52...
Such an innocuous digit. Except, perhaps, the fact that there are fifty-two weeks in a year (give or take a day or two). Week. Which sounds like ‘weak’. A word that my harpy of a therapist has used, more than once, to describe the kind of person that I happen to be. But anyway, getting back to the subject at hand, 52 happens to be the number of days in which I have managed to remain sober.
Sober. In the face of all the trappings that coincide with my particular means of income. Sober, in the face of an entire battalion of Confederate soldiers; all of whom want me to deliver correspondences to their families. Sober, while facing down Flight 19, and having to tell every one of them that the WAR has been over for decades, and that they were lost due to a temporal anomaly. Sober, in the face of a human history populated by individuals who happen to be dead, and who happen to only find answers from people like me. Yeah, staying sober, in the face of such things, just happens to be easy. Easy. Like living in this world is easy. But, like my therapist would say, I am dwelling on the past. In which case, I now divulge the present…
…where I am standing in the pregnant shadows of a long-abandoned storefront, staring at a building almost eight decades old. The building in question was almost exactly where Danny said it would be. Or rather, where his “contacts” said it would be. Some undisclosed location in Yuma County. These Depression Era ghost towns all look the same after awhile; all charred wood and rotten plaster and generic tragedy. And, of course, my eyes see them all a bit differently than most eyes. Families shuffling doomed and forsaken, trying to find food, any food. Men, who once were proud to eek out a living with their scarred and calloused hands, now lost and useless in a land whose promise lies broken in the dust at their feet. Sometimes, I can even see bodies, now long given to the aforementioned dust, lying in the streets like so much American discard. Thank fucking Whatever, I’ve managed to fade it all out of my singular vision, or else I’d never get anything done. It’s rather difficult to earn with my talents, when you’re ensconced in some puzzle factory, wishing the goddamn projectionist would stop the ghastly slideshow in your skull long enough for you to wipe the drool from your chin.
Anyway, I ruminated long enough, so I walked across the road to my objective; my favorite custom Doc Martens kicking up dust like dirty grey fractals in the light of the waxing moon. I ran my palms down the outer seams of my favorite dark green cargos. It was a habit I’d picked, seemingly unconscious now, to insure that the two thin strips of iron I’d sewn into the outer seams were in place. About the size of grade school rulers, these strips insure that no Fae in my immediate area would pick up on my energy and decide to nose in on my scene. They’re not particularly dangerous, I simply don’t feel like dealing with them. Kinda like walking around a crowded metropolitan area, and maneuvering across the street when you spot a spanger up the block, accosting passersby. There was just enough of the stuff to throw off my ‘scent’, but not enough to impede a hasty departure, if the need for one ever arose. It was a little something my pal Danny in Colorado turned me onto after I’d had a couple of jobs almost go indelibly south because some overly curious local pixie tried to horn in on the action, or simply wanted to see what all the pretty lights were about.
For once, I didn’t require my tools to enter the premises. I spent about an hour carefully making my way through the entire structure, up less-than-sturdy stairs & down again. The entire time, opening myself to the psychic leftovers within, coating the walls like the decades-worth of nicotine residue. Eventually I realized that the initial room in which I first entered had the most pull. The strongest signal. I had a fairly good idea how to find what I was looking for by the weather-worn placard on the door which vaguely said, “ARKADIN’S BOARDING HOUSE”. So, I took the Position of Inquiry and called out to St. Monica, the Patron Saint of Alcoholics. It doesn’t take much with her, you know, “O ye of the burning liver…” And so on. Once the incantations were coughed out (my throat was incredibly dry) I waited another five minutes to be sure that there were no scumfuck opportunistic shades in the vicinity, ready to try and grift me. Then I produced a small pocket knife from my cargos and slit an efficient gash down the palm of my left hand. It hurt like a sonofabitch. Always does. (You see, these spooks don’t give a rat’s ass what kind of blade you use, or what you say; they just want you to know that they are there. So, really, anybody with the right kind of esoteric knowledge could pull this shit off. Just don’t spread it around; trade secrets, and all that rigamariga.)
My blood pooled upon the dust-caked ceramic flooring, making an interesting shape; resembling, perhaps, a breeching orca. I stood still, my arms fixed at my kidneys, with my bleeding left palm upward. After maybe 40 seconds the pool of blood, somewhat resembling an oil-slick reflecting a red traffic light, began to quiver. It did so for another 90 or so seconds, before it sent sanguine tendrils across the floor, which coalesced into a single rippling stream. Said tiny river of my blood raced across the tile work of the floor toward the southeast corner of the room, doing a sort of liquid stutter as it negotiated the tiles. I’m sure you’ve seen Terminator 2. Same thing, only with blood instead of that mercury-type stuff.
I barely contained my surprise when the crimson rivulet, now with a silty-silver veneer like sand on an oil slick, sluiced its way under the door of a supply closet. After wrapping my southpaw in a bandana, which I would later burn for obvious reasons, I stepped toward the door, careful not to interrupt the stream. Mostly because it would pinpoint my quarry, but also because I hate getting anything on my boots. Fuckers cost me lots. There was enough moonlight coming in through the glassless windows to see by thus far, but the inside of the closet was blacker than my lawyer’s heart. (Yuk yuk. I’ll be here all week.) From another pocket I produced a small LED flashlight and shined it into the murk. Inside was what you would expect: a filing cabinet along the right wall with a broom propped up against it and some sagging wooden shelves along the left. Everything draped in the requisite robes of cobwebs. “Old as the hills, and twice as dusty.” as Danny would say. My blood had flowed to a small point directly in front of all this. Interestingly enough, at least to me, the pool vaguely resembled the fountain outside the Bellagio.
There was the expected brick-a-brack, but on the top shelf, nestled as if the nestler wasn’t all that concerned about proper stashing procedures, was a small box. I unwrapped the injured hand and briefly held it over the box, palm down. A single drop of blood dripped upon it and, for an instant, I felt like I was picking my teeth with a toothpick made of tinfoil. Thus, as they say in the old vernacular, bingo.
I took the item in question from its failed hiding place and discovered, to my *sigh* surprise, that it was a cigar box; the word ‘PANATELA’ was barely legible beneath about 70 years’ worth of dust. The contents were merely vaguely surprising: some old foreign coins, an ivory comb (which would probably make an interesting episode of Antiques Roadshow) and a folded handkerchief. I could barely make out the embroidered words, backwards, which read, ‘POKÓJ JEST Z WAMI’. While all of this was exceedingly interesting and valuable, what I was looking for was at the very bottom of the box. Beneath the various minutiae there was a postcard. The picture, which was facing up, was an old painting of St. Sebastian, bristling with arrows like a cubicle cactus. You might think that, due to the metaphysical way in which I located this particular item, that the picture would be of some significance. You would be wrong. It is the message, written in near-perfect English cursive, upon the back of the postcard which is the entire reason for my current commission. I used the belly part of my MUFON T-SHIRT to wipe the grime away, and read: “MY ETERNAL THANKS FOR GUARDING THAT WHICH IS PENULTIMATE. - N. Tesla”
I had no way of knowing if Nikola Tesla had actually written and sent this postcard. Nor did I give three shakes. My only concern was to get this thing to my client, who was paying me handsomely to do so. And by ’handsomely’, I meant six digits of fucking handsome.
I reached into the army surplus medical bag (lots of handy pockets) slung over my shoulder and pulled out a small silvery self-adhesive envelope, the kind the digimancers at Microsoft use to shuffle around their silicon whatevers. I slipped the postcard inside and sealed it. Another day at the office, mí přátelé. (Ok, now I’m just showing off.)
No comments:
Post a Comment