• “Look at that thing, man.”
• get into the good graces of the buxom widow
• escape from one calamity
• shortly returned on tiptoe
• marry after she graduated

Tune in next time part 250                           Click Here for Earlier Installments

They hadn’t uncuffed me, which pissed me off. John, I expected that kind of shit from. I glared at Tessa as I got up. That was also an excuse to avert my eyes from the crotch region of John’s tacky and immodest getup. And vulgar. I mean, was a vacuum sealer involved in putting it on?

Then there was Hipster Jane, the wildcard in my predicament. I swiveled my glance her way, trying to remember everything about her. She’d been in the music scene forever, originally as half of Jane and Able, a wife-and-husband duo. Able liked the groupies too much, though. Eventually he vanished under suspicious circumstances, and Jane shifted to the promotions side of the biz. She taught at the Academy as a sideline: Suspicious Circumstances 101. And she had more than one weakness.

I locked my eyes onto John’s groin, jutting my face forward to really sell it. “Look at that thing, man.” Part one of my plan was to get into the good graces of the buxom widow in the tube top and lamé hot pants.

It worked. Hipster Jane licked her lips and drew hard on her cigarette.

“Enough of that,” John said. “Let’s try to act professional.”

“Wow,” I drawled. “You’re really taking that, ‘dress for the job you want’ advice to heart, aren’t you, John.” Part two of my plan was still coming into focus, but I knew it relied on keeping John irritated and distracted. Otherwise, I’d just escape from one calamity and pratfall into another.

Tessa shot me a weird look, like everything she’d been suspecting had run away to hide around the corner, but shortly returned on tiptoe and whispered new aspersions about me in her ear. Or like she’d surprised herself with the memory of whom she’d planned to marry after she graduated.

Hipster Jane was dragging John up into the root cellar. Tessa was still staring into my eyes.

Time for part three.

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• on the rest of her body
• with a cold, wet hand towel
• proceeding with a defamation lawsuit
• that left only two
• his brother and he were twins

Tune in next time part 252                           Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I can’t believe you were just using me, too,” I said to Tessa. She stood over me, a sponge in her panties and glistening sweat on the rest of her body.

“Not just using you.” She located a small towel among the junk stored in the subbasement and dried herself before getting dressed.

“What did you mean about an ultimate goal? What is this exotic compound? There’s plenty more where that batch came from, by the way.” I wasn’t too proud to give seduction one last try, but I was too proud to ask her again about the handcuffs. I knew the answer already anyway.

She just hummed to herself as she put her clothes on, then crept up the steps that led to the root cellar. I shuddered.

When she was out of sight, I sat up and started getting ready to escape. There are things I enjoy less than post-coital cleanup with a cold, wet hand towel, but not many.

Betrayal, for instance. Being abandoned, in shackles, in a memory hole under our old school. I looked up, picturing the halls of the Academy, and wondered whether any of the faculty were still proceeding with a defamation lawsuit against the student government.

I set to work on the cuffs. I’d never been much good at picking locks, but the old cabinets and file drawers down here were filled with bobby pins and paperclips so I was bound to succeed eventually. The tunnel to the sub dock was behind a stack of boxes, easy to access once my hands were free.

Voices startled me, coming from that very tunnel. A man and a woman.

I squeezed under a table and pulled a crate of unclaimed diplomas in front of myself just in time. The woman was speaking as they emerged from the tunnel.

“… so we chased all the others off a cliff, and that left only two. Do you want to know the best part?”

“Naturally. Tell me everything, you vixen.”

“Those two. It turned out that his brother and he were twins.”

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• “Ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch.”
• inside planets with inhospitable surfaces
• the perfect setting for romance
• despair or cunning calculation
• her husband’s dangerous career

Tune in next time part 254                           Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Maybe we should let him put his pants on,” Fernando said.

“Hmm,” Betsy Murgatroid responded while staring at me and tapping her chin with a pale finger, making me queasy. A venomous grin stretched her cheeks. She leaned toward me and curled back her lips to say, “Ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch.”

The insectoid noise unsettled me. It tickled the underbellies of memories I hadn’t known I had, swollen swirls of dread like blobs of fluid inside planets with inhospitable surfaces and worse interiors. By the gleam in her eyes, I gathered she intended it as flirting, as if this dusty subbasement were the perfect setting for romance, and not a venue that demanded despair or cunning calculation of a means of escape.

Fernando had wandered to the steps, peering up toward the root cellar.

“Stay out of there,” Betsy lilted, never taking her eyes off of me. “I don’t want to have to tell your wife she was right about her husband’s dangerous career.” Fernando shuffled away from the stairs, making an obvious effort to find something other than my pantslessness to occupy his attention.

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• rendered him master of far mightier muscles than his own
• and a chin like the toe of a boot
• spasmodic efforts to smile
• “Rouse yourself, my dear girl.”
• Chinese striptease funeral

Tune in next time part 256                           Click Here for Earlier Installments

My finely honed instincts were like a lynx, but also in some ways like a rhinoceros, making me one of those people whose survival drive rendered him master of far mightier muscles than his own, even if they were still my own, and I snapped the handcuff chain. Betsy gasped in orgasmic shock. It was all I could do to continue withholding my ‘exotic compound,’ but doing so was essential to my getaway plans.

Fernando had a nose like the shell of a snail and a chin like the toe of a boot, and when he scowled, as he did now, the shell’s wrinkles followed its spiral shape. But, it wasn’t actually a scowl that he wore. His proboscis writhed in time to his spasmodic efforts to smile.

Betsy, meanwhile, was smiling effortlessly, her eyes lidded in contentment.

Fernando raised his walkie and said, “Rouse yourself, my dear girl.” He winked at me. “Over.”

She opened her eyes, a languid smile still on her lips. I nearly let my ‘exotic compound’ loose when she looked at me like that. It was past time for me to withdraw, from Betsy and this subbasement. The temptation to remain was strong, though. I hesitated.

She lifted her head and whispered in my ear, “Chinese striptease funeral.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t put a halt to our coupling. My movements accelerated involuntarily.

“Yes,” Fernando said, “do let’s try and get back on schedule.”

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