The Stranger - Max Frei [163]
“You know, friend, I sometimes surprise myself,” I admitted. “I’m afraid of myself. I’m a danger to my own existence—that’s what I think.”
“Maybe you’re just some former Grand Magician? And Juffin gave you a good whack, so you lost your memory?”
“I hope not. Speaking of good whacks, thanks for slapping me around there. You seem to have saved my life. You ever tried that with the deceased? Maybe it would work on them, too.”
“Nonsense, Max. I wanted to slap you around a long time ago, and now there was a reason. But really, what happened to you?”
“I sent him a call, and I probably tried too hard. Some hundredth degree of your blasted magic, instead of the second. It’s always that way with me. My whole life I’ve always put too much salt on my omelets, too. That’s the sort of thing that happens to me.”
“Hey, look over there, Max! There’s another curious spectacle.”
I turned around to look. That cage contained a person, too. I puffed on my pipe so we could see it better. Sinning Magicians! It was a piece of meat that still hadn’t lost the outline of its human form. A piece of aromatic meat dressed in a skaba and a looxi!
My nerves were ready to snap. We seemed to have unraveled this cursed affair, and much more quickly than we had anticipated. But I still felt no sense of relief.
“Do you see what I see, Melifaro? He cooks them! He cooks them, somehow, the swine! Send a call to our boys. We need Lonli-Lokli here. The sooner the better.”
“Yes,” whispered Melifaro. “And I really need the bathroom. I feel sick. We just ate what he cooked.”
“Go ahead and hurl,” I replied with a forced calm. “Don’t be ashamed. But I don’t think they fed us human flesh. I have a feeling the hunchback has only one Speciality of the House.”
“Lonli-Lokli will be here soon,” Melifaro reported. “I requested that he bring a few boys from the Police Force. What is this filth we’ve dug up, Max? Let’s go look at the rest.”
“Are you sure you want to? Go without me, then. I don’t want to barf after a good meal. I wasn’t raised that way. My mother thought that after visiting a good restaurant you shouldn’t even do number two for a week.”
“Still joking, Mr. Bad Dream? How would you have known about expensive restaurants living in the Borderlands? It can’t get worse than it already is. But what if there are live people in the other cages?”
“Maybe there are. Go take a look. I’ve seen enough.”
I turned away from the loathsome House Special and puffed on my pipe with genuine pleasure. Honestly, it wasn’t so bad after all, this local tobacco.
“Max, I was wrong!” Melifaro’s voice sounded improbably loud. “It just got worse! Come here and shed some light. Come on, puff on it one more time. You can close your eyes if you don’t want to look.”
I looked, of course. I had always known that my curiosity would be my undoing. A piece of meat in a looxi—that’s disgusting enough. But when above the belt there’s meat, and below, a pair of legs . . . Nevertheless, I didn’t get sick. My stomach is quite a reliable piece of equipment. No matter what kind of filth crosses its path in life, it continues to function. All of a sudden, though, standing upright became too much for me, and I sank to the ground with a dull thud, like an overloaded shopping bag.
Only then did I realize we were no longer alone.
The rest was like a dream. A second that seemed to last a whole lifetime—that’s what they usually say. “A whole lifetime” is an exaggeration; but that a few hours fit into the span of this second is something I’ll stake my life on.
In the doorway, I saw a darkness thicker than that which surrounded it and a short, stooped silhouette. The chef was hurrying to restore order to his kitchen. He was enraged, and wasn’t thinking about the consequences. One split second was enough for me to become this person, then to stop being him, and to realize—he’s a madman.
Itullo the hunchback was armed with a hatchet and a silk noose, which they use here to kill turkeys before plucking and roasting