Pure Dead Magic (15 page)

A Pound of Flesh

D
on Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia gazed at his reflection in the mirror. Dressed in a lilac hospital gown with a disposable paper hat covering his skull, he was aware that he did not look his best. This impression was supported by the fact that his vast nose was covered in blue lines and words like “nip,” “tuck,” “slash,” and “tear along the dotted line.” These scrawled instructions together with the grid of blue lines made the Don’s nose resemble a street map drawn in haste on the back of a napkin. Very undignified, the Don thought, but it will all be worth it. Today I go under the knife of Italy’s top plastic surgeon, Professore Flense-Filleto. Not only will he sculpt me the perfect nose but he and his team of doctors and nurses will provide me with the perfect alibi. The Don permitted himself the tiniest of smiles, imagining that evening’s newspaper reports:

Don Lucifer bared his teeth in a feral grin. Perfect. With all witnesses able to swear that on the day of the “accident,” the main suspect had booked himself into their hospital for a major rhinoplasty, there was little that the police could do to pin the “mysterious fire” on him. Perfect. A master plan, in fact.

There was a discreet knock at the door. The Don leapt across the room and arranged himself on the bed. Professore Flense-Filleto swung into the room, followed by a posse of young doctors and nurses.

“We’re ready for you now, Signor di S’Embowelli Borgia,” said the professore. “All the knives are razor sharp and I’ve been practicing my sewing on an old bit of chamois leather, har-dee-har, fnaar-fnaar.”

Obediently, the posse broke out in forced laughter. The Don paled. Propelled by three nurses, his bed began to move slowly across the room.

Opening the door, the professore oozed confidence. “Not nervous, are we? Mustn’t mind my little jokes. We’ve got a
lovely little elephant’s trunk just waiting for you in the operating room, haven’t we, nurse? Haar-haar, fnaar.”

Wearily, the posse sniggered on cue. The Don sat bolt upright in bed. Pushing him back into a horizontal position, the professore continued. “Nothing can possibly go wrong, signor. We have technology at our fingertips. We’ll hook you up to our machines, everything computer-controlled and linked to several hospitals across the world, and
that
way we have the skills of many of the finest surgeons at our disposal. You could say that you are on the cutting edge of science, hurr-hurr-hurr.”

The nurses gave the Don’s bed a particularly vicious push, and he found himself barreling through the doors to the operating room.

“Just a little jab and you’ll soon drift away,” one of the nurses said, bending over the bed and slipping a needle into the Don’s arm. She straightened up and began sorting scalpels and forceps. “Count backward from ten for me, Signor di S’Embowelli Borgia …?”

Obediently, the Don began, “Ten, nine, eight, seven lawyers, six … six policemen, five alive, alive oh, four no more, four sharksss … Ragu … Lucianoooo …”

His eyeballs slid backward in his head. The Don’s last awareness was of straps being placed round his head and arms, and the disembodied voice of the professore saying, “Signor, is that a fine pair of sunglasses you’re wearing or are those your nostrils? Huurr-hurr, dee-fnaar.”

You’re Toast

S
ignor Strega-Borgia clapped a hand to his forehead. This computer infestation was beyond him. He had spent the better part of a working day frantically dismantling computer mainframes, and still the rats eluded him. No sooner would he undo the maintenance panels on one monitor than the rats would disappear from within it with a squeak. Within seconds, they would reappear on a nearby screen with their pink noses pressed up against the glass in a demented form of peekaboo.

To add to his discomfort, the temperature in the computer room was climbing rapidly. Signor Strega-Borgia loosened his tie, removed his jacket, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. After a moment, he removed his shoes and socks. The marble floor felt warm underfoot.

“Strange …,” he muttered, padding across the room to a working terminal. He keyed in stregaschloss.co.uk and
stopped. In front of him the cursor blinked, on, off, on, off. If only it was all so simple, he thought, on, off, yes, no. Despite their apparent complexity, computers work on a binary system of choices. On or off were the only options. No in-between choices. No shades of gray. Just two choices. And what if you make the wrong choice, he thought, like that awful day when

I stormed out of StregaSchloss, fueled by a moment’s rage.…

The empty screen waited. Taking a deep draft from a bottle of warm Coke, Signor Strega-Borgia began feverishly to type an e-mail to his son. After a few paragraphs, he found that the sweat trickling down his forehead was stinging his eyes. His shirt stuck to his back and his fingers slithered around on sweaty keys. “Need some air in here,” he muttered, heading for the door.

PUSH, it read. Signor Strega-Borgia pushed. Nothing happened. Signor Strega-Borgia pushed again. The door remained firmly shut. Signor Strega-Borgia hurled his weight against the door. Still, nothing. Taking several paces backward, he ran at the door and launched a flying kick at it.

He slowly picked himself up off the floor, checked that no major limbs were broken, and crawled to the door. Pressing his eye up to the keyhole, Signor Strega-Borgia singed his eyelashes on the metal. Disbelieving the evidence of his eyelashes, he felt the keyhole with his hand. “OUCH!” he yelled. The metal was red-hot.

It was at this point that Luciano Strega-Borgia gave up hope of ever seeing his family again.

Stripped down to his boxer shorts, Signor Strega-Borgia sat panting at a computer terminal. The temperature in the computer room rose by the minute. Half an hour before, it had
been perfect for cooking meringues; now it was the ideal temperature to roast turkey. Large turkeys.

Two tears tracked down his cheeks, evaporating as they slid chinward. Signor Strega-Borgia was typing what he knew to be his last letter. He paused to wipe his sweat-slippery hands on his discarded shirt. Blinking through his tears, he looked at his words on the screen in front of him:

Recalling their faces, he tried not to imagine them held at gunpoint, pale and terrified, his beloved family at the mercy of Pronto. It will be all right, he reassured himself, Lucifer has what he wants and he will call off his hired thugs. Hoping against hope that this was indeed the case, he returned to his e-mail and typed:

Signor Strega-Borgia paused to blow his nose loudly into his shirt. Stifling a sob, he continued:

He paused again, struck by the thought that for his youngest child he would be nothing. Not even a vague memory. A blank dada. The thought was not a happy one. The soles of his feet began to feel uncomfortably hot, so perched on a melting stool, he carried on.

He stopped for a short weep. The winking cursor blinked on and off, waiting mindlessly for more words. “It’s so
sad,
” howled Signor Strega-Borgia. “I won’t see any of them grow
up. I’ll be a blackened crisp while they slowly forget me.…”

He picked up his shirt, noticing that despite having used it as a giant handkerchief, it was dry … and very hot. Blowing his nose yet again, he came to the final part of his farewell letter.

He typed frantically for as long as he could, stopping occasionally to pour warm Coke over his head in a hopeless attempt to cool himself down. Finally he reached the end of the letter. Sniffing, he typed in the address:

and blowing a kiss to the screen, he pressed
ENT
and
ER
. To his relief, up on the screen came the reassuring words:
MESSAGE SENT
.

Emptying the last drops of Coke over his head, Signor Strega-Borgia sat and waited for death.

The Music of the Pipes

P
ronto’s arms ached with the weight of the gun Wormwood. “Come
on,
” he groaned. “How long does it take to say goodbye?”

“A long time if you’re a Strega-Borgia,” muttered Pandora.

“You see, we have to say it in Urdu, Serbo-Croatian, Mandarin …,” explained Titus.

“Not to mention Xhosa, Pig Latin, ancient Greek, and Yibble,” added Pandora.

“Two minutes more,” warned Pronto, drumming his fingers on Wormwood’s barrel. “Don’t think I don’t know when I’m having the Michelangelo taken.”

“Ot-whay ow-nay?” whispered Titus.

“On’t-day o-knay,” said his sister, nibbling the skin round her gnawed fingernails. “E’re-way oomed-day.” She was trying not to look at Wormwood. In her terror, her eyes scanned round Titus’s room, finally alighting on a gloomy oil painting that had
hung in the bedroom for as long as she could remember. It was a particularly hideous depiction of a fox cornered by men in red jackets and fat, drooling hounds. The fox, as could be expected, was looking rather nervous, the hounds somewhat hungry, and the red-jacketed men faintly nauseous. The whole had been painted in somber earth colors of mud, sludge, and silage, and titled
The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Inedible.

It hung on the wall, just behind Pronto, massive and ugly … and ever so slightly askew. In fact, not askew, Pandora realized. It looked just like a vast door, slightly ajar.…