From the Journals of E.H. Kranklehunt:"PINCH ME, I'M DROWNING!"

"PINCH ME, I'M DROWNING!" I gasped for air and awoke. I found myself sitting as naked as I was born in a shallow puddle of tepid jungle water. Beside me, tossed aside in all their damp glamour: my maps my glorious maps. It was steamy and the sun shone over the clearing empty now of the shanty town and tents. All the native peoples with them gone only I and my lone canopy still stood.  

     As I sit writing this still in the buck for the scalawags must have absconded with my clothing before they departed so hasty. My mouth tastes of murk and mud, for I must have swallowed a great deal of jungle water. The last thing I remember was the woman with the facial tattoos and the steel grey hair. I will try to piece together as much as I can for this journal. At the quintessence at least I know, my search for long forgotten treasuries of ancient knowledge started like this.

     It was evident that I must reclaim my maps if the expedition was going to be anything like successful, and if there is anyone this particular tribe whose word they held dear it was their beloved and feared medicine man or shaman if you will.

I knew where his shelter laid but didn't want to draw the attention of the crowd, besides I could hear the corn husks still pelting the Monsignor. So I slipped out the back of my canopy and just then great peal of thunder erupted and a downpour was released from the clouds.  This brought even more hilarity to the crowd now, for the Monsignor slipped and sloshed in the mud, as the people hallooed; jabbering and dancing, they too becoming coated in mud. 

    Setting off to find the shaman I thought of my excursions in the South Pacific and the dire circumstances I encountered with the witch doctor on one particular island. He was a sanguine cannibal headshrinker and wanted me to marry his daughter to boot.  I thought it best to find my assistant, lazy as he was, to provide me support. Pacing the pleasure sheds I stuck my head in surely my assistant was there as he had been since we made camp. "Come along you scrofulous wretch!" He was snoring asleep with his arm flung over a lithe girl with long ebony hair that glowed in the low light of the shed. "Hurry now- the cretins have stolen my maps!" The girl looked up incredulous as if to say,“How dare you bother our napping” then pointing at my wet mustaches burst into a peal of laughter. (It seems a trait with these people: laughing). "Daresay I, stop fleching around, my maps, I say!" I had almost lost my temper. Finally rising up in the lazy manner that was his he had first to comb his part down the center and made sure his tie was just right before venturing out. The rain had not abated and both of us now were thoroughly drenched through by the time we arrived at the shaman’s tent. "Stay here, I will shout your name if things take a turn southerly." He gave me a stupid grimace and with both hands parted his hair down the middle.

Interlude: The Journals of E.H. Kranklehunt

From the Journals of E.H Kranklehunt.

“You tricksters!” I knocked over the lamps- oil spilling, I knew the vagabonds had come and replaced my maps with fakes. I stood up hitting my head and spilling my sweet drink.  I would not have all my work on this journey and search undone. They come here selling corn mashed with fish and sneak in while I am asleep from my cava. I rushed out shouting, “You tricksters, you vagabonds, you rascals, and rapscallions! My maps! My maps! I must have my maps back!”

      They were still in the camp. Posted up with their shanty tents and foodstuffs; the men in their armor eating and consorting with their pleasure girls. “What would great Jaguar have done with you?”

And they remembered what had been said about the East. From the east would come a man full of nonsense talk and fury.  They turned toward Monsignor Fabricio and began throwing corn husks at him.

Authors Note: Thanks to C.M. Mayo's Daily Five Minute writing exercises for inspiration. http://www.cmmayo.com

Mort and Nito

     The Grey-Eyed girl grabbed hold of his jacket sleeve and jerked him back from the curb as spray of greasy brown pot-hole water geysered up from under the oblivious beeping taxi’s tire.

“Sometimes I think the city is held together by dirty rain water,” Mort said.

“Ha, yeah and rust,” Nito said.

It was raining an all enveloping mist with a few fat cold drops, which would land on the back of Mort’s neck and run down his back. Nito had her hood up but the mist clung to her sweatshirt making it a wet sponge around her.They walked heads bent against the rain, the concrete sidewalk haloed in gasoline rainbows.

“I should of brought an umbrella,” Mort said.

“I don’t believe in umbrellas,” said Nito as she jumped a murky puddle. “We're almost there anyway.”

It was a small Italian restaurant with tinkling glasses, white table clothes, and waiters in black vests and bow ties. They were seated at a small table they were dripping wet and used their cloth napkins to dry their faces and hair.

“To me it’s just like a corpse of crumbling concrete, belching and bursting with noxious gases. We’re just the microbial life that’s left and worse; blow flies and maggots scurrying around trying to make a living off the host, running to catch the bus or thronging in crowds on 5^th ave. stampeding through Penn Station at rush hour. I imagine it’s all liquefying until all that’s left is the polished glass bones of the city,” Mort said rubbing his hands together on the napkin.

“Wow, that’s pretty grim, but I get your analogy.”

The waiter approached; his arms folded behind his back. “Have you decided on a wine sir?”

“No, not yet,” Mort said picking up the menu.

Walking away the waiter turned his nose up in the imperceptible way waiters in expensive restaurants have of doing without overtly offending you or actually turning their noses up.

“That guy was staring at you since we walked in,” Nito said.

“I guess he has something against wet people. I’m used to it- I never carry an umbrella,”

“So you don’t believe in them either, we have something in common,” Nito smiled. “You know, I’ve been staring at you since we sat down too.”

 “You- I like staring at me,” Mort said cracking a thin grin, a wave of heat spread over his pale skin. “You do have a way with those eyes.”

“It’s one of my skills,” Nito said. “Glad you noticed. Do you want to get out of here?” The grey-eyed girl stared down the waiter.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“I know an awesome taco place in the Village.”

Mort and the grey-eyed girl walked and chatted at an easy pace (the rain having let up) through billowing clouds of steam emanating from the belly of the city through the groans and grinding teeth of garbage trucks, grating and slamming dumpsters full of trash and cast off scraps. The bleating and careening metro buses hydraulics hissing , kneeling  like subservient beasts of burden, wailing sirens and shouting, horns beeping and blaring everywhere, jackhammers, and alarms, but none of this interrupts them only makes them raise their voices or turn their head so they can hear each other better.  The lights of the digital signs, the glass of store fronts, stationary stores, smoke shops, porno palaces, 24hr. bodegas selling fruit out on the street lit up with bright flowers dyed every hue, bars and more bars, thrift stores, cleaners, hair and nail salons, trendy shops selling women’s clothes, abandoned empty store fronts, construction sites that turn the street into a maze of corridors and mirrors, the muck of the street an unspeakable combination of human excreta, vomit, dog shit, and leaking garbage bags, exhaust from the constant stream of cabs, cars, trucks, and buses.

“What’s the deal with your friend?” Nito asks.

“Prof. Sign is my friend but he is also my employer.”

“Oh, so are you the Watson to his Sherlock?”

“I guess you could say that, it’s really his story but I keep getting dragged in.”

“What are you working on now?”

Union square lit by the lampposts the trees glistened still dark and wet scrawling there naked branches out into the hazy sky. Mort fumbled his phone out of his pants pocket.

“Fuck!” Mort said looking at his phone.

“What is it?”

“Prof. Sign needs me. Shit, I forgot to turn up the ringer.”

“How long ago did he call?”

“Three hours ago.”

The Mad Book Dealer

Antique, First Editions, Unique, Collectable. Books Bought ONLY BEST QUALITY!!! DO NOT WASTE MY TIME!!!!!! Nitocrisarchive@gmail.com

     The grey-eyed girl passed Charlie coming out of the elevator of West 96th street. The door was open and she could tell by the combined odor of old paper, and Moroccan leather that there would be some decent books here. Shelves ran along one wall of the apartment. She pushed the sliding library ladder so she could get a better look at a set of Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico bound in red gilt leather.

“Just give me what you think is fair.”

“You have a very fine collection here, Dr. Sign.” She said not looking away from the books.

“Yeah, I haven’t been able to part with them.”

“Moving?”

“You could say that…just leave the books on the shelf all the way to the left. What is the quote? A room without books is a room without a soul?”Derrick took a volume of The Life of Samuel Johnson into his hand and caressed the binding. “Books have given me joy all my life especially since I lost my sight.  I don’t think I have to explain it to you, but the feel of a book in the hand the binding, the boards, the smell of the paper and leather. The sound of the pages even, still give me pleasure.”

She was busy calculated what he had and feeling a little dizzy high up on the ladder, when a tall gaunt man (she hadn’t noticed previously) with hollows under his eyes wearing a threadbare double-breasted suit sitting at a desk, busy writing a letter, said  “My dear, does he have any works by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ?”

 “I have an appointment but an associate of mine will be here in about an hour to settle up with you. Will that be enough time?”

“Yes it should.” She said feeling a nauseous pit in her stomach.

Derrick rubbed his stumbled chin, “You don’t waste time do you?”

“No, Dr. Sign, I don’t. It was nice to meet you.”

                                        

The grey-eyed girl retrieved a notebook and pencil from her knapsack and began methodically recording the values of the books, what they would be worth online and how much she could pay Dr. Sign. She was sure she wouldn’t have enough money to front for all the books. There was well over $50,000 worth of books here. A hot sensation ran made the tiny hairs stand up on her arms.

“Quite a collection wouldn’t you say.” The man sitting at the desk was pulling a book from the shelf. Ah, the Arabian nights, one of my earliest influences. Buying books from a blind man, I do wonder how he went blind, perhaps he looked into one of these very books, possible a book containing a message so unearthly, so titanic, so beyond the ken and realm of human understanding his eyes ceased functioning rather than relay the horrid message to his mind.”

“Perhaps” she continued writing figures in her notebook trying to focus.

The gaunt man perused the shelves, “Ah yes, the Iliad, the Odyssey, this blind man does see I contend with a library such as this. This apartment is quite nice you know? Not like the places I lived in while I was here, rat-holes they were, the high ceiling and moldings are quite nice. I just adore these windows. Do you know why Nito that I never liked New York? People say I found it too fast passed, to diabolical, to monumentally oppressive, and it is all those things.  What I really didn’t like though was I couldn’t see the stars from my dingy apartment window. My view was a brick wall two inches from my window. Really. Are you listening Nito?  I see you are busy let me sit I will write this all down in a letter for you; ok Nito?”

“Yes Howard…?”

“I just wanted to see if you were listening.”

“Go ahead write down for me.  I know how you love to write letters.”

“OK Nito but I will be right here if you need my help. I do know my way around books you know. You know right, that…”

“Yes Howard, I know.”

He sat back down at the desk and started to write with a fountain pen.

After forty minutes the grey-eyed girl had almost finished tallying up the worth of Dr. Sign’s library, when a furry, orangey streak ran yipping by her scaring Howard out of the desk and up the library ladder.

“Egads! What was that?” Howard said.

The Pomeranian did a circuit or two of the room.  Behind the dog Mort entered the room.

“Oh a mangy mongrel of a dog! I so do prefer cats.”

“Come here Leland leave her alone,” The Pomeranian continued to yap and run around the room.

“I’m almost finished.”

“You must the book dealer.”

“How’d you guess?” The grey-eyed girl recognized him from the poetry reading.

Mort recognized her right away.

“Gads! Nito what kind of people do you associate with.”

She tried to ignore what he was saying.

“Professor Sign gave me a check for you, just let me know how much when your done.”

“It will be just a few more minutes, just have to tally it all up.”

“Nito, do not trust this creature. I am sure he is probably an emissary from a unseen race of creatures so beyond our understanding doing business with him will surely infect your sanity.” He said from his perch on the ladder.

Mort walked across the apartment and into the kitchen and started to move some glasses and dishes around.

“Howard you have to shut-up. Why don’t you leave?”

“He has pink eyes! I bet he stole Dr. Sign’s sight and sanity.”

“Listen to yourself.”

“Did you say something?” Mort called from the kitchen.

“Ah no, nothing” she said.

“You have to leave, now.” She said in a harsh whisper.

“Here I brought you water.” Mort said.

“Oh thanks,”

“What kind of creature drinks water?  Probably to keep his gills wet.” Howard said as he disappeared out of the door.

“My name is Mort by the way.” He extended his hand

“My friends call me Nito.” She said shaking his hand.

“I know what you did after that poetry reading.”  He said with small smile on his face.

The Air Between Us

Dear Charlie,

Read this letter by the shore.

Stand and feel. Feel the continent of nothing that separates us. See me from across the world gazing to you. Your eyes are green swirls in tidal pools. Waves wreathe sea foam along damp tracts of sand. My toes curled in the silken loam; up to my knees, breakers beckoning, undulating, “come deeper” the creamy tops swallowing my legs, hips.

Charlie feel the air between us.  Let it caress, let it hold you, let it grip you. Lick blowy against you, through you.  The sky is warm, pliable, let it enfold you. Taste the salt-spray  bite of the breeze.

 I kiss the air between us.

Feel my kiss on the air between us.

Love,
L.A.F

Eyes on the Street

THAA-WHACK! That was the sound of Mort's body hitting the mat.

Mort remembers seeing the ceiling of the dojo dimly give way to a fluttering blackness at the corners of his vision, like someone was tightening a garrote around his neck, then it was total black.

That was the first time Mort met Professor Sign.

Looking across the mat; Mort didn't think much of the man at the time. Yes, he noticed the tattered

black belt, the thick wrists revealed by the sleeves of the man's gi, but the guy was blind.

Mort was cocky in the way a lot of young, strong, beginners are. Mort pulled his blue belt tight, went to shake the hand left dangling for him. When Mort came to he was shaken; he stayed away from the black belt for months.

Eventual Sign came up to him "Why you dodging me Mort? You have to tap next time buddy." So Mort grabbed hold of Sign's gi when Mort pushed Sign pulled when Mort pulled Sign pushed. Mort felt like chew toy in the mouth of a Rottweiler. It was like grappling a whirlwind inside an empty jacket.

 "Don't use Strength Mort. Feel where I'm giving you energy than use that energy to throw me."

Sign took Mort under his wing teaching him all the techniques, and counters he knew. Pretty soon Mort was tossing guys on their heads as well. Professor Sign felt akin to this somewhat socially awkward kid that had certain brashness, an outsider’s attitude.

 

After years of training with Professor Sign; Mort knew almost nothing about him, he wore a ring but never mentioned a wife, he lost his vision somehow while working for the NYPD, that he taught Criminal Psychology and Profiling at John Jay College, and of course the ability to toss you on your head in the blink of an eye. Sign on the other had known almost everything about Mort. For instance that Mort was a nickname. That his family ran a funeral parlor which Mort worked at and that he was expelled from the Forensic Pathology Program at John Hopkins University because of extra circular experiments involving cadavers from the pathology lab. Sign knew Mort was something of a prodigy when it came to study lividity, desiccation, putrification, taphonomy, proximate and immediate causes of mortality. Mort though rough around the edges was a good kid and he knew his stuff.

It was on the Desi Freedman case, that Professor Sign enlisted Mort’s help. She was missing for two days when Steve Freedman, a Wall Street big-shot with enough dough in the bank to by a deserted island in the Caribbean and enough girlfriends to repopulate it with hired Sign to find her. Steve met Detective Sign at the couple’s posh west side townhouse. Through an open window Sign felt a breeze; the blowing breeze brought a smell of new churned dirt, and the faint bitter ammonia scent of decay. Sign knew Desi was buried not too deeply under the ivy in courtyard. He finished his talk with Steve Freedman in the courtyard “Ever since I lost my sight,” Sign said “that is one of my favorite sensations, the wind blowing through ivy.” He couldn’t risk letting him know he had found Desi already Sign had a feeling Mr. Steve had some blood on his hands and dirt under his fingernails.

 Mort was trapped. Professor Sign was holding him down using his signature side control pressure crushing Mort’s head down against the mat. Mort futilely maneuvered his legs to get a knee against Sign’s body to create some much needed space, just to breathe. Sign said to him. "Mort I hear your pretty good with dead bodies."

"Yeah they don't complain much."

"I bet. I have a job for you if you’re interested."

Sign needed Mort’s expertise to place a time of death, cause of death, everything a forensic Pathologist does and more. Sign always like working just outside the rules so he chose Mort.

 The Desi Freedman case was wrapped up. Two of Steve Freedman’s girlfriends murdered her in her sleep while Steve watched lying next to her in bed the whole time. Steve and the two girlfriends were both convicted and awaiting sentencing. Mort was able to tell the time and immediate cause of death through asphyxiation. Mort couldn’t testify in the trial because he wasn’t licensed but Sign brought Mort’s report to the coroner who gave it her seal of approval.

 The duo continued to train jiu-jitsu together and Mort would help out whenever Sign needed him. They would banter about cases as they tried to choke or lock up a submission on each other. While Sign had Mort squirming locked in an arm bar, he said.

"How about working for me full-time more-or-less."

"Owww...Owww!  Tap! Tap, tap."

"Oh, sorry. Mort I've learned a lot, how to use my senses to compensate, but I'm not superhuman I could use a pair of eyes on the street."

 

Mort became Sign's eyes on the street doing surveillance operations, trailing people, providing forensic backup at crime sciences, and supplemental pathology reports. With Mort’s help Sign was being hired for more and more high profile cases working with the FBI, NYPD, even the Joint Task Force on Terrorism, but he liked staying on small cases private cases that paid a whole lot more.

  It was Mort’s idea to place a camera and listening device in Sign’s sunglasses. Mort really could be Sign’s eyes at a crime scene or when meeting with clients or suspects, communicating information via a hidden earpiece. Sign quickly garnered a reputation of semi-superhuman powers of deduction, a blind Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunes Told/ Hairs Cut

Before I left for Mexico I figured I would get a hair-cut.

Someone had recommended I see this lady about it. Turns out she wasn't much of a barber but a hell of a fortune teller. I got the address from a contact in the city who mainly deals with polish immigrates and intelligence from their network of resistant fighters. This particular contact thought I needed a little insight in to my future and subsequently a trim.

After a little wandering around the village I found the Barber pole hanging from a second story apartment above a sign that said Fortunes Read/ Hairs Cut. I walked up the stairs and was passed by some ladies leaving almost bald but for some rough tufts of hair sticking out of their heads. Is that what I'm in for I thought?

The room was like your typical Barber shop, mirrors, two barber chairs, a waiting area with magazines, chairs, a coat rack, and pictures of men's and women's hairstyles but here you couldn't pick your hairstyle. There was also a back room separated by a beaded curtain over which hung a sign in the shape of a hand with an eye in it reading Aggi the Psychic.

I sat in the chair supremely skeptical and afraid for my head. Aggi came out, she was a dressed in a peasant tunic and looked like she hadn't had a haircut for years herself. Steel gray and black pulled back into a wild ponytail that reached the back of her thick legs. She looked at me with indifference and said "You want haircut?"

"Yes- please."

She motioned with her strong arm that looked accustomed to hard manual labor whipping out a white smock she tightly fastened it around my throat. Trying to loosen it with my finger I said "Just a little off the sides." and she smacked my hand away and said "Sit still."

Hair collected on the floor and she clipped away taking random bites off my head. I blew the hair off my face and blinked to keep it out of my eyes. Out from behind a beaded curtain a little woman with a broom twice as big as herself and dressed similar to Aggi started to sweep the hair into piles at Aggi's feet .Then a high-pitched voice came from below me.

"You will be traveling." The voice was coming from the little lady sweeping the hair into piles around the chair.

"Yes, I plan too." I glanced down and saw here staring down into the small piles of hair.

"Don't move." the lady with the ham hock arms said and forced my head straight ahead.

"The trip you are taking will end abruptly. Be careful of a green woman and be on the lookout for an enemy who is really your ally. Your trip will be ultimately unsatisfying. Don't go into bad places alone."

By this point it was all pretty general stuff and my head was getting cut to shreds.

"Stay off of motorcycles. You have knowledge, you feel you can't divulge. Disappear, someone is looking for you... you should disappear."

Although I was almost completely bald by this point I wanted to hear what she said and let the rest of my hair get chopped off.

"You will have children. But soon you will have to..."

At that point she stopped.

"Have to what?" I said looking down at the lady as she swept up the remaining piles of hair and waddled back behind the beaded curtain.

"Hey, where's she going?"

"No more hair no more fortune." the thickset lady with the scissors grunted.

It was true my head was completely shore.