by Scott Young
“Leave it. I want to watch all of them,” Luongo said.
Just then, Harmony came in with the food. She didn’t say a word as she placed it in front of Luongo before quickly retreating to her outer office. Luongo absent-mindedly opened the take-out container and began to eat the pieces of steak inside with his hands. He said with a mouth full of food, “Give me a minute here, Tommy. Go wash your hands or something.”
In the office bathroom, McCabe splashed water on his face, blankly staring into the mirror at the ragged, old stranger looking back at him. He couldn’t help but wonder if Luongo bought his story. If he didn’t, Tommy figured there was no way he’d be leaving that building alive. He was starting to think Margaret was right. Sooner or later, a mad dog has to be put down; it’s just a matter of time before his keepers decide he’s outlived his usefulness. He splashed more water on his face and when Tommy looked in the mirror again, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Harmony was standing right behind him, over his right shoulder.
“Jesus! You scared the shit outta me! What are you doing in here?” Tommy whispered, trying to cover his embarrassment.
Harmony moved closer, and then kissed him deeply. His body responded to her lips instantly. He grabbed her, pushed her against the wall and pressed his body against hers. She met his passion equally, moving her hands over his body like a concert pianist, hitting just the right keys. As his desire rose, threatening to explode right out of him, she bit his left ear hard enough to cause Tommy to cry out. As the pain radiated through his ear, she pushed him away with both arms. Once again, they locked eyes and Tommy felt his world slip away.
“Raise your game, Thomas,” Harmony said. “Forget your past. Become the man you want to be.”
“McCabe! Get in here! Now!” Tommy heard Lucifer Luongo shout from the other room.
“Two Fists” moved past Harmony and back into the office. He was almost in a fugue state, walking across the room by pure instinct. He sat rigidly in the chair, looking at his boss through vacant eyes. He barely noticed that Digger, who was grinning like a hyena, was back from the conference room.
“Hey! You there, my man?” Luongo asked jokingly.
“Absolutely, boss,” Tommy said unconvincingly.
“Okay, listen up because I’ve given this some thought and I’ve come to a decision.” Luongo stood and began pacing. “It’s like this: I want you to be more than just another employee, more than a fixer for me, Tommy. I want you to be my right hand. The person who helps me get this organization running the way I want it to run, need it to run.
I think you’re the man for the job. You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty and you’re loyal to the family. That’s important.”
The boss came over to Tommy, placing the work bag in McCabe’s hands as he stared into his eyes. “But it’s equally important that you be loyal to me. Can you do that, Tommy? Can you be loyal to me? I need someone I can trust to do what needs to be done. To do anything that needs to be done.” Luongo went back to his chair behind his desk before saying, “Get me?”
Tommy’s world began to become clearer, more vivid. His head finally cleared and the magnitude of Luongo’s message sunk in. The fixer knew this was an all or nothing proposition. He could be 2nd in command of the country’s biggest crime syndicate or he could decide to walk away. Harmony’s words echoed in his mind: “Become the man you want to be.”
Without saying a word or changing expression, Tommy stood and walked toward the door. Just as he passed Digger’s chair, he pulled out a scalpel and cut his partner’s throat ear to ear. Salvatore DiSalvo grabbed his throat with both hands as blood gushed from the wound. He fell to his knees, eyes wide and wild. He looked unbelievingly at both men before collapsing to the floor, the pool of blood under his head growing quickly.
“I absolutely get you, boss,” Tommy finally said.
“Excellent, Thomas. Truly excellent,” Luongo responded as Harmony stood next to him, smiling. The crime lord took another handful of steak from the container and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing loudly. He then lit another cigar, took a mighty drag on it and exhaled the smoke up to the ceiling. Lucifer Luongo rose, walked over to Tommy and put his arm around the fixer. “You’ve had a long day, my man. Go home now, get some rest. I expect you back in the morning. It’s time we remade this syndicate in our own image.”
“Absolutely. Good night, boss,” Tommy said with a smile before heading out of the office.
From his desk chair Lucifer Luongo could hear the elevator doors close, carrying Tommy “Two Fists” McCabe to the ground floor. Only then did he move the furniture away from the center of the room as easily as a child moves building blocks. When the middle was empty except for the body of Salvatore DiSalvo, Luongo began to speak in tongues not of this world. Harmony joined with a low guttural chant behind him. The crime boss placed his hands in the pool of blood surrounding the body, spreading it all over his face before tasting each finger slowly. The irises of his eyes turned red as he continued his ancient incantation. The lights flickered throughout the building as his voice rose. The blood pool began to boil, like oil in a hot skillet.
Slowly a gnarled, boil-coated hand emerged from the blood. It was more like a claw, with sharp nails, pointed knuckles and covered with a fine layer of something that looked like pus. Defying the laws of physics, the hand dug its nails into the floor until the rest of the arm sprang free from the puddle of blood. Then up from the pool emerged a face of pure evil, with reptilian features, a horn above each pointed ear and snake-like eyes glowing red under a protruding brow. The back of its skull was encrusted with living parasites that undulated in their own twisted dance, feeding off the host. The creature’s mouth was lupine in nature, with sharp rows of teeth behind snarling, cracked lips. Its tongue darted out of its mouth, licking the blood from its countenance as it continued to climb. It crawled out of the blood like a spider, its spine, arms and legs twisted in unimaginable ways as it moved across the floor. Every inch of it was covered in slime, maggots and rotting flesh. The demonic creature stopped in front of Lucifer Luongo and grew, rising to its full size before bowing its head in reverence.
“Yes, Botis, rise and take your place on Earth with your brethren,” Luongo said, touching the creature on the top of its head.
Almost faster than the eye could follow, the demon shrank down and skittered over to the body of Salvatore DiSalvo. The creature burrowed its way in through the slit in the dead man’s throat, causing the body to convulse for several moments. When the demon was fully ensconced, it steadied itself and stood in its new form. The wound created when Tommy cut Digger’s throat was gone, replaced with a small, thin scar. The Digger/demon amalgam smiled deviously and licked the blood off its new, human hands with vigor.
Luongo raised his hands to the sky and shouted, “Our time is come. Each day our numbers grow until we are legion and we will rule this world.”
At 3:25am, Tommy McCabe sat in his living room staring at the frozen image on his computer screen. He held the two hinge pins from Hector Guerrero’s closet door in his left hand, constantly rotating them over and over again like a pair of Chinese Stress Relief Balls. He’d been staring at the image for the better part of an hour now, since he finally gave up on trying to get some sleep. After what he’d been through today, an inability to sleep would seem normal, but it wasn’t Harmony, Lucifer Luongo, Hector Guerrero, Digger DiSalvo or even poor, unfortunate Sandra Westhoff that was keeping him awake.
It was this video image from the only flash drive he hadn’t given to Lucifer Luongo that kept him from peaceful slumber. This drive contained the most important video of them all for Tommy. It provided the explanation to all the questions he’d been unable to answer that day. As was usually the case, that resolution presented a whole host of other, more disturbing questions. McCabe closed the file, got up to leave but then paused.
He walked to the door leading out to his garage and opened it. He stared at the large, freezer in the corner of
the garage that was now home to Sandra Westhoff’s body. A little insurance for the coming days, he thought to himself before returning to the study and sitting back down in front of the computer. He started the video again.
The image of Hector Guerrero’s dingy apartment came into view again. The Senator’s daughter was lying on the bed where he’d found her. Hector Guerrero was sitting next to her trying to wake her up, offering her lines of cocaine from a small mirror. The timestamp showed this video was from earlier in the day, a little while after his erstwhile partner raped and killed Sandra Westhoff.
That’s when things take a surprising turn. The bedroom window was suddenly smashed in, causing Hector to throw his arms up to protect his face. The mirror and coke landed on his head, showering him with the white powder. A man came in the window, rushed Hector and promptly punched him in the face, knocking the pimp out and off the bed. He quickly injected Hector with something, probably a sedative, so the pimp stayed unconscious. The stranger was dressed in something that looked like blue battle armor, definitely Kevlar of some kind, equipped with multiple holsters holding a variety of high-tech, automatic guns and other weapons.
Tommy had never seen this man before but he knew who he was from reputation. He called himself “Hardline,” a mercenary/ bounty hunter who never took a job that didn’t fit his very narrow definition of right and wrong, hence the codename. The fixer had seen his handiwork around town for the past 5 or 6 months and the guy was a pro. The merc had definitely begun to draw the attention of Don Gravanzano by disrupting syndicate business on numerous occasions. In fact, the problems Hardline was causing the syndicate was one of the reasons Lucifer Luongo was brought in to replace the former Don.
The mercenary checked Sandra Westhoff for a pulse. Tommy could see him curse when he realized she was dead, just as he had. As he turned to leave, Hardline was distracted by something to his left and he moved towards the closet, pausing the porn movie as he did. Tommy watched him remove the door and place it to the side. Tommy stared at the hinge pins in his hand.
From out of the wardrobe crawled a thin, white female dressed in pink shorts and a stained yellow halter top. The girl had long, dyed-blonde, curly hair, big brown eyes and the all-too-familiar look of a junkie. McCabe recognized her as one of the women from the photo he found in the cookie tin. She looked around, confused, and then saw the senator’s daughter. She rushed to her side and tried to revive Sandra, repeatedly asking the man for help.
The gun for hire simply ignored her, heading to the window again, but before he could make it onto the fire escape, the girl from the closet grabbed his belt. She seemed to be pleading with him. He angrily said something to her and left the way he came. The girl sat next to Sandra and began to cry, her body shaking so hard it kept the motion-activated webcam running. Less than two minutes later, Hardline came back and offered the girl his hand.
This was the clearest shot of his face on the entire video and Tommy once again froze the image. He already knew that this bounty hunter and the girl left together. The fixer checked with his contacts in the police department so he knew she wasn’t dropped off at any precinct, hospital or shelter. He also knew they were the only two living witnesses that could place Sandra Westhoff in that apartment. As he stared intently at the image on his computer screen, Tommy “Two Fists” McCabe also knew one final thing:
The mercenary called Hardline was his son, Chris.
THE END
THICKER
THAN WATER
Emily Sheppard had already screamed her throat raw by the time her captor returned.
Emily always considered herself a survivor, managing to overcome quite a bit in her three plus decades on Earth: an abusive father, dysfunctional family, financial struggles, numerous bad relationships, a pain killer addiction and even an ovarian cancer scare a few years back. Through it all, Emily kept telling herself better days were ahead, even if she couldn’t quite believe it. Once she met Kurt, Emily routinely said the hard times were simply the dues she had to pay before getting to have his love in her life. The last eighteen months were better than she ever hoped for, but a part of her, the cynical, damaged girl she’d been for so long, was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She never dreamed that drop would be this precipitous.
The 33-year-old, part-time hostess was now trapped in a nightmare she could never have imagined, even at her lowest, darkest moments. When she left the restaurant where she’d worked for the past four years, exhausted from a long day on her feet, all she could think of was getting home. Some of her coworkers were heading out for a quick drink and some laughs, but she begged off, preferring a nice cup of tea and Kurt’s waiting arms. While unlocking her Ford Focus, Emily thought she heard someone call her name from far away. That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in this room completely nude, suspended upside down from the ceiling by ankle restraints. Her wrists were also bound together, tied to some kind of spike, which was hammered into the concrete floor. Barely ten seconds after regaining consciousness, she screamed for the first time.
After her initial panic subsided, Emily steadied herself, spending the first few hours in a desperate attempt to get free. It was difficult to think straight with the blood rushing to her head, but she valiantly kept trying. Eventually she realized the futility of it all. She broke down and began weeping uncontrollably before passing out again. She awoke to a new problem: she needed to use the bathroom. When she reached the point of bursting, unable to hold it any longer, her urine ran down the front of her body, settling on her face and in her hair as she once again cried like a toddler. Besides being one of the most humiliating moments of her life, relieving herself in that position was tangible evidence this wasn’t all just some horrible dream. Now even that unlikely comfort had been taken away from her and an even greater dread closed around her heart.
As if he recognized her weakening resolve, Emily’s captor chose that moment to enter for the first time. He wore a full face mask similar to those worn by executioners during medieval beheadings. Only his eyes were visible through asymmetrical holes cut in the fabric, and those dark orbs chilled her to the core. She choked out the word “why” before he hosed her down for the first of many times, causing her to choke as the water filled her nose and mouth. She thought she was going to die right there before it stopped and she could finally breathe again, coughing and gasping for air. He was gone without uttering a single sound.
Her kidnapper kept her in that simple, windowless, 10 x 10 room for days with no heat, light or other amenities, such as food and water. Her only nourishment came via an intravenous drip hanging from the ceiling attached to a vein near her ankle, so it wouldn’t get contaminated by her excretions. She spent most of the first few days falling in and out of unconsciousness due to both her inverted position and the machinations of her tormentor. After the first 24 hours, he would periodically come into the room to torture Emily, always keeping his face hidden. Emily quickly grew to despise the sight of that face mask with a hatred so all-consuming it surprised even herself.
Always in complete silence, her captor made superficial but precise incisions all over her body, cutting just deep enough for blood to stream down her naked form. He stood in mute awe as it flowed over her hips, breasts and buttocks, never saying a word. The madman never took his eyes off her, staring at the patterns the dripping blood made as it cascaded down her body. Despite not wanting to give him the satisfaction, she could hear his breath quicken and feel his excitement grow with each scream, moan or sob she eventually uttered. The son of a bitch would wait for her to lose consciousness before stitching her wounds and hosing her off once again.
Emily thought of Kurt often in those early days, drawing on their love for the strength to go on. She was determined to see him again, to somehow escape from this unnamed level of Hell in which she found herself. Hoping to piece together an escape plan, she began looking for normal patterns in this surreal, insane set of circumstances. She strained
to hear any sound that might be a clue as to where she was being held. But she didn’t even hear the wind or rain. As the days dragged on she noticed her captor only tortured her at night. At least she thought it was night by the drop in temperature before and during his visits. Did this bastard have a 9 to 5 job, pretending to be a nice, normal person instead of what he was: a deranged lunatic? Did he have formal medical training? The precision of his cuts and the meticulous stitching of the wounds made her think so. None of these disparate facts helped her form even a rudimentary picture of her attacker. That reality left her dispirited, chipping away at any remaining hope of survival.
As the same sick scenario played out over and over, day after day, Emily lost her will to live, unable to focus on anything but the pain radiating from every inch of her skin. Her demented keeper spent long hours cutting her and watching her bleed never saying a single word to her when she shrieked curses at him through gritted teeth. Before long, all she wanted was to retreat inside herself in a desperate attempt to get away from his cold, inhuman eyes constantly staring, always staring. The only thing she had left to look forward to was the moment she inevitably lost consciousness, managing to escape his glare for a little while.
After one such encounter, Emily woke up on the floor, no longer suspended but still restrained at the ankles and wrists. As she lay there on the cold, hard concrete, she couldn’t escape the stench of the fetid, waste-filled puddles scattered on the ground from her multiple cleanings. Even though she was still shackled, she could run her fingers over the vast multitude of stitched incisions all over her body. She’d lost so much blood it seemed incomprehensible that she could still be alive. Her belly ached from hunger and her throat was raw from both dehydration and her continuous screaming. She felt as weak and helpless as a newborn infant.
