The Killjoy

The Dancing Darlings Lounge

The boy was going to be  handsome one day, Izzy thought. That was before some crazy motherfucker  crossed him, and decided to slit his throat from ear to ear, giving the kid a macabre  second smile.

The screen flickered as Izzy stuck a post it with a interrogation sign in bold red handwriting. It was consuming his mind. Why were white, well fed, well groomed boys being killed? Two cases and none of them  reported missing by the family.

He lit his cigarette with his zippo, and inhaling deeply,  put another x ray on the light board. The chraneum had deep lacerations that touched the bone, and pathology couldn't say yet what  had caused it.

It looked  like a bite to Izzy, and so it could be, mountain lions were not unheard in  LA hills, but that was  just another assumption in a case full of them.

"Whatcha thinking?" Slash asked, giving Izzy a chow mein cartoon.

" What I'm thinking", Izzy said, chewing his food, " is that we have nothing. Zero. Nada."

"Poor bastard. What do you think happened to his face?" Slash asked, pulling the lights nearer as Izzy lifted the green sheet from the victms body.

They looked closely at the deep cuts. "That", Izzy said, pointing at one particularly ugly cut with his chopsticks, "looks very strange. I'd say it's a bite."

"A bite? What kind of thing causes a bite like that?"

"Fuck if I know. A mountain lion?"

"What the fuck?" Mick, the phatologist, a small man with  80s hair and a incipient hunch came charging at them. "Do you fuckers have any respect for the dead at all?" He said, bashing Slash's hand so his food was thrown on the floor.

"Dude, I was eating that."

"Go eat somewhere else, fucker."

"Izzy to Mars! Hey Mick!" Izzy said, throwing his cartoon in the trash. "Do you know what those marks are yet?"

"I'll send my report to you as soon as I hear from lab." Mick said, pushing the gurney back into the refrigeration unit.

"And that will be?" Asked Slash after clearing the floor.

"The usual. Two weeks, two months, who knows?"

"Any hunch?" Slash asked again, and Izzy and him couldn't avoid snickering.

"You two think you are very smart uh? Get the fuck out of my morgue."

"Mick, please, don't mind Slash, you know he is half retarded." Pleaded Izzy.

"I'm not sure. Reptile maybe."

"Really? What kind?" Slash and Izzy asked.

"I said get the fuck out. I have work to do, unlike you two."

"Yeah", Slash said as they were leaving, "and unlike us, you enjoy fucking", he flexed his fingers at that, "with the dead."

They didn't stay to see what cutting instrument was trown at their direction. Mick was a decent guy, and they enjoyed making fun of him. All harmless  until someone got stabbed with a lancet.

*****

The Killjoy was one of those places that,  upon walking in, one would have thought nothing could be of surprise, yet  the place was full of it. An unremarkable door to the left end of the long bar gave entrance to a wide, spiraling staircase, that led  to the  underbelly, the  money maker, acessible to only the selected few, the rich, the famous, the powerful, the influential, The Dancing Darlings Lounge.