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| Turns out Communism was just a red herring... |
I am aware of the failings of this story. For one, we have a pretty big character (the Blonde) who doesn't show up until almost the end. See, that's a story fail. We ought to have been introduced to her way earlier in the story. I attribute this failing to 1. inexperience as a writer and 2. writing this as a "pantser."
A pantser is a term used by my fellow NaNoWriMos to describe one who goes into the novel writing process without an outline--by the seat of their pants, so to speak. For this story, I had a rough idea of the story plot, based on Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," and a few preexisting characters in my back pocket. And that's it. I just thought up a scene, wrote about it, and then thought up the next thing as I went along. It was a wonderful exercise in coming up with "story," but the end result is full of plot holes and story writing mistakes.
Right up their next to "don't show me a gun unless you're going to fire it," would be "don't introduce a pivotal character at the end of the book." I'm not talking about waiting to reveal a characters identity, or hiding the villain until we fight them in the dénouement-- I'm talking about the mistake of saying "the butler did it" on page 385, when we didn't even know there was a butler until page 350.
Ah, well. Live and learn. Write by your pants, and edit by the rules.
Good luck, WriMos!
LLH
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
"The Demented Non-Life of Jefferson Davis"
By L.L. Heberlein
(copyright 2015, all rights reserved)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
“So, how long you think this will take?” John asked. He was laying down, eyes closed, mouth flapping. He wasn’t dead. Not yet.
My head snapped to McGuffin. “See,” he said. “I told you. You’re friend is possessed of some other source of animation. This stone does nothing.”
John sat up in his coffin, as if to demonstrate the point. “I guess that wasn’t it. Huh.” He started to climb back out.
“Wait, wait. Just hold on here a goddamn minute,” I said, still clutching tightly to the case full of money. “John, why aren’t you dead?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Cool we still get the money though, hu?” Then came that classic Horseface grin. “And I do me we, deadman! Cuz if you try to screw me out of my cut of the cash, I will find a way to end you!”
I shook my head, eyes wide, still disbelieving. “Here,” I said, handing him the case. “It’s all yours. You deserve it. But I still don’t get it. Why are you not dead?”
“IT WORKED!”
A lavender blur streaked passed me, slammed into John, and knocked them both into the coffin. The dais went tumbling, taking the coffin and the two huge floral arrangements with it. John and Lucy landed in a heap on top of the whole thing. Lucy began to sob.
“Oh, it worked! I didn’t believe it at first. I COULN’T believe it. But here you are!”
“Here I am,” John laughed. “And you want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“I hired an animator!” she said.
“A whose-it what-inator?” John said.
“An animator!” Lucy squealed. “She was just here! A darling blonde woman named Thea. Davis, you saw her. You were with her. Remember? I tried rolling my eyes at you because you were making time with my animator when she was busy working. She’s just incredible, isn’t she?”
“I did… what now?” I asked.
Lucy kissed John, and suddenly the talking was all over. There they were, a pile of gray and lavender on top of white flowers, making out. I scratched my head.
“Thea?” I asked. “I thought she worked here? She’s an animator? What’s an animator?”
No answers from the kissing couple.
McGuffin brushed past me. “If you will excuse me gentlemen, lady,” he said. “I will take my property and make my exit.”
“Now, hold on,” I said, taking him by the shoulder. “If the stone does nothing, then how come everybody wants it?”
He laughed. “Don’t you see? Everybody wants it, because everybody wants it,” he said. “That is it’s value.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t get it.”
“And I ask you, what value is a diamond, really? Or gold, for that matter. What value has a dollar bill, save that which we imbue it with?”
“So it’s valuable, because it’s valuable?”
“Yes,” McGuffin answered. “Quite so. Clara the would-be vampires offered me two million dollars for it.”
“But you didn’t accept her credit,” I said. “You didn’t take her money.”
“Oh I took it, alright,” McGuffin said. “Of course I took it. I am a dealer. I deal in any currency.”
“But you told her…”
“My dear boy,” McGuffin said. “If I’d allowed Clara access to the stone, she would have seen that it did nothing, and the stone would have become useless! Don’t you understand, it’s the mystique of the thing. I had to maintain the mystique.”
“So you set it up so she’d be attacked when she opened the box?” I asked. “You set her up?”
“Well, now, I didn’t say that.”
“And she knew you’d set her up, so she set me up?”
“That, I have no knowledge of.”
“So, wait. Let me get this straight. You offered to sell Clara the stone. She paid you two million, which you took. You shipped the stone here, complete with that booby-trap I encountered, to keep her from getting it. What’s more, you put some sort of spell on it, so she couldn’t get to it. Maybe a twenty-four hour holding spell? Or some daylight-only spell? Am I getting close?”
McGuffin shrugged. “I admit to nothing.”
“So I get there, because a ruckus, and the shipping center decides it’s a good idea to get rid of the thing, and delivers the package to my home, during daylight hours. Of course, I’m not there, but Horesface is!”
John stopped kissing Lucy for long enough to yell, “Hey!”
“Sorry, John,” I said. “Anyway, John gets the package, hides it away, and in walks Clara, in broad daylight, because she’s not really a vampire.”
“That, I swear, I was not aware of,” McGuffin said. “She must have possessed some powerful magic to fool me.”
“Which is probably why she was so interested in that stone,” I said. “Which she thought was some super-powerful magical item. Now, my question is, if you hadn’t intended on letting her have it, why did you agree to sell it to her?”
“Because that’s what he does.” Thea walked into the room. She brushed her blonde hair back over one shoulder and put her hands on her hips. The lizard-man stood next to her, arms crossed. “We’ve been tracking him for months now. He ships illegal merchandise, fake magical items, but never delivers. We’ve never been able to prove it, until now. We needed that stone as evidence!”
“And now, we have it!” lisped the lizard man. He snatched the stone from McGuffin’s hand and held it above his head. “Yesssssssssssss,” he said. “Finally, we have the evidencccccccccccce!”
“Wait, you?” I said. “You two are working together?”
McGuffin ran for the door. Thea moved fast. She swiped his leg. McGuffin landed on his belly. Thea jumped on top of him, grabbed his arms, and pinned them behind him. The lizard-man joined her, using a yellow zip-tie strip to bind his hands.
“This is beyond me,” I said, watching the lizard hand McGuffin over to Eric and his posse.
“Don’t worry,” Thea said, tossing her hair. “You didn’t mess things up too bad. Oh, you got in the way, and almost totally fucked up the plan. But you came through in the end.” She patted me on the ass. “And what a find end you have, too. Thanks for sharing!” She held out her hand for the lizard man. “Come on, darling. Let’s deliver the evidence, so we can go home.”
I watched the blonde witch-woman walk out of the room, hand-in-hand with the lizard.
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