AcmeShorts

The thrill was gone. Was it possible Smalls'd been in the biz too long? 15K of swag sat in the van yet here he could barely be bothered to urinate on the couch, let alone leave his steaming brown calling card somewhere pointlessly cruel.

Once upon a time Smalls used to make it a point of pride to outdo himself scatalogically on every job--didn't matter how small. In those heady days he'd smeared feces on a Wheaton terrier, shat in a shampoo bottle, unfurled a hot coil onto a victim's fresh baked lemon chiffon pie and left a hundred other "messages" conveying malice for his marks' bourgeois lifestyles. What's more, he never repeated the same delivery or location twice. But his initiative had waned as of late. Evaporated completely, more like.

Did Smalls' lack of hustle result from sensing success in crime had rendered his professed contempt for wordly comforts inauthentic? Or had his superior larceny skills ironically led to an adrenaline decrease on the job and subsequent loss of bowel movement volatility? Or maybe you could just chalk it up to laziness. These days he sometimes even "brown bagged it"--i.e., pre-defecated into a Ziploc and brought it along for instant dispersal--rather than pinching the loaf "live", so to speak. Why on Earth hadn't he brought a bag along today?

Thing was, there was no concrete reward. What was the point, when you got right down to it? Christ, what more did he have to prove?

Still, in his heart of hearts he knew he was only cheating himself. This was the line of work he'd chosen. You never knew; maybe the old fire'd come back one of these days; in the meantime the only honorable thing was to keep going through the motions.

With a defeated sigh, Smalls crouched over Billy's action figures and let his pants slide to the floor.