Suckers - J.A. Konrath

I took a closer look. Sniffed. It smelled familiar.
“Do you have pictures?”
“I will. Send the money to my PayPal account. My email is... oh god...”
The odor was rotten meat and formaldehyde. Somehow, while I was in the coffin, I’d gotten
a hunk of dead flesh up my nose. Dead flesh covered in boogers. And a nose hair.
I leaned over and puked up the coffee, Danish, and Advil. Eighteen bucks and change, shot
to hell.
“Mr. McGlade? Are you there?”
I wiped a toe through the puke, looking for the Advil. They were probably still good.
Instead, I saw something that made me want to quit eating forever.
Part of a human ear.
I got closer, sure it had to be some coincidentally-shaped chunk of chewed Danish.
No, it was an ear. The upper, cartilagey part. I often nibbled women’s ears when we were
fooling around. I must have got caught up in the role-playing and bitten off a hunk.
“Mr. McGlade?”
“Scratch that. I want triple.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“Lady, I went to third base with a dead guy last night, all because of your husband. Pay me,
or find some other schmuck to do your dirty work.”
“You did what with a dead guy?”
“Don’t believe me? You want to talk to him?”
I held my cell phone over the ear. Then I realized I was acting a bit hysterical. Maybe I was
still asleep, and this was just a dream.
I felt my backside, wondering if the pain in my ass was truly from sitting on my keys, or
from something that was still up there...
I stuck my hand inside my pants, reaching down the plumber’s crack...
It’s a dream, it has to be a dream...
A pigeon waddled over, pecked up the ear, and ran off. My fingers crept closer...
“Mr. McGlade?”
A dream, all a dream, just a harmless dream...
And then I touched the severed end of something that shouldn’t be there. Something that felt
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