Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (29 page)

For your final days of the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples, enjoy many sights and tastings while arranging your self memories for later saying to lovely Earther friends to make soon visits of themselves.

AFTER THE RETURNING

To follow your restore of conscious after portal journey, seek out many Earther friends to say of the joy of your most lovely voyage. Remember also to share the many discount traveling coupons provided to you by helpful Pooquar disembarking agents.

After some days from your voyage, many Earther feel a big sad of missing for the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples. This sad may have big heavy of the limbs, paining in abdomen, inside the head strikes, blood-making from here and there, and other such small emotions.

Best for this sad is to retreat with quickness to special place for to arrange your self memories to loveliness. Your special place should have elevated temperature and humidity. Also it will be most healthful to be a place where nearby pass many lovely Earther.

FOR YOUR LOVELY VOYAGE

From these small Health Tips for Traveler the governings of the Pooquar peoples wish yourselves a voyage for joy always after in your self memory. Also having hopes of long joy for the Pooquar peoples to visit the lovely Earth.

Barry Ergang

T
his murder is a fishy business, sir,” Detective-Inspector Shad Rowe said. “You’ve been of great assistance to us in the past when it comes to solving bizarre crimes, and I hope you can help us now.”

The Sleuth Extraordinaire, a gaunt hawk-faced man with no official status but possessed of a preternatural faculty for observation and deduction, sat in a chair opposite Rowe’s cluttered desk. He puffed complacently on his pipe, adding to the musty atmosphere of the cramped office. “I’m always pleased to help however I can. But you must give me the details. They’re essential.”

“Of course, sir.” Rowe leaned back in his chair and wiped a hand across his plump, ruddy countenance. “The victim is Lady Vera Muckinfutch.”

“The parliamentarian’s wife?”

“The very one. Her body was discovered early this morning, but the post-mortem indicates she died at approximately half past nine last night. She was strangled.”

“Killed at her estate?”

“That’s one of the rummiest aspects of the case. You see, sir, her body was found
in a textile manufacturing factory
!”

The Sleuth Extraordinaire’s left eyebrow became a quizzical arch. “Had she ever been there before?”

“As far as her husband, friends, and servants are aware,” Rowe said, “she had not.”

“You said it was one of the peculiar aspects. What are the others?”

“The room in which she was found was locked from the inside. The windows were locked, too, but even if they hadn’t been, they’d
be unusable. Each is covered on the outside by a metal grate, and none of the grates had been tampered with. Furthermore, it snowed yesterday, as you know, but the snow stopped falling an hour before Lady Muckinfutch was murdered. There were no footprints beneath the windows of the plant. The snow was undisturbed.”

“And the roof?”

“Snow undisturbed,” said a disconsolate Rowe.

“How was the room entered this morning?”

“The factory manager has a key—the room in question is enormous; it houses the huge looms used in manufacturing.” Rowe held up a cautionary hand. “But before you ask, we vetted the manager thoroughly. He not only has no connection to the victim, he has an unshakeable alibi for the time of the murder.”

“I see.” The Sleuth Extraordinaire drew on his pipe, discovered it had gone out, and took a moment to relight it.

“But that’s not all, sir. Now we come to the oddest part of the business. Lady Muckinfutch’s body was found a few feet away from one of the looms. This particular loom was canted
as if it had been shaken loose from its foundation,
yet everyone who works in that room swears its position was normal at closing time. An examination showed no obvious signs of tampering, and we certainly had no earthquake in London last night. Every other machine in the room was as it should be.”

Rowe paused long enough to emit a heavy sigh, then said, “Frankly, sir, we’re baffled, and we’re hoping you can make some sense of this.”

The Sleuth Extraordinaire contemplated the pipe smoke that curled among the dust motes in the wintry light slanting through the office windows. “Rest assured, Inspector, I shall give it my utmost consideration,” he said, then looked toward the ceiling and murmured wryly, “Thank you, Vera Muckinfutch, for presenting me with the world’s first rocked loom mystery.”

Sue Burke

M
iguel smiled at the tourist, a conspicuously glum young man. He had just stepped into the shadow cast by the thatched roof of Miguel’s market stall in San José, Costa Rica. The plain merchandise, gray granite spheres, attracted few customers, so Miguel was pleased to see him and picked up a stone the size of a large grapefruit. The tourist looked at it but kept his sunglasses on.

“This,” Miguel said, still smiling, “is a true mystery of the jungle, the thing you most want. Many tourists are happy to leave the market with common things like carved wood boxes or T-shirts. But that is not why you have come. You want something special.”

The tourist said nothing, but he took off his sunglasses. Miguel heard the young man’s troubles in the same way he heard the voices of the stones. But the stones were happy.

Miguel set down the sphere. “You can touch it.”

The tourist’s fingers twitched, but he did not reach out.

“These stones,” Miguel said, “are of the kind the Diquís Indians made for a thousand years. You have seen them in parks or museums, some as tall as you, no? And I will show you one more stone.”

He reached into his pocket for a two-thousand-colones bill, a crisp new one he kept for this purpose, and held up the picture on the back of the money: In the Costa Rican jungle, a Diquís sphere too large for one man to lift rested among orchids as a jaguar prowled nearby. It was beautiful, and it might be real.

The young man brushed his fingertips against Miguel’s stone as if it might sprout teeth and bite.

“Why did they do it?” Miguel said. “What can the spheres mean that the Indians worked so hard to make them? The Diquís are all dead. We do not know.”

The tourist’s eyes narrowed. In another moment, he might turn away, and that would be a misfortune, Miguel thought, because the stones could do so much.

“We do not know,” Miguel said quickly, “and yet it remains true, whatever they mean. These stones tell me they are the moon, and I think the moon is happier than the sun. The moon changes, she disappears, she moves in day and night, for she is free. You had hopes, but you think the jungle did not change anything for you.”

The young man shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“It is not too late,” Miguel said.

From across the market, a woman yelled, “John, would you hurry up?” The tourist closed his eyes, sighed and began to put his sunglasses back on, then stopped.

“This stone,” Miguel said, “is twelve thousand colones, or fifty American dollars.”

The tourist looked at the sphere, his lips moving silently. He stood up straight. He pulled out his wallet and counted out the cash, and Miguel solemnly handed him the stone. As the young man turned to leave, he waned into a quarter, then a crescent, and finally disappeared for a moment before he slowly came back into view.

Elaine Isaak

L
oyal Wife?’” Elizabeth asked, leaning over his shoulder.

Jeremiah straightened up, his stiff back crackling, and let out a puff of breath that misted the autumn air in front of the tiny cabin. His fist tightened around the grip of his hammer. He should have known. He should have realized it would not be the end, even now. A marriage like theirs could not simply fade away. “Loyal,” he echoed. “You promised to wait for me, and here you are. Is it not loyalty?”

Elizabeth folded her arms. Or rather, she tried to, but the winding cloths that wafted around her on an absent breeze tangled her thin hands. “If you say so, darling, but I do think I meant a bit more to you than that. You promised to carve me a bed.”

A tear stung Jeremiah’s eye, and he scrubbed his face with the back of his hand, then let the hammer fall, and it clattered on the stone before him. “Yes, Elizabeth, yes,” he murmured. He sniffled, then sneezed, as the stone dust reached him with its powdery presence.

She stalked back and forth over her grave, her ethereal feet flicking through the fallen leaves and browning grass. October already, and she ought to have had a stone long since. “‘Elizabeth Marie Freemont, born 1789, died 1813, the daughter of Edward and Louise Prescott of the Portsmouth Prescotts,” she dictated, gesturing toward the stone. “It’s a good beginning.”

Propped on another stone beside the grave, the fresh slate bore a delicate tree of life with trailing leaves over a winged skull,
symbol of the spirit flown away—or, rather, not quite. Beneath the words she recited and the legend “Loyal Wife,” he still had a few more inches above where the stone must be set into the ground. “What shall I add, beyond this?” He indicated the new words with his chisel.

Elizabeth paused, translucent cloths rippling and distorting the gravestones and trees beyond her. “Darling, I’m perfectly happy with the opening, especially the reference to my family name, it’s perfect, but I feel that ‘Loyal Wife’ makes me seem… diminished.”

The chisel’s point tapped the stone. “You want me to begin again.”

“Don’t I deserve it? Especially after my lonely death in that monstrous house—”

“My parents’ house,” he added.

She lifted her chin, baring that elegant stretch of her neck he had so admired. “And yet…alone, without my beloved.” She pressed a hand to her cheek, and he swore it looked a bit more pale, even granted the translucent nature of a shade.

“I was at war. I was hardly at liberty to—”

“That again!” She jabbed a finger toward him. “As if it were any excuse! I needed you. I was wasting away for the love of you!” Her words echoed into a sob, drawn out upon a wailing breath no mortal throat could produce.

The chisel clunked from his grasp as the letters carved before him wavered. Cold earth seeped through to his knees and his jaw clenched. He rose up, lifted the stone, and tossed it down again upon the heap where it broke into three, the pieces of tree and angel skull tumbling among the hundred other shards, some with trees and some with skulls, some with wings and some with words, her name carved in stark lettering, then in fancy, her birth and death abbreviated then spelled out, her every whim
expressed by the strength of his hands.

“Do you know, slate is so old-fashioned. Some of these newer stones—” she gestured toward the other side of the graveyard— “they have such a lovely sheen. Perhaps for the next one—”

“The next one!” he spat. “And the one after? What of the one after that?”

She gave a pretty, ghostly pout. “Perhaps the quarryman can set something aside, just in case.”

“Just…” words failed him, as they had on every stone. Jeremiah wet his lips. “Elizabeth, I have lost count of the stones I’ve made for you! You’ve been gone seventeen years!”