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Website content may offend and disturb. Content includes horror, murder, torture, military carnage and occasional incidents from the adult side of adult life. |
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"And?" said the concierge. "Who the hell are you?" Mop Molish had not come to Gorleth with plans for getting involved in a murder, but it seemed he might have become party to one. "Is he dead?" said Mop anxiously, looking at the man in whose death he might be implicated. "I don't think so," said Opera. The concierge who was in charge of 18 Saprabong Drive was bleeding heavily from the scalp. The bottle with which she had hit him over the head had broken on impact. Opera got down on her knees and peered at his face. The man's eyes were shut. A loose eyelash lay motionless on one eyelid. There was the most curious orange goo gunked up in the corner of his eyes. "Fingerprints," said Mop. "What?" said Opera, hearing his voice distantly. "Oh, yes. Fingerprints." She got out her handkerchief and wiped the neck of the bottle clean of fingerprints. "We should call an ambulance," said Mop. "We should get the keys, is what we should do," said Opera. She dropped the polished neck of the bottle into the trash can then, with her hand wrapped in her handkerchief, pulled open the desk drawer. There was a big bunch of keys inside. Presumably, the master keys. Five minutes later, they unlocked the door to apartment 2943 and pushed their way inside, and the man who was waiting promptly raised his pistol and fired at them. Twenty gunshots later, Mop and Opera finally figured out that the figure with the sidearm was a ghost. Presumably the neighbors were used to the racket because nobody responded to the sounds of gunfire. "Well," said Opera, picking herself up from the floor. The ghost aimed the gun at her again, then, realizing she had figured out what was happening, it gave up and dissolved into the wall, sulking. Looking around, Opera realized they were in a room which was at one and the same time both a kitchen and living room. The TV was on, the sound turned down low. It was tuned to Optimism One, the TV channel operated by the neighboring nation of Insulin Thex. Instead of a proper program, Optimism One was screening the scrolling text of a program guide which showed the lineup of movies, sports and educational programs available on Optimism One's nine sister channels, Optimism Two through Optimism Ten. (In point of fact, Insulin Thex only had the one TV channel.) "If there's money here," said Opera to herself, "why wasn't some of it spent on cable TV?" "Gee," said Mop, picking himself up from the floor, mentally three steps behind the action. "It wasn't a real gun." "So you figured it out," said Opera, giving him a little complimentary pat on the head. "Your intellectual facilities continue to impress me." "Faculties," said Mop, ducking away from her patting hand. "You mean my intellectual faculties." "But the noise was real," said Opera, ignoring the correction, "and real noises bring real hammerheads." "You shouldn't call them hammerheads," said Mop. "They get upset." "Then what should I call them?" said Opera. "Pigs? They don't like that either." "If I were you, I'd stick to calling them cops," said Mop. "Well, you're not me," said Opera. She paused to suck at her hand to remove a stray splinter from the floorboards which had gotten lodged in her flesh when she hit the floor. "Which is one of life's mercies for which I thank myself daily. Come on, let's not mess around." A side door stood open, giving them a view into a windowless bathroom unit where a ventilation fan whirred softly. Opera gave it a cursory glance then headed for the door which led deeper into the apartment. She pushed it open and a rat ran out. Opera flinched, but the rat was more scared than she was. "The rat's more scared than you are," observed Mop. "Thank you," said Opera. "You really know how to flatter a woman." The room beyond was a bedroom. The drapes were almost completely closed, but not quite, and the sliver of bright light shining in through the drapes was the first thing that Opera saw as she walked into the room. She tripped over something and stumbled. A set of golf clubs. Some idiot had left a set of golf clubs lying in the middle of the floor! Opera straightened up, then stopped dead as the evidence of her nose told her, unmistakably, that there was something large and dead in the room. To judge by the olfactory evidence, it had been dead for at least a couple of days, if not more. "Do you play golf?" said Mop, joining Opera. "Hush," said Opera. Then she saw what she had come for: the suitcase on the bed. The suitcase was open and there was money inside. A lot of money. There was a man lying beside the suitcase, but he was not going to dispute the possession of the money because he was very plainly dead. Opera walked toward the suitcase in a trance of attraction. She felt as if she was floating. She felt as if she was flying. Her heart beat faster, and, gazing down at the money, she knew that she was in love. "It's dirty," said Mop, peering at the huge heap of wadded bank bills. "Bloodstained," said Opera. However, money is one of the few things in the world which remains desirable despite its own degradation. The Morleth-Spindles took the money without hesitation, and, on the way home, Opera stopped by at the supermarket and picked up a couple of bottles of an enzyme-packed detergent "guaranteed to take care of difficult stains such as chocolate, blood and wine". Two days later, Opera and Mop were sitting in the living room, which was papered with drying dollar bills in various denominations. They had already used some of their new money to make a couple of experimental purchases at automatic vending machines and it worked just fine. They were watching "Upscale", a TV program aimed at the upwardly mobile, when the doorbell rang. Opera and Mop were watching "Upscale", a TV program aimed at the upwardly mobile, when the doorbell rang. "That'll be the pizza," said Mop, getting up from his chair. Opera followed closely. By and large, Mop was fairly well trained by now, but he did have the habit of picking the anchovies off the top of the pizza before Opera could get at it, something which drove her crazy. When Opera and Mop returned to the TV, all was peace for a moment. Then Ptolemy Dace showed up. He shimmered into visibility right in front of the TV set, giving Mop such a surprise that he spilt his beer. "Now look what you've done!" said Opera. She was particularly vexed because beer, despite the best efforts of the beer manufactures, did not have an upwardly mobile image. They had probably degraded themselves in Ptolemy's eyes. "You're probably wondering why I'm here," said Ptolemy. "Not at all," said Opera. "My psychic powers told me you were coming." She had recently read a book called "Aristocrat Now", which had instructed her that surprise, astonishment and over-reaction in general were characteristics of social elements which it referred to as "proles", meaning "members of the proletariat", the kind of lower-class wage slaves who were sometimes referred to, in the vulgar argot of the city's less salubrious quarters, as "working stiffs". "Do we get more wishes?" said Mop. "Ask Opera," said Ptolemy. "She's the one with the psychic powers." "This gentleman," said Opera, seriously annoyed by now, in part because she felt it to be improper for a genie to be addressing her by her personal name, "is delivering pizza, but has accidentally found his way to the wrong address." "What kind of pizza?" said Mop, puzzled. While Mop did have his fair share of brain cells, these seemed to switch themselves off with distressing regularity. "Enough jokes," said Ptolemy. "The truth is that I've taken employment with Inadamerc. I'm here to collect the money you owe on your lounge suite. Nineteen dollars, please." "Shall we pay?" said Mop, turning to Opera. "That," said Opera, "was just Ptolemy's little joke. Okay, Ptolemy. What are you here for? What do you want?" "I want my cut," said Ptolemy Dace. "Your what?" said Opera, in astonishment. "You heard me," said Ptolemy. "I want my cut. I've never had real money before." "But you're a genie!" said Mop. "What could a genie possibly want with money?" "That's my secret," said Ptolemy. "We do have a little problem here," said Opera. "You don't have any control over the, uh, weights and measures. Physical stuff." "You can't even pick this up," said Mop, waving a dollar bill in front of Ptolemy's nose. "You pick it up for me," said Ptolemy. "You bank it into my account. Get something to write with and I'll give you the details." "Aren't you forgetting something?" said Mop. "You've got no physical form. What can you possibly do with money? How can you possibly use it?" "You let me worry about that," said Ptolemy. "Anyway. I want half the money. You put it in my account - " "No," said Opera, cutting in. "We're not doing any such thing. "Get out or I'll have an exorcist come and get rid of you." "You'll do what I say," said Ptolemy, "or I'll go to the police. I'll tell them who hit the concierge over the head with the bottle." "The courts won't listen to a ghost," said Opera dismissively. "They can't. That's the law." "I'm not a ghost," said Ptolemy. "I'm a genie." "Same difference," said Opera. "Don't imagine the police will believe you, either." "They will when I tell them where to find the fingerprints," said Ptolemy. "Nobody's going to clean them away, you know. The police have got the whole room sealed off. It's a crime scene. All I have to do is tell the police where to look and they'll find your fingerprints." "Fingerprints?" said Opera scornfully. "There are no fingerprints. I wiped the bottle clean." "You knelt down to look at the man's face," said Ptolemy. "Remember? Do you remember, Opera? After you hit the concierge over the head, you realized you'd killed him." "What?" said Opera. "He is dead," said Ptolemy. "You did know that - didn't you? But you weren't sure. So you knelt down to have a look. And what do you think you left on the floor? Why, two perfect handprints. Well, Opera. Do we have a deal?" "Okay," said Opera, realizing she was trapped. "However, we're in the middle of laundry at the moment. Once they money's dry, we'll give you half." "No," said Ptolemy. "You'll get on the Internet and make the transfer now. Your account to mine." "But we neither of us have money," said Opera. "You both of you have half a dozen credit cards apiece," said Ptolemy. "You'll get advances and you'll pay me, now, or you'll suffer the consequences." Half an hour later, it was done. Ptolemy had gone and the Morleth-Spindles were alone. It was then that Opera realized that they hadn't even started on the pizza, which had gone almost completely cold. "Well," said Mop, "at least we still have the cash." "Yes," said Opera. "What's more, the idiot even trusted us to count it. This is stuff is more or less dry. You pick it up and I'll put another bunch in the wash." Although Opera played it cool, the question of the concierge's fate still weighed heavily on her mind. Had she really killed him? She hoped not. From what she had heard, the food in prison was dreadful, and, what's more, the only TV you could get was the free-to-air garbage. There was nothing on the news about a murder in Gorleth, but run-of-the-mill murders didn't always make it onto TV or into the pages of the larger newspapers. In the end, Opera went to an Internet cafe - she was way too smart to use her home computer - and did an Internet search. And found the story. The concierge of 18 Saprabong Drive, one Fred Plock, had been arrested by the police after being caught burglarizing jewelry from an apartment occupied by Imelda Stong, the ex-mistress of a disgraced senator. Fred, or so said the story, was alleged to have arranged for an unknown confederate to give him an alibi of sorts by hitting him over the head with a bottle. "The head injury was extremely convincing," a police spokesman was reported as saying. "But the confederate overdid things. Plock was damaged more severely than he realized, and he passed out in the middle of Ms Stong's living room, which was where she found him on her return home." "So," muttered Opera. "So, live and learn, I guess." That was how Ptolemy Dace ended up with half the cash. Thanks to the miracle of voice-operated software, he could manipulate the money with ease. And soon he would. Soon he would begin to teach the citizens of the city state of Oolong Morblock not to inflict their wishes upon the city's genies. But first things first. "Phone," said Ptolemy to the computer. "Which number?" said the computer. "Police emergency," said Ptolemy. Twenty minutes later - just as well he wasn't bleeding to death or something like that - the emergency number finally responded. "I'd like to report a murder," said Ptolemy. "There's a dead body in a room in Gorleth. The room is in apartment 2943, 18 Saprabong Drive, Gorleth. The murderers are Opera Morleth-Spindle and her husband Mop Molish Morleth-Spindle. They have the bloodstained money in their apartment. That's 222 Hoodle Street." "An apartment? Which unit?" "Unit 17." "And your name, sir?" "My name is Danzburg Tosterburger," said Ptolemy. "I'm the city exorcist." Ptolemy had always hated exorcists, since exorcists could be as damaging to genies as they were to ghosts, and he could not resist this chance to strike at one of his enemies in passing. By the time Ptolemy was done, he was smiling hugely. Although the Morleth-Spindles had laundered the money - literally - modern science would still be able to find the victim's blood on it. And, if the Morleth-Spindles could by chance wriggle out of this situation, their next step would probably be to take revenge on the man who had betrayed them, the exorcist Danzburg Tosterburger. Danzburg would deny everything, of course, but Opera Morleth-Spindle was not the kind to believe pleas of innocence. "In the end," said Ptolemy, feeling very pleased with himself, "life is pretty much what you make it." Okay. It was time to make his next phone call. Ptolemy had already made contact with a good hitman, so really only one question remained - who should he have killed first? |
This story,"A Genie at Work", was first published when posted online on 2003 September 27 Saturday. (4,254 words)(fantasy). |
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