As if two jobs and as much photography as I can possibly squeeze in wasn't enough, I thoroughly enjoy writing short stories. Creative writing. Though my style may not be to the liking of some people, as it's blunt and often from the dark side of humanity. But I don't write for other people. I write for my own pleasure and to maintain good mental health. Here is a sample for you.
Herman Lederhosen took a good look at the crime scene: One dead body, a bloodied knife and and a broken window. Out in the kitchen, one unused condom without its wrapper, casually thrown on the floor like a cigarette butt in a 1950's Humphrey Bogart movie.
"Real pretty stiff, tho", Lederhosen told himself as he tightened his suspenders. "Black suit and pink shirt suits you well". He took a look at the broken window in the door. Turning around to look at the corpse again, he murmured to himself: "That's what you get for refusing to wear a condom in this part of town". Barczewo was not an easy meal for any private investigator.
Lederhosen pulled the tobacco yellowed curtains slightly apart and peaked out when he heard the engine of a car in the otherwise eerrily empty streets. A quick glance at the cracked cuckoo clock on the wall told him it was 04:23 when the local butcher pulled up to his shop, got out - big gut spilling out over his apron, held up by a tool belt full of dirty knives, went to the back of his van, flung a slap of meat over his shoulder and went into his store with something that looked more like human meat than fresh pork. "Babushka will fight for a piece of that sausage, today", Lederhosen mused. "Where did you find him? On the park bench, passed out from too much Wyborowa"? Looking down at his stiff on the floor, reality hit home for Lederhosen: "Had I shown up any later, you might have ended up as the filling of that sausage" he told corporis humani who was now in full rigor mortis.
He took a look at the bloodied knife. "Looks like something a butcher would use. Big and heavy. Surely good for splitting bones". Lederhosen was jerked out of his thoughts when the phone rang with a loud obnoxious clang. He looked in the direction of the culprit of the clang but couldn't see it at first. On the second ring he noticed it on the desk, half covered by beer cans, vodka bottles and empty, crushed up cigarette packs. "Polskie papierosy", he scoffed, and the he picked up the phone, put it to his ear without saying a word.
"Czy to ty? Czy zadanie wykonane"? Clearly a female voice. She sounded like he imagined an Olsztyn bimbo would sound. And he was pretty familiar with bimbos. That was all he could afford.
"Możesz przyjść. Ale zostaw majtki w domu. Jest happy hour", he replied after a brief moment. "I hope she took the bait", he thought to himself as he immediately hung up.
He wasn't sure where all of this was going, but if he stirred the pot, a few more kernels of corn might pop, he figured. "So you break the window", he strategized, "open the door, let yourself in. You want sex, your buddy agrees but wants you to wear a condom. You refuse. You have a fight and he plants a knife between your third and fourth rib. The he drops the knife and takes off. Is that how it went"?
As dawn starts to break, he rolls up the collar and walk down to the local watering hole in the rain. Inside Bijący się Wymiotujący the air is so thick of smoke from bad polish cigarettes that you have to cut your way through it with a knife. "It stinks like a shithole in here" he thinks to himself as he makes his way to the furthest away table. Dzem was busy on the juke. Czerwony jak cegla was perfect dirty blues for a filthy joint like this one, full of passed out drunks who would all be kicked out in a hour. He pays his informant and downs two shots of his usual poison. Not much life left in his liver as he exits, stops in the doorway to light a really bad polish Marlborough and then steps back into the rain.
He takes a left leaving the joint, and then a right, down Ulica Prostitutek, a right at Aleja Opryszczki and he was in the back-alley right behind the butcher's back door. All windows had been covered in cardboard, so nobody could take a look in and see what was going on. According to the butcher himself, it was to "protect business secrets" from snooping people. That was probably true and probably the kind of secrets you wouldn't want to see, anyways. At least not as a customer.
As he's standing there, comtemplating if he should let himself in, pay the butcher an unannounced visit, one of the lost angels of the street walks by, sees him and as ask if he's got a couple of bucks to spare. He pays her 50 zloty for a quick hand-job and she's off to search for more glory and fame. Lederhosen searches his pockets for his old locksmith tool and 15 seconds later he's in. "Like ridin' a bicycle", he tells himself. "You never forget".
He hears a lot of hacking and heavy thumps and then the meat saw being turned on. Carefully not to step on the creeky floor boards he found out of on his last illegal entrance, he carefully, slowly makes his way to the door frame, where he sticks his head out just enough that one eye can see what's going on, what all the noise is about.
He sees one arm come off. Then the other. Rib cage already ripped open and what used to be..., well, used to be...has already been gutted. Head and torso long gone. He looks around and sees a pair of legs in a plastic barrel in the end of the room. "Nice meaty thighs", he tells himself. "Babushka will be very pleased".
When he looks back, the butcher is nowhere to be seen. Grubaczech is gone...untill he sticks he head around the other side of the door frame and stares right into Lederhosen's eyes, their heads so close Lederhosen can feel the warm air come out the butcher's nostrils.
"I don't like surprises", the butcher sneers at him. "Especially not bad ones like you". Lederhosen swollows deeply and tries to sidesteps the butcher's surprise attach, like a hunter making it around a hole in the ice. "I'll make you a deal", Lederhosen starts out, frantically serching in his mind for what should be the content of such deal. "I'll forget about the fag in the pink shirt. You know, the one you demanded wore a condom, for, say, 6 months supply of real meat. From a four legged beast of some kind, that is. "It's one hand washing the other", Lederhosen tried to justify.
"Oh ya?" said the butcher. "You want meat", Grubaczech continued. "Ok! I'll give you meat" he said, slowly making his way around his chopping block where Lederhosen was standing. "I'll find a nice cut for you. A re-e-a-aly nice one" he said, pulling the biggest knife out of his tool belt. He took a step sideways, like he was heading for the cooler, and then - with full force - he launched forward and planted the knife deep into Lederhosen's chest. Lederhosen's first reaction was to look at the knife in his chest, like he was more astonished and surprised than anything. Then the butcher pulled the knife out and burried again, even deeper, in Lederhosen's chest, just an inch more to the left. It took three stabs before the Private Detictive finally gave up and decided to take a bow. "Deal's off", Grubaczech said, watching Lederhosen slumping down onto the floor.
Next morning, there were fresh sausages enough for everybody in the neighbourhood. There were even some "deer ribs" and "organic bacon". Business was brisk.
PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS - GOOD OR BAD - ON MY PAGES. SIMPLY CLICK THE "COMMENT" BUTTON IN BUTTOM OF PAGE.
No comments:
Post a Comment