March 21, 2008
Web of Deception Chapter 4 - The Hand of Fate
Posted by Jess in
Day to Day
NOTE: This is a continuation of the "Web Of Deception" round-robin story. If you're late to the party, please start with Chapter 1 on Ben's site and go from there. You can also follow the RSS feed hosted at http://www.andthentheboilerburst.com/WebOfDeception.rss.
Chapter 4 – The Hand of Fate
The hobbit's loud shriek startled the hand, and the human who belonged to it. The vines quickly sprang back, and heavy footsteps could be heard through the grass, getting farther and farther away. The funny little man had fallen down in surprise, but he had managed to grab a quick glance at the hand before he fell.
Now, this little man was not the smartest, best dressed, or the most educated man in town. In fact, his list of unanswered questions seemed to span into a rather impressive list of ponderables he tucked away to find the answers to on a rainy day. For instance, why did that scruffy, unkempt cat always appear when Tom Dufay left the immediate surroundings?
He sighed inwards to himself, berating himself silently for his earlier cruel thoughts about Tom, not particularly caring whether they were true or not. Ever since Tom started supplying him with his wool, the pharmacist had made it clear it was on the condition he could not ask questions about where it came from, and the hobbit-man had no choice but to comply. It didn’t matter, anyway. Every time Tom flashed those pearly white teeth and held out his outstretched hand, it was only a matter of time before they disappeared. The hobbit laughed, his body shook, and then he winced in pain as his body was betrayed by the motions. He shifted positions and leaned back against the cold cave wall. Hell, maybe it was a conspiracy. It didn’t matter; Tom had met them, and now everything would start all over again.
As it had always been, there was no one who spent more time silently scrutinizing and watching the townsfolk like him on a regular basis. No, he was certainly not the most educated man in town, but he was definitely the most observant. While his list of unanswered questions was growing by the day, there were three things he knew without a shadow of a doubt. He knew old Betsy Hodges was a widow, he knew that hand was male, and he knew the match to the wedding ring he saw on that hand had belonged to Betsy.
Armed with a new observation to ponder, the funny old man sighed, furrowed his brow, leaned back against the cold cave wall and continued knitting. He’d be sad. He liked that pretty lady. He paused, drew a deep breath, and started knitting faster.
…
Mike was frantically rummaging through box after box, looking for the familiar glint of the shotgun barrel his father had given him on his twenty-third birthday when Callie poked her head out of the kitchen door, washing up after cleaning his scratches. "Mike, just let it go." She threw up her hands in exasperation.
Mike hated cats. It was Cara, his girlfriend just out of college that had left him with enough hidden feline battle scars to make a field nurse wince. In reality of course, it was not Cara but in fact Marshmallow, her small, white fluffball of doom that grew a halo when Cara walked into the room, yet melted it into a fiery pit of hot lava when she left. That cat was so mangy and dirty, it looked more toasted than fresh, and Mike wouldn’t have shed a tear over a toasted Marshmallow. Yet Cara, having rescued the cat from a dumpster, was blind to the ugliness of the cat, both physical and in nature. Cara. Mike hadn’t though of her since that trip they took with his father down to Florida… wait, his father? Mike abruptly jumped out of his daydream with a start and a realization. The phrase 'leggy blonde' is exactly how one would have described Cara, so maybe his father had the right description, just the wrong girl. Whoops. Cara was no Callie, that's for sure.
Maybe Callie was right. The cat was gone. He'd get over it, anyway. He had withstood the entire experience of being humped by a tomcat with a glazed, detached persona, just as he had when Callie had dragged him to a performance of Dilbert and Mulligan’s P.M.S. Pinafore, or whatever the hell it was called. All he knew was that he had pushed the entire experience to some far back corner of his mind, and he'd do that again now.
"Let it go? Fine, Callie, but that cat was nasty. I'd go to the doctor for a rabies shot if I knew where the local doctor's office was, for crying out loud." He paused for a minute. "Hey, where is the local doctor's office?"
"Somewhere in town, probably," she waved her hand still containing the towel dismissively. "Hey Mike, I forgot to tell you earlier about someone I saw in the yard." Callie proceeded to tell Mike everything she had seen, including the strange, small old man that had been traipsing around the garden.
Callie had barely finished the description, when Mike, visibly alarmed over what he was hearing, rose from digging through boxes. He was already up and halfway out the door when he saw Tom Dufay bolting up the old farmhouse driveway. And he did not look happy.
The fate of this story has been placed in the hands of Libby Ingrassia, who included the word "inebriated" in her chapter. Who knows where this story is going! It certainly isn't the authors, and that's what makes it so fun.
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Comments
Holy moly, I can't wait to see what happens next. Great job!
@Ben Here Here!
@Jess ... Excellent, you bit prods the story on with vim and vigour :)
Steve
ROTFLMAO @ "Dilbert and Mulligan’s P.M.S. Pinafore"
Hey, you only said I had to use it, there were no rules on context. :-)
Yes, outstanding use of the word "pinafore". Excellent story progression too.
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