JIM MCLEOD MUST DIE: YOU DIRTY CAT BY TIM LEBBON

Four and half years ago, something amazing happened, while chatting to a bunch of friends in the aftermath of the Adam Nevill's book launch at Fantasy Con, I looked up to see that I had unwittingly been circled by everyone in the room.  My first thought was, " oh well if I'm going to go out I'm going to go out screaming."  

Then Phil Sloman (Best Legs in Horror ™) stepped forward with a glint in his eye.  Had Phil done the unthinkable, and amassed  his legion of coffee cream hating Slomanites in one room to seek their revenge on the leader of teh Coffee Cream Alliance?  

I frantically searched my bag for my emergency supply of throwing coffee creams, only to realise I had eaten them for breakfast.  What was I going to do.  

Thankfully, as you can guess since I'm writing this, that it was not to be the day I Died.  However what it was was one of the most emotional days I have ever experienced (just don't tell my wife).  You see Phil, had spent the year putting together a one off anthology of stories from my favourite horror authors, where each and everyone of them was tasked with killing me.  

Almost five years after the event I still can't find the words to fully express how honoured and humbled by such a generous gesture from Phil the authors involved and the beautiful afterword from my long term drinking buddy Fiona.  

There has only ever been one edition of the book, and it sits pride of place on my office desk, so whenever i get those crazy feelings of being alone I can look at the book and see that it isn't the case.  

I had the thought this week, that a lot of people are struggling with the lockdown, and that maybe some of you will get a kick out of seeing me get killed multiple times, so with the permission of the authors i now present to you a limited series of articles featuring some of the stories in the anthology.  

Today we welcome the legend that is Tim Lebbon with his story You Dirty Cat 

Cats will never be man’s best friend. I know that now. That’s why I’m a man on the run, with a hundred grand on my head and a one-eyed hit-man never more than half a step behind me. I shot Gross Gary’s one and only son-and-heir in the face; sprayed his brains across the inside of his bullet-proof windscreen. I didn’t mean to, really I didn’t, but do you think Gross will give a flying fuck about what I intended when he gets a hold of me? I won’t even have a chance to say ‘hi’ before he lays into me with a chainsaw.
            My name is Jim McLeod, and I must die.
            I’m living in a box. Literally. An old transport container in some forgotten corner of the docks. Thing’s been stuck here for five years and the hinges have rusted half open. But it’s warm enough, I suppose, even if it does smell like an abandoned morgue after a shit-eating party. Sometimes I hear a gentle whisper as something slides along the outside wall. Cats, I guess. They must know when they’re not wanted, because they never come in.
For now, it’s home.  
 
Gross Gary thought his nickname came from all the chainsaw executions he carried out, but almost everyone knew that it was a result of his terrible nose-picking habit. It was an unconscious thing, like scratching your balls or rubbing your eyelids, and the fact that he always ate it afterwards lifted it from plain unpleasant to, well, gross. The name stuck; he liked it. Said it gave him character.
            The first time I met him was six months ago, sitting in a bar full of smoke and lunchtime losers, slurping cheap bottled beer and wishing I’d never been born. The only thing that drove me to Gross was money, or rather the lack of it. What else drives someone like me -- maybe not honest, but decent; perhaps not hardworking, but prepared to pull my weight -- to someone like Gross? Cash. Moolah. The big green.
            Gross stormed in and ordered a drink as if he owned the place. I found out later that this was the case; he’d ‘inherited’ it from an ex business partner who’d found eternity in a bridge support. He had two heavies with him, hanging at his shoulders like pet vultures. One of them was his son, Norman, who I’m sure never understood his nickname Bates. He was short, slight and renowned for his gleeful sadism. The other was Gross’s hit-man Bouncer who, rumour held, was heavily into S&M. The two thugs went well together.
            Gross was carrying his Persian. “This is Trixie,” were the first words he ever said to me.
            “Hey, Trix.” I raised my bottle and drained the gassy dregs in mock salute. I sensed the sudden tension there; all the muscles in the room became bunched, coiled, ready to spring.
            “It’s Trixie,” he said. “Her name’s Trixie.” His tone of voice forbade any response other than that which I gave.
            “Sorry. Trixie. Hi, Trixie.” This time I did not raise my drink. The cat regarded me with curious cool eyes before going back to the important job of licking her arse. Gross tickled her absently beneath the chin as he sat himself on a barstool held steady by Bouncer.
            The big hit-man sniffed and sneezed, then needlessly clicked his fingers at the barman. The guy was already there, two shades paler than he had been five minutes earlier.
“The usual, Sir?” he asked.
Gross nodded, managing to keep his index finger in his right nostril throughout the manoeuvre. When he extracted the digit a string of snot flopped down onto his chin.
I grimaced, realising how apt his nickname was, then locked eyes with Bates. The guy was cooking me with his stare, challenging me to react to his Dad’s horrible habit.
“On me,” I said to the barman, “and get these two gentlemen whatever they want. Oh, and another of these.” I waved the bottle his way and he went about setting them up.
“How much do you want, McLeod?” Gross asked.
Straight to the point. Well, I thought, two can play at that. “Seventy-five thousand. I’ll pay you back half before Christmas, the other half before this time next year.”
Gross smiled at me and wiped his finger on his cat’s neck. “So that’s sixty thou this year, sixty next?” The cat purred and stretched in his lap.
Bouncer went to sneeze, dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and sprayed everywhere seconds before slapping it to his nose. What was it with these guys and snot? I thought. I saw him glance at the Persian, and suddenly realised what was wrong. Bummer, being allergic to your boss’ favourite pet.
I almost laughed. “A hundred and twenty?”
Gross nodded. “And another five for every week you’re late with a payment. To a limit, of course.”
“What limit?”
Gross took a gulp of brandy, stared up at the yellowed ceiling, offering me a view of the blackheads and tiny pustules around his nose and upper lip. I wonder if he sniffs coke, I thought. Maybe that’s why he eats his own snot.
“Three weeks over,” he said slowly, “and then the repayments translate into body parts.”
I was silent, and he took this as a request for clarification.
“A months of limbs, and then your head.”
Bates grinned over his right shoulder. Bouncer moved back slightly and sneezed again.
I had a sudden urge to leave. I had debts, sure, but none worth a headless torso. I imagined slipping from the barstool, dropping a twenty onto the counter and walking calmly away, leaving Gross to stew with his two cronies and the slinky moggie in his lap. I’d open the bar door and walk out into the sunlight, poor but safe, lacking credit but still in the black to the tune of two arms, two legs and a head. I’d find a coin in the gutter, I knew, and I’d be able to call my parents. Ask them for a loan. Swallow whatever pride I had left.
At the same time, I knew that Gross would never let me leave. He had me now, and although there was only one kind of contract these guys ever really understood -- the one involving a silenced gun and a weighted body in the river -- I knew that business had already been done. If I backed out now, I’d be in default.
“OK,” I said. “Deal.”
As if to confirm my suspicions Gross nodded. “Yes, I know.” He rubbed his nose, and I watched with dreadful anticipation as his index finger slowly curved, hooked, and sunk straight back in to the second joint.
Trixie meowed. She blinked sleepily and settled into a silky ball in Gross’ lap. Bates sat on a stool and reached out to stoke the pet, and I had to close my eyes to avoid laughing at the grotesque, ridiculous sexual image this formed in my mind. Father and son, Gross and Bates. I snorted, halfway between a groan and a giggle.
Fuck, I must have a death wish.
            Bouncer went out to their car and returned with a paper bag containing the cash.
“See you at Christmas,” Gross said nasally. “Oh, and McLeod?  Don’t forget to pay for your round.”
I pulled a twenty from the middle of a bundle in the bag, threw it into a beer puddle on the bar and left.
 
 
I never did see them at Christmas, but then you’ve probably guessed that by now. What you may not have guessed is what happened to the money, and why there was none to pay Gross back.
            Well, suffice to say I’m a fool. I never thought of myself as a loser, I’d always imagined myself more as a roguish gambler. Someone DeNiro might play, but not Keitel.
The cash went down the same drain that created the debt in the first place, the debt I borrowed from Gross to pay off. Not cards, not women, not drugs. Gold.
An old school friend had a sure-fire way of locating and retrieving gold sunk in transport ships during the last World War, and my cash went in to help finance the search. Trouble is he also had some heavyweight backers, and whenever the projects went tail-up they always shoved the debts onto the small-time shits like me. And my friend’s sure-fire methods weren’t as certain as he’d led us all to believe. He disappeared with half a million before he’d even tried a second time.
I never learn anything. Not even by my mistakes. That’s why, in the process of paying off a bad debt, I created a worse one.
            So come Valentine’s Day, while lovers canoodled in restaurants and kids steamed up car windows in country lanes, I found myself moving from place to place, trying to brush over my tracks, desperately making final arrangements to get out of the city. Trouble was, I was so concerned with covering up the way I’d come that I didn’t look ahead.
            I ran straight into them.
 
 
I was on my way to buy a gun when I found one thrust into my back.          
            “Into the car, asshole,” Bates said.
            I closed my eyes, feeling the whole world turning fluid and me sinking down into it. “Look––"
            “Into the car, or I’ll gut-shoot you here in the street and take off your limbs with a hacksaw.” 
            How could I argue with such a proposition? I reached out slowly, grabbed the handle he indicated and opened the door. He pushed me in and kicked the door shut behind me.
            I was alone on the back seat, or so I thought at first. Then I saw Trixie, Gross’ Persian cat, curled in the far corner and regarding me with cautious eyes. In the driver’s seat Bouncer sat with hands at ten-to-two, knuckles white where he grabbed the wheel, staring straight ahead.
            Bates jumped into the front passenger seat and turned to aim the gun at my face.
            “Your Daddy sent his brains to do the talking?” I said, nodding at the cat. Inside, I grimaced. Idiot.
            The gun curved up and around, and I saw sunlight reflected from the barrel in oily rainbow arcs as it came down to meet my head. There was a loud thunk! and for a second I thought, That didn’t hurt. Then the shock gave way to pain, and it felt like someone had poured white-hot metal into my eyes and ears.
            The car moved off. By the time my senses had started to sort themselves out the light had changed, and I realised that we were heading out into the suburbs. I was leaving the city, but not in the way I had planned.   
            “I’ll get-“
            “Don’t want no money,” Bates said.
            “But I can-“
            “You think Gross Gary needs money?” He frowned at me over the top of his gun. Its barrel looked very wide. “He’s got more millions in the bank than you’re got pubes. No, my dad wants revenge. He can’t let you be seen to get away with it, even though it was only a little loan. Gives the wrong impression, y’know?”
            “Your old man still eat his own snot?” Oh shit! Sometimes I wished I could just shut the hell up. The gun didn’t swing down again, however, and when I glanced up Bates was in the same position, smiling a smile that would look at home on a gargoyle.
            “Have a giggle, man,” he said. “No, go on. I mean it. A man should have a bit of fun in the last moments of his life.”
            I thought he was going to shoot me there and then, and I hunkered down into the seat as much as I could. I looked at the cat where it sat against the door, staring at me, tail twitching as if controlled by an invisible wire. I wondered whether it would lick up my brains when they spattered the upholstery, and I was suddenly sure that that was why they had brought it. Waste me, drive around while the cat-  
            “BLAAAGHHH!”
Bates squealed and dropped the gun.
The car slewed across the road as Bouncer’s head ricocheted from the steering wheel. “Bless me,” he muttered.
            A thought zipped through my head (you’re just not this lucky) but I’d already snatched up the gun and sat up. Strangely, the first thing I pointed it at was the cat.
            “Shit!” Bates.
            “What?!” Bouncer.
            “Gun.”
            “Keep them on the wheel, big boy,” I said, talking very slowly and deliberately so that my nerves could not slur my words. I aimed the gun into Bates’ face; his pupils were black and wide, the barrel reflected. “Keep driving, not too fast. Turn around and head back into town as soon as you can. Let me know before you do it.”
            Bates sneered at me and pretended to dismiss what was happening, but I saw a nervous tick beneath his left eye.
            The cat stood and slunk across the seat, snuggling itself into my lap. I reached down and tried to shove it aside, but it hissed. I kept the gun aimed at Bates’ nose. He laughed.
            We stayed that way for a while. It wasn’t like in the films, where the good guy has a ten minute fight with the bad guy, offs him and saves the day. We just sat there: Bates staring at me, looking for the first opportunity to launch himself my way; Bouncer driving, hands tight on the wheel; the cat in my lap, seemingly asleep; and me, my arm becoming sleepy with the weight of the gun, my mind in a spin.
            What the hell to do?
             “Gotta stop,” Bouncer said. His voice sounded weird.
            “No.”
            “Gotta.”
            The car slowed and crunched onto the hard shoulder. Bates glanced briefly at Bouncer then back at me. Passing a secret signal, perhaps.
            The cat raised its head as if to ask what was happening.
            Bates’ eyes glimmered, his body tensed. His lips were pressed together so tightly that they were white.
            “BLAAAGHHH!”
            It took seconds, but I can remember it all in exquisite detail. The sneeze from the allergic Bouncer that sent the shocked cat’s claws twisting into my nuts. My hand jerking, finger squeezing, the deafening crash of the gun. Bates’ face disappearing through his head and onto the windscreen. Bouncer struggling against his seatbelt, digging his hand inside his jacket, eyes wide in the mirror as he realised what I was about to do ...
            I had to. He was reaching for his gun.
            I shot him as I opened the back door and fell onto the loose gravel. His side of the windscreen turned red in sympathy with the other side, and he began to scream and scream. A high pitched scream for such a big man.
            I glanced into the car once more before I ran away. A haze of gunsmoke had turned the inside opaque, but I could still see the mess I’d made. And I could still see that fucking cat, calm and smug on the back seat, stepping daintily across the leather upholstery towards where the ruined men lay.
            As least it was not my brains it would be licking up today.
 
 
So here I am, an old gambler in hiding, a rogue with no marked cards left to play. Hell, a loser. I’ve never killed a man before, and it doesn’t feel good. What feels worse is that I didn’t kill two -- Bouncer lost an eye, and he’s more pissed at me than I ever thought anyone could be.  His bosses response?  Jim McLeod must die.
            Yeah, right.  As if I haven't heard that one before.
So there’re two things I’m listening out for, above the sibilant whisper of the oily sea. One is the sound of Gross’ ridiculous Persian moggie purring away as he tickles its back, like some miscast Bond criminal.
            The other is a sneeze.
            I don’t know which I want to hear the least.
 
THE END