Free My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) by Clarence Major

hermetically around the unbroken linkage of the two. Could he have been the author of such a mysterious disruption in the relation between cause and effect: if The Impostor were yin, Mason was not necessarily yang. Forced connections were possible. But this was labyrinth: like the outcome of Mason's romantic philosophy of asserting himself: taking the identity he wanted. If The Impostor was on a blind trip, so was your boy. And the rigor mortis of truth was with them both. Harebrained? You bet.
    Money. Mason packed his W two-sixty-three. Money: a jockeyship itself: owing its fiber to confidence. Bamboozle there (even in his memory of child support which he paid, “buying his way out of guilt,” one judge said to his lawyer) in that sandcastle. Now the “stolen” money given to Ferrand: stolen because Ferrand had no right to it. He'd walk in: “Fucker, you doublecrossed—” then shoot the cigar outta the joker's mouth. For starters. No, he'd be more serious, factful. After all he only wanted the bread back. Mason arrived. Ferrand in his one-horse office sat with his kicks on his desk. Calmly, sweetly Mason told the detective the truth. It didn't impress. Then with ten-speed passion Mason shot: “I don't like being deceived. Once I climbed a pole for clarity: I was deceived. Then you pretended to give me the hoof marks of the man who snatched my—uh . . . ” “ . . . your wallet?” “Ferrand, I came here to get my money back.” He took out the machine. Ferrand's pig-smile didn't take wings. Mason plunged on, hysterically: “I came to you sincerely. What a fool Iwas. I'm going to shoot you, and you know it. I came wearing the ugly mask of a dead mullet with glazed eyes. I coughed blood on the way. Ferrand, I—” He disliked his own pleading. It generated his anger; need for revenge. Mason saw that Ferrand was mindful of the pistol: as though it had a life. “I tell you: no cheap, two-bit private eye's gonna stand in—” but as Mason talked he angled the W two-sixty-three a way from Ferrand, carelessly, and in that moment Ferrand whipped out his own weapon, a forty-five, and in no time had it against Mason's forehead where his worried eyebrows met. “Nigger, don't you know I'll kill you. You mean nothing to me or nobody else! What kinda dumb nigger are you, huh? You talk like you just came down from heaven, boy.” Ferrand was turning red as he backed Mason—at gunpoint—toward the door. “Now get out of here before I have you strapped and sent to the nut ward at Bellevue!” As Mason turned to leave Ferrand shot at his left shoe. The bullet hit. Close range like that it had to take off the whole foot, right? Wrong. This explanation is called instant gratification. I don't believe in bait, foreshadow, the Judeo-Christian work ethic, the Theory Z Management philosophy, negative votes, October, gold diggers, Freud's reality principle, so: the bullet bounced off left—leaving a tiny hole in the window as it sped its way across the abyss created by this building and the one next door: it smashed through the window of another office—that of an importer of Hong Kong toys. Of course Mason was wearing his steel-toed boots from welding days.
    Halfway through the “daring” stickup Mason felt less like a greenhorn than he'd the moment they stepped into the glassed, sterile and staid enclosure. You should've seen ‘em: Mason with a Thompson, Jesus fanning the silver thirty-eight (that probably would've misfired), Brad bullyng customers and clerks with Mason's W two-sixty-three. Two guards they disarmedand herded over with the jittery, dapper customers by teller windows. Mason and Brad held them at attention while Jesus jumped about—behind counter—with his potato sack filling it from cash drawers opened on command. The three saw everything they did through the dimness of nutmeg nylon smelling of Edith's Evening in Paris. Contrary to the plan: Edith was at the wheel alone. The Turtle did not show when