"Don, are you still here? I thought I was the last holdout on the floor tonight."
Donald Fancy momentarily looked up from the note he was jotting down to the seemingly disembodied head floating sideways in the doorway of his office, then back down to his paper and finished writing down his thought.
"You know me, Marty. Always trying to impress the father-in-law."
The inquisitive head laughed and rolled his eyes. "I don't envy you that."
"Not many do," he agreed with a light smile.
"Just because you're related to the old man doesn't mean you want to wind up like him. That fucker is still hunched over files up on the thirtieth."
"Quasimodo's still here?"
The head laughed again. "If he ever finds out you were the one who started that nickname..."
"He'd have to come down from his bell tower and catch me first."
"You're too much. G'night, Don."
"I'm right behind you. G'night, Marty."
The head jiggled one last time then disappeared behind the door frame, presumably to roll down the hallway, press the elevator button by way of its nose, and then back to the underground parking garage where Don saw the appendage attached to the rest of its body early this morning.
Donald Fancy — part-time charmer of women, jokester among men, and full-time sociopath with a talent for contract negotiation and a penchant for expensive clothing, adultery, debauchery, and the occasional sadistic killing — finished up the last of his tasks and started cleaning his desk off for the evening, just as he promised the disembodied head he would.
He tucked some files into a satchel and set the bag on his chair, not that they really mattered, and not that he even cared which files they were. Always having homework (as his son put it) gave him every reason to stay in his private study in his absurdly large home. The room was off limits from everyone including his family and the cleaning staff and afforded him the perfect excuse to get away from his dotingly pathetic wife and cloying, sticky-fingered child. It was the one place where he didn't have to smile, didn't have to act like he cared, and could spend time with his real treasures, his memories and the tiny keepsakes from the forty-seven women he had killed over the years.
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YOU ARE READING
Out on a Limb
Misterio / Suspenso(COMPLETED) (PEAKED AT #1 ON THE HOT LIST THRILLER-FICTION!) Donald Fancy is athletic, good looking, a devoted family man and dutiful lackey at his father-in-law's hugely successful company, but he's also so much more... With a penchant for details...
