Freaks and Techniques

Chapter 1

The first thing Frank did when he got home was turn on the lights. All the ones in the whole apartment–the fluorescent overhead in his lousy excuse for a kitchen, the ceiling fan in what passed for a living room with the one burnt-out bulb and another that flickered, and even the ones above the bathroom mirror.

In the bedroom, he cast off his mask and threw it on the dresser. Peeled off the rest of his costume and tossed it in the hamper. He’d have tossed it out the window if it all weren’t evidence. It wasn’t like he’d need the ensemble again. He’d only put it on in case his new deal didn’t end up going through, and he was forced, on the fly, to doing what he always did four times a year, but that hadn’t happened, had it? He was free now. The Graverobber never had to kill again.

Really, he just wanted out of the damn cravat. That, and the coat. The seams had endured their strain at the peak of his gain, but now it hung loose in places he hadn’t expected to find unfamiliar.

But at least the Graverobber never had to kill again.

His hands shook as he wrestled a fresh shirt from a drawer that wanted to stick to the inside of the dresser, and then he let himself fall…well, not exactly ‘into’ bed, but on top of the unmade bed, no effort expended to get under the comforter.

With the light on overhead. It was only a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless, a reminder that without the darkness, nothing could surprise him.

And hey, in other good news, the Graverobber never had to kill again.

He lay for a while in his undershirt, belly not quite gone, but smaller now, after the sacrifice. He was glad it was still there. That made his job easier when it came time for the next round; now he had a head start. Before the Solstice, he’d put on sixty pounds (well, 63, to be exact), in a matter of three months, hoping it would be enough not to get him killed. He’d only had to part with, what, forty? So he probably only needed another twenty before the spring to guarantee he’d be okay–he’d have to check the scale to know for sure, but right now he was way too exhausted.

If he could overshoot his ‘requirements’, though? If he could make it on the other side of the Equinox with more than a scrap of plushness that felt almost like an afterthought…?

Suddenly, the window slapped open. Frank rolled over to look in the direction of the noise, but his panic was short-lived. Of course it was the Bloodhound, in all his flame-blue, self-aggrandizing glory, holding up the pane with one gnarled, clawed hand. With his fiery mane flickering, he leaned over the sill with his lupine face forward and his eyes narrow and hungry for bad news as he said, as if reading Frank’s mind, “Maybe then she won’t leave next time. If she comes back at all.”

“She left,” Frank retaliated, “because you blinded her.” He was sure it had been a kindness: Connie had gone to her sister’s house so he wouldn’t be tasked with taking care of her while her vision recovered. She’d be back when she was in a suitable state to go back to taking care of him. “Anyway, what are you doing here? I just paid up.”

“And what kind of friend would I be if I only came calling when I wanted something?”

“You always want something,” Frank grumbled, before rolling over to crack open a dresser drawer. There was a sack of gas-station powdered donuts in there, as well as an open and half-finished family-size bag of chips with the top rolled up. If the Bloodhound wouldn’t let him get any sleep, he might as well get productive.

“Nonsense.” The Bloodhound phased through the wall, joining him in the bedroom. “That thing they say: ‘what do you give a man that has everything?’ It also applies to divine overlords.”

“Okay, you are NOT my ‘overlord’, and anyway, don’t you have like, hundreds of other people you can bother?”

“Sure, but none of them are as deliciously miserable as you.”

Biting into a donut, Frank thought to himself that he didn’t FEEL miserable. In fact, after the long night he’d had, it would have been a welcome relief to come home to a stash of snacks, if not for his unwelcome guest.

“I have to admit,” the Bloodhound went on, “I was a little disappointed when it stopped hurting you to glut yourself stupid…”

Connie was the one to thank for that. She’d had a million different tricks up her sleeves to help him train his appetite: rewarding him with kisses after each course, distracting him from how full he was getting by intermittently casting articles of her clothing onto the floor while he ate until eventually, his body adapted to the volume of food he had to put away, the old discomfort giving way to cravings and anticipation…not to mention, she could administer a belly rub he’d have believed she’d learned in some secret temple of healing nestled in a remote, secluded mountain range, if that’d been what she decided to tell him. (She hadn’t; let it be known that Crime Brulee was not only just that good, but out for all the credit she was due.) And once, sensing he was intimidated by the ludicrous amount of pizza she’d ordered to his doorstep, she’d blindfolded him and fed him by hand, so he only had to focus on the rhythm of chewing and swallowing and the touch of her expert hands.

Trying his best to ignore the Bloodhound, he turned his attention instead to the handful of chips he pulled out of the bag. This was another one of the body-hacks Connie had taught him: alternating savory with sweet, crispy with soft, so he wouldn’t prematurely think he was too full to go on when really the problem was boredom. All her expertise made him suspect, for a time, that she had some sort of illustrious history of fattening guys up. (She didn’t, she’d eventually explained–she just tended to pick up fat guys and keep mental notes about their snacking habits. When he asked where she found them all, she’d said ‘here and there’, naming a few places, including, to his surprise, the coin-operated laundromat. And when he asked her if that was a popular spot for heavyset men to congregate, she’d explained that, no, nobody really hung out there–what she did was go rummaging through the machines for the biggest pairs of men’s underpants she could find, and then lie in wait for their owner to come and retrieve his stuff.)

“This, however, is far more entertaining. You might think I left your appetite intact and let you keep your meager head-start out of mercy, but there’s something so much FUN about seeing you here, left with the things Miss Cole gave you, and yet, no Miss Cole. Just when I was starting to fear I’d regret allowing her to re-broker your deal–just as I considered scrapping the whole thing and simply making you kill again–she comes through for me with her little disappearing act.”

“I told you, she’ll be back as soon as she can be,” said Frank, and took another whack at blocking out everything except his snacks. Chips, donut, more chips…

That, and the memory of Connie at his side, brushing the pads of her thumbs across his cheeks as she kissed him, sweetly talking him through ‘just a few more bites’ as hunger gave way to satisfaction, and then, to the slight tension in his stomach as it filled, that he’d come to relish because he knew it would earn him her gentle hand, slipped up his shirt, to help him relax…

He imagined her so he wouldn’t have to miss her. Had it really been less than an hour since he dropped her off at Cornelia’s?

“You really think?” said the Bloodhound.

“No, I don’t ‘think’. I know her.”

The Bloodhound scoffed mockingly. “I don’t think you know her either.” As smoke began to swirl around the monster’s overmuscled frame, Frank shut his eyes, suspecting a burst of flame was coming–and he wasn’t wrong. When the light flashed, bright and unforgiving, through his eyelids, he knew he’d acted without a second to spare.

And when he looked up again, he saw that the Bloodhound had become Connie.

Or tried to.

Blue fire had shaped itself into the curves of her body, the whirls of her mess of unkempt curls, and the sly smirk she gave him whenever she was about to say something outrageous or funny. But the eyes–goddamn, the eyes–were empty. No humor. No mischief. No tenderness.

No Connie.

Not-Connie sauntered towards him, letting slip a cruel laugh. “Do you really think I still want you?” said the creature, in a dark caricature of her voice. “Like this? I mean, it was fun, fattening you up until you were someone I didn’t mind fucking. Now, though?”

“Stop it. You’re NOT her!” snapped Frank. “You’re wrong. She did what she did so you couldn’t force me to rip any more bones out of people!”

“Please,” said the Bloodhound, still wearing Connie’s likeness like a suit, “if you felt that guilty, would you have broken?”

“You’re wrong!” Frank said again, although, this time, with less conviction. True, the Bloodhound had approached him all those years ago promising the gift of infallible charisma, and only after the two of them shook on it had the creature named his price. And true, after two seasons of enduring the extraction of a bone for payment, he’d broken: ‘Do they have to be MINE?’

“Crazy, isn’t it? Your literal superpower is making everyone like you, and yet, I’m the one that you want…and the only one immune enough to see through your bullshit! Call it a miracle…and call me lucky, for being able to see through you! You’re nothing but a coward, Frank Conway! Cute one, though, or at least, you were.” The Bloodhound reached into the bag of donuts and pulled out the last two, shoving both at once into Frank’s mouth before he could protest. “Better hurry up and put all that weight back on, and I DON’T mean so your bestie doesn’t drag you to Hell. It’s just that I don’t know how long it’ll be before I decide to go back to thinking you’re annoying.”

Frank flailed. He wanted to tell the monster to ***, that Connie did care, but there was nothing he could say with his mouth stuffed full of sugar and dough. He grappled for the Bloodhound’s wrist, only for the contact to sear both his palms.

He screamed through the mouthful of donuts.

“That’s what you get for falling for the hottest girl in town,” said the Bloodhound, transforming back into himself while Frank sputtered and choked, dropping both unfinished donut halves into his lap before moving them to the nightstand with blistered fingers.

“You really are a special kind of cunt, you know that?” Staggering out of bed, he went to the kitchen, grateful he’d already gone through the trouble of turning the lights on, that way there were no switches to flip.

The damage, thankfully, wasn’t so bad. First-degree, probably.

The apartment had come with this shitty fridge-freezer combo, with the freezer on the bottom and a busted ice maker that dumped ice directly into the freezer instead of into your cup. He’d only come in here for the ice, but when he opened the freezer, he found, unexpectedly, a pint of Neapolitan ice cream. In the early days of her encouragement, Connie had insisted on him trying as many flavors as she could push in front of him, determined to figure out which was his favorite, which turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated. Prior to Connie rewriting his terms of demonic enslavement, he never used to eat sweets, but once he finally came around to admitting he liked them, he found he couldn’t pick just one, so she’d told him, ‘Then don’t pick,’ and turned him on to this stuff. There was a sticky note attached to the top of the container, too: ‘Surprise! Hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the look on that poor cashier’s face while I was sticking up the store. Seriously, I think I made him shit himself. Love, Crime Brulee.’

She must have put that there before the sacrifice.

And she’d written her love on it in her untidy ballpoint scrawl.

Plucking it out of the freezer, he let the frosty exterior of the paperboard container soothe his hands. As it melted, he’d be able to drink it straight without going through the trouble of gripping a spoon.

How was it that even in her absence, Connie always managed to come through in just the right way?

He took the ice cream back to bed with him, and when he got there, the Bloodhound was gone.

***

“You came back again.”

Connie was in the kitchen when Frank said it, stirring something delicious-smelling on the stove, in a pan she must have brought with her; he certainly hadn’t bought it. Despite working in restaurants his entire adult life, he’d never been much of a cook.

When she’d showed back up to the cantina for work with her eyes all healed up, it had seemed too good to be true. And yet, she’d laughed with him like she hadn’t been gone for a week. She’d moved in close to grip him by the hips like there was still as much of him for her to grab as there used to be.

And now, days later, he came home to find her here, in full supervillainous regalia, making noodle stir-fry.

“What, no ‘how did you get into my apartment?’ Broke in, by the way,” she said.

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Explains why the front door was unlocked.”

“That lock is actually really tough. Couldn’t bust it. I had to crawl in through the vent and unlock it from the inside to drag in all the groceries I stole.” She gestured upward with a motion of her head to where she’d popped said vent off its screws.

Well, it wasn’t like he was ever getting that security deposit back anyway, what with the place constantly reeking of demon sulfur.

“You always find a way, don’t you, Crime Brulee?”

“Bet your ass.” She tossed the noodles, meat, and vegetables a few more times in the pan before killing the heat and using her thermal levitation powers to float a pair of plates down from an open cabinet. “Take as much as you want,” she said, handing him his. He would have found it awkward to be served like a guest in his own kitchen, if not for the fact that she had brought all the ingredients with her. Funny; usually burglars broke into your house and took stuff. Connie Cole, however, had a habit of defying expectations.

“Have you had dinner yet?” he asked, not wanting to leave her hungry, after all her hard work.

“Don’t worry about me. I stocked the place pretty good; I’ll find something else to eat if I need to.”

Still, he served himself less than he might have at first, waiting for her to scoop what she wanted onto her own plate before he helped himself to what remained.

They settled onto the couch together, neither paying attention to the mindless sitcom on the secondhand TV. “This is good,” he said between bites of her cooking. “So what’s your secret? Extra oil? Throw some weight gain powder in here, or something?”

“How dare you! I’ll have you know that I only followed the directions on the thingy! Well, tried to.” She pulled a sheet of paper out of some pocket of her costume he hadn’t noticed and unfolded it to reveal a recipe printed from online. “Remind me to hit the Better Buy after hours and jack you a printer, by the way. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass if I need to keep breaking into the lease office every time I want to make dinner here.”

“And here I thought you were a professional,” he teased.

“Hey, it’s not my fault that the crime rate down here means everyone invests in like, three deadbolts! Tell you what though: if you ever wanted to join me on a heist, you could run up to the east side with me. Up there, they leave the doors unlocked on purpose. They think it’s a power-move, acting like there’s nothing that they can’t afford to lose.”

“Who needs an unlocked door when I can walk through the walls?” he pointed out.

“Touche. Anyway, are you sure the noodles are okay?”

“Are you kidding me? If you had your own restaurant, you’d put the cantina straight out of business.”

“That’s because the food is garbage there,” she reminded him. “Shrimp pizza-dilla? Ungraceful.”

“Disgraceful.”

“Whatever,” she said. “It’s really not too spicy?”

“It’s not,” he promised her.

“There’s not too much lemon juice?”

“There’s not, Connie.”

“The noodles aren’t too overcook–?”

“Connie! It’s fine,” he reassured her.

“Well, okay. But just in case you need a little something-something to balance everything out…” She pulled a candy bar from pocket he hadn’t noticed, popped the wrapper open, and broke off a piece to offer a bite to his lips. He plucked it from between her fingers with his teeth, savoring the dark chocolate and gooey caramel. “That’s it…you’re doing so good,” she said, leaning in close to take his plate from him and feed him, bite by bite, a little bit of stir-fry followed by a little bit of candy, her own plate abandoned about halfway in.

But even as he relished her attention even more than the food, he couldn’t help but feel guilty.

“You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said.

“Why…would I not want to?” she asked. For a moment, her eyes flitted from one end of the living room to the other. Then, she scowled and sighed. “Where is the bastard?”

“Not here right now. At least, I don’t think.”

“But he was?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, not at first. He should have known she would guess, tack-sharp as she was. “After you went to Cornelia’s.”

“And what did he say?”

“He…turned into you. Well, not really. Got the eyes wrong,” he tried to explain. “He said you would change your mind about me. That once your eyes healed, you’d see me and…and go back to thinking I’m annoying.”

“Annoying?” She rolled her eyes. “I never thought you were annoying.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“Are you kidding me? You’re the coolest guy in town! Tell you the truth, there were times it almost made me wish I was a normal girl. Not like, a boring one that’s not a supervillain,” she was quick to clarify. “Just one that’s not…well, you know.”

“What, a raging chubby chaser?” While they’d talked, he’d taken the plate back from her hands and finished off the rest of his noodles before setting it, empty, on the coffee table. He felt warm, full, but in that could-be-fuller way. “But that’s what makes you so much fun. Anyway…what would you say if I told you I was still hungry?”

She pressed a hand to his stomach, making him gasp as she pushed on it with her palm, testing its gentle but definite bloat underneath a humble layer of pudge. “I’d say you’re a liar and a dastardly villain, Frank Conway. I’d also say I know just the punishment for naughty boys who try to gaslamp me into thinking I don’t feed them enough.” She popped out of her seat, crossed the room, and took the phonebook off the shelf. “Let’s see, where’s the number for Pizza Palace?”

“I’m pretty sure the term is ‘gaslight’,” he said, even as his stomach gave an involuntary, eager growl while she commandeered the phone, that had nothing to do with hunger, or maybe it did. Maybe she’d conditioned him to see her acting all dangerous and want to get even plumper for her, anticipating the moment when she dropped the femme-fatale act and ended the night in his bed, riding him ragged before cuddling him close like he was her fat, squishy plush toy.

“No, it’s gaslamp. I’m positive.” She dialed the number, and after three rings, someone picked up. “Hi, how late are you guys delivering…? Uh-huh? Perfect…”