Free Bullet Through Your Face (improved format) by Edward Lee Page B

Rudy.”
“Coincidence? What about the Tuttle fight? He didn’t just pick
the winner, Beth, he picked the round . He picked a KO by a guy who
every bookie in town said was gonna lose.”
“I don’t care,” Beth replied, turning her back to him amid the
covers. “He’s scary. I don’t want him in the house.”
“Beth, the guy’s a gold mine on two legs. We keep him under our
wings, we’ll never have to worry about money again. We’ll be—”
The scream came down like a guillotine blade. Rudy and Beth
went rigid in the bed.
Then another scream tore through the air.
“Thuh-that came from M-Mona’s room, didn’t it?” Rudy stammered.
“Yuh-yeah,” Beth agreed.
“She’s your friend. You go see what happened.”
“Fuck you!” Beth shouted. “Inconsiderate coward son of a—”
“We’ll both go, then. Here. I’ll protect you.” Rudy boldly
brandished one of Beth’s nail files. Then, disheveled in their
underwear, they crept out of the bedroom.
    “Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered when he saw the trap-door to the
basement standing open.
Then they padded down the ball, and peered into Mona’s room...
“Aw, Christ,” Rudy muttered again.
But Beth didn’t mutter. She screamed.
Gormok, his face smeared scarlet, grinned up at them in the
lamplight. And atop the stained bed lay Mona, naked and quite dead.
She was also quite eviscerated.
The student’s trim abdomen had been riven open, and from the
rive an array of organs had been extracted and arranged about her as
if for some macabre inspection. An outline of slowly seeping blood
spread about the corpse like a Kirlian aura.
Gormok was eating something dark and wet out of his hands. Her liver , Rudy realized. He’s eating Mona’s liver.
“Friends! Hello!” Gormok greeted, chewing. “How art?”
Rudy bellowed, “What in God’s name did you do!”
“Not in God’s name,” Gormok lamented. “In Nergal’s. Lo, and
to my eternal shame, behold the freight of my curse. I try to fight
it, on my heart. But the blasted Nergal has condemned me to such
heinous acts wheneverest I breathe on the salt’s divine fumes.”
‘Uh . . . huh.” Rudy shuddered, feebly wielding the nail file. Should I kill him ? he debated. But he thought about that. He’d never
much liked Mona anyway. Bitchy, arrogant, and always taking cheap
shots. Sure, he’d fucked her a couple times when Beth was at work
(—no great shakes in bed, either. Like fucking a starfish—) and since
then she’d regularly implied that it wouldn’t be a good idea for Rudy to ever raise her rent.
“Gormok, wait here a minute. Beth and I have to talk.”
“0f course! Enjoy your discourse, dear friends,” Gormok invited.
“Whilst I enjoy my meal.”
    Rudy had to about carry Beth back to their bedroom. She was
going pasty-faced, pale. “Rudy,” she fretted, “we have to get out of
here while we still can! We have to call the police!”
“Don’t overreact, honey. He’s harmless.”
    “Harmless!” Beth’s eyes came close to jettisoning from her
head. “He’s eating Mona’s liver! You call that harmless?”
Rudy had a plan, but he had to play it out right. “Listen, Beth,” he
said in a consoling, quiet voice. “Mona’s got no relatives or friends—
hell, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. She’ll never be missed. And
she wasn’t doing well in school, anyway—”
“Rudy! You call the police right now!”
“All right, all right.” Rudy held up his hands, his hair sticking up.
“I’m calling the police. See?” He picked up the phone and began to
dial.
But not the police. Instead, he dialed 1-900 Sportsline. He
listened a moment, tapping his foot. Then he hung up and smiled.
“Clipper won the bout in the sixth round.”
Beth went into a staccato burst of crying and screaming. “Rudy,
you’re out of your mind! What is wrong with you?”
“Baby, it’s only because I love you,” Rudy, well, lied. “I’m
not doing this for me, I’m doing it for us . I want us to be