King Arthur - King of the Merry Iguanas

It was pure luck that put me in the smoking hall at Conklin. I smoked cigarettes occasionally, mostly when I was drinking beer, but would have never requested a smoking room. Nonetheless, the same envelope that informed me that my roommate would be 'Larry Jo Hrab' also contained a card that declared that I would be living in the smoking hall. I didn't know it at the time, but this little 6"x4" card would completely alter and define my college experience.


A few numbers up front to put things in perspective: In 1990, there were approximately 20,000 students attending BGSU. Of these, around 7,000 lived on campus, mostly freshmen and sophomores (older students tended to move to apartments). There were around 15 buildings that housed students on campus. While there were a few select 'smoking rooms' scattered around campus, only one dorm building contained an entire hall where smoking was permitted. This was Conklin.


A four story dorm building, it had inexplicably devoted half of its second floor to what we would eventually term 'the smoking ghetto'. If you went up the central staircase and turned left, you would enter a normal, every day dorm hall; blaring music, notes left taped to doors, bulletin boards advertising dorm 'events' that no one would attend. If you turned right, however, you would enter 'the smoking hall', where the rules lived upside down, and insane behavior was expected.

I lived there happily with my roommate Larry for two years. Somehow we both managed to maintain above a 3.0 GPA, but that wasn't because Conklin wasn't trying to distract us.

It usually went like this. There were around 25-30 rooms in the smoking hall. So, at the beginning of each semester, 50-60 guys would arrive. By the end of each semester, only 20-25 guys would remain. The rest would have been tossed out unceremoniously for a variety of infractions.

The interesting thing about the smoking hall was that some dudes just couldn't handle the smoking hall. While I say there were no rules, there actually were rules, its just that some of the guys in the smoking hall found ways to work around them. Beer was easily smuggled in, carried in over sized knapsacks. The smell of pot was easily countered with the old 'fan and pillow in the window' method. Women were snuck in through popped side doors. The guys that understood how to break the rules got to come back. The guys who couldn't adapt and went all insane got the boot.

Some of them were ejected for the usual slew of drug offenses. On occasion the university police would bring 'Bunny' the drug sniffing dog to roam up and down the hall, and we would all stand around and chuckle because the dog couldn't pick out a room with drugs in it. Bunny would just run up and down the hallway, turning in circles and whining. Eventually, she would stop and identify one of the few rooms that didn't have drugs in it, and the cops would give up and go away for a while.

There were fights and arrests, blood and vomit. There was one memorable incident where a guy fell down in the bathroom and knocked out his two front teeth on a sink. I clearly remember crawling all over the bathroom floor with him, blood gushing down his chin and all over his shirt, looking for his teeth. When the cops arrived to help him, he climbed on top of their car and peed all over the windshield.

There was a ring of guys selling guns imported from Toledo. There were the football players who got in an actual gunfight right in front of the building (interrupting the Spock episode of 'Next Generation', for which I will never forgive them). Then there were the idiots that made secret porn tapes, filmed from the closet without the knowledge of their unwitting, mostly passed out co-stars, which were then copied and distributed all over campus. One guy would whisper suggestions (Dude! Dude! Get the gourd!) to the other guy, who would then do as he was commanded. Their 'artwork' ended up getting us all questioned by the police.

Arson, vandalism, assault and battery, armed robbery, they all had their time in the smoking hall of Conklin.

The handful of guys that managed to not get thrown out would shake their heads and then come back for the next semester to greet the new crop of fools that had popped up to take the place of the idiots that had been tossed. These survivors are the guys that I remember most from my time at BG.

There were Matt and Brett, the twins that lived down the hall. Their parents were instructors at BG, so they got free tuition, room and board. Even though their parents lived in Bowling Green, the chose to brave Conklin instead. There was Randy, 'Lord of the Night', a friendly, over sized guy that had a 32" TV (huge at the time) in his room, which regularly attracted visitors at all hours. You could usually stagger down to his room after a hard night at the bars to find a bunch of guys laying around watching a movie.

There was Briggs, the enormous red-afro-wearing sasquatch across the hall, who rarely appeared out of his nightshirt/mumu, and who would randomly thrust a thick arm out the door to snag passersby and drag them physically through the door, forcing them to do hits from the 'Kraken'. There was poor, sad, Andy Davis, an amiable hippie type who eventually disappeared after his girlfriend was killed in a car crash on the way back from a Dead show. There were Ravi and Jim and Pepper and Jeff and Scooter and Jay, and a bunch of others I could tell about. We were the smart ones (or at least the lucky ones), the ones that knew how to work the system. And that's what made it so shocking when one of us finally got taken down.

****************

I first met Don during the 'summer retard program', the trial period that Bowling Green offered to bright underachievers direct from high school. We didn't become fast friends. In fact, he barely registered on my radar, as I spent most of that summer attending classes and then squirreling back to my room to hide. The only lasting impression I had from our few encounters was his rumbling voice, which pretty much sounded like a dump truck depositing a load of gravel in his throat.

My first 'real' semester at B.G., my roommate Larry and I spent hiding in our room and drinking beer. I had a few other friends on campus, and Larry went home weekends to work landscaping and see his girlfriend. We had other social outlets, so we really didn't spend a lot of time with the dudes in the hall. That was before one fateful night when I came home drunk and found Larry at a party down the hall. Six hours, a mountain of beer, and one stolen girlfriend later, it seemed that we were going to know these people after all. And the friendliest and most outgoing of these was Don.

Don was the biggest personality I had met at Bowling Green. I don't mean that Don was loud, or boisterous, or funny and incredibly personable to everyone he met. No, he was all of those things, but that's not quite enough to cover Don. No, Don was more like something out of a movie. He was a force of nature.

He sucked Marlboro Reds down like they were going to disappear off the planet the next day. He wore a leather biker jacket with zippers all over it, and before long, he showed up with a bike to match the jacket. His parents were both cops, and growing up in their jurisdiction gave Don a healthy disrespect for law and order.

Larry and I would be sleeping peacefully in our bunks some Thursday, and the door would kick open at 3:00 AM.

"Wake up motherfuckers!" Don would come marching through the door. "I'm drunk and the chick I was going home with disappeared and we're going to smoke this WEED! GANJA! Get up!" He would meander over to the stereo, put in a Metallica tape, and crank it all the way up. "Who's cigarettes are these? I'm stealing them! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Get the fuck up! Ba-Bow-Ba-Bow-Bow-Bow!"


"Go away, Don," Larry would say. "I have a test in the morning."


"Dude, seriously?" Don would say, looking slightly hurt. "I think you should say FUCK THAT TEST, and GET THE FUCK UP, and let's DRINK SOME BEERS!"


So we would.


There was really no defense against Don. Our sophomore year at B.G. he was randomly roomed with a recovering alcoholic, and that pairing was no good for obvious reasons. He began spending more and more time in our room and away from his 'bum-out' roommate. We could lock the door, but he had quickly discovered (through random experimentation?) that our lock was the only lock in the hall that had been installed backwards, so he could just slip his student ID through the crack in the door and come bursting in whenever he wanted.



Not that we really minded. Or should I say, not that I really minded. Larry might have been another story. No, to me, Don was good fun, and a spark of life when things got gloomy.



"Dude, let's go get some beers."



"I can't, man, I'm sick. I have snot actually running down my lip and into my mouth."



"Fuck that. Smoke all these smokes until you feel better, and let's go get some beers. Smoke 'em! SMOKE 'EM! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"



So I would. I always had a blast with Don, reeling from one ill advised adventure to another. We dated two girls that were roommates for a time, and the four of us would hang out for hours on end in their room, burning incense and watching their tiny TV. Don and I would skip class for days on end, in an endless battle for Tetris supremacy. Don and I would arrive at a party hours before it was scheduled to begin, and eat all the jello shots before anyone got there.



We had a pretty wide circle of friends eventually, but Don was my favorite. There was a kindness in him that he kept carefully buried under all of his gusto and bravado. He was fiercely loyal, and had a sort of code of honor that he lived by. When you were friends with Don, you knew that he would never, never stab you in the back. He was energetic and funny, and had just a touch of danger to keep things interesting. With Don, you felt you were always about three steps from getting arrested. His complete and total disregard for the rules had the disconcerting effect of making everyone with him feel untouchable. Don quite simply did whatever the hell he wanted to do, whenever the hell he wanted to do it. And if you were with him, so did you.



****************



"Dude, I have an iguana at home," Don said one day, while we were just hanging out and smoking Larry's cigarettes.


"Really?" I asked. "What is that, like a salamander or something?" I was inexperienced, iguana-wise.


"No, dude, it's like a big evil fucking lizard. His name is King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguanas. With his tail he's almost two feet long. He eats mice and shit. My mom has been taking care of him while I'm at school. I'm thinking of bringing him from home."



"I don't know, dude," I said. "I thought the biggest thing you could bring here were fish."



"I also have this fucking crazy mutant dog," Don said, completely ignoring me. "It's half German Shepard, and half wiener dog. It's like someone took a German Shepard and smashed it down, and then streeetched it out." He blew out a puff of smoke. "It's awesome. Genetic freak. Freak show! Nightmare!"


I started laughing at the idea.



"We should go to my mom's house and get the dog high, and then come back with the iguana," he suggested.



And so we did. We went to Don's house for the weekend, got his genetic freak show German-Shepard-weiner-dog high (which was actually kind of sad, it just laid there looking pathetic), had a huge party with his sister and their friends in Cleveland, and returned to B.G. on Sunday with the iguana.



Carrying the tank into the elevator, I mentioned the pet rule again to Don.



"Dude, you shouldn't let too many people know about this. You are breaking about six different rules here."



"Whatever, man," said Don. "King Arthur is fucking awesome. No one is gonna care."



"Still, though, dude, it's a stupid thing to get in trouble for."



"Fine," he agreed. "I'll keep it quiet. But watch, it's no big deal. You'll see."



And I believed him.



****************



I came home from class the next day to find about 14 dudes down in Don's room, all gathered around the aquarium.



"What's going on?" I asked.



"Dude, you're just on time! We're feeding King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguanas a fucking mouse! I bought a mouse down at the pet store, and my iguana is about to eat his shit!"



I looked into the tank. King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguanas was perched on a branch of driftwood, completely ignoring the tiny mouse huddled in the corner of the cage. He really was impressive. He was leaf green, with an evil glint that glared permanently from his eyes. Part of his tail had been broken off at some point in the past and had grown back a different color, which helped with his overall badass image.



We watched for a while, but when it became clear that King Arther-King of the Merry Iguanas wasn't hungry, the crowd began to get restless.



"Dude, he's not eating the mouse."



"Dude, I gotta get to class."



"Dude, your iguana SUCKS!"



And so on.



Finally, some brilliant sick mind came up with a grand idea.



"Dude, hogtie that fucking mouse with dental floss, and whack the iguana in the face with it!"



A murmur of excitement went through the crowd. It was generally agreed that if the iguana was going to provide us with mouse-eating entertainment, we should hogtie the mouse and whack the iguana in the face with it. How had we not thought of this plan before?



Dental floss was procured from a neighbors room, and it was quickly discovered that hogtying a mouse was much more difficult than it sounds. Eventually, it was done, and after whacking King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguanas in the face about fifty times, he roused himself enough to take a half hearted chomp at the mouse.



A cheer went up from the crowd, and the secret of King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguana's existence was officially out of the bag.



****************



A few days later, Don came storming into the room. Larry was at his desk doing homework, and I was reading a Piers Anthony novel in my bunk (I have since sworn off of them). Plopping down in my desk chair, Don lit a cigarette.



"They found out about the iguana. They want me to get rid of it," he said.



"No surprise there," said Larry, glancing up briefly from his reading. "You aren't allowed to have anything bigger than a fish."



"I know, dude," Don said, "but it's in an aquarium, so it's just like a fish. I mean, what's the difference between a tank full of fish and a tank full of iguana?"



"An iguana isn't a fish," observed Larry.



"I'm aware of that," Don said. "But still, it's a stupid rule. For all the other stupid shit people do around here, and they're going to get on me about an iguana? It's pointless."



"So what are you going to do?" I asked.



"I told them that I was going to take it home to my mom over the weekend. They seemed okay with that."



"Are you really going to take it home?" Larry asked.



"No way, dude!" Don said. "It's a retarded fucking rule. What are they going to do, throw me out for having an iguana?"



****************



And so the iguana stayed. Under constant threat of being thrown out, Don began moving the iguana around the dorm, from room to room. This had the effect of keeping everyone on their toes. It became normal to go into someones room and plop down in a seat, only to hear the iguana suddenly hissing at you from two feet away. He wasn't a terribly friendly creature, and I was actually kind of afraid of him. I tried to give him a wide berth.



College students are destructive pigs, and it wasn't uncommon in the winter time to go into the communal shower and find that someone had used pizza boxes to stop up all of the drains in order to create a steam pool. One chilly morning, I stumbled to the shower and mumbled in approval that the steam pool was at it's maximum depth, and was overflowing into the dressing area beyond. With all four nozzles spraying and full force and an unlimited hot water supply, it was so steamy in there that you couldn't see the wall three feet away. With my glasses off, I was effectively blind.



I splashed into the steam room, and happily shoved my face under the nearest sprayer.



"Dude, watch out for the iguana," said the only other guy in the shower. He grabbed his towel and left.



I looked around in a panic. The iguana was in the shower? Was he just swimming around? I scrambled to the corner of the shower room, slipping and falling through the four inch deep water. I huddled in the corner of the shower room, peering about anxiously. I scanned the water, but didn't see anything. Squinting through the fog, I looked at all four walls, but there was nothing to see.



Suddenly, I heard King Arthur-King of the Merry Iguanas hissing directly above my head. Looking up, I saw that he was perched to the wall in the upper corner of the shower room. Yelping, I moved to make my escape, running towards the doorway. My feet slipped out from underneath me, and I went down flat on my back. The water broke my fall for the most part, but I still conked my head a good one on the floor. From my prone position on the floor, I looked up at the iguana. He hissed again and jerked in my direction. Convinced that he was about to spring, I scrambled on hands and knees out of the shower area, grabbed my towel, and fled.



****************



The warnings continued, and Don's assertions that he had 'given' the iguana to this person or that person were losing steam with the dorm staff. They knew the iguana was his, and they wanted it gone.



Finally one day it all came to a head. Don threw open the door, and came into the room holding a sheaf of crumpled papers, held together with a paper clip. Larry was at his desk studying. I was in my bunk reading a 'Myth-Adventures' book (I have since sworn off of these as well). Don plopped down in my desk chair and lit a cigarette.



"They want to throw me out of school," he said.



"For what? The iguana?" I said. I had come around to agree with Don that it was a stupid rule.


"Yeah, and a bunch of other stupid shit," said Don. "But it's all about the iguana. They just can't stand that I have the iguana. It's not like he's hurting anyone."



"They told you to get rid of the iguana like two months ago," Larry noted.



"Yeah, but it's not even in my room anymore," Don said. "I keep giving it away. Its not my fault that people give it back."



"What about the other stuff?" Larry asked.



"What other stuff?" I wondered.



"Oh, just some stupid shit that happened around the dorm that they said I did. No big deal."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like someone taped the water fountain in the 'on' position and it overflowed," Don said. "And someone set of the fire alarm the other day. Shit that happens every day around here and they just want to pin it to me because they hate my iguana."

"Did you do it?" I asked.

Larry looked at Don, and Don shrugged.

"Does it matter? Its all about the iguana anyhow. This place is run by dicks."

****************

Don had a few days before he had to go in front of the board that would decide whether he would be thrown out of school. We hatched various schemes for his defense, and though they sounded good at the time, as the day got closer we realized just how paper thin our arguments were. Don became more and more nervous with each passing day.

Finally, a couple of days before his hearing, he relented and packed the iguana back up and took it to his mom's house in Cleveland. It was too late.

The day of the hearing arrived. I was nervous all day, almost as though it were my neck that was on the line. His appointment was at 11:00, but hours passed before Don came back with the report of what had happened.

Don kicked open the door to our room, and stood in the doorway, red-faced and silent. I could tell that things had not gone well. He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and threw it on the ground in the middle of our room, turned on his heel, and left.

Larry and I sat motionless for a second. Then I bent over and picked up the envelope. Inside, carefully written in familiar handwriting, was a testimonial from Larry witnessing the acts of vandelism by Don. I read it to myself in shocked disbelief. It said that Larry had watched Don tape the water fountain with a big group of guys. He had also seen Don set off the fire alarm on the floor below ours. At the bottom was his neat and precise signature.

I stood there silently.

"They came to me last week," Larry said quietly. "They had some stuff on me. Buying you guys beers and things like that. They said that if I wrote out a testimony against Don, they would drop the stuff against me, and consider me for an R.A. position next year. I can't keep going home every weekend and working landscaping. I just can't. Its killing my grades to not be here. He really did that stuff, but they were going to kick him out anyway over the iguana. He was already gone. It didn't matter that I wrote it."

I just stared at him. I was utterly speechless. He just sat there, looking at the floor.

****************

So in the end, Don got the boot for 'other dumb shit', and not for having the iguana. He was only suspended from school for that semester, and resumed classes cheerfully in the fall, living off campus with our friend Jay in an apartment that quickly became ground zero for a variety of antics. That apartment became a place of legend, and even now when I drive through Bowling Green, I sometimes get off the highway and drive by it slowly.

Don went onto have a variety of interesting careers, before settling on 'deep sea welder' down in the gulf. He likes to refer to himself as an 'underwater superhero', which is surprisingly apt. He remains a dedicated and loyal friend, even though I suck and keeping in touch with people.

My friendship with Larry eventually recovered. He was trapped between a rock and a hard place, and with a little time and perspective, I came to understand that. Things normalized between us with time, but it was rocky there for a bit.

The dorm, however, never recovered. The loss of Don seemed to dispell whatever magic was hanging over the place. There were only a few months left before summer at the time that Don got the boot, and as far as I know, none of the 'regulars' returned in the fall. While most of the guys from the hall stayed in touch, most of us never set foot in Conklin again. I hear that it is now used as an office building, so people are now working in our rooms, having no idea of the things that went on there.

It's funny, the nostalgia I feel for the place. At the time, I don't think I realized just how great life was there. We lived in a beautiful, landscaped paradise, where everything was done for us and all of our needs were met. We had food cards to eat as much as we wanted, whenever we wanted. We had endless free time to goof off and do whatever struck our fancy. We bounced around, breaking rules and laws without a care in the world. And every once in a while the real world would intrude and smack someone down. Sometimes that person would stand back up, and sometimes they would simply disappear. Don stood back up.

I eventually disappeared.

A Deed With No Name

After many years, I had grown tired of ordinary evil acts.

I began pursuing my dastardly enterprises at a young age. I was only sixteen years old when I took all of my annual earning from my paper route and bought an airline ticket to Africa. I chartered a Jeep to a remote village in Zaire, and after spending several days getting to know the local population, I discreetly dumped a small packet of Ebola down the only drinking well in a fifteen mile radius. Much later, after returning home, I sent a letter with a photograph of myself, smiling and waving. Although I was very proud and anxious to claim responsibility for what I had done, I expect that there was no one left on the receiving end to acknowledge me. My superior plot went...unnoticed.

It was not a mistake I would soon repeat.

From then on, every ship I sank was equipped with exactly one life boat. Each plane that I blew out of the sky had internal parachutes built into a few seats. Yes, this required months of extra coordination, and incalculable added risk. But if there was no one left to tell the tale, how could my genius and meticulous planning ever be recognized? I needed witnesses to describe the horror to the world. I needed a few people to be left every time, to wonder why I picked them to survive when everyone else plunged to a fiery grave.

So, the last car of the train would detach ten miles before the engine would hurtle over a cliff. I would carefully leak vaccines into a few select homes' water supply before dusting a town with a mutated strain of measles. I would secretly build a safe room or two into the first floor of a building, rooms carefully designed so that they could survive the impact of 80 floors worth of steel and concrete crashing down around them. The survivors became my muses, my signature. They became what I was known for, all the world over.

This was all, of course, before I became fatigued.

After twenty or thirty years of doing a job, putting your heart and soul into your work, anyone can be expected to go through a period of self doubt. I became weary of doing the same old thing, day in and day out. There were only so many evil deeds in the world. Plane crashes were common. Buildings crashing down had become passe. I had blown up a few dams, flooded a few towns, but after a couple of awesome tragedies people got wise and most towns in valleys were abandoned. It was no fun flooding a ghost town.

And as much as I tried, over and over again, I could never quite perfect a machine that was capable of controlling the weather.

No, I needed something new. Something unexpected. Something to shake things up a bit. People had become accustomed to my run-of-the-mill terrorism. Sure I still got a bit of time on CNN, but with each new horrifying act, my profile would disappear off the news feeds more and more quickly. I began to discover quiet rumblings online that perhaps I was getting soft. Perhaps my evil had run its course, and it was time for a new evil doer to step up into my place.

I simply could not abide this type of thought. After my long and storied career, there was no way I was going to abdicate my position and allow some new, inexperienced whelp to try his hand. No, I had to prove that I still had what it took. I needed to do something so evil, so over the top, that people would once again gasp in awe at my audacity. I had to concoct something that had never been done before. I needed an act so inspired, awful and unthinkable, that it had no name.

I retreated for a time to my polar lair to concentrate on creating what was to be my crowning achievement. It began to dawn on me after some consideration that perhaps my problem was that I had failed to keep up with the times. I had become so set in my ways that I had failed to embrace all of the new technologies that were at my disposal. My entire method of planning and thinking was at least ten years out of date. Of course the message boards online were mocking me. Why would they not? I was old fashioned to them, a relic. I now knew exactly what I had to do to modernize my efforts. I knew how to capture the world's attention.

I realized that modern technology, which was often decried as a divisive force in the public's eye, could be used in quite a different way. While it was said that modern technology and communication devices often allowed people to close themselves off from the rest of the world and allowed some weak-willed users to become lost in a wonderland of anonymous chat and fantasy games, I knew that these same advances could be used to bring something into peoples homes that was intensely personal, immediate and dire. With a few simple, easily accessible devices, I could make the entire world at once both a victim and a survivor. I knew how to capture the world's attention, and how to beat them all to a pulp. Figuratively, of course.

I began with just a simple web page. On it, I featured a recently taken photo of myself, and a 48 hour clock, counting backwards. I knew that before long, the authorities would notice the page, and soon after them, the news people would pick up on my little broadcast and begin to monitor it. I had never announced an evil act before hand, instead preferring to save all comments and maniacal laughter for carefully released statements after the fact. My reputation being what it was, people would begin to speculate as to my intentions. Fear would ripple throughout the world. Businesses would close. Police and emergency services would add extra shifts in heavily populated areas. By the end of that 48 hours, the entire world would be on edge, glued to their televisions and computers, both terrified and excited to see what I had planned.

When the clock finally counted down to zero, the view switched over to a simple video feed. The camera was aimed at a blank brick wall. I waited a few moments to heighten the suspense, and then I stepped into view.

"Greetings, people of Earth. How is everyone feeling today?" I smiled and waved.

"I suppose you are all wondering what all the hoopla is all about. 'What is with the web page?' you are thinking. 'What could he be planning?' you are wondering. Well, that is why I am here. I am going to tell you.

"I have planted nuclear devices in 47 major metropolitan areas all around the world. I have timed these devices to detonate in precisely fifteen seconds. I have always wondered how I would fare in a post-apocalyptic world, and I finally decided to find out. The countdown begins....now!"

I pointedly looked at my watch. As much as I tried to stop it, I could not help the giggle that came over me. I stood there, staring at my watch and snickering, imagining the countless people all over the world darting around, hugging tightly to their loved ones, flinging themselves from windows, etc.

Finally, after thirty seconds or so, I decided to let them off the hook.

Laughing out loud now, I cried out, "JUST KIDDING! I'm only kidding! I wouldn't do that! Destroying the world is entirely unimaginative. I could have done that fifteen years ago, if I wanted to! No, I was only joking!

"In fact," I said, smiling graciously, "I want you all to know that you are safe. If you are watching this at home, you should now relax. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. You will go to bed tonight, safe in your beds. Airplanes are safe to fly on. You should feel free to take the subway to work in the morning. The police, the ambulances, the army; you can all stand down. NASA, on the other hand...you guys might want to think about approving a bit of overtime."

I paused, staring benignly into the camera for several moments. I do relish dramatic pauses.


"You see, I am going to lay out my entire plan before you. I am going to explain exactly what I am going to do, and then I am going to do exactly what I say. And you will all be powerless to stop me.

"Let me start at the beginning. Over the last several months, I have travelled all over the world, with the help of various disguises,of course. I have visited every inhabited continent. I have done this with one single purpose. One driving motivation sent me reeling across the globe, careening from city to city, with only one goal in mind. And finally, I have achieved this goal.

"I have kidnapped the most adorable poor child on earth."

I swung the camera around to reveal the worlds most adorable little girl. She was sitting happily at a table, eating cupcakes that I had made myself, specially for the occasion. Her white-blond hair was tied back into a pony-tail, revealing exquisite bone structure. Her delicate little fingers were busily shoving the sweet cake into perfect little mouth, where she merrily chewed it with her perfect little teeth.

"Wave for the camera, Cindy-Lou!"

The child stopped gobbling down cupcake long enough to wave a perfectly cute, albeit grubby, hand at the billions of people watching her all above the globe.

"As you can see, she has been quite well cared for. I assure you, before I took her into my care, she was quite poor, and somewhat emaciated. I briefly considered allowing her to become addicted to crystal methamphetamine, but in the end I decided that such a course of action would be counter productive to what I am trying to accomplish here. I have taken great pains to ensure that she has had proper nutrition and exercise, in spite of the indulgent treat you are witnessing her devour during our little program this evening.

"As for her identity, well, that will remain a secret for now. I leave it up to the world's authorities to discover who she is and where she comes from, in order to return her body to its proper final resting place when we are finished here. During her time with me, I have simply called her 'Cindy-Lou Who', which has worked out nicely for both of us. Hasn't it, Cindy-Lou?"

The child nodded happily, chewing all the while.

"Now, I would like to take a moment to demonstrate how ludicrously adorable this child is. Cindy-Lou. Cindy-Lou!" I clapped my hands to get her attention. "Perhaps you could do us all a favor, and gift us with a song."

The child looked at me and smiled sweetly.

"Could Mr. Binks listen too?"

"Of course, dear," I said. "Mr. Binks can listen!"

The child stood from her chair and scurried across the room, returning with a somewhat tattered stuffed horse. She pushed the plate of cupcakes aside, and carefully positioned Mr. Binks on the table so that he was facing her, the closest of her massive audience.

Then with a voice that was heartbreaking soft, and crystalline in its timeless perfection, she began to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Her sweet little voice filled the room, echoing off the distant walls. When she had finished, she grabbed the horse from the table and hugged him close to her.

"I love you, Mr. Binks," she whispered softly, but audibly. I could almost hear hearts breaking, all around the world.

"That was lovely, Cindy-Lou," I said softly, relishing the humanity of the moment. I remained silent for a time, simply letting the camera remain on the beautiful child, so full of wonder and innocence.

Finally, though slightly unwilling to break the spell, I swung the camera back around towards myself.

Taking a deep breath, I began again.

"So, now you are all expecting me to do something absolutely monstrous. You are thinking that I might simply grab a chainsaw and begin hacking away at the poor child. No, I assure you that I will not harm a hair on this child's head. She will not be beaten, cut, dismembered or abused in any way. I am evil, but I am no monster. No, what I have in mind is far more interesting...

I swung the camera around to reveal the rest of the impossibly massive room we were occupying. I expected that people the world over were gasping at what they saw.

"What you see here is a scale replica of an Saturn V Apollo Rocket. It has been programmed to launch in about ten minutes. I have spared no expense in either the building of this rocket, nor in the computers I have used to program the path it will traverse.

"You see, I am going to launch little Cindy-Lou Who here to the moon. All by herself. Well, except for Mr. Binks, of course. As I said, I'm no monster..."

I swung the camera around to again focus on the child.

"Little Cindy-Lou will be exposed to several minutes of crushing g-forces as the rocket carries her into orbit around the earth. I fully expect her to survive this process. She is young, and healthy. From there, she will be launched toward the moon. Approximately three days later, her lunar lander will touch down on the surface of the lunar landscape. Understand, this is not 1969. With our current technology, this entire endeavour can easily be automated. I used a Mac." I smiled for the camera, delighting now in the dawning horror that must have sweeping over every listener.

"Cindy-Lou will have enough oxygen, food and water to survive three, maybe four days once she reaches the lunar surface. Several cameras in the cockpit have been positioned to capture and broadcast to the world her entire trip and eventual demise from every possible angle. The very latest in two way radio technology will allow any authorities that possess the same technology to communicate with, and perhaps comfort little Cindy-Lou as her breathing air slowly dwindles away. Maybe, if we are lucky, they will convince her to sing a song for us from the moon. I'm quite sure that Mr. Binks will want to listen!"

With that, I couldn't stand it any more. I burst out laughing uncontrollably. Clutching my stomach and doubling over, I had to seat myself on a nearby stool, I was laughing so hard. I swung the camera around so the audience could see that Cindy-Lou was laughing as well, having been convinced by my rollicking guffaws that something hilarious was going on. We both laughed together for several minutes.

Finally able to calm myself, I stood, wiping the tears from my eyes and sniffing a bit. I held out my hand to the little girl.

"Come on, Cindy-Lou! Are you in the mood to take a ride?"

Still smiling happily, she nodded, reached out, and took my hand.

"You are going to have such an adventure!" I told her, leading her to the elevator. "You and Mr. Binks together!"

And I felt my heart positively glow, as the world shuddered around me.

Chachi

I peered out the window to see if he was still there. I didn't see him for a moment, but then he stepped into view. That little familiar gate of his was the same, just slowed way, way down. At the rate he was walking, it took him about two minutes to get from one end of the sidewalk in front of our house to the other. He took a step with his left foot, waited a few seconds, then brought his right foot up to rest where his left foot was. Another pause, and then he would throw his right foot out and take another step.

He looked almost cute down there, dressed in the little outfit I had put him in almost a week before. His little Nikes were still tied tightly in a double knot. It had been a chilly October morning, so I had put a little red windbreaker on him to keep him warm. His twin sister had the sniffles, and I didn't want him to get sick as well. The windbreaker was now hanging unzipped, revealing the grubby T-shirt underneath. His jeans, which had been new a week ago, now sported a hole at the left knee. Somewhere along the way he had lost the little Dodgers cap I had bought for him for his last birthday.

I had noticed the day before that he had begun falling down more. He had never been a graceful kid, and he had taken his share of spills over the years. Nothing serious, thank God. Just the usual cuts and scraps. But now, as I watched him walk towards the area where he would turn around (almost as though there were one of those invisible fences there, you know, like they use to keep dogs in an open yard), the glare from the streetlight caught his eyes. He looked up, lost his balance, and fell down.

Ever so slowly, he tried to regain his feet. Like he did every time, he looked slightly confused for a second when he threw out his hands to pick himself up, only to discover that one of them was gone. I had stopped cringing every time he jammed the open ended stump down into the sidewalk, the bone clacking and grinding audibly, even from this far away. I had stopped cringing, but that didn't mean that it didn't make me grit my teeth a little.

Finally, he was standing again. As always, he absently brushed himself off before attempting his next step. I think that was what killed me the most. Him using his little hands to try to brush himself off, forgetting already that one had gone missing. He had a half dried streak of red and yellow running down the front of his T-shirt and jeans.

Having regained his composure, he settled down and took another step. His name was Chachi, he was five years old, and he had been dead for almost 7 days.

****************

His real name wasn't Chachi, of course. It's not like the wife and I were crazy Scott Biao fans. His real name was Richard. His sister's name is Emily.

When he was a baby, he was colicky, and he would go on these endless marathon screaming jags. He would scream and scream until he was horse, and then he would scream some more. His sister would be sleeping peacefully beside him, oblivious to the nightmarish caterwauling that was her brother's claim to fame. Before long, we were calling him 'Little Richard', in tribute to his screaming abilities.

That nickname lasted for several years, and my wife and I amused ourselves when he was a toddler by singing Little Richard tunes to him as we went about our daily routines. Feeding time was accompanied by 'Tutti-Fruity'. Screaming fits were quelled with a soft rendition of 'Good Golly Miss Molly'. And bedtime just wasn't bedtime with out 'Roll over Beethoven', which was his favorite.

When he was around three, he started trying to sing along. It was pretty adorable. He would kind of gurgle and garble along with the verses, and then he would kick in with the chorus. "Roll over Beat-uh-uh, and tell Chachi the news." A couple of weeks of that, and he became Chachi. We expected the nickname to stick for the rest of his life, whether he liked it or not. The wife was pretty funny, and she came up with the idea of never explaining where the nickname came from to him when he got older. I think she was interested in seeing what sort of wild theories he could come up with.

Emily, his sister, was just Emmy.

****************

Emmy and I were now huddled in the attic together, peeping out the tiny window that faced the street, watching her brother lurch back and forth in front of the house, a dazed, slightly confused look on his face. I guess we had gotten a little used to him being there. It was almost reassuring to have him out there, like a sentry keeping watch over us. If only I could stand to look at him for more than five seconds without crying.


****************

I recognized what was going on for what it really was surprisingly quickly.

I suppose every generation has it's own version of 'What If'. In the fifties, it was probably "What would you do is aliens invaded?". The sixties through the eighties were mired in "What would you do if the Russians invaded?". For the last ten years, my peers and I had been discussing what we would do in the face of the zombie apocalypse.

The conversations would start spontaneously at parties. Or sometimes I would get a random call from a friend. "Okay, check this out, you have to have a bat, right? Then you fight your way to a car...". The discussion could go on for hours.

Some people had some seriously detailed plans. One guy would head straight for the local grade school (windows high off the ground, lots of lockable doors, plenty of food). Another had a route planned out to the Great Lakes, where he would dock his stolen boat at an offshore nature preserve (no people allowed, ever). Wal-mart, mountain cabins, secret underground bunkers, they were all carefully discussed, pros and cons. Plans that were considered inferior were harshly criticized and dismissed. Discussions could become pretty heated. Zombie invasion was some pretty serious business.

My own plan (hatched over about fourteen beers) was to drive my family downtown. There are a bunch of half finished condo buildings down there, sitting empty because the economy took a dive and no one could afford to buy a new fancy condominium. We would park in one of the underground parking lots a few blocks away, and make our way through the tunnels connecting all the buildings downtown, gathering food along the way. We would calmly walk up the stairs, locking each level behind us, and take up residence on the top floor. Top floor of an abandoned building was pretty good, right?

Then it happened for real, and all of our carefully formulated plans went to shit.


****************

The thing one doesn't expect about zombie apocalypse is how boring it is. I imagine that quite a few people got themselves killed simply because they got bored in whatever hiding place they were in and tried to move to someplace more entertaining. I refused to make that mistake. Aside from our tiny guard outside, there was no indication from the outside that our house was inhabited, and I intended to keep it that way.

Emmy, on the other hand, was going ballistic, bouncing off the walls. The electricity in the attic had failed two days prior, which means that her Nintendo DS could no longer be charged. The few kids books that we had stashed away in the attic had entertained her for about 7 minutes, and now she was spending most of her time alternating between whining about being bored, whining about being hungry, and staring out the tiny window at her brother and crying.

"Why can't Chachi come play with me? Can't we just put some Band-Aids on his hand and bring him in? Why can't I go outside and play with him? No one is bothering him, why would they bother me?" I tried to explain as best I could that Chachi was different now, that he might try to hurt us if we let him in, but Emmy just couldn't wrap her head around the fact that Chachi would ever try to hurt her. Neither could I, for that matter.

****************

It was about 1:00 in the afternoon when the neighborhood exploded in violence. 45 minutes later, Emmy and I were in the attic. It happened that quickly. There were no warnings, no dramatic news reports from distant cities, no mysterious meteors falling from the sky, no government quarantines. Just one minute it was a quiet fall day, and the next minute I was watching my neighbor and longtime friend Bill throwing his 7 year old son in front of a speeding bus.

I had bundled up Chachi about a half hour before. My wife had decided to take him to the park a few blocks up the street for an hour or so. With Emmy sick, he had been couped up for a few days, and the kid needed to get some air.

Fifteen minutes after they left, I started hearing what sounded like thunder drifting from across town. Thunder that didn't stop. Just a low rumble that went on and on. I called my wife's cell, and her voicemail immediately picked up. That was the last time I heard her voice.

The next thing I knew, all hell had broken out.

I won't bother trying to describe it to you. It was just images really. Many of which you have probably seen in a thousand movies over the years. There were screams. There was blood. There were fires and explosions. There were my neighbors running in and out of each other's homes, killing each other. I watched all of this through the blinds of my second story window, with Emmy locked safely in the bedroom closet behind me. I stopped watching after about five minutes when I saw a mob overtake my wife. She was running from the direction of the park, and a group of five or six people were chasing her. When they took off her arms, I snapped the blinds shut. I knew that my son was already dead.

I didn't go into shock. I didn't freak out. I didn't scream and cry. Leaving Emmy locked up, I walked quietly downstairs and threw the double latch on the door. I pulled closed all the blinds and curtains. I went to the kitchen, and began dumping everything in the refrigerator in the trash. I filled empty milk cartons and pickle jars, salad dressing bottles and cottage cheese containers with water from the tub upstairs. I threw as much food as I could into two hefty bags, and hauled them up the ladder into the attic. I carried Emmy up there, and then handed all of the containers of water carefully up to her, having her stash them in a corner.

I went out the side door into the attached garage, grabbed the 'Port-o-potty', and carried that up to the attic as well, along with some paper towels and toilet paper. I grabbed the flashlights from under the sink, and some extra batteries. After a second of thought, I also grabbed Emmy's game and her charger. All of this took about 15 minutes. I didn't look outside. I didn't answer the frantic knocking at the front door. I didn't answer the phone. When I had everything I thought I needed, I pulled the ladder up through the hole into the attic, and shut the hatch behind us.

And there we waited. Five hours later, Chachi showed up.

****************

Despite all of the varied plans that people came up with to deal with zombie invasion, there are a few accepted rules that pretty much everyone agrees on.

1) A human faced with zombies can never hesitate to use overwhelming, sudden violence. The quicker you accept the fact that you have to bash heads to survive, the better off you are.

2) You never go after anyone. If you attempt to retrieve a friend or family member, either you will die, they will die, or you both will die. Nothing good will come of trying to make your way across town (or across the street for that matter) to find someone. If they are not with you, they are lost.

3) Hesitation kills. If a friend or family member becomes bitten, or infected, or whatever, you must immediately put them down, hard. Do not wait for them to turn and bite you. Kill them, and kill them now.

There are no rules for what to do if you are hiding in the attic and your beautiful little son appears outside and won't go away. So far, all I've come up with is:

4) Sit quietly. Try not to think about it.

****************

No one has attempted to come inside our home. I have been able to occasionally slip downstairs to empty the potty and get fresh water. Our house feels both foreign and familiar at the same time. It is still exactly the same, but the entire world around it has changed. I no longer know if it's home.

I don't know why Chachi came back home. I don't know if other victims (I still can't think of my little son as a zombie) wandered back to their homes. I have always instructed my son that if anything should happen to him, he should try to come home, no matter what. If he got separated from his mother, he should try to get home. If someone snatched him, he should kick and scream and fight and try to get home. If he ever got hurt, he should come straight home. It looks like he listened. I can't help but wonder if he knows we are in here and whether he wonders why we don't let him in. Or maybe he thinks we're away, and is walking back and forth, waiting for us to come back. Or maybe he just doesn't think at all, and it's just instinct to keep moving that makes him pace the way he does.

Maybe he just doesn't know where else to go.

***************

I have always kind of wondered, watching zombie movies, how long it takes for the invasion to die down. The issue is, I don't know what kind of zombie I'm dealing with here. Are they dead, reanimated people, that bite each other in search of brains? Are they infected with some disease that some research lab lost control of? Have they been dosed by a stray canister of top secret military gas? No idea.

The streets have been quiet for over two days. I haven't seen anything move out there at all. No one has walked past. No cars are moving off in the distance. No planes fly overhead. The nights are peaceful and silent.

The only information I have is from watching Chachi. He doesn't eat anything. He doesn't use the restroom, that I can tell. He drinks no fluids. He just walks, back and forth, back and forth. His skin is starting to take on a slight, greenish hue. He is looking a little shiny. And he is falling down a little more often.

****************

So here we sit, waiting for Chachi to fall down and never get up again. Every time he falls, I die a little inside. My need to run out there and scoop him up and comfort him is overwhelming. I want to take his hand, and lead him back down the street to the park. I want to find his hat. I want to hold him, and rock him, and tell him I love him.

Instead, I sit silently and watch my little son walk back and forth, back and forth.

GERTIE

Okay, so I have to preface this story by explaining where it came from. I dreamed this entire thing last night. I had been lying awake in bed from about 4:00 through 7:00, and I finally fell back to sleep from 7:00 to 9:00. During that time, I had this dream. The characters, the dialogue, the setting, the whole damn thing is directly from the dream. Don't let that stop you, it's pretty linear and cohesive.

It was bouncing around in my head all day, completely written. So instead of watching TV tonight, I sat down and pounded it out. I only paused for about thirty minutes to read a couple of chapters of my kids' book to them at bedtime.

It's sick. I know it's sick. You don't have to tell me it's sick. But it's kind of sweet, too, in a horrible, horrible way. I don't know. We can't control our dreams. But we can write them out to disgust others.

Let me know what you think.

E.H. 08.24.09

Gertie

I was standing outside the entrance to the subway with Gertie, waiting for the lady with the brown hair to show up. Stamping my feet and rubbing my hands together wasn't doing much for me, but the warm air drifting up from the subway stairwell helped out a little. Gertie didn't seem to notice the cold, she just stood there, crooked and still, little clouds of warm breath coming from her nose. It was just Gertie. Just how she was.

I had met Gertie a few years before, and we settled into a nice team sort of thing. Sometimes I referred to us as the Dynamic Duo, but Gertie didn't understand what I meant, so I didn't say that too often. I didn't like to make her feel bad. I had been on the streets for a couple of years. Gertie, I think she had been out there most of her life. She didn't know a lot of things that other people knew. She couldn't name any of the presidents. She didn't know who Gilligan was, or anything about Bugs Bunny or none of that. But she could round you up some hot food on a cold day, and that was something. The other thing was, people never saw her coming.

Sometimes I thought I saw Gertie looking at me, you know, all romantic like, but sometimes I think I was just imagining that. Gertie was waiting for her knight in shining armor, her Prince Charming. He would come sweep her off the street and take her someplace nice and safe and warm. That sure as shit wasn't me. I wasn't going nowhere, except maybe to some motel when I had a bit of cash in my pocket. And when I did that, I always felt stupid the next day when the cash was gone and I was right back out in the street again. I always took Gertie with me to the motel when I went. Like I said, she was kind of my partner. But she never tried nothing or nothing. She just slept on the floor, curled up in her little Gertie ball.

"Where is this bitch?" I said out loud. This brown haired lady was always late. "I'm gonna leave if she don't get here soon."

Gertie didn't say anything back, she just stood there looking at me. She knew I wasn't going anywhere. The brown haired lady had what we needed, and I would wait there until the next morning if I had to.

Finally, what seemed like forever later, the brown haired lady hustled up. She was wearing a big overstuffed yellow orange coat, and she had her hands stuffed down in the pockets. I stood for a second, looking at that coat. The thought crossed my mind that I could throw this bitch down the subway stairs. I could stick her and take that fucking coat. But after a second I stopped thinking that way. She had what I needed, so I had to not kill her. I had to do what she said.

"Hello Gertie," she said. "Hello," she said to me.

"Hey," I said. "Did you get it?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "I got it. I got everything. I got just what you asked for. Times, dates, location, the whole enchilada. I got it all."

"Well," I said, "are you going to give it to us?"

She shifted around, bouncing from foot to foot. She looked like she had to pee.

"Not yet," she said. "Gotta do something for me first."

"Oh, for fuck sake," I said. I was getting pissed. I was always getting pissed. "Haven't we done enough?"

"Just one more," she said. "It'll be easy. No problem. One guy. What's your hurry, anyhow? It's not like it's going anywhere."

"One guy," I said. "Just one guy." Gertie looked up and took a step forward.

"Yeah," the brown haired lady said. "Just one guy. And Gertie, I want you to do him like you did that other guy that one time. This guy and I, we used to , I don't know. Have a thing. I want him to smile."

Gertie smiled for a second. I looked away. I hated when she smiled.

"Here's the address. Roger. He lives in the basement, B-16. You can take your time. It ought to be quiet down there." She handed me a little piece of paper. I shoved it in my pocket. The brown haired lady turned and walked away, hands shoved back down in those pockets.

"Bitch," I said, spitting on the ground. "Always one more with her." I turned and started down the subway steps. At the bottom I stopped for a second to let Gertie catch up. She wasn't so good on stairs. Her heel got caught a lot. She had to hold the railing.

"Do you think he'll like me?" she asked when she made it to the bottom. In the warmth of the stairwell, her cheeks were glowing a bit. "Do you?"

"Yeah," I said. "He'll like you. They all like you."

****************

It was warm in the basement. After coming in from the cold, my glasses were fogged up. I took them off, and pulled my shirt tail out of my pants to wipe them off. Putting them back on, I could see that the brown-haired lady was right. There wasn't going to be any problem here.

The place looked like one of those horror shows I watched in the motel sometimes. The floor in the hallway was wet, and the lights were so dim I could hardly see. The walls were covered with mildew. Bare, rusty pipes seemed to be running in every direction. This was the sort of place that you could saw somebody's head off right here in the hall, and no one would even peek out the door to watch the show.

We walked down the hall to B-16. Gertie's bad foot made a gooshing sound as it dragged behind her. I didn't mind. She took too long to move if she didn't just let it drag. I shifted the duffel from my right shoulder to my left.

Standing outside the door, I looked over at Gertie. She was really something.

"You ready, Gert?" I asked.

She nodded. She was pretty much always ready.

I pounded on the door with my fist. I used to just kick them open, but I stopped because it hurts my knee. They don't show you that in the movies. The shock runs right up your shin bone and into your knee. As I got older, I stopped doing stupid shit like that. You got to take care of yourself.

"Who is it?" a man's voice called from inside.

"Are you Roger?" I asked through the door.

"No, I'm Paul," the voice answered. "Who are you?"

"It's the girl scouts. We have Roger's cookies. Open the fucking door," I said.

"You don't sound like girl scouts," Paul said. "Roger! Did you order some cookies?"

"Fuck this," I muttered. Patience has never really been my thing. I pulled my gun from the small of my back where it had been tucked into my belt.

"Hey Paul!" I yelled, and shot five bullets through the door in a circular pattern. Wincing, I took a step back and kicked the door in. The instant pain in my knee pissed me off.

Paul was lying on the floor in the fetal position. He was bleeding from somewhere, but I couldn't see where.

"I told you to open the door," I said, kicking him a little. "Where's Roger?"

"Oh GOD!" he yelled. "You shot me! Roger, run! Hide! It's a man! A bad man and a midget thing! God! Roger! Help me!"

I slung the duffel from my shoulder. Gertie was already scurrying around this chump and heading into the apartment. I pulled the masking tape from inside, and tossed her the duffel.

"I only brought enough rope for one," I said, as I kneeled down and jammed my knee into Paul's spine. I quickly wrapped the tape, two quick layers around his entire head. Then I taped his hands behind his back. I tossed the tape back to Gertie.

"Belt," she said. "Use your belt."

Good idea. I unbuckled my belt and slid it from my pants. Making a quick loop, I threw it around Paul's neck and snapped it tight. He screamed through the tape for a second, but stopped as soon as the belt cut off his airway.

"Come on, Paul," I said, throwing the belt over my shoulder and dragging him behind me. He jerked some, but the more he jerked, the harder I jerked back. Bathroom, bathroom, where was the bathroom?

I heard a shot come from the next room. Gertie wasn't wasting any time.

Turned out the bathroom was right inside the apartment and on the left. Dragging Paul in there and holding the belt near his neck at one end, I threw the other end over the shower curtain rod, which was actually a pipe hanging down from the ceiling. Seeing what I was about to do, he started flailing around again, but a few good punches to the ear took the fight right out of him.

"Nothing personal, Paul," I said. "Wrong place and time and all that."

I hoisted him up and wrapped the belt around shower curtain about five times. He was low enough to the ground that he could stand, and eventually he figured that out. Hope gleamed in his eyes as he stood up. He stared at me with a puzzled look in his eye. I saw that the blood was coming from his right ear, which had been shot mostly off. Not so bad, considering what it could have been. I pulled my gun back out and shot him in both knees, and down he went. His eyes began to bulge out, but I didn't stay to watch.

I left the bathroom and made my way down the hall and into the dingy bedroom. There, a man was tied to a grimy bed, one hand to each post at the top. His feet were taped together and tied to the board at the foot of the bed. He was wearing nothing but boxer shorts. I noticed that his feet were bloody. This must be Roger.

Gertie was standing near his head, with her gun in his face.

"Shot him. In the foot," she said.

"I see that," I said.

"He wouldn't settle," she said.

"Um-hmm…" I replied, glancing around the room.

"Oh my God!" Roger shrieked. "Who the hell are you people? What the hell is going on here? What the fuck? Who is this? Why did she shoot me? Goooooddddd…"

Gertie hit him in the temple with the butt of her gun. "Calm down," she told him. He immediately quieted.

"It's nothing personal," I said. "We're just doing what we do. I guess you pissed someone off."

"Who? Oh my God, who? Whoever it is, whatever they are paying you, I can beat it. I can top it. I can pay you twice what you are getting for this!"

"Not about money," I said, shrugging. "Brown haired lady, she has something we need. Gotta do you to get it. Nothing personal."

As I was speaking, Gertie had gathered the sheet from where it had been laying rumpled beside the bed. She carefully tucked it into the edges at the foot of the bed, then pulled it up over Roger until it rested just under his chin.

"What? What is she doing?" he said. "Please! I think…"

"You think too much," I said, and shot him in the belly. Roger screamed. A neat little black hole appeared in the sheet. It was clean for a moment. Then a little red pool started spreading through the fabric. "She just likes her privacy."

Roger stopped screaming. "What? Oh my God, what? What is she going to do to me?"

Gracie slipped her teeth out of her mouth and sat them on the tiny night table next to the bed. She took off her shoes and set them together by the door. "Don't want to get the sheets dirty," she said. Without her teeth it sounded like "Done wanna gedda shits diddy." That made me smile.

She lifted the edge of the sheets and crawled up under them. Roger started bucking and screaming, his ass bouncing up and down like one of those electric bulls you could ride at the country bars.

"Hey," I said. "HEY! You're going to want to settle down over there. If she gets hurt, it's going to be worse for you."

Roger was beyond listening. His shrieking grew louder.

"Oh GOD! What is she going to do? What is she? Why does she look like that? What sort of sick fuckers are you? Oh GOD! Is she going to bite me? Oh GOD!"

"Put your finger in the hole, Gertie," I said. "That'll get his attention."

"Wha one?" came the muffled voice from under the sheet.

"Belly," I said. "Jam it in there real far."

"Kay," she said.

Roger's body under the sheet looked like he had just been hit by a cattle prod. His back arched up until the only things touching the bed were the top of his head and his toes. His scream ripped from his throat, and this time I noticed there was a slight gurgle to his voice. His head slammed from side to side wildly. Finally, he slumped back down in the bed.

"Okay, Roger, now that's enough of you carrying on," I said. "Here's how it's going to be. I'm going to put this tape on your mouth because I'm tired of hearing you go on the way you have been. You are going to lie there quietly and let Gertie do what she does, and you aren't going to make one peep about it. I understand that girls might not be your thing, but you just close your eyes and pretend it's someone else, and we'll all be just fine. I'm sorry it had to be like this, but this is the way it is."

I grabbed the tape from the duffel and gave it two good wraps around Roger's face.

"Okay, Gert," I said. "You ought to be good now."

"Doon wadge," she said.

"I won't," I said, and I turned away. I did peek a few times to make sure she was okay. Her head was dutifully bouncing up and down under the sheet, so I turned back away.

Roger made tortured moaning noises through the tape, which eventually stopped. There was silence in the little room for a while except for the tiny slurping sounds coming from the bed.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the sounds stopped.

"Kay, done," said Gertie from under the sheet.

I turned and shot Roger twice in the head. He didn't even have a chance to open his eyes. Gertie slid sideways from under the sheet, kicking her little legs until her feet made contact with the ground. Her hair was matted to her forehead with blood and sweat, which ran in little rivers down her face and onto her neck.

"Good job," I said. "You may want to take a shower. Let me get Paul out of there and you can take one before we go."

She went to the nightstand and retrieved her teeth. After she slid them back into her mouth, she looked up at me, eyes glowing with excitement and exertion.

"Do you think he liked me?" she said, a starry look on her face. She reminded me of a teenage girl who had just been asked to the dance. "Do you? Do you think he liked me?"

"Of course he did, Gert," I said, patting her gently on the head. "They always like you."