Tower Trophies
by
JD Clapp
Donald stood at his workbench in his basement studio, mixing a concoction. He heated it on the Bunsen burner. Once stable, he removed his respirator and drew a small amount of the liquid into a syringe. He carefully injected it into the blue iris of a fresh eyeball set in a plastic socket. He set the timer. This version should be the one. He glanced over at the mason jar of failed eyeballs floating in alcohol.
The door buzzer sounded. He ignored it. The buzzer blared again, followed by pounding on the security door. Mother fucker…Donald looked at the security camera monitor on his bench. One of those runner girls for Pistol Princesses, Hellton Towers’ all-female and current alpha crew.
He liked this crew, they were violent but fair, and he and their Queen, Star, hit it off—a bonus for him, since his tiny empire depended on being in Hellton Towers, which meant kissing the ass of the current sociopath in charge.
He looked at the test eye. So far, so good. Another door buzzer cried. Donald sighed and headed for the door.
He picked up the Mossberg 12-gauge street sweeper he kept next to the door, racked a sabot slug into the chamber, and pressed the intercom button.
“What?”
“Open up, gramps.”
“What the hell do you want?”
This time the door buzzer rang in prolonged, ear-piercing hum.
“Ring that buzzer again and I swear to god I’m coming out hot!”
“Jezzzus. Chill gramps. Miss Star has work for you. I’m here to drop off something for you to taxidermy…Come on, old man, open the door.”
The girl stood in the dim light of the elephant-gray hallway shifting from foot-to-foot. She waved a plastic baggy up to the security camera. It contained two severed human ears. Donald shook his head, put down the Mossberg, and buzzed her in. The girl entered.
“Dude, it smells like chemicals in here, you cooking meth?”
“No, and it smells like a week-old corpse just shit itself out there. Shut the damn door.”
Even before he shrunk in his early 70s, she was taller than Donald. She looks like she could kick my ass in a shithouse minute. She was damp with sweat, her pink wife beater clinging to her skin. Colorful ink, almost all Pistol Princess gang tats, including the requisite Pink Glock with a gold crown over the barrel, covered her entire upper chest, neck, and both her sleeves. They got her young…she could be my granddaughter…Damn shame.
“Miss Star wants these two made into necklaces. She said use the gold hardware again.”
Donald looked at the ears through the baggy. One, two hours old…Both right ears…
“And who did these belong to?”
“Two assholes who jacked one of our meth runners. They’re in that new Hell Boys Crew trying to bust into our turf. Miss Star said it’s gonna be a war.”
Donald sighed. Another war…more ears, some fingers, if I’m lucky a cock and balls, maybe a set of tits…could be challenging…but mostly boring shit…
The girl looked around the room crammed with shelves of chemicals, body molds, blocks of foam ready to be carved. She walked toward the workbench.
“Hey, stay away from there.”
“What is all this stuff?” She asked, pointing to the workbench.
“That’s where my magic starts. I make the mixtures I need to preserve human skin with all that. I’m one of the last taxidermists in the world who can do it.”
“That’s sick.”
“Well, girly, it’s no sicker than skinning, preserving, and mounting any other animal for display.”
“No…I mean, it’s sick. Like, it’s cool, gramps. I love this shit.”
Puzzled, Donald looked at her. Well, I’ll be damned.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Maggie.”
“Do you want to see how it works?”
Maggie looked at him hard.
“If you’re looking for a blow or fuck, go see the hos up in 3B.”
Donald laughed.
“Do I look like I can still get a chub? Christ. And you’re damn near a child for fuck’s sake…Even the madam in 3B is too damn young for me…and she’s 50! How old are you anyway?”
“I’m 17. Old enough to kill an old perv.”
Maggie sized him up—harmless.
“Ok. Show me around.”
“First thing you should know, girl…Maggie…my business is not contained to this shithole making ear necklaces and severed thumb trophies for Hellton gangs. I do human skin mounts for a variety of international characters and concerns.”
“Like mob bosses and big-time cartels and shit?”
Donald smiled and nodded.
“And dictators… a few billionaire big game hunters who want their lion holding a real human arm…all sorts of oddities. I used to do endangered species before the market tanked. I do a lot of grimoires and satanic bibles bound in human skin.”
“Oh, fuck yeah! Witches!”
Donald showed her everything. He started with the body part molds and explained how he used them to stretch and pin a preserved skin when he mounted an appendage.
“Some of my clients in Asia and the Middle East lop off a hand of anybody who steals from them. They display them publicly as warnings.”
“So, when I do a hand, I pull the skin like this,” he said, demonstrating on the mold.
Maggie was all questions, wanting to know how things were done and why, how long each process took, and the like. Donald explained things carefully, not dumbing anything down. He could tell the girl was switchblade sharp and fast.
He looked at her carefully and considered his question before asking her.
“Maggie, if Star agreed, would you like to learn how to do all this?”
“Hell yeah I would, but Star ain’t letting me spend time down here when we’re at war.”
##
Donald rummaged through his pill case for his before-dinner medicines. With this many goddamned drugs flowing through me, you’d think I’d have more than a fucking year to live.
“Fucking horse pills,” he said aloud after he gagged down his new heart medicine. He took six other pills; there’d be two more before bed.
He shuffled his way to the kitchenette of his basement apartment/taxidermy studio. Let’s see…fried chicken, Salisbury steak, or pot pie…He selected the Hungry Man fried chicken dinner. He poured himself a glass of Chianti from the jug. He’d cut himself back to one glass of wine with dinner and one cigarette after, in hopes it’d extend his life long enough to finish his Opus Magnum—a full-size taxidermied human head. He’d perfected preserving the skin and hair but he couldn’t get the eyes to keep. Any hack could put in glass eyes…I’ll be the first to preserve real eyes in a mount…the grail…the doors to the soul…
As Donald ate, he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. She could be the answer…and it might save her, too…He sipped his wine. An apprentice…yes…but how much will Star want to let her go? Donald pushed the half-eaten Hungry Man dinner away and lit his nightly Pall Mall. He took a drag from the coffin nail. As he exhaled, an idea began to form.
##
Donald packed the small wooden box in his old canvas tote bag. He stuffed his loaded Ruger .357 magnum in his belt. Fuck it, here goes. He left his apartment and locked the safety doors behind him. He tottered through the basement, past the only other subterrain apartment, which belonged to Chucky, Hellton’s superintendent, a nitrous freak who reportedly produced snuff films on the side.
He pressed the service elevator’s “up” button, setting off a cacophony of grinding and clanking, echoing down from above. When the doors opened, a rat the size of a beaver strolled past him, headed toward Chuckie’s apartment. Damn, I could make a nasty mount with a rat like that…put a mounted finger or hand in its mouth. As he pressed the button for the 8th floor, he made a mental note to set some traps in the basement.
As the elevator lurched up, the lights flickered, the floor moaned. Donald leaned against the heavily tagged wall, and mentally rehearsed his pitch.
When the doors opened, two Pistol Princesses waited to escort him to Miss Star. He knew the drill; he surrendered his pistol to the larger of the two women, while the other checked his tote.
“What’s in the box?”
Donald opened the lid of the cherrywood box and showed them.
“Daaaamn…That real?”
Donald smiled.
“Yep.”
They led him through a half-dozen locked doors that had been cut from apartment-to-apartment, each room well-guarded, some jammed with stolen goods, others being used for processing meth, one with a card game going. When they reached the end of the daisy-chained rooms, his escorts opened a heavy, fortified door. The door swung open to reveal Miss Star waiting on the throne her crew boosted from a local theater company. She held her hand out for Donald. He smiled, walked over, kissed it, and gave a small bow. They both chuckled.
“Donald, those last ear necklaces were exceptional,” she said, pulling hers out from between her oversized, inked breasts and holding it up to admire.
“Ah Star, I always appreciate a woman who knows quality. Speaking of quality, I brought you something.”
Donald handed her the wooden box. She opened it; surprise painted her face.
“You made this?” Star asked.
“I did. It’s real, too. It belonged to that guy who overdosed last year in the elevator.”
“The one the kids in 6C kept sending up and down with different gang colors on for a few days to fuck with people?”
“That’d be him.”
Star took the shrunken head from the box, held it up, and examined the tiny dome.
“My God. This is amazing work….why are the eyes sewn shut?”
Donald explained how shrunken heads were traditionally made and his efforts to do a full-size head with real eyes.
“And you can do this for me? If I get you a head?”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. I have a business proposition for you…I need an assistant.”
Star raised a tattooed barbed-wire eyebrow. She’d heard he was sick.
Donald spat out his proposal—she’d inherit his business when he kicked off, Maggie would carry on his work…He stopped to answer Star’s questions about his clients and margins. He became animated when discussing Maggie’s potential. Star finally stopped him.
“Ok. I’ve heard enough. We have a deal. I’ll send her over tomorrow.”
Donald grinned and bowed. When he turned to leave, Star stopped him.
“Oh, and Donald, I’ll be sending you a head soon. Shrink it. Three months turnaround?”
“Maybe four…It’ll be Maggie’s first job.”
“Make it three. She learns fast and you look like shit.”
They both laughed.
##
A month later, Maggie and Donald stood at the workbench together alternating glances between the digital timer on the wall and the eye on the bench. They’d just injected the 28th variation of eye-preservation compound. In about a minute, they’d either have a perfectly preserved and mountable eye, or a clouded iris that would degrade.
Donald watched the clock and counted down in his head…5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Maggie let out a whoop and hugged the old man.
“We fucking did it! We did it!”
Donald looked at the girl and gave a tired smile.
“No child. You did it. Now go get the head. We have work to do.”
Maggie grabbed the cooler from the chest freezer and took it to the workbench. She opened the lid, reached in, and pulled out the freshly severed head of Jimmy “El Diablo” Petters, Capo De Capo of the Hellboys.
Bios:
JD Clapp lives in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in Cowboy Jamboree, Bristol Noir, Roi Fainéant Press, trampset, Punk Noir and numerous others. In 2023, he was a Pushcart nominee in nonfiction, and had a fictional story selected as a finalist in the Hemingway Shorts, Short Story competition. He is a regular contributor to Poverty House.
Punk Noir Press 