Tag Archives: Fiction

Sunday Snippet – Rufus Amalgam Loved his Bluetooth, Part 2

Posted on by Bill Chance

Time for another silly bit of throw-away fiction. A week ago I put up part one of Rufus Amalgam Loved his Bluetooth based on a character idea from Peggy’s Blog. If you haven’t read Part One, go read it here first. Here is Part 2.

“Rufus!” Sandy was so loud in his Bluetooth headset that Rufus had to pull it out of his ear and hold it out or he would be deafened. Sandy’s voice sounded tinny and distant like that, which suited Rufus just fine.

“Damn it Rufus! You need to get your ass down here and take care of that Sylvester dude. He’s in my apartment and he won’t leave.”

“And this is my problem, why?”

“It’s your problem because you set the whole thing up. Now you get down here right now and help me throw the guy out or I’m gonna start making some calls. And you won’t like who I call or what I am going to say.”

“Ok, Ok, calm down. Now, you said that the Radio guy is in your apartment? Where exactly is he? What’s he doing?”

“He’s on my couch. Asleep. Has been since this afternoon. I can’t get him to budge.”

“Ok, Ok, Sandy. Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’ll be right down. Won’t be any big deal.”

Rufus stood up and walked out of the Starbucks, glaring at the table of women that had been eyeing him all night. As the front door closed, he thought he could hear a smattering of applause filtering out through the narrowing crack of the glass door. “You all can go to Hell!” Rufus yelled back at the coffee shop as he walked quickly to his primer-colored Ford Taurus.

He headed directly for the car door, his eyes focused on the latch. Rufus didn’t like to look at the long, winding rusty dent that buckled along the entire driver’s side. He knew there was a shorter, but deeper puncture wound on the passenger’s. The trunk was held down with a piece of wire, and there was even a wide dent on the bottom of the car where he had driven up over a parking barricade in a drunken stupor.

Reaching the door, he didn’t need a key, the lock had been drilled out months ago. The ignition cylinder spun freely and with a turn and a few seconds of sputtering and coughing, the engine came to life, idling roughly.

The yellow “low gas” light stared him in the face, mirroring the “Check Engine” symbol on the other side of the dash. He did some mental calculations and decided he could make it to Sandy’s place, though he’d be on fumes once he arrived there.

He was glad that Sandy needed his help and as he started out down the road, began to plan his angle. He needed somewhere to stay and he thought he remembered Sandy’s place as having a good, working, air conditioner. That Sylvester Radio guy was a skinny little runt and he’d have no problem rousting him out the door. If he did it in an assertive, manly way, then Sandy was sure to show some appreciation.

Maybe he could get a little more out of the deal than just a place to crash. Rufus started to imagine Sandy’s face full of gratitude, her eyelashes batting. The fantasy became more and more involved, more and more pleasant, a nice warm spot in his mind and gut, until he sprinted up the two flights of stairs to Sandy’s apartment and rapped confidently on the door.

Rufus’s fantasy left immediately when Sandy opened the front door. She stood there, her dirty blonde hair sticking in all directions, her face smeared with mascara, and wearing old torn cutoff blue jean shorts, a dirty T-shirt, and mismatched Crocs on her feet.

“I am so glad you are here,” Sandy said “he’s not moving at all.”

“Well, don’t you worry your…  little head over this bum. I’ll just pitch him out and then we’ll talk.”

Rufus strode to the couch where he saw Sylvester’s head sticking out from under a ratty quilt. He bent over and gave the quilt a yank. It came up quickly – flying into the air.

“Okay Radio! It is time to.. Oh geez! Damn it Sandy! The guy is naked.”

Rufus had to reach in the air to grab the quilt and push it down back over Sylvester Radio as quickly as he could. The image of those skinny hairless limbs and sunken chest would not leave his mind even after he shook his head violently.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was naked!”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“You forgot? I don’t even want to think about…”

He didn’t want to finish the sentence. It was best to get things going fast, so Rufus leaned over and grabbed Sylvester’s shoulder and started shaking as hard as he could. At the same time he started yelling to wake the dude up. Rufus wanted to get him out as soon as possible.

“Oh Christ Sandy, he’s stiff as a board.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think the guy is dead!” Rufus jumped back in disgust as quickly as he could. He stood in the middle of the living room shaking and staring at the quilt with the tuft of wild dark hair sticking out of one end and a pair of grubby feet with overgrown, yellow toenails out the other.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. He’s as stiff as a board… as dead as a doorknob. What did you do to him?”

Sandy said nothing. She simply stared at Rufus and he was horrified when he thought he saw a small grin flash across her face for a second.

“Where’s your phone? We need to call the cops.”

“Oh no,” Sandy said. “No cops. No cops! I’m on probation you know. This will send me back to the big house for sure. And I’m telling you I’m not going back there because you sent me some scrawny pervert with a weak heart.”

“Well then what do you suppose we’re going to do?”

So Sandy told him what they were going to do. It bothered Rufus when she came up with a plan so quickly. He suddenly had the thought that Sandy might have known Radio’s condition before she even called him at the Starbucks. He even wondered when that quilt had been placed over the corpse. The first step, Sandy told him, was to wedge the dead guy off the couch onto the floor while keeping him wrapped up in the blanket.

Rufus looked around for something to use; he did not want to touch the body. All he could find was a toilet plunger leaning against the end of the couch. He didn’t even want to think why it was there. He grabbed the wooden handle and used it to wrench the corpse off the couch. Thankfully, it landed in the quilt, and the blanket settled draped all around it. He took two corners and Sandy took two and after checking the front stairs they dragged the body out the door and down the two flights as quickly as they could. Luckily no curious bystanders showed up.

“Okay, where’s your car,” Sandy said.

“My car? Tanks dry as a bone, coasted here on fumes. We’ll have to use yours.”

Sandy shook her head in disgust and clumped around the corner. Rufus heard the whine of a small engine and a tiny Smart car appeared.

“What is that? Is that a toy? How are we going to fit in there with him?”

“You should have thought about that before you came here with no gas.”

“I know. I have an idea. I’ll wait here and you can drive with him in the passenger seat.”

“No way! I am not going to do this alone. You sit in the passenger seat and hold him on your lap.”

And that was how they drove. Sylvester Radio’s head was covered with the blanket and sticking out the passenger window at an angle. His corpse was too stiff to sit down and Rufus held the body with his eyes scrunched shut. They drove to a spot Sarah knew about where a rough gravel road crossed an old railroad spur and dipped down into a thick grove of scrubby trees.

“I don’t even want to think about why you know about this spot,” Rufus said.

“It is lucky that I do.”

They opened the door and slid the body on the quilt down to a thick weedy patch and pulled the blanket while the body rolled away into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” Rufus said “it doesn’t seem right to leave him like that. Should we cover him?”

“That’s my quilt. I’m not going to leave it here for the police to find. God knows what kind of DNA is in there. Don’t worry. They’ll think he’s just some dead naked junkie. He’ll never be missed.”

As they were driving away Sarah asked Rufus to open the glove box. Inside was a wallet and keys. Rufus instinctively checked the wallet.

“There’s no cash, no credit cards. I’ve already pulled them,” Sarah said. “I want you to check his driver’s license and give me the address.”

“What for?”

“We’re going to his place. Those are his keys. I want to see what’s there, I want to look…”

“Come on Sarah, we are not burglars”

“You can’t be a burglar to a dead man.”

Rufus recognized the address, he had been there before. It was a small brick duplex not far from the University. They parked a half block away and walked along the darkened sidewalk. As they approached the door with Sarah holding the keys they jumped as a voice called out from the darkness of the next door entryway.

“Are you two friends of Sylvester’s?”

“Uhhh,” the same confused sound came out of both their throats as they started to slink away from the unexpected interruption.

A spindly old woman suddenly moved from the darkness into the blue light from an overhead street lamp.

“It’s good to see that Sylvester has some friends, some young friends.”

“Yes,” Sarah said, thinking quickly, “we are Sylvester’s friends, we’re here to check on him.”

“Good,” the old woman said, “Sylvester needs someone to check on him, especially with his, well, you know, his disease and all.”

“Disease?” Both Sarah and Rufus spoke at the same time.

“Yes, don’t you know? That’s why I stayed up waiting for him. He has this nervous disorder. When he gets too excited. His whole nervous system – his brain and spine – his muscles – they freeze up stiff as a board. Catatonic. You would swear he was dead. Sometimes he won’t wake up for hours. Scares me to death to think that something bad might happen to him. You don’t think… Has something bad…?”

Rufus and Sarah stared at each other.

“No, no,” Sarah said “nothing bad… but, you know, we had better be going.”

“Yes yes,” Rufus replied, “we had better be going right now.”

Rufus Amalgam loved his Bluetooth.

Posted on by Bill Chance

Our writing group is meeting most every Wednesday after work. I’ve been doing more editing than writing lately and this week I didn’t have anything fresh to bring. I don’t like to show up empty handed, so I whipped off a silly little quick thing simply for the amusement of those involved. Now I’m sticking it here too.

If you want to read the genesis of my bit of scribbled rag, read Peggy’s blog entry, Here.

Rufus Amalgam loved his Bluetooth.

“Hey Hunk, I’m telling ya’, this is a great deal. If you keep tellin’ me no, one day you’re gonna look back and be pissed at yourself for passin’ this up. And I ain’t gonna feel sorry for ya, neither.”

Rufus’ buddy Hunk had recently lost both his elderly parents. He had received a large inheritance. That was supplemented with a healthy negligence lawsuit settlement from the tour operator that had let its bus break down in the desert. The bus was full of elderly tourists, including Hunk’s parents, on the way to a wilderness tour of an Indian village near the Grand Canyon. Heat stroke is a terrible way to go, but Hunk’s grief was washed away by the cash.

Hunk had been estranged from his parents for twenty years – ever since in a fit of youthful self-destructive pique he eschewed his families ‘ long-proud ancestral regal title, hired a lawyer,  and had his name legally changed from Percy Beauregard to Hunkahunka Burninglove. Ever since, everybody called him Hunk – except his family, which never called him at all.

And now Hunk was rolling in it.

Rufus had Hunk in his sights as a mark, or at least a potential customer, but Hunk was acting a lot smarter and with more discretion than his ridiculous adopted name would indicate.

“So that’s what it is going to be, is it,” Rufus said, finally giving up. “Hey, now, let’s not let this get ‘tween us, now. Saturday night, The Palace of Love, OK?”

Rufus was not happy when Hunk was noncommittal about a big Saturday night at the fanciest strip club on that side of the city. Rufus knew he could tap his flush buddy for a night on the town, a big night. He didn’t have the scratch to pull it off on his own.

“Man, these Starbuck’s soft chairs are sure comfortable,” Rufus said in the same loud booming voice he used on his Bluetooth phone, even though he wasn’t speaking to anyone. He lowered the book that he held in front of his face a fraction of an inch to survey the scene in the coffeeshop. It had filled up a lot since he had come in and sat down – luckily the barista didn’t seem to notice that he hadn’t bought anything. A table of four women was glaring at him, so he raised the book back up and tried to concentrate.

“48 Hours to the Work You Love.” What a load of crap. He had been reading the book for a week now and nothing had happened. He still hated his work. The real estate crash had made everyone wary and tight. Rufus had been working for Glengarry Properties for three months now and hadn’t made a sale. He had been following the instructions – locate a client with money to invest, find that person’s weakness, and then exploit it. No luck.

Rufus had found the “48 Hours…” book in a pile dropped outside the dumpster at his apartment building. It looked like a good idea, but Rufus couldn’t get a handle on what the author was trying to say. He was never much of a reader anyway. But at least the book was good as something to hide behind while he was trying to bilk some marks from the comfort of the Starbucks.

He was getting desperate. His power was off at home, so he had to go out and find some air conditioning. Glengarry paid for his phone and Bluetooth, but they were threatening him with termination if he didn’t produce anything. His salary was less than minimum wage, no benefits to speak of – he was supposed to make it all up in commissions.

He was relieved when a buzzing at his waist gave him an excuse to ignore his book-skimming and answer his Bluetooth.

“Rufus… whatchagotgoinon!” he bellowed into midair, his book deflecting the soundwaves into all corners of the Starbucks.

“You miserable, lying scum, you disgusting bastard!”

“Oh Sandy, it’s you,” Rufus smiled when he recognised Sandy Samsonite, a woman he met six months earlier when they worked in adjacent cubes at the call center. Rufus always felt there was a connection between the two of them. They were fired together when they were both caught smoking weed in the alley during afternoon break. It was Rufus’ idea, but it was Sandy’s weed, so he always felt she was responsible and owed him a solid.

“God, you no-good…”

Rufus cut her off. “Hey, Sandy, how did your date go?”

“That’s why I’m calling. That moron you set me up with… he was the biggest perv I’ve ever met… and that’s saying something. Not only that, he was cheap. A cheap perv. And boring… a boring cheap pervert… that smelled like bad chicken.”

“Well, Sandy, I’ll give you that one,” Rufus chuckled into the air. “I noticed his aroma… I thought it was our lunch.”

“Jeeze, Rufus, I don’t know how I managed to let you rope me into this. You owe me big time now.”

Rufus had convinced Sandy to go out on a date with Sylvester Radio, a painfully awkward man he had met at the door of a class called “Coming out of Your Shell”  on the State campus. Rufus had figured that the cost of the class would indicate anyone enrolled had spare cash and the shyness thing would indicate weakness. Mr. Radio fit both criteria.

A couple beers and Rufus was able to pry Sylvester open and a smidgen of information fell out. Sylvester hadn’t had a date since his cousin had gone to his senior prom with him and Rufus figured a night out with Sandy would deliver him into the not-so-happy family of Glengarry Properties investors and a start to the painfully exclusive club of Customers of Rufus. He had to bribe Sandy with his last twenty and a handful of Oxycodone, but she had agreed when Rufus promised to cut her in once he had his fish hooked.

But it looked like things had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.

A bit of text found on my Alphasmart, file seven

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’ve started carrying my Alphasmart Neo again. I’ll write about my Alphasmart soon – for now, if you don’t know, it’s simply a portable keyboard designed for schoolkids that works great for writing first drafts. I had to clean out the old text from the machine. Seven of the eight files are full of stuff I wrote a while back. Six were parts of short stories: “Single Malt” – a modern retelling of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” which  will be in my upcoming short story collection, and “Like Regular Chickens” which… well, won’t.

The seventh is a bit of text I wrote and never uploaded – at least I don’t think I ever took if off of the Alphasmart. If I’m wrong and I used it somewhere – sorry. It’s a bit of true story written down in the third person. My name isn’t Frank. The kid didn’t have spiked hair. I was involved in a minor accident in the MiniVan. It totalled the van, actually, but that didn’t take much, it was a rolling piece of shit. A shame, really, it was a rolling piece of shit, but it was rolling, and that is the only thing important to me.

Before I clear the memory of the Alphasmart I wanted to put the text somewhere, for safe keeping. Why not here?

At any rate, here’s a snippet of writing, truth, fiction, whatever.

——————————

The first surprising thing about a car accident is the sound. It is very quick and very loud. A pressure wave of impact, a punch of suddenly rended metal and a tinkling trail of showering glass and small steel pieces striking the asphalt.

The second suprising thing about a car accident is the way that your logical mind catches up with your limbic system. The inner ancient lizard brain knows something has happened, somthing bad, though it has no idea what. That hank of emergency response nerve endings, shoved up inside your big old bulbous fancy modern brainy grey matter has been there, unchanged, since the days of charging mastodons – so how could it know about automobile crashes?

Something sure sets it off, though. Before the final bit of physics (Newtonian laws observed, bodies at rest disturbed, bodies in motion trying to stay in motion, gravity, energy adsorbed and turned into waste heat) has played out it sends out its panic juices. Eyes bulge, heart races,  fingers clutch. Only then, too late, really, does the mind catch up. The eyes look around and the brain starts trying out scenarios – “Did that guy behind me just rear-end my car?” “Was that a truck?” “Where did THAT come from?” – but every possibility is thrown out – judged an impossibility by the information coming in from the eyes.

So Frank sat there motionless, stunned. He wasn’t hurt, though his teeth ached a bit from being forced together with his head impact-shoved into the seatback. Then he saw the mangled motorcycle out in the middle of the intersection ahead. That was what had hit him. He had been patiently sitting motionless at the intersection in the left turn lane waiting for the green arrow. He looked at the crumpled machine, watched fluids running out of the mess,  and realized the rider was nowhere to be seen. Frank’s engine was still running so he switched it off and started working up the courage to open the door. He didn’t want to. He didn’t even want to look around. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to the rider. Finally, he decided that there was no getting around it and with a rictus of dread stretched across his face, he opened the door and stepped out onto the little strip of concrete that served as the left-turn median.

The people from the other cars were already out and looking around.

“Where’s the rider?” asked Frank as he gingerly looked under his truck.

“Oh, he’s way back there,” said the guy from the Honda parked in back of him. “He was racing, doing wheelies, and he must of fallen off his bike.”

“You mean I was hit by a riderless bike?”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“Did he hit you?”

“Nope, it went right by me, bounced off you and that red truck, then out there.”

Frank looked back and saw about fifty yards back up the road, some kid with blond spiked hair trying to stand, brushing road grime off his leather jacket. Frank was glad the kid was all right, relieved he didn’t have to deal with a mangled corpse jammed under his truck.

Still, looking at the damage to the back quarter of his truck, the twisted metal, the shredded tire, the pile of red plastic bits below where the brake light used to be, he found himself wishing the guy was hurt – at least  just a little.

————————————

Now that I read that snippet, I think I”ll steal a piece of it, clean it up, punch it up, and insert it into another story – “Tailgate.”

There’s a rear-end car accident in that one, and I like the bit about the sound of rending metal.