Winter broke late this year. Snow gave way to rain. Gray landscapes gave way to green leaves of hope. It was thus in Jules Stevens' heart, if not in the city as a whole. He rotated into the Central City's Equine Patrol an assignment heavy with community public relations; horseback riding for kids, scheduling the ball fields, hiring the lifeguards and shepherding the golfers. He picked out a handsome stallion for his mount; Chestnut, a Morgan named for its coloration.
The weather was still cold a week later when the Chief of Detectives called Stevens to his office where he paced back and forth like a man waiting for a chimpanzee to wax his testicles.
"Your buddy, the one with the funky name and weird friends on that society blog that the kids love and the mayor hates. Aubrey's it? Well, he's misbehaving again in our park," The Chief of D's said. He moved in jerks and spasms as if seeing insects, swatting at them and then not seeing them. Stevens recognized an obsession curse and it came from pictures attributed to Aubrey's Weekly Blog on the Chief's computer screen. The Weekly snitched to Stevens, his secret source, the best in the city.
"So, uh, what's Aubrey done?" said Stevens, shifting in his seat as if encouraging a leech on his right buttock to move on to the next boil.
It was the first week of April, the cruelest week, mixing squishy mud pies with half-chewed gummi bears dropped by toddlers who would have retrieved and eaten the gummi bears if they could have found them among the mud pies.
"Molested some golfers," the Chief replied, scratching himself as though he might find the Hope Diamond in his own scrotum, then not finding it but keeping on scratching anyway because it felt good. "I know everyone says golfers just wander around the meadow and take orders from dogs, but this time one of them complained about it. The molesting, I mean."
Stevens said, "OK, boss. I'll deal with it."
As Stevens swore quietly under his breath and headed to the door, the chimpanzee sat quietly to one side and mumbled, "You think you've got a tough job?"
Opening: Dave F......Continuation: John/Anon.
7 comments:
I'm going to frame that continuation. Either that or steal it for a completely new story. Just find some bizarro anthology and march forward, fearing nothung...
P1: Punctuation issues:
Stevens's is preferred. Those who don't like adding apostrophe s to make a name ending with "s" possessive should avoid giving characters names that end in "s."
I would change both semicolons to colons. The items in the list, being somewhat lengthy, could be separated with semicolons.
P2: Good simile for our next bad analogy contest, but distracting. I could live with "waiting to have his testicles waxed," assuming comical analogies are a theme of the story, but the chimp is over the top. Besides, it reads like it's the chimp's testicles.
P3: Kids wouldn't love a society blog. If they love it because it pokes fun at society, call it a satirical blog.
Either it's obvious who's talking, or you should let us know earlier than the end of his third sentence. I think it's obvious, so you don't need "the Chief of D's said."
After the word "curse" it's not clear what anything means.
Very odd. You sure it wasn't the chimp's testicles? Great continuation.
Thanks for the fun and suggestions.
Looking over this by the light of day, I think I unconsciously swiped the Hope-Diamond-in-the-privates line from something by Dave Barry. Mea culpa.
Mark Twain said Adam was the only man who was ever sure the thing he said hadn't been said before by someone else.
(Quite likely Eve had said it, but Adam took the credit.)
--ARc
I had to look twice at the screen colours, because this read as if it were written by three people rather than two. There's a sort of lyrical, meditative voice, then the Chief shows up and it's heavy comedy and lumps of info, then it turns blue and starts to make sense again.
Post a Comment