Grimm Tales by John Kenyon

his forehead into Wallace hoping to break his nose. Nothing worked.
    Wallace locked eyes with the young brother. “Who the fuck are you?” C.B. didn’t feel like giving out his vitals right then.
    They waltzed across the room, past the couch, past a side table, C.B. unable to lift his arm up to fire his gun.
    As they struggled and turned they found themselves falling to the floor. Their progress had been halted by a lump on the carpet. Jay’s body.
    Tripping over the nearly dead man sent them both down to an oriental rug. C.B. managed to fire a round but only succeeded in making a loud noise and a hole in his jeans from the muzzle flash.
    The dance had turned to a Greek wrestling match. Wallace got his blood-slick hand up again to C.B.’s face. The giant nearly hooked a finger in his eye but C.B. thrashed away, spinning his head violently to avoid being blinded. He inadvertently put his ear in the big man’s hand and Wallace pinched down on the flap of skin and the diamond earring in the center.
    C.B. made another try at bashing his forehead forward and this time caught Wallace’s nose square on. He also jerked his skull forward fast enough that the grip Wallace held on his ear tore away a piece of flesh, and a bit of jewelry as a bonus.
    Not showing Wallace’s restraint, C.B. cried out in pain.
    Like a live wire C.B. bucked and thrashed. Wallace loosened his grip as his nose throbbed and the prey in his arms became wilder and harder to clench with blood-soaked hands.
    C.B. slid down the man’s belly and popped out of Wallace’s grasp, immediately ditching the gun and grabbing at his half an ear. He screamed his way out the door, passing by the quaint suburban grandfather clock chiming midnight as he left.
    C.B. felt Wallace reach out to claw at his ankles, trying to keep him in the room. “I’ll find you, motherfucker,” C.B. heard as he reached the car.
    C.B. landed back at Yancy’s place wondering how the hell his fortunes had gone to shit so quickly. Bobbi came fast-stepping out of the back pulling on a thin robe over her brown thighs.
    â€œYancy? What happened?”
    She stopped when she saw only C.B. The way he crashed through the door signaled trouble and now the sight of his face, as pale as he’d ever been which meant only a shade lighter than oil, and the smears of blood down the side of his neck from the missing earlobe gave off signs that things were worse than Bobbi could have expected.
    â€œBobbi, I’m sorry. It all went…fuck, it all went bad.”
    She glanced over his shoulder through the open door checking for her brother and Jay. When they didn’t appear she knew better than to ask if they were ever going to.
    C.B. hit the couch, slumped over and pressed hard against his ear, hoping the damn bleeding would stop and maybe if it did he could formulate a plan.
    Bobbi went back down the hall, came out ten minutes later dressed and holding a suitcase.
    â€œYou best get going, too,” she said, but didn’t stop moving out the door.
    C.B. knew where some money was hid. An operation like Yancy and Jay’s always kept around a decent amount of cash.
Git-up-n-go
money they called it. Might be enough to get a start. C.B. discovered that with the only world you’ve ever known suddenly off-limits the choice of where to begin again is a hard one.
    Blood crusted around the missing piece of ear and caked like dried mud down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Bits of it flaked off, dark and dry like his skin had been baked. His body felt pinned to the couch like someone had turned up the dial on gravity that day. He felt a rush of blood to his brain and knew it was moving too fast. A shutdown was coming. Even with his eyes closed he felt the world go black.
    He wasn’t sure how long he’d been on the couch, passed out. The door still hung open, Bobbi’s perfume had dissipated. C.B. thought of the money. He