Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time

by Don Webb

  It was four in the afternoon when she came by. Her long red hair was done up in the filthiest dreds he had ever seen. A little pus oozed out around her navel ring.

  “Come in.” he said, “The books are in the back.”

  She followed him back to his bedroom, which no woman had done in two years. He pulled the sock form one pocket and the soap from another pocket and put the soap in the sock. She crossed the threshold and he swung.

  She didn’t have the decency to fall down, just yelled. The filth and ropes of her hair probably softened the blow. He had to swing twice (and twice as hard ) to knock her out,. She had been beginning to turn, so the last blow hit just above her left eye and broke the skin. She was a vegan, so she didn’t weigh much. He picked her up and put her in the old straight back chair that had belonged to his grandmother. He thought of it as the only nice thing that he owned, not understanding it had been poor people’s furniture when she had bought it during the great depression.

  He taped a funnel to her mouth so he would be to pour in the Pepsi. Then he tied a rope around her to be extra sure she couldn’t escape, when she came to.

  He figured it would be a bad idea to call from home. So he went to the 7-11. Not the close 7-11, he wasn’t that dumb. He carried a can of Pepsi with him to call the 1-800 number for questions or concerns.

  The phone tree presented him with many options: * For an extension; 1 For information about products, 2 For an explanation of how coke is different than Pepsi; 4 How to buy Pepsi products; 5 How to tell if you were a member of the Pepsi generation; 6 How to register complaints against Pepsi truck drivers; 7 How to register complaints about dead mice in bottles; 8 How to register complaints about other foreign objects in bottles; 9 How to present claim about kidnapping Brittany Spears. He pushed 9.

  “Sorry, but our records show that Ms. Spears has not been kidnapped today, so we can not process kidnapping claims.”

  The recorded voice crushed Bill. He could not believe it. Perhaps he had been too hasty, perhaps there were other young women with pierced navels. He had missed a day of work in tight economy, which wasn’t good, and he should probably have to let the girl go. Keeping for a sex-slave would mean cleaning and feeding her. He hadn’t even let her go to the bathroom. Probably if he let her use his clean good-smelling bathroom she would be so happy that she would forget the little kidnapping incident.

  He felt really tired and victimized by the time he got home. He wanted to nap, but decided to let the girl go.

  She looked mad, so he through he would talk to her and then let her go to the bathroom, and then everything would be OK.

  “Look,” he said. “I know you probably aren’t very happy right now. But I’ll give you the books and I’m going to let you poop in my bathroom, and everything will be swell. I had a little senior moment and I thought you were Brittany Spears.”

  When he said Brittany Spears, her eyes softened and see looked sad.

  He pulled the duct tape from her mouth.

  “I am Brittany Spears.” She said.

  “No. The phone message says you’re not.”

  “That’s because I have been out of circulation long enough, shit-head.” She said affectionately. “Just keep me for a few more hours and you can get a quarter mil.”

  “It’s not really money that I want.” Said Bill.

  “I know, baby.” She said, “Can you say what you really want?”

  “I. I. I. Well money would make it better.” Bill finally said.

  “That’s because money partakes of the Real.” Said Brittany.

  “What I really want is someone to love me enough to give me used Stephen King books.”

  “I Love you. I so Love this world that I send images of the Real World I come from into it.”

  “I don’t understand.” Said Bill.

  “Here put your head on shoulder and I will tell about the Real World.”

  Bill put his head on her shoulder, which wasn’t easy since he kneel down by the chair she was tied in. And so Brittany told Bill of the Real World. In the Real World people danced when they drank a good beverage. Everyone was healthy and good looking. Cars drove through endless fields on bright starry nights. Little lizards helped you get car insurance, and little dogs helped you have great intercultural dining experiences, and everyplace was really and truly Disneyland.

  “People from your world discovered the Real World when they invented television. There are no TV channels,. No broadcasting. We came up with those myths, so you wouldn’t feel bad watching the Real World. The Real World is commercials.”

  “But why would you ever leave?”

  “Your world is very interesting to us. It’s like a roller-coaster. Besides you people treat us well.”

  “But you’re living in a dump.”

  “It’s just a game for me. You’ve heard of other people from my world that live among you. For example the cast of Different Strokes.”

  “Is there anyway I can go to your world?”

  “Of course Bill, we discover people all the time. Take the rope and off so that I can get out of this chair.”

  “Oh right. Sorry.”

  Brittany stood up and rubbed her wrists. Then she stretched her knees and arced her legs.

  “What you have to do Bill is drink all of that Pepsi while I dance.”

  As soon as she started dancing she looked better. Her thick dreds become long flowing hair. Her dirty kin became clean. The pus vanished from her navel ring. By the time Bill was on his third Pepsi he could hear the music. His house seemed larger. His furniture became bigger, newer, more conformable, more fashionable. The air smelled better. He drank and drank and drank; although it became harder with each can. There were other people dancing with Brittany now. The roof of his house vanished and above was the bluest sky he had ever seen, with more perfect white sun above. The birds sang in time with swelling music. Flowers began to grow out of his floor. He drank and drank and drank. It really hurt. The President was walking up and beside him the Pope was roller-skating. People of all colors were dancing together. Good looking people. People better looking than anybody he had ever seen. He drank and drank. Soon the case would be finished. Boy did it hurt. He really needed to go to the bathroom. He hoped they had bathrooms in the Real World. There was a talking lizard. There was the talking dog. It was all too wonderful. He could see the Pillsbury Doughboy in the distance dancing, dancing, dancing. One more can. He popped the top. He took a slug.

  Bill’s gut exploded. He had a moment to look down at the ragged hole that blood and Pepsi were gushing out of. Then he died and slowly began to fade from the Real World.

  Brittany and her friends were laughing, but with his last breath he thought that he could detect some compassion in her voice. Maybe not enough to buy him a used copy of The Shining, but at least Carrie or one of the short story collections.

  OUR NOVEL

  Upon my recent diagnosis with Carson’s Syndrome, I realized that it was time to talk about the creation of Wilson Is Not Toast, which has the dubious distinction of being mentioned in every book on the oddball novels of the early twenty first century. Wilson is Not Toast did very well, even being a Mystery Club Book of the Month and having translations into twenty languages and adaptations for the WWW, film, TV and other media. If you are at all a mystery reader, you probably have a copy at home. What makes WINT so interesting is that it had eleven co-authors. Jointly written books seldom do well, but the author list for WINT has several other peculiarities. Firstly all of the authors had had only publishing credit before the publication of WINT, in a regionally distributed short story collection, which was aptly described as “dreadful vanity publishing at its worst.” Secondly despite the huge success of the book only three of the writers went on to publish anything thereafter and their minor attempts were frankly published because of their connection with the successful Wilson Is Not Toast. I was the best published of the three.

  I am Moses Gubb, and I on from my success with
WINT into a writing “career” of seven mystery short stories and cookbook of recipes by mystery/thriller writers Sleuth Stew. I am very grateful to the editors of Has-Beens on Parade for this opportunity to share these reminiscences from my early career. I know that many people would be offended at being solicited by such a fanzine, but I am not in total denial on my lack of writing success, and I feel that my work in WINT is one of the most satisfying of my life.

  First let me tell you a little about myself. Not that I was born and so forth, you probably have a good idea about that, no I want to explain the late twentieth century to you. Everyone wanted to be a writer, because a good deal of effort in the craft seemed to have been removed. My mother had told me with horror that in her first job she had a manual typewriter. It was one of those tales of “how bad it was” that ranked up there with the idea of a TV without remote control. There were all kinds of software in those days that helped you write. They formatted the text, they prompted you with both words and plot, and they even encouraged you if you stopped writing due to some from of block. I remember when the first time my computer got the (as it was then called) World Wide Web. It was as much of a breakthrough then as doing away with keyboards had been a few years before.

  My job1 or as we said then, my job, was a manager of a video store in Austin, Texas. It was the “cool” video store next to New Atlantis, which was a used bookstore, and a bar called the Decline of West. It didn’t pay for shit, but it did bring in a steady group of artistic people. Austin was sort of a writers’ colony in those days. You couldn’t spit without hitting a published author. I know because I spit a lot, mainly just at the people walking by into Violet Crown Videos. My girlfriend worked for me and made even less. We considered ourselves to be as cool as our videos. But we had one tragic secret. Unlike our clientele, we hadn’t achieved in any art form. Now we were smart enough to see writers don’t have any money, or they wouldn’t have grumbled so at the dollar a day late fee on their DVD’s (I’m guessing that the readership of HBOP is historically savvy enough to pick up on most of my quaint terms. If they ain’t that’s too bad because I’m not being paid for this). But everyone was working on something. Neal, the stock boy, was working on a screenplay, Susan on her novel and Tagi on an opera. Belinda, my girlfriend, had done some painting that we used to fix a whole in the roof of our garage. I had learned to play “Stairway to Heaven” on the guitar, and even worked in a band that got to play at a couple of parties, until some drunk guy threw our drummer into the river. But we began to get the wannabe spirit.

  How tough could writing be? After all, New Atlantis was filled with it, clearly most of it turned out by people less smart than us, if not in fact less talented. I asked Mary Denning, a founder of the Contrarians, a school of Austin writers, what her secret was. “Persistence.” She said. I figured I could try that awhile, at least until it got boring. Picking what to write was the next hurdle. I asked all the writers that came in, what sold, and they all said mysteries. So I got some mystery writing software, and I took off. My first novel was entitled The Woman with Three Breasts. I thought my grand climax was stunning, “She gazed horrified at one of three breasts. It was made of wax.” It took me months to write and despite my sending it to three or four publishers I couldn’t sell it. Therefore, I decided to try my hand at short fiction. That way I wouldn’t spend so long at creating the thing.

  Meantime Belinda was trying a more social approach she had joined a group of people that wanted to write mysteries called People Who Want to Write Mysteries (PWWtWM) or as they affectionately called it, “Pootem,” The group brought famous people in the field of mystery writing to Austin—agents and publishers and such—which would surely snap up some of the locally produced delicacies. So we both attended and shelled out money for workshops. We watched other people being published left and right. In fact at out first workshop the woman who had set to the left of me and the man who had sat to the right of me, both sold a mystery novel in a month.

  Was there some cosmic conspiracy against us?

  I wrote many short stories in those days,” The Dairy Queen Murders,” “The Jell-O Slayer,” “The Pork and Bean Menace.” But none of them sold. One was even returned to me with a thin pencil scrawl “It’s the food guy again.” I would show them. I tired writing about drinks.

  About this time Horace Greenslau came on the scene. Horace appeared in the form of unsolicited e-mail (or as we called in those halcyon days “Spam.”) Horace presented him self to the brethren and cistern of Pootem as a wily old publisher with many tricks up his ink stained sleeves. He pointed out two facts. Fact number one: the second sale is easier to make than the first, so if you want to be a published author, the best thing you can be is already published. Fact number two: you don’t have to pay dead guys anything but respect. His emails to Pootem just talked about these ideas, he said he just kept thinking about them.

  So one day I sent a note to this list saying why not put them together? You could put a book that was half stuff by dead guys that you didn’t have to pay any money to, and half by living guys that were first time writers.

  What a great idea! Wrote Greenslau.

  It became his project at once. He had spots for eleven writers, to mixed with eleven classics of detection. It would be called Mystery Classics. He had some has-been guy, D. B. Bowen, author of The Cellophane Fawn Trilogy, on hand to write an intro for five hindered smackers. He would mention the twenty tales one by one and thus give illusion that the new guys ranked up there with Chandler, Borges, Doyle, and so forth. The classics were great from literary to hard-boiled, impressionistic to great logic tales. There was only one rub.

  Money.

  He didn’t want to do it as a vanity press, no that was evil. He simply needed each of his writers to buy—say—two hundred copies. They could easily sell them to libraries, specialty shops, their friends and relatives. What proud momma wouldn’t buy a book that listed her baby son after Agatha Christie? He would sell the rest.

  I know what you are thinking. Well it’s easy to think things like that when fame isn’t around the corner and some guy is telling you that can sell two hundred books.

  Belinda and I figured it this way. I could put a display of the books for sake at the store, plus I could take a suitcase full of them to our family reunions, then when the store sold off its used videos at the flea market in the spring I could sell a few more copies then. Before long we could sell our four hundred.

  So we coughed up the cash and we wrote out tales. Mine was “The Butcher Wore Red” and hers was “The Video Store Murders.” Nine other people in Pootem likewise coughed up the cash.

  The books took a long time to materialize. Since we had never met him in the flesh, we began to wonder if we had been scammed.

  When the books did show up, they were as nicely produced as we had imagined for the rather hefty price we had put out. Belinda and I had visualized them as leather bound with gilt lettering and quaint illustrations (at least for the real classics). Greenslau had also asked each of us for a black-and-white photo. I guess he had merely asked for his collection, there weren’t any picture in the book.

  Bowen’s introduction was little weird too. He had very perceptive things about the classic tales, but made fun of us. For example, “In Moses Gubb’s ‘The Bucher Wore Red’ we see an interesting attempt to turn a food obsession into a tale of detection. Although the astute reader will have guessed the identity of the killer long before the end of the tale, his obsessive writing will have a special appeal for a certain type of reader interested in the workings of the authorial mind.” Sad to say, mine was not the worst.

  But it was a book. It had an ISBN number. It, for the most part, spelled out names right, and it was a hardback, not something easily recycled. It would live on in libraries and bookshelves of our friends.

  To my surprise and initial glee, I was listed as the editor. Greenslau had sent a note when everyone’s book was delivered reminding him or her it had been my
idea.

  The local paper reviewed us. The reviewer liked all the things the dead people had written. It called the editor “only half bad.”

  Our relatives did buy copies. But our friends couldn’t afford them. Local specialty shops like Adventures in Crime and Space were willing to buy a couple, but the look of pity in the eyes of the owner didn’t make us feel very good.

  You know, nobody buys expensive anthologies at flea markets. But some people did ask us on advice on how to get published. Then I started getting little nasty notes from my fellow authors. They had all laid out nearly three thousand dollars apparently for the purpose of loosing closet space. Nobody blamed Greenslau; everyone remembered that I had thought it up. Your most noble moments may be like the seeds of a dandelion, but e-mail lives forever. (Well at least it did in those uncivilized days).

  A year passed. We did our best to sell copies. One of our members a dentist did sell his off to his clients, but he offered them a price break on his services. The few books we gave away as review copies showed up in used bookstores around town, anchors in the cheap bins. I lost my friends in the group. I lost Belinda for other reasons, but when she left me her copies of the book stayed in the garage. Fine. I made a pile of them and propped up a roof beam.

  I became guilty. I felt that it was my fault. The least I could do was buy up the cheap copies of the books around town. They usually went for one or two bucks. I made a game of it, wearing dark glasses and pulling a hat over my face, I would go out and bag a few on nights of the new moon.

  I don’t know how many copies I had bought before I discovered that there were variant editions of Mystery Classics. One night I opened one up. There were tales by the eleven masters and eleven people I had never heard of. There was an introduction by D. B. Bowen for eleven writers—all of whom lived in Houston, Texas.

  So I went out in my garage. The books looked the same on the outside, but close inspection soon reveled that I owned the Santa Fe, Dallas, and Anchorage versions of Mystery Classics. I drove to the copy shop and began shooting copies of the alternate title pages. Each edition had its own editor, some fall guy (or in the case of Anchorage fall gal) that had had the same “brilliant” idea that I had had. I spent all night addressing envelopes. I wanted all the Austin writers to know. To know that I hadn’t done it. To know that somewhere Mr. Greenslau was traveling from town to town raking the dough from would be writers. I had to use snail mail; they wouldn’t take my calls anymore.