Far From Ordinary

by M James Murray

  Maybe they had decided that he was a loose end and that it was easier to kill him after all.

  “Dick, open up!” From the other end of the door, he could hear a shrill and decidedly female voice.

  On the other side was Delilah. Delilah was another tenant in the same apartment complex as Dick. She was one of the prettiest girls who had ever given the time of day to Dick.

  “Well, are you just gunna stand there, or are you gunna let me in?” She drawled in her Southern Texas accent.

  “Hey there Delilah. Sorry, please come in.” Dick said. Delilah stepped past him, and he couldn’t help but catch her usual smell in his nostrils – Eau du Whisky et Cigarette. It smelled delightful.

  “Coffee ready yet?” She rasped, grabbing herself a cup. It had become a routine for her to come over and steal a cup of coffee from him. He wasn’t much of a drinker himself, but he always made sure to have some Irish Cream in the fridge for her visits.

  “Help yourself.” Delilah went to the fridge and grabbed more Irish Cream. She pushed a tendril of her blonde wig away from her face, then poured it the liquor until the beverage was more Irish Cream than it was coffee.

  “Thanks, sugar,” she said. She wasn’t wearing much, as always. Dick could see her nipples underneath her gossamer shirt when the light hit it just right. He felt himself stirring and crossed his legs and looked away and thought of the holy spirit. “Rough night?” She asked, sitting down.

  Dick only owned about three pieces of furniture – the table was one of them. It was the centerpiece of the entire apartment.

  “You could say that,” Dick answered, thinking back on the events of the previous evening.

  “When are ya gunna get a job somewhere that don’t have you up all hours of the night?” It felt nice to have someone ask about his life. Delilah had been stealing cups of coffee and flirting with him for as long as he’d lived in this building, which was in a rougher part of downtown Houston.

  “Well, I –“

  “You could work at the club with me. They’re always lookin’ for bar backs.” She said with a giggle that melted his heart just a bit.

  Dick wanted to say yes so badly if only to be closer to Delilah. He wasn’t sure if she liked him romantically, but she certainly loved to flirt with him.

  But her club was a rough one. Voted 5th best strip club in Houston for the past two years. The clientele wasn’t exactly savory. His mama wouldn’t have wanted him working at one of those dens of sin as she called them anyway.

  “I can’t give up the money,” he said blushing.

  “Why don’t I… help you out? With the money, sugar.” She said with a wink, leaning forward and giving Dick a fantastic view of her slightly wrinkled cleavage. “I don’t make as much as I used to in my youth, but I still get by.”

  Delilah paused, waiting for Dick to compliment her.

  “You’re not old at all!” he said, offended that she would think of herself like that.

  “Thanks, sugar. You always know the right thing to say. I see you lookin’.”

  Dick was indeed lookin’. He didn’t think he could turn away if his life depended on it.

  “I… well… Just with the money?”

  “If you’re lucky sugar,” she said, drawing out the “e” sound in lucky.

  Dick squirmed uncomfortably. She was older than him by a few years; she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday a few months after Dick had moved into the apartment. That would make her thirty-three? Thirty-four maybe?

  It wasn’t that Dick didn’t want to engage in carnal relations with his neighbor, it was that he’d never engaged in carnal relationships with anyone before. Part of the problem with his cumbersome limbs, and not being especially attractive was that he didn’t have a lot of experience talking to women - beautiful or otherwise.

  And Delilah was so experienced that he was sure that he’d disappoint her. Sure, she’d had a couple of partners before, he could hear them from the small corner where he put his bed, but they’d all been men (and occasionally women) of repute who had paid her well for a surprisingly short period.

  Delilah was rough around the edges. She was sweet as sugar when she needed to be, but Dick had heard more than one shouting match coming from her apartment over trivial matters.

  “I’ve always wanted to find out why your parents decided to call you… Dick…” She placed her hand provocatively on his thigh and inched closer to him, flipping her blonde wig hair over her shoulder to show off the rows of piercings on her ear. She was so close that he could feel her stubbly leg hair rubbing against him. She took his hand and placed it over her heart. “C’mon, sugar. What do you say?”

  Dick gasped and felt something warm and wet against his upper thigh. The lanky man squirmed in his chair uncomfortably, hoping that Delilah couldn’t see the wet stain on his pants.

  Her pale green eyes flickered down quickly, just for a moment.

  “Oh my,” she said in her Southern Texas accent, “Looks like we were a bit premature.” She stood up and placed a finger underneath his chin and forced him to look in her eyes. “Clean yourself up darling, maybe I’ll stop by after I finish my dances tonight.”

  She kissed him lightly on the lips and stood up.

  “Thanks for the coffee, sugar.” She lit herself a Marlboro Lite cigarette, blew the smoke in his face and sauntered towards the door. “Oh, and before I forget Larry says that you’re late on rent again.” And with that, she was gone, but her scent lingered for a precious few moments.

  Larry was Dick’s landlord. Larry was a dick. Delilah didn’t have to pay rent, at least not nearly as much as he did. Dick thought that it was unfair, but at the same time, he could see why. If he were Delilah’s landlord, he wouldn’t make her pay a dime.

  Dick stood up and grabbed a piece of paper towel from the counter and rubbed his leg while cursing himself. He changed into shorts and sat down again at the kitchen table to finish his now-cold cup of coffee when his cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Peenanator! How’s it going, big guy?”

  “Oh, hey Josh, how’s things?”

  “Good. I see I missed a call from you late last night… what’s up?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “There’s a few missed calls. Was your ass calling me, or was it you?”

  “I talked to you. For like five minutes.”

  “You did?” Josh sounded surprised. And then, under his breath “I must have been tripping balls last night.” Dick didn’t think that he was supposed to hear the 2nd part. “Anyways, what’s up? You need something?”

  “Yeah, we had an issue last night.”

  “God-damn! Isn’t that the shit’s tits! What happened? Did that damn drain clog up again? I keep telling them that we need to get better processing units!”

  Dick thought for a long second about telling him everything, but the little voice in the back of his head said to him that describing to Josh the events of last night was a big mistake. And his mama had always told him to listen to the voice in the back of his head, and that pretty girls lie.

  “Yeah, the drain clogged. I took care of it, though. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Damn straight! These things can wait until the morning, yes?”

  “Yes,” Dick echoed as he hung up. A part of him felt bad lying to Josh about what had happened. Another, more significant portion told him that he hadn’t lied, not really. Yes, there had been a clog in the drain. Yes, he had taken care of it. No harm, no foul.

  Browne and Nieminen had checked the place from top to bottom and hadn’t found anything.

  They don’t know the place like I do, though.

  Dick didn’t think that he would have any different luck than them, but he had to try.

  He knew that the body was still there, somewhere. It had to be. But he would need to fly under the radar to not arouse suspicion from anyone.

  Dick stood up, the legs of the chair grating against the warped hardwood f
loor.

  He had to go back. He had to see for himself that there wasn’t a body hiding in the rafters somehow.

  Perhaps he had been ingrained with a touch of the stubbornness of his mother, who refused to change his name, but Dick Mitey knew that he had to see this through until the end, whatever it was.

  Chapter Nine

  That very same night Dick found himself back at the sewage treatment plant. On his day off, no less. He had initially had some exciting plans for the evening which included re-reading his favorite comic book, and maybe even having a glass of coke – with just a rare splash of Jack Daniels.

  Just a little bit, though, the taste of whiskey wasn’t something that Dick especially enjoyed. He was so thin that it didn’t take much for him to feel the effects of the potent alcohol anyway.

  Dick was dressed all in dark clothes. It made him feel like a ninja and what he was doing that night seemed very much the thing that a ninja would do.

  He navigated the familiar steel confines of his workplace, boots clanking against the metal floor. He headed first to the broom closet where the trail of sewage had led to, scoffing at the laziness of the Saturday skeleton crew - no one had cleaned up the trail leading up to the closet.

  “I guess I’ll add that to the list of things to do tomorrow,” Dick muttered as he opened up the closet. There should have been a night waste technician on shift this night, as well, but Dick was pretty sure that old Chester would be sleeping in the control room.

  Unsurprisingly (this time) there was nothing in the broom closet that was outside of the ordinary. Dick closed the door and then opened it up again quickly in case there was just someone hiding from him, but that didn’t yield any different results.

  All of a sudden Dick found himself entirely out of ideas.

  “Now where in the hell did you go?” He asked his absent friend. He stood straighter with a sudden realization. “…Are you a ghost?” He asked, then held his breath.

  Fortunately, nothing materialized in the shadows. Dick let out a sigh of relief. Don’t provoke the supernatural, his Mama had always told him!

  It was then, however, that he heard some movement from down the hallway.

  Dick crept silently towards the sound. He could see now that there were brown smudges on the door. They hadn’t been there last night, as far as he remembered.

  Browne and Nieminen would have noticed those almost certainly, as well. They were new – fresh from this evening. He walked up slowly, thinking that he might just be breaking one of his Mama’s rules.

  “Don’t open doors that have poop on them!” He could hear her say in his mind. To be fair to Dick’s mother, he wasn’t sure if she actually had said that before, or if he had just made it up right now in his head.

  He reached the handle and opened the door, expecting it to creak sinisterly. The heavy door opened smoothly and quietly. He turned on the light to see a lot of used paper towel on the ground. Someone who didn’t work in a sewage treatment plant might even say that it smelt terrible in there.

  Fortunately for Dick, who had become accustomed to foul smells in his time at the sewage treatment plant, he didn’t notice anything out of order in the olfactory sense.

  Inside the office, there was a fat man slumped over on a couch completely naked. He was spread-eagled, there wasn’t even a decent attempt to conceal his modest-sized sex.

  “Oh my Lord,” Dick said. “Hello, can you hear me?”

  The body didn’t respond.

  “Are you alright?” He did look like he was sleeping, but when Dick touched his skin, it was cold as ice. The harsh fluorescent light in the room reflected off his corpulent body and balding head.

  The body had a thin grey mustache hanging off the man’s upper lip. He was the man who Richard had fished out of the cistern last night, there was no doubt.

  Dick was getting tired of feeling chunks of ice form in his stomach. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He sat down beside the dead man on the couch and tried hard not to hyperventilate.

  “What the heck has been happening here?” He asked aloud, directing the question towards the fat, dead man sitting beside him.

  For a moment, images of a zombie disaster movie he’d watched while at work a few weeks ago flooded into his brain.

  Now, Dick knew that it wasn’t possible for something like that to happen, but that’s always how it started in the movies, too. Just to be safe, he shimmied as far away from the man as he could.

  “What are you,” he asked.

  “That, my boy, is a dead man,” said a pleasant voice from behind him.

  Dick turned around to find a fair-haired man dressed in black, emerging from behind the opened door. He was at least 4 inches shorter than Dick, but he moved with the athletic grace of a cat. Dick had never been so startled in his life! He must have jumped up about 6 feet.

  “Who are you!” Dick asked. The man had a warm smile on his face that said: “you can trust me.”

  “My name is Adrian Vandervoort. You must be the illustrious Dick Mitey.” He said.

  “I am.” Dick wiped his hand on his pants and offered it to Adrian Vandervoort. He had recovered from the initial shock and didn’t want to forget his manners. The latter looked at Dick’s hand as though it was the plague.

  “Put away your hand! I shudder at the fecal contamination contained therein!” Adrian had a rich British accent, the type you only heard with period pieces about English lords, and the blonde hair and mustache to match.

  “Well, you don’t have to be rude about it,” Dick said softly, wiping the remnants of the sewage on the door handle on his pants. He was beginning to think that not everybody deserved his politeness.

  “You are absolutely right, my boy,” Adrian said. “I apologize for my harsh words. In truth, I am happy to see you. I saw you last night, though undoubtedly you did not see me.”

  “Are you the one who is moving this guy around?” Dick asked, jabbing a thumb back at the naked man sitting on the couch.

  “I am. I wanted to avoid the unpleasantness which would come about by meeting your two friends from yesterday.” His voice had the musical tones of a deep woodwind instrument. Dick decided that he liked this man.

  He was undoubtedly quite charming, as Dick wanted to be.

  “Not my friends,” Dick said quietly.

  “Indeed, I wish that I could have helped you in some way. I am glad that there weren’t any incidents which would have forced me to reveal myself. You handled yourself admirably, I must say.”

  Dick felt a smile blossom across his face. People didn’t compliment him very often.

  “Where did you hide him?”

  “Briefly, in the roof. We’ll have more time for explanations later, my boy. Time is fleeting! We have a rapidly evolving situation on our hands here.”

  “We?” Dick got the feeling that he had gotten himself in much deeper than he would have liked.

  “Yes, we.”

  “Why we!?” Dick asked. In truth, he hadn’t expected to find the body at all. Silently he cursed the stubbornness which had drawn him back to the plant. Adrian Vandervoort pointed at the giant naked man sitting on the couch covered in feces.

  “Because of he!” He made a dissatisfied sound and then corrected himself. “Him. For better or for worse, my boy, you are a part of this now. And I shall require your help with the Prince,” he said, pointing at the dead man with his index finger.

  “Are you saying that you’re forcing me to help you because of the implications of someone finding out about this guy,” Dick jabbed a thumb in the general direction of the body on the couch. “and what they would do to me if they found out?” Adrian blinked, surprise registering in his eyes.

  “Well, yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “No,” Dick said.

  “No?! I did not give you an option! Now come along, we don’t have time for this blathering! You MUST assist me, the fate of the commonwealth – nay, the world – may depend on it!”


  “That all sounds a little too dramatic for my tastes.”

  The blonde man considered for a moment before responding.

  “And for mine. But thus is the lot with which we find ourselves. Some men are born great, while some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. You have just inherited a great responsibility, Dick Mitey.”

  Dick was at a loss for words. It wasn’t often that tall, mysterious British strangers invited him on what would undoubtedly be an adventure.

  “Wow… Did Jesus say that?”

  “…Yes. Yes he did,” Adrian sighed. “Now, will you help me?” The British man opened the door fully. Dick could see that he carried a silver revolver on his hip. He didn’t believe that the man would use it on him, but then again the past few nights had been a bunch of firsts for Dick Mitey.