Frost and Heat

Shchh. Click. The magazine slid into the receiver without resistance and locked there, despite the parking lot being painted in a late November frost. Cy placed the weapon delicately in a warm pocket of his coat. He put the silencer on the other side of the coat, in a separate pocket, so they would both fit inconspicuously. His hands felt as if somebody had shut them in heavy door, and were turning a sickly shade of black. There was no point locking the car at this hour.

Cy had never been to the Kneeling Bar. He supposed probably would not be returning, at least in the near future, although he had considering paying a visit to the adjacent church. It had the air of history, but looked and felt far from decrepit. The façade was aged red brick, spattered in places with crumbling concrete that made the whole thing seem likely to collapse at any minute.

He prodded some concrete, which shattered under the pressure of his finger and fell, broken, to the ground. A dark man-shape entered the building. Cy followed it.

Harris was already melting his insides with Ketel One when Cy arrived. Not a soul drank with him. No witnesses.

“Would you like a seat?” Harris offered, pulling a tall black barstool from underneath the lacquered bar.

Harris had forgotten him. All the better.

Cy thanked him for the seat, hung his coat and on the back, and sat down. Thinking twice, he faced the ground and put his cap back on. Nobody could know him. He removed his coat and cap and sat beside Harris. The seat felt painfully warm when he sat.

“You and I,” Cy began, “I think I know you.” He was lying. He did know him. Harris had seduced Cy’s wife five years ago without even knowing it.

Cy’s wife was already dead: an industrial accident. A barrel of roofing nails had fallen from the top of Harris’ neighbor’s house onto her head, as she was on her way out: panting and sweating.
Cy had looked sadly on: it was of his design of course. She would die without her wedding ring. He had taken it from her in her sleep. In her beautiful sleep.



The bartender stood and absentmindedly polished a glass with a terry cloth; it was already clean – it had been clean for the past ten minutes – but it gave the bartender something to do. The customers never liked seeing a lazy server, so one had to pretend these things.

“No,” Harris said, after pondering this for a while, “I believe we don’t know each other. At least, I don’t believe I know you.”

“Are you in engineering?” Cy asked, delicately removing suspicion from his shoulders.

“No… no.” Harris looked confused, almost wary.

“Construction?”

“No…”

“Oh… well then, I guess we don’t.”

“What’s your name?”

“Harris. Handell.”

“I know where I know you from! You ever go out with a girl named...” he reached inside himself to keep a straight face. “… a girl named Tina Jarvis?”

Harris shifted his eyes nervously. He was obviously quite uncomfortable.

“I did.”

Cy’s nostrils flared, but he tried to keep himself under control.

“That’s it.” Cy said, “I saw Tina a few times. She talked about you a bit. I saw some photos.”

Cy felt a note of sick pride for his seamless masquerade.

“What’s your name, pal?” Harris asked. He was trying to add a note of familiarity to a desperately awkward situation, as anybody could see.

Cy stared coldly into his eyes.

“Montresor Bullfinch,” he lied.

And Harris would be his Fortunato.

Cy surveyed the bottles – tall, small, wide, square, and all filled with differently-colored and glimmering liquids. The only empty bottle was a bottle of Laphroaig.

For old times’ sake, he ordered a different beverage.

“Get me a Del Duque; serve it in a snifter if you don’t have any copitas.”

The bartender looked puzzled.

“A… Del Doo-kwa?” he asked. His eyebrows rose almost comically.

“Yeah, you know: the sherry?” Cy explained, “It’s an amontillado, you know the stuff.”

“Sir, we don’t serve fine spirits or fortified wines here.” the bartender clarified, “Hell, we don’t serve any wines here. Beer and liquor, sir.”

Cy forced himself to curse and act disappointed, pulling it off with the grace of a veteran.

“Get me a Laphroaig, then. On the rocks, about three cubes.”

“Yes, sir”, the bartender replied, before turning to discover the empty bottle.

“I’m sorry, sir. We seem to be out…” he apologized “If you’ll hold on a while, I can go to the basement to get a new bottle.”

“That’s cool.” Cy said through a toothy grin. “You go ahead, my man.”

Harris stared with his jaw gaping and a look of puzzlement in his eyes.

“I’ve never even heard of that shit.” he proclaimed, “Amontillado? Laphroaig? What in the…”

Harris only had time to gasp briefly before Cy leapt like a cat from his barstool and seized him by the throat, fixing a meaty hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming. Cy carried him across the room by his chin and pinned him against a column in the back. Harris’ eyes were wide.

“My name is Cy Jarvis!” he whispered urgently, “You remember Tina Jarvis?”

Harris didn’t reply.

Cy picked him up and pinned his throat to the floor with a steel-toe boot, amidst the sounds of gagging and choking. Cy pulled a dirty burlap mouth-gag and his silenced Makarov 9mm from his coat pocket on the back of the barstool. He furiously shoved the gag into Harris’ throat and rammed it home with the muzzle of the silencer.

“I said… Do you. Fucking. Remember. Tina Jarvis. Do you remember her you little scumbag? Because I was her husband.”

Harris nodded, screaming into the gag.

“Good. You remember her ass?”

Harris broke out in a cold sweat, but nodded.

“That’s terrific. Because it’s last one you’ll ever see. Think about it. Let that be the last fucking image in your mind. Be happy… for a little while.”

Cy grinned, but his smirk was soon replaced by sharp, white teeth and anger. He nodded at Harris.

Harris shook his head around desperately, his blond hair swinging back and forth like chains of gold on his forehead.

The bartender’s footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs. Cy peered across the room, and then began to drag Harris towards the bathrooms. He bent him backwards over a toilet.

“Where the…” the bartender exclaimed.

Cy watched him through the glass door of the bathroom. Finally, the bartender went back down into the cellar with a label-maker and an empty bottle of Laphroaig. Cy smiled.

“Good… good.”

He turned to Harris.

“Now listen here, you pathetic little cocksucker. Consider…” he said, removing a three-inch, wiry twist-tie from his pocket.

“Consider what I’m about to do to you the best thing that could happen to you the best goddamned thing that could happen to you. Consider it a fucking blessing.”

He pulled Harris’ black pants down past his ankles, followed by his underwear.

“Abelard had it done to him, and he got a much better lay than you got: he got Heloise.”

Cy felt guilty as he said this. He turned away, inhaled, and turned back. The guilt had disappeared.

Cy found himself staring at Harris’ testicles, nestled securely in a ring of thick, wiry black hair that circled his perineum and trailed up the center of his abdomen. He stared not with disgust, but with undiluted anticipation. The moment of a lifetime. He set to work tying the twist-tie around Harris’ testicles and penis.

“Alan Turing got it taken off for putting it in a dude’s ass. You at least got a female.”

Cy stood back and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to midnight.

“So we sit here, and we wait for ‘em to become nice, and pale, and swollen. Count out fifteen minutes for me. I’m over here heating up my ... hehe, hot plate.”

When Harris heard “hot plate”, he began to moan through the gag, choking himself.

“Don’t worry. It’s just to cauterize the wound. Although you deserve… you deserve so much worse. In the meantime, let me a tell you a story. Maybe it’ll make it easier. It’ll probably just make the wound bleed. Oh…” he said, and cackled, “Let me tell you, I will have no better moment in my life than watching you pass out from blood loss through the penis. That will be pleasant indeed. Oh… but don’t worry, you won’t bleed out on me, will you?”

“This story is about a woman named Tina. She was twenty-seven years old, perky tits, creamy thighs, hips like the Midgard serpent… a cunt that was to die for.”

He continued describing his ex-wife until...

Harris closed his eyes and bared his teeth. His penis was beginning to swell: beginning to swell with blood that would seep out, like precious crimson water from a main, when the job was done. It was perfect.

“Somebody’s getting a little excited, aren’t they? Should I keep going? ” Cy whispered, through lips that were a vicious crescent.

Cy reared back, his foot on verge of swinging forward and knocking Harris out cold. He paused. No. Harris needed to see this, enjoy this, and revel in it like Cy would.

Cy spat and frothy blob of tobacco-brown saliva on Harris’ eye.

“That’ll do ... pig.”

Cy checked Harris’ testicles. They were gray and pale, and slightly cold. They were ready.

“We’re set,” Cy announced, “Let’s…hehe, let’s boogie down, shall we?”

Cy unsheathed a glistening, serrated combat knife from a pouch on his belt. He slipped it underneath the narrowest part of Harris’ constricted genitals, right next to the twist-tie, and began to slowly saw upwards.

Harris screamed, a high pitch coming from behind the gag.

The leathery skin of Harris’ scrotum burst open with ease, and Cy sawed at blood vessels and a swollen, tan vas.

“Coming apart pretty easy there, buddy.”

Harris had his eyes shut tightly. his jaws were quivering.

When he was nearly through the opposite side of the scrotum from where he began, Cy tugged abruptly at the nigh-severed organs. They came off swiftly and lay, docile and guiltless, in his hands.

“One down…”

He began to cut through the hardened base of Harris’ penis. Blood seeped out and ran along the knife blade, up the rubber handle, and onto Cy’s hand. Cy stared at the blood, and began to rub it around in his fingers until his hand was red. Then he put the bloody hand on Harris’ forehead, leaving a print.

He continued to cut, until the detached penis lay limp and bleeding on the stained tile of the bathroom floor.

“All done…” Cy proclaimed proudly, “Now we just seal you up…”

The fresh wound on Harris perineum was seeping blood. Cy picked up the glowing hot plate from the bathroom counter, and firmly pressed it against the exposed flesh. Harris’ eyes widened like plates, and he screamed loudly into the gag. The flesh began to hiss and blacken, until all that remained was a charred, but no longer bleeding, stump. Harris squirmed in agony, hitting the side of the stall door loudly with his flailing feet.

Cy stood back and admired his handiwork.
Harris lay back, his head lolling on one side. He had passed out.

“To look at it…” he said, holding up Harris’ flaccid penis to in front of his eyes, “One might think you have more than you started with.”

Cy smiled, then took the silenced pistol from it’s holster. Calmly, he aimed it at Harris’ exposed throat. Considering the risk Harris’ death might pose, Cy holstered the pistol.

The cops would investigate a murder. They would poke fun at a castration.

Decisively, Cy grabbed Harris’ face and slammed the back of his head into the porcelain toilet. He was out for the night, now. Cy took the abandoned penis and testicles and put them in a Ziploc bag. After rinsing the blood off of the bag, he slipped it in his unconscious victim’s pocket. He swabbed the blood from the floor and his knife with a paper towel. He placed all of his instruments – pistol, knife, hot plate, and gag – in his coat pocket. Appraising the unconscious body one last time, he walked towards the door, tipping the bartender generously on the way out.

The bartender looked surprised.
"You left..." he said.
"No, I'm leaving," Cy replied.

Cy walked on.