Yes dead is dead unless you want it to be something else, but it will cost you.
---Al Most, Attorney at Law, and other stuff
Just because a man has been shot and stabbed it don’t mean a crime was committed. Most likely it was a shaving accident while deer hunting.
---Sheriff Tally Hoe
The devil works in mysterious ways. Can I get an Amen and another slice of that peach pie?
---The Reverend Sally Forth, Preacher at the Eve Was Right Church of the Garden.
The people deserve to know the truth, I guess. Maybe not. We’re still discussing it. And what is the truth, really?
---TV talking head Alice Fair, The Mourning Hour
AnD sO It BeGaN
It was early evening when a figure moved through the shadows of the frigid night, one foot at a time, although he preferred hopping on one leg in time to the music that played loudly in his head that would fit perfectly into a 7 ½ sized hat, if he had been wearing a hat. Instead, he wore an XL black panty hose, with only one eye-hole, a trick he’d learned riding with The Overripe Persimmon Motorcycle Club, when Rocky “Big Eyes” Rhode caught a bumble bee in the eye and needed a flat heat screwdriver to dig it out. Afterwards he was just known as Rocky.
But, back to the avenger: Perhaps he should have cut one leg off the pantyhose to keep from tripping. He was not a quick learner and still limped from the second and third times.
Under his arm was a Salver model 14mQ, loaded with a full clip of 7.66 millimeter, highly polished brass cartridges with steel piercing bullets, made especially for him by the little known Happy As a Fragrant Clown Gun Shop and Ice Cream Parlor in South Philly. The gun was so accurate he could correct a squirrel’s astigmatism at a hundred yards, but it was another learning process. A few squirrels mistook headlights for sunrise. Some of their friends stood on street corners, cups in their tiny claws, waiting for nut donations.
The target, Wiber Willright had a titanium plate in his head from a previous attempt on his life. The first assassin tried to do the job with fossilized deer antlers, mounted on the hood of a black and red 1954 Chevy. The killer didn’t survive the Chevy blowing a rod that pierced his heart. With the new assassin there would be no mistakes. He was a professional and knew to keep things simple, mostly. You find, you kill, you get paid; you spend your money on expensive whiskey and cheap women, or that was the plan. So far he’d found no cheap women and he took this job because he was also running short of whisky.
Willright, lived on Casanova Avenue in a heavily gated community, if you could call one house and sheep farms a community. The gate was so heavy it took two men and a harnessed donkey to drag it open. The donkey would rather have been frolicking with a very cute filly in the back forty, but no one had asked him. Sadly, frolicking was still a distant dream.
Willwright had not previously had a heart condition, but after the near miss, his heart pounded every time the gate creaked open, or he saw deer antlers, or the donkey brayed. Nor was he fond of 1954 Chevys. These days, he mostly sat in his massively fortified home, in front of the TV, on a couch once owned by Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger, doing obscene crossword puzzles, asking himself questions, such as what rhymes with snore and banal pecks?
Not short of ideas and possibilities, his assassin reached the gate and paused to change into this boots with the soles sewed on backwards, so trackers would only know where he’d been, made for him in London in a shop with a sign on the front that said, NO soul resides in this establishment and that means you, you soulless heathen!
Using an old trick he’d learned in survival camp, after he’d been lost for several days, he whistled. Loudly. The donkey stampeded. The men’s attention was on the animal that had mistook the whistle for someone calling the frolicking filly. Raging hormones pulled the gate open by several feet.
The assassin saw his chance, managing to slip through and stumble into the bushes unnoticed.
He quickly and almost silently cocked his Salver model 14mQ, especially designed with a soundlessly clicking clicker. It was then he discovered he’d left the 14 bullet clip on his dining room table, along with his see through socks.
Damn, the boots hurt his feet, chaffed his calves, making him say very naughty things. He regretted not paying the extra $600 for the double padded cheetah skin bouncy heels. Fortunately, he had sprung for the sparking electric laces and internal, automatic athletes foot sprayer..
With no squirrel piercing ammo, he would have to improvise. He tapped the side pocket of his French commando, 1959 Rothschild wine and Brie scented pants. Fortunately, he had brought his self guided Lightening Tomahawk; built in a tiny New Mexico pueblo by who else! Tommy Hawk, the noted rifle stock manipulator and gun sight schemer, known for once selling a gun sight to a blind fortune hunter.
As he approached the house, two robotic pit bulls growled and ran metallically toward him. His electric bootlaces quickly shorted their circuits. They barked no longer, but began to moo and mow the lawn.
One window was open. Unfortunately it was the window to the sixteen car garage. Then his luck changed. Willwright appeared at the window near the eight-foot high custom made sixteen pane beveled front door. The killer had seen doors like this, made by Johnny Appleseed’s great grandfather, the apple tree slayer.
The quiet avenger threw the hatchet-tomahawk, which went through the window, but bounced off the titanium plate in Willwright’s head. Blood streamed down his shirt and he rushed upstairs to change and desperately search for his Ranger Rough Rider flintlock buffalo long rifle, purchased at a cigar store in northern Maine and kept in a locked gun case, inside a locked gun cabinet, in the locked safe room in the basement. He could only find two keys! Where the hell had he put the key to the save room? Then he remembered it was in the Trust and Hope Savings Bank, in a safety deposit box, only available on Tuesday and Thursdays from 9 to 9.15 a.m. “Well, darn it,” he said.
By this time, the avenger had made it through the broken window, using his 4 gauge, stainless steel, handmade window smasher and bottle opener. He quickly retrieved his Tomahawk and began climbing the stairs.
Willwright stood on the top step looking, bewitched, bothered and bewildered. This time the Tomahawk found a perfect resting place in Willwright’s chest. Dang, he thought, as life ebbed; he should have remembered to put on his Kevlar vest when he was changing into a clean shirt.
By the time the time delayed house alarm went off and the cops responded, the avenger was long gone.
Sheriff Tally Hoe and his team of detectives saw this for what it was. Obviously, Mr. Willwright had heard his dogs mooing and gone to an upstairs window to investigate, carrying his high tech hatchet, then had a heart attack and tumbled down the stairs. The Sheriff reasoned that since Willwright was hunting for a possible intruder, “We’ll call this one a hunting accident.”
Alice Fair of The Mourning Hour wanted to know, “What about the broken window?”
“No idea. Windows break all the time.”
Al Most, Attorney at Law and stuff, asked if Willwright had an attorney.
Nobody knew, but Mr. Most thought he might be able to find a distant cousin and help him settle the estate, or join a profitable business venture, turning used inner-tubes into horse condoms.
The Reverend Sally Forth described Willwright’s passing as an act of providence, adding that Willwright never gave a cent to her church, refused to give her another piece of peach pie, and got what he deserved. After several snifters of medicinal brandy, she dropped to her arthritic knees and recanted, ready to do the Christian thing and forgive all number of sins done by people she didn’t know and had never met, but leaving out several of her parishioners.
The avenger? No one knows for sure, but a man, wearing a size 7 ½ hat and carrying what appeared to be a new, custom made hatchet, stopped at the Come And Get Me Wholesale No Tell Gun Shop to buy several boxes of dark, XL panty hose that were on sale, with no questions asked. Limit four.
* Yes, this is satire, a take off on thrillers. If you know any of these people, don't tell me. I don't want to know.*
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