By O. Lucio d’Arc
Chapter 6
THEY PILE INTO Thom Fole’s car again and head back to the squat. The only place to park is across the street from The Doldrums. Scott Free and Carole get out and start across the street, holding hands like they usually did.
Thom Fole is rummaging for something in the trunk, which he doesn’t find.
As he starts across the street a black panel truck comes speeding around the corner, straight at him.
He is, not surprisingly, shocked stiff.
The truck, between the two and Thom Fole, seems to graze him, and keeps going, leaving Thom Fole’s body a crumpled heap near the trunk of his car.
But Scott Free and Carole don’t see that until later.
They can’t take their eyes off of Thom Fole’s severed head rolling across the street to rest at their feet.
CAROLE WANTS TO faint, but she can’t. Scott Free does, and she helps him sink slowly to the sidewalk, away from the head, after they both scream.
People come out on their porches. Someone even calls the cops.
First to the scene is Raphael. He is a frequent uninvited guest at The Doldrums. An auxiliary cop, Raphael during his visits ignores the roaches and bongs. He is more interested in the girls, especially the underage ones.
Some flirt with him, but none do the deed. He keeps hopefully coming back anyway, usually walking in without knocking, in his too-tight uniform.
Raphael is short. Fat. Greasy. Worse, he is the weekend bouncer-slash-molester at The Camaro, the gang’s long-time favorite bar because of the funky, Gothic bands they bring in.
The girls have a nickname for Raphael: PDBF – Pin Dick the Bug-Fucker.
But he doesn’t know that.
Oreste P. D’Arconte, who writes fiction under the name O. Lucio d’Arc, is a retired newspaper publisher and a weekly newspaper columnist. His short stories have appeared in the Murder Inc. trilogy of anthologies and he has had his poetry published in several literary magazines. A resident of Attleboro, Mass., he also wrote a hardback history of the Attleboro YMCA in 2017.
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