Sciforums novel that never ends.

But if she didn't get some help soon she'd just give up. anBut of course that's what everyone was hoping.....

 

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And now! The next chapter of "SciForums Spade: Opportunity Knocks and then Runs Away

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It was only an hour later that I was able to shake that broad loose. She talked like a coyote on jet-powered roller skates with a rocket strapped to his back on an oiled highway with a hurricane behind him. It was time to get back on the case.

I lit a cigarette and hit the alleyway; I had to piss like a racehorse. I'd already started when I noticed him. It was Oli, my would-be competitor. He was racked out in a suede zoot suit and pachuco alligator shoes. I changed the direction of my stream. "Sorry about that," I said.

"Cheese it, Spade," he said, shaking off his ankle. "Word on the street is, you've got your beak in a numbers racket."

"Had my beak in it, you mean," I said, stowing the pipe. "Spurious is Roscoing me for 40, and Sam for 30."

Oli laughed. "Nice addition, rube. You any closer?"

I struck a match and lit another cigarette. Realizing I now had two, I tucked one surreptitiously behind my ear. I scowled. When Oli'd been born, the doctor had slapped his mother. And then the nurse, actually. The anaesthetist. Most of the staff. They'd slapped back; it had devolved into a girlie brawl. His mother'd never been the same. And the drop hadn't done Oli any good. "Not so far. I put the screws on Nickelodeon, bumped gums with Sam and Spurious, got puffed by a coupl'a goons. Nothing."

Oli grinned. "Well maybe you need a partner, then."

My eyes narrowed. There was a burning feeling at the back of my head, and I didn't like it one bit. "Oh, yeah? How much?"

Oli spread his arms, trying to lay on the charm. And maybe it would have worked, too, if it weren't for the crosseyes and the hunch. "We split 50-50 on your profits. Fair and square."

I laughed and took a swig from my hip flask. The pee was starting to taste a little better. "No deal," I said. "Another 50% from my take leave me with -30%, rube. And anyway, you got nothing. No leads, nothing."

"Go climb your thumb, Spade," he spat. "I'm all over the case like the Cubans on Miami."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. That strange burning sensation was getting stronger. It was like my head was trying to warn me about something. I ignored it. "You don't have any leads."

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!" he barked out before he could stop himself, then swore as he realized the subtle ruse. "Oh yeah?" he snapped back, legendary temper loose. "Well, you may have won this round, Spade, but I do so have a lead! A good one!"

"Noyadont, noyadont, noyadont, blah blah blah," I said, clamping my hands over my ears. "I'm not listening."

"I do too have a good lead! It's - " but then suddenly there was a shot in the dark; a flash, running feet.

Oli pitched forward, his fedora falling in the gutter. "Ugh! They got me! They done killed me! The bastards!"

"It's ok, kid," I said, holding him and rifling his pockets. "You're going to be all right."

"I'm a goner! A deader, I tells ya!"

"Easy, kid," I said.

"A corpse! A gravestone! A slab of meat!"

"Ok, easy."

"A stiff! The big sleep! Curtains!"

"Ok, that's enough."

"Fitted for a Chicago overcoat! The final goodbye!"

"Quiet!" I said, trying to choke him.

"This is the kiss-off! The final exit! Exeunt, stage life!"

"Shut up and die already!" I yelled, jumping up and down on his chest.

"Hey, Spade," Oli said suddenly, pointing, "Your head's on fire." Then he died.

Death is never attractive in the big city. It's especially unattractive if the person holding you as you die is a man, who then has to drop you and run around screaming and yelling, frantically smacking his head and hat which are burning like a torch, then rolling on the filthy ground and jabbing his cranium into a puddle. But that's the city's rap; that's its essence. The city doesn't pretend to be something it's not. Some days it's a lucky run in with a drunk hooker who doesn't notice as you lift her purse, and some days it's running in circles like a madman with a burning cranium around a dead body. It's just something you get used to.

As I got back in the Hudson, my brain was whirling; or maybe it was the hypoxia and the first-degree burns. Who would want to keep Oli from talking so badly that he'd have him rubbed out? What did he know? And whom had he talked to?

There was only one person that could give me a jake answer, but I knew he wasn't going to; Oli's boss, the mental mongrel.

I looked up the rainy, windswept hill to the big building on the mount where I'd find him; a square monstrosity of cement and madness, held together by mortar and bars. It was there I'd learn what Oli had known, and maybe even who had killed him.

I knew the latter wasn't strictly part of the case, but, hell: it was the least I could do to pay him back for a new pair of alligator shoes.

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Thanks for taking the pressure off whispered sniffy, adjusting her fur bikini and tipping her bibbedy bobbidy hat. And she turned on her 14 hole doc martins and was gone again. Thank god.

 

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What a night, murder, mayhem, sudden death, unseen enemies... it was enough to give me flashbacks to my time in 'nam.
Believe me, as long as I live I'll never forget that Saturday night in the Fish & Handcuffs: Dagenham was the roughest place I'd ever been.

The rain was coming down fast, huge droplets of water hitting hard as bullets; like the sky was doing a St Valentine's Day massacre replay, and the Earth standing in for Bugs Moran's gang.
It was still dark, still hot, my mood hadn't improved one bit and I was planning on a visit to Arkham Asylum, the least appealing and most dangerous place in the world. To talk to the man with those exact same characteristics.

According to the rules you were supposed to sign in and pay a refundable deposit of $20 (too many visitors these days, they had to get funding from somewhere) but I slipped the caretaker a fifty and he let me in for nothing.
I knew where to be, even if I was unsure of where I was going, and I slid quietly down the convoluted corridors like I was my own ghost.
His door wasn't locked, no point, this guy's mind was so twisted he could think his way through any lock devised. I let myself in without knocking.
He had his back to me and I hadn't made a sound...

"Spade, you're just on time"
"Absane." I acknowledged, "In time for what?"
"Not IN time, but ON time. I knew you'd come and I knew it would be now."
"So you also know why I'm here, and what I want."
"Meh, just like everyone else, you want to have your pi and eat it", he sniggered softly and drool started forming in the corner of his mouth. Same old trouble: as far as Absane related to reality he wasn't lucid, and as far as he was lucid, he didn't relate to reality.
"You want to know something Spade? I'm Batman." He flapped his arms half-heartedly, but I didn't laugh. Most of the inmates made that claim a couple of times a day. Hell even that janitor, ex-rich guy, Wayne something? something Wayne?, whatever, had said it once or twice...
"Forget it Spade, it's only funny the first couple of hundred times, but it gets boring in here. Nobody's got the answers I want, not even that guy two doors down, God."
"You got just the one guy here who thinks he's god?" I asked.
"Oh we got a few who think they are, this one's the real deal. Here voluntarily, for "observation" so to speak, he's a had a rough time lately. But he doesn't tell me anything useful. Never mind, we all got problems. What's yours?"
"I thought you knew, thought you'd help me."
"Sure I know, but do you? And help isn't going to help, so to speak."
"Waddaya mean, do I know? I want the answer to this case, I want to know who offed Oli and why, I want to know what Sam's angle is, why I started on this case, who gave it to me..." I trailed off. Shit, I couldn't even remember being given the case, the more I thought about it the more it seemed like my life had started with me already having got the job: I could remember things from "before", but that's all it was, memory.
Absane gave me a rare smile of pity, he knew exactly what I was thinking.
"One clue for you: tell me why you think Oli was taken out of the picture."
"Easy, he was too close to the answer.Uh, or he knew who was. Or maybe he just pissed somebody off, Sam possibly."
"So you don't know even that. Oli was offed cuz he was getting too big a part in the story, and it's supposed to be YOUR story. Supporting characters should come in, help or hinder as required and then leave. No fuss, no mess."
"Story? What is this shit?"
"At last, an intelligent, or at least pertinent, question." He sat down on the ceiling. I hate it when he does that, it gives me a pain in the neck. "Spade: who are you? What do you want to know the answer FOR?"
And then, with a Cheshire-cat smile, he went to sleep.

 

a bit of a too complicated plot to jump in (whole thread).

 

No plot, just read the last post and continue from there.

 

Of course there's a plot: minumimum of one per writer that I can see so far (and I think I'm personally up to 3 so far - I keep changing my mind).

 

Hey whilst you lot are faffing with the plot there's an asteroid heading towards earth and it's gonna impact in two days giving you the chance to switch to sci-fi mode. See what I did there?

 

No, of course not.
We're GUYS, fer cryin' out loud.
You got to give us a hint at least.

 

I wrote the asteroid into my plot so that someone can change it to sci-fi as per the genre options vote. I shouldn't even be here as I flounced off in by fur bikini, doc martins and bibbidy bobbedy hat two installments ago....

 

If you look anywhere near as good dressed like that as I (obviously) do then there's a plot twist (or at least a gratuitous scantily-clad titillation scene) as well - but I'm dead by gunshot, verbose to the end...

And still waiting for the hint.

 

Oli may be dead but the main character isn't.

 

If I have the time I will write a thought provoking, yet sensual chapter tonight.

 

I'm worried already.......

 

Yeah, any one that actually spends time thinking about what to write on this story is very worrying.

 

Never said I am going to spend time thinking about what I am going to write. Everything I write is thought provoking and yet sensual.

I'm just waiting till I have the time to open the floods.

 

wow, you guys have wrote alot, now im going to have to read it all. we are being characters in the story as ourselves?.

peace.

 

Spade isn't any one of us, just a generic (dumb) gumshoe: everyone else is in as themselves or parodies of themselves.
And I'm the only one that's been killed off so far...:bawl::bawl:

 

You know what they say: " some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" :bawl:

 

Er, actually no.
I've never heard that before, and can't really see me saying it any time soon (or at all).
"lucky rocketship underpants"? :shrug::crazy: