With the Tinsel Garrote Out of the Way
When 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?”
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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?”
bonus points for using them in order