CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

He glanced down at the mask dangling from his fingers and locked eyes with the black holes that bore into him like judgmental pits.

The frown was slipping, sagging at the edges where his sweaty mug had stretched the material. Turning the expression from comically morose to downright pathetic.

You blew it, the mask said to him. Threw it all away, like you screw up everything. Weak, pathetic, can”t even get through a set without bombing.

‘Go to hell,’ he snarled back. ‘Just a minor setback. I”ve still got the closer, the coup de grace.’

The mask just stared. Anger pulsed in his temples, thick and curdled and tasting of bile. With a strangled roar, he tore the thing to shreds. Felt the tacky plastic stretch and give, digging into his fingers until it finally cracked.

Panting, he flung the pieces to the grimy concrete. Stomped on them for good measure, grinding the tattered remnants into the muck under his heel. There. Gone, erased, removed from the act like a rotten tomato lobbed by some heckler in the cheap seats. The thought curled his lip, old hurts prickling under his skin like hot needles.

He”d been so close, so goddamn close to finishing his masterpiece. To take his sweet time with this squid before the big sendoff. Really make the bastard squeal, make him pay.

But the damn pigs just had to show up and stick their snouts where they didn’t belong. Interrupt his work, his art. And now he was running, lungs burning, rabbit-hearting through the urine-filled backstreets of this hopeless city. Filth under his boots, fear clogging his nostrils.

The whole scene - the grand guignol, the magnum opus, his fucking raison d”etre - left behind like so much set dressing. Abandoned in his mad scramble to ditch the cops and save his own sorry skin.

And the wheelchair. The damn wheelchair. All part and parcel of the performance, and now it was police property.

It was all coming apart, unraveling like a cheap sweater. All his planning, all his prep, all the hours spent honing his material, rehearing the moves front of the mirror until everything flowed like poisoned honey, all primed for punchlines that”d bring the house down.

Wasted. All wasted.

Well, he hoped they enjoyed the show. Hoped they got a real kick out of ruining a man”s life”s work, his goddamn magnum opus. No appreciation for the craft. For the blood, sweat and tears he poured into his routine. Now, the timing was screwed. The rhythm was off, the flow interrupted. He”d lost the beat, the groove, that zesty je ne sais quoi that separated the hacks from the headliners.

He had to get it back. Had to dip back into the old toolbag and pull out one last zinger, one final bit to bring it all home and leave them howling. Or screaming.

Same difference, in the end.

They’d all been so quick to judge, so eager to cut him down. The whole stinking world lined up to take their shots, take their pounds of flesh. Well, he was taking his own back now, and the currency was suffering. The sweet music of screams and sobs, the crunch of bones and the glorious snick of life leaving the body.

Payback. Revenge. For every slight, every snub, every cruel word and mocking gaze seared into his memory like a brand on a steer”s hairy ass.

It wasn”t enough. Would never be enough, not until the whole world choked on its own sick laughter. On the jagged shards of its own smug superiority. But it was a start, a mere down payment on the reckoning to come. The grand balancing of the scales that”d leave him the last clown standing in a world of corpsified straight men.

And he”d get there. Oh yes, he”d get there. Just one more to go - the main event, the big kahuna. The headliner he”d been saving for the finale, the glittering jewel in his carnage crown.

But first he had to book. Scram, vamoose, skedaddle stage left while the getting was good. The pigs would be swarming the scene by now, combing for clues and getting their grubby mitts all over his genius. Mucking up the delicate timing, trampling the nuances until they were flatter than a critic”s punchlines.

His car was nearby. Far enough away from the scene that the pigs wouldn’t connect it to the grand display at the fountain. He needed to get there, get back home and plan for tomorrow’s performance.

So he ran. Scuttled like a roach through the dark cracks of the city, the parts that never saw sun and stank of hopelessness and human effluvia. Twitchy, glancing over his shoulder every third step, half-expecting to hear the baying of hounds and the wail of sirens on his heels.

But there was nothing. Just the jaundiced gloom. Piss-stained walls and the smell of rotten fruit between his ears. Dover”s rancid underbelly, the seedy substrate where he”d cultivated his glorious fungi of vengeance.

He laughed to himself. Fungi. Classic bit.

He”d have to write some of this down later, mine it for material. The harrowing escape, the thrilling pursuit. Stretch it out, punch it up, turn it into a bit that”d make them wet their pants even as their guts froze in the chest.

But that was for later. For the next town, the next stage. When he”d finished his encore and could finally take his bow, bask in the bravos and the thunderous silence that was sweeter than any applause.

He slipped down a narrow passage, more crevice than alley, brick walls pressing close on either side. It was tight, claustrophobic. A place to hunch shoulders and walk sideways, praying your coat don”t snag on some jagged outcrop or spent needle. He scurried along, rat-quick, sharp little breaths puffing in the fetid dark. Just a little further, a little deeper into the dank bowels of the city and he could reach the safety of his vehicle.

He stumbled to a halt, chest heaving, sweat stinging his eyes and turning his world to a smeary Vaseline lens. Propped himself up against the clammy wall and felt the damp brick leaching the heat from his skin like some kind of backward vampire. He needed a minute. Just a minute to get himself together, to tamp down the twitchy roil in his guts that felt like a stomachful of wasps.

The last one. It all hinged on the last one, the final piece in his glorious puzzle of payback.

And he already knew where to find the schmuck. Knew his haunts, his habits, the sad little ruts and routines that made up his pointless, puttering existence. Had cased him for weeks, swallowed his own tongue ”til it was thick with the sour taste of surveillance.

The sad sack would never see him coming. He’d go down easy, like a sack of turds in an elevator.

A quick in and out, then exeunt stage left, with a spring in his step and a song in his shriveled little heart.

This son of a bitch had it coming real bad. He”d earned it in snubs and slights and arrows that stuck in the skin and festered like thorns dipped in anthrax. Every cutdown, every smirk, every cruel chuckle seared into his memory like a red-hot brand.

Well, he was doling out the punchlines now. The setups and sendoffs, bloody and final as the tomb. No more the jester, capering for peanut shells and guffaws. Now he was the straight man, and all the world his bumbling, stumbling foil.

Infamy. Not fame, never fame - that whore had spurned him, turned up her powdered nose and laughed in his face. But infamy, oh yes. The dark renown, the black-edged notoriety that clung like a miasma and seeped into the cracks in the pavement.

The last laugh. The ultimate joke. And he”d be there to see it, to toast it with rotgut and grave dirt, spit and semen and the salt of his own mad, crowing laughter.

It was so close he could taste the grease paint and smell the sawdust. Just one more. One more, and he”d be immortal.

Laughing. Always laughing, even as the world gagged and retched and clutched its splitting sides. He”d bring the house down, alright, and he”d stand in the center of it all, bowing to the twitching corpses and the shell-shocked survivors.

And then, at last, blessed silence.

Because a good showman knew when to make an exit. Knew when to step offstage, while the crowd was still writhing and wheezing and crying out for more. Always leave ”em wanting, even if what they wanted was for him to choke on his own blood and die screaming.

So he straightened. Pushed off the clammy alley wall and sucked in a deep breath of that thick, fetid air. Let it fuel him, nourish him. The stink and the rot, the decay and despair. It was all so deliciously funny when you really stopped to savor it.

But now it was time to move. To find his vehicle, stalk his prey, close in for the kill. And when the time was right, when the stage was set and the players all in place, then at last, it would be time for the gag to end all gags.