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Monday, February 10, 2025
Doctor Moreau's Favourite
Sunday, February 09, 2025
Tropical Castaway Beachcomber
Saturday, February 08, 2025
True Blue Navy Through and Through
Friday, February 07, 2025
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Leaning Cowpoke
Shoveled softly
Sublimate and subvert
Slim Sanderson
Sinking slowly southward
Sighing softly
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Calamity Jean
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Flash! Oww-wwww!
With a man's torn shirt
Nothing but a man
Covered with bruises and blood
No one but this pain-wracked guy
Can save our wo-orld
Oh, Flash
Oh, Flash
Monday, February 03, 2025
Rick Barlowe
"I would if I thought about it," I drawled. I pulled a cigarette from my jacket, leaned against my desk, and scraped a match across the bottom of my shoe. I touched the resulting flame to the fag and took a deep puff, contemplating the ceiling fan that whirred above, undisturbed.
"Stop mocking me!" Peabody spat, brandishing the gun. "I'll shoot you dead if you don't tell me what I want to know!"
An ironic chuckle slipped free before I could suppress it. "Kid, if you shoot me dead, you're the one that's going to need answering--to the Slender Man."
"I'm not scared of him!" Peabody yelled, quivering. "He knows I'm loyal!"
"Oh sure," I said. "So was Dunwich. He was loyal. Quimby was loyal. They were loyal all the way down to the bottom of the bay."
Peabody burst into tears, cradling his head in his hands. "Oh, if only that witch hadn't interfered! We didn't care about the inheritance! Only the notes! Only the Steinbrunner notes!"
"Here's a note for you. Get out of my office and tell the Slender Man to come in person next time. I don't talk to flunkies."
I thought Peabody's eyes would pop free of their sockets, so great was his rage. But after a moment, he left, stomping his size four feet all the way down the hall.
I turned off the lights so I could stand in the dark for a while. Hallway light spilling through the glass window on my office door painted my name across the weathered wood floor at my feet. The letters were distorted, angular, like buildings in a German expressionist movie. It was the perfect visual metaphor for my state of mind--questioning who I was and what I was doing mixed up in this mess. A younger, smarter version of me wouldn't have gotten involved. But my hair was silver now, and climbing three flights of stairs up to my office had become an unwelcome chore.
One way or another, this would be my last case. I wondered if I'd finish it dead or alive.
Sunday, February 02, 2025
Slim
But never mind that. I hadn't had a client in weeks and I was down to my last nickel. When she sat on the edge of my desk and dangled one stiletto heel from her toes, only part of my booze-fogged brain absorbed the details of her case; the other parts were focused on her writhing toes and the curve of that nylon-wrapped foot. Something about an inheritance due her, an inheritance contested by a long-lost supposed black sheep half-sister showing up on her doorstep at a time so inconvenient it beggared belief and buggered up the works.
Somewhere along the way I caught her name: Slim. Well, slim she was, and so were her cigarettes. Also her patience, because she was snapping her fingers right in front of my eyes.
"Are you going to take the case, gumshoe, or are you gonna keep staring at my feet?" she barked. Her breath smelled like coffee grounds and tar. I liked it.
I drew back from her percussive fingers and rose up from my well-worn office chair.
"My fee is ten bucks a day plus expenses," I said. "Don't ask me to carry a gun or otherwise fool with rough stuff. I'm strictly an investigator. I'm no one's enforcer, no one's goon, no one's gunsel. Get me?"
She smirked with lips glossy as patent leather.
"Sure, I get you. How you do your business is--your business," she said. "Besides, if you get yourself killed, no medical expenses. Or any expenses, I suppose."
"You'll pay my secretary," I growled. She shrugged as if the cash didn't matter at all, then turned on her heel and walked out the door.
I flicked off the light switch and stood by the window, looking down at the street, the big neon EAT sign flickering on and off, red-yellow, red-yellow. I hoped to see those long legs again, marching off down the sidewalk, but she must have headed west instead of east.
I thought about going downstairs to the diner to spend my last nickel, but a coffee went for ten cents these days and I hadn't asked for an advance. My mind had still been preoccupied by the sheen of nylon stretched over smooth, uncallused feet. She was the kind of gal who used a pumice stone.
A little while later I'd find out I was wrong about a lot of things regarding Slim and her case--but not the condition of her feet.