Free Midnight Special by Phoef Sutton Page A

along with them, or even tell anybody where they were going, I thought he was just being dramatic. I mean, what was he going to do? Blackmail them? I had all the money in this equation.
    “I got there a little late. I always get everywhere a little late. Or a lot late. It’s a power thing.
    “When I got there (it was the weekend, so the office was empty), my lawyer had the two men trussed up like Christmas turkeys, all naked. One of them was screaming his head off. The other one didn’t have to—his head had already been cut off. He was spouting a fountain of blood from a neck hole all the way across the room and all over the other paramedic.
    “Isaac was standing over him holding this katana, which he’d taken from a display in my office, without so much as asking me. Also he was naked, which wasn’t a pretty sight.
    “He looked up at me and said, ‘Hi,’ like you’d say any other time you met somebody. He said he hoped I didn’t mind, but he’d started without me. It was just too exciting. But he’d saved one for me.
    “I said, ‘What the fuck?’ Isaac was bewildered. His deterioration had increased. His body was bloating and splitting open. Maggots were having a field day in his intestines. Even then I knew that whatever was making him rot on the outside was making him rot on the inside too.
    “He didn’t understand my objection to the scene. Wasn’t this just the logical conclusion of all the orgies and whatnot we engaged in over the years? ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the light go out of somebody’s eyes and you know you did it!’
    “He handed me the sword. Just handed it to me like I would naturally give it a try on the poor guy tied up at his feet.
    “I turned the blade on Isaac. I told him to untie the schmuck and that I was going to call the police. Isaac was thoroughly confused by this turn of events. It was like I was busting him for smoking a joint or something.
    “When I took out my iPhone, when he really believed I was going to call the cops, he ran at me. It wasn’t too hard to slice through him.
    “They really make these swords well.
    “When he died, he looked at me and I saw the light go out of his eyes, just like he said. It was awesome. And I don’t mean ‘awesome’ like the Valley Girls say. I mean it was truly awe inspiring. It was the biggest reaction I’ve ever gotten. More than any scene from any movie I’ve ever made. More than any laugh or any scream or any standing ovation I’ve ever elicited. It was truly the reaction to end all reactions.
    “Awesome.
    “I’m not saying I liked it. But I knew right then and there that I’d have to do this again sometime.
    “When he fell back off the sword, when the air was filled with a mix of blood and shit, I just sat back down and breathed for a while.
    “The surviving paramedic was breathing too. Panting. His eyes shut, like he could make all this go away.
    “I went to untie him. I couldn’t do it. The knots were too good. Isaac had really known his way around ropes. I took the sword and cut through them, like Alexander and the Gordian knot. I noticed some sores on his wrists—bad sores—but I thought they were rope burns.
    “I don’t have to tell you where this is going.
    “In a situation like this I would normally have called my lawyer, but since I’d just stabbed him through the liver, I couldn’t think of anything to do but either call the police or call my producer.
    “I called my producer. He’d gotten me out of some jams before. Drunken driving, possession, etcetera. Nothing on the scale of two men killed with my samurai sword, but still, he knew his way around public relations problems.
    “Before I even got out the story, Simon told me to shut up and tell him nothing. He could tell from my tone that it was bad. He said he would send somebody over—a fixer. And he hung up.
    “I should tell you that there are, or were, a lot of weapons around my office in West Hollywood. That’s the