I'm in a silly mood, because I have waaaaay too much work to do and not enough time to do it, plus I just got my hardcover copies of RUSTY NAIL and they rock and I'm damn happy.
So it's time to goof off.
Here's the game. You have six sentences to add a section to a hardboiled detective story. Sex and violence are good. Funny is good.
Put your six sentences in the comments section. There doesn't have to be any continuity between sections, other than this:
1. The first main character is a Chicago private detective named Skip Fancy.
2. The action all takes place in Skip's office.
3. The second main character is a bombshell named Ilsa. She's trying to hire Skip for something.
Stick to the characters and the setting, but everything else is up for grabs. I'll start:
Skip Fancy was polishing his gun when someone knocked at the door. Normally, Skip liked knockers--they were two of his favorite things--but in this case knockers could only mean one thing; someone was at the door.
"I'm coming!" Skip said. Then he tucked his gun back into his pants and zipped up his fly.
He opened the door and inhaled sharply---so sharply he cut himself, right on that little dangly thing that hung in the back of his throat like a big pink upsidedown exclamation point. What was that little dangly thing called, and what the hell did it do anyway?
"These are my Fancy pants," Fancy said, cocking his head to the side. "And speaking of knockers --"
ReplyDelete"I have a problem, Mr. Fancy," she purred.
"Don't they all? What is it, sugar. Lay it on me."
Her body was enormous, her clitoris hanging like the uvula of an old man. Bile rose in Skip's throat, but he figured what the heck. He ain't been laid in hours.
ReplyDelete"Oh my. Your penis is as big as mine," she said, her adam's apple bobbing with every word.
"You pushing or pulling?"
Skip wondered how this turned into transexual pornography, but then he remembered; that drunken surgery at Johns Hopkins. The things a man would do on a dare...
ReplyDeleteAnd then he woke up and realized the story was going on without him.
"Will you help me with my Spaniel?" she asked.
"Cocker?"
"No, just walk her."
"Sorry, babe. Can't walk your Cocker." Skip raised the hem of his corderoy pants and showed off a gleaming ankle restraint. "My business is limited to these four walls."
ReplyDelete"How do you get any detecting done in here?"
"I've got Earthlink, baby."
Ilsa leaned over and licked Skip's neck.
ReplyDelete"I've always liked a man in restraints," she said.
"Are you Mistress Ilsa from the S&M club down the street?"
"Yes, I need your help finding a co-worker of mine who is missing. Think your Earthlink is up to it?"
"Lick my neck again and it won't be the only thing up around here," Skip replied.
Ilsa--probably in her mid-twenties now and angry as a scalded armadillo--held a pair of .38s, one of which she shoved into Skip's mouth. Luckily, she didn't have any guns.
ReplyDelete"You vill vork for me," she said, her accent thick as a Russian novel.
Skip took a quick sweaty taste, backed up a step and said, "Maybe I vill, maybe I von't."
"You mock me," Ilsa said, pulling an envelope from her clutch, "but I have this sheet of paper that will perhaps make you, how you say, change your tune."
Skip grabbed a hand full of peroxide blonde, pulled her face toward his, said, "I don't take no sheet from nobody, baby."
“Wow, you’ve figured me out - you’re such a great dick.”
ReplyDelete“You ain’t seen nothing, baby.”
"But that’s just it! The real reason I’m here today. I want to have your baby. We could go to Namibia or Rwanda, wherever you want to go."
In walked a man with a gun, looking a lot like Peter Lorre.
ReplyDelete"All right, Fancy. Where's the bird?"
Fancy's gaze shifted from the gun to the rack full of curves sitting across from him. "You're looking at her. At least I think she's a bird."
"Not that bird," Lorre said. "The bird. The falcon."
Fancy just stared at him. "What the f*** are you talking about, dipshit?"
"Don't play dumb, schweetheart."
ReplyDeleteThe stranger jerked his pistol.
"I'm not talking about orchids. I want the one they fiddled with and crossed with a duck.Let's go. "
"Don't take my Fancy," the blonde screamed.
"You pull me out of that door, and this here ankle bracelet will have this place surrounded by cops in minutes," Skip said.
ReplyDelete"What the fuck? A private dick, on house arrest?"
"Office arrest."
"What d'ya do?" Ilsa always had a soft spot for the bad boys.
"It involved a case of Courvoisier, the drummer from 'Skid Row,' and a rabid llama... you don't need the messy details," Skip said, slapping Ilsa's hand away from his telephoto lens.
ReplyDeleteLorre pushed Skip out the window.
"What the hell?!" Skip brushed off his Fancy pants, glad he worked in a one-story building.
"You better get to work finding my falcon before the fuzz goes poking around in your navel."
Skip ran.
Questions burrowed through his brain like that nasty case of scabies he'd just cleared.
Skip decided to change POV.
ReplyDeleteI brushed the broken glass off of my shirt and stared through the window. Ilsa was giving Lorre the bird. Then she gave him the Falcon. Then she gave him a hummer. I hadn't even noticed it, parked in the corner of my office.
The Hummer was one of those remote control jobs you can buy at Woolworth's for about a C note, and my old nemesis--G.I. Joe--was at the wheel.
ReplyDeleteJoe, nine inches long (so they say), stood erect and shouted, "I'll drive you home, Ilsa."
Joe was a hard man to deal with, his head swollen like a run-on sentence you write just to get your word count up and mix a few metaphors and similes and I knew his story like a rusty nail in that hangy-down thing at the back of my throat.
Joe had a Tommy gun trained on Lorre, but I had my hair-triggered .44 mag aimed straight for Joe's gaping mouth.
"I'll be the one driving her home," I said. "Now give me that Hummer, Joe."
I knocked the shards from the window sill and climbed back into my office.
ReplyDeleteStupid bastard Lorre. I can't go back to prison for a parole violation, not now. I turned my gun on him and shot a load into his face.
Ilsa screamed and Joe made a dash for the Barbie Dream House I'd bought for my niece. I followed him, dragging Ilsa with me.
Lorre was writhing on the floor, screaming and waving his hogleg back and forth. He appeared to be more disgusted than hurt.
ReplyDeleteI hid begind my desk, sweaty hands working frantically to re-load my own gun.
"Do him again, Skip! Do him again!" Ilsa shouted from behind the file cabinet.
Suddenly, Uvula Luke appeared in the doorway holding the pizza I had ordered and cheerfully declared, "The anchovies ain't none too fresh but I put em on any....what the hell happened to your office?!?"
I was about to tell him to "Get down you idiot" when my pistol went off prematurely, making a mess of my foot.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThere was seed everywhere--I must have knocked over the small dish of sunflower seeds when my gun discharged.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly, something like talons ripped into my scalp. It turns out they were talons ripping into my scalp--the talons of a large black falcon.
"Is this the falcon you were looking for?" I asked the gimp.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The falcon replied, "I'm Michael Vick"
"And that's the trick I'm having him do on Letterman tonight!" Illa yelled.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to me to attract failed animal trainers as business.
"And the falcon can talk? That's bull."
"No, it's a bird. And that wasn't the falcon, it's the police officer outside the window who seems to have a penchant for ventriloquy." Illa explained.
"You're under arrest for leaving the premises ," the falcon seemed to say.
"If we get arrested," Lorre said to Ilsa, "It will be hard time."
ReplyDelete"Is that innuendo?" Ilsa asked.
"I thought I was innuendo," said the cop. "Get it? In your window?"
Lorre turned on the cop and fired.
"But you aren't even my boss!" screamed the officer.
Hey, lol, you been peeking at my newsletters and manuscripts?
ReplyDeleteYour sense of humor rocks right along with mine!
I was just getting comfortable lying back with my feet on my cluttered desk when she walked in.
ReplyDeleteI had to look up to her… The dame was tall…about 5”10’. I couldn’t believe my luck…I kept on watching her, but first I knew I had to quench a thirst.
I dug deep into the back of my desk drawer knowing that I placed a full bottle of Jack Daniels for an occasion just like today.
I silently decided that I would have to investigate her body inside and out. I touched my chest where I had a 38 special hanging and as I glanced at her I saw a pair of 38’s pointing right back at me.
“Join me for a drink Ilsa?”
“I’m not much for Jack Daniels straight up, I’m more of a Whiskey Sour type of dame.”