“Do you know what time it is? If you’re trying to sell me something, it’s against the law to call this la—”
“Ma’am, I’m not trying to take your mon …” Von stopped short. “I mean, I haven’t broke the law …” He stopped short again. “Look, this probably isn’t what you think it is.”
“Whatever it is, the answer is still the same. He’s not here. He’s away on business.”
Von laughed. “Is that what he told you? I regret to inform you he was actually seen in the company of cheap women this evening at a local establishment called the Electra Complex.”
Her voice turned hard. “Was he indeed?”
“Yes, ma’am, and—”
“That son of a bitch! That depraved, immoral, perverted little son of a bitch! He
Her voice was now loud enough that Greg and Sammy could hear her clearly. Von held the receiver away from his head.
“Well, ma’am, I—”
“If he was here right now, you know what I’d do?”
“No, but—”
“I’d take a meat cleaver and chop him off. I’d dice his little cock into shish-kebab, that bastard—”
“In that case, I have some good news for you, ma’am. You see, we already took care of that for you.”
“You diced it into shish-kebab?”
“Well, not exactly. It’s still in one piece—” Here Von crossed his fingers. “—and if your husband wants it back, he’s gonna have to pay us.”
“Oh, he’s not getting it back,” she replied firmly. “He can spend the rest of his life pissing through a plastic tube for all I care.”
The three men shared a look of absolute horror—not at the prospect of Edward Rochester pissing through a plastic tube for the rest of his life, but the increasing likelihood that there wasn’t going to be any ransom payment.
“Wait, listen, the women really weren’t that cheap, and he wasn’t even buying lap dances, I swear!”
“Nice try, but I’m not going to be stupid about trusting my husband anymore.”
“Okay, but what about compensation?”
“I’m not reporting you to the police. That’s my final offer.”
“We want our jillion dollars, you bitch!”
She hung up on him with an efficient little
“Well, Von, you ready to go buy that yacht now? Hell, let’s go jet-setting,” Sammy suggested, for once not enjoying his own sarcasm.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Von shouted.
“Wasn’t it? All you had to do was say, ‘Look, I cut off your husband’s tool, and it’ll cost you three million dollars to get it back so they can reattach it.’ The way you did it, you may as well have said, ‘Hey, your husband just raped a bunch of preschoolers after firebombing six hundred sixty-six churches and performing analingus on your mother’s rotting cadaver, and by the way, how much will you pay to get back this penis I ripped from him?’ If someone said they’d kidnapped your girlfriend while she was out slobbing knobs for a five-spot on Seymour and Laymon, would you pay up?”
Von, who’d never actually had a girlfriend—not a willing one, at least—said nothing. He slammed the phone on the counter and curled his arm around the Tupperware bowl, almost protectively. He looked at the spoon, remembered its origin, and raised the bowl to his lips. He supped from it like it was the last of the milk in a cereal bowl.
“So you mean to say we ain’t gettin’ one red cent for what we’ve done tonight?” Greg asked.
“That’s what I mean,” Sammy clarified.
“You mean I had to put that guy’s . . . that guy’s
“Yep,” Sammy agreed. “The eternal plight of women everywhere.”
“Well, that’s just low down as anything.” He sulked, miserable at the idea that they probably
They were silent momentarily, stunned at this cruel turn of events, at a loss for words . . . the overconfident team who had boasted all along about their “inevitable” championship victory crusade, only to fall to the upstart underdogs. It wouldn’t have seemed possible for their night to turn out worse than Rochester’s, but here they were anyway. Every one of the involved parties, emasculated in one way or another.
As if on cue, they all heard a sudden outburst of laughter overhead which could only be construed as demonic. It did not seem to be predominantly masculine or feminine.
“Okay, I think we’ve had enough of your secrets,” Von said. He about-faced and left the kitchen for the stairs, carrying the Tupperware bowl with him.
“It’s safer if you don’t go up,” Sammy warned.
They ignored him. He tailed them with a sense of finality, not attempting to stop them. It was when they were passing the door to the Divided Man that a voice froze them. “Look down here, boys. I want to see your faces before I paint the walls with your brains.”
“Who’s this B-movie actor?” Von asked Sammy as they all obeyed the directive. “Another one of your ‘art’ exhibits?”
They found themselves seeing all of Horace for the first time, not just the fresh stump of his manhood jetting haphazardly like a lawn sprinkler. He stood at the foot of the stairs, deathly pale, with the front of his jeans almost entirely soaked in blood. He held a .38 on them. “From my glove compartment,” he explained. “I never drive without it. Guess I should have brought it inside the Electra Complex.”
“I’ve never seen him before,” Sammy replied to Von.
“Well, we don’t recognize him either,” Greg said.
“Of course you don’t,” Horace sympathized. “We weren’t properly introduced before you ran off with my still- bleeding dick, now were we?”
“He ain’t Edward Rochester,” Greg said.
“Hell no he ain’t,” Von agreed. “The pale little son of a bitch is lying.”
“Look at the front of my pants!” Horace shouted incredulously.
“
Sammy sighed. “Allow me to translate for you two jack-offs—you didn’t castrate Rochester in the bar. Okay? You got
“Wrong guy? Bullshit.” Von pointed at Horace. “Prove it.”
Horace kept the gun on them while he undid the button of his jeans with his free hand and pulled his pants down. “You see now?” he asked triumphantly, then cried out when his underwear jostled the remnants. He had revealed something that looked more like a charred crater left by a meteorite than the external male reproductive system. His movements since the cauterization had teased open some of the heat blisters which had formed at the very base of his shaft (what little remained). Yellow pus was oozing over the rim of the blackened wound, the entrails of which were as indistinguishable as the remains of spontaneous combustion victims. The pus adhered to them like candle wax.
“Well then,” Von said. “We stand corrected. But before you blow our brains out—” He heaved the contents of the Tupperware bowl in Horace’s direction. The contents splattered across Horace’s face, blinding him and—when he inadvertently swallowed some of them—ickening him. He covered his face with both hands, trying to clear his eyes.
The trio scrambled into the Divided Man’s room and threw the door shut. Sammy had barely locked it and stepped back when the gun began firing on the other side, blowing out huge holes.
Von looked around frantically. “There’s nothing here!” he said, referring to the lack of an arsenal. Greg gave the tube sock wide berth as he searched, also unsuccessful.
The gunshots destroyed the lock and Horace kicked the door open almost effortlessly and rushed in. Sammy
