Acclaim for Vincent Zandri
“Sensational…Masterful…Brilliant.”
—New York Post
“Vincent Zandri nails reader’s attention.”
—Boston Herald
“Zandri writes prose that rarely strains for effect, and some of his scenes…achieve a powerful hallucinatory horror.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Zandri explodes onto the scene with the debut thriller of the year…”
—Harlan Coben on As Catch Can
“Superb.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“For those of you not presently familiar with Vincent Zandri, you are in for a treat…”
—Seattle Post Intelligencer
“The action never wanes.”
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Books by Vincent Zandri
The Remains
Moonlight Falls
Godchild
As Catch Can
Permanence
Pathological
By Vincent Zandri
Smashwords Edition Copyright ©2010 by Vincent Zandri
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
StoneHouse Ink 2010
StoneHouse Ink
Nampa ID 83686
www.TheStonePublishingHouse.com
First E-book Edition: 2010
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Pathological: digital short #1/by Vincent Zandri. 1sted.p.cm
Copyright © 2008 by Vincent Zandri
Cover design by Gina Occhiogrosso
Published in the United States of America
www.TheStonePublishingHouse.com
Pathological appeared previously in slightly different form in the following journals:
apt., August 2008
The Battered Suitcase, Vagabondage Press, October 2008
Table of Contents
Pathological
Call me parasite.
Call my father-in-law the necessary evil. Or just plain call him ugly.
But please allow me to correct myself.
Ugly is not my father-in-law yet. But if all goes according to plan he will be dead by sundown tomorrow evening. Also, he’s not really all that ugly and I’m not sure about the evil part either. He’s only ugly and evil when he’s angry. And right now, he’s seething.
As I pry open the little black box to reveal the two and a half carrot diamond engagement ring, I can’t help but notice the old man’s bushy salt-and-pepper brows rise up in alarm (brows so bushy and untamed that the ends rise up in definite points an inch or more beyond the east and west landscape of his forehead, making him look a lot like a comic strip devil). Jagged blue veins pop out of a pale, hairless scalp. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down again like a pissed off turkey facing the hatchet (not that a turkey knows it’s alive in the first place, but I could be wrong about this).
“I’d like permission to marry your lovely daughter,” I smile.
“Over my dead body,” shouts the banker from inside the wood paneled study of his country mansion.
Exactly, I think. Over your dead body.
Here’s what I do in the angry, ugly face of rejection: I bite down hard on my bottom lip, shift my gaze to the fire roaring in a fireplace large enough for a full grown man to stand inside. There, proudly displayed on the railroad crosstie mantle above it, the gold-framed family portrait captured in vivid oils: the old man seated in between his wife (now deceased) on one side and his beautiful golden-haired daughter on the other—my future matrimonial prospect.
Lowering my head as if in deep disappointment, I peer into a flawless diamond that brilliantly reflects the light from the flames. The piece, which is set in a white platinum band, set me back twenty-five large at a Hasidic counter in N-Y-C’s diamond district. The custom tailored double-breasted jacket I wear over matching pleated linen trousers went for another nine hundred. The black patent leather Gucci loafers with true gold tassels cost six hundred and change.
Only moments ago I pulled into the Westchester estate not in the beat up Chevy pickup I drove a half dozen years ago, but an automobile more deserving of my newfound financial and social status: a black ZX3 BMW convertible, which I parked inside the front cobblestone turnaround.
“Are you sure you won’t extend your blessing?” I plead one last time.
“You don’t love my daughter,” Devil Brows spits. “You love her money.”
He’s got devil eyebrows. But he’s not stupid.
I close up the black box. I shove it inside the right-hand pocket of my jacket. When Devil Brows insist I leave before he calls in the police, it’s all I can do to squelch my laughter. With a slight nod of my head, I begin to take my leave.
On the outside I say, “I can let myself out.”