The Walrus of Death: A Short Story (5 page)

“Don’t mention it,” I said, thanking God that my healing ability would take the pain in my hand and arm away soon.

“Oh no, I won’t mention it. No sir. Not one more word.” He made as if he was running a zipper across his lips.

“I’m glad,” I said. “Hey, I was gonna brew up a pot of coffee upstairs if you want to join me?”

“Oh, no thanks, Norman,” Hal said, looking up 7th Street, away from Main. “But I gotta be going. Lots to do, lots to do, yes sir.” And with that he loped away. “See you in the funny pages,” he called over his shoulder, giggling like a little boy who’d heard his father say the word ‘poop’.

I shook my head as I watched him walk away. Once he was out of sight I sighed and climbed the stairs to my office.

I have the entire top floor all to myself. I used the key to let myself in, crossing the waiting room and moving into the office proper. I ain’t much for décor, preferring just the desk against the back wall and a pair of chairs sitting in front for clients. I have a small table to the right where a coffee maker sits. The pot was full of hot coffee which I’d prepared the night before and programmed to run this morning so it would be waiting for me when I came in.

I hung my coat and jacket on a coat tree in the corner, then pulled off my shoulder holsters and guns and set them on the desk before I snatched up the only mug on the table next to the desk. I frowned at the layer of dried creamer and sugar at its bottom and spent a few moments washing it out in the sink of the private bathroom attached to the office.

Once clean I poured myself some coffee, added cream and sugar, and went to the large picture window that looked out onto Main. The window was taller than I was and I put a foot up on the sill as I sipped the hot coffee. I could see the entrance to the Pub from here and smiled because Lemonzeo was standing out on the sidewalk with the two vampires. I smiled because they were arguing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, but it was obvious that the vamps weren’t happy. I could only assume that I was the cause of their ire, and that made me smile even more.

Lemonzeo however, did not get where he was by not knowing how to get things done. It only took a few moments, but he soon had the vamps pacified and then saw them off in a stretch limo. I watched Abner as he stood at the entrance to the Pub, watching the limo speed off down Main at well over the legal limit. Then, as he was about to turn and go back into the Pub, he looked up the street at me standing at my window. I raised my coffee mug in salute. He scowled and disappeared inside the small bar.

I smiled again and was about to tip the mug and take my first taste of coffee for the day when the phone on my desk rang. I walked to the desk and had my hand just above the phone when my office door exploded inward. I ducked behind the desk, dropping the coffee to throw my arms above my head as splintered wood rained down on me.

The phone continued to ring.

“NORMAN OKLAHOMA!” a voice roared from where my door used to be. I knew that voice.

I stood as the phone rang for the last time and my answering machine picked up. I heard my voice say that no one was available to take the call and all that jazz. But I wasn’t paying much attention to the outgoing message. Instead I focused on the hulking figure in my doorway.

“Ah, there you are,” the Walrus said, and in two quick strides, he was across the room.

I looked from the oncoming walrus to the guns on the desk. I tried to go for them, but I was too slow. The Walrus had reached the desk, batted it aside with one massive hand, and before I could run screaming from the scene, he had snatched me up, holding me over his head in both hands.

“Norman,” Pat’s voice rose from the answering machine that now lay on the floor. “It’s Pat. I don’t know where you’re at, but you need to know that the Walrus escaped custody and I’m afraid he’s gonna come looking for you. Just wanted to warn you. Keep safe.”

“Thanks, Pat,” I said.

Then the Walrus threw me out the window.

HAS ANYONE EVER THROWN you out a window? It ain’t the street fair one might imagine.

There’s pain involved; lots of it and from almost everywhere at once. There are more sensations of pain from just this one act then there are flavors of ice cream at a rich man’s sundae bar.

Let me try and describe it to you.

First, you feel a crushing blow and your body impacts in upon itself, your bones bruising and grinding together as you come into contact with the window. This lasts but nary a moment as the glass gives way and shatters around you. Then comes the biting shards that tear at your clothes and slice up your skin as you soar through the window and out into the open air.

You ever see them cartoons where the coyote is chasing the road runner and the road runner takes a quick left turn, but the coyote can’t turn as fast and winds up running right off the edge of a cliff? But being that it’s a cartoon, the coyote doesn’t notice right away that there ain’t no ground beneath him and so he hangs there in midair for a time.

You feel almost that exact sensation when you’re thrown out a window.

You hang there for a split second though it feels like eternity. Then you fall, leaving your stomach behind. The ground rushes up to meet you, and it ain’t as forgiving as the glass, it doesn’t yield beneath you. Sure, if you ain’t too high and if you’re dropping into a field of lush grass it may not be that bad when you and the ground reunite. But I was two stories up and had nothing beneath me but concrete.

Once you’re down, the fun ain’t over. You have a shower of glass to look forward to. More razor sharp shards to rip at your skin and make you bleed.

If you’re lucky, you survive, and unless you’ve fallen into a busy street, you have nothing left to worry about. Just lie still and wait for the good folks in the ambulance to come along and scoop you up.

Me? I wasn’t so lucky.

I hit the sidewalk face first and felt bones snap and teeth crack as glass fell on me, slicing through my clothing and biting into my skin. I heard the screech of tires as cars skidded to a stop at the sight of a man falling from a second story window. I tried to rise, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I knew that I’d heal soon enough and would eventually be able to get up and walk away, but I couldn’t count on the Walrus waiting around and allowing that to happen.

Sure enough, I felt the impact of three hundred and fifty pounds of mutated muscle land near me on the sidewalk. He must have forgone the stairs and decided instead to jump. How efficient of him.

I felt an intense itch course through me, which meant that the healing had begun. But it was too little too late. The Walrus grabbed me by the hair on the back of my head and pulled my face from the cement. Blood ran from my nose and mouth like a faucet and I could see pieces of my teeth lying there among the dark crimson pools.

“I know all about you, Norman,” the thing whispered into my ear. “I’ve researched you, studied you. I’ve learned all I could.”

“Stop it,” I said as best I could with a mouth full of blood and broken teeth. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Don’t feel special. It’s something I do for all of my targets. It’s much easier to kill someone when you know their strengths and weaknesses. For example,” he said as he slammed my face into the concrete. “I know all about your healing ability.”

I wanted to say something clever, something quick and witty, but my mind was a bit busy dealing with the pain.

“The one thing I don’t know about you, Norman, is just how powerful this healing ability of yours is. I mean, it’s obvious that you can break, bleed, and feel pain.”

He emphasized this by slamming my face into the sidewalk once again. I didn’t scream though. I mean, I wanted to, but it ain’t an easy thing to do with your face full of concrete.

“Can you die, Norman Oklahoma? Can you be shuffled off this mortal coil? I must know.”

He stepped on my back and pulled my head toward him until I both heard and felt my spine snapping.

That time I did scream.

The Walrus just laughed and flung me back against the wall of my building. I heard more bones snap, but I couldn’t feel much of anything anymore.

As I lay there, bleeding, I could see the Walrus take in the faces of the gathering crowd. The surrounding area filled with onlookers and gawkers who’d come out to see the show. He smiled and scratched at his chin. It appeared he was thinking things over.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I tried to say. I can’t be certain what actually came out of my mouth, but I know it wasn’t intelligible.

“Look, Norman,” the Walrus said. “Everyone has come to watch.”

He smiled and bent over me to whisper into my ear.

“As much as I enjoy the eyes of all your friends and neighbors watching me break you, I think it might be best if we take this somewhere a little more . . . private. What do you say?”

With that he lifted me into the air and threw me over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“How about it, Norman? Your place or mine?”

The Walrus carried me up and around the block. A few of the bystanders justified my never-ending hope in humanity’s inherent selflessness by attempting to intercede on my behalf, but they were no match for the monster. He pushed them aside like stalks of corn and loaded me into the trunk of a large black sedan as the rest of the onlookers ran.

“How about your place?” he said and smiled once more before slamming the lid closed, leaving me in darkness.

The ride out to my home in the country was fairly uneventful. It did however; give me time to do two things. Think, and heal.

The healing itch burrowed into me and I felt fear for the first time in a long time. I didn’t want to die, never really thought it was possible, but now . . . well, all bets were off.

As I said before, I ain’t up there with the great thinkers of the world, but I needed a plan or I would learn if Death had made a place for me at his dinner table. Luckily, though I may not be a great thinker, I’m a fast one and a plan formulated in my mind. It wasn’t gonna be pretty, but it was sure gonna be simple. I was good at simple. Heck, I was the Einstein of simple.

Most of the plan depended on a couple of variables.

First, I had to pretend to be passed out, and I really had to sell it. Regardless of what the Walrus might do once we arrived at my home, I couldn’t cry out, I couldn’t open my eyes, I had to remain as still as the dead.

Next, I had to gamble on a gut feeling that the Walrus would want to take his time with me. I figured that he might want to torture me a bit before he helped me, as he put it, shuffle off this mortal coil. I also had to count on the hope that he wouldn’t enjoy torturing me if I wasn’t awake to suffer through it. My hope was that as long as I was passed out, or as long as he thought I was passed out, he would wait to start in on me.

Maybe he’d want to tie me up some and get everything ready for his big number while I remained void to the world. I had a lot to pin my hopes on, but I didn’t have much of a choice either way.

So yeah, that was my plan. I needed to buy enough time to heal so that I could run and fight another day.

Again, it wasn’t up there with some of history’s all-time great plans, but it didn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to work.

The sound of the tires changed from pavement to gravel and I knew we were close, so I got my mind right. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing . . . in through the nose, out through the mouth. Steady, calming breaths. I did my best to relax. It wasn’t easy.

The vehicle slowed and then stopped. The engine died and the lid to the trunk popped open slightly. I had begun to gain some feeling back in my legs. I heard the steps of the Walrus as he made his way to the back of the vehicle and soon felt the cool autumn air on my face as he lifted the lid to the trunk.

“We’re here, Norman,” he said. “Ah, are you sleeping? How nice.”

He slapped me. Hard.

By that point I’d gone to my happy place. I imagined my bed; the memory foam mattress and the thick comforter. Furthermore, I imagined myself in that bed, the comforter pulled up to my nose, snuggled deep within the folds of cotton and down, a look of bliss on my face. Then I added that final puzzle piece that made it possible for me to lie still as the Walrus slapped me around – I imagined a sky outside my bedroom window, a sky so filled with clouds that the sun could find no way through and pull me from my slumber. As matter of fact, I’d done such a good job creating my happy place that the one thing I had to struggle with was to keep from smiling.

“Wake up, Norman. We’ve arrived at the end of your life.” He slapped me again, but harder than before.

My teeth clacked together and my head rocked to the side by the force of the slap, but I had remained in my trance.

For a moment or two nothing happened. I could only imagine that the Walrus was standing there at the open trunk, looking in at me in thought. I figured he was thinking it all through. Then I felt some pressure on my right trigger finger. The Walrus held it gingerly in his hands.

It would happen quickly. I had to be ready.

With a sharp stab of pain, the Walrus snapped my finger like a chicken bone. I didn’t move, didn’t cry out, didn’t even flutter an eyelash. It took every ounce of strength I had, but I did it.