A little background material to The Big Mosquito.
A Jason Midnight and His Cousin Caroline short mystery
from Slow Left Turn At Midnight.
Copyright 2006 by John H. Baillie
The Lost Lagoon of Dr. Hota
Part Three
When I wake up, I’m manacled to a wall in a dungeon.
What’s the point? I wonder. I shut my eyes, and try to pass out again.
“Jason, you fink, I saw that!”
Damn! Caroline caught me. I open my eyes and look around some more. Hmm, quite the line up we’ve got here.
“Good to have you back in the land of the living, laddie,” Patrick says from my immediate right. “That was quite the whack your poor noggin took, there.”
I roll my head around on my shoulders. It doesn’t fall off. Good. “I’ve felt worse. So. Who’s all here?” I look down the line to my left. Patrick’s the only person to my right. Leaning out, I can see Caroline directly beside me, and after her, Gary, Rodan, Mothra and Kent. With me, that makes —
“They got eight of us,” Caroline snarls.
I sigh. “Seven, Caroline, seven …"
“No, actually she’s right,” Patrick agrees with her, but what does he know, he’s an escaped lunatic. “The bastard’s got Annabeth stashed away somewhere too.”
I’m about to apologize to Caroline when she says “He does?” All is right with the world. And I notice of the seven of us, Kent, Rodan, Mothra and Gary are all gagged. This Dr. Hota can’t be so mad as all that, then.
“What happened?” I ask.
“The nudist Zombies overwhelmed us,” Patrick explains. “Or was it the Zombie nudists? No surprise, really, either way.”
“Could have been both,” Caroline remarks, sagely.
“They dragged the lot of us out here to the Lost Lagoon,” Patrick goes on. “But Dr. Prufrock, Henry, and the butterfly hunters got away.”
“Oh, what a relief,” I manage to say with a straight face.
“How they’ll find us out here though, I’ll never know,” Caroline says ruefully.
“We’ll just have to rely on our own wits to get ourselves out of this,” I announce.
Caroline laughs heartily. “Good one.”
A door creaks open ominously. An obese, menacing figure waddles onto the scene. A collective shiver runs through the room. “Dr. Hota, I presume,” I say, before I can stop myself. What is wrong with me?
The figure rolls up to me.
“Now there’s a heart attack waiting to happen,” Caroline whispers out of the side of her mouth to me, then gives Hota a big, innocent grin.
Hota glances at her. “Hmp.” He’s got a round head, big, sad, droopy eyes, and fat, slightly obscene looking lips. “And how did you deduce that I was Dr. Hota, my dear sir?” He has a resonant, unhurried voice, a mid-Atlantic accent, but he’s more Charles Laughton than Orson Welles. There’s something very oily about him.
“You’re fully dressed,” I point out. And he is. He’s wearing a white suit complete with tie and cufflinks, for Chrissake. Who wears cufflinks anymore? Especially out in Lagoon country?
“Ha!” Hota laughs loudly. “Well spotted, sir! It’s unfortunate you’re too old to join my little colony. I’d be most interested to see what effect my little potion would have upon such a keenly analytical mind.”
“He’s nuts,” Caroline says to the gagged Gary on her other side. “Obviously raving mad.”
Hota chuckles. “I’ve been called far worse than that, madame. But such epithets are meaningless. My work speaks for itself.”
“A herd of buck naked teenagers unable to think for themselves?” I comment. “Oh, that speaks loads, all right.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Okay, he’s got the evil laugh down all right, I’ll grant him that. “You scoff at my accomplishments sir, as so many have before you. But posterity will tell, sir, posterity will tell.” He drapes himself languidly on a table across from us, his legs right up off the floor and crossed, massive hips rolling into place.
“Did he say ‘posterity’, or ‘posterior’?” Patrick asks.
“Oh, most droll,” Hota drawls. “But may I remind you people, that even though you are presently my guests, you are hardly in a position to abuse my hospitality.”
“For someone who maintains his authority primarily through some form of mind control, that’s talking pretty big,” I point out.
“My mind control potion is only a means to a spiritually moral end,” Hota argues with complete conviction. “I would never dream of using it on an adult, fully rational human being. Let me give you an example. Trent!”
Hota sits up and claps his hands once sharply. A set of double doors at the top of a staircase opens, and Trent lurches in, holding his arms straight out in front of him, but leading Annabeth by a chain locked to a gold collar clamped around her neck. “RRRRRAGHHH!”
Trent still wears his black swim trunks, but Annabeth — whoa, Nellie!
“You fiend,” Patrick growls at Hota.
“I don’t know,” Caroline says brightly. “I think it really flatters her hips. And that colour’s a knockout on her.” Caroline runs a textiles store. This time she knows what she’s talking about.
Trent leads Annabeth up to us just in time for the captive girl to hear Caroline’s comments. “Do you really think so?” she asks eagerly. “He offered me another one in pink, but I thought, with my skin, no, it just wouldn’t work.”
“No, the teal was definitely the right choice,” Caroline assures her.
“I’m so glad you think so!” Rodan and Mothra vigorously nod their silent agreement too. “But what about the shoes? Too much?”
“Do you mind!” For the first time, Hota loses his cool a little. This impromptu fashion review is throwing off his maniacal monologue.
Hota’s dressed Annabeth in some weird kind of turquoisey one-piece cloth, that goes around her neck, down her front and then down and up again behind to her waist, draped around some gold metal hoop around her middle. The cloth’s neckline plunges to below her navel, and she’s not wearing anything underneath. She looks like some barbarian princess off of an old Edgar Rice Burroughs’s paperback. She’s also decked out with some kind of teeteringly balanced, wildly elaborate golden tiara-type thing perched precariously in her hair, and the gold collar the chain Trent leads her by is attached to, with a set of gold bands cuffing her arms together around her wrists. She wears gold anklets as well, and these bizarre, silvery, metallic-looking open toed high heeled shoes, that look like scorpions sitting on their stingers. She’s none too steady on her feet, but I have to agree with Caroline. For someone so amply endowed in the lower regions as well as up top, Annabeth carries off the ensemble very well.
“Meet the woman I have chosen as my queen,” Hota gloats lasciviously, “and I assure you, I have used no mind control potion upon her.”
“Gedoudda here, ya creep!” Annabeth snarls.
“We’ve already met,” Caroline protests. “That’s Annabeth, she has the cottage down the path from mine, and —”
“But you have never before met her as my queen!” Hota insists, a little miffed. “That’s the point.”
“She’ll never be your queen, monster,” Patrick argues. “Annabeth, darlin’ — hold on. We’re bound to be rescued, and then I’ll get you out of that awful outfit as quick as I can.”
We hear Rodan and Mothra trying to scream behind their gags. Patrick blushes.
“I mean — well, you know what I mean, love!”
Annabeth goes even more wobbly, and there’s an awful lot of her in view right now that wobbles. “Did you just call me — love?” she gasps to Patrick.
“Yes, darlin’.”
“Did you just call me — darlin’?” she squeaks.
“Yes, my beautiful one.”
“Did you just call me —”
“Enough!” Hota erupts. “You’re my queen, let me remind you! Don’t forget who gave you your fair and radiant raiment.”
“And the handcuffs, and the chains,” Caroline snarls. “Although I do hear that kind of thing is popular in certain circles, these days. On late night cable TV. I really don’t know about the shoes, though —”
“Face it, Hota,” I interrupt. “You can dress the girl up — sort of — and put on the chains and all, but golden as they may be, you still will not have won her heart. Ee-gad, what did I just say?”
Hota chuckles quietly. Walks up to me again. “That is where you’re quite wrong, sir. And where you are wrong, and you, and even you.” He points at Patrick, Caroline, and Annabeth in succession. “You see, I will break the girl to my bit, and not through the use of my masterfully concocted mind control potion either. But through the proper respect and admiration I am owed, that she will come to develop for me as comes to know me.”
More hearty scoffing from the manacle gang.
“You laugh, but I —” Hota holds one dramatic finger in the air — “am a superior human being. I have purged the base sex drive from my body, and attained a completely elevated spiritual plane hitherto unknown by man except to the greatest mystics.”
“Right,” I concede. “That’s why you dressed Annabeth up like some barbarian tart from Mars, and that’s why you surround yourself with gorgeous bodied teenaged girls and boys you brainwash into never wearing clothes, and oh yeah, don’t you have some kind of wild woman daughter running around somewhere too, Mr. I’m-so-much-better-than-sex?”
Hota smiles, with those oily fat lips. His droopy eyes go all watery. “The path has been a difficult one, I admit. To fully conquer my bestial urges I did need to indulge them once, to know the full power of what I gave up — thus, the unfortunate Vixeena, who I have tried to protect form the ways of the world as much as has been in my power. As to my companion regent’s dress — I find the only proper way to maintain my heightened spiritual edge is to constantly expose myself to the path of temptation that I must resist — And ain’t she a looker? Woof! Woof!”
“Okay, we’ll give you those two, but what about the zombie nudists?” Caroline grants him. “Eh? Gotcha there, don’t we, eh? Eh?”
Hota favours her with a particularly condescending smile. “Those — Zombies, as you so quaintly refer to them, are nothing short of my crowning achievement. The scions of a new race of spiritual and physical perfection.”
“Oh, sure they look good, but spiritual perfection? They all look zonked out of their skulls.”
“Let me tell you the proper history of Dr. Hota’s Naturalist Resort for Decent Young Men and Women, madame,” Hota insists, as he is in full monologue mode now. He’s enjoying his captive audience. Say what you like about naked nubiles, if they’re all zombified out the whole time it must be nice to have someone clothed and relatively with it to talk to once in awhile.
“My family opened the colony as a Christian Sunshine Camp in the 1920s. I took over management in the late 1950s. My family always had a strong philosophical belief in the power of the mind over the body’s baser urges, but their attempts to encourage these beliefs amongst the general populace were hopelessly primitive.” Hota warms to his subject, beginning to move around. “My parents’ approach was to retreat from life, and deny as much as possible that temptations to the spirit even existed. When they ran the camp, their young men and women were not allowed even to bathe without being covered from chin to ankle. Bare feet were frowned upon, but allowed. Only on the men, however.”
“And you saw good reason to change all that?” I remark.
“Oh yes. If the mind and the spirit could grow to such a profound extent as they did within me as I was brought up in this environment, how much further could these exemplary qualities expand if exposed to the most extreme temptation every single day? So when I took over ownership of the premises, I changed the nature of the camp completely, turning it into a colony in which the young men and women would live for a full year of their lives with every single barrier to appreciation of the physical body removed completely. My young men and women would not be protected from each other. I would openly invite them to appreciate each other sexually every moment they spent with me. But they would rise above these temptations, through the daily instruction I offered in the power of the mind and spirit to elevate the soul. They would attain the ultimate pinnacle of decency in their nakedness. Their nudity would only sharpen their daily triumph over their baser desires. And so I started my grand experiment, with a full roster of fresh-faced, able bodied young men and women.”
He pauses, looking uncomfortable. “Well,” he continues, glancing downwards. “I failed.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“One of the young ladies snuck a long playing recording into the colony, one of those new ‘rock and roll’ platters. They decided to have a dance, down on the beach of the Lagoon. They played this record and — well. The results were havoc. My — ahem — daughter, Vixeena, was just one of the results of the moral chaos that ensued that night. That — ahem — first night, of the grand experiment.”
I sigh. “But you didn’t give up. Did you?”
“Of course I did not give up! For I was — and am — Hota! I devoted myself once more to science, and developed my chemicological masterpiece. The mind control potion! Tastes something like root beer. I enrolled a new group of colonists, and before I let them take their clothes off, I administered the potion to them. The result was everything I could have hoped for. A large group of beautiful young men and women perfectly willing to coexist with each other in the nude and completely able to withstand the baser urges of their flesh thanks to my brilliant teachings of the way of the mind — the way of Hota! From then on, my colony was an unmitigated success. Since then, I have inculcated my message into three generations of young people. Some have grown older and chosen to stay with me, such as the loyal Trent —"
"RRRRRAGHHH!”
“Well. Actually, Trent’s the only one who’s ever stayed with me, and he’s not the most sparkling conversationalist, but he is still an example of the triumph of the brain over the body!”
“RRRRRAGHHH?”
“Sort of.”
“So why isn’t he naked?” Caroline asks, pointedly.
Hota smiles. “He’s too old. I never let anyone over twenty-five enjoy the true freedom of the colony. As I have never allowed my daughter to do so, at any age, I might add — or myself. Some proprieties must be observed, by those of us responsible enough to be in charge. That is also why I have not administered the potion to any of you, or have had you remove your clothing.”
“Because we’re too responsible?” Caroline’s trying to work this out.
“No. Because you’re too old. Except for the lad and the two girls there, I may yet —”
“You sunnava —”
“Please, madame! Control yourself. Our byword in Dr. Hota’s Naturalist Resort for Decent Young Men and Women is dignified restraint.” This sentiment rather loses some of its effect as he finishes the statement by leering at Annabeth and starting to shake, his fat fingers twitching.
“Why have you kidnapped Annabeth then, and dressed her up so, you lecherous old sod!” Patrick demands.
Again the smile. “I told you, sir. To test myself daily. Not with a zombie, as you call them, but with a real, live, vivacious, beautiful, breathing, quivering woman, with huge — ahem. And, because, it is time, I, Hota, took a mate. I mean, a companion. Time marches on, sir. Even Hota grows older. This — enchanting, voluptuous young woman will come, in time ... to appreciate my philosophy and join me in ruling and enriching the lives of my many young wards. We will continue to turn out generation after generation of truly decent young men and women, taught to happily and gloriously renounce their animalistic sexual natures for the rest of their lives …” He practically beams as he finishes this speech. Too bad his fingers still twitch.
“Just one thing,” I ask, having deduced what’s undoubtedly the major flaw in this plan.
“And what would that be?”
“Where do you find these new groups of colonists, generation after generation?”
“Well, naturally an endeavour such as mine relies on the utmost discretion. Thus my new colonists are recruited by invitation only.”
“And how do you choose who to invite?”
Another huge smile. “I invite only the sons and daughters of my previous colonists, of course. Naturally, their parents are quite willing to accommodate me, as — ahem — the effects of my mind control potion never do completely wear off.”
I smirk, and glance over at Caroline. “Do you want to point it out to him, or should I?”
“Point out what?” Caroline can’t do the math, of course.
But Patrick can. “That his former colonists have hardly entirely renounced their sexual natures and totally embraced ‘the way of Hota’ if they’re out there having so many bonny wee babbies, have they.”
Hota stops dead. His face turns purple. His expression is of someone just kicked in the teleologicals.
“But — how — could they — can they — but I — but they —” he splutters. Then he claps his hand over his mouth and turns away. He claps his other hand over his mouth too and sounds as if he’s muffling a scream. His massive, round shoulders shake. Then he slowly turns back to us, a beaten man.
“I never thought of that,” he says quietly. “I have failed. Totally ... and utterly ... failed. I have no recourse but to end my grand experiment now then, and forever, right here in this room. I shall burn my laboratory and mansion to the ground, leaving no trace of my mind control potion for any to find. ... Unfortunately, you’ll all be killed in the blaze too, but I’m much too upset at the moment to concern myself with that. Meanwhile, I’m getting out of here with the babe.”
“What! Hey —”
“No! You can’t —”
“Jason, you idiot, look what you’ve done now —”
“RRRRRAGHHH?”
Hota darts to Trent and grabs Annabeth’s chain from his hand, then wraps one greasy right arm around her waist and clutches her to him with an evil laugh. “I may have failed, but at least now that means I don’t have to hold back my own depraved lusts any longer! This woman is mine, mine I tell you! And —” he dashes to the wall and grabs an ominously placed flaming torch — “there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”
“Halt! You fiend!”
What the hell? Our heads turn to look at the door at the stop of the stairs.
“It’s the butterfly hunters!” Patrick cries out. “I knew we’d be rescued!”
I’ll be damned. It’s Moose and Lucky all right, with Humphrey on his leash. Don’t tell me the toad came through? And our men are even armed — they brought their butterfly nets.
“No pair of lepidopteran nimrods with a giant Bufinidae can stop me now!” Hota gloats, waving the torch. God, I love my job! Where else can you hear such colourful language? Although I think the correct term would probably have been Bufinida.
“Who are you calling nimrods?” Moose wants to know, mortally offended.
“I’m putting this room to the torch, and then I’m having this woman, now, tonight!” Hota declaims. “I’ve wasted thirty-four fucking years on the way of the mind, I’ve got a lot of lechery to catch up with. And you won’t stop me! Ha!” He dashes the torch onto a wooden table piled high with papers, which go up like a tinderbox. Then he hauls the screaming Annabeth back through the room to a wall, where he presses some concealed switch, and a secret exit opens. He yanks Annabeth through the opening, disappearing until there is no trace of him left except the fading echoes of his mad laughter and his captive’s shrieks of terror. Lucky and Moose charge down the stairs to unshackle us — they’d better move quick. The flames are spreading unnaturally fast.
“No!” Patrick directs them. “Leave us! Quickly! Rescue Annabeth! After them, run!”
“Right.” Lucky nods. He and Moose run off through the increasing smoke and flames into the secret exit. Leaving us all behind, still manacled to the wall.
“Patrick, you — you —” I’m speechless. “You lunatic.”
“And your point is?”
“How the hell are we supposed to get out of here!”
“Oh, someone else is bound to come along, just you wait and see, boyo.”
As if on cue, Vixeena undulates out of the shadows. She heads straight for Kent. Holds up a big brass key. Removes his gag.
“Vixeena! Thank God you’re here! Quick — unlock my bonds!” Wesley pleads.
“Hota not in control no more?” Vixeena enquires ingenuously. She slips her fingers into Kent’s shirt. He starts to shiver, despite the heat from the fire.
“No! Hota’s gone! Hota’s gone forever! I’m in control now, just like you wanted, get me out of here and let’s get naked, quick, quick!” he practically shrieks. It’s getting really hot in here.
“Who’s this slut?” Caroline wants to know.
“Vixeena, the Dough Babe, remember?” I remind her.
“Oh, Christ.”
“Now! Vixeena, let’s go!” Kent wants out. The flames start to lick at our feet. We start to cough. But Vixeena seems strangely unaffected.
“Hmmmmnnnn?” she purrs musically. “Hota is gone? Vixeena can do as she wishes?”
“Yes! Vixeena! Do anything you want with me, anything! But do it quickly, and get me out of here!”
“Hey!” Caroline coughs. “What about us too, you rat!”
“Then Vixeena will do exactly what she wants!” she grins, slipping her hand out of Kent’s shirt and down to his pants. He squirms and moans. “Exactly what she wants ...” There is a very tense moment — then she rushes to Gary and sets him free. “If Hota is gone, Vixeena wants this one now!”
“What! What about me?” Kent wails.
Vixeena waves him off. “Too old!”
“Ha!” Caroline exults, but then ends up choking.
Vixeena grabs Gary by the waistband of his pants, dragging him into the smoke towards the secret exit. She stops once to look back and give Kent a little wave. “Bye bye ... sucka!” And they’re gone.
“Okay, now I’m beginning to get a wee bit worried,” Patrick concedes, as the remaining six of us start choking harder.
It’s getting hard to see, as the smoke builds and our eyes water. We’re all coughing hard, pulling back as the flames start to bite at us from the centre of the room. A couple of us still struggle wildly with our bonds, but nothing seems to give …
Just when I’m about ready to give up, a figure comes charging through the door and down the stairs, carrying something heavy. It’s Henry Henry Henry Henry, carrying a pickaxe! He smashes us loose one by one, starting at the end closest to the door, with Kent. After him go Rodan and Mothra, then Caroline, but she only takes a couple of steps before she collapses to the floor, choking. Henry smashes my manacles, and I grab his arm. “Get her out of here!” I gasp, pointing at Caroline. “I’ll free Patrick!”
Henry complies, handing me the pickaxe. He scoops up Caroline and hurries back up the stairs. I whack away at Patrick’s bonds until I get him free. We lean on each other for a second, choking.
“Let’s go!” I pant.
“Thanks, mate! Owe you one. Gotta save me woman now.”
“You what —”
Patrick leaps through the flames, disappearing into the smoke, in the general direction of the secret exit. I stare after him, stunned, then realize I need to get the hell out of here. I cover my mouth with my arm and run for the stairs.
“RRRRRAGHHH!”
Trent looms up out of the smoke, arms extended, eyes full of rage, still in full Monster mode, cutting me off from any escape. I need to think fast.
“Quick! Did It Come From Another World, or was it the Thing From Outer Space?” I demand.
“RRRRRAGHHH? ... Um ... It?”
“Nope! That’s the thing! You lose!” I clobber him with the blunt end of the pickaxe, knocking him out. Then, using the absolute last of my strength, I drag him up the stairs and try to find my way out of the burning building.
***
The fire has already spread to the main floor of wherever the hell it is we are, and the smoke is incredibly dense. I’m not gonna last much longer — and I don’t know my way out — when I hear some familiar ear-splitting screams coming from my right. Ah! Thank goodness somebody got Rodan and Mothra’s gags off. I drag deadweight Trent over in the direction of the screaming, almost immediately falling through an open door. We’re out! Rodan and Mothra run over to help when they see me — they go off with Trent’s limp body while I fall on the grass, choking and coughing. I finally manage to get most of the carbon I inhaled out of my system, and haul myself unsteadily to my feet. There’s a nice level tree stump not too far away. I go and sit there.
Phew! After that fire and all, boy, do I need a smoke! I pull out my cigarettes, and light up. For some reason, I start coughing again.
Well! What’s going on here, anyway? Moose and Lucky run by. “Hey!” I call. “What happened to Annabeth and Hota? Did everyone get out okay?”
“It’s madness! Terrible! An atrocity!” Lucky laments.
“We caught up with them just outside the mansion,” Moose explains, “but when we did, Dr. Hota actually stopped and pushed Lucky down!”
“And he calls himself a doctor!”
“Wow,” I sympathize. Are there no limits to the man’s depravity? Bullying butterfly hunters. “What about Dejah Thoris? I mean, Annabeth?”
“As soon as Hota let her go, she turned on him and whacked him up the jawbone with those golden handcuffs.”
“Then she kicked him where — where — where it really hurts. Hard. Twice.”
“With those tacky silver scorpion shoes?” I wonder.
“Yup. Then she jabbed the heel of one of them down into his foot.”
“You should have heard him squeal.”
“Yeah! So then Hota pushed Lucky down again, because he was in his way, and the crazy guy ran back into the burning mansion!”
“With Annabeth?”
“No! He was trying to get away from Annabeth! You should have heard her swear at him.”
“So Hota went back into the mansion?”
“Yeah! Then Patrick came running up out of the smoke, and he and Annabeth started kissing, so we thought we’d better go help Dr. Prufrock with the nudists.”
“Who wouldn’t? And what exactly was Dr. Prufrock doing with the nudists?”
“He came up with a antitoxin that counteracts Hota’s mind control potion, so he was setting their brains free.”
“How resourceful.”
We’re interrupted by Prufrock himself suddenly highstepping by yelling “Cover their eyes! Cover their eyes!”
“Why?” Moose calls in concern. “Are they panicking in the fire? Like horses?”
“No! They’re naked! And now they realize it! We can’t let them see each other! Cover their eyes! Cover their eyes!” All three of them run off. I look back at the burning mansion. I imagine it was quite the place, not that I got to see much of it, what with being unconscious and all when they carried me in.
I sit, and smoke my cigarette contentedly, taking what I deem to be a well earned rest. At one point, some movement to my left, near the bushes, catches my eye. Oh yeah. There’s Vixeena and Gary, taking off the last of their clothes, then running happily off hand in hand into the forest, buck naked. Hota may be perishing in the flames even as they skip off together, but his spirit lives on.
I stub out my cigarette, and haul myself up. Time to go look for Caroline. Or at least for a few of those Lost Lagoon Zombie nubile nudists.
***
A week later, for some reason, while I’m waiting for Caroline to finish packing up her car so she can drive me back to the city, I’m left standing alone with Kent. Some real authorities showed up finally, took care of the fire before it spread to the woods, determined that they could not find Hota’s body, and returned all the newly unbrainwashed Zombie nudists to their proper homes. Then they sent out a search party for Vixeena and Gary, but I don’t suppose we’re going to find those two again in a hurry.
Which really gets up Wesley’s nose.
“I don’t understand this!” he laments for the umpteenth time. “Patrick ends up with Annabeth, fine. I can accept that. Trent even goes off with Rodan and Mothra and Dr. Prufrock for some kind of rehabilitation treatment, I can even accept that!”
“Sort of like B-Movie Monsters Anonymous?” I wonder. “RRRRRAGHHH! My name is Trent. And I’m a cheesy Gillman-ripoff in a rubber suit.”
“But Vixeena rejected me! For Gary! Why would she do that, after everything she told me?”
“Because you’re too old,” I remind him. “She was just leading you on.”
“But what about your cousin Caroline?” he demands. “I always sort of, kind of, had my eye on her. And I thought she liked me. What about her?”
“She’s gone off with Henry Henry Henry Henry. One of them, anyway.”
“Why!”
“Because when push came to shove, he saved her, and you didn’t.”
“Women!”
“Go figure.”
“And now, not only is Gary gone with the girl I should have got, Gary is gone!”
“What, both of him?”
“So I’m left alone, without a girl, running this stupid resort by myself, with nothing to keep me company but a goddamn sixteen foot tall plaster woodtick named Woody!”
A better man would see the publicity opportunities in all this. “Ah well,” I console him. “Must be something in the water in these parts, eh?”
“All I ever wanted to do was make movies! Now I’m totally behind the eight ball, and I don’t know what to do! How’m I supposed to turn this ridiculous situation around?”
“Well — you could always go the ‘way of Hota’, and open a nudist colony of your own. There’s a vacancy in the area, now that the mad doctor’s supposedly gone. You have the facilities. ... Kent. Kent! I was joking! Kent — come back here! Kent, put your pants back on this instant! Kent —”
*****
Photography by Renee Beaubien, at Beyond the Prism
on Flickr, at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/
*****
REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!
The Big Mosquito continues, with postings number 4 and 5 of 49, Monday August 17th and Friday, August 21st. As always, at:
http://realficone.blogspot.ca/
It’s the old naked-girl-jumping-out-of-a-cake-with-a-machine-gun routine!
Featuring:
6. meanwhile, Eddie sees something he shouldn’t
7. in counseling
8. surprise!
9. clandestine dreaming
Sink Decomposition Series
by Fandango Moberly
#6 of 50
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