A Blast from the Past!

I wasn't always the cute funny guy that everyone knows and loves. This dark little piece I wrote when I was around twenty years old. Uhm, that was like three years ago... *Crosses fingers and hides hand behind back).


It was a dark and [Stromey delete] Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, it would have been if the Hollywood moguls had pulled their fingers out and splashed out a few thousand on the effects. As it was it was a bright, hot and well worn summer day. The sort of day you find pasted on the front of a cheap romance magazine—along with half-naked men and bosomed heroines.

So what can I say? There I am, sitting at the office desk filling out some paperwork. "Maddison Murducks - Private Investigator" was glistening in freshly painted gold filigree on the door glass. I'd just come through from the little door in the back of the office which housed the john. I’d finally finished my last job for the day. Then this broad walks in.

"I've caught you at last Mr. Murduck."

She speaks in this classy uptown talk and I'm hanging on each word. Spellbound. Hey, you can’t blame me. Normally this kind of chick walks past me like I'm some kinda ghoul from the latest Stephen King novel. And if they did spot me it was normally to touch me with the live end of a 6,000 VOlt stunner, or to set their precious fifi--a five hundred pound Rottweiler--on me. I reckoned this must be one distressed lady if she was willing to stoop so low as to say “Hi”.

"Here's the money we agreed on the phone." She slaps the greens on the table before me. A quick glance revealed it was one thousand smackers. Five times what I’d normally make in a month. She was one hell of a distressed lady. "The other nine I'll give you when you've found my brother and he's back home."

Wow! I mean, there’s distressed and distressed. Now this is distressed.

"Hey maybe..." I start talking, thinking it's time to come clean with her. Tell her I couldn’t do the job she wanted me to do.

Guessing my motives for opening my chow hole she bursts into a real fine blubber of tears.

"You've got to help me, Mr. Murduck." Her sobs are heavy like she’d thrown her whole soul into them. "You're the only hope I've got of getting little Tommy back from Mr. Musher's group."

"Yeah well," I shuffle uncomfortably on the chair. Like ain't nobody who ain't heard of Musher the Crusher and most of them's that did wish they hadn't.

Taking that for a “yes” the broad's tears vanished in an ingratiating smile. And just to seal the pact and stop me speaking again she planted a big Elizabeth Arden sucker on me. Having her pucker up and come down like that effectively stunned me 'til she'd got out of the door.

I picked up the thousand bucks she’d left behind and began mulling over what she'd said.

She was some kinda gal, you gotta admit. I’d only met her for five minutes and already she'd got me making plans on how and where to look for her little Tommy.

I wonder if I should have told her I was Pepe Wulp, the plumber. And Murduck had called me in a few minutes ago so I could fix the john…

SJ Willing
www.sjwilling.com