Crueler
an excerpt

Crueler had been counting the swish of the fan blades. It was a weird fan, he would say, noting the odd structure; he guessed it was only decorative, not really cooling. He certainly couldn’t feel any breeze. He refocused his mind on the spinning wooden slats… twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty- wait, thirty! Thirty-one… or two or three… damn. He’d lost count again.
There was some acid jazz (maybe David Sanborn) pulsing softly at a pianissimo in the corner, where a little purple and gray CD player sat, leashed to the wall by a black cord that was frayed near the plug. There was a thin disk in there somewhere, spinning, spinning, spinning…like the fan, like the five wheels of Crueler’s Corolla, like the eyeballs of a dead man sliding back into their sockets, like the earth on it’s invisible axis. Like Crueler’s mind. Spinning, spinning, spinning, always pondering. His mind drifted to his Corolla out in the parking lot. Actually, it wasn’t a Corolla – it was a Tacoma; he’d just liked the ring of professionalism when “Crueler’s Corolla” rolled off his tongue. And at the moment, he wondered how the non-Corolla was doing outside, if it was being broken into or jacked by some idiot. The notion wasn’t beyond consideration, especially here in New York. Crueler contemplated stepping out to check on his precious Corolla, but decided that if anyone was breaking in, he’d just hunt them down and kill them later.
A door to his left opened partially to allow a large woman with curly hair to waddle in. She scanned a clipboard in her hand, looking uncannily similar to a fat penguin in her nurse’s getup.
“Jacobin Crueler?”
Crueler found himself making one of those spilt-second decisions that he always regretted later. He was divided between going with the nurse, and staying behind to find out exactly what how many revolutions-per-minute that stupid fan was making anyways.
The penguin lady called his name again, which he was tired of hearing. It was always Jacobin this, Jacobin that…Jacobin, won’t you come home with me tonight? He’d never been able to figure out what made him so attractive…but ever since he’d accepted the fact, he’d apparently seemed less attractive, because no-one was asking him home at parties anymore. Or maybe it was just that one thing with the police in Los Angeles. A whole LAPD SWAT team had burst in amidst (what else?) but his very own father’s birthday party. He’d had to convince his parents and all their curious, walker-toting neighbors that he was secretly an operative with the bureau, and that he had been handpicked to lead a SWAT team in a high-profile sting against a weapons-smuggling neo-Nazi at the docks. That had been one hell of a day.
“Mr. Crueler?”
He rose to face a very irritated penguin lady, and followed her through the door. He watched her as she walked/waddled down a vacant hallway. Give her a nose and bird-feet, thought Crueler, and she’d be quite convincing at the zoo. She padded into an empty room with a default scowl on her face, and told him to sit.
He stood.
Maybe coming to the doctor’s office had been a bad idea. He wasn’t really sick. Sure, he’d swallowed a pint of acid irritant to make sure his throat was nice and raw, but other than that he was feeling fine. Without a word, the penguin-lady walked over, velcroed the blood-pressure thing to his arm, and started pumping it full of air. Crueler always thought it would be fun to yank the squeeze out of the nurse’s hand, but he refrained with as much self-control as he could muster, because he had a mission to accomplish here. And he didn’t really enjoy the thought of being attacked by a frighteningly large penguin lady.
She spat out some numbers in quick succession (they meant nothing to Crueler, so he didn’t note them) and then she hobbled out the door, closing it behind her. The room was suddenly very quiet; no noises to speak of, no items of particular interest, none of those awkward posters about testicular cancer doctors always slapped on the walls. Crueler desperately wanted something else to think about, but he settled for the silence because he knew he should be focusing anyway.
He knew no-one in the waiting room had seen the unusual bulge in his jacket pocket, but he wasn’t so sure about the penguin lady. He’d been so distracted by her birdlike qualities that he’d forgotten to analyze her like everyone else. Come to think of it, she had been scowling…that was never a good sign. He sat down noisily on the cot, crinkling the white paper, shifting carefully so the bulge wasn’t so obvious.
There, that was nearly perfect. At least, as perfect as he’d get it anytime soon –
The door swung open, somehow enigmatic in itself. The doctor was a stout little man with a bald head and cloudy, careless eyes. A thin pair of spectacles made him look more scholarly than he probably was in that quaint white lab coat.
“Hello, Mr. Crueler. What seems to be the problem?”
Jacobin cleared his throat, deciding on a Yugoslavian accent. “Vell, you see, I accidentally have some Clorox, and thought I threw it all up, but zis morning my throat is red. It very hurts.”
The doctor nodded, pursing his lips and casting Crueler a strange look. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you treated right away.”
“Vell, actually, Doctor, I had something else in mind.”
“Oh? What would that be?”
“You see, I know something zat no-von else knows.” Crueler leaned in close. This was just too much fun. “I know…zat you are really an undercover agent vith zee CIA.” He added a foreign giggle for good measure.
The Doctor was frozen for a moment before stuttering, “I think maybe you, uh, had too much of that bleach. You really need treatment right away.”
“No, no, zere is more to my story! So ven I learned that you are CIA, I zaid to myself in me head, “Jacobin, everyvon has a price,” and so ven I call my old boss in Yugoslavia, he say that you are vanted dead by their intelligence agency! Small vorld, no?”
The Doctor bolted, but Crueler had already pulled the silenced 9mm Taurus out of his jacket pocket and put two slugs in the doctor’s brain.
“Small vorld indeed.”
Crueler stepped over the body to the counter and grabbed an antiseptic wipe. His mind started spinning again, like an old Temptations record, as he wiped the Taurus clean and unscrewed the silencer. He liked this particular silencer, because it was silver – and to him, silver spoke of black BMWs, jazz clubs, the red-eye to Paris, a steak dinner in the city, all of it and more. Silver was somehow more sophisticated than gold, simpler, closer to the essence of beauty.
Crueler dropped the printless gun into the Biohazard receptacle, slipping the silencer back into his jacket pocket. He thought about grabbing that David Sanborn CD on the way out; it sounded like good driving music. Good music for Crueler’s Corolla. But the fact remained; he had already stuffed the glove compartment full of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Coltrane, and the works. Yes, Crueler’s Corolla was fully stocked with the capricious throes of a love supreme, where he could speed for miles with no-one to watch over him, and think, what a wonderful world.
Sort of an ironic notion, considering the violent sight before him: the splash of crimson that slowly deoxygenated on the linoleum, and the dead doctor that rested facedown in gentle sleep. Crueler grimaced, and exited the room, stepping lightly into the hallway with a glance in both directions. No sign of penguin lady.
Crueler decided against the lobby, hurriedly striding further down the monochrome hall. He passed a few open doors – nervous middle-aged men, sniveling toddlers and their parents, working women looking icy with a tissue – but Crueler kept going. He almost stopped at a faded, blinking old soda machine, but realized that he didn’t have change, and there was no Mountain Dew anyway. A few more steps carried him through a pair of swinging double doors, into an outdoor parking lot brimming with hot-orange ambulances.
He placidly resisted the temptation to steal one, and instead opted for the street. By the time he’d jogged the block back to his car, he could already hear police sirens. Which meant that they’d found the body, seen the bullets, maybe even happened across the gun in the trash can. But everything was clean, everything pointed to nothing, and certainly nothing pointed to him.
Satisfied, Jacobin Crueler kicked the Corolla/Tacoma into reverse, squealed out of his parking spot, and hit the road.