“Dude, dude, dude!”
He was looming over Harvey, chest-to-chest as the shorter man backed into the wall and pleaded, “Please dude, please!”
He could smell the fear, sense the submission; even hear the quiver of the twitching muscles. He grabbed Harvey’s forehead and jammed the back of it through the sheetrock, and for some inexplicable reason opened his mouth. His neck seemed to compress and his jaw popped as he snaked his yawning mouth sideways and began to sink his teeth into the bobbing windpipe.
Sweat and tears dripped into his mouth and his body lit up—no his mind came alive—with messages written in some primordial chemical language: ‘I fear, submit, beg, plead, will serve—don’t kill me master! The younger one tastes better!’
He was beginning to reason again, but still wished to eat this meat-puppet, sour or not. A slathering growl rumbled in the small office, and, with a chill, he realized it was him. The only other time he had made this noise was when he had slapped Wilson for bitching about slaughtering the Triple Canopy contractors in Ecuador.
It was wiggling and whimpering, would taste no good at all. But it had betrayed him.
A loud ringing echoed with a dull shortness in the office as he felt a vague pressure on his neck and head. He turned and saw Jimmy standing there, his soft pot belly quivering, his small eyes red from crying and sunken into his round head. He was holding a folding metal chair which he had just bent over Pozer’s head. An involuntary snarl escaped his lips, stretched as they were over his odd feeling teeth.
Harvey sagged a little, “Jesus Jimmy, get the fuck out. Yer mom ‘ill die if you get hurt.”
Jimmy stutter stepped, but then raised the chair over his head for another swing, then looked at Pozer with piercing eyes, “Harve iz ma budz. Led him go Poze.”
He saw the condor flying off in the distance, leaving the world behind, and was suddenly content. He heard Harvey breathe a sigh of relief as he eased him down. He then took the chair from Jimmy, smoothed out the metal where his head had dented it, un-kinked the back bar that had bent, unfolded it, and sat down in it, “Good shot Jimmy. Sorry Harve.”
Jimmy patted him on the back and then held his hand. Harvey was besides himself, “This is tragic man. You could have been the next UFC champ: the freakin’ six-million-dollar man! I could have been your manager. Jimmy could be—shit. What do we do? The boss is dead!”
Why do I feel so good, so free?
He looked up at Jimmy, “Cuff me bro. Get Esham’s cuffs and slap them on in case I turn into a jerk again.”
Jimmy went about the task like any other, looting the security man’s cuffs and slapping them on, as if he had been paying more attention than anyone suspected when the security man had secured those shoplifters for the police.
Harvey was panicking, “What do we do dude?”
“Call the cops Harve.”
“Dude, that’s like against my religion. I hate pigs.”
Pozer looked at the bodies, then looked back up at Harvey, “You better get used to working with them. I think Mister Ben will be promoting you. It’s looking pretty thin at the top here.”
Harvey was melting down even as Jimmy just patted Pozer soothingly on the back, “Dude, how are you not freaking out?”
He just looked up and saw the condor flying through the drop ceiling and into limitless space, “Call the cops Harve. Make sure Ruby gets those DVD’s.”
“Who is Ruby?”
“She’s Linona’s daughter. Just go to the club and tell Terence what’s up. Get the video’s to Ruby.”
“Dude, what about you?”
He felt the cool downdraft ruffle his feathers, could smell the limestone scented mist churning up from the base of the roaring falls, “I’m gone Harve. Make the call. Jimmy, walk me out front and sit me on the curb.”
Jimmy handled him with a light respectful touch just as he had seen Esham do with so many shoplifters. But Harvey, even as he punched in 911 on his cell phone, could not wrap his head around something that seemed so welcome and natural to Pozer, “Just like that dude, you just kiss the world goodbye?”
As he stood and walked through the door with little Jimmy guiding him and Harvey’s conversation with the 911 dispatcher beginning, his coworker’s words continued to echo in his mind, becoming a mantra, that he repeated in his mind over and over again as he glided above the thundering falls below, Kiss the world goodbye. Kiss the world goodbye… Kiss…
Continued with The Paddy Wagon: Out of Time #5
