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Ricky remained curled up on the bed, the eye of a storm comprised of the other hotel employees ransacking his room. Clearing out closets, tearing open furniture, even smashing open the toilet cistern.
Eventually Jonathan rounds on Ricky, brandishing a chair leg. He doesn’t seem upset as much as on some new level of amusement.
“Ha! So where’s Howdy Doody, Ricky? Where’s that little scamp scampered off to, huh? Your secret little case of all your little tools, your little devices? WHERE’S IT HIDING?”
Ricky remained silent. Esteban, one of the hotel’s cleaners, barged his way to the front.
“This fucker killed Steve, boss, I always knew there was something wrong with him! just let me…”
“No! We’re not animals. Ha hah! We’re not vegetables or minerals, we’re not models of modern major generals… we’re going to do this properly.”
Steve’s voice emerged, a whisper of a whisper.
“He’ll come back… He…he always does…”
Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“So it’s somewhere else. C’mon, let’s use our brains. Gary, Esteban, you’re helping me search. You two stay here, keep an eye on Ricky…”
Jonathan charged off like a man on a mission, despite not having a clue where he was going. On his third rotation of the corridors he saw something out of the window. The utility shed, located out near the now snow covered gardens, had its door wide open.
Out in the snow Jonathan was freaked. Teeny tiny little footprints to the shed. Child sized ski-marks going away and down the hill.
Esteban and Gary share incredulous looks. Jonathan smiles and shakes his head.
“So it was a kid or a midget or something in a wooden costume. It makes perfect sense. Perfect!”
“So do we go after it, I mean, him?”
“In this weather? He’s a boysicle.”
They hear a blood-coagulating scream.
“Fuck!”
Our three intrepid, if slightly tired heroes quickly make their way back to the room.
The two men left on guard have been… well, swept aside is the closet word. Their mangled corpses lay to the left and right of the door.
Inside there was nothing but a whole lot of blood and a suitcase. Charlie’s case.
Jonathan carefully opens it to find Ricky inside, carefully cut into his component parts, from the expression on his head, it was while he was still alive. Dismantled.
Jonathan suddenly looks very serious.
“You’d need three people to do this. Two to hold, one to saw…”
“You mean he was Innocent?”
“If you want to put it like that, yes.”
They stare at the horror for a few minutes. Then Jonathan grins and claps his hands together.
“Well, I’m off to bed! Please inform the guests about the three horrific murders and burn the corpses, will you boys? I’m just plum tuckered out. “
He breezes out of the room.
“Good niiiiight!” |
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