"I.. beg your pardon..?" Ostey ventured, composing his bulky frame; but yet, he didn't turn his head to look in to Karl's eyes. Karl stayed at the man's ear, a little conscience; to be his guide.
Heavy with a sarcastic feeling in his being, and a tinny, whining tone, Karl snarled, "I beg your pardon," in to Ostermeyer's red, droopy ear. Ostey flinched, his hands clenching rigidly – as best as they could, around the tape.
"The devil is this, Karl? One moment you're going on about how devoted to your wife you are, and the next, we find ourselves in a cat-and-mouse game that you seem all-too content to end. You could just leave me here – I am tied up – and go home, forget that all this ever occurred."
"Oh, oh yes, you would like that, wouldn't you, Ostey? You would like to send me home, home so you can wait out the night; alone in your office, shit in your pants, and piss in your shoes; you would wait to see the secretary's face, to tell her of my befuddled plans – and, oh, hell, who she would tell!"
"It wouldn't be like that – I could say it was someone else, you know. A bandit. Nab a few things on your way out, yes?"
"Oh, mm-hmm; you want me to leave, so that tomorrow you can fire me, and pretend I'm gone for some bureaucratic reason, is that right?"
"Well, I.. I.. I wouldn't do that."
"Oh really, silly-willy? Would you promote me, maybe? Is this the kind of take-charge attitude you really want around here? 'Cuz if so, I have loads more where this stems from – I feel it, you know?"
"I, uh…"
"That's right! You don't have a plan, not anymore than I do. You want out of this, but at this point, you've stepped in shit, so you might as well go through the puddles as well. Shoes are all fucked anyway. Go on, jump, fucker; jump."
Ostey leaned towards the wall, towards Karl, apparently planning to bury his captor alive in a mound of pissy flesh. Karl leaned on the chair, keeping in place. "Oh, no, big fella. You're staying with me tonight." Karl twisted the chair to thrust his face nose-to-nose with Ostey. Ostey's eyes conveyed the frown on the lips that Karl couldn't see from this angle. His eyes glossed over, back in to Passive Victim Ostey eyes. Karl leaned back on his heels, waving the knife across Ostey's field of vision – no reaction.
"You smell like piss; you're not the one with balls here. You're not the bigshot. You go ahead and fantasize about your non-realistic release. I'm here for you, here to show you reality, chum. Reality is a real stinker – like you, really. Reality is real; I am very real. You must also realize that you're real; you're real, and this is really happening. Lucky for you, this has a real definitive ending."
Ostey blinked.
"Wrong move, motherfucker!" Karl hooted, plunging the knife, to the hilt, in Ostey's massive right thigh. Ostey let out a squeal, jerking erratically, wrenching Karl's hand from the knife. He began hyperventilating, making whooping sounds that seemed better suited to a victim of asthma.
"Oh baby!" Karl gloated. "Don’tcha think it'll be all the more sweeter when I pull it out?"
Wheezing, Ostey rasped, "Oh God, no…"
"Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. We are partying now, whoo-eey!"
Karl's face was blotchy and smooth, his eyes gleaming with a mad look to them. His hair fell in lank hunks, framing a face disconnected from logic and the concepts of "morning", "janitor", and "consequences". He sat on the floor next to the chair, leaning back and crossing his legs, staring up at Ostey as if he were a favored storyteller.
Ostermeyer had heavy flash-flood channels of tears racing down the sides of his face. No whimpers, no sobs – just tears of pain, running to pooling at his chin, dripping to reach his shirt, soaking in to join the moisture of his sweaty chest. He let out a sort of sigh.
And then, it came: "I see no evil, for Richard Pryor is with me." Karl didn't know what it meant, but hell, an epigram is an epigram! Up to his feet he shot, and out came the knife. Ostey uttered a throaty gurgle of strain. Lucky for Oster-meyer-wiener, his end came unexpectedly – with all of the spasming that he did, he jolted straight in to the path of the knife, gouging a hole in his trachea. Ze end, Mr. Bend!
Blood sprayed out in gushes, hitting Karl in the chest. The final spurts caught the desk, as Karl reefed on the chair, spinning it away from himself. There, upon the desk, Karl spied something, something of interest – a resignation for Ostey, and a pink slip for Karl. Oh, now, now we can't spoil the fun, can we? He thought, scooping up the papers; lucky for him, there were no spots where desk, paper and blood all met at the same time. No telltale paper-shaped clean spots to give him away. Good – the thought of wiping the blood around to try to hide it sort of disgusted him. Ostey, you fat prick, you'd like to leave me with a mess I couldn't clean up, wouldn't you? Oh, yes… And that's why these papers would be safe in his pocket; he had a little plan, involving a bathtub of water.
Dripping with his writing tool, Karl wrote out Ostey's last words in a scrawling imitation of his schooldays' version of handwriting. Richard Pryor was dead, he knew that – is that why fatboy was sure of his involvement?
With a head surging with questions, Karl tottered out of the office, out past the desks – wiping a bit of blood on an edge of the tabloids section's cubicle.
What did the Richard Pryor thing mean?
