boys will be boys

The killer (K) was troubled. Which meant it was time. For a haircut. At the Barbershop in town: "Salon Tony". Where the hair was cut and the faces shaved only of those men who didn't or couldn't or wouldn't shave themselves. (Did the Barber shave himself? Hard to say.)

Ensconced within the poky little shop was a swarthy man of indeterminate age and glittering eyes, hair slicked back in a dark and oily wave.

As K entered the shop, the Barber looked up and said, "Mr K, please to take your seat," indicating a tall chair facing a mirrored wall.

When K was settled in the chair, the Barber tucked a long white smock around the neck of his customer.

"How's things, good?" asked the Barber.

"Ahh... you know," came the cautious response.

With comb in left hand, scissors in right, the Barber began to perform his art, such as it was, upon K.

"I was wondering..." said K hesitantly.

"Ye-es..." came the Barber's drawn-out bisyllabic response, turned up at the end into a question.

"If I could get your help again," said K.

"Same as last time?"

"Same," admitted K with some embarrassment.

Last time had concerned the disposal of the corpse of K's victim #15.

"Well, OK," said the Barber, "but cost you more this time."

On conclusion of the haircut, the two men left the shop, got into K's car, and off they went. But when they got to the place where K had hidden the body, it wasn't there, as a corpse. It was there as a living human being, wounds healed, lying in deep sleep upon a battered sofa.

The Barber seemed as shocked as K, even more so, especially when from the kitchen nonchalantly came a tall winged being in an armored cuirass of silver, a long sword in zir hand: the Archangel Michael.

Noting the look of horror upon K's face, the Archangel frowned sternly and said, "Surprised? I have reversed your evil, humanchild, and turned back death, but the price remains for you to pay."

"Kill it," whispered K hoarsely, fearstruck beyond imagining.

"Fool," snarled the Barber, "you can't kill an immortal!"

"Foul spawn of hate," said the Archangel, steel blue eyes fixed upon the contorted face of the erstwhile barber, transformed into his true shape, that of Beelzebub, Lord of Flies.

"Ye cannot be returned to hell," continued Michael calmly, "for ye are well steeped in it already. But no longer will I permit thee to help this unclean human conceal his evil crimes."

"Who's gonna stop me?" roared Beelzebub, flapping his leathery wings, "You and which army?"

"No army is required," said the quiet voice of a newly risen Christ, raising a gentle hand of restraint, "love alone shall stop thee."

"Not if I have anything to do with it," growled Lucifer, emerging from the deep to stand reassuringly with the embattled Beelzebub.

"Then I'll have to make damn sure you don't," came Jehovah's voice from a burning bush out back.

K's mind broke in fright, and he slumped to the floor, dead. Then the Father, sons and brothers threw themselves at each other with cries of bitter rivalry.

Suddenly the ground began to shake. The house disintegrated. A dreadful rumbling noise, almost a voice, filled the air. As tall as the sky, the Goddess known by many names --- Kali, Isis, Astarte, Tiamat, the Great Mother --- loomed as frightful as the night, wearing her garland of decapitated enemies.

"Who dares disturb my slumber," she roared, then noticed her children abasing themselves at her feet.

"I lay me down for but a brief ten thousand years, nor can you let me take my rest. Little boys should be seen and not heard. Now stop fighting and come to mama."

Then with treetrunk fingers she picked up her children and tossed them into her gaping maw, one by one. Until they were no more.

And K's 15th victim? Why, she slept through the whole thing, but remembered some of it as if in a dream. Enough to prompt her to go to the police with what she knew. You can imagine what they made of it. She told me too, her therapist, and I believe her. That's why I shave myself, religiously, every god-damned day.

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