Suckerville by Chris Sorensen

Author:Chris Sorensen [Sorensen, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-30T22:00:00+00:00

Doc sat JD down in the desk chair and closed the office door. A giant mounted walleye stared down at them, ready for the fun to commence. The place was littered with papers: bills, flyers, you name it—some stacked in piles on the desk, others tacked to the wall. Whatever semblance of order Doc kept in the bar proper, he abandoned here in his office.

“Just can’t keep your nose clean, can you?” Doc rummaged around in a metal cabinet covered in magnets advertising medicines for pets, remnants of his veterinarian days.

“My nose ain’t the issue, Doc.”

Doc extracted a mason jar filled with pickled eggs. “Want one?”

The eggs looked like they’d been pickled sometime in the last century. It was a hard pass for JD.

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Doc popped the top, and gas escaped, perfuming the room with Eau de Fart. He extracted a gray egg and swallowed it down.

Doc pulled out a bottle of iodine and doused JD’s ear before he knew what was happening. The move so shocked JD that he forgot to scream. It was like the man had just dipped his earlobe into boiling cooking oil.

“Sit still.” Doc set aside the bottle and quickly threaded a surgical needle. To say JD felt woozy would be to do a disservice to the word. “Concentrate on something else.”

JD placed his attention on the calendar hanging on the wall across the room. February 1999—an oldie but a goodie. The fourteenth was circled in red, the name Wilhelmina scrawled within its box. Doc was single, as far as JD knew, so the old fellow’s Valentine’s date must have been a bust.

The needle pierced skin, JD shrieked. By the time Doc was done stitching, JD was well and truly hoarse.

“Not my best work, but it’ll do. I’ve seen cats who hold still better than you.”

JD was at a loss for words. His earlobe was a raging ball of fire.

Doc opened the mini-fridge next to his desk, rooted around, and came up with a jar filled with muddy water. Lazing about in the water were little wormy creatures.

“Gonna have to get the blood flowing or that lobe of yours is gonna turn black and fall off.”

“What are those?” JD asked, peering cautiously at the jar.

“What do they look like?” Doc replied, fishing out a few leeches.

JD scooted back in his chair. “I don’t think so.”

“Tough shit,” Doc said. He selected the liveliest of the batch and held it to JD’s ear. “Doctor’s orders.”

There was no pain as the thing latched on, only an uncomfortable tug. JD reached up to touch it, and Doc swatted his hand away.

“Leave it.”

Great, just great. He’d managed to avoid the suckers outside only to become intimately acquainted with them here in Doc’s office.

“For how long?” JD asked.

Doc didn’t reply. He was staring at the remaining leeches in his palm.

“Well, I’ll be…”

He tipped his hand, and the leeches dropped back into the jar.

“It wasn’t my fault, Doc.”

“That’s interesting…”

“That man out there is a psychopath—”

Doc shushed him.

“You okay, Doc?”

The man just grinned and shook the jar like some sort of grim snow globe.

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