D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (26 page)

William picked up the phone and dialed his personal assistant. “Jennifer, I want you to take care of something for me, first thing in the morning. Call my lawyer. I want to file for divorce...no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just something I have to do. Why live with a twenty thousand dollar whore, right?” Jennifer didn’t know what to say to that. “Yes, just make sure you do it first thing.  Thank you.”

Diana was a twenty thousand dollar whore that would soon become a multi-million dollar whore, but what was money when all it bought was the finest cheap liquor and the most expensive cheap suit, not to mention the most expensive diseased hooker in all of New York City.

Why stop there
, William thought as an image came to him of a certain trampy slut he remembered from high school, Becky Tarantino.

Mr. Buckingham swallowed the last of his whisky deciding to sleep on the floor rather than on the bed with the four hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. After all, they were probably no better than the sheets on clearance at Wal-Mart.

And why stop with gonorrhea
, He thought,
my money could go so far
.
I bet Becky has it all, even full blow AIDS
.

As William lay down he wondered what it was all for: the huge corporation, the millions of dollars, the investments. Why so much when it could all be ruined so easily?

His body trembled as he looked around the darkness of the suite. Anything could happen. The building was supposed to be safe, surveyed twenty-four hours a day by security cameras and armed guards, but what was any of that
really
worth? Nothing else seemed to be worth its cost.

A crazy man could bust the door down and assassinate him, or perhaps take him and torture him until he handed over his fortune. Anything could happen.

Normally William would be going home to crawl beside the woman who despised him. He had only slept in the suite on rare occasions—like the other night with the twenty thousand dollar whore! 

In the past he never worried about the security of the building any more than he questioned the quality of his scotch or the softness of his sheets. He never really questioned anything before, just took everything for face value, literally. Value was everything to William Buckingham. To him, life was only equal to the value of everything therein. He liked only the finest.

But what happens when the finest isn’t so fine after all?

Sleep alluded him, leaving his mind to torment itself—he worried about his dental work, and he could swear he felt pain in the tooth he had a root canal in about six months ago. The dentist was supposed to be the best in Manhattan, but then again...

His paranoia gave way to relief when he thought about the divorce he would be pursuing in the morning.
To hell with it
!

He thought of Becky Tarantino again. He was going to have to make a call tomorrow, see what she was up to, see if she wanted to make a quick buck.

It wasn’t that catching the clap was the end of his life—the disease was an easy fix—but something snapped in his brain and suddenly the world around him wasn’t what he always thought it to be. Somehow he had been hoodwinked into believing that he really could live exclusively, but it wasn’t true.

He was going to have to start living in reality.

The best of the worst that money could buy.

It wasn’t hard to find Becky Tarantino. She hadn’t married and her name was well known by those on skid row. There was a corner she frequented when she needed money for dope and that was where William found her. She hardly looked like a hooker—at least what he thought a hooker should look like—the way she was dressed in a tattered shirt and baggy sweat pants. 

He suddenly realized that walking the streets in this part of town, regardless of how awful a woman looked, would have men pulling up to ask for a blowjob in broad daylight. It was just that kind of neighborhood.

William must have driven by ten times throughout the evening before he saw her. He promptly picked her up and told her he would pay grandly for her diseases. Even in her state of degradation she was offended by his comments; however, when he flashed a wad of cash as thick a hardcover novel, she smiled and stepped inside his Honda Civic (William Buckingham wouldn’t have been caught dead in a Honda only a few days ago, but now that he knew the true lack of value in everything he traded his loaded Lexus for a low end Civic).

She picked at her skin in the most disgusting manner as William drove them to his suite. Once there, he did things to her he should be ashamed of in spite of who she was and her soiled reputation—but that was what he was going for. He wanted her disease, wanted to writhe in it until his flesh broke out in a rash of severe boils. He wanted to hurt, to feel pain that would take the place of the pain he felt at being so ignorant for so many years.

He threw her out of his suite; gave her far too much money, and told her to do society a favor and kill herself.

He wasn’t sure why he added the last part, if nothing more than mere bitterness that she was fortunate enough not to see just how useless life really was. Here she was, happy over a couple thousand dollars she would undoubtedly waste on bad dope and cheap booze after which she would have to drag herself back to the corner where she would never sell her miserable body for near as much money ever again.

William decided against drinking liquor for he wanted to feel her disease infiltrating his body, flowing through him like venom, and to his disappointment, he felt nothing. There wasn’t even the suspected irritation on his groin he had hoped for.

It isn’t quick enough
.
I need something that will work faster
.

That’s when William found the razors in his medicine cabinet and decided to cut a grid on the bottom of his feet like bloody grill marks. The pain wasn’t what he had hoped for, but he knew the wounds would become infected and scab up, at which point it would feel as if he were walking on broken glass at all times. That was the kind of punishment he was looking for, the kind of constant reminder of his incessant ignorance he needed.

Over the next month, William Buckingham was rarely seen in public. There were phone calls that filled his voice mail to which he never answered; at least a hundred messages on his phone at the office went unheard.

Strange business dealings were being approved as William sold pieces of his company for pennies on the dollar, in some cases giving whole factories to smaller unknown businesses that likely wouldn’t be able to handle such a workload.

Though William was the CEO there were others, top shareholders in Buckingham Enterprises, who were concerned by his rash decisions, but they couldn’t locate the man and those that used to be close to him—at this point nobody was close to him—weren’t talking.

His soon-to-be ex-wife was off in the Bahamas having the time of her life without a care in the world to the state of Buckingham Enterprises.  It wasn’t until the shareholders spoke to William’s older son, Daniel, that they came up with some answers.

Daniel was the heir to Buckingham Enterprises and no one was more concerned about his father’s sudden decisions to sell off the company so quickly and for so little. He vowed to the shareholders that he would find his father and bring sense to him.

It was in one of the old abandoned warehouses where Daniel finally found William. He was a sorry sight, a man on the verge of death from sheer exhaustion, lack of nutrition and severe infection. It had been a while since Daniel had seen his father, and never had he seen him in such a state.

“What’s happened to you, dad?”

William looked at his son, his face shrunken in, flesh hanging from his bones like a man so much older than himself. He had been standing in the middle of the warehouse amongst the racks of old product that had been stored there and forgotten. He looked so peculiar the way he stood silently as if there were people there waiting to yell ‘surprise.’

“Son, you found me,” William’s voice hissed.

It was obvious William knew people were looking for him. 

A gunshot rang out dropping Daniel to the floor. The bullet hit William in the right arm knocking him off balance though he somehow remained standing.

“Shit!  Someone’s shooting at us!” yelled Daniel looking for cover.

“At me, son. You don’t have to worry.”

Daniel looked from the ground at his father, his brow wrinkled in confusion. He didn’t understand what his father was saying to him.

“Who’s shooting at you? We’ve got to get out of here, you’re wounded.”

“I hired him, son. He’s not the type of guy you would hire to kill a congressman, you couldn’t trust a guy like that anyway.  He’s just a small time hood who could use the money. You see, he doesn’t know how useless money really is.”

“What do you mean you hired him?”

William looked around the warehouse at the rafters and storage area, accessible by ladders that went up three floors or more. “He’s out there somewhere. I told him to shoot me periodically, in the arms and legs, nowhere fatal.”

“What! Nowhere fatal; what the hell are you talking about?”

Another shot rang out causing Daniel to yelp and take cover. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete floor.

“I knew what I was getting, son. I knew he would miss once or twice. Can you imagine paying for a hit man that misses? It would be like getting the clap from a twenty thousand dollar whore.”

Daniel didn’t know what to say. His father stood there like some crazy martyr waiting for the next bullet. His arm was bleeding onto the floor where Daniel saw the state of his father’s feet. He was without shoes, his skin puffy and red, infected with poorly scabbed wounds.

“It wasn’t enough, son. I needed more.”

“More what?” Daniel’s concern for Buckingham Enterprises was completely replaced with shock.

“More punishment. The twenty thousand dollar whore, the Egyptian cotton pillows, the single malt scotch—all of it lies. All my life believing such lies, and now...”

“You’ve completely lost it, haven’t you?”

“...Now I know what’s real.” William looked his son dead in the eyes as another bullet fired, echoing through the warehouse. This one hit true blasting a hole through William’s left leg. The loss of balance brought him to the floor. He cried out and winced, but there was laughter as well, laughter that Daniel loathed. He didn’t like the bullets either. It would be far too easy for one to mistakenly hit him.

“Why bring down Buckingham Enterprises with you, why do this to me? What have I done?”

Now William was on the floor, too weak to stand.  His immune system was working overtime to deal with the influx of disease he had given himself: flus, various VD’s—he had even located people with deadly skin diseases and persuaded those willing to allow him to touch their festering sores and rub the discharge over his body.

“You have made the same fatal mistake I have, son. You too have found superiority in things inferior. It’s all cheap, son. We’ve been fooled into just giving our money away, and for what? A bottle of cheap scotch with a fancy label, an expensive hooker with gonorrhea? Nothing is what it seems.”

Another bullet came out of nowhere, this time barely missing William’s head. It ricocheted off the floor lodging itself into Daniel’s leg. It felt like the sting from a very large bee with a quarter inch stinger.

“I’m getting out of here!” said Daniel.  “I’m going to my lawyers to file that you are insane and unable to further handle your estate.”

“Too late,” said William, his voice almost too weak to speak. “As of this morning, I have no estate.”

This stopped Daniel in his tracks, clutching his wounded leg. The question sounded more like a squeak. “What did you do?”

“I found truth, Daniel. I found what I had been looking for: reality. I lived such a miserable life and never knew reality, pain, or suffering. I was shielded, as you are now. I decided I could do something to save you from a miserable end as the one I am suffering; because if you continue to live like this, you too will want reality and punishment for a life wasted.”

“What did you do?”

“The pen, son, is truly mightier than the sword. It has power no one can fool you with, truth that cannot be hidden behind a fancy label or a hefty price tag.”

“What...did...you...do?”

“I took a pen this morning and signed away everything.  You should be pleased with me, son. Now you won’t have to make the same mistakes I had to.”

Daniel rushed his father, kneeling before the man.  He grabbed his collar slamming his body into the floor.

“Why?” Daniel screamed. “Why did you do that?”

In his fury he took a swing, disgusted at the sight of his father, a man he never really knew, a man who had always been too caught up in his work to make time for his family. He took another swing and yet another, hitting his father so hard he fractured the older man’s skull.

Behind him the door to the warehouse opened, a figure slipping out into the sunny day. It was the man who had been shooting at William.

Daniel jumped to his feet running to the door, but he was too late. The man was gone; he could have fled in any direction. On the floor was a piece of paper.  Daniel picked it up and read:

You’ll find me at the warehouse on 56th and Vine. Do as we discussed, shots to the arms and legs until my son attacks me.  At that point you may leave with the money in this envelope. No strings attached.

Daniel looked at his father’s body wondering if he was dead or alive. “You set me up to attack you?”

There was no answer. His father was dead, and he went out just as he had planned. He did hope this experience would teach his son something about the true value of life; he hoped Daniel wouldn’t have to make the same mistakes, and felt certain that Daniel wouldn’t have the opportunity now that he would have to find a job and live as a normal person on a modest income.

It was by the hands of his own son that he was dealt the final blow and what else could he have expected? A son isn’t supposed to kill his father, but many times things aren’t what they’re supposed to be. Like the dirty whore, the one that was supposed to be clean, the bad scotch with the fancy label, and the Kobe beef that was no better than a sirloin.