The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) Read Online Free PDF Page A

be perfectly honest with you, Chinese philosophy gets up my arse, you know what I'm saying?'
    'Very well,' said Wilson, a little irritated. The quote had been completely inappropriate, but he generally found it useful in awkward conversational moments when his flock were looking for guidance, to quote any old crap that they'd assume came from the Bible. He'd have quoted the Bible itself, but he hadn't read it in over fifty years and couldn't really remember much about it. There were a couple of bits about Jesus that rang a bell, and he was fairly confident about the story of Moses up to the point where he gets stuck in the basket, but apart from that he was hopeless. 'What would you like me to do for you?'
    'No, no,' said the killer, smiling broadly. 'You've got me wrong, your worshipfulness. I don't need your help. I'm here to help you.'
    Wilson sat back, straightened his shoulders and looked witheringly across the table. This was not someone who could help him in any way, and if he was about to be asked the question which he presumed he was, his late-night guest could get the Hell out of Sodom and leave him in peace.
    'I can't begin to imagine what that might be,' said Wilson.
    'That is because you have so little imagination,' said the killer, who inched forwarded, then added, 'To that high Capital, where kingly Death keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, he came!' quoting the poet Shelley and getting a little overexcited as the words flowed.
    'What?' said the bish.
    'You're about to die, old man,' said the visitor.
    The Reverend Wilson was still confused. So, in order to swiftly bring this general air of verbal chaos to a conclusion, the killer of the four American tourists rose swiftly, produced a pair of hairdressing scissors – a classic set of Buckmaster Texans, circa 1947 – raised them dramatically aloft in a staged movement, paused briefly to enjoy the look of terror that suddenly manifested itself on the old man of God's face, then leapt at him across the coffee table, a massive powerful leap, so that when the scissors thumped into the vicar's face, they plunged through his eye socket and penetrated deeply into the back of his head.
    A rather strange cry was ejaculated from the pit of his throat, and it sounded not unlike 'ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning' , just going to show that all the Bible stuff that he thought he'd forgotten had actually just lain dormant in his subconscious, waiting for his moment of death. Didn't mean he was going to get into Heaven though.
    The killer took another moment as the end of the vicar's strange words dribbled from his twitching bottom lip, looked curiously at the old man, engaging the eye that wasn't beholden to a pair of scissors and then, with another well practised and vicious movement, withdrew the implement of murder and immediately thrust it into the bish's chest. Another noise escaped, this time a scarcely audible grunt, as the air was squeezed from his lungs.
    The killer straightened up, breaths coming quickly with the shock of carrying out the execution and, just as had happened with the murder of the four tourists, hands shaking and heart thumping lustily. For after years of searching, a true vocation had been found.
    The killer looked around the room, and it did not take long to find the perfect canvas for the face of death, drawn in blood.

5
Kierkegaard Ate My Hamster
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    A s late night drifted into the early hours of the morning, there was a strange collective in the bar of the Highland Inn, some time after the Reverend Wilson had been despatched from his grumbling miserable misery of miseries to an even more miserable eternal misery of miseries. There were eight people in the bar, as well as Bobby the Barman, who was looking forward to a late-night snack, the exact nature of which you really, really don't want to know.
    There was Legal Attaché Cameron of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (Crow having disappeared for