Hell, nobody messed with James “Cooter” Coolidge. Folks knew better. Ever since he’d nailed that last guy in prison. The one that talked shit about Cooter. Cooter had used a smuggled razor blade to cut the guy’s throat. After that, nobody messed with Cooter.
He sat up in the darkness. His head ached like a son of a bitch. Somebody had managed to get the jump on him. Somebody that was about to be real damn sorry.
“Where you at?!” Cooter stood. His 9mm was missing from where he kept it snuggled in his waistband, and his switchblade had been removed from his pocket. *That’s okay. I don’t need ’em. Got my fists.* “I can hear you breathin’,” Cooter said. He had three teardrops tattooed on his face, one for each of the men he’d killed in his twenty-three years of life. *Gonna be needin’ a fourth.* “Where you at?!” Cooter demanded.
A voice answered him from the darkness. “I am close enough.”
“You done picked the wrong guy!” Cooter informed him.
“It surprised me that you came here alone,” the voice said. “Doesn’t your kind tend to roam in packs?”
“I’m a lone wolf,” Cooter said, grinning. He wondered if the person talking could see him. Cooter hoped so. He wanted them to see that grin.
“You came snooping around the wrong habitation, my good man,” the disembodied voice said.
“That right?” Cooter had thought the old house to be abandoned. Not that it mattered. “Hey, you talk funny,” Cooter said. “Where you from, anyway?”
“From far away.”
“Ain’t never nailed me no foreign meat before.” Cooter sneered. “This is gonna be a first.”
“Yes. A first for you.”
“Why you hidin’ in the dark?” Cooter said. “Why don’t you turn on the light, ‘less you scared to.”
The room exploded into light. Cooter cursed, covered his eyes.
“I should thank you,” the voice said “By delivering yourself right to my door, you’ve saved me considerable trouble. Now I don’t have to go out and find someone.”
“That how it is?” Cooter blinked in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead, his vision coming back. He saw a square room, no windows, just one door, made of glass. A one-armed man, all stooped and crooked, wearing some kind of sack over his head and a long white coat, stood on the other side of the door, watching him. “What’s up with that sack over your head?” The man removed the hood. James “Cooter” Coolidge gasped.
“Jesus Christ!” He took a few quick breaths, then he cackled. “Shit!” he said, “you got me! That’s some mask. Well, I hope you enjoyed your little joke, ’cause now I’m for sure pissed off. I was just gonna do ya’ up. Now maybe I’m a’ find me a blade. Maybe gonna make your real face look like that mask.”
“This is my real face,” the man said.
Cooter snorted.
“You are going to help me with a little project, my good man. You get the honor of being my personal guinea pig. How does that sound?”
“Come in here an’ I’m a’ show ya’!” Cooter said. “I’m a’ do ya’ up right!”
“There is nothing you could do to me that has not already been done,” the man said. “As for your own sufferings, I assure you they will be brief.”
Cooter was getting nervous. Something about this man, the way he seemed not afraid. Cooter had never before met a man who was not afraid of him. And that mask. It had to be a mask, didn’t it?
“Truth be told,” the man said. “Your death will be a kindness, compared to some.”
“Ain’t nobody dyin’ today but you!” Cooter said.
“Oh, that occurred some time ago,” the man with half a face said. “It is a wretched condition, being dead. Now I wish to share it with you. You and all the rest. You see,” the man said, “it is true what they say. Misery loves company.”
