Jack Kilborn & J. A. Konrath (22 page)

The pillow wasn’t amused.

“I think you broke some ribs,” he moaned.

I checked. “Nope. I’m fine.”

I climbed off Andrew and squinted at the darkness around me. It smelled like a root cellar, earthy and moldy, with and underlying hint of something.

“Now
this
,” my airbag said, “
this
is a pit.”

“Nice observation, bright boy. Now see if you can find a door to the outside.”

“Andrew?”

The voice came from the darkness, somewhere ahead of us. A creepy, crackly, moany kind of voice.

“Andrew who?” I said.

“Andrew Mayhem,” it moaned back.

I turned to Andrew. “Know anyone named Mayhem?”

“You’re a waste of carbon,” Mayhem said. Then to the voice, “Horace? Horace Folterkeller? Is that you?”

“It’s me, Andrew!”

“Horace is my neighbor up the street,” Andrew said to me.

“Whoop-de-freakin’-doo,” I answered.

“I thought you left your wife,” he said to Horace.

“I didn’t leave her! I was kidnapped and brought here!”

“Oh. You probably don’t want to hear about the new man she brought home, then.”

“New man? I’ve only been gone a few weeks.”

“Sorry, Horace. Everyone just assumed you ran off.”

While this conversation was all savagely interesting to me, I decided that looking for an exit was more important than neighborhood gossip. I groped around blindly, hands in front of me, searching for a door or a wall or something.

“Is he nice?” Horace asked.

“Is who nice?”

“The man my wife is seeing.”

“Well…he’s got a lot of very nice tattoos.”

“Tattoos?”

“And a nice motorcycle.”

“She’s dating a biker?”

“Well, not dating so much as moved in with.”

“What about my teenage daughter?”

“She seems to like him. She’s, um, kissing him all the time.”

I nudged something with my toe, then crouched down to pick it up. Some sort of slimy hose. I gave it a squeeze.

Nearby, Horace farted.

I squeezed it again.

Another fart.

I put two and two together and realized this wasn’t a hose after all. I set it down gently.

“Pardon me,” Horace said.

“Buddy, are you, uh, missing anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like your colon?”

Horace sighed. “I thought they were yanking something out of me. I’m chained to the wall so I can’t tell.”

“Aren’t you in any pain?” Andrew asked.

“Nope. Feel pretty good, actually. Got some sort of IV, doping me up. When they come for feedings it kind of tickles.”

An IV? Now that I could use. I had a killer headache, and my arm hurt from landing hard on Mayhem. I was sure Horace wouldn’t mind if I gave myself a little poke to take the edge off.

I headed toward him, but my feet got tangled up and I fell sideways, turned a small cartwheel, and ended up on my back with my legs in the air.

There was a loud sound—part flatulence/part slurp—and then Horace produced an exaggerated sigh that sort of petered out into silence.

“Horace? You still there?”

“He’s in a better place,” I said, unwinding the intestines from my ankles.

“What did you do now, you idiot? How the hell did you ever get a private investigator’s license?”

“You need a license?”

“God, I hate you.”

I smelled something poopy, and realized that something in the entrail pile was leaking.

“Your neighbor had a lot of guts.”

“More than you’ll ever have.”

“I mean he really had a lot of guts.” I felt something small and wet, like a skinned lemon. “What the hell is this? A spleen?”

“We need to get out of here. Jesus!”

“Call me Harry.”

“I found a wall. And another corpse. Oh God, and another one. And another.”

I finally kicked off the last of the offal, made it to Horace, and took a hit off his IV tube. Tasted like morphine.

“I think there may be an exit this way. I feel a breeze.”

“Mmmm. Morphine.”

“Harry, you moron, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, yeah, breeze, exit, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Are you
eating
something?”

“I’m nob eebing ebbyfib.”

The morphine went down easy, just like Aunt Emma, and soon all of my various aches and pains were replaced with a non-specific sense of well being. I tied a knot in the tube, pulled the bag off the IV stand, and then plodded off in the direction of Mayhem’s insults.

I found the wall, and my hand touched something wet, sort of like a water balloon coated in baby oil. I squeezed it. It popped. Thank God for total darkness.

“Over here, McGlade. I think I found a door.”

I came up next to him and felt around.

“What gave it away?” I asked. “The doorknob?”

“It’s locked.”

“No shit.”

“It feels like one of those bathroom door locks. If we stick something small and thin in the hole, we can open it.”

I started to giggle. Some jokes don’t even need to be said aloud.

“Feel around for a nail or something.”

“I’m on it,” I said. Then I sat down and stuck the morphine needle in my mouth.

“Harry? Harry, are you searching for something?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

Someone, probably Andrew, kicked me. I giggled. Then I felt a pair of hands snatch away my morphine bag.

“Dammit, McGlade, you’re getting high!”

“Just taking the edge off. Do you see that bunny?”

I reached out to pat the bunny, and he did a funny little bunny dance.

“Okay, I think I can use this needle.”

“Don’t bogart it. Save some for your buddy Harry.

I heard a metallic clicking sound, then the sound of a knob turning, then the sound of a door opening, then the sound of two leprechauns having sex.

“Grab her in her Lucky Charms,” I said to them.

They laughed, and gave me a big hug. So did the bunny. Then I bit my tongue really hard, just to see if I could feel anything. I couldn’t. Life was swell.

“Here’s a switch.”

A light went on in the room next to me, which scared away the leprechauns. I started to yell at Mayhem to turn the light off, and saw him walking up a flight of stairs. I followed him, because, after all, he had the morphine, and when we got to the top there was another door.

“I think this leads outside,” said someone, possibly me, possibly Andy, possibly the large walrus in the clown hat who I had named George.

I loved George.

Andrew opened the door, and standing there were two police officers, and I was 96% sure there weren’t a hallucination.

“Thank God,” Andrew Mayhem said. “We’ve been held prisoner in a house full of psychopaths who think they’re vampires.”

“And there was a bunny,” I added.

Then the cop on the left grinned, and I felt very confused because it looked like he had really sharp fangs.

S
top
.

When Harry and I agreed to relate the unpleasant tale of our unfortunate adventure together, we set some ground rules. First, and most important, was that I would not write in the same room as him. I think we can all agree that this was fair and just. If fewer people spent time in rooms with Harry McGlade, the world would be a much happier place.

Second, we agreed not to debate each other’s contributions to the narrative. So though Harry’s side of the story has certain…ah, lapses in accuracy, I let them go. He mostly got the big picture right, if not the details.

I was cool with this until I read his last section, where we suddenly have a
completely
fabricated conversation that makes me look like an insensitive idiot. I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve been an insensitive idiot on many an occasion, but when a guy is chained up in the basement with his intestines slopping out onto the floor, even at my most insensitive and most idiotic I would not try to cheer him up with news that his wife is shacking up with a biker dude.

Correction #1:
My neighbor’s name was not Horace Folterkeller. It was Dan Smith.

Correction #2:
I did not say “You probably don’t want to hear about the new man she brought home, then.” She did not bring home a new man. Dan’s wife was absolutely devastated by the situation.

Correction #3:
Dan didn’t even have a daughter. He had a son who’d gone off to college.

Correction #4
: In fact, not one word of that conversation is accurate. Mostly there was a lot of “Dan! Dan! Can you hear me?” while I gently slapped his face and tried to get him to focus on me. He wasn’t even able to speak except for a few incoherent words.

It was all very tragic. That McGlade felt the need to rewrite it into a not-particularly-convincing comedy routine says a lot about his moral character.

What Harry got right was that the bumbling dipshit did indeed take a hit of morphine. You probably thought he made that part up, too, because nobody would actually do something like that, but I assure you that he did. And, yes, you are right to weep over the state of humanity.

So, anyway, we walked up the stairs and saw the cops with fangs. At least Harry saw them. I didn’t, because I’m a big stupid poop head and I like to smell people’s butts.

* * *

Chad,
After much consideration, and at the urging of my wife, I have come to the decision that I cannot continue writing the story of my encounter with Harry McGlade. As you’ll recall, I was initially very reluctant to involve myself in this project for numerous reasons, all of them variations on “Harry McGlade is a cretin.”

Your suggestion that we alternate chapters every few pages was a good one. That made the story a collaboration without actually forcing me to “collaborate” with him. And while I certainly had some issues with what he’d written, I figured that they weren’t worth fighting over. Readers know what “rings true,” and as long as the inaccuracies were kept in Harry’s segments, it was fine.

I was even willing to continue the project after he completely made up a conversation just to make me look stupid. I did
not
engage in a cruel dialogue with a dying man about his wife’s new lover. It simply didn’t happen. But I was willing to forgive even that, provided that I got a chance to include a rebuttal in my own segment.

Now things have gone too far. Harry McGlade has resorted to rewriting
my chapter
to include a painfully juvenile comment about smelling people’s butts. Was it funny? Sure, if you’re six. Whether McGlade actually intended his “rewrite” to be included in the final product or if he was just trying to annoy me, the simple fact remains that I cannot work with the man.

I would like to return my advance and cancel this project.

Yours truly,
Andrew Mayhem

* * *

Harry,
Just got a troublesome e-mail from Mayhem. Says you’re being a dick. Stop it or you don’t get paid.

Sincerely,
Chad

* * *

Chaddie,
If Andy likes to smell peoples’ butts, I say we should let him. Who are we to judge?

Love,
Harry

* * *

Harry,
Listen, guy, you know I’m your biggest fan, but Andrew is really upset about the whole situation, and he’s prepared to walk. Even though we could finish it without him, I can’t have him badmouthing the project to the press.

Behave. For me.

Chad

* * *

Chadster,
Oooooooh, is the whiny tattletale going to say mean things about me to Katie Couric? You know, Mayhem isn’t so easy to get along with, either. He’s so caught up on ‘getting the details right’ that he’s watering down the story. People don’t care about the truth, Chad. They want sex and violence and big laughs, like that Ben Stiller movie where he got his nuts caught in his zipper.

Believe me, my heart weeps for that disemboweled Horace Smith guy. But this isn’t a police report. This is true crime. It needs to have zing and zip. We owe it to the victims of this tragedy to tell their story in a way that sells the most copies.

I vote we fire Andy’s ass and let me collaborate with that chick writer who knew Ted Bundy. You know, Ann somebody, the one who does all those books, wrote The Stranger Who Boffed Me or whatever it was called. The movie had Mark Harmon in it. Google her.

Love & Spankies,
Harry

* * *

Andrew “Narc” Mayhem,

TATTLETALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Harry

* * *

Harry,
Andrew forwarded me the e-mail you just sent to him. I’m being totally serious now: I
will
cancel this project if you two can’t learn to work together, and you
will
be responsible for paying back the advance, as per your contract.