Fangboy

Nathan had never seen a bullet strike somebody in the forehead before, nor had he seen their brains exit from the back of their skull at such an accelerated rate. He’d actually thought the process would look more like when somebody jumped into a swimming pool, where the water splashed outward, but instead it looked as if standing behind the first robber would have posed the greatest risk of getting splashed.

“You killed him!” the second robber screamed. “You’ve created orphans of his nine children! You’ve made a widow of his wife, who hasn’t got the looks to ever find another husband to care for her! And in his spare time he was on the verge of finally discovering a cure for—”

The second robber’s head burst open in a similar manner to his partner’s. His body dropped.

Nathan cried out in horror.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” said Kleft. “It’s never a pleasant thing, watching your driver kill a pair of men.”

“Well, it can be, under the right circumstances,” said the driver.

“Yes, but not when it’s self-defense.” Kleft sighed and clapped his hands together. “All right, let’s get to work. We’ve got two corpses to skin before anybody else comes around.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Nathan.

“We’re not just going to leave them here with their skins on. That would be madness. If we each take a knife and start scraping we’ll be done in no time.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Perhaps where you come from human skins dangle from trees and you can just pluck one or two whenever it strikes your fancy, but out here they’re a little more scarce. Do you know how many coins a human skin fetches on the underground market?”

“No.”

“It varies, based on the size of the human, the number of scars and warts, and most importantly—and realize that I am not being racist when I say this, I’m merely sharing a reality of the contemporary market—the color.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Yes you are. You’re going to skin your share of those corpses, and there won’t be any complaint. In fact you will grin while you do it, is that understood?”

“No!”

“You will grin, and you will speak in creepy whispers as if to a second mind inside of your first, and you will smear residue in your hair on purpose, and you will stop acting like a sheltered baby and start acting like a proper member of my show, for God’s sake!”

“Make him use his teeth,” said the driver.

“Now that would be a show worth the half-coin admission by itself. Watch the Astounding Tooth-Boy skin a corpse in three minutes! All of the money that would bring in would far exceed the cost of importing the corpses.”

“I’d rather be shot!” Nathan said.

The driver pointed his gun at him. “Are you sure?”

“I am not.”

“One should think about the types of comparisons one makes about things one would rather be doing before saying them out loud,” said Kleft. “I once told an ex-girlfriend that I’d rather be buried alive than kiss her again. Do you know how difficult it is to dig your way out of a grave? Oh, sure, it looks easy, just scrape away some dirt, la de da, no problem at all, but did you notice how all of my fingers are wooden?”

Actually, Nathan hadn’t, but now that Kleft had pointed it out, he could see that he had a flesh palm with five pieces of finger-shaped wood attached to it.

“Let me assure you, young one, that when a man is forced to dig through cold earth so frantically that he wears his fingers completely off, he discovers that a kiss isn’t quite so bad, even with the cold sore. So we’re going to allow you to re-evaluate your prior comment about getting shot being preferable to skinning a corpse with your teeth. Keep in mind that once you’ve been shot, we will skin your corpse as well. You may think ‘Well, I’ll be dead, it won’t matter to me anyway,’ but can you be assured that you won’t feel anything? What if you’re up there, floating around in the afterlife, and you feel every poke and slice of our knives? And St. Peter says ‘Sorry, we can’t let you into heaven, because your screaming and thrashing will disturb the other angels.’ My advice is to not get shot.”

“Can’t I…can’t I just use a knife, like you two?”

“Thirty seconds ago I would have said yes,” said Kleft. “Thirty seconds after that, which brings us to the current moment, I am saying no. I’m afraid you have no choice but to regress into savagery.”

Nathan wanted to throw up. So he did. He couldn’t skin a body with his teeth! That was insanity! He didn’t even want to bite down gently upon the bodies of the robbers, much less puncture anything! What would the sisters think if they were watching him right now? Would they even want him to send them coins that were acquired under these circumstances? “Oh, goodness no, we can’t buy food with these,” Penny would say. “They have the scent of blood, and our meals will be tainted with the imagined taste of human flesh.”

But he couldn’t refuse, could he? He didn’t want to get shot. Nobody did. Getting shot was awful.

Skin a corpse with his bare teeth or get shot…skin a corpse with his bare teeth or get shot…skin a corpse with his bare teeth or get shot…?

Then something occurred to him.

“You’re bluffing,” he said.

“In what way?”

“You said that the members of Professor Kleft’s Parade of the Macabre are two days south of here.”

“Yes.”

“That’s in addition to the day we’ve already traveled.”

“Yes.”

“So you traveled three days to fetch me.”

“Yes.”

“Six days of travel, there and back, and you’re just going to shoot me? That seems peculiar. Therefore, Professor, I call your bluff.”

Kleft grinned. “You are a clever one. But allow me to offer my rebuttal. Considering that I have threatened to shoot you if you do not commit an act of grisly mutilation, is it more likely that I am bluffing, or that I am medically insane and thus my actions are not based on any type of solid logic?”

“I…” Nathan trailed off. “Damn!”

“So which choice have you made?”

Nathan hung his head. “I’ll follow your orders.”

“An excellent selection.”

“I’ve never done such a thing before,” said Nathan. “You’ll have to show me.”

“That won’t be a problem at all, as we have two bodies available,” said Kleft. “Watch and learn, boy, watch and learn.”

The next few minutes that followed were a sight so unpleasant that Nathan was certain that flashes of it would pop into his mind for the rest of his life, probably at inopportune moments, such as his wedding or important public speaking engagements. Such untidiness they were creating! He stood there and trembled and gasped and felt terribly sorry for the robbers even though they were already dead.

“You’re cutting too deep,” said Kleft to his driver. “That’s no example to be setting.”

“You have the better knife.”

“Are you really blaming the knife? I could cut at him with a piece of broken glass and do the job with more skill than what you’re demonstrating.”

“Is that so? Prove it!”

“I shall!” Kleft stood up and walked back to the coach. He climbed inside and came out with a mostly empty bottle of wine. He drank up the last sip, then shattered it against the wheel of the coach. He selected one of the largest pieces, returned to the body of the robber, and resumed his work.

“You see?” he asked.

“Well, naturally, when you cut there it’s possible to do it with a piece of glass, but