Savage Tales

phone down. The young man on his floor was starting to stir, rising.
    "They're not even two blocks away," said Arthur. "You just try and run, boy!"
    Mark knew who the old man meant. He shook off his daze and ran, the old man's hissing laughter trailing him with Doppler effect.

    3.
    A block away officer Jackson and Appleby were rolling silently toward the house. Their car wasn't silent, but they were. They'd been partners seven years and long since exhausted all avenues of conversation. They disliked each other, but would never let on this was the case lest they be perceived as racist.
    As they came to 616 Martreefrondish Lane they saw a young black man coming out of the house in a cold sweat. They couldn't actually see the sweat from their distance, but liked to imagine they could. There were even targets at the shooting gallery labeled "Cold Sweat" that were somehow meant to visually impart the tactile significance of coldness and sweatiness to an officer in the heat of battle a mere 30 or 50 feet away from a target, be they large, small, or black.
    They ejected coolly from the car like they'd seen so many cops do on TV.
    "Freeze!" said Appleby. "Get your hands up!"
    Mark looked at the two officers and decided he had a fifty percent chance they wouldn't shoot.
    "No!" he screamed. And bolted.
    "Great," said Jackson. "Nice work."
    "What?" said Appleby. "What?"
    "He was a brother. I thought we agreed that I would deal with the brothers."
    "Oh. Oh yeah. I forgot about that."
    "You forget about that. Jesus Christ. Come on."
    They ran after Mark and found him in process of being devoured by two dogs in the backyard of a neighbor's house. Appleby and Jackson, never favorable to the manhandling of dogs, let a few rounds fly at the animals. The dogs exploded into an orgy of blood and meat and dog teeth that seemed to spit from another dimension. One minute a whole being. The next: EXPLOSION. The sound came with it, the sound of bullets, and one of those bullets went through the Doberman and into Mark. He would definitely not be making second period.

    4.
    At Village ICU Dr. Merv Constantinople was on duty when the young black man was wheeled in a respirating mess, blood pissing out of his collar-bone. "What have we here," said Merv. "Young fellow, shot by an officer while perpetrating, yes, yes, and it seems rather critical, wellll, well I am the man, as if this youngster seemed to know that Merv Constantinople was on the job today. Did somebody tell him to get shot today knowing he'd be in good hands? I dare say they did not, he merely psychically intuited it. Well, Nurse Sugarbottom – not your name – is it? I don't know – just roll him in I'll be right with him and we can see about dese little bullet we have wedged betwixt him and his life, oh me."
    Nurse Johnson wheeled Mark into the operating room where Nurse Hayes was also waiting, preparing the instruments of dissection, unpeeling them from sterilized packaging and sliding rubber and hoses and bleeping devices that few could comprehend outside the medical world. She looked at Nurse Johnson, that hussy, always flirting with Dr. Constantinople, she hated her.
    Dr. Constanti nople came in laughing deliriously. "Jesus Christ, give that boy some of whatever I'm on! Haha. What am I on?"
    He pinched Nurse Johnson's ass and imagined dissecting a piece of it at some future hour as he had so often done with Nurse Hayes.
    "Now, what about this boy? Hahahaha."

    5.
    Mark did not survive the night.

TV

    Sure I tell my friends I'm a television producer and they laugh because they can't understand the ups and downs, the ins and outs of Hollywood and how the machinations bring you high or low at the flip of a pen, the turn of a key. But I am, was, and always will be in the biz. So I may not have a house to put my head under or a fancy car like I once did and my stocks took a fall and etc etc dotcom blah blah blah, as if any of that mattered. I have a TV and that allows me to work inside the TV business because I'm a businessman but now I'm no longer constrained by the constraints of an office and suit and secretary and paycheck telling me do this do that. Bah. I'm an independent soul like these kids here with their $24 T-shirts with electric lines all splattering because I live in a box they may laugh at me but what cares I? What care? Freedom is my ever-coddling lover. So let me tell you about my show. There are two characters who look like action figures I found at the