Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.75				$0.64

eBook Category: Horror
eBook Description: The decapitation turned out to be awfully messy. But a writer's got to find out about these things somehow.

eBook Publisher: Rosetta Solutions, Inc., Published: 1987
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2002

15 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [71 KB], eReader (PDB) [37 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [11 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [11 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [111 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [82 KB], hiebook (KML) [93 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [73 KB], iSilo (PDB) [9 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [12 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [52 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [19 KB]
Words: 3500
Reading time: 10-14 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Once it was all over, I thought that I'd wiped up all the blood, but damn it, there's another spray of it. Across the ceiling, natch, above and a little left of the top of the china cabinet. Not that it was such a brilliant thing to do the actual killing in the dining room, but when a couple of hundred bucks is at stake, and time is short, I'm not inclined to be all that methodical.

Or neat, unfortunately, although I don't suppose hacking off a live head with a hatchet qualified for a single-paper-towel cleanup. As it was I used up nearly a whole box of Spic and Span dissolved in one of those "one liquid gallon, one liquid quart" ice cream pails (it really pays to save them) and a jumbo roll of paper towels, and that didn't count the time I spent re-polishing the furniture after it dried off. Then there were the feathers, but I vacuum every day anyway with two long-haired dogs it's a must so I can't really bitch about that, but the damp carpet made the inside of my Hoover upright sticky, which meant having to take the blow drier to it, then scraping out the gummy residue of feathers, semi-moist Spic and Span, and residual blood with a putty knife, breaking two fingernails in the process.

(I swear, there is someone Up There looking down at me who has decreed, "Thou Shalt Not Have Ten Long Fingernails at the Same Time," like it's a spare commandment with my name on it.)

Anyhow there it is, a burst of stale brown splatters, something like the tail of a descending comet. I never imagined that a chicken could have so much blood in it. I mean, really, it's only a little bit bigger than a football, but I suppose the severed arteries did the trick. Of course, not being able to catch it right away added to the problem; if old Dead Fred from next door hadn't have picked that moment to start buzzing on the doorbell, just to ask if I'd mind if he trimmed the pine branches from my tree which hung over onto his lawn (the emphasis is eternally his), when he knew and I know that 99 1/2% of the time he lops the tips off those branches anytime he gets a yen to do so (as in often), whether I've given my permission or not.