Detective’s Log

Detective’s log: 11/30

Had sliders for lunch.

Convinced they were just the meatballs from the diner spaghetti

flattened out and thrown on the grill.

Soggy looking waitress got really defensive when I grilled her.

Some people don’t respect a guy waving around a badge and gun.

It’s all those video games and violence on TV.

Desensitizing everyone. And no, I did not tip her.

Got back to the office to two messages.

One was an email from an outlet store.

I asked them to stop emailing me,

but as soon as I would send an email,

they would send one right back, almost instantly,

saying, “don’t send this address emails.”

It was like they were messing with me.

My emails got angrier and angrier

but they came back so quickly, so instantaneously,

that I began to suspect that they might be close by.

I don’t know who “Don Otreply” is,

but I think I’m going to do a little background check on him.

The second message was to make an appointment.

The voice was female,

a sense of urgency permeated her timbre,

as if she were under great duress,

or maybe menstruating.

She left the number of a hotel I recognized,

but gave no indication as to the room number

or name in which she was staying.

I called back, and was surprised to hear the same woman’s voice answer the call.

As soon as I introduced myself, the woman insisted I head over to the Hotel Grenada at once.

It’s close to my office, so I walk.

Passed by a hot dog stand.

Gas grill, no logo.

Just a guy on the street selling bacon wrapped hot dogs.

I flashed my badge

which is kept on my holster

and asked to see a permit.

He didn’t have one,

but gave me a hot dog to let it slide.

Sure, I just ate,

but those were sliders,

they’re basically appetizers.

Note: See if there actually is a permit that is required to have a hot dog stand.

The Hotel Grenada is accommodating in the, “they can get you drugs and whores” kind of way.

Because they’re so courteous with the local criminals, its actually a fairly safe and pleasant place to be.

The Grenada staff are the little birds that clean the gator’s teeth.

The establishment is clean,

mostly because people die there so often.

Regular deep cleanings are necessary.

Potted flowers and vases help hide the smell of ammonia and anti-biotic treated vaginas

but by no means gets rid of the odor;

a piano that’s been sectioned off with velvet cord excretes varnish fumes,

and I think of how my grandma would play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the honky-tonk,

waiting for a pie to cool, while really, really drunk.

As I enter, I feel the attention of everyone in the ill lit lobby.

I flash my badge attached to my gun and tell everyone to calm down.

I’m a private detective.

Over the years,

I’ve definitely noticed a general decrease in respect for the independent investigator.

They tend to not take it as seriously as the real police.

After a lot of trial and error, I’ve found the best way to earn their respect

is to show them your credentials, i.e. the gun and badge.

Sometimes the badge itself isn’t enough

because it’s just a paper certificate for my p.i. license

instead of a brass badge.

Its just unreasonable to expect people to read that much.

So having the gun there

is just a subconscious reminder to them that I am an authority figure.

A dame approaches.

If her legs were pipe wrenches a celebrity would lick them in a meme for retweets.

I think… I don’t really know what some of those words mean,

but I’ve been led to believe they are dirty.

She had eyes like canned salmon skin and a figure that a man would wear drowned puppy mittens for.

Her hair, identical to rope

one might choke oneself with

to make self-gratification

more gratifying.

I recognized her voice instantly as the one from the message.

By her airline pilot like outfit, I assume she is either management or the concierge.

She quickly ushered me to a staff area.

Her name is Jessica.

Her ass has shown no sign of quitting,

and I am totally on board with the situation.

There are soda cans littered on the floor

that have clearly been converted and used to consume drugs.

Her legs are screaming at me.

I want to rip them off her pelvis like a Mortal Kombat finishing move. Sexually.

She tells me that there has been an increase of murders at the hotel.

The rest of the staff, and her bosses are convinced its just the “business as usual” murder,

but she worries for her safety.

Jessica says that with some of the more recent killings could have only been committed by someone with an intimate knowledge of the building and had access to the staff areas.

So you think its a fellow employee? I ask.

She confirms

Tell me about the murders.

“I can show you.” Jessica says.

She leads me into the break room restroom.

It smells like dead.

The door opens and a wave of bile odor washes over us.

A sixty year old white male with black plastic glasses and a tweed suit

emerges with bloodied hands.

“You must be the independent contractor.”

I’m a private detective.

If you have a dead body,

I have to call the real police.

I mean the regular police.

I mean the police.

“Right. Detective. We need someone who can discreetly dispose of a corpse.

I’ve been led to believe you have the means to do so. Is that correct?”

You’ve got the wrong guy.

“I will pay you ten thousand dollars cash.”

I’ll get a garbage bag.

Jessica looked horrified.

Technically, I solved the murder. It was clearly the old guy.

I assumed he was her boss.

Note: Bill Jessica for solving crime.

I had a plan, of course.

So I winked at Jessica to ease her spirit.

“Why did you just wink at her?” the old man asked.

If you’ve never pistol whipped the elderly, I really recommend it.

Just make sure they’re organ donors before you do it.

Technically, it is using their bodies for scientific research,

ie the research of how to pistol whip effectively.

They’re slow, so you can really focus on your form.

The trick is to try to give them a concussion

by hitting them in the jaw, at the point where the lower mandible meets the skull,

this way, it rocks the top of their head back and forth,

effectively jostling, hopefully bruising the brain.

Some people might tell you to hold the barrel

and whack the guy with the handle.

Big mistake.

You should hit them with your finger on the trigger.

If the gun goes off, as long as you’re not pointing the gun at yourself,

which would be really hard to do if your finger is on the trigger,

it’ll only scare the living shit out of them,

or deafen them,

or shoot them in the face point blank.

Either way,

It’s a very effective technique.

Unless you miss the pistol whip.

The old man was spry. He slipped out of the way with the grace of a buttered eel.

He punched me in the gut and skull several times.

There was a speed and penetrative quality to his fists

that reminded me of the way my father beat me as a child.

I insisted that I was merely going for a high five

and just happened to have my gun in my hand.

He did not believe me,

but then I offered to drop the price of body disposal to six thousand dollars

and that seemed to lighten the old man up.

After wiping my blood off his hands into his thick pepper beard,

the old man walked away, his steps echoing off the linoleum.

“You’ll dispose of the body for free, and I won’t have you killed.”

His voice pained my ears. So had his foot.

Jessica asked me what we should do.

We get rid of the body.

It was okay. I had a plan.

Getting rid of a body really isn’t as hard as you think it would be.

You can just put it in the trash.

Television makes it seem like people are always coming across bodies in dumpsters,

and that’s partially true,

because if you’re going to find a body

it would probably be in a dumpster.

But no one checks for dead bodies when they look in dumpsters.

Just put some trash on top of it

and really, no one is going to find it.

Ninety nine out of hundred times,

you will get away with it.

When was the last time you decided to move the top layer of a dumpster’s garbage?

Never right?

That’s super dangerous.

There could be needles, broken glass, disease, all kinds of horrible stuff.

You don’t want to be in there.

So hide a dead body in a dumpster, and most of the time

it gets to the dump without anyone even knowing it.

I asked Jessica who the old man was.

The hotel manager, Mr. Green.

She knew nothing of the man, only that he seemed to be on very good terms

with some of the more frightening of criminals in or passing through town.

He had the ability to make anything imaginable happen.

There were days where Jessica would leave the hotel at 8 at night,

return at 7 the next morning, and find that all the furniture had been replaced.

No one said anything about it happening,

which meant someone had gotten shot,

and by the looks of it,

that someone happened all over the hotel lobby.

Jessica also claimed to have seen the cooks prepare a dish for Mr. Green

which was like chili verde,

but with kobe tiger cub.

The concierge was surprisingly helpful in moving the body.

She could carry half the corpse and continue the conversation

with social finesse and poise.

The body itself was a limp, mid thirties Korean man, completely nude and blatantly defiled.

Jessica noticed me staring at the eviscerated anus.

“That’s how I know it was the same person doing a lot of the killings.” she muttered,

gesturing to his butthole.

I asked her how she knew it wasn’t Mr. Green doing the killing.

“It wouldn’t make sense.

Mr. Green is a bad man,

but his job is to uphold his equally awful institution.

The people who have been killed

have all been vital to the hotel’s daily operations.

The people who are dying “

That’s why she thought she was in danger.

She thought she was also vital to the operation

and therefore in danger of being targeted by whoever was attacking the hotel staff.

I understood why they came to me.

With their reputation,

they might be under attack from some rogue police officer.

It was plausible.

It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for the criminals to attack the hotel staff.

They provided so many conveniences.

If they bring the police in on these murders,

then it is cause for the cops to snoop around the premise

and uncover a litany of other crimes,

and the crimes of their guests.

My interest was officially peaked.

I told Jessica she wasn’t in danger.

No one cares about the concierge.

They’re incredibly unimportant.

But I did still have a plan.

We heaved the body into the hotel dumpster,

and I asked Jessica to bring me back to Mr. Green’s office.

I wanted to collect my money.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

I love that look.
It means I’m about to do something awesome.

Jessica led me to Mr. Green’s office.

He seemed unpleasantly surprised to see me.

I asked him for ten thousand dollars.

His face soured more.

I told him not to punch people with guns.

He told me something very vulgar

and then I shot him in the stomach.

I heard in a movie it takes four days for people to die of gun wounds to the gut,

but that might not be true.

Either way, a .22 revolver doesn’t really kill people instantly.

It doesn’t really kill people at all.

I’ve tried.

Human bodies are fairly resilient things.

Old men, on the other hand,

can also be little bitches.

Mr. Green started to leak angry sobs of pain.

I searched his wallet.

Five crisp one hundred dollar bills.

That’s really not a bad body moving fee.

You’d pay way less for a college kid to move a piano.

Jessica stood in the corner of the office, shaking nervously

but staying remarkably quiet.

I’m not used to women being quiet, especially around shooting.

It made me like her a little more.

I explained my plan.

Clearly, there was someone in the hotel, with an intimate knowledge of the staff areas, who is killing members of the hotel staff, presumably with the intention of slowing down the operations at the Genada. What I have done here, is create a chaotic variable. I did something the killer did not expect. I shot someone he wanted to shoot. It will give him pause to think, which is my favorite strategy. Throw a monkey wrench. Jessica will announce the shooting of Mr. Green to the rest of the staff, and then take note as to who presses for more information. Anyone who demonstrates interest, or changes their behavior in any suspicious way will be noted. I will go undercover as a guest in the hotel, and investigate until I know who the killer is.

“Let me get this straight. You just shot me, and now you want a room?”

A free room. Yes.

“If I agree, will you get me a doctor, or something?”

Yes.

And so it came to pass,

I took care of my living situation that month,

I made five hundred dollars

and began my investigation into the murders at the Grenada.

My first objective was to establish my cover, as someone who fit in at the Grenada, so I bought some drugs and a whore.

***

Chapter 2

The whore arrived at midnight.

I requested the most “well traveled” of prostitutes;

the one with the most “work experience.”

I wanted one who had seen and done everything.

She smelled like shark’s fin and had eyes that stared at imaginary goblins

who I’m sure were screaming at her in her head.

She introduced herself as “Lolli, like the pop.”

She looked like she could take a hard punch in the head,

a strong character and constitution.

Lolli meant business, and stared at me with blank irritation

until I showed her some money.

After assuring her that I was not after her intercourse transaction,

we did some of the drugs,

and I told her about my situation regarding the dead body.

She wanted to see it.

We did a little more drugs.

I took her out back to the dumpster,

and using out cell phones as flashlights,

we uncovered the deceased Korean.

“I don’t recognize him.” Lolli said.

“Do you know anyone who might be capable of inflicting those anal contusions?” I asked.

“th’whasit confusion?” The drugs made words sound silly.

“Anal contusions. The butthole wound. The gash in his ass. The tear in his tookus. The rip in his rump. The bleed in his bum.” I was on too many drugs.

“Oh. Oh! Woah!! That must have been a monster dong.” Lolli, mesmerized by the discovery, poked it. Yes, it.

“Exactly. I’m thinking there probably aren’t too many people in this neighborhood with that gigantic of a willy. There’s just too much cocaine and steroids for that to be a possibility. And if anyone were to know of a regular at this hotel with a children’s time capsule sized cock, it would be you.”

“There’s only one person I know who would be capable of a thing like this.” Lolli whispered, fear dripping from her lips. There was drool too. She was crazy high.

I was given the name of Teddy the Bear.

I cross referenced the name with Jessica.

She knew him.

He was staying in the hotel.

She asked if I was on drugs.

I said no,

but the drugs were messing with my hearing

so I may have been screaming at the top of my lungs.

I definitely had taken off most of my clothing.

Jessica gave me a bathrobe.

To calm down, I had a few minibar liqueur bottles

and now was no time for a crash

so I did a teenie weenie amount of drugs.

I asked how Mr. Green was doing.

He was bleeding.

I asked if her concierge skills could conjure something like a “crime doctor.”

Jessica did know of an individual:

The dead Korean man with the blasted ass.

It looked like Mr. Green would be bleeding for just a little bit longer.

I asked her what I was doing, again?

Teddy the Bear.

Hahahahahaha.

No.

Right.

People are dead.

Justice time.

I left Lolli with Jessica and told them not to do any of the drugs without me.

Teddy the Bear was in Room 222.

Room 222 connects to Room 224.

Room 224 was inhabited by an obese woman with a roast.

She thought I wanted the roast

because I was staring at it hungrily.

She got really defensive.

I explained that I was actually a private investigator

who happened to be on drugs

and that I needed to force my way into her room

to try to ambush a cold blooded killer who lived in the room adjacent.

She was still defensive,

but not as defensive knowing I wasn’t asking for the roast.

I really wanted some,

but I felt like that would sour negotiations.

The woman led me into her room.

She had veins on her legs identical to licorice.

Celebrity gossip TV illuminated the room.

About a third of the meat had been flayed open,

seemingly by her own gnarled hands and teeth.

A suitcase full of expired Mexican “que-ludes” lay open on the bed beside her

and an open package of licorice.

One of the veins on her legs actually was a licorice.

I didn’t say anything

because I didn’t want her to know I was staring at her gross leg veins.

The rest of the room was bloody velvet

with ferns and lamp/water-feature/clock-radio combo appliance

next to a rotary-telephone and a guest-pass for AOL minutes.

The connecting door looked thin.

I could bust through it.

Those last few attempts,

those were flukes.

I had this.

Before, I was using my whole body weight to try to crash through.

Like an idiot.

Really, I need to kick the door.

Focus all that power on the one point that matters:

The hinge.

I let fly a chopping side-kick.

My knee hyper-extends.

Yelps are yelped

and I hit the ground.

Two shadows appear from under the door.

I pull out my gun.

Locks begin to unlatch.

I hobble to my feet.

The door opens inward.

I go for a planted front kick to the groin.

Instead I kick a midget in the head.

It’s with the hurt leg.

So we both go down.

“TEDDY THE BEAR,” I yell,

pulling out my pistol

and aiming it at his bulbous head,

“HOW WIDE IS YOUR DICK?”

**

Teddy the Bear turns out to be a delightful male prostitute

He admits to having caused the anal contusions on the Korean doctor

but swears he had nothing to do with the death,

the doctor left his room alive, albeit limping.

We confirm this with web-cam footage.

By we, I mean the large que-lude woman and myself.

She prepared plates of meat for us both.

I took a lude for my knee.

Teddy the Bear took two for his face.

I might have told him they were aspirin.

He is by far the most ripped dwarf I have ever seen.

Actually, he’s the only one I’ve ever met in person,

so maybe they’re all jacked.

By the looks of things,

Teddy must have been a semi-permanent fixture at the Grenada.

The room was lined with hanging clothes, costumes and props.

Trunks of shoes were stored and stacked under and on top of every usable surface

and the bathroom could very well have passed as an inventory room

for a department store make-up counter.

The LP told me his customer base had a wide range of needs.

His computer situation seemed complex to say the least.

A full desktop, stacks of hard-drives, rolls of blank CDs, and

five monitors hummed enough to the point you could feel it in your feet.

Strangest of all was a small satellite, independent of the computer system,

which plugged into both the hotel phone and television.

Teddy says they’re all for live-streaming purposes.

Then I noticed he also had a number of guns laying around his hotel room.

By a number, I mean many, many, many guns.

Guns I had never seen before. They look custom-made.

Teddy claims they are for self-defense.

It’s a rough working environment.

He must be doing very well for himself

because by my initial sweep of the room

I’d say there was at least half a million dollars worth of clothes, computers and guns.

Teddy dressed himself in a tailored blue suit

and black dress shoes that must have added three inches.

There was a knock at the door.

Jessica’s voice came through the other side.

She asked if she could come in.

Teddy looked suspicious.

I told him it was okay.

He stalled.

I asked him again to open the door.

He inched towards it slowly.

When Jessica sees Teddy,

her face washes over with confusion.

She doesn’t recognize him.

The next moment, she is on the ground.

The beef woman screamed and fled as fast as she could.

A flash of steel whipped through the air

crashing against Jessica’s kneecap

and then again in the left temple.

The Bear had some sort of telescopic baton.

I drew my weapon, but before I could even yell, “I’m going to shoot you,”

an explosion cracked through the air,

and the dwarf jettisoned through the air, out into the hallway and out of sight

with unbelievable speed.

The beef woman had rocked herself to her feet.

She was still screaming.

It seemed to really be taking the wind out of her.

I scramble over to Jessica.

She’s breathing, but her head was bleeding

way more than they allow you to see on TV.

I grab a little cowboy outfit from Teddy’s rack

and wrap the concierge’s head.

Beef woman has reached the door.

The que-lude kicks in.

Down the hallway, I hear gunfire like I’ve never heard.

Like a dozen hunters simultaneously fired shotguns at their dogs.

Feet scamper towards the door.

Teddy reappears, his eyes ablaze.

He brandished a gun I’ve never seen,

like an uzi

with worryingly nerf-like qualities.

The laser-sight drifted in artistic loops along the wall,

his pupils followed.

“You didn’t give me aspirin, did you?” a mist of blood powdered his lips

which clung to creeks of drool.

Yes…?

Teddy the Bear slumped over, and shot off his left big toe-nail,

and a lot of that toe.

I know there was nothing that could spasm,

but I swear the toe fragment twitched when it finished spinning on the floor.

After dragging Teddy inside,

I find something to wrap his foot.

An impulse in my heart told me to check outside.

Make sure no one was hurt.

Another impulse told me to look at Teddy’s penis.

In an attempt to be democratic, I ignore both impulses.

It had been a while since I had been in a dirty hotel room

with a drugged midget prostitute and an unconscious woman.

I considered asking the beef woman for help,

but by the sounds of things she must have just settled down

and I felt it would be cruel to disturb her further.

The sound of her lips smacking up against cow meat

restocking precious calories

sang like horns over an orchestra of computer fan droning.

The monitors on Teddy’s desk began to light up.

The satellite dish tilted up and down.

Some unrecognizable skype-like program

was receiving a call.

It must have been one of Teddy’s clients,

or maybe his pimp.

Either way, I decided now would be a great time

to do something awesome.

I thought it was a touchscreen, because it looked really expensive

so I almost missed the call, having to put the monitor back on the desk.

Shadowy figures sat in front of a panoramic lens

which distorted their silhouettes even more

into sharper, jagged pillars,

their backs illuminated by a massive screen showing an icon of a fist clenching a lightning bolt.

“Agent Hatchet, you missed your scheduled report-in.”

Their voices were garbled.

I thought it must have been some sort of role-playing thing.

This would be too perfect.

I grabbed Teddy’s barely-conscious, babbling, bleeding body

and propped him in front of the computer like a puppet.

Yes, this is Agent Hatchet. I said, in a sexy voice. I’ve been a naughty dwarf.

“Hatchet, you don’t sound like yourself. Why are you in make-up right now?”

Panic washed over me.

I had no idea what to say, or how to say it.

Teddy started blowing spit bubbles.

Oh aye! I cried. Sorry ’bout that laddies, just yankin’ on yer cock-balls!

To my mind, the only dwarfs I knew were Scottish

and from Middle Earth,

so I went with that angle.

A beat passed, then the screen went dark.

The satellite stopped twitching.

Small amounts of smoke diffused from a knock-off iPad.

Jessica began to stir.

I watched her pull her memory back together.

She shot up instantly.

I felt the blood pulse in her head.

The pain nearly took her back down.

The concierge glanced around the room.

“Oh my god, he’s a spy.”

What are you talking about?

“Look around you. The costumes, the guns, the computers…

The dwarf…

There can be only one answer.

This is Agent Cam Hatchet.”

That’s not a sex thing?

“What?”

Nothing.

“Hatchet is a thing of legends.

One of the great super-spies,

like James Bond, or Ekkkksss.

His name strikes fear in all criminals hearts.”

You mean to tell me that every major criminal

is aware of a legendary LP super-spy,

and no one took notice to a midget hooker

living in your hotel?

Also, I think it’s pronounced “Triple X.”

“Cam Hatchet is a master of disguise.

He could look like anyone, from far away.

When he attacks, it is with such blinding speed,

by the time you think,

‘Wait, is that not Sandra Bullock standing far away,

but a Sandra Bullock impersonator

standing considerably closer in the foreground than I initially perceived?’

He’s already on top of you with that damned ADA military reacher-grabber.”

Jessica caressed the knock on the head, from said reacher-grabber.

I’m gonna need to hear that one more time.

I was never given the opportunity.

At first I thought it was a strange reaction between the drugs I’d taken with Lolli

and the que-ludes from the beef woman.

It felt like the floor was sucking me under.

For a moment I thought I could see in 360 degrees,

like the truth was a membrane running through the atoms of my blood

like existence itself was a reflection of my own imagination.

No, wait, I’d been roofied.

I remember that feeling.

Darkness pooled beneath my eyelids.

Thundering terror blanketed Jessica’s face.

I tried to bring her back from fear,

desperately attempting to get her to brandish the dwarf’s weapon

at whatever looming animosity threatened her.

I tried to tell her to load the magazine into Teddy’s gun,

but as I slumped over, all I could manage to get out was,

Just put it in.

My nerves flailed under helpless flesh.

A wide shadow rose over me.

The beef woman stood in the doorway wheezing,

“You’re not Teddy the Bear!” her voice had the audio equivalent of “neck flaps.”

Meat woman… you fool…

Then nothing.

***

Meet Mort of Müür

Normally, Mort’s morning starts at 4:15 AM with a chilled corpse massage over the smell of a french press, touched with rust, struggling to squeeze out a mug of next-to-instant coffee. The massage itself really takes place closer to 5 AM, once everything has been peeled and seasoned. The skinning takes longer than it should. The skeletal chef does it all before the first sip, so his hands move smoothly, and he can leave as much fat on the meat as possible. The skin is set aside for later, to be fried up like bacon, then served with runny eggs on toast.

Today’s cut is a thigh. Mandy has a thing for meat on the bone, so the tenderizing hammer is left on the shelf and Mort goes at it by hand. He salts the leg, and with a steak knife, creates small incisions in the flesh, where he stuffs cloves of pickled garlic. Mort believes in simplicity, especially for meat. “Taste what She hath created for us to enjoy in paradise,” a placard reads above his bare spice rack.

Mort usually crushes peppercorns in a stone bowl creating large fragments to be rubbed into the marbling. As his decrepit fingers run up the thigh, Mort’s grip tightens ever so slight and sensually. He’s not even aware he does it, but has to swallow a mouthful of pooling saliva. An insignificant amount of dried basil is added, just for the thought of it, and then the toothless chef lets the salt tenderize the flesh while he prepares his own breakfast.

The kitchen’s aesthetic could be described as “autopsy-esque.” Metal instruments in loops, jagged crosses, spirals and spikes line the three-quarters sized cooking space. The skeletal chef being small, his work palace contained custom cookers dwarfed for his convenience by the manufacturers. The only device not made slight smaller was the dish washer, due to the enormity of plates used to prepare massive lumps of human flesh. But other than that, the chairs, tables, knives and coffee pots are all minutely miniaturized, such that when no one ever brings it up, for fear of seeming silly or delusional, but it lingers in all the guests’ minds. Mort runs mostly on coffee. He did the math once, and found on average, he consumed five to six hundred food calories per day on a fifteen hour work day. The rest was made up with caffeine. Additionally, his small stature makes it a decent amount of food. He never goes hungry. He just forgets to eat sometimes; a folly of chefs who are always in a state of tasting.

The skeletal chef doesn’t like wearing the dentures Mr. Green found for him. Not because they belonged to a deceased guest whose mouth was wider than Mort’s, but found that his mind would focus on keeping the over-sized plastic mandibles in place, instead of the palate’s sensation.

In addition to sucking on strips of skin bacon and drinking eggs, Mort has taken to the whole juicing fad, but instead of kale and broccoli, he juices livers, pancreases and spinal fluids. Its great with Tabasco, salt and celery, but Mort will not tolerate calling it anything resembling a “bloody mary.”

The time to experiment is there. Most roasts usually take all day, unless it is a smaller cut, like a forearm or “lower-spine stew.” It’s exactly like ox-tail. No one in the Grenada can tell the difference, even Mr. Green. The cook’s latest culinary victories are the bone marrow macchiato, and figuring out how to make an edible garnish from fingernails.

Normally Mort would celebrate, or reward himself for creating something worthy of his pride. He would sit with his coffee, in addition to the rose-foamed macchiato and feel with every ounce of his existence, himself being pleased with himself.

This morning however,

instead of licking his own lips,

tasting his own skin,

unbeknownst to him,

making his dick wiggle.

His twin sister Mandy

ambles in with the listless bodies of the concierge, a man and a nude dwarf

with that look on her face like she wants to make sushi

but with people.

She doesn’t eat seaweed

so it’s basically raw people on rice.

There is a similarity though,

in that both large fish and Mandy’s victims

are killed with a harpoon.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,

but they’re people and it’s in the dark.

The bone marrow macchiato will have to wait. With the recent increase in deaths in the Grenada, the kitchen freezer was already full. Now there were three extra bodies, albiet one smaller. Mr. Green assured the skeletal chef an individual was being hired to help dispose of the excess. It’s usually best not to disturb Mandy while she’s getting her harpoon and meat maze ready, so Mort untied his apron and teetered off to alert management.

TO BE CONTINUED…