End Of The Year Collection - 2014

by Spain, Laura

  “Fine,” Mr. Herzenberg said.

  “Here,” the Tailor said, handing the man a card. “My address.”

  “Fine. Now I must go.”

  “I know.”

  And with that, Mr. Herzenberg turned. The bell above the door rang once. It rang again as the door closed. The man disappeared into the fog.

  Billy Torch Takes a Beating

  by Jonathan Hansen

  NOW

  Billy only had to tell the old man once.

  The bell dinged and the cash register slammed open, coins crashing in the drawer, loud and loose in the empty little bodega.

  The old man said nothing; his head was down. He was sweating in his raggedy tank top despite the artic blast of cold from the rattling air-conditioner overhead, plastic streamers flapping in the breeze. Oily beads rolled down his wide forehead and into the unruly bushes of his eyebrows—blinking, blinking, blinking—they hung off the tip of his long nose. His massive Adam’s apple bobbed and swallowed.

  And Billy Torch smiled to see it.

  Sure, that asshole Felix Fixit may have fucked him over—the chintzy, price gouging son of a bitch. Yeah, he might have double-crossed Billy on the cost of repairing his flame-rig, forcing him to hit the street and start taking up “collections” again, but shit, moments like this… Goddamn, if it wasn’t all suddenly worth it.

  “It’s rough, Mr. Duc, I know it is,” Billy said, smiling, leaning. “Believe me, I know. Sudden change is always rough. You wanns know the secret? Sure you do… The secret is: Us little guys? We gotta roll with it, right? We have to…” his face scrunched, thinking. He brightened. “We have to learn to appreciate the little things.”

  Mr. Duc pulled a greasy sheaf of oft-folded bills from the cash drawer.

  “But then, who knows?” Billy said. “Fortunes change every day, am I right?” He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Eh? Come on now.”

  Mr. Duc said nothing, stoop-shouldered, a single small glare.

  “What am I saying?” Billy spread his arms, as if struck by sudden recollection. “You know that. Of course you do. I mean, what was it? Last year?” He stopped. “Wow,” shocked. “It’s been a year already? Time flies, huh?”

  Mr. Duc stuffed the money into a blue vinyl bank bag and zipped it closed.

  Billy laughed and leaned back, resting his elbows on the counter, a man at ease in an empty store. The few patrons that had been in here, had watched Billy swagger in out of the drizzle, stylized flames sewn around the cuffs of his jacket, and had known better than to stay. They had scuttled out in a hurry, abandoning their meager groceries while Billy browsed the racks of glossy celebrity mags. Now, just the back wall of cold-fogged freezer glass, the silent aisles of chips and paper towels, and the wire shelves of stale snack cakes were the only witnesses to their exchange.

  Billy’s gaze fell on the stack of newspapers next to the counter and the bold headline emblazoned above the fold: “The Sick Man escapes! Where is The Cowl?” And below that, in smaller type: “Vigilante legend vanished?”

  “I’ll never forget that night,” Billy glanced back. “The Cowl crashing in here… My knee still kills, you know? And since then? Well… heh… it’s been a rough year,” his smirk widened into a toothy grin, “know what I mean?” Mr. Duc said nothing. “But like I said, fortunes change. Who knows, maybe you’re next.”

  Mr. Duc held the bank bag out across the counter, eyes shiny and wet.

  “Maybe not.” Billy Torch took it, calm, cool and in no hurry, not a care in the world, not these days, not anymore, not with the Cowl gone. He unzipped the bag and thumbed through the contents. Low numbers blurred by, his lips moved with his count, the bills flick, flick, flick… flick… flicked… and then he sighed, looked up and slowly shook his head. “A little light, right?”

  “People are staying in,” Mr. Duc muttered.

  “People got to eat, right?” Billy scratched at the scruff under his chin, sniffed and motioned around. “You’re a grocery store, right?”

  Mr. Duc just looked away.

  The silence dragged. Billy watched the old man avoid his eyes while the fluorescents stuttered and buzzed and the air conditioner rattled. Finally he said, “Look, Mr. Duc, this is all new, I know… well, maybe not new so much as… starting up again. You know what I mean. It’s been awhile, is what I’m saying and I’m a good guy, so…” He held up a wad of bills.

  A sudden jagged lance of pain shot up his leg.

  His knee buckled and he cried out, the money spilling from his hands as he lurched over. He caught the counter, clutched at it like a drowning man. He hung there, red faced and hissing, just this side of hitting the floor. He stood on one foot, wincing. He groaned. His knee throbbed, it pulsed and ached. He bent it, eased it through the motions, listening to the click and pop of once-broken bones that had never quite healed right.

  Goddamn knee, he thought.

  A flash of memory: A year ago, crumpled on the dirty tile, sprawled among wrecked shelving, screaming, snot and blood coating his chin as he clutched a leg bent the wrong way. His flame-edged mask was askew and his white jumpsuit was in tatters, stained red with blood and cranberry juice. His flame-rig had been torn off and tossed aside; it was dented and broken, spritzing fuel in the corner. He was sticky from spilled soda, peppered with shards of Doritos and splattered with mashed Twinkies. A black clad figure stood over him, growling, metal studded gloves creaking into monstrous fists.

  The memory burned.

  Goddamn Cowl.

  He set his foot down, wary, testing the feeling, waiting for the twinge, the pain. None came. He put his weight on it, carefully stood on it, looked up and caught Mr. Duc watching, a flick of a smile quickly gone, his eyes skipping away.

  Billy boiled over.

  “The fuck are you smiling at?” He whipped a handful of cash across the counter.

  Duc flinched back, his arms up. He stumbled into the racks behind him, spilling a colorful avalanche of cigarette boxes and plastic Captain Awesome figures to the floor—muscled arms akimbo and star-spangled capes fluttering.

  Billy almost went over the counter right then. His hands itched to throttle the stupid old bastard right then and there, but he didn’t trust his knee to make the leap, or to do much else these days. If I had my rig and my mask, Billy thought, breathing angry blasts through his nose, I’d burn you and your little shithole to cinders, old man.

  But he didn’t, and he needed money to fix that, money people like Duc would provide, so he let his breathing slow, let his anger ebb away. He glanced at the bank bag with its sad little bundle of wrinkled bills. It was nothing, some ones, some fives, a few ratty twenties. Time was, a score like this would have been beneath him, barely worth the strong arming. Times change. Billy had only been outta stir a few days, he was getting desperate. The plain truth of it was he just couldn’t hack this bullshit loser life, waiting in line, this nothing existence.

  He needed to get back out there.

  He needed his name back. And the key to getting his name back was his flame rig and his mask. And in order to get that, he needed money, a lot of money, which meant he needed to be careful, because the cops were out in force tonight.

  The cops and The Cowl had long been allies. They couldn’t publicly support him, of course: they investigated him, they chased him, yeah, but it was all show. They relied on him; he crossed lines they couldn’t. So when word of The Cowl’s death hit the streets, the cops came out hard, hunting with fist and truncheons. Billy had seen them on the way over, rousting easy marks, dragging snitches from their holes, and kicking apart the tent cities nestled under the overpasses. Everybody was hitting the side of a squad car tonight.

  So Billy needed to be careful, because heat was another thing he couldn’t afford right now—at least, not until he could afford to provide a little heat of his own…

  Smiling, Heh, yeah…

  His smile faded, But for that, I need money… you son of bitch, Felix. He took a s
teadying breath. Just a little bit more, he thought, just a little bit more and I can pay that bastard off, get my flame rig back and then… then I’m gonna climb up outta this gutter. He smiled again. No more civvie-life bullshit, no more scrounging, and living like a rat among hawks. Billy Torch back on top. Respected. Feared.

  A flash of memory just then: leaning out the open side of Big Time’s helicopter, buffeted by the whomp-whomp-whomp of the big rotors. His flame-edged white jumpsuit snapped in the wind as the neatly bound stacks of gold bars gleamed behind him, clinking and sliding with the swoop and turn of the aircraft. A crackling jet of flame blasted from the chromed nozzle of his flamethrower, thunderous, scorching the air. He was ecstatic, screaming defiance, screaming guttural victory, as Ms. Missile slowly tumbled back to earth, trailing a plume of black smoke down into the warren of buildings below.

  Oh yeah, those were the salad days, a contented sigh.

  He watched the bills flutter down around Mr. Duc, a twirling paper storm, sticking to the old man’s sweat slick skin and fly-away hair. “This week’s a pass.” Billy pointed around at the little drifts of money, edges flapping in the air conditioned breeze, and then leveled a finger at Duc. “Next week?” He shook his head. “No passes.”

  Duc nodded, sweat-shiny and swallowing, and Billy felt a second twinge in his knee—the damp always played havoc with the injury—but this time he smiled. The little things, he thought, watching Mr. Duc cringe, you gotta appreciate the little things.

  * * * * *

  THE ESCAPE (7 DAYS AGO)

  The Sick Man had been locked away for years, kept in a dank cell in a sub-basement far beneath the dark rock of Black Maw Prison. There he stewed. He screamed. He raved and lurched and paced in his tiny cement square, his skin blistering and oozing, chained into a steel cable strait jacket twenty-four hours a day.

  They never let him out. He was fed protein paste from a fire hose. No one ever got close to him. Not the guards, not the prisoners. The warden wouldn’t allow it.

  The clean-up cost way too much.

  Inhumane, the Sick Man’s lawyers claimed—this concerning a guy who once ate a baby on live TV—inhumane. They demanded the prison loosen his restraints, at least for an hour. One single hour, they said, every day, one hour where he could eat, exercise, or use the computers, maybe even get his GED. They finally got a judge to agree and the word whispered on the street was: blackmail.

  The locks on the Sick Man’s cell clanked and thudded and rolled back.

  Six guards eased in, wary and walking on the balls of their feet. A squad of containment officers waited in the hall beyond, clad in their gleaming armor, crowded together and sweating beneath the layers of ceramic and steel.

  The Sick Man squatted at the back of his cell, twitching and growling, his strait jacket stained and crusty from his own blood and infection. He watched their careful approach, their batons crackling with arcs of electric blue. He could hear a plastic Spork rattling on the lunch tray the last guard carried. The Sick Man cracked a smile, his face a red ruin, the skin splitting at the corners of his mouth, seeping.

  “Don’t you move, shit bird,” the guards warned. “Don’t you move!”

  They undid his restraints, buckles tinkling and falling loose.

  And the Sick Man burst up, a blur, suddenly free.

  The cell door banged shut.

  Inside: muffled screams. Muted banging. Thuds and splashes. Then: alarms. Flashing lights and running feet. Rattling gunfire. There were screams and the deep thud of fists to flesh and laughter, rending meat and dark laughter. Outside, the ground shook. A fiery fist punched up at the sky, tearing through glass and steel, a hail of debris raining down. Black Maw Prison cracked open; a sagging, flaming ruin.

  Lunatics, thieves and murderers ran cackling into the night.

  The Sick Man climbed over the rubble, klaxons blaring all around him, dusty gravel falling from his shoulders, his strait jacket hanging in flapping tatters. He leaned back, arms spread and howled his wild celebration up into the night sky.

  Glowing in the distance, the city beckoned to him. The Sick Man stared at the tantalizing riot of light that laced the horizon’s edge. He stared; a cool breeze caressed his feverish brow, venomous desire twisting around inside of him.

  Years, it had been years, and now, free at last, he vowed to make the city his.

  * * * * *

  NOW

  The city was gray and wet.

  It pissed cool water, never enough to soak, just a slow mist, constant and damp. It had been raining all day, all week, and a hazy veil draped the skyline.

  Billy flipped up his collar and limped out onto the sidewalk.

  It wasn’t long before he was cursing himself for parking so damn far away, his knee was worse with each step. Soon he was gritting his teeth, splashing in the wide oil-sheened puddles. He could feel his knee grind, his eyes watered from the pain. The trains rumbled and clacked overhead, a migraine building like a thunderhead behind his right eye. What the hell had he been thinking; parking by his first stop was just poor planning. Next time, he promised himself, he would park down here by Duc’s, walk up to Benny’s Pharmacy and make his collections while his knee was fresh. Then, when he was done, the car would be right there.

  That was a fantastic idea. Fantastic.

  His hip had started to ache, his limp becoming more and more pronounced. It will be so nice to sit down, he thought, breathing through his nose, concentrating on each step, so nice. Just a bit farther.

  A shower of pebbles clattered the long and lonely fall down the side of a building. They echoed and bounced and splashed.

  Billy froze, alarms going off in his head.

  The 9:30 express blasted by overhead, a thunderous cacophony ratcheting down the tracks, flashing lights and throwing sparks. It rumbled and roared and screeched, and then it was gone. The street was left hushed and empty again.

  Billy scanned around, wary and alert.

  Nothing. The pavement was shiny black and wet, gleaming with the flashing red, yellow and green of the stoplights. A lone car rolled through a distant intersection.

  It looked like he was alone, but it didn’t feel that way.

  Billy had forgotten all about his knee. His nerves were alive and thrumming. He squinted, trying to pierce the inky drape of shadows. His head cocked, listening. He could feel it, his shoulders hunched, eyes in the dark, close by, watching. The buildings loomed over the narrow streets and the elevated train tracks, three or four stories up, all shrouded in deep black shadows. Something scuffled through grit and gravel far above and another scatter of pebbles fell to the street.

  Billy swallowed, he knew what this was. Oh yeah, he knew was this was, but it can’t be, it was impossible, there’s no way…

  The Cowl is dead.

  Another train thundered above him, clickety-clack-clickety-clack, slowing, rolling into the station down the street. Brakes screeched, lights stuttered and flashed. Sparks fell in a hot orange rain, hissing in the wet streets and banishing the shadows, illuminating the corners and alcoves, illuminating a dark figure standing in a doorway.

  Right there in front of him.

  Flashing red goggles.

  Oh, shit. Billy spun and ran down the street. He hobbled. Oh, shit. His aching knee caught up to him. He limped in long lurching strides, hurrying. Oh, shit. It can’t be. The Sick Man said he killed Cowl. He said he killed him and ate him.

  His car was just ahead, parked on the other side of the alley.

  Shit…come on…

  The alley was so black it was like a hole in the universe. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. If he stopped, his knee would give out. He was so close to safety. He was almost there; he could see his car waiting at the curb. He threw himself into a flailing, stumbling run, fumbling his rattling keys from his pocket.

  Something grabbed his coat. His collar went tight, choking him. He squawked as he was pulled off his feet, dropping his keys as he was yanked back into the
dark.

  * * * * *

  THE PARTY (5 DAYS AGO)

  Billy was fresh out of the joint, cut loose early from a year-long stint for armed robbery, when he ran into The Cowl.

  He had been coming out of the bathroom, head down and dragging up his zipper, the TV over the bar going on about the Sick Man’s recent escape. Word on the street said The Cowl was on the hunt, busting up the underworld in that sudden terrible way he does. First the breaking glass, splintered wood and a haze of smoke, then the black clad fury of hobnailed boots, fists like granite, and hard barked questions.

  That’s never a good time.

  The villain scene was tense, everybody was jumpy and gearing up for a fight, which meant an ambitious young tough like himself might be able to find some work if he kept an ear out and knew where to look.

  And Billy Torch was a guy who knew where to look.

  Tomorrow, he had been thinking, tomorrow I’ll call Felix and start putting my gear back together. Maybe I’ll look up the Deadly Elements and see if anyone’s around, maybe Frigid will want to grab a drink or two. Maybe she’ll finally put out.

  “Billy Torch.” It was a growl, instantly recognizable, and Billy stopped cold. He looked, suddenly seeing the destruction around him, suddenly hearing the anguished cries and groans, suddenly seeing the scatter of bloody bodies, beaten and flung about.

  The Cowl squatted on the bar, a monster man wrapped in creaking black leather, his red goggles flashing. “How’s the knee?”

  “Aw… crap,” Billy said, shoulders sagging.

  The Cowl lunged at him, a metal-studded fist swooping in.