Act Two:
Modus Operandi
Prologue:
One Hundred Corpses of Frank Gorshin
Edward's apron dripped a smelly brown liquid on Hell's sticky linoleum floor. Surprisingly void of broken glass, used needles, and rusty razor blades, Hell chose many patterns and hues of strictly linoleum to cover their floors. It was never cleaned similar to the dishwater he used as a bus boy in Hell's most popular restaurant, The Hungriest Tapeworm. Despite suffering this egregious insult Edward found another problem in the coworkers with whom he shared space. His only occasional friendship grew upon meeting everyone's favorite patriot and fellow bus boy Benjamin Franklin.
"Mr. Franklin, I'm shocked to see such a great man as yourself here," Edward exclaimed on their first meeting, "Whatever could bring you this way?"
"Too much to tell, son. The nights were so long, so very long and dark but let's not dwell on such a mundane thing as how a man chose to pass his time." Always the same answer whenever he was pressed. Generally they spoke on current events topside or as close as they could get. The rest of the crew at The Hungriest Tapeworm was not nearly as pleasant towards Edward.
Head waitress Marilyn Monroe served most nights to much adoration from the regulars. This love came despite the unfortunate punishment of continuing to age past death. This meant the ungodly bag of meat she hauled around calling a body died over fifty years ago but continued to rot. She regularly lost a finger or ear in a patron's dish but men rarely complained. Using his well-known way with words Franklin put it best.
"And yet those boys will still line up around the block for it." The day manager Genghis Khan devolved over centuries in the pit. Since no one spoke his language he mostly grunted and beat people mercilessly with his whip. The night manager Adolf Hitler spent most of his time in the back pulling wisps of hair out over the uneven budget. Sometimes he gave long speeches about expansion and taking over that chicken place up the street ran by a colonel. Edward often wondered as to the authenticity of the "chicken" they fried. Honestly he expected more from an afterlife nearly brimming with former FDA employees.
One typical night Edward crouched under the sink attempting to remove a clog in the bend that had grown sentient. It also grew teeth and attempted to latch onto his fingers whenever he got close. The clog swore in Dutch and demanded a brand of European snuff Edward didn't recognize. Using a pipe snake to pry the clog's uneven teeth open Edward poured a half glass of wine almost complete vinegar by this point down its throat as it coughed and spit some back at him. Next Edward shook some baking soda in after it. The clog began choking and seizing up as its putrid stink spread through the back of house. He stabbed it a few times with a paring knife to make sure it was truly dead.
"Bus boy! Herr Gorshin has come to visit you again," Hitler called cheerily from the dining room. Exploding through the swinging doors Edward wielded a cast iron skillet and immediately attacked his nemesis. On his first night at work in Hell Edward received a visit from Frank Gorshin a man who claimed to be an actor on some sort of perverted Batman television program. Even more than that he insisted he played the role of the Riddler though Edward knew this to be false as he wasn't nearly handsome enough to capture his essence.
That first night Frank explained he served as a messenger from a place called the Source Wall. He wore the same grey smoking jacket and brown slacks on each subsequent visit. Promising him freedom from the indignities of Edward's current employment Frank encouraged him to abandon his pride and ask for aid from a higher power. Apparently this entailed Edward accepting the truth that he had been a fool in his misguided quest for the secrets of the universe.
Edward's reaction wasn't hard to imagine. Frank died in the kitchen foaming at the mouth from his order of eggplant parmesan salted with industrial grade rat poison. Calmly Edward finished his cleaning duties and then dragged Frank's body out back into the alley next to the dumpster.
The second night Edward was so surprised to see Frank and hear his offer again that he stabbed the actor twenty-six times with a rusty corkscrew. It shocked Edward even more when he dragged Frank out back to find his first poisoned body still in the alley rotting merrily away. The third night Edward grew so angry at the fraudulent imposter and his disrespectful offer that he drowned Frank in his tub of blackened dish water. For over three months Edward's night ended in another original murder and a growing pile of repetitive sin.
Tonight like all the ones before Edward viciously attacked Frank this time in the dining room to Hitler's severe embarrassment. Frank and Edward crashed through a table occupied by Ronald Reagan, Karl Marx, and two of the four Golden Girls. The table didn't seem to notice as Reagan and Marx were already exchanging heated words, but the rest of the restaurant certainly did.
Next to the hostess station Pope John Paul II grabbed his friend the great chairman Mao by the shoulder and insisted they go somewhere else. Mao shrugged. At the bar an underage Anne Frank cheered on the scuffle while she and Joan River's laughed like no one's business. Princess Diana grabbed snatched up her drink, kicked at the pair coming her way, and told them to piss off.
"I don't need you or them, Frank! I'm running out of ways to kill you so tell them I don't need their offer!" Edward screamed punctuating his sentences with swings of the heavy skillet, "They think I'm a fool? ME? I'm the smartest man who ever lived! I can figure it out on my own! I'm a genius! GENIUS! GENIUS!" When the rage burned off he dropped the pan and spat at Frank's caved in skull. His face was a bloodied mash of skin and bone.
For the first time Edward noticed his captivated audience. The patrons hung on a precipice of silence as he grabbed Frank by the ankle and dragged him back toward the kitchen. Passing a table where Margaret Thatcher and Tex Avery shared an appetizer of moldy caviar Edward heard her express a very British disapproval with a quiet tut-tut. He stopped, kicked over their table, and screamed in her face.
"WHO WANTS THE SPECIAL?" No one responded as he pushed through the door to the back while Frank left a wet shining trail of blood stretching out behind him. Hitler fainted and the crowded restaurant began to murmur and hum again. A completely unperturbed Mark Twain looked up at his dumbfounded waitress finally ready to place his order.
"Ah think ah will try the special, ma'am."
Behind the restaurant Edward heard a scuffling on the other side of the mountain of Franks as he stacked another body. The figure flicked a lighter and hit a hastily crafted crack pipe.
"HIIIIYOOOOO!" the silhouette called into the night.
"McMahon, is that you?" Edward asked.
"Yessir," the disheveled man stated shuffling around the pile. Ed McMahon, famous sidekick of Johnny Carson, appeared wild eyed and hitching under the layers of filthy blankets draped over him. Edward often ran into Mr. McMahon back there either getting high or chewing a mouthful of something Edward refused to acknowledge.
"Hello young man," McMahon stated, "Tossing another log on the fire, I see?"
"I'm afraid so," Edward lamented.
"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth but why do you keep killing this guy, son?" McMahon asked going back to the pipe. Edward sat on the step and sighed with melancholy.
"Honestly I'm not sure anymore. The truth is I could use some help, but it's hard to ask for something like that."
"Why?" McMahon asked burning the rock.
"I guess I'm used to being the best and I shouldn't need it. You can relate. You and Johnny were always on top. Where is Johnny by the way?" Edward asked.
"Heaven," McMahon answered leaning back on the step blowing smoke into the starless sky.
"Oh," Edward replied sorry that he had brought it up.
"Here's the thing, kid. Being the best doesn't mean much in the end. That is if you don't have your friends with you. Sometimes it's about reaching back and pulling people up with you like John did for me. Or there's the other possibility I guess…"
"What's that?" Edward asked.
"That you're not the smartest. That maybe, just maybe you don't know everything you think you do, yessir," McMahon chuckled.
"You know what I think, McMahon? I think you're a burned out crack head who isn't worth anything," Edward's anger returned quickly. He grabbed a broom sitting against the wall and swung at the old bum who deftly dodged the strikes.
"I want you out of my alley now!" Edward demanded. McMahon skipped down the steps and grabbed a severed arm from the edge of the pile.
"And quit eating those bodies or next time you're getting the hose!" he yelled as McMahon sprinted down the alley.
"HIIIIYOOOOO!" the old host yelled behind him. Sisyphus came to mind as Edward sat back on the step and stared at the mountainous pile of mutilated actors. Despite a lack of sun Hell's heat baked the stack of corpses at an alarming rate. The early ones at the bottom were essentially compost at this point.
"This boulder just keeps getting bigger," he complained to himself as he lit up a cigarette. It was a bad habit he picked up there. Franklin rolled his own and didn't mind sharing.
"It certainly does, Eddie," a head of Frank's sticking out of the pile agreed, "How many times do you plan on killing me before you start listening?" Then another Frank spoke and another each cutting the last off mid statement.
"Don't you want to change? To move on? It's the pride-"
"-holds you back. You have done nothing in your life to warrant such a high opinion of-"
"-yourself as you hate everyone else for not living up to what you believe is possible and necessary-"
"-and good is that we use what we've been given to the best of our abilities for the betterment of everyone-"
"-thinks you're a deluded, no talent hack who gets outsmarted daily by a crazy man dressed up in pajamas-"
"STOP!" Edward screamed at them.
"Fine," the latest severed head that spoke rolled away from the pile up to the steps, "How about this? A nice juicy cut of that sweet truth you crave…you're not dead yet."
"Nonsense, I've been here killing you for ages," Edward laughed.
"I'll admit it's certainly felt that way but actually you're still lying on that boardroom table being kept alive by the last person you'd ever expect. Would you like to see?" Frank asked. Warily Edward admitted he would.
"Stick your head in that dumpster."
"What? Absolutely not," Edward protested.
"It's not even a real dumpster. You're talking to a pile of dead bodies. Just do it," Frank's head demanded. When he did Edward saw down onto the scene he left seemingly so long ago. To his surprise the youngest attendee Anarky performed CPR on his lifeless body.
"Do you see now? I'm not lying. Tell me what else you can see of your city," Frank asked. Edward looked deeper and saw armies amassing. An unstoppable force led into motion by love, the greatest weapon of all. Among the countless tragic possibilities he found a lonely chance of things actually changing for the better. He came out of that dumpster a changed man from a single glance into eternity. Like so many unreasonable people inhabiting the world all it took to correct his opinion was a small dose of perspective.
"I see it now, Frank. I am a fool. I always have been and I understand that now. Please help me. Help us all," Edward lamented.
"I'm afraid that's not really in my department, buddy. I'm here to teach you and reveal to you the answer you gave up everything for. First thing to do is get out of this alley. Why don't you lose the apron while you're at it?" the head advised. He walked down the corridor to the dreary main street of Hell. Immediately Frank pulled up to the sidewalk in a lime green sports car.
"Hurry up. We need to get moving if we're going to get you back to your body in time," Frank spurred him along. They sped off across highway on-ramps and bridges moving away from the urban sprawl.
"I'm sorry I killed you, Frank," Edward apologized.
"It's who you are. I wouldn't expect anything else from you but maybe we can change that. Maybe I can prove you're more than your arrogance, and if not…well, we have contingencies for every outcome. There's no stopping what you've begun now. We're taking it all the way home to meet the gods of the great and powerful Riddler." A quiet tension filled the car.
"Ed?"
"Yes…"
"It's going to make Hell seem like your dream job."