48 The burning man

“I told you,” says the Scarecrow Man, “this can go easy, or this can go hard, but it’s got to get done.  It’s just, it’s got to, you see?”

The Girl is holding the handle of the knife, sobbing now.  Blood is beginning to stream across the yellow plastic laminated table and onto the hallowed planks of the Palisades roller rink.  Scarecrow accompanies Toto in serenading the Girl,

It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do . . .

Scarecrow Man walks a few paces away – he’s not concerned about the Girl escaping – and lights up another smoke.  Scarecrow doesn’t see as the Girl wrenches the knife from the laminate table, wrenches it from between her radius and ulna.  With his back to her, the Girl is able to rush at Scarecrow Man; she gets just a split second drop on him.  She stabs him in the small of his back, just beneath Scarecrow’s right shoulder blade.  Toto is rudely interrupted as Palisades fills momentarily with the sound of his pain.  He spins about on the Girl instantly, but she is armed now.  She is able to get off three more quick lunges before he gets a hold of her.  The stabs are sloppy, but do some damage nonetheless.  The gangly man wrestles the blade away from the Girl and punches her in the face.  The Girl falls flat-backed onto the rink floor, and the killer makes for her.  “What have you done to me, you stupid child?!”  Scarecrow Man is furious now.  He means to exact his revenge upon her with a cruel slowness.  But it is not to happen.  It becomes apparent to both victim and assailant that Scarecrow Man’s wounds are in fact quite serious.  Blood streams out his pants leg into an alarmingly broad and solid puddle.  He takes a step or two towards the girl, but winces terribly.  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he says.  A rabbit-fear takes shape in his eyes.  He forgets about the Girl and starts to make for the exit.  But it is too far: an unfortunate irony.  A few bloody steps and the Scarecrow falls to his knees.  He crawls, slowly, towards the doors. 

The Girl rises slowly to her feet, holding her slashed forearm, and approaches the wounded man. Tears of blood weep from between her clenched fingers.  “What are you doing?!” the killer yells at her.  “Call 911!  Call an ambulance, you stupid little girl!”   The Girl steps on his wrist and pries the knife back yet again.

“The Girl is gone,” she tells the man calmly.  “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  But that was a long time ago, Scarecrow Man.   Now is the time to put childish things behind me.  Lauralei is gone now.  Sorry.” 

Scarecrow Man’s face is crimson with fury.  “Call an ambulance you stu . . .” Maggie plunges the ornate knife into Scarecrow Man’s Adams’ Apple.  His back arches convulsively; He is dead within moments.

Maggie walks unhurriedly to the Snack Bar and rifles noisily around, clanging metal cabinet doors and utensils about in her search.  She returns shortly to the man’s dead body, carrying a canister of some sort of fuel that she has found in the kitchen.  She douses the body in the flammable liquid and, with a frozen corndog in her mouth, strikes a match from a small book and tosses it on the Scarecrow.  There is a wicked whoosh as Scarecrow Man, AKA the Kensington Caller, immediately ignites and a furious stack of flame sucks up all the oxygen in the Palisades roller-temple.

Maggie, not Lauralei, cracks an ice-hard piece of corndog off and munches it idly as she strolls in slow motion toward the ticket booth and freedom beyond. Scarecrow Man’s pyre rises and claws angrily for the Disco Ball above.

Hall & Oates lovingly serenade Maggie out the door.  Private eyes – clap clap – are watching you – clap clap – they’re watching you’re ev’ry move . . .