Uneasy Reading: 4 Horror Shorts Read Online Free PDF Page B

room. The sound of his retching came
almost instantly.
    A crumpled body lay in the corner. It was a
large man with dark skin and gold rings adorning each finger of his
left hand. The Haitian.
    He slipped inside to get a better look at
the carnage. The Haitian's eyes were open, staring up at the
ceiling. His mouth was slack and his throat ragged and torn, but
there wasn't much blood on the floor. The wounds on his neck looked
as though they came from teeth.
    His body lay next to an opened metal crate
that was a few feet long and about a foot high. It reminded Joey of
a coffin, except for the digital padlock on the opened lid. He'd
seen locks like it before, but this one looked like it had some
type of timer attached to it.
    "The fucking burrito," Vincent said. He spat
more vomit onto the floor. "I'm so screwed. I fucking killed myself
because I had the munchies."
    Joey paid little attention to Vincent. He
was more concerned with the crate. He looked inside and saw crude
wadded up bedding as well as a pillow and a small brown envelope.
The box wasn't large enough to hold a full-grown adult even if they
tucked their knees to their chest, but someone had definitely been
in there. It was the right size for a child. He opened the envelope
and looked through the contents.
    Inside were several pictures. One was of the
Haitian drinking a martini. The other was of Joey smoking a cigar
on the deck of Giovanni's yacht. A third picture was a family
portrait that looked like it had been taken at Sears or one of
those other cheesy studios suburbanites were so fond of using. The
fashions in the picture were outdated, and he figured it was an old
photo from sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. The
mother and father had stupid, placid grins on their faces. Above
the husband's lip was a mustache that would have made Mario, Luigi
and even Thomas Magnum envious. The child, a little girl of around
seven or eight with dark curls and a round face, looked utterly
bored in the photo.
    "What was supposed to happen here?" Joey
asked. He pocketed the pictures and turned to face Vincent, who was
leaning against the wall and weeping quietly.
    "I fucked up," he said. "I was supposed to
get you here on time but I was hungry."
    "You aren't making a whole lot of sense
right now," Joey said.
    "I knew you'd buy me something to eat.
You're a good guy, Joey. You remember that. You're a good guy."
    "What happened to the Haitian?"
    Vincent shrugged. "I really don't know. I
just know that I was supposed to get you here and I didn't make it
in time." He slid to the floor next to his own puke and placed his
head in his hands.
    "What were you going to do when you got me
here?"
    "You were supposed to go in there and help
the Haitian with the box. When you went in, I was supposed to lock
both of you inside."
    "Then what was supposed to happen?"
    "I don't know. I thought maybe they had a
bomb in there or something," Vincent said. "I didn’t know what it
was."
    "You did this so you could clear your issues
up with Giovanni?"
    "Yeah, I did. I couldn't keep hiding from
you and when she made the offer, I… I didn't know what to do. She
hates you and she was pissed at him," Vincent said, nodding at the
dead man. "She knew the two of you were tight and she thought he
was probably feeding you some info to keep you ahead of Carlos and
his hounds."
    "Haitian wasn't that stupid," Joey said. He
pointed the barrel of the shotgun at Vincent's face. "What you did
was a real dick move."
    "Don't shoot me," Vincent said.
    Joey smiled. "I ain't gonna shoot you. You
said that Giovanni knows how to hurt people the deepest, right? I'm
going to leave you here for her. I assume you brought an extra
padlock or chain for the door?"
    Vincent nodded and dug the padlock out of
his pocket. He slid it across the floor to Joey.
    "I won't be seeing you around," Joey said.
He went back outside and started to roll the door closed.
    "You're really just gonna leave me here?"
Vincent said.
    "Don't