Thrilling Hard-Boiled Detective ComicsScott Brothers
The dick is barely alive. His strong, jutting jaw line, angular to a
fault, rests upon his chest in utter defeat. The dick is slackening. The
dick is soft. He is flaccid. The private dick, Rex Holdem, bound with
rope to a steel pipe in the belly of an abandoned factory at the very
edge of the outskirts of the City, having barely weathered a beating
that was nearly―but not quite―what one would call savage,
at the hands of Mr. Black’s burly, dumb-as-doorknobs henchmen, his
blackened eye closed over, the bluish-purple skin-stain spreading
outwards, his upper lip cut and bloated, his grizzled face sagging
beneath a ragged Fedora, is silent save for an occasional moan that
slips from his gaping mouth. It was as if his face were putty that had
been reshaped, worked into something less than human, a monstrous visage
that replaced what women often referred to as ‘rugged good looks’.
Egads! he is easily taken apart, surmises the villain, Mr. Black.
Mr. Black has seen his share of private dicks, but this one was the
weakest willed of the bunch, begging not to be hit, splayed out upon his
knees looking upwards at the villain, pleading, his hands clasped
together, Mr. Black―a dwarf―seemed to tower above Rex. Mr. Black,
dressed in his most appealing white suit, not wishing it to be bloodied,
(he had had his share of immaculate white suits ruined completely by
blood stains that refused to leave the fabric (plus Mr. Black always
felt awkward when he brought the suits to the dry cleaner, as if the dry
cleaner was owed an explanation for the regular occurrence of blood
stains in the fabric)) unleashing the brute strength of his henchmen
upon this particular private dick. Soon: Mr. Black will tell the dick of
his awful plan, as elaborate and lengthy as it is, then he will shoot
Rex dead―one bullet through the back of the head, as is his style, the
M.O. of which every citizen of the great City was familiar with thanks
to the flesh-hounds of the tabloids. Besides, the dick isn’t going
anywhere anytime soon and Mr. Black is all too happy to explain the
complexities of his plan; this was one of the fringe benefits of being a
villain―flaunting his power and the extent to which he could wield it.
Rex Holdem attempts to lift his head. The world is awash in Technicolor;
objects are rendered in garish, lurid halftones, which ferret out the
details that lie beneath.
Lucy Marigold hides behind a cluster of pipes, biding her time―biting
her nails. Crimson-lipped, a woman governed only by the will not to be
governed, is she. Lucy holds her 357 Magnum close to her chest, her
finger lingering over the trigger. She has a .38 Special tied to her
left calf, a Berretta down the back of her linen pants and a .45 stashed
in the front of her bra, nestled carefully between her breasts (look at
the guns on that dame!), the latitudes of her body having become
a haven for concealed weapons. She is waiting to hear Mr. Black ’s
plan. If Lucy can save the private dick in the process then so be it,
although Rex Holdem is not her main concern. It is Mr. Black she is
really after; it is he Lucy wants to kill. But first, the plan; it was
essential that she discovered the architecture of Mr. Black’s revered
scheme so as to exploit it later, then she would make her move. Mr.
Black takes his time. He talks at great length about the months and
weeks leading up to the plan, the preparation that actually went into
making the plan a reality. That is the real secret, Mr. Black
pontificates as he paces back and forth, the structure of the plan―the
organization, all of the behind-the-scenes arrangements that makes a
plan such as his so diabolical, so utterly foul. That was the biggest
mistake other criminals made when it came to the hatching of the plan.
That all the angles weren’t worked out. All of the possible holes in the
plan not sealed up completely, making it water proof, or rather, fool
proof. The plan was proof he was no fool; the proof
was in the pudding, as it were! What was a plan if weren’t solid through
and through? Mr. Black asks Rex rhetorically. Mr. Black had also
conceived of a back up plan if the main plan failed, a plan that was as
good as the main plan and that was as painstakingly crafted. Mr. Black
remarks that he wouldn’t reveal the specifics of the back up plan now,
only at such time that the main plan failed. Rex Holdem begins to slip
in and out of consciousness. To Rex, Mr. Black’s grand monologue had
become, at times, a string of garbled words, devoid of meaning. This,
unfortunately, was a possibility that Mr. Black had not thought of: his
henchmen beating Rex Holdem so badly that he would not be able to fully
comprehend the depth of his amazing plan, a plan so rich in detail and
nuance, that he would surely be remembered in criminal circles as a
genius of plan making, that his formal eloquence in this regard was
without equal, his was a plan in which innovation and
originality were the key words, and it was this plan that was about
to be revealed, word for word, which Rex Holdem knew he would be unable
to digest without a great deal of work on his part. Lucy waits
patiently. Her time would arrive―eventually. Mr. Black finally completes
the prologue to his plan. "And…now…" he says, drawing out every
syllable, plucking them tenderly as if strings on a violin. He pauses to
regard the dick’s beleaguered countenance, then lights a cigarette,
taking a long, leisurely drag. Lucy suddenly realizes that she has to
urinate very badly.
"Have you ever been hypnotized?"
"No."
"Not even on stage, in a nightclub act?"
"No."
"Could it be you were and you don ’t remember because
you’ve been told through the process of hypnotism to forget that you
had, at one point, been hypnotized?"
"Well, I guess. Anything ’s possible."
"Yes, yes it is. We are here to help you regain you ’re memory.
Memory is an illusive thing. It can be very slippery. In your case,
you’ve lost your grasp of it completely. I want to help you. I want to
help you get it back, your memory that is. I want to help you place all
of the pieces together. That is what we have now, Rex. Pieces to a very
intricate puzzle. Wouldn’t you agree?"
"I think so…"
"Rex, I want you close your eyes. Relax."
"Relax?"
"Yes, relax. Now, I want you to count backwards from 10.
Ready? Begin."
"10…9…8…7…"
Mr. Black, more than anything, wished to extricate himself from the
villain business. He was becoming old and crime was so often a young
person ’s game. Mr. Black wanted no part of fooling himself into
believing that he could still wield power the way he once did. Moreover
the entire enterprise of being a criminal was itself becoming, in a
word, old. Mr. Black no longer took the pleasure he once did in
illegal activities, in exercising his considerable power over the City’s
criminal underground and, as of late, he had been burdened with an
illness that left him tired most of the time. He longed for fulfillment
of a less life-endangering kind. He wanted to help people; he wanted to
make people happy, a notion that had blossomed since he anonymously
gifted thousands of dollars to a local orphanage. Perhaps philanthropy
was an endeavor that he could fully embrace, a field in which he could
exact real, fundamental change. Mr. Black considered his nature
ambulatory in this regard; his advanced age had revealed as much. The
very idea that libraries, institutions for higher learning, etcetera,
could all bear similar gold plaques proclaiming that their very
existence was indebted to the boundless generosity of Mr. Black, that he
would be remembered for his work in these areas, not helping to forge
the City’s criminal underground, gave much happiness to Mr. Black. Yes,
he would do it! He could remake himself; reinvent himself, his prior
aberrational behavior notwithstanding. People with fewer resources than
he―often no resources―did such things every day. Those in his
employ would surely not be grateful for his sudden change of heart, they
might even resent him to the extent of trying to kill him (not that that
was anything new, as the City’s greatest villain his life was constantly
endangered by those representing good and those evil), but surely they
could all find new work with whom ever sought to replace him, those of
which were plentiful indeed, so many crime bosses vying for the position
of the king of the City’s vast underworld of crime, that their
precipitous ascents would no doubt be marked with a fair amount of
bloodshed.
Mr. Black rises from his bed and moves fluidly toward the balcony
doors of his massive bedroom, maneuvering easily into a soft, cobalt
blue velvet robe that is draped over an oversized chair. He throws open
his balcony doors, as if he were a character in a movie, the president
of a small county, eager citizens awaiting his appearance in the streets
below. He leans over the balcony looking down upon the vast metropolis
that held so much promise. Mr. Black thinks to notate this moment as a
crucial turning point, the defining moment of his life, significant
enough to warrant an entire chapter in his forthcoming memoir. This sort
of revelation always made for good reading.
Rex Holdem is sitting in the waiting room of his dentist ’s
office, thumbing through aging copies of Redbook and Field and
Stream. He had lost a few teeth during his prior run-in with Mr.
Black’s henchmen; more specifically when he ran into their fists.
Rex was surprised that his teeth were the only pieces of himself that he
had lost; he had been close to death, positive that Mr. Black was going
to kill him right then and there, in the abandoned warehouse on the
outskirts of town. Mr. Black had tied Rex with coarse, itchy rope,
dangling him over a vat of acid, lowering the besieged gumshoe a few
inches every so often, no doubt to heighten the tension of the entire
situation. Mr. Black, a tall, lanky fellow, a freakish giant as
Rex called him under whispered breath, was about to reveal his evil plan
when Rex blacked out, probably from the beating he had received at the
hands of Mr. Black’s henchmen. Rex awoke sometime later in a junkyard
then hitchhiked back to the city. Thankfully, he had fairly good medical
and dental coverage, which, for a PI such as he, was hard to come by.
Rex had been searching his mind for some clue as to what had happened
between the moment he blacked out above the vat of acid and awoke in the
junkyard, his body dull with pain. Had Mr. Black changed his mind about
killing him? Had someone rescued him at the last moment? Rex tongued the
holes where several of his teeth once resided, the naked gums feeling
slick and unwelcoming to the habitual probing. A Muzak version of
Muskrat Love played from a location that was not obvious from Rex’s
vantage point. There were three other people in the waiting room with
him: A woman in her forties―her skin worn and slack from too much time
in the sun―was flipping through an issue of Cosmopolitan; a man
of some girth, even though he was small of stature, whom some people
might refer to as a dwarf or a little person, dressed in a
dark blue seersucker suit, wearing dark sunglasses that appeared more
like a space-age visor of some sort, a cane at his side, sat impatiently
in his chair, constantly thumping the top of his cane with the palm of
his hand; a teenager, as surly-looking as they come, his hair unkempt,
his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest , stared downward, his
eyes fixed on the floor, never diverting their gaze. The receptionist at
the front counter calls for a Ms. Learner. The woman reading the issue
Cosmopolitan rises, almost giddily, and is then ushered through a
door and down a narrow hallway. The man in the black suit suddenly grabs
his cane, moving awkwardly toward the door, throwing a quick glance at
Rex. Rex experiences a flash of recognition; the man with the cane
seemed familiar; had Rex met this man before? Rex was sure of it, what
was that sensation―Deja Vu? The man leaves the waiting room,
exiting through the glass double doors; all the while Rex watches his
truncated frame amble down the hallway. Was there something to this
sensation? Rex wondered. Rex springs from his chair, informing the
receptionist that he would be in the restroom, worried that he might
miss his appointment, the receptionist in turn nods slowly, one eyebrow
cocked above the other as if to say, why are you telling me that
you’re going to the restroom, I don’t need to know your bodily functions,
and then Rex is out the double doors, not really sure why he was
perusing the man in the dark suit, what he would do once he caught up to
him. Rex calls out to him, Hey, you, wait! but the man in the
dark suit doesn’t respond, he doesn’t even flinch, as if he hadn’t heard
Rex at all. Rex calls after him again. Still the man doesn’t respond.
Maybe he’s deaf, Rex thinks. Rex finally catches up to the man in the
dark suit, he is just behind him, ready to grab the man’s arm when Rex
looses his legs, that is to say his legs loose him, they fall out
from underneath him, as if giving way―that’s what it feels like in those
initial seconds, that his legs no longer work―that they have forgotten
how to work with the rest of his body. But it is only when he has hit
the ground, tumbling on his side, his head coming down hard on the
floor, his jaw striking the ground first, the surge of pain great enough
to make him yelp, that Rex finally realizes he had been attacked from
behind, that someone had grabbed both of his legs. Rex rolls over,
moaning from the extreme pain surrounding his jaw and mouth. The surly
teenager from the waiting room looms above him. It was the kid! By God,
it was the kid that had attacked him! Wha th’ uck, wha th’ uck!
Rex screams over and over, cradling his mouth in his hand, his jaw
already swelling. The man in the dark suit is near him as well,
lingering at the very edge of Rex’s vision, barely perceptible, an odd
ocular occurrence that manifested a certain amount of dread within Rex.
Rex Holdem, what do you think you were doing? a voice says. Is
that the teenager speaking? No, his mouth doesn’t move. The surly
teenager reaches into his back pocket, producing a large switchblade,
the blade immediately unleashed, the sound it makes like a dynamic
onomatopoeia from the pages of a comic book: SWISH! Bad move,
Rex, the voice says again. The kid smiles for the first time, as if
mugging for a camera. He has no teeth. What the hell does he need a
dentist for? Rex wonders before kicking the kid in the crotch with one
of the wingtips he picked up two days prior from Lenny’s Shoe Repair on
First and Amsterdam.
Could I pass as a woman? A passageway to womanhood; would anyone make
a pass at my supposed womanliness? I situated the chestnut-brown wig
upon my head, maneuvering it into place. I used this same outfit as a
disguise several years back in case I was working, liked the way it
felt, liked the way my skin felt in it, and had, on occasion, worn it
again, around my apartment. Eventually, I began venturing beyond the
safety of my abode as a woman; the grocery store, the park, the bowling
alley, even to bars―the cigarette smoke so thick and alcohol available
in such great quantities that recognition of certain inaccuracies in my
portrayal became blurred. Lucy Marigold: this was the name I used on
these particular outings. My name, why it ’s Lucy Marigold, and
yes I would simply love a drink! I’d venture to a certain bar downtown,
one that throngs of private detectives frequented, including myself,
when I wasn’t dressed as a woman. It’s almost like a game now, to see if
I can fool them, to see if I can truly pass as a woman. I enter the bar;
my gaze leveled straight ahead. I sit at a table in a darkened corner,
the physicality of my every movement laced with what I perceive to be
the utter ease of femininity. Sure enough, there are many dicks here
tonight, large and small, all hoping for the same thing: some gorgeous
dame to saunter into their lives. And this is what I’d say: you don’t
want to get mixed up with me mister, I’m trouble.
Lucy Marigold is sitting behind her desk in a cramped office, flanked
on all sides by filing cabinets overflowing with paper work from old and
current cases. Organization never being her strong suit and having fired
her office manager for making several long distance phone calls of a
dubious nature, day-to-day operations of her small detective agency had
fallen into disrepair. The man who enters the office says that his name
is Rex Holdem, repeating the words several times in succession. He
appears as if he might have once been handsome, a trace of which
remained beneath a defeated façade; his back curved outward, shoulders
brought forward, his face sallow and unshaven, his clothes rumpled and
wrinkled so badly one might suspect that they were in such a state on
purpose, to prove a point, whatever that might be. The man is oddly
familiar to Lucy. Had they met somewhere? Had they been on a date
previously, the date so horrible that she had tried to bury the memory?
In the end Lucy avoids asking if they had met. . She had learned that in
this type of business you were never sure with whom you were dealing
with exactly, that some things were best left unspoken. "Please sit
down," Lucy offers, quickly averting her gaze, asserting it upon the
sheaves of paper work that lay across her desk. "I ’ll be brief,
Ms. Marigold. I think my wife is cheating on me. With this guy, Mr.
Black. But I want to be sure. I mean I suspect it is this fellow
that my wife is sleeping with." Rex Holdem shifts and fidgets in the
chair. "I just want you to know, Mr. Holdem, these types of situations
are never easy. You might think you are prepared for certain,
well, truths, but, once you have photographs of your wife and Mr.
Black together, once you have proof of their liaisons, it’s a
different story entirely. Another ball of wax." "I understand,"
Rex says plainly, obviously anxious to get started. Lucy was suddenly
aware of where she had seen Rex before. It was a few nights ago, in a
dream. Some hoodlum, his face undistinguishable, had tied up her and Rex
together, back to back. A gigantic table saw was slowly heading toward
them, the whole bizarre tableau established by the hoodlum in order to
make she and Rex talk, convinced that they both possessed some important
scrap of information. It was as an over-the-top scenario as you would
see in the movies. Of course, just before the blade of the saw was about
to slice the two of them in half, Lucy awoke. And now, here he was:
sitting across the desk from her, a more defeated-looking person she
could not remember meeting, the man of her dreams. That is to say, the
man in her dreams.
Lucy is crouched behind a stack of boxes watching the dangling dick
as he is lowered over a vat of boiling acid. Mr. Black was about to
reveal his plan; then―as he carefully explained to Rex Holdem―he would
lower the dick to his gruesome, painful death. This was it! Finally Lucy
would hear the plan. Then she would instigate her own plan; one
of certain revenge against Mr. Black. Unexpectedly, Mr. Black began
sneezing, at first sporadically then finally in great, prolonged bursts,
sending globs of phlegm and mucus in all directions. He sat on a small
wooden crate still sneezing, while each of his henchmen, Eddie Big Nose,
whose nose was exceedingly large —as the name
indicated—encapsulating most of his plump, reddened face, like a mutated
W.C. Fields and Vinnie the Vacant, a more indicative name there could
not be, withdrew a handkerchief from inside their sport coats.
Allergies, Mr. Black explained―the sneezing villain grabbing both
handkerchiefs then blowing his nose into them one after the other―always
got the better of him this time of year. Perhaps, Mr. Black offered,
they should resume the outlining of the plan and subsequent ghastly
killing sometime later, when the allergy attack subsided. As it was he
could not properly explain his elaborate plan to the pendulous PI, nor
could he enjoy Holdem’s ensuing death while his nose was slick with
snot, his eyes puffy and itchy. "Uh, should we take him down, boss?"
Vinnie the Vacant asked, scratching his bald cranium, looking stupidly
at the sneezing Mr. Black. "No, I want you to give him a big sloppy
kiss." to which the henchmen looked at one another, then up at Max
Holdem, then again at Mr. Black. "Yes, of course I want you to take him
down you morons! Take him down and tie him up until tomorrow. I’ll take
a couple of allergy pills and hopefully I will feel better." The
henchmen lower Rex Holdem from the ceiling. He is barely consciousness,
his solid body gone limp under the length of rope that encircled Rex
from his shoulder blades to just above his knees. Lucy is enraged. This
would mean that her plans for revenge would have to be put on hold for
another day. She couldn’t wait any longer. She wouldn’t wait any
longer. Lucy steps out from behind the stack of boxes, aims her .45 at
the henchmen and this is what she says: "Hold it. None of you are going
anywhere."
"6…5…4…"
Rex Holdem is being fired upon. Bullets whiz past him. One bullet
nicks his left ear, the pain instant, acute as a bee sting. Rex wasn ’t
entirely certain how he had come to this place. To this exact moment in
time. Before: there was blackness and now he was here. Unable to move.
Pinned down by a scourge of bullets, running out of ammunition. Rex
Holdem fires back at the criminals. (The Audience gasps.) He
hears a woman’s voice. She is shouting orders to her henchmen. Then she
speaks directly to Rex, saying that he has nowhere to go, which was
true. The gunfire ceases briefly. Rain begins to fall. Rex peers around
the trashcan that he is stooped behind. The woman and the two henchmen
move around behind two cars which block off the entrance to the alley.
Perhaps they are reloading their weapons. Perhaps they are trying to
make him sweat. The woman seems familiar. Had he met her before? Rex
wasn’t sure. There is a backdoor at the end of the alley. A single light
fixture hangs above the door, the bulb blinking on and off, the buzzing
sound of electricity intermittent. Had he already tried the door? Surely
he must have. (An Audience member cries out, "Check the door!")
The woman calls out to Rex again. She is saying that it is over,
over and over. Rex begins inching along the alley wall, making his way
toward the back door. He hears footsteps on the wet pavement, from
around the corner. They are closing in. A police siren screams in the
distance. Rex notices that he is bleeding from his leg. Had he been shot
previously and not realized it? He looks back over his shoulder. Shadows
move like liquid up the opposite wall of the alley. Rex is at the
backdoor. It is locked. He hears a voice from behind, a sound like
sandpaper working against a hard surface: "I see him". With as much
strength as he can gather, Rex throws the side of his body at the
backdoor and falls into darkness once more. (The Audience gasps
again, this time louder.)
Rex Holdem, the private dick, lingers near Mr. Black, occasionally
zapping him with a taser gun. Mr. Black crawls around on the concrete
floor of the abandoned warehouse by the docks, the distant sound of
foghorns occasionally penetrating the silence. "Are you going to tell me
now? Are you going to tell me your plan?" Rex Holdem sneers, leaning
down toward Mr. Black. "I don ’t know what plan you’re talking
about! I have no plans!" Mr. Black says, gasping. "Oh, but you do. And I
want to hear them!" Rex whispers, close to Mr. Black’s gaunt face. Rex
Holdem smiles, zapping Mr. Black again, directly on the side of his
neck. This was the part of the job that Rex enjoyed the most.
("3…2…1…All right, times up you dirty bums! Not talkin, huh? well
maybe this will make you talk then!" that ’s what I says to these
two jokers, thinkin theys can be all hard-nosed with me, like I’m gonna
put up with shit like that, I put up with it from Mr. Black for ten
years before I told him to go fuck himself, that I was through as his
tough, that I’m gonna go out on my own, I’m gonna be my own
villain, gonna get my own toughs, boss them around, which is just
what I did I tell ya, and I was good at it, put that Mr. Black ta shame,
I tell ya, then I get wind of somethin brewin, my squeals on the street
tellin me somethin stinks like a whorehouse at low tide, that some pair
of knuckle-heads was keepin’ tabs on my business, see, sneakin around
like pair of sneakers, so I gots their names, rounded up these two
blowhards, gonna show ‘em a thing or two, show ‘em who’s boss, which
would be me of course, teach them to meddle in my business, MEDDLERS!
that’s how we got to where we are, smack-dab in this here situation,
these two mooks tied together, the broad and the private dick, tied up
with a big ol table saw comin at them, pretty fuckin brilliant, huh? had
all the time in the world to tell me what they know, but they just
clamed-up, stupid moolys, not the best time ta clam-up when ya got a
table saw bearin down on yous, a saw big enough to slice both of yous in
half and then some, better fess up or it’s curtains, I tell ya!
CURTAINS! and the table saw, it’s getting’ real close like, and the
two pea-brains still ‘aint talkin! Fuckin-A is right! game of
chicken, right? who’s gonna blink first and all that shit? well, I’m
from the neighborhood, I know how it’s played, and this is what I did)
The deadline is imminent! A more telling word there could not be:
deadline; speaking in absolutes to the ineluctability of what would
happen; there are no excuses available in the face of a deadline, it was
what it was, and, so often, it did mean the death of him
physically; finishing the script on time was frequently mentally
draining, or, perhaps, it would mean the death of him
financially; that is to say, he would be out of a job. Deadlines
were taken seriously at Wonder Comics; so serious in fact that people
had been fired for missing just one. Rex Holdem always managed to finish
writing the script for the latest installment of Thrilling
Hard-Boiled Detective Comics just as it was to be passed onto the
artists. Wonder Comics was a sweatshop for sure, but so was every other
publisher in the industry. It was the night before the script was due
and he had written the main character of the series, a tough-as-nails
private dick named Ace Manly, into a corner―literally. Ace was
surrounded by gunmen in an alley, with no chance of escape, and Rex hadn ’t
an idea of how to end the story. He wrote dozens of comic books every
year; horror comics, true crime, romance, sci-fi fantasy. He was known
in the business as a jack-of-all trades (or a
jack-ass-of-all-trades as some of his detractors referred to him), a
writing chameleon that could write in many different genres, making them
each uniquely his own. More importantly, he never missed a
deadline. Ever. He was a wunderkind at his current employer,
Wonder Comics, a demy god among its mostly transient staff and a
colossus in the comics industry. But here he was nonetheless, bound and
gagged, (figuratively at least) like an unfortunate character in one of
his stories. Had writer’s block finally blocked him up? Perhaps the
cerebral version of an enema was necessary! Rex had written dozens of
stories in which the hero managed to maneuver their way out of a
difficult situation, a jam. If truth be told, Rex would have
ended the story with a cliffhanger—To Be Continued Next Issue—unfortunately
the previous issue of the comic had ended in a cliffhanger and it was
Wonder Comics’ policy never to have two cliff-hanging endings in row
(which, to Rex, was an inane policy to have anyway; they could, if they
desired, string kids along for extended periods of time, cliff-hanging
after cliff-hanging ending, securing their return to the newsstand month
after month). Rex sat on his couch in the middle of his apartment
clipping his toenails, letting the severed bits of keratin fall directly
onto the carpet. Clipping his toenails and fingernails was usually a
potent distraction for him; the banal quality of the act itself was
enough to let his mind work through whatever barriers he had erected for
himself, the writing following this ritual more fluid. The intermittent
sound of toenails edited from his stubby, hairy digits cut plainly into
the blank air of the apartment, the sound so isolated that Rex suddenly
became aware of its weighty presence, like the sound of a ticking clock
in an otherwise quiet space. He watched the toenails collect upon the
surface of the worn beige carpet, starring deeply at their stark
presence, yet he failed to raze the barriers he had built. Rex was
swiftly overwhelmed by a feeling of claustrophobia, and needed vacate
his apartment for a while. He wished to clear his mind. A late night
movie might be just the sort of distraction he required. Or perhaps he
would pay a visit to his ex-girlfriend, Lucy, someone who had, on more
than one occasion, saved Rex from himself, and for whom Rex still
harbored a fair amount of unblemished desire. Of course the man Lucy was
living with might not look favorably upon a late night visit from an ex.
Rex snatched his coat from the hall closet and hurried out of the
apartment, leaving his discarded toenails to linger on the floor, never
stopping to look back over his shoulder, at the unoccupied typewriter,
the damned thing as loathsome a sight as he had ever seen in his fairly
un-loathsome life.
Scott Brothers’ short stories and humor pieces have been published
(or are forthcoming) in Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, The Big Jewel,
and Monkeybicycle. |
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