Twins in Death
A Tale of The Weirdo
By Brett N. Lashuay
Chapter Six: To Plan a Meeting
June 1st, 1390
12:01 p.m.
They were walking a well-trodden road; the two men moving from one place to another. They were possibly just a pair of men going about their business. One of them seemed to be dressed in the faded once black gray of a priest’s cassock. He might have been an adventurer though. It would be hard to tell without looking closer at him and inspecting his person. Unfortunately he did not look like the sort of man who would invite investigations. The other man was a writer.
“So I’ve got this idea about a knight.” The writer said.
“Oh yes?” The Weirdo asked.
“I’ve written some of it already.” He said.
“Is that the idea you had about the pilgrims?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a bit ambitious Jeff.”
“Am I?” Jeff asked.
“This is the fifty third idea for this poem you’ve come up with so far.” The Weirdo said. “I’m not sure you could get it all done in time.”
“Maybe not.” Jeff said. “But we can discuss it a bit, work out what should be kept and what should be left behind.”
“Sure, why not.” The Weirdo said.
“Besides.” Jeff said. “It’s important to let people know how their heroes act, and not just how they should act. Parody is very important you understand, by making a broad joke you can revel the narrow truth.”
“So long as you can throw your talking penis in?” The Weirdo asked.
“Well, it’s a laugh isn’t it?” Jeff replied.
October 24th, 2002
2:17 p.m.
The Weirdo walked past one room with an open door and looked at the network television, which screamed at him from the hallway. He walked in and found his protégée, Max. His feet were propped up on the arm of the couch and his head was resting on several throw pillows. His left arm was placed across his stomach, being the only place he could comfortably rest it anymore.
Maximilian Zane was about twenty-one and had begun college this year, but still lived in The Weirdo’s house and worked with him. Unlike the rest of his housemates, he dressed more like an average person his age. He was usually wearing blue jeans and a good shirt. His brown hair was an acceptable length, and it was combed in an average style.
He wasn’t slouched on the couch though, as slouching caused pain. He still ached from a pair of bullets that had meant to take his life, ten months earlier. He also couldn’t drape his left arm over the back of the couch since his left arm couldn’t raise that high anymore without significant pain. The bullets that should have killed him had at least created a significant discomfort.
The events in the freezing lake had also started some arthritis in his left hand. He wasn’t sure if he was prone to the painful joint disorder or if the bullets which struck the vest which he had worn had started it. He had pain in his left arm that had started from the cracked ribs and having to pull himself up from the freezing water, but it had lingered well after the body as supposed to have healed.
The Weirdo walked into the room and sat down. He looked very much unlike a rich superhero to Max. He wore a T-shirt and sweat pants most of the time. Usually the shirt had three or four buttons running down the front to give the illusion of something more than just a T-shirt. He was also wearing a thin cotton dress shirt over his shirt today. He pushed the thin shirt open and ran his fingers along the buttons.
“Can't you feel your brain melting?” The Weirdo said.
“Fortunately.” Max said, “I've been subjected to this for so long that my brain became an unrecognizable goo long ago.”
“Oh,” The Weirdo said nodding, “I see, no change then? Just a bit of churning going on, a bit of percolation?”
“Oh, shut up.” Max said and then turned to The Weirdo “What are you up to?”
“I am wandering about the house. I am bored and not doing anything.”
“So watch TV.”
“Nothing good on.” The Weirdo said. “I'm just not digging TV today.”
“Digging?” Max asked. “Do people still dig things?”
“In some parts of the world I’m sure people still dig things, and even catch the funky groove once in a while.”
“Glad I live in a civilized place.” Max said.
“Enjoy your TV watching.”
“Thanks.”
“And do your homework.”
“Have done already.”
The Weirdo got up and walked out of the room, he almost always felt at least a little better after talking to Max. It was like reaching out to a part of himself that hadn't died with that chestnut haired beauty on the floor of the front room. He often wondered if it wasn’t as Mrs. Pendleton had suggested that Max was like the son he didn’t have. That in Max there was something of the boy he used to be.
He moved into the hallway again, he moved past a small Victorian table with a portable phone on it. The phone suddenly chirped in something slightly resembling a ring. An electronic tone is not a ring. He looked at it and thought about the possibilities that this phone would ring at this time. He reached out and picked it up.
“This is The Weirdo.” He said.
“Hello there, brother.” A cheery voice said on the other end. “This is your clone talking.”
“Sorry,” The Weirdo said. “I have no siblings. I was birthed out of sea foam like Aphrodite.”
“Don't hang up.” The voice on the other end said. “I've got a surprise for you. You're gonna love this.”
“Love what?” The Weirdo asked.
“This is Angie.” The voice said. “Say ‘hi’ to The Weirdo, Angie.”
“Oh God, help me!” She cried into the phone.
“Angie is a hooker, I had to sodomize and kill her boyfriend earlier today. He was kind enough to give me ownership of her before he died though. This is what it sounds like when I cut Angie's pinky off.”
There was a moment, less than a second really, when The Weirdo was able to form a perfect mental image. A straight razor, the flesh of a finger being cut, the way the blade caught resistance for a moment when it hit the cartilage. The fact that for a moment he could hear it didn't help. There was a scream, the throat clenching in the special way. The blood pouring down over the crevices of her hand and dripping onto her shoe was clear to him. The Weirdo put a hand over the phone.
“Max! Trace this call.”
“And this is what it sounds like when I cut off her ring finger.” The voice came over the cries of pain.
There was another image in The Weirdo’s head of the blade cutting into the ring finger. He could see the spurt of fresh blood and then he heard another blood curdling scream.
“It's a cell phone, registered to someone in Pakistan.” Max responded after a moment.
“What the hell do you want?” The Weirdo snarled into the phone. He could hear sobbing for a moment before his question was ignored and the voice on the other line continued.
“And this is her middle finger.” There was a scream that cut off half way through. “Damn, she fainted. Listen though, you can hear the flesh tearing away.”
The Weirdo could see the image in his head the faint sounds through the phone seemed unnecessary when compared to the ones he heard in his head, the hand gripping the finger and tearing it away from the hand. The finger had to be twisted quite sharply to get it to rip off from the hand. The Weirdo could picture the image completely, he could even tell which part of town the call was coming from.
He could feel the annoyed look on the face of the person talking to him. The person was hoping to draw this out longer but Angie had failed him, there was a feeling that he should have expected this from her.
“Oh what the hell. Might as well.” There was one sudden bang.
“You just shot her, didn't you?”
“Yes,” he said. “A nine millimeter, and now that I have your attention let me spill the big secret.”
“Big secret?”
“There's a government project in the works right now. It won't be perfected for another thirty years or so, but it's there. This doctor, I won't give you his name just in case, perfects human cloning and gene manipulation to a point where he can take a person's DNA and turn it up to ten. After all that he's going to make a clone of you. He's going to turn your DNA up to ten, maybe even eleven like in that movie Spinal Tap. They put him in a bad home where he was abused and beaten. Then someone found a way to release Loki from his prison in Niflheim, and put him in this perfect body they made. So now I’ve got resources, and I’ve got means and I’m going to take my revenge. I came back in time and I’m going to take my revenge.”
“How are you going to get your revenge though?” The Weirdo asked. It was the only thing he could think of after a bombshell like that. “What do you want?”
“I want you. With worms coming out of one of your eye sockets.”
“Lovely.” The Weirdo said. “How does that help you in the vengeance department?”
“Do you know what pain it cause me, with those rocks on me? That snake, dripping on my head? Or what they did to the boy who was here before I got this body? I’ve got to deal with the personality that is you in this body as well. It’s quite tough, and we’re not having a very good time together so I’d like to kill you as soon as possible.”
“How does that help you though?”
“Doesn’t matter if you see or don’t see the plan.” Loki said. “You get killed and I’ll worry about the rest.”
“So when do you want it?”
“When?” The voice asked. “Oh, when? How about you walk into Rockefeller Plaza and let me cap you there?”
“Why should I do that?” The Weirdo asked wondering what kind of verb was 'cap' anyway? He internally sighed for the American educational system.
“Because you don't want me shooting into the crowd.”
“Did it occur to you that I've got friends who could help me kill you?”
“I did think of that yes, but I'm more resilient than you are. I think I could take them on.”
“So, you want me to just walk into my death?”
“That's the plan. Otherwise I might take a machine gun down to the plaza and just start cutting people down. Maybe it's won't be Rockefeller, maybe it'll be Time Square, maybe I'll go to the White House.”
“What stops you from going there after?”
“Nothing, but you won't have to worry about that.”
“Why should I worry if you decide to take out the White House?”
“Good point, but I could go to a schoolyard.”
“So, you'll go on killing people at random unless I show up to a place to get shot at. Afterwards you'll go on killing people at random anyway?”
“That's the plan, man. I know it's not very fair, but I'm not a fair guy.”
“Am I supposed to wear a target on my back or anything? No guns, stuff like that?”
“Oh, hell no. Bring an entire arsenal if you like. Shoot back, it'll make the game more fun.”
“I see.” The Weirdo said.
“Anyway, must go. The police will be here to find out what that bang was and someone might notice the fact that a stolen cell phone's being used and shut me down at anytime. See you in about an hour. Must go, bye.” He hung up.
“Well?” Max asked as he moved into the hallway. “You gonna go?”
“I don't suppose I have much of a choice, do I?” The Weirdo said. “He just killed a woman over a phone line with no other reason than to prove that he would.”
“Yeah.” Max said.
“Yeah.” The Weirdo said, opening a closet and pulling his coat out.
“Thing is.” Max said.
“Yes?” The Weirdo asked.
“That conversation you just had with whoever it is…”
“What about it?”
“You didn't notice anything odd about it?”
“Like?”
“Like it sounded like you were having a conversation with yourself. You sounded exactly alike.”
“How would I know, anyway?” The Weirdo asked. “Who recognizes their own voice?”
“Well I kinda thought you would.” Max said
“Almost nobody can recognize their own voice. The only people who can are some people in the media who are such ego maniacs that they listen to their own shows.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He pulled out a forty-five automatic and primed a round into the chamber. This was not a chrome or nickel-plated model. This was barely blue steel. It was clearly a utilitarian weapon. It was something that said to the person on the wrong end that the guy holding it was probably not going to take 'oops' as an excuse for beating an old lady to death or the old 'she was asking for it' as defense for gang rape. This was the weapon of someone who seriously wanted to make people not alive anymore. He slipped the gun back into his coat and wondered how a gun could say so much. For a hunk of steel, it sure was a chatty little weapon.
I’ll have to jump when I die. The thought echoed around in his head again. It won’t happen now, but I’ll have to jump when it does.
“You want me along?” Max asked. The Weirdo pursed his lips for a moment and slid the gun back into his coat.
“Yeah.” The Weirdo said, “Get Jack and Tommy, too; but only as backup. No interference unless you have to. I can just hear the news people screaming about me being a blight on the community now.”
“Probably.” Max said. “I'll call the guys and tell them to come back you up.”
“On my call.” The Weirdo said.
“Right.” Max said, “He’s nuts isn’t he?”
“Hmm?”
“He thinks he’s the God Loki?”
“No he doesn’t.” The Weirdo said. “He’s gotten used to telling people he’s the God Loki, his name might actually be Loki but he’s telling people he is. He’s probably got a little batch of losers convinced he is Loki doing his bidding for him.”
“What did he mean by revenge though?”
“Oh I spent some time among the Nordic Gods for a little while when I was, ya know back in the day.” The Weirdo said. “I helped get Loki locked up.”
“So how does he know this?”
“That’s an interesting question. One which I shall find the answer for later.”
“How do you know he’s lying then?”
“It’s in the tone of his voice. He doesn’t actually believe the last part. He believes everything up to the point were he starts claiming to be a god. I think he’s told other people that he is the god though, so he might begin to believe it soon. We’ll just have to give Stewie McCrazypants a kick in the ass before he gets to that point.”
“Loki McCrazypants.” Max said.
“Yeah whatever.” The Weirdo said.
“So we wait for you?”
“Yeah.” The Weirdo said. “I’m gonna go check something down in the hole and then I’m going to go to Rockefeller center and see what I can see.”
“You sure you don’t want us to just go with you?”
“No.” The Weirdo said. “Let me check him out on my own first, if anything he said is true he’ll probably be expecting you guys to show up. It’ll keep him off balance longer if he doesn’t know the power of our force.”
“If you say so.”
“And I do.”
© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions
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