He stood silent and still in the open doorway, his hands in his pockets as he weighed his options from his front porch. His neighbour, Jack Morgan Esq., was still hunting for his beloved pooch, spatula in hand. George absently picked at his teeth, noting that the oily dog hair was wrapped in a very unpleasant way around his back molars.
"Smells good, don't it?" Jack shouted, his grin wide and white, his apron flapping at his knees like a skirt. "I bet you want to try a bit, don't you? That's grade A beef I got cooking up for breakfast here, you can't get that through the proper channels." Jack pointed his spatula square at George's chest. "I ain't sharing. Can't do it, pal. See, if you were an early investor in Osmosis 37 like I was, you could have had executive status. It's not like they didn't give you the forms to fill out. You and that hard working wife of yours snoozed and losed, just like that. Shame, really. I thought you two had more on the ball than Dopey Dolores over there."
He gestured to George's neighbour on the opposite side and George watched as Dolores staggered through her rose bushes, her martini sloshing over her housecoat as she drunkenly picked at her flowers. "Bought in early and got to reap in all the benefits. She gets to waste her days sucking back tequila and lorazepam and here you are, still struggling to bring home the bacon." Jack Morgan stretched lazily, the spatula waving and dripping fat onto George's driveway. "Mind you, this is a mature street. There's a reason it's so dead quiet."
He moved closer to George, and brought him into a mock confidence. "The Osmosis Foundation snatched up this whole block about a year ago. They figure they can get at least three holding facilities here, housing about five hundred undead wigglers each. Of course, some people are just too stubborn to die off and become part of the plan. As an executive, I'll have my pick of a new downtown condo in whatever city I want. But dead weight like you..." He shook his head. "Let's just say with the kind of payola three holding facilities generates it doesn't take much to get a bank to do some creative accounting."
"Hello, Jack!" Dolores sang to them, her droopy eyes unable to bring either of them into proper focus. She held up her now nearly empty martini glass in greeting. "So lovely, what you're doing for the neighbourhood."
"You're goddamned right about that," Jack said, and Dolores tittered, hiding her drunken belch behind a delicate palm.
He gave George a level glare. "The Osmosis Foundation doesn't take kindly to people who aren't one hundred percent behind their charitable works. If I were you, I'd be channelling all that money your wife earns into some hefty Osmosis donations. Maybe with a kind word put in by, say, a friendly neighbour for a small fee--Let's try five thousand, that should do it--and you could get a small but liveable little bachelor apartment in the heart of the city. Trust me pal. all kinds of things can happen when you're off the Osmosis naughty list." He scraped the bottom of his chin with the spatula, leaving streaks of hickory flavoured BBQ sauce on his neck. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I got a steak to char."
George followed him with his rheumy eyes, not moving a muscle as Jack returned to his BBQ, his calls for his missing, miserable little dog riddled with new curse words. When George did move, it was with slow deliberate plodding, a method that worked best for his increasingly out of sync muscles.
"Good morning, George," Dolores sang out to him. He turned to her, unsmiling, her blank gaze unfocused as she concentrated on his face. "Goodness, that's a nasty cut on your ear."
He stepped down the three steps that comprised his porch and made a beeline for Frank's yard, which was now fully immersed in hickory smoke. The stereo was blasting an ancient Pink Floyd tune, one that George himself had once favoured and might have even sung along to, had the situation been different. But with that jerk Jack enjoying it, it was as if his fond memories of the band and their music were tainted. Defiled, even.
His gut was so hungry, its unsatisfied hollowness screaming in agony. He walked up behind Jack, who turned the steak on the BBQ with a flip of his spatula, the fat sizzling into delicate black edging as the blood dripped onto the hot coals.
George grabbed Jack by the shoulders, hoping to shake some sense into the little creep. He knew better than many how to reason with a cocky, know-all fool. But George wasn't aware of his new strength, and where a shake of the shoulders should have resulted in a bit of cursing and a sense of self-satisfaction for George, the result was horrifyingly different.
Damn. It was just a couple of tugs.
It wasn't like he was expecting to shake the fool's head clean off.
George stood dumbfounded on the front lawn of Jack's house, the man's severed head in his hands dripping blood and BBQ sauce. The remainder of the body lay twitching on the ground a few feet away, the arms and legs running like the last neurological impulses of a headless chicken before finally collapsing into an eerie stillness.
A low humming began behind him and George slowly turned to see Dolores, who had a fresh martini in her hand. She had staggered over to the stereo and was adjusting the controls. Pink Floyd disappeared and Henry Mancini took their place.
George absently took a bite out of the side of Frank's face, eyeing Dolores all the while. Beneath the hair and crunchy bits of skull, the grey matter within was especially sweet. The aching in his gut was finally appeased, and he hungrily chewed and bit into the rich sustenance with a vigour he once used to attack pistachio ice cream.
"It's just so nice that everything has stayed the same in the neighbourhood, just like they promised," Dolores crooned. She downed her martini and toddled over to the BBQ the spatula in Frank's dead grip torn from it with effort, and bringing a couple of fingers with it. She flicked them off with a quick pinch of her thumb and forefinger. "I wonder if he has any hamburgers in his freezer? You remember the hamburgers we used to have back then, don't you, George? Thick and juicy, with lettuce and pickles and mustard and those nice, fluffy sesame seed buns you could get at Earl's Bakery. Those were lovely times."
She regarded the carnage at her feet with a wistful understanding.
"Do you think he's still going to eat that steak?"
***
Dolores was an organized soul, he had to admit. With her martini freshly renewed, she had come back out to Jack's backyard with her hands encased in yellow kitchen gloves and a shop grade rubber apron. Before she had become an Osmosis investor, and long before she had been married, Dolores had worked in her father's butcher shop. Her dispatching of Jack was remarkably efficient. Arms and legs cut off, at the joints and then neatly packaged in brown paper. The torso was cut into steaks. The guts were properly emptied and dumped into a large metal garbage can for easy disposal. When she was finished, she clapped her hands, splattering blood across her pink forehead.
"That takes care of that," she said, and began hauling the little packages into her house. "Really, you can't expect a meat and potatoes generation like ours to live without the meat part. Such nonsense." She heartily wiped a piece of human tissue from her cheek with the back of her hand, leaving a nasty read smear behind. "Say hello to Frankie for me when she gets home. My, but that poor woman works so hard. She should settle down and retire, that's what she needs to do. It's time to enjoy life." She patted George sweetly on the shoulder and gave him a warm smile before going back into her house.
Henry Mancini was still playing in the background. The theme from the Pink Panther crept across the silent, green, overly manicured lawns like a pop jazz dirge. Frowning, George tossed the remains of Jack Morgan's head in front of his BBQ, bits of the man's teeth still stuck to George's palm. He wasn't hungry anymore, which was strange enough, but he had a sudden, new ability he hadn't counted on. With that physical need satisfied, the cloudy remnants of his mind were suddenly in clear focus. He couldn't understand why he had been so confused by the air conditioner, or how even the simple act of opening a door had taken such effort. It was all very strange.
While intellectually he could concede that it was indeed terrible that he'd made a meal of someone else's mind, there was an unmistakable rightness to the fact that he had regained his own.
He'd have to talk to Frankie about it when she got home.
Frankie.
Home.
The one-sided conversation Jack Morgan, Esq. had subjected George to now took on a new significance. He looked down at himself in disgust and knew he wasn't going to get any answers looking this gory. He'd go back in and take a cool shower and get changed into something worthy for battle. A suit and tie and rock solid argument were difficult to overcome. George had some questions, and the manager of that damn bank was going to let him pick his brains for an answer.