Smokin’

by David

My name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt. I’m a P.I. In my business, trouble often comes calling. This time a giant bug grabbed my elbow and jerked me around, tearing my shirt.

“Lady,” I said, “violence is not necessary.”

“Emergency!” She screamed. “My house is on fire, my children will burn!” She pointed. A plume of black smoke rose a few blocks away.

“Did you call the fire department?”

She nodded, urging me in the direction of the blaze and ripping my sleeve clean off.

“Then fly away home; I’ll be along.” I started running.

*

By the time I got there, the fire was out. Her children huddled around her skirts, crying. She counted frantically. “Ann, my youngest, isn’t here!”

I waded into the rubble. I started in the wreckage of her kitchen. “Here she is ma’am,” I called, “under the pudding pan.”

While the frantic mother was cuddling the baby, a local cop arrived. Constable Johns and I went way back. Bridget had a sharp eye, she was tough, and she owed me, since the “Boy Blue” incident.

“Good work Hasp,” she said, “but why are you interfering with an arson investigation?”

“Arson!?” I exclaimed. “This just happened.” If I’d been thinking a little faster I would’ve claimed Mrs. Ladybird was my client, but just then the lady in question turned to us.

“Arson!” She looked at me. “Hasp Deadbolt?” I nodded. “I want you to help me nail the bastard who tried to kill my babies.” She turned to Constable Johns. “What do the police think?”

“Well, ma’am, I’m not at liberty…”

“Deadbolt, you’re on the case. Is 100 a sufficient retainer?”

*

“Constable,” I said, “we need to talk. Let me buy you a pastry.”

“I’ll fill you in,” she said, taking a bite, “if you help me.” There’d been a string of suspicious fires on the north side.

“We’ve kept quiet. We don’t want copycats.”

The fires were set in broad daylight; it had to be somebody who spent a lot of time in this part of town. I rubbed my chin. Old Miz Hubbard was doing time in the happy house. “This is not Georgy Porgy’s style. I like Dr. Fell, but I can’t say why.”

Bridget nodded thoughtfully. “I can put him near two fires, maybe more.”

“Let’s check his house.” I couldn’t do that legally, but Bridget could. The next day we waited until the doctor left on his rounds and we went in the back door.

*

Not much can turn my stomach, but all I will say about what we found there is this: I do not love thee Dr. Fell.

The end

For those unfamiliar with the two nursery rhymes referred to here, these are links to versions similar to the ones I used.

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/dreamhouse/nursery/rhymes/ladybug.html

I do not like thee Dr. Fell
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/dreamhouse/nursery/rhymes/fell.html

Jaunting

by Trent Walters

Although known commonly as “teleportation,” I prefer this 1950s usage, which implies a short, pleasant trip. Originally, it meant to ride your horse until it tired. Now it’s knowing your destination by orienting your mind to the beginning and extrapolating yourself to the end–a minor reorientation of perspective that changed the world.

Whenever newsheets downloaded the latest death tolls, my family took short trips down to a private North Carolina pine-forest island beach. We laid out a blanket and picnic basket and gave our daughter a bucket and a shovel–pretending we were the only people left in the world. The Atlantic lapped the shore as if time might stop. We didn’t experience that pang in the chest every time we snapped up a newsheet to find out who bombed who, who hung or decapitated in retaliation.

Vera, my wife, coped differently. She rearranged the world, moving the couch at different angles to the 3V as if the news looked better from a different perspective. In her green phase, all the upholstery was verdant with vines, leaves, and hanging gardens seen only when the light glanced off it. A spring of false optimism. Every tribe attempted peace accords. Negotiations murmured behind closed doors. We held our breath when the world’s leaders came out to say nothing had been resolved.

When news of jaunting spread like a virus, every man with a grudge and a bludgeon could appear anywhere within the limits of his imagination. War returned. Vera swapped green upholstery for red.

When our bank lost their reserves to mirror-shielded jaunters on whom automatic laser rifles had no effect, my mind was distracted and I jaunted home, afraid to tell my wife we were penniless and probably wouldn’t be able to fill our picnic baskets on our jaunts to the seashore. Only after we’d eaten dinner in silence–a minestrone with grated Parmesan–did I notice the furniture was green. The couch was repositioned to where it was before jaunting hit the world. Furthermore, news on the 3V had restored its era of false optimism.

Whenever Vera changed the upholstery to ashy blacks or desert tans, I jaunted back to an apartment of green upholstery. I won’t say that I’m jaunting to a saner, parallel universe or that I’m reversing time, perhaps stunting my child’s development indefinitely. I don’t know.

But somehow I don’t care.