SHORT STORIES : Chameleon

The night had started out great. A guy’s night out at the local bar and tavern, Harry Banner out with Jim Morbius and a few of Morbius’ friends—Edward Manson and Robert Holloran. It was Jim Morbius whom Harry had known best of all, after working with the man for two years at Stop‘n’Shop and had gotten to know the man quite well, despite this being the first time they were ever together outside of work. Edward Manson and Robert Holloran, he knew even less about.

Robert Holloran, seemingly a mild mannered black man working as a retail manager at Woolworth’s.

And Edward Manson, a scrawny man with sandy brown hair prematurely graying at the temples, was a janitor at that very same Woolworth’s. He seemed a little strange, occasionally mumbling incoherently under his breath and staring at the cracks on the dusty wooden floor for long periods at a time. Morbius had said that Manson had a long history of drug abuse problems, and Harry hadn’t doubted that for a second. But he still seemed like a decent enough guy anyway. And Harry had been a recovering cocaine addict himself, so he could understand a little bit of what Manson was going through.

And Edward Manson, a scrawny man with sandy brown hair prematurely graying at the temples, was a janitor at that very same Woolworth’s. He seemed a little strange, occasionally mumbling incoherently under his breath and staring at the cracks on the dusty wooden floor for long periods at a time. Morbius had said that Manson had a long history of drug abuse problems, and Harry hadn’t doubted that for a second. But he still seemed like a decent enough guy anyway. And Harry had been a recovering cocaine addict himself, so he could understand a little bit of what Manson was going through.

The four sat next to each other on barstools, watching the game on TV, while the bartender, a man in his early fifties, slightly overweight, with gray, thinning hair, a fat face with a prominent nose and a walrus mustache served them their drinks.

And all in all, it was a wonderful night.

A wonderful night that had now just turned into a nightmare.

It had all happened so fast, really, in a time span of under ten seconds, the time it took for Jim Morbius to pull a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber out of his inside coat pocket, aim the gun at the bartender, and took a single cold pull of the trigger. A fearful shriek escaped from the lips of the bartender, as a deafening gunblast went off like a bolt of thunder, with a blinding flash of light that seemed to Harry’s sensitive eyes to be an explosion of a thousand suns, and the expulsion of a single round aimed directly at the bartender.

A hauntingly torturous expression of horror and disbelief, a trembling leer of pain stretched across the bartender’s face, now sickeningly pale, pallid, waxy hue as he felt the bullet penetrating his flesh and internal organs, bringing an explosion of unyielding agony as it burrowed right through him. Both hands clutched tightly at his belly, applying pressure to the wound as a crimson stain spread throughout his white apron, blood leaking through the thin gaps between his fingers and pattering over the wooden floor as he staggered, hunched over, struggling to remain on his feet. It was a losing battle, he must have realized, as he began to topple forward, and then collapse entirely, smashing his chin against the splintering wooden paneling of the dusty barroom floor. He squirmed and wriggled and writhed in pain, the horrific expression over his face now illuminated by the dim neon lights overhead in an almost theatrical manner.

And Harry was absolutely sickened as he watched that man suffer in endless agony, wanting to put the man to death as a simple act of mercy, he appeared to be in so much pain. He leapt off his barstool, throwing himself backward two or three feet; and his half-empty mug of beer slipped from his fingers, and plunged to the ground. A few drops of beer slipped from the rim before it hit the wooden floor in an outward explosion of broken glass and amber liquid.

“Jesus Christ,” he hissed dreadfully. “Jesus Christ, Jim, what the fuck did you just do?”

Edward Manson and Robert Holloran stood there, laughing, cheering, and praising Morbius for what he had just done.

And Morbius stood there, blowing the jet of smoke that rose from the gun barrel, while his free hand became wedged in his pants, massaging his cock from the looks of things. “Beautiful, is it not, Harry,” Jim Morbius said, his voice not just eerily calm, but sounding like the tone of a man in pure sexual ecstasy. “Aw man, you just haven’t lived ‘til you’ve taken a life!” he exclaimed, and that sick grin on his face widened.

“You motherfucker…you stupid motherfucker,” he whimpered now feeling sick to his stomach. His face literally turned a pale greenish white with queasiness as he recoiled from the sickening sight of the dying man and from the mere presence of a man whom, up until tonight, he had thought of as a friend, or at the very least a very good acquaintance. “Why’d ya have to do that, Jim…Jesus…I thought we was just goin’ out for a few drinks and that was it…I-I never thought--my God…I thought we was just goin’ out for a few drinks…a guy’s night out, ya know. I never thought…I never--”

“It was just guy’s night out,” Morbius told him. “And we did come here to kick back and have a few drinks. And that’s just what we did, didn’t we?”

“Then why’d ya shoot ‘im, huh? Why the fuck did ya shoot ‘im, Jim?”

Morbius looked at him, his dark eyes locked in this cold-blooded reptilian gaze, the kind of eyes you’d see in a corpse, freshly killed and leering back at you with cold, dead eyes. Harry shuddered repulsively, recoiling from that icy gaze. His entire body rippled in gooseflesh; being under Morbius’ deathly gaze was like have the sharpened tip of an icicle scraping deeply across raw, exposed flesh, like falling under a patch of thin ice and sinking like a rock into the cold, dark, murky waters below.

Harry took another step back, and then stood his ground there. He made a harsh, retching noise in the back of his throat and asked once again: “Why’d ya shoot ‘im, Morbius? What’d he ever do to you?”

“It was nothing personal,” Morbius replied, stepping forward, painfully closer to Banner. He wanted to escape that deathly gaze of Morbius’ more than ever now, just wanted to run out the door and get the fuck out of this bar, and then maybe-if he was up to it--he could report what had happened to the police and get all three of those sick bastards behind bars. He wanted nothing more than to do all of those things, but couldn’t. His feet were frozen to the ground. His entire body stiffened, frozen fear that rippled every inch of flesh into cold, dreadful gooseflesh.

Morbius grinned and then explained: “I just suddenly got the urge to kill the bartender. That’s all. So I simply pulled out my gun, and shot him in the stomach. All on a whim. All on that one sudden impulse.”

“You’re sick…you’re fuckin’ sick…you’re…”

“What’s a matter, Harry, gonna mess your panties,” Edward Manson giggled and hooted, with that psychotic Joker’s grin encrusted over his face.

“Yeah--betcha he’s gonna go home an’ cry to momma now, huh,” added Robert Holoran, no longer seeming so quiet and mild mannered as before.

They both burst out laughing, and Morbius immediately joined in. And their mingled laughter, that sick and twisted cackling from that trio of sick bastards, was one of the most dreadful, sickening sounds that Harry Banner had ever heard in his life.

“I don’t believe this,” whimpered Harry, shaking his head, “I just don’t fuckin’ believe this.” He felt numbed by it all. Numbed by their laughter. Numbed by what had happened to the bartender. A gunshot wound to the stomach. Perhaps one of the most painful, most bloody ways to die. And Jim Morbius was all too happy to give him one.

Jim Morbius, the man he had befriended and had come to trust over the course of that two-year period. Jim Morbius had always seemed like a nice guy with a great sense of humor; the kind of guy that probably couldn’t have hurt a fly, Jim Morbius had appeared to be.

It was that same really nice guy, whom had just killed a man in cold blood, a man who could have had a wife, kids, a whole family to support and take care of for all anyone knew. And now, his life had been brutally snuffed out in cold blood simply because Jim Morbius felt like it. The man was a chameleon, no doubt about that, a wolf in sheep’s clothing or perhaps more aptly put at this particular moment, a wolf now completely naked, momentarily stripped of his sheep’s skin by his own accord so he could truly be himself around his own sadistic brethren, his own small pack of wolves.

If I’d known it’d turn out like this--

But he didn’t know. He never imagined that they’d do anything like.

Morbius had always seemed like a perfectly normal guy, a nice guy. Surely Jim Morbius had never once seem like any kind of a psychopath, not the kind of psychopath that would kill a man on a whim simply because he had gotten the sudden “urge” to take the man’ life. Harry might not have known everything there was about Jim Morbius. He might not have known that man’s deepest darkest thoughts and dreams or anything like that, didn’t know Morbius better than Morbius knew himself. But Harry knew Morbius well enough…or at least he thought he did. Morbius had always seemed so normal. A perfectly mundane individual working at the Stop‘n’Shop deli section. Besides the fact that Morbius never got sick, never so much as a sniffle, Jim Morbius seemed to be the embodiment of normality. A young man somewhere around twenty-five, dark eyes, dark hair, white flesh, and with not a single blemish or abnormality over his physique. He was the kind of man you’d feel safe around, the kind you would have an unyielding amount of trust for. A man who’d have normal hopes and dreams, normal thought processes, a conformist of sorts without a single deviation to the norm.

But now he had seen a completely new, completely different side to the mild-mannered Jim Morbius, and it was a side that repulsed him, disturbed him, and frightened him all at the same time. A secret side to the man’s personality, put his entire character into question, and made Harry now see him in a completely different light. A darker light, a forbidden light that burned his eyes and his soul, and put his trust into everyone he knew, his friends and his family into question. He asked himself how many others were pulling this routine that Morbius was pulling. How many other chameleons were out there, posing as though they fit into the norm, as though there were nothing wrong with them, only to reveal their true colors, their darker colors when no one else was looking? Loyalties were being scrutinized. Trusts were being examined. How could you know, how could you ever really know who could be truly trusted and who couldn’t be? How could you know who was truly on your side, who was looking out for your best interests, and who was just letting you on? You couldn’t. You couldn’t know what truly went on in the darkest reaches of another person’s mind, what they were really thinking and feeling.

Harry had just wanted to get a few beers with Jim Morbius. Get to know the man a little better. That was all. The fact that Morbius had brought a couple of friends along was fine. Sure, why not? The more the merrier. Had Harry known it’d turn out like this, he wouldn’t have even bothered with it. He would have stayed home. Or maybe he would have gone out with Tabitha, picked her up from her apartment, and then the two of them could go see a movie or something.

“You don’t know what it’s like, do you?” Morbius said suddenly. “You don’t know of the power it brings, the shear power of knowing that you are the one causing he suffering of another living being. The power you have over the one you are tormenting. Oh the power you have over that person whom you are torturing or killing! You have no idea how intense, how truly erotic it can be.”

Morbius drew Harry’s attention back to the bartender, who was now mere inches away from death, drenched in oceans of his own blood, his flesh now ghost white. “You’ll never know the power I have over that man over there, and how good it makes me feel to know that I was the one responsible for that man’s suffering, that I was the one who killed him, and that I was the one to make sure it was a slow, painful, and utterly miserable death for him. You will never appreciate the feeling I get knowing that I was the one to cause all that.”

“Get away from me, you sick fuck!” cried Harry as he backed away even further and threw his hands out at Morbius in a warding-off gesture.

“I don’t think he’s into what we do, Morbius,” observed Edward Manson. “Maybe we oughta just send this stupid pussy home to his mommy an’ forget about ‘im. What d’ya say? We’re better off without that pansy.”

“We can’t just let ‘im go, dumbass,” Robert Holloran admonished. “He might go to the cops an’ tell ‘em what we did. How would you like that , huh Eddy?”

“Oh yeah. Good point.”

“I say we kill ‘im,” suggested Holloran.

“Yeah, let’s kill ‘im,” agreed Manson. “Guy’s nothin’ but a fag anyway. A motherfuckin’ fag an’ I think we should just kill ‘im now before this faggot pansy motherfucker has the chance to get away an’ squeal to the cops.”

“C’mon, Morbius, let’s just kill the stupid prick and go already.”

“Yeah, let’s just kill the stupid prick already. I wanna see more blood!”

“You sick motherfuckers,” whimpered Banner as he backed away another step. “You sick fuckin’ motherfuckers.”

“Watch your language, Harry,” said Morbius.

“Yeah, dipshit, watch the fuckin’ language an’ start showin’ a li’l fuckin’ respect here,” snickered Edward Manson.

And the three of them were laughing at him once again.

Harry’s head lolled drunkenly back and forth, his eyes swiveling in both directions, the atmosphere taking on a more surreal, dream-like quality, as the trio of sickos continued laughing. He took another look at the bartender laying in a pool of blood on that filthy barroom floor, his flesh ghost white, his grayish blue eyes looking somberly up at him. His movements were now nothing more than a few faint twitches of life about ready to be extinguished. Harry still couldn’t decide if he should try and help the man or put the poor bastard out of his misery. It didn’t matter, really; both options were tremendously out of reach at the moment.

In a way, it had been Harry’s fault that the bartender was dying. It was his idea to go to this bar with Morbius tonight; Morbius’ idea to bring his two buddies, but Harry’s idea to go to the bar tonight. Had he stayed home, or gone out with Tabitha, than he, Morbius, and the two psycho-clowns wouldn’t have come to this bar. And while there wouldn’t be any business for the bartender (the four of them were the only customers in the bar at the moment) the bartender would still be alive, perhaps to get some better business on another night.

But Harry couldn’t blame himself for what had happened, now could he? It really wasn’t his fault at all, because he had no idea that Morbius would whip out a gun and shoot the bartender like that. He hadn’t even been aware that Morbius was armed. And even if he could have prevented it, even if he had known, it didn’t matter now. He was too scared, too sickened, too nauseous to feel an ounce of guilt right now anyway. If his conscience was nagging him right now over what had happened, it didn’t register. Regret was now nothing more than a wasted emotion.

It was his stomach, sour and nauseous over the sight of the dying bartender lying in his own blood, his wounds spitting out even more thick clumps of thick scarlet, that he listened to right now. It was the only thing he could listen to. He felt undigested particles of his last meal scaling up the back of his throat, making him feel even sicker, and he struggled in great protest to keep it all down where it belonged.

And then, still a bit woozy, he felt Morbius grab his attention and, for some reason that Banner couldn’t possibly comprehend, he felt Morbius handing him the gun, and his fingers reluctantly wrapping around the cold metal barrel.

“What’re you doin’?”

“I’m going to give you a chance to know what it feels like to hold a man’s life in your hands,” Morbius answered, the grin on his face was gone, and he was no longer laughing now. He had on a solemn, poker face, and Harry knew that this was no longer a joke to him--at least it didn’t appear to be. “There’s one bullet left in the gun. Use it on me, and you’ll know what I know, hold the same power over me that I have held over quite a few.”

“Christ, why are you doing this, Jim?”

“Because I’m your friend; because I like you. I’m even willing to forgive this pathetic display of yours tonight if you would only let me help you. I just want to share my knowledge, my wisdom, and my pleasure with you, Harry. If I die knowing that I have made this one positive difference in your life, I’ll die a happy, satisfied man.”

Aw man, this ain’t happen, man, this just can’t be happening…No fucking way, man, this just ain’t fuckin’ happening!

“You gotta be shittin’ me! You…you want me to shoot you, and kill you, so I’ll know what it’s like to hold that kinda power? Jesus Christ, Jim, if I’d known you were this crazy, I--you want me to shoot you?”

Morbius nodded.

“You’re wearing body armor, aren’t you, Jim? A bulletproof vest. And if I shoot you, it’ll just bounce off you’re chest, right? Am I right?”

“Then shoot me in the head if you don’t trust me,” Morbius replied curtly.

Harry raised the gun shakily at Morbius’ head, his finger trembling at the trigger, not really wanting to squeeze it, not sure if he had the balls to pull it or not. He looked at Manson and Holloran, and they were both grinning amusedly at him, watching in fixed anticipation to see how it would all play out.

He couldn’t shoot Morbius. If he did, then Morbius’ buddies would attack him and beat him to death. There was only one round in the gun--Morbius said so himself. Just one stinking bullet, and it would have already been lodged somewhere in Morbius’ head, now completely used up and totally useless.

The situation seemed unreal; it made no sense to him whatsoever.

Jim Morbius made no sense to him whatsoever.

And worse, it was a no-win situation. A situation where he was dead either way, where he had nothing to gain and everything to lose no matter how he played the cards dealt to him. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He was a dead man no matter what he did. No way out now. If he didn’t kill Morbius, Morbius would no doubt kill him--he never would have believed anything like that before, but now he couldn’t help but believe it. And if he did shoot Morbius, then Morbius buddies would come after him, and the weapon would be empty and useless. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself against their wrath. He could try to use the gun as a blunt object, and that might be an effective defense if there were only one psycho to contend with. But there were two. Two against one. And if the right one don’t get you, the left one will.

No way out this time, Harry!

He thought of how they always said that the first time you took a life, the first time you killed someone, you were killing a part of yourself as well. Where had he first heard that interesting piece of wisdom? He could no longer remember and the origin was irrelevant. Only the information mattered here. In it’s own way, it was pertinent to what was going on now. Harry had never taken a live, except for a few insects he might have accidentally and unknowingly crushed during the accumulated time he had spent throughout his life walking. Morbius would be the first victim, the first person to die by Harry’s hands were he to pull the trigger. He would be killing a small piece of himself; a small piece of Harry Banner would then be dead, leaving behind the rest to face the wrath of Edward Manson and Robert Holloran when it was all said and done.

They wanted to mercilessly destroy him one fragile piece at a time.

“So what are you waiting for?” Morbius spoke up once more. “Do it and get it over with.”

Without hesitation, he raised the gun placed the barrel of the gun into his own mouth, tasting the bitter chrome flavoring as it rubbed against his tongue, which was now dry of spit. A teardrop scrolled slowly down his cheek.

I’ll take all at once over one piece at a time any day!

And with that one final thought, Harry finally managed to pull the trigger.

He was spared the deafening sound of the loud gunshot exploding inside his throat. His brain stem was severed, his upper spine, as well as the base of his skull, shattered and splintered into thousands of tiny bone slivers that blasted out of the back of his head and neck along with dozens of splattering oatmeal-like chunks of gray matter and thick crimson droplets of blood that hit and decorated the ugly wood-paneling of the distant wall behind him. And he didn’t feel a damned thing!

The gun still firmly hung firmly from his mouth, his finger poised at the trigger, as smoke began to seep out from his lips, but he no longer tasted anything, neither smoke steaming in thick gray clouds from his mouth through his lips, nor the cold metallic taste of the gun’s chrome barrel. He couldn’t hear, smell or feel anything either, and was completely unresponsive. His life seemed like a distant, fading memory, deleted data from a file that was now irretrievable. His vision was a hazy blur of dimming light as what was left of his life force quickly dwindled away into nothingness. He uttered a soft, muffled cough that barely escaped his lips along with another short wave of gun smoke, and then fell over forward, his eyes rolled back, his vision in an even greater blur as the filthy barroom floor rushed up to his face. The darkness quickly engulfed him completely, and his was in oblivion the very second he hit the ground…thump! The barrel of the Smith & Wesson was jammed even further down his throat upon impact, scraping a great deal of meat off the back of his esophagus, and he hadn’t felt it at all.

For by then, he was already dead.

The dark trio peers down upon the newly dead corpse of twenty-three-year-old Harold Banner, different thoughts and feelings running through each of their heads, but not one of them feeling the urge to panic, run away, and/or inform the police of what has just gone down.

Robert Holloran’s mouth hangs open. He doesn’t feel an ounce of discomfort for fear within him, now used to seeing people getting aced ever since he had started hanging out with Jim Morbius. But he is still unable to believe what he had just seen, stunned and dumbfounded as to why Harry Banner would take his own life rather than Morbius, but still unable to comprehend why Morbius would give the man such an opportunity to begin with. But that doesn’t matter now, he supposes, for he’s learned long ago that it is best not to question the will of The Great James Morbius (referred to affectionately as “Jim” by all of his friends and followers). Even if you don’t understand his logic and his methods, that is irrelevant; all that matters is that he understands his motives and actions. But still, he is the least bit curious as to what was up with giving the prick the Smith & Wesson and telling the prick to shoot him in the back.

Jim Morbius grins with amusement as he stares down upon the dead corpse of Harold Banner, feeling stimulated for the second time tonight in only a period of around five or ten minutes. He begins to laugh softly with sadistic humor.

Edward Manson feels only contentment and satisfaction with the results; he’s glad that Harry Banner’s now dead, overjoyed about it, in fact. That pathetic sissy was really started to bug him and he was good and sick of listening to Banner whine, moan, bitch, and complain the way he was just because Morbius shot the bartender. His warped mind never thinks to question why Morbius had handed Banner the gun in the first place; he’s just glad the whiny little bastard’s finally dead. But like Morbius, he is also amused with the final outcome of events, and begins to laugh along with him. “Damn, the prick actually offed himself? Ha-ha, didn’t see that comin.”

“Hey Morbius, why’d you do that? Why’d ya give the gun to this prick an’ ask ‘im to shoot you with it?” wonders Robert Holloran.

“I wanted to see what he’d do,” replies Morius.

“Guy was a real wuss, y’ask me,” sniggers Manson. “Nothin’ but a pussy. See the way he was actin’ after ya offed the bartender. Like he ain’t never seen nobody get aced before. Man, I can’t believe we actually considered lettin’ ‘im into our inner circle. Can ya believe that? Boy, what were we thinkin’? I mean, what in the fuckin’ hell could we’ve possibly been thinkin’?”

“What do we do now, Morbius?” asks Holloran.

Morbius shrugs nonchalantly and answers: “We simply walk away.”

“What if the cops stumble onto your prints on that gun?”

Morbius calmly and confidently clears up whatever issues that Holloran might have regarding the murder weapon and Jim Morbius’ fingerprints: “My prints aren’t on the gun because I had them burned off years ago. Only Harold Banner’s prints are on the gun, and so when the cops do stumble onto this, they’ll simply assume that he was the one who perpetrated the whole thing. No one will know that we were even here. The cops will assume that Banner killed the bartender, and then killed himself. This will be ruled as a murder-suicide, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Holloran feels satisfied with Morbius’ explanations, confident and secure in the knowledge that Morbius has everything taken care of and that there is absolutely nothing to worry about. He regrets ever having doubted in Morbius in the first place, even if it were only for a second or two, and almost feels ashamed in his lapse of faith in the Great One. But his faith is once again restored, and he remains confident that everything’s going to be all right; his faith from that point on remains unfaltering.

The three of them walk out the door calmly, as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary has happened here at this bar at all; and not one of them looks back. And later tonight, they will all sleep very peacefully, having happy, pleasant dreams if any of them has any dreams at all tonight.

The End.

November 18, 2000
December 18, 2000