I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.
A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.
“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay. “I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war. She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot. “Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.
“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.
The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.
“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”
“It’s about my husband. He’s gone missing.”
She was not wearing a ring. It means something when a woman does not wear a wedding ring. Usually, it means that she is not married. “Seems your ring has also gone missing,” I said. I hoped her dress would join it.
Her red mouth curved upwards. She was smiling a little. “I don’t wear it outside. A diamond that large would only invite trouble.”
“In my experience, trouble doesn’t wait for an invitation.” I looked at her legs again. They were both still there. “When did you last see your husband?”
When Megatron first said, “I don’t fear you,” he meant it as defiance, and he was unprepared for the sheer delight, the sheer longing, that emanated from the being in front of him, ploughing into Megatron’s EM field like a physical wave.
“What do they call you?” he murmurs now, much later, his claw-tips gently stroking a tendril of dark matter that is there and not there; the being doesn’t speak, but an idea presents itself in the forefront of his mind: I Am First And Best, and Megatron would scoff, were it not for the sadness that accompanies the words, as if they are a burden rather than an honour.
“I will call you something new, more befitting a protector rather than an emperor,” Megatron muses, then offers, “What about Hunter of Peace – Orion Pax, in the old tongue?” and the dark void, so black it gleams with a kind of reverse light, settles happily against his frame, and tangles its essence around him.
Norse mythology fails to convey the sense of terror that must have hung over Asgard every time Loki was gone for longer than eight months and three weeks
Payback for not listening to her reasonable speech about Earth’s resources.
honest to god, this is a lot funnier if you pay attention to the plants in the last few panels. I recognize a few of the poisonous plants, but there are also breeds of flowers that specifically smell like rotting meat.
In such trying times I wanted to share a happy story…
So about a month ago I’m getting back from a break and hear a strange cheeping coming from my boss’s office. I poke my head in and see him staring at a small bird in a cage with a look of consternation.
“A guest brought this to the front office. They found it in the garden and thought it was injured.”
I take a closer look at the bird in question and my heart sinks. It’s a fledgling robin. Someone saw it hopping around learning to fly, assumed it was injured, and essentially kidnapped it.
“Did they say where they found it?” I asked.
“Not really, just somewhere on the green. I think I’m gonna take it to the Nature Center after work.”
But then we talked for a bit and decided to take the little bird out to the green just to see if the parents happened to show up. We set the robin out on the grass near some undergrowth, stepped away, and watched.
At first nothing happened, except a lot of unhappy cries from the fledgling. I played some robin calls on my phone.
Then finally we see an adult robin watching from a nearby tree. It lands and the baby immediately starts hop-sprinting towards the adult. At first the adult stays put, but then it flies away.
Our hearts sink.
And then the adult bird returns with a worm and plops it into the baby’s mouth. I almost applauded.
We watched for a few more minutes as the two parents showered their kidnapped offspring with food. We also posted a sign in the general vicinity warning guests not to kidnap the fledgling birds.
Sometimes things work out. I try to take heart in that, even when it’s little things.
i love dolly parton and please acknowledge that she’s a queen
Dolly Parton has come up with some of my fav quotes. Two I remember very well are:
“No money doesn’t make you happy but at least you can wear nice clothes while you’re miserable.”
“No it doesn’t bother me when people call me a dumb blonde because I know I’m not dumb and I know I’m not blonde.”
Our patron saint of Tennessee. Go to Dollywood if you can. Eat a lot of fudge, go to fun tourist traps, do the whiskey tasting. It’s not great whiskey but it is fun.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 