Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical: A Novel Read online

  Just as they were about to step outside, Marvin slipped free from their grasp, waddled back toward the manager. He had that wide grin on his face again, pointed at the manager’s shoes.

  “Ah,” he said, pulling a rag out of the pocket of the horrified busboy who stood beside him. “Looks like those shoes could use a shine, me laddie.”

  “You stay the hell away from me,” the manager said. He picked up a ketchup bottle, broke it on the counter, and then waved the jagged, ketchup-coated glass at Marvin as he approached.

  Marvin spat into the rag. “I’ll have them brogs shining like glass when I’m done with them.”

  Mark ran forward, scooped Marvin into his arms. “Really sorry about this!” Mark shouted to the manager, to everyone in the restaurant, as he rushed through the doors and into the hot night.

  Trinie stood outside, her cell phone in her hand, glaring at the screen.

  “You call the cops?” Mark said. “I’m thinking we may need a mental health officer or something. Marvin’s fucking whacked.”

  “Text from Simon,” she said, then held the phone up for Mark to see.

  Simon: Meet at the theater. Emergency!

  The leprechaun sat up in the apartment, giggling maniacally as he smoothed out his green coat, placed his hat back on his head. He licked his pimpled green lips as he thought of his wee little friend, probably boasting about how he’d tricked the leprechaun, maybe bragging about slaying him. That Marvin Brinks hadn’t tricked shit. Long ago, the four-leaf clovers might have proven fatal, but through so many centuries of exposure, the leprechaun had finally grown immune to their power.

  “Dammit, Marvin me lad,” the leprechaun said as he rose to his feet. “I was starting to like you.” He was still too stoned to speak in rhymes—this weed, the bomb as they call it, was delightful. The leprechaun couldn’t help but wonder what other delicious treats he had been missing.

  He licked his lips again, tasted Marvin’s blood. He’d bitten the wee little bastard, and that meant Marvin would be changing. Which filled the leprechaun’s black little heart with joy. It had been far too long since he was in the company of another leprechaun.

  But he could worry about that later. For now, only one thing was certain: until he secured his stolen property rights, his flute and his pot of gold would elude him. So he’d kill every last crew member of that musical.

  He left the shitty apartment, eager to explore this strange new city, taste its delicacies. There’d be plenty of time for killing. For now, he had something else in mind.

  By the time Simon and Byron screeched to a halt in the theater’s parking lot, half the cast and crew had already converged. Simon guessed the others weren’t showing. His broken phone had powered down after he’d texted everyone on the road back from the forest, most likely never to turn on again, and he didn’t have a clear idea of the time. The chaos in his skull seemed to swell beyond him, crowding out any recognition of darkness or light.

  Some of the crew drank tall boys of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Others passed flasks and joints. Nearly all of them smoked cigarettes, even some who Simon had never identified as smokers.

  Bloodshot eyes and sallow faces stared him down as the car pulled up, and Simon realized what he’d done. He’d ruined everyone’s fun, made their lives miserable in recent weeks. If ever presented with the opportunity to be part of a similar project again, they’d all more than likely respond with a resounding Hell no, regardless who was involved, because Simon had transformed a good thing into an experiment in group suffering. He was sole proprietor of several dozen worst life experiences. For a moment he sat in the seat of Byron’s car, gazing out at his crew, feeling shame and sympathy. He rolled the flute through his fingers, contemplating playing it so he could gain control of the whole group, force them to do his bidding.

  Not yet.

  “You know what you’re gonna tell them?” Byron asked.

  Simon shifted uncomfortably in his seat, almost startled by the words. They’d remained silent on the long drive back from the woods. “We start with the truth. We tell them what we know. From there, who knows?”

  “In case you forgot again, we just buried a dead girl in the woods. That’s not exactly the move of innocent people. I know you’re innocent, but I’m your best friend. These people view you through a different lens. To them, you’re hardly better than a murderer as it stands.”

  “That dead girl we buried, someone dismembered her in X-rated fashion, and then she returned to life as a zombie fly girl. So unless we took the same bad acid, my number one concern is protecting these people, because for all we know Genevieve’s death was only the beginning.”

  Protecting these people? Simon thought. More like protecting my show.

  “One more thing.”

  Simon looked at Byron quizzically.

  “I never had trouble memorizing ‘Bitches Be Spooky.’ I just think it’s a stupid song.”

  Simon raised the flute. “Bet you if I blow on this I can get you to sing it.”

  They were both too battered to laugh, but their silence felt enough like laughter. They stepped out of the car.

  If I blow the flute, I can get anybody to do anything. The musical will be a sensation!

  Simon parted the exhausted crowd and unlocked the theater door. He jogged down the center aisle to the stage, onto which he performed a leap-hop that told him just how much of a beating his body had taken during the night. He called out, “Hey everybody, find a seat wherever you like.” He locked eyes with Byron, who did not join him onstage, and took a deep breath before continuing. “This is not a rehearsal. In fact, I don’t know if there will be any more rehearsals.”

  Because the play will be a hit even if it sucks.

  Simon held the flute at his side, rubbing his thumb across the golden surface.

  Murmurs erupted, passed around like the joints they’d shared outside.

  “Just calm down for a second and I’ll explain everything,” Simon said, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. Most surprisingly, everybody listened. He realized that they’d grown so used to him shouting all the time, acting like a belligerent asshole, that they were unnerved by his more natural, soft-spoken voice. Either that or they were just drunk and tired.

  “One of the cast members was murdered last night.”

  Now the worried shouts erupted as people craned their heads in every direction, trying to account for the missing. Simon carried on regardless.

  “The murderer left a note warning us from putting on the musical, but that’s not all they left.” He raised the magical flute. “Does anyone recognize this?”

  “Yeah, it’s a load of fucking bullshit!” shouted a dude with too many facial piercings who Simon recognized as one of Jesus Freak’s posse.

  Byron hung his head. If he’d known Simon planned on mishandling the disclosure of Genevieve’s death so badly, he never would’ve helped him get rid of her body. They should’ve gone to the police, or run out and never said a word. To load someone up in trash bags and bury them in the woods…. Man, what had they been thinking? They’d been thinking about nothing, that’s what. They’d gone into crisis mode, most likely into shock, and responded in a manner at odds not only with rational human behavior, but also with their own asses. It’d be like a couple of gazelle trotting straight into a lion’s den. Now the lions were the cast and crew who’d actually shown up for this meeting. Several held cellphones to their ears, chatting away in uncertain, panicked voices as they spoke to emergency dispatchers. Byron estimated five, maybe ten minutes before the cops had the theater surrounded.

  Simon put the flute to his lips then, and Byron didn’t like the look on his friend’s face. Byron was just about to rush toward him, tackle him before he could play it. Things were bad enough without Simon trying to control any minds.

  That was when Mark and Trinie burst through the theater doors, followed by Marvin—it must have been Marvin—in startlingly realistic leprechaun makeup. Trinie and Mark each
held one of Marvin’s arms, the tips of his shoes inches above the ground.

  Marvin looked injured, part of his neck ripped open.

  Is that…is that green blood?

  Byron thought back to Genevieve and how her limbs had bled the same way before she had put herself back together.

  Marvin was weeping. His head hung low as he was carried across the theater toward the stage. Trinie and Mark set him down and the little man bawled even harder, staring at his bloody hands with tufts of fur stuck to them.

  “Something’s wrong with Marvin,” Trinie said.

  “The psycho bit off a cat’s head,” Mark said.

  “Oh, Brian!” Marvin wailed.

  “Oh shit,” Byron muttered under his breath. When Simon accused Marvin of murdering Genevieve, Byron had defended Marvin. Now Byron doubted himself. Marvin was a good guy, someone Byron had considered a true friend, but maybe Marvin was under the leprechaun’s influence or something. Or maybe he really is the leprechaun.

  Simon, still onstage, stared at Marvin with wide eyes, the flute pressed up against his lips, though he wasn’t blowing into it.

  Marvin, crumpled on the floor between Mark and Trinie, looked up at Simon, and the woeful countenance that had been pinching his face loosened. His mouth curled into a grin, the teeth tinted green, and he hopped to his feet, licked his lips.

  “Ah,” Marvin said, pointing at the flute, his eyes now sparkling with green light. “What’s that you’ve got there, me lad? You wouldn’t keep gold from a cute little leprechaun, now would you?”

  Holy fuck, he really is the leprechaun.

  Trinie grabbed Mark’s arm and squealed. Both of them backed away from Marvin as he started to climb the stage, giggling all the while.

  The rest of the cast exchanged glances, some smirking as if they thought this was all some kind of joke, something Simon had come up with to get their morale back up about the musical.

  Simon backed away, shaking his head.

  “Now give me the gold. As quick as you can. Or I’ll tear out your heart with my wee little hand.” Marvin wiggled his fingers, which had started sprouting claws right before their eyes.

  “What the fuck?” Simon’s eyes landed on Byron. “Fucking help me!”

  Byron bolted upright and pointed an accusatory finger at Marvin. “That little motherfucker’s the one who killed Genevieve.”

  “Genevieve?”

  “What happened to Genevieve?”

  “Genevieve’s dead?”

  Her death instilled her name with the senseless power of a chart-topping pop song. People repeated her name, Genevieve, as if sifting through the syllables for a meaning that could never be found.

  Simon, picking up on Byron’s plan, stood taller and faced the crowd again, his confidence restored. “Y-yeah, Genevieve’s dead! And, and Marvin killed her.” He pointed at Marvin with his flute hand, and in that same instant, Marvin growled and ripped the golden instrument away, his claws digging furrows into Simon’s forearm and palm. Blood poured from the wounds and Simon yelped, dropped to his knees and pressed his arm to his chest.

  “Fuck me,” Byron said, wanting to run to his friend’s aid, but hesitant to get anywhere near the leprechaun formerly known as Marvin. Byron could hardly look, expecting Marvin to rip out Simon’s throat or disembowel him at any moment.

  Instead, Marvin cackled as he hopped off the stage and danced toward the cast, who all gasped and backed away simultaneously like a spooked school of fish.

  One guy, who was part of the chorus, had his back to the stage, speaking insistently into his cellphone.

  “That’s right!” the guy screamed into the phone. “A fucking leprechaun murdered her!”

  Marvin climbed onto the chair closest to the guy, still clutching the flute and licking his lips, then sprung onto his back. The guy screamed in surprise, spun in place like a dog chasing its tail.

  Then surprise turned to pain as Marvin bit off the guy’s left ear. For some reason, he continued holding his cell phone even after Marvin turned and spit the ear at the now-panicked crowd. Through the chaos, Byron only caught glimpses of what happened next. Marvin pried the cell phone from his victim’s hand and stabbed it into the tattered, bleeding hole where the ear had been ripped away.

  Marvin waved his hand, and in the next instant, the phone began ringing, spouting a fountain of blood past the earpiece with each ring.

  “Let’s see who’s calling, laddie. Who might it be?” Marvin said, reaching into the man’s screaming mouth and ripping out his tongue.

  The hysterical cast and crew ran past Byron. He was determined to help Simon now that Marvin was distracted.

  Marvin placed the tongue in his green, warty mouth and spoke in a lower, garbled voice into the blood-spewing phone, “Hello?” He paused to listen for a moment before continuing. “Why, of course. We’ll see you soon. Tea with you, who could resist?” He removed the severed tongue from his mouth and spoke again to the bleeding, screaming man. “That was Death, and if you know what’s wise, you’ll suck his scythe.”

  Somehow the man was still alive, still standing even. But he was a goner, so far lost in shock he was immobile, knees locked. And in the next instant, Marvin balled his clawed hand into a fist and punched through the man’s chest.

  Police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.

  Simon still sat in the same spot onstage, nursing his wounds and glaring at Marvin. Byron rolled onto the stage, grabbed Simon by the arm, hauled him to his feet.

  “Come on!”

  “The flute,” Simon said. “He’s got…he’s got the fucking flute, man!”

  “Fuck that flute!” Byron pulled Simon across the stage and down the steps. They broke into a sprint, Byron having to yank Simon along as his friend kept looking over his shoulder at Marvin, who had pulled out a length of intestine and was jump-roping with it.

  “Jesus fuck!”

  They exploded out of the theater doors, both of them losing their footing and crashing to the pavement. Simon grimaced, clutched his injured arm and hand, then started running back toward the theater.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Byron said, grabbing hold of Simon with his arm around his neck.

  “I need it…I need that flute, Byron. Without it we’re—”

  “Get your ass in the car, whiteboy, before I kill you myself.” Byron dragged him backward until they reached his car, then tossed him into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

  Simon stared out the window toward the theater, lips pursed and eyes watery.

  As Byron rounded the car and threw the driver’s door open, someone nearby shouted, “Where are you going?” Byron didn’t respond, didn’t even look up to see who it was. He hopped into the car and peeled out of the parking lot, driving over the lawn outside the theater.

  There was no fucking way they were hanging around, not with Marvin, a fucking real-life leprechaun, on the rampage. Not to mention, the police would surely want to ask them questions. They’d get to that eventually, tell them everything they knew, lead them to Genevieve’s remains (or at least where they’d buried her remains). For now, they needed to stop the insanity. At least for a couple hours. That’s why Byron didn’t even have to ask Simon where they should go. They both knew it already: the Lovecraft.

  They hit a back alley street just as the cops tore in from all directions, surrounding the theater.

  “Want some music?” Byron asked.

  Simon didn’t respond, just kept staring out the window, holding his injured arm to his chest.

  Byron turned the stereo on anyway, and Gravediggaz accompanied them the rest of the way to the bar.

  After sojourns into several bars where bartenders treated him to Goldschläger shots on the house, the leprechaun decided he liked this town. Portland. Portland fucking Oregon. After each film came out, he had traveled to each of the locations where they were set—except for outer space of course, though he did try, falling from the top of
an airplane from a thousand feet up (immortal or not, that fall hurt like a motherfucker). Though the films were abominations, they did succeed in piquing his interest. Vegas had been a bust. The hood ate him alive. Twice. And the American countryside was full of dimwitted rednecks and Jennifer Aniston lookalikes. All of it made him homesick for his heartland, a place he could never return. “Perhaps in Portland I’ve found me a home,” he pondered aloud. “Now all me needs is a wife to bone.”

  He squinted through his drunken stupor, hungry for pleasures of the flesh. Right then, the city spread its legs and answered his prayer in the form of a neon sign. A joint on the block ahead promised to be the Devil’s Point. The leprechaun could think of no place he’d rather be.

  It had been so long since he was able to stretch his legs. He longed for a new tale of adventure, feared that his life’s work would be trivialized, remade for a new, young, callous audience. But the only thing that mattered right now was the jiggling asses of lascivious lasses.

  “Hold it right there, lil’ homie.” The man at the door, as big as an oak tree, leaned down and locked eyes with the leprechaun. Though the noise thumping out of the club indicated a party, there was nobody else around, not outside by the door anyway. “You some kinda actor or sump’n? That costume is dope. ’Specially them shoes.”

  “Dope?” the leprechaun said, raising an eyebrow, glancing down at his gold buckles.

  “You know. Fly. Swag, son.” The man popped his own collar and ran his tongue across the front of his teeth.

  “It’s not nice to insult a leprechaun’s clothes, me massive laddie. Not nice at all.”

  “Yo. You in that musical, ain’t you? Yeah, yeah you is. Them posters are all over town. Me and my girl was gonna come through, check that shit out. Them movies are a trip.” He smiled, placed his giant mitt on the leprechaun’s shoulder. “Cover charge is on me, lil’ homie. Just make sure you hook it up at the show, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  The leprechaun scratched the orange hair on his chin, unable to decipher the words coming out of the giant’s mouth. All except musical. And the sound of it got his green blood boiling, dissolved whatever buzz he had managed to build. He stepped past the large man and into the dark club, the music thumping, the lights flashing. He stopped, turned back toward the man at the door.