Read Online Screwed by Eoin Colfer - Free Book Online

Fortz through the blood. “Stop! Police!”
    In the words of the sweatband-wearing, fuzzy legend J. McEnroe: You cannot be fucking serious.
    I bet McEnroe said fucking all the time off-camera. You can just imagine it coming out of his face.
    I bounce on the bed to work up momentum and behind me I hear scuffling and clicking. I just bet that’s Krieger finding his gun. He may be a shitty cop, but usually the shitty cops are the best shots.
    A bullet clangs into the chair’s column, knocking me forward a step and I decide to make use of this blast of kinetic energy to hurl myself toward the wall, praying for a single board of sheetrock. The way my day is going my head is gonna connect with a water pipe.
    Also, my use of the verb hurl may have been a little optimistic. Lurch might be a bit more honest.
    Saints be praised, luck o’ the Irish, the wall is a flimsy partition and I bludgeon my way through, directly into the middle of a threesome. At least I only count three. One second I’m in a room with two decidedly out-of-shape cops and the next I’m on a bed with a bunch of extremely well endowed young people who seem to be loving their work.
    A line from Ghostbusters pops into my head: Do not cross the streams; that would be bad.
    I duck underneath what I hope is a forearm and tumble to the floor.
    A film crew is by the foot of the bed and the director jumps to his feet, all ponytail and pout.
    “A eunuch? I didn’t order a eunuch?”
    I will replay that later and be offended.
    After a moment’s grace my sudden apparition causes pandemonium. Even in the kinkiest pornographic scene no one is expecting a semi-nude middle-aged man to come crashing through the wall. I ain’t even waxed, for heaven’s sake.
    The guys lose their tempers among other things and the girl’s squeals sound a lot more authentic than the ones she was making a few seconds ago.
    “Sorry,” I say automatically. “Just passing through.”
    Waiting in the wings is an aged fluffer standing sentry at a dessert trolley loaded with various accessories. She is the only one un-freaked out by my arrival. Her jaded, heavy-lidded eyes tell me she has seen a lot weirder things than me in her day.
    “Can you uncuff me?” I ask from the floor, shaking my chains urgently at her.
    The woman squints at my shackles while the director calls “cut” over and over again in increasingly panicked tones and an expensive-looking light on an aluminium stalk keels over, exploding in a shower of white sparks.
    “What kinda cuffs you got there?”
    I glance nervously at the hole in the wall. “Police. Standard issue.”
    She laughs. “Cop cuffs. I could open those with my tongue.” This idea is made even more unsavory by her mouthful of nicotine-stained choppers.
    “A key will be just fine, darlin’,” I say, laying on the leprechaun.
    The woman locates a key and goes to work on my cuffs. Meanwhile there is more activity behind me on the bed as Krieger attempts to climb through the hole.
    “A gimp!” exclaims the director. “I am not doing a gimp scene. What is this, nineteen ninety-two?”
    I twist around just in time to see one of the working studs, an obscenely muscled man, deliver a right hook that just about takes Krieger’s head off.
    “Motherfucker has a gun,” he explains, which is enough to send the starlet shrieking from the room.
    Krieger droops in the hole. One hundred sixty pounds of dead weight.
    A few clicks later I am a free man.
    “Who the hell are you?” the director screams. “What the hell is going on?”
    I read someplace that it’s acceptable for men to scream like girls if they’re movie directors or being electrocuted.
    “It’s okay, people,” I say, climbing to my feet, trying to muster some gravitas in spite of my appearance. “I’m police. Undercover. Those two were planning an illegal shoot. Just put all your permits and birth certificates on the table and I can have you out of here in five minutes.”
    The room goes