Creative Writing

[barton]

[He's here all week, folks!]

[nytempsperdu]

with his lovely assistant, who doubles (triples and sometimes quadruples) as Lisa Marie Pretzellania, contortionist extraordinaire and Elvis spouse impersonator so-so, whose solo act was sometimes known to include a move known as the...

[Beppo]

'Choke Kojak'; a technique that involved...

[barton]

...a volunteer from the audience, of which there was usually a plentiful supply.

[appaloosabeach]

Garner remembers a conversation with his father, replayed numerous times, "so what you want to do, kid? you're eighteen, out of school, out of the house, no cash, any plans?" I want to be a hit man, the kid answers, I would like to kill people for a living. The kid chuckles. Dad looks confused. Two years later, on dad's birthday, the fourth of July, Garner killed his father. A dinky little 22 pistol shot to the back of the head, payback for a couple decades of abuse. Garner knew dad murdered mom, never could find the body. Dad said she got on a Greyhound bus headed for Idaho, she wanted to visit her sisters. He showed me the ticket receipt. The old bastard died with a Miller light in his left hand, tv remote in the right, he was watching the Simpsons. Garner feels a tinge of remorse when he slams the eighteen inch pipe wrench, a big inviting weapon sitting on top of dumb Roy's tool box, into the back of Roy's neck. Sorry, Roy, I need your truck. He grabs the brief case from the Lexus, back on the road again, an F-450, he's thinking the backhoe might be a lifesafer, somewhere down the road. SANTA FE 21 miles.

[nytempsperdu]

...a volunteer from the audience, of which there was usually a plentiful supply

some of whom had father issues and so were more than ready, like Woody Allen, to return to the womb--"Anybody's!"  Forced to establish a standard method to enable her to choose among the willing candidates without the use of forms, questionnaires and waivers of liability, La Pretzellania finally arrived at a single question to ask, i.e., "_______________________________?"

[whiskeypriest]

"How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?"

The answer being, of course, 42.

[appaloosabeach]

Garner hits the turn signal, HWY 42.  Twelve miles to Santa Fe.

[barton]

Or 108 miles, if he backtracks and heads east, to Moriarty, NM, a town where his nemesis waits, rubbing his hands together and cackling insanely.  42, Garner knows, is the final number in the Valenzetti Equation, and contains many hints to the future of humanity and our survival on this planet.  It is the age at which Natalie Portman will bear her second child, who will grow up to be the Dalai Lama and unify the nations of the world into a cohesive political unit that is finally able to enforce peace, offer universal health care, and herald the return of plastic packaging that you can open without recourse to scissors.  Not everyone can get so much from 42, but Garner is a seasoned private investigator.  And he knows it's time to turn south, confront his nemesis and save Natalie Portman from a fate worse than...

 

[appaloosabeach]

.......Whirlpool appliance salesmen? But I digress. Time for breakfast, a little mom and pop diner, the 42 CAFE, Garner parks the truck and trailer behind the cafe, meanders inside, finds the men's room, he still has Roy's blood, even maybe some brains on his hands. No hot water, Garner leaves the men's room, really pissed off. No goddamn hot water.

[appaloosabeach]

 The Highway 42 Freaking Cafe?"  Garner is pissing red balloons. Your menu sucks and the damn toilet doesn't work and you call yourself a cafe. Do you charge for breakfast or do you give it away? The goddamn men's room doesn't have any hot water, the goddamn men's room doesn't have any hot water. Garner leaves, dark brown grunge under his nails. Might be blood, might be shit. Garner opens the till, leaves the twenty-two bucks, not counting the change. Couldn't even buy half a tank of gas. Pop looks at mom and smiles, "must be from St. Louis," he says.

[Beppo]

Meanwhile, Belfast 'Moistnostrils' Mickey had been deployed by the FBI to Santa Fe.  His philosophy, Horas non numero nisi serenas - an outlook tending towards ease - gave his investigations an aura of international zen. He knew little latin (and less Greek), yet he understood ...  

[carol polk]

that New Mexico was a marginally safer place to ply his trade than Arizona, which trade consisted largely in asking people what they thought the then legal residents of what is now Virginia thought of the unwanted immigrants floating up the James, with their guns, their incomprehensible language, and their drugs, etc.

[nytempsperdu]

At least in New Mexico, natives could always wait until the sun was at a certain angle then point the outrageously attired interlopers toward the golden lands farther West (says one who used to teach at a high school named Eldorado) then go about their business undisturbed yet a while longer, until, of course...

[knoxharrington]

....Natalie Portman bears her second child, Mortmain, the future Dalai Lama and plastic packaging reformer.   Soon, an outbreak of cellulite at Los Alamos, oddly coinciding with the first quantum elevator, will call upon all of Mortmain Portman's inner resources and he will step out of the shadows to....