Chapter 13
Stu and Maurice: Precious
“I’m the one doing the fucking here.” Curtis still holds the penknife over Maurice’s body and he realizes his words do not come out as intended. “I mean, don’t tell me we’re all fucked. I know it. And I’m going to fuck it up even more.” He’s never been that good at aggression. He thought months spent fantasizing about murdering his ex fiancé would help him build up some skills in that department, but he’s not feeling it. He imagines Maurice is laughing at him on the inside.
But Maurice doesn’t laugh. He whispers, a soft whisper that is seductive in all the wrong ways.
“Let’s kill them, Curtis. Let’s kill them together. Come on, it will be fun.” Curtis pulls the knife up a little bit, but not all the way. He’s still kneeling on Maurice and he knows that if he totally pulls back, Fetterling will be all over him in a second. Probably kill him with his own penknife. He’ll be nothing more than a bloody mess on the floor of WTCP studios and while he thinks that wouldn’t be a bad place to die, it would be a bad way to die.
Maurice whispers again and Curtis notices his voice has a weird tinge to it; it’s not quite Maurice’s voice. It’s a shadow of his voice. “Come on Curtis. What do you say?”
Curtis is unnerved. He’s known Fetterling to be a lot of things; abrasive, arrogant, vulgar, kind of a dick. But he never knew him to be evil. Or murderous. Then again, given the way things have gone all weird around Greener Valley today, nothing should be surprising. Still, the way Maurice is whispering is kind of creepy.
“Curtis. Curtis.” Curtis stops, entranced by Fetterling’s whispered callings to him. “The skeletons have come out, Curtis. And they are dancing. Let’s dance with them Curtis.”
Curtis moves back now, no longer worried about Maurice overpowering him, but really fucking worried about Maurice suddenly growing devil horns. “I gotta go Maurice.” He throws the penknife down and tries to get on his feet, but Maurice reaches an arm out and grabs Curtis’s head. His grip is strong, so strong Curtis thinks his brains might be crushed and they will soon leak out of his ears and as he takes a dying breath, the last thing he sees Maurice’s evil grin. But Maurice lets go and laughs. It’s an earnest, hearty laugh, as if he was sitting in his bar with a bunch of good ol’ boys telling dirty jokes about the barmaid. Curtis backs up, keeps backing up until he’s at Stu McLundy’s desk. Curtis eyes the records strewn all over the desk, the records he loves to hear, the songs that make me him cry and smile and yearn. Scattered between the records are empty Dixie riddle cups.
Maurice makes his way toward Curtis, still laughing. The laugh has gone from hearty to sinister and it seems to come from somewhere deep inside Maurice, somewhere that’s filled with lust and anger and murderous intentions. It’s a sour, rotting place that makes a chilling sound fall from Maurice’s lips in the form of a laugh. The room suddenly smells like a combination of anti freeze and vomit and Curtis’s flight or fight mechanism kicks in. He heads for the window.
“Don’t go Curtis. There’s so much for us to do. Me and you, Curtis. Hey, you know what?” At this point Curtis is realizing that he can not climb out of a window that opens inward instead of up. He wonders how this will end. Will Evil Maurice swallow his soul? Rip his entrails out? Tear his head off?
“She’s coming, Curtis. Sharon is coming.”
Curtis freezes. His heart falls to the bottom of his stomach where it makes the contents of his breakfast – a Lender’s bagel and six mugs of coffee – lurch upward in the form of bile.
“She’s on her way here,” the Maurice monster whispers. “She is coming to humiliate you, Curtis. She is going to show off those tits that man bought her. She’s going to show off her legs and her ass. They should be yours, Curtis. She’s going to make a fool of you.”
Curtis throws up then, his vomit forceful and heavy. It sprays everywhere, a few chunks of masticated bagel landing on Stu’s desk, all but ruining Bobby Sherman’s Christmas Album.
“What do you dream about, Curtis? What do you fantasize about? What do you think about every day and every night and see in your sleep, waking up thinking that you’ve actually lived out your dream, but disappointed in yourself to realize it is all in your head? What is it, Curtis?”
Something is stirring in Curtis. Something dark and dank. Something that feels like warm slime makes its way through his body and it feels like it’s coming from his soul and it’s tearing out pieces of him as it worms its way out. When Curtis opens his mouth to protest, a small burst of green mist escapes from within.
“Curtis?”
Curtis smiles at Evil Maurice. “She’s going to be sorry she’s coming here.”