The Fixer
An Ultra Short Story
Reginald Scheminger has lived in this apartment for seven, unprivileged years. It is the darkest, moldiest two-bedroom unit in the building, and he despises it. Reginald uses the second bedroom as a home office and a guest room.
And today — to hide a dead body.
He hadn’t murdered that person. He only dug him up from a cemetery.
Reginald smuggles the corpse into the Magic Asian Medicine store in exchange for a vial of a rare snail poison from the lady proprietor who looks almost mummified and yet inexplicably living — a kicking proof of her magic medicine. Then he exchanges the poison for a bag of white bat powder from the Haitian Herb Shop. The bulky guy at the counter never says a word — it is a silent agreement they both do something illegal but it’s none of each other’s business.
Armed with the powder, Reginald returns home and mixes a potion from a secret recipe. Then he pours the mixture in a cocktail glass; fixes himself a drink, and knocks at Matild Doomdorf’s sunlit door.
Reginald drinks his black coffee on the warm balcony of his bright new apartment. The last remnant of Matild’s presence is the coffee cup in his hand.
