Page 56 of All That Glitters
A headless mannequin lay on the grass, looking less like a victim of a gruesome murder and more like it had been in a food fight and lost. The rubber torso, salvaged from a closing department store’s clearance section, had seen better days even before the Rif Raf crew got their hands on it. Now, beheaded and positioned artfully (a generous term) against a tombstone, it was supposed to be the vampire fraternity’s latest victim.
The problem was blood. Or rather, the distinct lack of it.
Todd, the special effects guru whose previous experience consisted mainly of creating realistic-looking injuries to claim worker’s compensation, tore open a McDonald’s ketchup packet with his teeth. He squirted its meager contents onto the mannequin’s neck stump like a painter finishing his masterpiece. The ketchup oozed unconvincingly over the wound, looking more like a rubber hot dog than the aftermath of a decapitation.
Todd tossed the empty packet onto a pile of empty packets on the lawn. He patted his pockets for another one and found them empty.
“All outta blood, Craig,” he hollered across the cemetery to Craig.
Craig looked up from the camera setup, where he’d been trying to angle the shot to hide the obvious fakeness of the mannequin. He scanned the chaotic set and spotted Steve, who was chasing Elvis to retrieve a pair of vampire fangs the dog had run off with.
“Hey!” Craig yelled. “Did Roy and the boys take off yet?”
Steve bent over, hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “About half an hour ago,” he wheezed. “Said something about a supply run.”
Carl’s battered pickup truck, rattling like a tin can full of bolts, pulled into a parking space outside a generic fast-food restaurant. The doors opened with a groan of rusted hinges, and Carl, Roy, and Jethro piled out, looking like a gang in search of their next place for a shakedown.
A hush fell over the lunchtime crowd as the three inmates barged through the glass doors and headed inside. Diners paused mid-chew, mothers instinctively pulled their children a little closer, and teenagers lowered their phones as the threescary-looking men marched past the counter and over to the condiment station.
Roy pulled a box of condoms from his vest pocket and ripped it open. He unrolled a condom and held it beneath the nozzle of the ketchup dispenser. Carl began pressing down on the plunger, squirting thick, red ketchup into the makeshift container.
Once the condom was filled, Roy handed it to Jethro to tie it off and replace it in the box, while Roy and Carl went to work on the next condom.
“We’re gonna need at least twenty of these,” Roy muttered, reaching for another condom. “Craig wants to do multiple takes of the head chopping.”
At the counter across the lobby, an elderly man and his equally elderly wife watched the bizarre events unfolding at the condiment stand.
“Herbert,” she hissed, tugging on her husband’s sleeve. “Do you see what those... those... individuals are doing?”
Herbert adjusted his bifocals, squinting for a better view. His expression shifted from confusion to shock as comprehension dawned. “Good heavens,” he muttered.
They both watched in scandalized horror for a moment, before the man turned and waved down a pimply teenage employee, who had been trying very hard to become invisible behind the register.
“Are you the manager?” the man demanded.
“Yes,” the teenager squeaked, adjusting his name tag that read ‘Assistant Manager’. “Can I help you with something?”
“You certainly can,” the woman chimed in. “There are people over there filling their prophylactics with ketchup!”
The manager stared at her, his face a blank mask of confusion. The training manuals hadn’t covered this particular scenario.
“Excuse me?” he managed, hoping he had misheard.
“Condoms, honey,” the elderly man clarified for his wife, patting her hand gently. “The word’s condoms.” He turned back to the manager. “These... uh, men, are using your dispenser to fill their condoms.”
The manager leaned across the counter, his eyes following the man’s pointed finger. He saw the three large bikers methodically filling their latex balloons with ketchup.
The manager’s eyes widened as his brain went through the calculations: the size of the men; the grim determination on their faces; his meager $8.25 hourly wage; and the very real possibility that his shift could end painfully. He leaned back and looked at the elderly couple.
“I would suggest,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “that you let them fill their condoms with whatever they want.”
Just outside the main cemetery gate, a white TV news van with the ‘Hollywood Gossip’ logo emblazoned on the side parked at the curb.
Lauren Zales climbed out, her sharp business attire and perfectly styled hair a stark contrast to the ragtag production crew shooting just beyond the wrought-iron gate.
Her assistant, Justin, grunted as he lugged a bulky TV camera from the back of the van.
“Careful with that,” Lauren snapped without looking back. “It costs more than you make in a year.”
