The Bagman

Chapter 6
Interrogation

Chapter Description: In which the Bagman deduces the name of his target.

Chapter 6- Interrogation.

Max Pigro sat in his dingy apartment, playing a movie on his brand new Playstation 3, watching on his new big screen T.V., while sitting on his brand new couch, surrounded by his brand new surround sound system. Max had recently experienced a windfall and had immediately rushed to spend it. He had just lost his job, his rent was past due, and his phone bill was delinquent, and he really needed to go grocery shopping- maybe eat something healthy for once- but Max had priorities. They were screwed up priorities, but they were priorities none the less.

He was just getting to the good part of his favorite movie- Bella Donna‘s Fucking Girls Again…priorities remember - when he heard a loud knocking at his door. “Mr. Pigro, open up!” A voice called out from behind the door. “This is your landlady, Ms. Watson! Open up before I have to go get the key!”

Yeah, that sounded like Ms. Watson, alright. The old bat was always on him about money. It’s not like she didn’t have an entire apartment building filled with regularly paying customers. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone and let him pay on his own time? It was the middle of the night for Chrissakes!

He ambled over to the door and peeked through the peephole. Sure enough it was Ms. Watson, pounding on his door with an afghan draped around her shoulders and her coke-bottle glasses hiding her eyes. She must be really mad if she was calling him “Mr. Pigro”. Normally it was just “Max”, between the two of them. Max looked closely through the peephole. There didn’t seem to be any big burly guys around him, and it looked like she didn‘t have anything in her hands; so no eviction notice. Maybe Max could sweet talk the spinster and get some piece and quiet for the night.

“Miss Watsoooooon-” Max’s speech ground to a stop as soon as he opened the door. Ms. Watson wasn’t there. Instead, a black gloved hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed onto Max’s throat. Max was knocked back and manhandled back inside his apartment. The door closed, seemingly of his own accord. Max raised up on his tip-toes to prevent from strangling.

In the light of his crappy apartment, Max could see his assailant better. Attached to the black glove was a fat man wearing a dirty black trench coat and matching fedora. He had a palpable air of menace and disgust about him. His oily grey hair framed his puffy face, and Max felt as if those sunken in grey eyes were burrowing directly into his soul.

“You dumb prick”, the Bagman rasped. “You dumb prick.” He raised his slimy head up and looked around the room. “You pull a stunt like you did and you don’t immediately skip town?”

A panic stricken Max began to flail and struggle for air. “What are you talking about?” he wheezed, the Bagman not quite cutting off his air supply. Max stumbled onto the dirty floor of his apartment and landed on his back as the Bagman roughly shoved him down. He tried to scramble away, but found a boot planted firmly on his chest, pinning him there.

“Mama Maria’s Italian Eatery blew up a few nights ago.” the Bagman said, shoving his boot down into Max’s chest. “Police reports say that a shit load of propane was snuck into the back kitchen.” Max started trembling. “What it also says,” the Bagman continued, “was that you’re one of the few surviving employees. Turns out you called in sick that night. What happened? Were you busy buying all your new stuff?”

“You a cop?” Max asked.

“What do you think?” was the only answer he got. Max slowly shook his head no. He should have skipped town, he should have skipped down, he should have skipped town. But it was too late now. The man in black reached into a side pocket on a satchel he was carrying. He pulled out, of all things, a bag of marbles.

The Bagman reached into the ziplock container and took out a single round, polished stone. He held it to his lips, kissed it, and then spoke. “Max Pigro.” The marble started to glow an unearthly green.

“A sinner’s stone,” the Bagman said by way of explanation. “My own little invention. Based off an old Voodoo ritual with a little bit of Japanese Oni Magic weaved in. Real potent stuff. I say your name and-” he took his foot off Max’s chest and placed a marble in its place. “it fills up with your sins and starts weighing you down.” Max had less than a second to gasp for a proper breath of air before the marble started crushing his chest. It was as if the weight.

“Looking around,” the Bagman observed, “I’d say you got pretty good amounts of sloth, envy, greed, aaaand…,” he looked at the T.V, “lust. Ooooh, Bella Donna’s Fucking Girls again…good choice; you’ve got some good priorities in terms of smut.” Max kicked futilely on the floor as the stone continued to pin him to the floor. He thought he heard the floorboards creek underneath him. They were starting to break! If he didn’t get out of this, he could literally fall through the floor!

“So let’s make this simple,” the gravely voice echoed throughout the room. “Where’d you get the money for all this stuff?”

“Some guy gave it to me!” Max groaned.

“No shit,” the Bagman replied, “what was his name?”

“He was some gangly, wiry guy. Mid twenties, tops!” Max answered, his panic building as the pressure refused to let up.

“I didn’t ask you what he looked like, I asked for his name!” the Bagman bellowed.

“He didn’t give me a name,” Max squirmed, then he felt his chest hurt even more. The stone was getting heavier! Max screamed out in pain.

“Lying’s a sin, Max,” the man in the trench coat hissed. “Keep adding more sins to the stone and you won’t have a rib cage left.”

“Okay, okay!” Max shouted, thought it barely came out above a whisper.

“He gave me some money in return for me not showing up for work that day and me giving him my uniform. That’s all I had to do. When I asked him his name he told me that he was just a ghost…no no no no no…a…a..a specter! But I could call him Johnny!”

“Johnny?” the fat man rubbed his chin. “A specter?” Then his eyes lit up. “And you said he was maybe in his mid twenties?” Max nodded. What might have been a laugh escaped the Bagman’s throat. Really though, it sounded more like a dry wheeze. “I’ll give the kid this, he’s got a flair for the dramatic.”

“So you’ll let me go?” Max asked.

“Sure, kid,” the Bagman smiled. “Sure. But first…” The Bagman reached down and unbuttoned Max‘s pants. He pulled off yanked off Max’s shoes and pulled down Max’s pants and underwear. What the hell was going on? Was he about to get raped? Max tried to shout out-to protest, to scream, to plead- but it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

The Bagman opened the main compartment of his satchel, and produced something square and white out of it. It crinkled like plastic and Max could make out a yellow line going down the middle. The Bagman unfolded it, and Max noticed the three little tapes on either side. An adult diaper?

“It’s a Depends,” the Bagman explained as he slid it under Max’s butt. “It ain’t the greatest, but it’ll do the job.” The Bagman pulled the adult undergarment up between Max’s legs and quickly and sloppily fastened the tapes on. “You might get a leak, but you won’t care soon enough.”

The Bagman went into a side compartment of his bag, and withdrew a white plastic canister. Baby powder? “I know what you’re thinking,” the Bagman said, “this typically goes on before the diaper, well this ain’t your typical baby powder. It’s baby teeth soaked in demon spit and then ground into a fine dust. Has a real interesting effect, wanna see?”

He shook a little powder into his hand, leaned over and blew it directly into Max’s face. The marble was taken off of Max’s chest, and involuntarily he took a deep breath. He sneezed a little bit as the powder went up his nose. Suddenly Max felt a little weird. An emptiness was filling him, creating a void.

The first thing of Max to go was his short term memory. Where was he, and how did he get here? Who was the scary fat man standing over him? Then went his knowledge. Out the door went his reading, writing, math, science, history, and even his trivia and useless information he had picked up over the years. Then went his language, his toilet training, his walking and even his crawling. The yellow line wetness indicator vanished as Max peed into his diaper, unknowingly

The Bagman smiled at his work, the mental part of the transformation complete. Now for the physical part. He raised up his hands over his victim and placed them on Max’s forehead. He intoned the words, “Adolescentia dissipasset, corpus abiit, mentem ut sequi ex iam in”. Max’s body wasted away. He became bonier, frailer. His hair turned grey and thinned out. Age spots formed on his skin while he drooled away and babbled.

The Bagman stood up and admired his handiwork. Guns were always so sloppy, and loud. Plus there was no poetry in it. Now, left with the mind of a baby and the body of an old man; no one else would be able to get any information out of Max Pigro. If he was lucky, someone would come by and check on him before he starved to death, then he’d spend the rest of his remaining years in a nursing home or hospital; the deterioration of his mind written off to dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Just to give the kid a sporting chance, he left a note on the apartment door. It read “Grandpa, I’m sorry -Max.”

“So, Johnny Spettro, huh?” the Bagman mused. He finally had a name. The prodigal son was at last returning home and it was time for the Bagman to clean up the mess that Giovanni left behind all those years ago. He smiled. “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…you’ve been a bad boy.”

Next Chapter: They Meet.