Two Fisted Nasty: A Novella and Three Short Stories (Stories to SERIOUSLY Creep You Out Book 2) by Vernon Steve

Author:Vernon, Steve [Vernon, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Stark Raven Press
Published: 2014-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7 – Night of the Living Dumpster Demon

There was a big, round moon staring down over the city when we got ready to bury Montezuma. It might have been the eye of God, or it might have been a circle of moldering green cheese. I didn’t really care. A friend of mine had died and I had a promise to keep.

It was a bad death.

There aren’t many good ones.

We held the funeral that evening. It was a quiet service. Funerals are best presented as a glorified pantomime. Why mess with useless dialogue when a good man has died?

Mind you, there had to be a bit of music to carry the soul home. A sad-eyed man with a gray and grizzled droop of walrus moustache banged out a tune on a three stringed guitar, while Amos Briarchild blew his harmonica, sweet and low.

Robert Bruce stood beside me, as silent as a shadow’s whisper. He kept watching it all, watching everything like he was soaking it in. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered who he was thinking about.

I looked down at Montezuma, lying on the concrete of the alley outside of The Shambles, just next to the dumpster. We had wrapped a couple of tea towels over his face to hide the burns.

The tea towels stuck to the scald like a terry cloth caul.

There was no weeping. This close to the street you understood how transient a thing life could be. Nothing more than a handful of shiny coins that you hang onto for a while and then let go.

We slid Montezuma into the dumpster, and then a half dozen of us braced our feet against the wall and shoved the dumpster safely away from The Shambles. A half-filled jug of kerosene that had been liberated from a conveniently unlocked shed was emptied into the dumpster.

I said a few things. Some of the onlookers listened. Others were too tanked to care. At least three wine bottles had been opened and emptied. Death was best faced in a state of perfect numbness.

All of us lit our matches and heaved them in. It was important that we all did it together, so nobody could take the credit or the blame for the destruction of Montezuma’s remains.

I was pleased to see Robert Bruce lit a match of his own and threw it into the kerosened dumpster as well. It was the proper thing for him to do. He was one of us, now.

Within five minutes, we had ourselves a fat and roaring crematorium.

I stood there lost in a reverie, until about ten minutes later when the bucket brigade of civilization arrived. A policeman, complete with a badge and a billy club. The policeman’s partner stood nervously at the end of the alley, shifting from foot to foot, wishing he were anywhere else but where he was. Max Sennett would have been damn proud.

“What’s going on here?” the policeman asked.

I looked for Robert Bruce, but he had already faded into the crowd, demonstrating a surprising instinct for survival.

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