Welcome to Lively Acres!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Interlude : Running Late

Pissed and running late, he ground out the latest in a long chain of cigarettes in a dish overflowing with spent butts. His cellphone rang before he could light another. Swearing vehemently, he answered it.

"You have ten minutes."

He threw a ten down on the tiny oil-cloth covered table and left immediately. It only took five minutes to get where he was going. By the time he made it through the endless rounds of security checks and being scowled at by hired goons, he was late. Later. More late than he'd been already.

A withered husk, propped up in a wheelchair, glared at him with burning eyes in sunken sockets.

"You are late."

"I'm so - "

One desiccated hand twitched minutely. "Do not lie to me. Do not waste my time. You lost her and now you are too chicken shit to face me."

"It isn't li - "

"Do not. Waste my. Time. Time, especially mine, is a precious commodity worth far more than you. Find her. Now. Yesterday."

The chair was wheeled away by a stone-faced thug in scrubs. The scrubs clashed with the fire-power the 'nurse' was strapped down with. A very clear message. Several clear messages.

"Fuck," he muttered, and reached for his cigarettes.

[Doktor Howl]

squeeeeeeee!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Welcome to Lively Acres! - Part Five

She flipped through newspaper after newspaper, looking for some clue that someone noticed she was gone and knew who she'd been when she went missing. She thought she should be feeling sad that there was nothing resembling her situation, that it hadn't been reported. But instead filled her with dread. She was missing from wherever she'd been. There was no police involvement. No outreach from devastated relatives. But she knew someone was looking for her. She could feel them getting closer and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. Like someone slicing open her belly to dump ice water inside, then stapling it shut and shaking her until it melted. And then more ice was added.

Supper came and went in the form of merry Mazey and bitter Elsie bringing her food, helping her slide off the board and hobble to the outhouse a few yards beyond her shack, cleaning her up, and then getting her comfortable again. An extra blanket was put over her back and tucked in to keep her warm and the curtain they'd rigged over the empty doorframe pulled across, as they left.

She tidied the papers into a neat stack and then tucked her arms up under the blanket, to her sides. Just her head poked out from the covers.

Night came swiftly here, after a fashion. The days dragged on forever until, at the last moment, darkness swooped in and sent everyone to sleep. No candles or artificial light of any kind was used by this rag-tag group. Everyone went to bed when it got dark. It was little better than camping. Just the cricket song and starlight trickling in along the bottom of the curtain.

With the blanket on her back, over the sheet and bandages, she felt ungainly and cumbersome. Bound to the bench she lay on.

"I'm a tortoise," she said to the trickle of night, creeping into the shack. "Stripped of my shell and left to die."

She lay in the dark, waiting for sleep. It would be more comfortable if she could pillow her head on her arms but then her hands would touch her face and that odd scaly, scabby skin that covered her fingers and the backs of her hands gave her the shivers. Something had happened to make the surface of her hands bubble and crackle like cooking pig skin, except the palms which were smooth, shiny, slightly iridescent, and taut with scar tissue.

Had she cupped something in her hands? Something too hot to touch? When the scabs fell off the back of her hands and she held them between herself and the light, she could see the bones, bowed slightly and twisted. The mottled skin of her forearms, blotchy pink, red, white, brown, beige, gray, and black . . . all the colors people came in, splattered on her flesh.

But it didn't bear thinking about. Her body shivered and her teeth chattered despite the warmth of her cocoon. So she listened to her heart beat. Counted the crickets. Paced each breath, slowly in. Hold it. Slowly out. Hold it. Until the shivering stopped.

She was a tortoise stripped of her shell, left to die, and partially roasted alive. But she was alive and she planned on staying that way.

* . * . * . * . * . * . * . *

"Morning, girly-girl," Mazey trilled, throwing aside the curtain and flooding the shack with sunlight.

"Inhuman monster!" The invalid moaned, throwing up her hands to shield her eyes from the light, jerking sideways, and falling off the bench. Taking her cocoon with her, of course.

She screamed as her back hit the floor.

"Oh Great Goodness. I'm so sorry, so sorry." Mazey chanted, fixing the padding on the bench and lifting the screaming woman back on to it as if she weighed nothing. "Just hush hush hush, let me see. So thoughtless, me."

The blanket and sheet were peeled away and the bandages pulled off. As soon as air hit the tender flesh and the wounds, she began screaming again, muffling them with a mouthful of blanket. Hot knives, melting needles, rusty flaming hatches were all biting deep into her back. Shredding and tearing. Devouring her in slow mouthfuls and swift chops.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry," Mazey said over and over.

"I see I came in good time," Mr. Brown announced, sliding swiftly into the shack and standing over the exposed injuries. "Split sutures everywhere. Mazey, there is a white plastic jar in my cottage. It is more numbing agent. Fetch it swiftly now, there's a good girl."

Mazey was gone in a flap of skirt and the slap of bare feet on wood. Mr. Brown hovered his wrinkle-caked hands over the wounds.

"Plenty of heat but no undue redness or signs of infection. Slow, deep breaths, my girl. The more you relax the less it will hurt. It sounds like pure nonsense, no you needn't curse my existence, bite harder on the blanket then. Your brain is telling you all manner of things about your back and I assure you, aside from the multitude of pulled sutures, it is fine. Here, see?"

He ran one puppy soft finger across her shoulders, which went from on fire to merely itching. He ran his finger along either side of her ribcage and very carefully around the slashes in her back.

"Nothing here. Nothing wrong. It's just your brain and panic and confused nerve endings. Calm down, there's my girl. Deep breath."

Mazey returned, ashen faced, with the jar. She yanked the lid off and held it out for Mr. Brown, who produced a pair of surgical scissors and carefully removed the ruined sutures. After every one, he dabbed a light touch of the cream. It was cool and soothing and took away the itch and the pain.

Soon her back was no longer being hacked into pieces or devoured. It was just a back with some cuts on it. And they didn't hurt that much, really. Exhausted she looked over her shoulder at Mr. Brown and Mazey.

"I'm a tortoise. Who had my shell cut off. That's what I decided last night. That's what it feels like."

"A very apt analogy," Mr. Brown said soothingly.

But she'd fallen asleep.

"I've killed her," Mazey said mournfully. "She went delirious and I killed her."

"Nothing of the sort, silly girl. That was an epiphany, on her part. Cease your wallowing and leave her rest. Keep watch for she'll require food and tending when she awakens. I can't imagine she'll be out long.  I believe I've discovered a method of discerning her identity." Mr. Brown chided her and then left in a flurry of tails and cane tap-tap-taps.

Mazey stared mournfully after him. "I all but killed her and he's excited. And he says I'm the daft one."

* . * . * . * . * . * . * . *

"Elsie!" Mr. Brown called, as he approached the old witch's house. It was partly a dug-out, being embedded into the hillside, and partially a haphazard pile of wood nailed together and stuck in the dirt. But was sturdy, he had to admit. And didn't leak, have drafts, or let in bugs. It just looked like a rat trap. Which he rather suspected she'd intended. "Come out, you cackling biddy. I've got an idea and I need your help."

Elsie burst on to her porch with a home-made broom in one hand and a bit of metal folded into a dustpan in the other. "Keep it up, fancy-man," she cawed. "I'll see you dancing on a pole in my vegetable garden yet."

"May you make merry with my bones once my flesh is dust, dear woman. But until such a time, I require your assistance." He stopped at the edge of the porch, knowing better to set a toe on it without her express permission. "Give me your library card."

"Like hell," she crowed, changing her grip on the dustpan to emphasis its oddly razor sharp edge. "Use yours."

"I lack the ability to do so," he said through gritted teeth. "The fine is perilously large and renders the card unusable. But I need research materials particular to the . . . "

"Well then what about Wallace's?" Elsie demanded. "Or Mazey's?"

"Damn it, woman, I don't have time for this. Will you help me or not?" He shouted, dropping his verbosity in excessive frustration.

"Well then," she all but cooed, peeling back her lips in a smile that was more a baring of suspiciously sharp teeth than anything else. "I suppose I will. But you'll owe me dear, fancy man."

"What?" He asked warily.

"Since you'll be going into town, I need a ten pound bag of flour, five pounds of sugar, cornmeal, a pound of ripe but not over-ripe tomatoes, a six pack of that local microbrew I like, and a large container of Morton's uniodized salt. Out of your pocket. Oh, and a bag of Hershey Kisses. I do love a small sweet treat now and again."

"Highway robbery, ma'am. Why wouldn't I just pay the fine on my own card instead of stuffing your larder?" He asked angrily.

"Because you want my OTHER library card. The one with special access. The one SHE gave me," Elsie said knowingly, disappearing into her house and returning without the broom or the oddly sharp dustpan.

Instead she held up a blue and white plastic rectangle the size of a credit card. She threw it to him with a mad laugh. He caught it, but barely. It weighed more than it should and buzzed in his hand as if alive and attempting to fly away.

"If you hadn't pissed HER off, SHE'd have give you your own card. But no, you can't use one word with a winning game of Scrabble will do," Elsie cackled. "Bring it and everything I asked for back before sundown."

"Harpy. Foul-mouthed witch." He muttered, gingerly tucking the card into his tuxedo's breast pocket.

"I believe you mean 'Thank you, sweet Ms. Elsie'," she cooed.

"You! I. HOW DA - " He stopped. Breathed. "Thank you, sweet Ms. Elsie," he said, sweeping off his top hat and giving her a courtly bow. "Your assistance is as gracious as it is timely."

Then he turned on his heel and stomped away, ignoring her howling laughter. The things he did for strangers, he thought. The things he did . . .

[LMNO]

Holy monkey balls! A semblance of plot emerges!


CPD, this is really great.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Holy monkey balls! A semblance of plot emerges!


CPD, this is really great.

Thanks. It's a bit slow going. Every time I sit down to write I get interrupted. So it's a bit piecemeal.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Holy monkey balls! A semblance of plot emerges!


CPD, this is really great.

Thanks. It's a bit slow going. Every time I sit down to write I get interrupted. So it's a bit piecemeal.

The work is appreciated!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is developing wonderfully!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Interlude : On the Scent

Standing outside a trashy diner three states and a thousand miles away from the sick man in the wheelchair, Cad found himself regretting his life up until this point. Dingy gingham curtains on the other side of dusty, greasy windows did nothing to disguise the porcine patrons and trough-worthy cuisine.

How she had gotten this far, he had no idea. Probably traded truckers blow-jobs for a lift. She was that unclean, unscrupulous. She didn't pay what she owed if she could avoid it. It made him so angry. Especially when he was caught in the crossfire between her and the old man.

Prodding the diner door open with one finger, he entered and let the door swing shut behind him. The floor was sticky black and white vinyl tile. The counter and table tops were sticky, chipped Formica. Patsy Cline rattled forth from an ancient and battered jukebox. He sat, somewhat gingerly, on a duct-tape mended stool at the counter and waited.

On the third silent recitation of 'Hail Mary', a waitress with frizzy hair and holes in the armpits of her peach-colored smock, dropped a pile of one-page laminated menus beside him. She handed him one and proceeded to start wiping the others down with a dingy rag.

"Today's soup of the day is beef. Barley can be added for an extra fifty-cents. Lunch special is on for another thirty minutes. Half a sandwich and a small cup of soup with fries and coffee for four dollars and twenty-five cents. Dinner special is house salad, steak and a baked potato for ten dollars." She recited purely by rote, without making eye-contact or smiling in even his general direction. "Desserts are apple pie, cherry pie, pecan pie, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles."

"You make it all sound so appealing," he said, glancing over the menu. "What I really want, however, is information."

"That isn't one of the specials," the waitress replied, still uninterested. "Can't stay if you aren't eating."

"Then I will have an order of fries and a glass of water," he said, managing to do so without grinding his teeth. "And anything you know about this . . . person would be very helpful."

He held up a wallet-sized photo of a brown-haired woman with serious eyes and a wary smile.

The waitress ignored it and went to place his order. He put the picture on the counter and waited. Patiently. Ever so patiently.

[EK WAFFLR]

My Lord, how did I miss this? Fanfuckingtastic, CPD!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

You only missed the last few bits. Unfortunately I've stalled out on it, can't decide which direction I want to go. :P My brain gets in the way of writing every time. Probably just going to wing it. :P

Thanks.

[EK WAFFLR]

You only missed the last few bits. Unfortunately I've stalled out on it, can't decide which direction I want to go. :P My brain gets in the way of writing every time. Probably just going to wing it. :P

Thanks.

That's what I do. I have no idea what'll happen when I sit down to write a new chapter.