Tagged: tune in next time

Sure, My Family Owns an Inflatable Woman Manufacturing Plant

  • by jena scaled-down version of Las Vegas
  • (who’s also probably looking at porn)
  • bearing a bowl of lather
  • scar on his ring finger
  • She was fair-skinned and red-headed

Tune in next time part 149                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Sure, my family owns an inflatable woman manufacturing plant,” I said defensively, “but we’ve never had a model called Astrid.”

“She was fair-‘skinned’ and red-headed, just like Tessa, so of course Maurice couldn’t resist her,” the woman said.

How did she know about Tessa?

“Here.” She thrust her phone into my face, and hit the play button on a video. “This is what was broadcast all across Harmonia, to my everlasting shame.”

In the video, the man was wearing a leather Zorro mask that hid most of his features, but his smile looked familiar, even with the keys dangling from it. The camera panned down and I could tell from the scar on his ring finger that the man she called Maurice was the man I knew as John.

I had never heard of John having a wife in Harmonia, or anywhere else for that matter, and yet here he was, on video, bearing a bowl of lather in one hand and keeping himself quite busy with the other. Beside him was the inflatable redhead, clearly a substandard model designed by an amateur who’s never seen a naked woman in real life (who’s also probably looking at porn), not the experienced professionals my family employs.

“Where did you and Maurice meet?” I asked, handing the phone back.

“In a scaled-down version of Las Vegas called TinselTown,” she said, staring hard at me. “We were introduced by a man named Jinx Damocles.”

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John’s Connection To All This

  • by KentThe man on the toilet groaned
  • “If this don’t beat cock-fighting!”
  • one of her more diaphanous outfits
  • using only one hand
  • like clandestine love affairs

Tune in next time part 150                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

John’s connection to all this shouldn’t have surprised me. He was certainly prone to things like clandestine love affairs, and evidently he could make them happen using only one hand.

“What do you know about Tessa?” I asked the woman. “And do you really think your husband’s name is Maurice?”

“I know it is,” she said. “Did you really think his name was John? As for Tessa, my only interest in her is what pertains to Maurice’s dalliances. This pretty well sums it up.” She shoved her phone at me again, and this time I saw John (Maurice, allegedly) dancing with Tessa, who wore one of her more diaphanous outfits. It was a gown of dragonfly wings I stole for her from the Bulgarian embassy in Thailand. Watching John leer at Tessa, and Tessa’s coy smile in return, I understood my companion’s sense of betrayal.

“If this don’t beat cock-fighting!” The conductor had come up the aisle and stood watching the video over my shoulder. The phone’s owner tucked it out of sight and glared at the conductor, who said, “Tickets, please.”

After he left, the woman said, “Excuse me, I must use the facilities. I will be right back.”

The train covered several miles, but she didn’t return. Thinking myself ditched, I went in search of the restroom in case I was wrong.

Behind the door of the first restroom I found was a man. His face was bruised, and wrapped tightly around his throat was a tinsel stole. I loosened it. The man on the toilet groaned.

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With the Tinsel Garrote Out of the Way

  • by jenWhen you owned your own world
  • for I was born in the North Country
  • put those running shoes on the feet of
  • engraved THIS MAN IS A PRICK
  • “Your own son?”

Tune in next time part 151                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

With the tinsel garrote out of the way, I recognized the man. It was my great uncle, Jinx Damocles! He groaned again, but in not quite the same way he had with Lyudmila in that Rhode Island church basement.

“Never mind me, Jason,” Jinxy said, fixing me with his one good eye. “Don’t let Hildegard escape!”

“She’s long gone,” I lisped, imitating my twin. “How did she manage to overpower you?”

He looked down at his missing left arm and then glared at me.

“Sorry.”

I tried to think. What could Jason and Uncle Jinx be doing in Harmonia? When Jinx was presumed dead, I had inherited TinselTown from him. Was he perhaps here to reclaim it? Could he be the one who had rebranded it Valentine Village, in all likelihood destroying whatever message I was meant to find there?

Grabbing his right (and only) hand, I hauled him to a standing position. “When you owned your own world, your own amusement park, why on Earth did you give it a Christmas theme?” I asked.

The old man stared hard at me. “It reminded me of home, for I was born in the North Country.”

That struck a chord with me. My mother chose to deliver Jason and me at the North Pole. She said it was a family tradition, but both she and Father were born at military facilities in the States, as were the majority of my siblings. My head was swimming. I found my mental Nikes and put those running shoes on the feet of my dark thoughts, and let them race. They ran laps around all the inconsistencies I’d heard through the years about “Uncle” Jinx. They reminded me of how Mother was unusually close to her alleged uncle, and how no one else in the family had the surname Damocles, and how Father refused to ever be in the same room with him. They finally came to rest in front of a sign that was engraved THIS MAN IS A PRICK BUT MOST LIKELY YOUR REAL FATHER.

“You’re not my uncle at all, are you?” I asked.

“And you’re not Jason.” He pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at me.

“You’re going to shoot me?” I asked. “Your own son?”

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You’re No Son of Mine

  • by KentHot blood, hot blood.
  • My stepdaughter vanishes for two nights and returns with an alleged husband.
  • suggesting that horses had been tied there
  • hitched up, as it were,
  • cheer a little less aggressively

Tune in next time part 152                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“You’re no son of mine,” Jinx Damocles wheezed.

The one-armed man in front of me was also the one, armed man in front of me. If paternal warmth wasn’t going to keep him from shooting me, then I had to find some other angle so he wouldn’t spill my blood. Hot blood, hot blood.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I was always told you were my uncle. You were the one who always preferred to spend time with Jason over me. Give me a chance before you disown me.”

“It ain’t like that,” Jinx said. He sighed raspily. He muttered something that sounded like, “My stepdaughter vanishes for two nights and returns with an alleged husband. Knocked up, of course.” He focused on me again and said, “You’re no son of mine because you’re my grandson. Well, step-grandson.”

The train had begun slowing as he spoke, and now I heard the squealing of the brakes as we decelerated more forcefully. “Out,” Jinx said.

We were in a field, no station or other signs of civilization in sight. Jinx marched me away from the tracks and the train started moving again.

“I thought we were going to TinselTown, or, I guess Valentine Village,” I said.

“I won’t ever go there again, and I can’t let you go either.” He crowed loudly, “Bleed the Candy Hearts! Bleed the Candy Hearts!” Then he coughed and spat before shoving me ahead with the gun.

We came to a lone tree among the tall grasses, where there were eight horseshoe imprints within an area of flattened stems, suggesting horses had been tied there, hitched up, as it were, to the tree in anticipation of our arrival.

“I think I scared ’em off,” Jinx said. “Next time I’ll cheer a little less aggressively.”

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I Was Still Reeling

  • by jen“That’s enough.”
  • violating curfew
  • a commotion and a scream
  • his fellow student of death
  • by promptitude and dexterity

Tune in next time part 153                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I was still reeling from the shock of learning that the man I had always known as my great uncle was instead my mother’s step-father. It was a baffling state of affairs that did nothing to explain why he was now holding me at gunpoint and refusing to let me go to Valentine Village to find Tessa, or at the very least a message from her.

The tree we stood under had many branches that reached toward the sky, and a single branch that dipped toward the ground. I did a quick calculation in my head, and then, by promptitude and dexterity, timed my move.

In the split-second when Jinx blinked, I sprang up, grabbed the branch, and wrapped my legs around the old man’s neck. It was a move I learned from John when I was his fellow student of death at the Academy.

Jinx dropped his gun amid a commotion and a scream that I silenced by squeezing my thighs and cutting off his air. When he crumpled and sagged, I released him and dropped down from the tree. I was now glad I’d allowed John to talk me into violating curfew so many times to hone our fighting skills in the fields outside the Academy.

In the distance I saw the Rainbow Connection, that most colorful of locomotives, still getting back up to speed. The violet caboose was just visible. I sprinted for it, my thighs shrieking and my lungs burning with the effort. I caught the rear railing just before my legs gave out, and I hauled myself up onto the platform.

I laid there, gasping, for the rest of the ride to Barbershoppe. Outside the station, I caught a cab to Valentine Village.

The amusement park was the gaudiest thing I’ve ever seen, all red and pink and frilly lace. Insipid love songs played over the sound system as I waited in line to buy a ticket. My teeth ached from the saccharinity of it all.

At the heart-shaped ticket window, the chubby man dressed like Cupid took one look at me and said, “Tessa’s waiting for you, Jason.” He let me in through a side door marked Employees Only. “She wants you to wear this.” He handed me a toga and a pair of feathery white wings that matched his own, and then stood watching as I changed into them.

“The final touch,” he said, handing me a compact full of blush and a makeup brush. He held a mirror for me as I applied layer after layer of the red stuff to my cheeks. Finally he said, “That’s enough.”

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As I Meandered

  • by Kentthat’s my butt
  • he was ready to try again
  • unnaturally taxing their bodily energies
  • to create a delicious new flavor
  • depositing his hat on the floor

Tune in next time part 154                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

As I meandered through the tacky, sappy, garish, and depressing realm of Valentine Village, I kept my eyes peeled for Tessa. Would it really be her? Or a robotic simulacrum? Or Tallulah?

“Hey, where’s your tray?” The nasal voice behind me was as grating and sour as my surroundings were pillowy and sweet. I turned to find a scrawny man in an argyle vest and a green visor, consulting the clipboard in his hand. He shook his head and then looked at me. “Wait here.”

My new supervisor stepped into a small shed and popped right back out with a silver platter covered with pastel hearts. “Get moving, a bus just pulled in.” I took the tray.

As soon as he turned away, I started examining the words on the tiny candies. I quickly determined that this was not the message I was looking for. They said things like, “that’s my butt,” and “now you wear the collar.”

I quickly discovered that carrying this platter attracted the park’s guests to me. An elderly couple stepped up, the man reaching for the treats I carried. He picked one up and squinted at it, leaving his wife bewildered when he didn’t give the candy to her. After pocketing the first one, he was ready to try again. And again. On the seventh try he decided the inscription was appropriate, which judging by his wife’s reaction it truly was. They scampered away, no doubt toward pursuits unnaturally taxing their bodily energies. Well, his pocketful of sugar would revive them.

To avoid being confronted by more customers, I entered the small building behind one of the numerous stands selling obscene balloon animals. Once inside, I glanced at another heart, which said, “eat me.” “Call me Alice,” I muttered and popped the candy heart into my mouth. It tasted like lime, not at all what I’d been expecting. Finding another one with the same words, I ate it too, finding it was an unidentifiable blend of spices. The two candies’ essences mixed to create a delicious new flavor. I hunted through the rest of my inventory, but there were no more that said “eat me.”

I hadn’t meant to remain in one spot for so long. Looking around, I expected Tessa to be right behind me, smirking at my shorty toga. But the person standing there wasn’t Tessa, it was a man with a Tyrolean hat and a thick mustache waxed into large, looping curls. He bowed like a horse, with one leg kept stiff in front of himself, a single sharp nod depositing his hat on the floor.

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“Heinrich!”

  • by jenwe wish we had not so many clothes
  • throngs of volunteers
  • there was a guard
  • brown hair and a mustache
  • standing this time on her right foot

Tune in next time part 155                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Heinrich!” I exclaimed.

Heinrich used his toe to flip his hat up off the ground. It landed neatly on his head. He glared at me. The last time I’d seen him he was in a very unpleasant situation involving his wife, a nasty jellyfish sting, and urine.

I smirked. “How’s Aphrodite?”

“Our marriage is over.” He shuddered. “After what I had to do to save her, there was no way for us to go on.”

“And Svetlana?” By the looks of his enormous gut, his contortionist mistress had resumed her residency underneath his aloha shirt.

“It is at her request that I am here,” Heinrich said. He began to unbutton his shirt, and then the one underneath it. “Sometimes,” he muttered, “we wish we had not so many clothes.”

There weren’t exactly throngs of volunteers eager to help him strip, that’s for sure. In the corner there was a guard, but he was studiously ignoring us.

Finally all the layers of Heinrich’s garments were peeled away, exposing Svetlana. She gracefully unfolded herself from her harness and stood between Heinrich and me, wearing only a pale pink leotard and balancing on her left foot. She stretched her right leg straight up by her head. This pose made it impossible to ignore her pregnant belly.

“I’m so glad we found you!” she cried. “I knew you’d be thrilled to hear that our little train rendezvous was a success!” She caressed her belly. “It’s going to have brown hair and a mustache, I just know it!”

I threw a glance at Heinrich, wondering how he felt about all this. He glared at me even harder before turning his attention back to Svetlana who was standing this time on her right foot.

“You’ll have to do just what we say,” Heinrich said, “or we’ll tell Fleur and her warlord father about Svetlana’s baby.”

Svetlana threw me an evil grin. “And we’ll tell Tessa, too!”

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I Suppose I Have No Choice

  • by Kenthaving an extra nipple
  • drink to the devil
  • Rubenstein was furious
  • had it not been for the indefatigable efforts of the assiduous Goodwin
  • his manhood in public

Tune in next time part 156                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I suppose I have no choice,” I said. “What is it you want me to do?”

“There is far too much explaining needed,” Svetlana simpered, seeming oddly aroused by the prospect. “We can’t just stand around out here.”

The nefarious duo led me to Lonelyhearts, a bar within the park. When I questioned the idea of so visibly pregnant a woman going in there, they brushed the objection aside. I thought we would at least find a shadowy corner table, but they went directly to the barstools.

Svetlana batted her eyes at the bartender and said, “Heinrich here will be having an extra nipple, a slippery one that is. Plus whatever he wants for himself.” She pointed past Heinrich to me. “Paying for your drink is the least we can do. Just toast me.” She winked.

“Bourbon, neat,” I said. When you’re on your way to hell, you might as well drink to the devil.

Svetlana hadn’t been lying about there being a lot to explain. An hour later, Heinrich was still laying out the background. “Rubenstein was furious, and had it not been for the indefatigable efforts of the assiduous Goodwin all our worst fears might have come true.”

“What do Rubenstein and Goodwin have to do with anything?” I asked.

“Nothing. They’re retired. I just wanted you to understand where we’re coming from.”

I counted the glasses on the bar, feeling a bit dizzy. Heinrich’s tolerance appeared to far exceed mine, as his eyes and speech remained clear despite double my number of drinks.

“Now, I have to explain to you about the ninja factions we have today. They trace to ninth-century Japan…”

Heinrich rambled for several more rounds of whisky. When he stopped, the sudden quiet was like an alarm clock going off. He looked over his shoulder at Svetlana and said, “I believe our little apparatchik is ready to prove his manhood in public.”

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I Had Never Heard a More Convoluted Backstory

  • by jenJust give cash.
  • arterial spray across her cheek
  • when her memory was fresh
  • Transylvania homicide detective Regis
  • put on his best clothes

Tune in next time part 157                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I had never heard a more convoluted backstory, or a more unnecessary one. The plan Heinrich and Svetlana had concocted was really quite simple. Ugly, but simple, like the pig that put on his best clothes to pass himself off as human in the old Harmonious cartoon, “Transylvania Homicide Detective Regis St Oink-Oink Goes to Washington.”

Svetlana got into an argument with the bartender over the size of our tab. I knew that even when her memory was fresh, Svetlana was not what anyone would consider a math whiz, but I also knew that this squabble would likely end with the bartender’s arterial spray across her cheek.

I turned to Heinrich. “Just give cash. We don’t want to leave a trail.”

Heinrich slapped a few bills on the bar. The bartender snatched them up, leaving Svetlana looking quite disappointed.

“Hop on,” Heinrich said, gesturing to the harness under his shirts.

This was the first step in the plan. The hell of it was he wasn’t talking to Svetlana.

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My Initial Squeamishness

  • by Kentorder his midnight niblets
  • in defense of Ewoks
  • last night I slept on a feather bed
  • give me my crown
  • grope her way crusty-eyed back to her sleep

Tune in next time part 158                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

My initial squeamishness about step one of the plan was quite robust. I still had some chafing from my indenture to Tallulah, which made it even more difficult not to view the harness on Heinrich’s torso as a sex swing. But the plan was a good plan, due in large part to its simplicity, and step one simply called for me to put aside my aversion and climb on.

It was Svetlana’s glare that convinced me.

And as soon as my feet and arms were secured, I began to feel better about the plan. Heinrich buttoned his shirts over me, and I felt safe and warm. His swaying gait produced a comforting rocking motion, and I could envision how after a long, hard day of villainy Svetlana might grope her way crusty-eyed back to her sleep here in Heinrich’s artificial womb. Loyal subjects of dreamland, give me my crown. For if last night I slept on a feather bed, which I didn’t, it wouldn’t have been so restful.

I dreamt. I was a baby Wookiee, accompanying the great heroes in defense of Ewoks. I was a werewolf at an all-night diner where a monster could order his midnight niblets in peace.

“Wake up,” Heinrich’s voice boomed. “It is time for step three.”

“What happened to step two?” I mumbled, blinking at the light as he pulled the shirt aside.

“You slept through it,” Svetlana giggled. “But I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to see what we chose for you to wear.”

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