’s legacy; the aching head and back. All too real. Perpetual nervousness. Chronic paranoia.
So why sweat whether he lived or died at this point? What difference did it make? Other than the fact he had come up short in achieving his life’s goal? Nothing. As stated. Nothing. And if that were true, why then were tears rolling down his face?
Should have cut up ten thousand more of them out there than I did. Yeah? Is that what the tears mean? Is it? I don’t know. I’m not sure.
You’re scared. Admit it. Why was he scared now? Was he afraid to die? Like all the rest of those pissants? Like the vics? Was he? Scared? Me? Cecil Biggs fearing death? Brother Trusty afraid of getting caught?
Hell, no!
What was there to fear? They wouldn’t kill him anyway. They never killed his kind. Not in America. He was crazy, a certified nutcase. They wouldn’t execute him. The law always turned a blind eye when it came to felons with mental health issues.
Maybe that’s what bothered him. That simple little fact. They wouldn’t kill him even after all the blood spilled, after all of it. They wouldn’t put him down, instead put him away, tuck him away in some rubber room motel, somewhere like they did before. Only this time he wouldn’t be able to bluff his way out. No way would they reward him with walking papers this time around no matter what a good boy he pretended to be. Not even in liberal-minded California.
He thought of padded cells, tie-downs, shock treatment, hydrotherapy, medication, and experimentation.
Is that what he dreaded? Maybe frontal lobotomy this time. Goddamn yes. As much as the other. No, worse. More so. Death would be fine. It was that other death that he feared: the slow death torture of being in a loony bin full of subnormals like Norbert Fimple.
No, he didn’t want that. He couldn’t take that. No way. So pull the trigger and end it, Cecil. Pull the trigger. End it. That’s suicide. On their terms. Because they want it. Want to see me dead. Want me gone.
Half a dozen, or more, failed suicide attempts in the past had all been his idea. Good, bad, in-between. His idea. That was different. Made it all different. This time they wanted him out of the way and it pissed him off enough to make him want to live.
Bottom line: Suicide is for faggots and cowards. No one’s going to force me to do anything. Suicide is for sissies, all those sissies out there. Someone like me has too much backbone to commit suicide.
Could be it runs in the family. The nutty bitch committed suicide, after all. Charlotte checked out on her own. If it was good enough for her, it ought to be good enough for you.
When I’m the one who wants it, and not when it’s being forced on me. Not like this. I’m not ready to go. Not now, not yet. I’ve got things to do, goals to accomplish.
Suicide? A born loser like John Joseph should have committed suicide. Just about drank himself to death. Shot liver. Arteriosclerosis. But that’s not what finally did him in. He was dying, but didn’t have the guts to finish the job, instead it took a little old lady down in Hollywood to shoot his ass dead in her front yard while he tried to snatch up her Shih Tzu pup.
Got his finally. Serves him right. Only wished I could have been the one to nail him.
He wiped tears. Looked at the mouth-breather. Nearly in tears himself at not having been able to decapitate the illusive chicken. Could hear it clucking out there. Drove Norbert to near-madness, not that he wasn’t fairly close to it to begin with. No point in pointing out that chasing after the chicken was sheer folly, that there were far more pressing matters to consider. Then it happened: Fimple became aware of the mask. Took him long enough. Had a rubber mask over his large skull. Stuck to his face. Didn’t seem to care for it. Caused him to sweat and made breathing difficult. Wanted it off. Had his hands on either side of the mask and made the effort to free himself of it. Nothing doing. Too bad.
“Keep yanking on it, and you’ll strip half the skin off your face with it, Norbert. Not a good idea, my friend.”
Biggs checked his left thigh. Although not exactly seeping out, he was losing more blood than he was happy with. Not only from the bullet hit, either, but all the damage Muck had inflicted earlier. The feeble suturing job he’d attempted in his room was but a joke. Laughable. Only he wasn’t in a laughing mood. Was sure of one thing: Unless he did something about his wounds, even if he got out of the basement alive, he would, in all likelihood, leak to death, so what did it matter?
CHAPTER 616
As Perez had feared, the touched woman was lying in the sickening copper tub with a bullet hole in her forehead. No time to carry her body out, take it upstairs.
He’d tried to warn her. Wouldn’t listen. One of Biggs’s nutjobs. Forget it. See the door. Get the door off the wall—and do it fast.
Bucket under the butcher’s block had rounds in it and they were exploding, going off in all directions. The block itself had caught on fire by this point.
Perez hurried up to the wall, did his best to quickly tie the loose nylon ropes together that hung from eyebolts at about the middle. It was not easy. At least now he had a means by which to keep the door upright and close to him.
Bullets went off. Too many, too often. Mattress left his legs exposed. He lifted the heavy door by the rope with his right hand, and that was as far as he got. Door didn’t seem to want to go with him. What the fuck.
He looked down. Saw the chain. Locked to one of the eyebolts, and the chain itself locked to one of the tub’s claw feet. He cursed again, and would have stood there cursing some more—only he didn’t have the time, couldn’t afford it.
He dragged another, heavier mattress in from the other room to protect his back from the blasting honey bucket.
Looked around. Moved. Guided a couple of the candles that were on the floor toward the bottom of the door. Candles by themselves might not do it; if he used his gun to fire shots into the wood . . . that alone wouldn’t do it, either. But combined. Maybe.<
br />
Fire from the candles worked on the wood: heated the eyebolt and the surrounding wood turned black.
He bit his tongue, waiting. Didn’t have a second to spare, but he was forced to wait it out. Didn’t stand a chance without the door for a shield. Biggs would take him out without thinking twice about it.
Area around the eyebolt was charred enough. He kicked at the iron eyebolt. No go. He kicked it again with the heel of his shoe.
Held his gun close enough to it and fired once, then fired again. This time when he kicked and kicked with all his might, the eyebolt loosened and dropped out. He shoved the heavy mattress, that he would no longer need, off to the side. Still held on to the other one.
He had the door off the wall, spun it around to protect himself from the blasting bullets, as they continued to rip through the bucket, and stepped out of the Fun Room.
CHAPTER 617
Practically hugging the wall on his right, he moved toward the center of the basement. Granted, this new door shield afforded better protection, but it also created complications, in that in order to be able to see where he was headed he had to shift it to either side from time to time, a pain and a bitch, then he’d duck back behind it. Continued in this snail-paced progress toward what looked like a play area for mentally handicapped types and that bucket there with the wild flames and billowing black smoke.
Although he felt a degree safer, having the door, there were no guarantees. Wasn’t looking for any. Just an edge, a slight edge and this, he felt, he had—against the evil bastard who had been killing people all this time.
Someone had to stop him, get their hands on him—even if it meant, in the long run, losing his own life.
He stuck close to the wall. Moved his way along toward the play area. Checkers, dominoes, coloring books and crayons on the green patio table. Metal chairs around it. Ping Pong table on his side. Books, lots of books up and down a bookcase on the Roscoes’ side. Hated to think what would happen if those books got lit up.
There was what appeared to be a gray wall, maybe steel, on the far side, and a steel door with a lock and chain hanging from the handle. Part of some type of refrigerated room? He was guessing.
To the left was another bookcase, narrower. Too many books, tons of books, for a maniac like Cecil Biggs. All that knowledge and wisdom, centuries of it, wasted on a cold-blooded killer.
Quit thinking about that. Guy was always weird, antisocial. What did you expect? Had no love or kindness for anyone. Selfish, that’s all it was; all these serial killers like him could ever be. Hurt innocent people. Leave pain and suffering in their wake.
Goddammit, he cursed to himself. Stop it.
Just a few feet in front of the bookcase, maybe a yard or so, was the large paint bucket that had been set on fire and left with bullets that continued to go off in every direction. This was as great a fear as the one he had a second ago of the books going up in flames with potential to spread like a forest fire. The bullets were the immediate threat, those sporadic bullets exploding.
Smoke was heavy and thick enough to cause a grown man to choke and prevent him from being able to breathe. It wasn’t easy, nearly impossible: held the towel over his mouth with his left hand, while holding up the door with the other. Gun had to be tucked away for the time being. Towel helped keep some of the smoke out, but it also made it difficult to take in good air, what little of it there was left.
His vision? His vision wasn’t much to speak of. The hole he’d made for his eyes in the mattress was just large enough and wide enough for that, although his peripheral vision was non-existent, not that it was crucial presently, because half the time he didn’t even dare look directly in front of him from fear a stray bullet would actually enter through the hole in the mattress, either blow his brains out or blind him. Had to see where he was moving and would peek from one edge of the door, then the other, from time to time.
Biggs had gone in one of the rooms to the left of the narrow bookcase, he knew that much. Prior to that he had attempted to either shove the bookcase to the side and was looking over some keys, or both. Which room now?—was the big question. First or the second? One on the far left was the john. Door wide open. Nobody inside. That he could tell.
Close to half a dozen bullets went off simultaneously and forced him to hit the deck, flat on his back. Ordinarily, he would have been flat on his belly. Military style. One of the first things you were taught. Hit the ground. You hear incoming, you’re being shot at—hit the deck. Cover your head. Protect the head; eyes, heart. Ordinarily, that is.
There was no way with the door and the mattress. He was on his back instead, his head away from the paint bucket out there.
This was insanity. All of it. Dungeon of death and insanity.
He could hear bullets inside the room with the torture contraptions going off in back of him. More bullets in that paint bucket sitting about a yard in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. That bucket was about thirty feet ahead and to the right some.
Rounds exploded and blasted out the ten-gallon paint can. Black smoke made him choke and his eyes water. Towel helped, but not enough. Would he even be able to hit the evil bastard if he spotted him? Could he see past the smoke well enough?
CHAPTER 618
Perez rose to his knees. Felt bullets thumping into the door periodically. One grazed the left side of the mattress. Didn’t matter, he told himself this time. Because he had to move on. Move forward. Put the pressure on Biggs. The rage was back, the fuel that made it possible for him not only to endure, but pursue his goal, the only goal that mattered: needing to see Bishop Cecil O. Biggs either captured, or destroyed. Preferably the latter.
He made his way to the bucket. Using the lower part of his wooden shield, the door, he nudged and prodded (as carefully and cautiously as he was able, in order not to cause it to tip over), and guided the paint bucket toward the blaze in the pit.
Got it there near enough—and a corner of his door caught on fire. So long as the mattress didn’t, he thought. The obvious left begging: How long before the mattress followed? If that happened he’d be baked alive in a matter of minutes. Wouldn’t even have enough time to lose the mattress and free himself.
He did his desperate best to hold on to the door shield all the same. Had no choice. Bullets remained in the bucket and continued to go off.
Although not intimidating enough to keep him from what he needed to do, the flames, moderate in size, travelled gradually up along the right edge of the door, spreading, as well, across the bottom, toward the left corner.
He had the bucket up against the edge of the pit. Kicked it into the blazing oil. As much as he wanted to cross back to the “play area,” shots fired directly at him from back there forced him to abandon that notion, as well as the tiny flames along the bottom seam of the mattress that nibbled at it now.
He cursed to himself. Needed to be closer to where the shots were being fired from. Dove in the direction of the john and the area outside it where the hampers were.
He dropped the door, shed the mattress and shoved it into the tub and turned the water on that knocked the flames out. Grabbed a towel and tossed it over the door and stomped the fire out. Stuck his head out from behind the corner.
“What’re you doing, Mr. Biggs? Buying time? You can’t buy enough time, no matter what you do.”
CHAPTER 619
A struggle of a different sort was under way inside the Furnace Room. Norbert’s eye glowed red with blood. Couldn’t tell where he was exactly or that Biggs was holding up the index finger of each
hand and asking him to take a guess.
“How many fingers do you see, Norbert?”
The one-time used car salesman didn’t so much as bother acknowledging. Did it matter? Affect Cecil’s game plan in any way? Not quite. Mouth-breather should be easier to manage, so long as he remained in this quasi-dazed state.
Biggs extracted a pair of panties from one of his pockets. Held the panties to his nos
e and mouth. Inhaled deeply. Was about to slip them over Norbert’s bloody foot. Realized it was a lame idea, and stuck them back in his pocket.
Dug out the panty hose and slipped the crotch part over the man’s injury, crossed the legs of the hose and wound the ends around the foot and tied them at just below the ankle.
“You have no idea what I went through to get these. No idea at all.”
Norbert looked up, now that he had regained some of his senses, and spat his shattered dentures out through the jaw part in the Parfrey mask.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking shout. Like Sassy: take everything for granted.”
Fimple didn’t want to hear it. He had pain and he had a chicken that had refused capture on his mind. Not to mention the rancid hog mask that had been glued to his face and doubled his discomfort, at the least. He shifted his belly, and the various pieces of metal inside clanged against each other.
“Do I take care of you? In spite of the silverware you consumed. Always took care of my people. Why do you think I switched you to wooden spoons once we realized what you were stuffing your belly with? Provided shelter, 24/7 tv programming. Wasn’t color. Tee-vee is still tee-vee. Free meals—not to mention the occasional chicken you mangled. But I don’t mind. We’re in this together. Only now is not the right moment.”
