[NOTE: This is the first fiction I’ve written for a couple of months. I feel very out of practice, so I decided to write whatever interested me. Tomorrow I’ve got to get into doing my third Robin Hood novel so this is warm-up.
Sorry about the long absence. I hope to get to catch-up on people’s posted stories in the next ten days or so and then pick up on overdue stories I’m due to deliver. No promises, though, since work is heavy and I’m still sorting through my mother’s estate.
Anyway, onto the story. For the record, there are no new characters in this tale, none at all. If you don’t believe me, ask Who’s Who in the Parodyverse.]
***
She was dead, wrapped in plastic.
“Any ideas?” asked the sheriff as he squat beside the corpse of the popular cheerleader. The body was still damp after being hauled out of the river. The deputy kept the gawkers from the fisherman’s diner as far away as possible.
Champagne sipped her coffee and examined the dead girl more carefully. “Professional job,” the blonde detective judged. “Clean blow under the sternum, missed the ribs, surgical, fast. She wasn’t expecting it and the assailant was close up.”
“We’ll get forensics to work out what kind of blade it was,” the Sheriff promised.
“Six inch curved steel knife,” Champagne supplied. “But it’s the other marks that are as good as a signature.”
Deputy Joe waddled over and leaned in to see. “That big red circle on her forehead? She was attacked by daleks?”
Sheriff Andy shook his head. “That’s the mark of a sink plunger. A sacred sink plunger of a defunct Egyptian sect and its last remaining killer.” He wiped his forehead and sighed. “Cobra’s back. And she’s killed again.”
Joe looked down at the girl in plastic. “Cobra killed Imke?”
“Yes,” sighed Champagne. “Fifth time this month.”
***
Cobra moved silently and swiftly over the rooftops, somersaulting across the shingles of the little town. The sun was a red smudge over the forest. The shadows gathered.
Ahead was the abandoned sawmill.
“I guessed you’d come here,” Champagne said. “Either you’re easier to read than you think or else you wanted me to find you.”
The trained killer dropped down into the alley beside the detective. “You need to talk to him,” she insisted. “And this time you need to listen.”
Champagne shook her head. “I’ve heard his crazy talk before. We all have.”
“But you haven’t listened. What if he’s the one making sense and we’re all mad?”
Champagne shrugged. “You’re lecturing me on sanity? Imke’s going to be furious tomorrow when she finds out you killed her again. Oh, and Sam and Julia say you’re barred from the diner. This has to stop, Christine.”
“And it will,” promised Cobra, “when we work out what’s really going on. Look, just try to hear what he has to say, okay?”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
***
“Deliver us, deliver us, deliver us from evil,” muttered the homeless man crouching by a meagre fire in the sawmill ruins. “The aliens and the demons, the monsters in their towers and the scientists in their basements. Deliver us.”
“Oh yes, this was well worth me delaying turning you in,” sighed Champagne. She liked things to make sense, and the odorous tramp didn’t.
“You asked me once why I keep killing people,” Cobra said. “Andy thought it was a compulsion. Tim said I was a sadist. But here’s the reason, this man right here.”
“Don’t trust them,” the hobo warned, huddling deeper into his battered leather coat. “Don’t trust what you see. Don’t listen to Lucifer. Don’t believe what they tell you. Don’t expect tomorrow.”
“I don’t suppose you have a gibbering lunatic to English phrasebook on you, do you?” Champagne asked him.
“No time and no space. No home. Our houses are a trap.”
“He sees something,” Cobra explained. “I don’t know what but something. I can glimpse it too, sometimes, just at the moment when I kill. As I end a life there’s a… a clarity. An expectation.”
“An expectation of what?”
Cobra looked a little embarrassed. “An expectation that they won’t come back to life tomorrow.”
***
“Things are getting weird,” said the Mayor.
“Tell me about it, Jamie,” sighed Champagne. “I talked with old Zaurius today. And with Cobra.”
“You caught her again?”
“She’s been shacking up with Zane behind his garage. The clues were easy, like they always are. She’s always shacking up with Zane or hiding out with Porter if she’s not lurking in the water-tower. It’s always the same – and that’s kind of my point.”
“You think there’s something behind all of this?” the Mayor puzzled. “I don’t know. This town’s pretty idyllic until that weird stuff happens. But it happens so much. If it’s not Cobra or Imke killing each other then it’s that big shaggy sasquach-thing in the woods stalking little Lissie or its cattle ripping over at the Carrington ranch or whatever.”
“I think…” said Champagne slowly, “that we’re close to a breakthrough. Tomorrow for sure.”
“If Cobra doesn’t kill Imke again,” said Jamie.
“Well, yes.”
“So what’ll you do?”
Champagne tried to fight the clouds in her mind that were pushing her towards sleep and reset. “I’ll see if I can get Carl to guide me into the woods as far as the old Indian camp,” she reasoned. “That’s where Shawn disappeared each time. I’ll look around there.”
“That’s a long way from town, Champagne,” the Mayor warned. “Things get a little strange that far from home.”
“Our houses are a trap,” Champagne said, remembering what the old bum had shouted. She looked beyond the river to the night-darkened treeline beyond. “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on here at Hood’s End. Tomorrow I’m going to find out.”
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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