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Slow Eddie & Nikita
With a name like Eduardo Casino you'd expect a bit more flash. Like an ascot or a gold necklace or suspenders.
Or a ducktail. Or maybe a or even a shark skin suit. Something. But all you get is Slow Eddie the Weasel,
a boot licking racket boy burnout from Queens who saw his abusive mother come at him naked once and hasn't
gone to bed without a pair of shades and a switchblade since.
These days he furrows under the city like a rabid rodent, eating other people's garbage and leaving a
stain on everything he touches. If you ever need someone to breed rats for you, Slow Eddie the Weasel's
your man. Would have made a hell of a Nazi. Why Slow Eddie hates women isn't much of a mystery, but
analyzing the little worm doesn't help the ones he'd skinned and cleaned as if they were rabbits that
he'd found lying wounded in the road; or explain why his victims all seem to be tall, thin, mousy
haired types who look exactly like his mommy dearest.
Nikita is shivering, her feet caked with ice, the grease-streaked New York snow bouncing like dirty marshmallows
off her mousy, yet oddly appealing, 70's style hairdo. Humiliated after getting turned down for ten secretarial
jobs in a row, she staggers down 42nd Street determined to find the address of the next Employment Agency on
her list or die trying. It isn't in her to quit, which is apparently some kind of Russian Mafioso thing on
her grandfather's side. More balls than sense her mother says.
Because the melted snow has obscured the address of her next appointment, Nikita bows her head and stops
dead in her tracks, as blue as she's ever been. She doesn't even notice the rancid, loosely wrapped bundle
of human waste crouching in the alley like a bird dog on point, but she does feel the knife he's got nudged
up against her ribs. Considering the week she's had, she mutters wearily, "Go ahead, stick it in, fucker.
You'll probably be doing me a favor."
The shocked shitless troll scrunches up his coldly detached squirrel eyes and looks nearly straight
up into Nikita's face, snorting out of the side of his crooked little maggot mouth, "Let's see some
green, bitch!"
Not being a great fan of PMS or being rejected for employment ten times in a row or, for that matter,
being dumped by a husband who'd only recently walked out on her, leaving nothing behind but twenty counterfeit
fifties and a colicky cat she hates, Nikita leans down and growls, "I'm a lot more afraid of me than I am of
you, Shorty, and if I was you, which, thank God I'm not, I'd be afraid of me too."
"Jesus I'm gonna shit my pants I'm so scared! If I find out you weigh a hundred pounds I'll fall over dead in shock."
Rubbing her oversized purple purse menacingly against the troll's crotch, Nikita responds as cool
as a custom pool cue: "Listen, you sawed off little prawn, a .357 magnum doesn't weigh all that much
either, but can you imagine the hole it could put in a bedbug your size?"
Calling her bluff he scoffs, "Oh, shit, now I'm too petrified to pee!"
"Well now, it's too bad intelligence design hasn't had more of an affect on your reasoning there, Einstein."
"You think you're in a position to crack wise with me, you fucking giraffe?"
"Why lower myself?" Nikita scoffs, "pardon the expression. And considering your inability to decipher
the freaking time of day, why bother? It's almost dark, dip shit, in case you haven't noticed. Shouldn't
you be home fondling your little brother or something?"
"You gotta be kidding me. I'm the one with the blade here, you twisted twat. Now give me that fucking purse
before I make you squeal like a pig!"
"It's obvious you stole that line from "Deliverance". It's not a very smart one either considering
the size of the gun I've got pointed at your half inch piss stick." What the hell, Nikita figures,
Pig Pen over there doesn't know she's bluffing, it's worth a shot.
Bewildered, the pint-sized runt stares again at the lump in Nikita's purse and begins to think maybe she COULD
have a gun poked up against his zipper, and judging by the deranged look in her eye, maybe she IS thinking
about turning him into a eunuch. He pockets his blade and grumbles, "Girls with guns. Jesus, what next?"
Nikita scoffs icily, her uncontrollable temper sizzling, "What comes next, you lily livered little gnome,
is you turn around and go play nice with your brain impaired, junkie playmates down at the shooting gallery,
and get the fuck out of my face"
"That was a bit harsh don't you think?" the troll jeers. "Jesus, who put that stick up your butt?"
He spins around on one spiked heel, executes a perfectly demure pirouette, and snickers over his shoulder,
"I'll be seeing you around, Stretch, you whacked out alien freak of nature. I think I hear my mother calling."
The tragic little troll flips Nikita a backhanded bird and shuffles off into the bitter white night
smack into the grill of a speeding cement truck that's just skidded on a patch of ice and jumped the curb,
smashing dead center into Slow Eddie's already sunken chest. Nikita is thinking he looks more like a basted
Butterball turkey than a person, his gizzards, gravy, and all the stuffing lying there in a polluted pool
of blood, guts, and gore. "Serves you right, you cross eyed little ferret," is all she has to say about it.
The poor little sucker had seen the truck coming and sprung straight up into the air like one of those
jack-in-the-boxes right before that stupid "pop goes the weasel" song starts playing. Unfortunately,
he'd timed his jump about a second too late, forever enshrining in infamy his nickname, Slow Eddie the Weasel.
Steven Marshall Newton studied with C. D. B. Bryant and Philip Roth at the
University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop. Studied English Lit and Greek Mythology at Bradley University.
Studied graduate and undergraduate creative writing and poetry at the University of New Mexico.
He is a professional songwriter, part-time photographer,international headhunter, small business owner,
and a published poet. A short story, "Nothing But A Kiss", Won First Place in the
SANTA FE REPORTER Annual Short Story Contest. "Somewhere in LA", received honorable mention in the
ALIBI Magazine Short Story Contest. He was also a finalist in the Gator Springs Gazette
Annual Short Story Contest. He has published short stories in Amarillo Bay Literary Magazine,
Juked, the Evergreen Review, Gator Springs Gazette,BLINK, and Hot Metal Press .
Email: Steven Marshall Newton
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