All You Can Eat Italian Buffet by Armand Rosamilia
from Seven Deadly Sins: A PUNK NOIR Magazine series
Paul ‘Pulp’ Carmichael had walked right past Fat Tony Collazzo and sat at the corner table.
Fat Tony–even his own mother called him that–came here for dinner every night at six o’clock and didn’t leave until after nine. Every night.
It was an Italian buffet, serving various pastas, warm bread, antipasto and various salads.
Fat Tony never bothered with the salads.
Pulp watched as the man, on the wrong side of four hundred pounds, shoved a forkful of chicken parmigiana into his mouth, chasing it with a chunk of bread.
The man used to be a notorious killer, a hitman for The Family, the New Jersey organization. Until his eating had gotten the better part of him. Now he was relegated to a common soldier.
Pulp had been hired to make sure that arrangement stopped. Permanently.
He strode across the room and got behind Fat Tony, putting one hand on his shoulder and the other hand, holding the small syringe, near his neck.
“Are you alright, sir?” Pulp began the Heimlich maneuver a second after injecting Fat Tony with the poison.
Fat Tony would never kill another person or another plate of pasta again.
This story appears as part of Seven Deadly Sins, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series, originally published July 2025.
Bio
Armand Rosamilia is a full-time crime thriller and horror author who loves coffee, bourbon and bourbon-flavored coffee.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art" -- La Rochefoucauld
Rest in pasta 🍝