2-Mar-2018
A tiny mobster, a one-legged bird and the Executioners.
The gray dawn stalked through the canyons of buildings. The eastern horizon showed signs of the sunrise, but it was still an hour away.
“Where in the sam hills are we?” a small, grouchy voice asked from the other side of the balcony divider.
“Will you get off of me?” another squeaky voice said.
“You touch me one more time and I shoot you.”
“Like I can help it, we’re in a box.” This voice sounded put out, but not irrational. “Who’s on the top?”
“Yo, Corey. What’s going on up there?”
Karl, the pink flamingo lawn ornament, felt a peck on his metal leg.
“Hey, Coral, what’s going on over there?”
Karl looked back at his fellow flamingos and found the other three staring at him. Sneering. The tallest, Spot—so named for the black mark on his side, which he wore with great pride—craned his neck, but couldn’t see past the barricade
“We got new neighbors,” Karl said. “I heard them come in yesterday.”
“See who they are,” Spot said with swagger in his voice. Since it was difficult to swagger with just one leg.
The other two, Gretta and Pink, giggled.
“You see who they are,” Karl said.
Spot’s smile faded, and he looked over his sunglasses at Karl. His voice held gravity. “Now. Or I break you.”
The girls giggled again.
The four of them were stuffed in to a two-foot square box of fake grass, but somehow only Karl could get his head around the barricade.
Karl sighed and turned toward the bars.
“Go on,” Spot growled.
“Give me a minute,” Karl said.
“What’s the matter, head too big to go through?” Pink asked through her giggling.
Somehow having a bigger head than the others had become a joke for them. Karl couldn’t reach them to peck back, since he was cemented into the fake grass facing the building across the road, so he twisted his neck to the side and gently pushed his beak through the gap in the bars.
It took several tries as he avoided losing his glasses, which his owners would surely notice.
Just as he was almost through, something pecked him in a highly inappropriate place on his back side.
Karl jerked away from it, and ended up shaving the off paint of one side of his head as it went through. His glasses teetered on the edge of his beak, and Karl frantically jerked his neck around in order to keep them from falling.
Spot roared with laughter. The girls gave their normal response.
The glasses settled, and Karl heaved a sigh of relief. If he lost the glasses, his owners would probably replace him. He was, after all, the oldest of the birds.
After a moment reveling in his relief, Karl remembered his mission. He craned his neck and looked around the barricade.
The cold, cylinder of a gun greeted him.
A tiny gun. In the hands of a tiny…man. A tiny man dressed in yellow pants, a bright green shirt and a pointy, red hat.
“Yo,” the gnome said. A cigar hung from the edge of his mouth. He cocked the gun.
Karl blinked. “Uh, hi.” He’d never seen a gnome before, but he’d heard of them.
“Who the hell are you?” the gnome asked.
“Uh, my name is Karl.” Her jerked his head back toward his box. “I live next door.”
“Where are we?”
“New York.”
“New what?”
“It’s a city,” Karl said.
“Damn,” the gnome said.
For the first time, Karl looked past the first little man and found six more, all armed. All staring at him with hate-filled eyes.
“Where did you come from?” Karl asked.
“Kansas.”
Karl didn’t believe him.
“Coral,” Spot said. “Who is it?”
Karl felt another nip, and he jumped, dislodging his glasses. The eyewear tilted dangerously to one side, and Karl moved to compensate. But the glasses hit the fulcrum of their journey and went back the other way. Leaving Karl looking at the world through nothing.
One gnome, this one slightly taller than the rest with a green hat, pushed his way to the front. Quick as a cat, the gnome’s hand flashed through the bars and grabbed the glasses. He smiled, and despite the sword strapped to his hip and the knives sticking out of each boot, Karl instantly liked him.
“You might want those,” the gnome said. It was the one with the calm voice. “I’m Pete.” He put the glasses back on Karl’s beak. He lowered his voice. “It seems to me like you have a little problem over there.”
Karl didn’t say anything.
Pete smiled, his cherub face turning ugly. “In exchange for information on this, city, we’d be happy to take care of your little, problem.”
Karl blinked.
“It’ll be clean. Fast. They’ll never know what hit them, and we can make it look like an accident.”
“Are—are you serious?” Karl asked.
The gnome winked as the others began checking their gear.
“We’re the Executioners, it’s what we do.”
