*short story* Elizabeth Everstone and the Talking Fetus

Today I am writing another short story, a friend of mine asked me why haven’t I updated my blog for a few days and that she wants something new from me to read. Now I already had two blog posts in my mind to write that hopefully I will have time after this one to finish and get up today as well. But she said to me she wants a bedtime story now being the wonderfully Aspergers  girl I am took that literally and decided to write a short story. Since I didn’t really have anything in mind and don’t like the thought of going through my pile of old manuscripts and writings I had the idea of sitting at my keyboard and just writing, see what happens, nothing else. So now I am going to write with no forethought, no destination in mind and once its done I will do no corrections of any kind. With that in mind, on with the show is it?

If my mom could see me now she would probably moan at me for how much I’m drinking, she was always like that, proper uptight, straight laced whose idea of a good time is playing board games and talking to her equally “Stepford” friends about how much weight they’ve lost this week and all the money their husbands make and all the things they buy them, probably as a way to ease the conscience for the “business trip” they took with their secretaries the week before.

Well if she could see me now she wouldn’t judge me for drinking, I mean how could you? If you were at a the bar of some dive club chatting to some bartender who looks set for a night out at the opera in 1882 with a knockout, red headed dominatrix who literally could cast a spell on you sitting to your right and a fetus who keeps bitching at you for not changing the water in his jar and a penchant for karaoke you would drink too.

I’m not crazy if that’s what your thinking, well six shots of Jack ago I was a lot more certain of that, and six shots of Jack ago the fetus didn’t sound this good doing Celine Dion songs with the cowboy so lets not split hairs here shall we?  I guess you won’t be believe I’m not crazy until I explain how I ended up in this situation so lets go back to the beginning.

My name is Elizabeth Everstone and I’m a private detective, mostly I get asked to follow husbands around or investigate their bank accounts and spending, I guess a lot of women feel more comfortable going to a woman for these kinda things, maybe they think I understand more or some such. But one night I was getting ready to down a couple shots of whiskey and zone out to the sounds of some God awful punk band who lived in the flat below me and evidently couldn’t tune their instruments or write songs without the repition of the word “bugger” or some variation of it. A good night I am sure you will agree.

Well my night was ruined when suddenly my front door swings open and in walks a guy who didn’t seem to know when he’d reached the moment you get up out of the barbers chair, I knew this on account of the fact he didn’t have the top half of his head. For that matter he didn’t have eyes, skin or teeth and looked like he had spent a couple months too long in the tanning bed, but whatever I’m sure the dead chicks, or dudes, he hung with thought he rocked the shit out of the zombie look. Jumping up from my chair I draw my revolver only to see him fall to the floor and start bleeding all over the rug I stole from my above neighbors bin after she died. Looking at my watch and seeing it was only 10:30pm I got the feeling this was going to be a long night indeed.

“Victo….ria Streeettt” In case you haven’t ever spoken to a dead guy who doesn’t have a tongue before, take it from me its not the easiest thing in the world to do. Kneeling down beside him and making sure not to stop pointing my gun at his head, not sure what good a bullet would do, I tried to understand why he had ruined what was going to be a good night in.

“Dude, your bleeding on my carpet, wanna stop that anytime soon?” Don’t judge me, like you would think of anything better to say in this situation. Also it was a lovely carpet.

“Victoria…. Streeettt”

“Victoria Street? Do you want me to go there or do you just want money for a taxi because if that’s what you want do you really think I look like I have money to spare? Also maybe you want to think about spending some money on a good skin moisturizer?”

“Victoriiaaaa…”

“Yes I get it, stop bugging me already, I’ll go to Victoria Street!” Getting up and grabbing my grey trench coat before shoving as many bullets in the large pockets as I could I took one last swig of whiskey and headed out to Victoria Street. Not before I warned my friend Crispy what would happen if he didn’t get his undead arse off of my carpet and stop bleeding promptly.

Driving to Victoria Street I couldn’t help but think that maybe my mom was right, perhaps I should have gone in to nursing. Wait scratch that, talking dead guys with half a head and my mountain of debt aside my mom is NOT right. Man I wish I had brought the bottle with me if I’m thinking crazy stuff like that.

Parking my car on Victoria Street I get out and take a look around while lighting a cigarette. Taking care to keep my other hand on my revolver in my pocket I straight away notice that…… Nothing seems out of place, nothing, the street is dead, a calm silence hangs over everything, the only light coming from the sickly, orange glow of streetlights and a few bedroom windows. I hate when Zombies trick you in to going on a wild goose chase so they can rob you. Undead, skinless bastards, all of them! Where is Leon Kennady when you need him? He wouldn’t stand for this shit!

My watch read 11:10pm and things were going exactly as I expected them to. I was gonna kick his arse when I get home… If he has one that is.

Leaning against the rusted bonnet of my car I take another draw on my cigarette and take one last look around the street to make sure nothing outside of the bedrooms that still had the light on was going down. Now I’m not a girl who likes being proven wrong but I can admit when I have made a mistake and from where I was stood something did seem to be going down on Victoria Street, how did I know? Well for starters when you see a guy hunched over carrying a big, bulging burlap bag with dark stains on it you start to feel suspicious, so that’s clue number one, clue number two was the way he laughed manically in way you should only ever do when tying kids to train tracks and curling your mustache because you are devilishly evil. Still not convinced? Well the Zombie walking behind him picking up the body parts that kept falling out of the aforementioned burlap sack made me think all was not well on Victoria Street.

Drawing my gun I started to slowly follow them, leading me to a non-assuming, semi-detached house at the far end of the street I wondered if being an evil scientist doesn’t pay so well these days. All those other evil scientists had big castles that just made you want to wear lots of white foundation and talk in a mock German accent. This one just made me wonder where the mini van and screaming kids and two minutes of missionary position sex was at. Wonder if he shared with his mom? I was interested to find these things out.

Staying a few feet behind them I watched them slink down through the open basement window, well the Zombie at least slinked, our mad scientist friend sort of squeezed through and then spent ten minutes trying to pull his “body bag” through the window, after watching that I’m afraid I just can’t stomach minced beef anymore. I reminded myself to put a bullet in him for ruining shepherds pie for me!

Once they were all in the basement I moved closer to get a good look at them and what they were doing. The Zombie was around 6ft4 and dressed in what I’m sure was once a very nice pinstriped suit. He had all of his head too but his skin and pretty much everything else had been toasted off, he looked like he had a permanent grin on his face. So I shall call him “Smiley” the other guy was short, dumpy and bald as a Crenshaw melon, rummaging through his bag he kept laughing to himself, standing up with an arm in his hand I saw he had beady eyes and milk bottle glasses, a pencil mustache that made me decide to put another bullet in him for crimes against fashion and wore a doctors coat now covered in blood.

“This is it Victor, everything we have worked for is now coming to fruition! On this night they will see I am not crazy, I do not care what that team of psychotherapists said, or that brain scan! I am not crazy!” Judging by how Smiley only responded with a thumbs up I assumed he couldn’t talk, God typical mad scientist, loves the sound of his own voice and by coincidence has an assistant who cant talk so can’t tell him he’s a ranting idiot.

“God, will you just shut the Hell up already? You’re harshing on my mellow you ranting git!” Now that didn’t come from me, I’m almost certain I wasn’t that drunk I could have shouted something and not realized it. I’ve been that drunk before but Crispy stopped me when I was around half an hour away from reaching that blissful stage. But that voice, so sultry, so sexy! Moving in closer I catch sight of a tall, leggy and very curvy red head dressed in latex and PVC straight from the BDSM club of my dreams! *I will leave the specifics out of this as I am currently trying my luck and don’t wanna seem overeager and drooling while describing counts I believe* currently she was in a cage at the back of this nutbars basement that did not help my concentration on the case any. What she was doing there I have no idea but it seemed a crime that a guy like that had a woman like her caged and was not only far too ugly for her but was spending anything but a woman like her in a cage. So that was bullets number three and four I owed him.

“Can I have one moments peace from you! Just once can you keep your opinions to yourself?! You miserable little failure! Tonight I correct all the wrongs I made with you” Failure? Oh he did not just insult my future wife!

“Of course you are, we’ve heard it all before, you’re going to prove them all wrong, you’re not insane, blah, blah, blah! Going through the moments like always” Did she just say we? Hm I’m starting to like this case, I really should thank Crispy, he is a good guy, I like him. He introduced me to the twins, sultry, dominatrix twins. At least that’s what I suspected. Well not so much suspected as hoped.

Ignoring the continued insults from my future wife he moved over to some large, mechanical contraption that was covered in bloods and other things I was glad I couldn’t name and began connecting the body parts to it by means of various tubes and wires. You maybe asking yourself what my plan was at this point and I want to assure you I had a plan, I had a very good one but it reached a snag round about the point I heard a gun click and felt a cold barrel against the back of my head. Slowly turning around I looked up at a third Zombie, I wasn’t sure what the time was but, yes, the night had somehow gotten worse and from the looks of that fully loaded shotgun was about to get worse before the morning. I should have been a nurse I thought.

I finally reached the party and had been there for only two seconds before I wanted to leave. The stench was horrendous, standing next to the cage I got a good look at the women and realized this was it, I was truly in love. She would make a beautiful, pale, winter bride. “Well, well have you come to witness the end of the world?” The evil scientist greeted me with another cliché and a torrent of bad breath.

“Actually I just came over to borrow some sugar, but now I’m here; babe in a cage, Zombie, gangster henchman and a bunch of body parts, I can see you are a guy I wanna party with! So what do you say we just break out some beers, your lady friend here can do a dance and we’ll just forget all about this whole taking over the world stick?” Apparently he didn’t share my sense of humour. With a click of his fingers Smiley cracked me one in the jaw, that was one owed straight to Smiley, I can take a punch but 6ft of dead meat straight at your face hurts no matter who you are. Doubling over I obviously wasn’t seen as much of a threat as they went straight back to what they were doing. Moving over to the cage I thought I’d be respectful and not yet ask her to lick it better but rather get the lowdown on whats going on here.

“Basic mad scientist, trying to take over the world by building an army of indestructible Zombies, very cliché”

“So what are you doing here?” Besides walking right in to my dreams….

“I was his first experiment, he stole me from the morgue, thought the fresher the better you know, but he couldn’t control me like he does those two. My brain hadn’t decayed enough for that to work but the longer they’ve been dead, well, I’ve been here a few months and lets say its messy..”

“So, basically you’re a Zombie? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, can’t remember much of how I died or my life before, but I can gather enough from the clothes to get a good idea of what I was up to”

“That’s okay you’re a Zombie, we can still make it work!”

“Huh”

“Nothing, just thinking out loud”

The fact she was a Zombie aside she was still hot and Elizabeth never leaves a babe in distress, dead or not! I was pretty certain that no matter how dead these mobsters a few bullets would make them deader, but I couldn’t do anything with that goon pointing a shotgun at me. The moment I reach for my revolver he’d put two slugs in me and I at least wanted to live until our wedding night.

“You there, skinny blonde girl, come here!” Always nice being spoken to so respectfully…  Walking over to my host I took one look at what he was doing with the machine and now I can’t have kebab either.

“I need an extra pair of hands and apart from handling guns my friends have very little skills and I refuse to ASK FOR HELP FROM THAT WITCH!” He shouted in the direction of Mrs Everstone. “While I load the machine I need you to pour the mixture in to the tubes there.” Picking up a bowl of what smelled like liquid funk and not in the good way I noticed it bubbling and spitting. Shotgun wielding goon was standing next to me, out the corner of my eye I could see Smiley was a few paces away and he wasn’t holding any weapons, our host was so wrapped up in what he was doing and so assured of his victory he didn’t even look up from his work. I suddenly decided if I was going to get out of this nuthouse I had to do something, and it was very stupid, but I had to try, I was going to die no matter what I did so may as well try and do a majorly stupid thing and impress a babe, right?

Spinning round I threw the boil of funky liquid at the rotund goons head and judging by the shrill scream he let out and the way he fell back the liquid burned and he didn’t have a tongue either. Smiley instantly leapt for me and it was time I figured to pay him back for that cheap shot he got in earlier. Reaching back I hit him square in the head as hard as I could, feeling my knuckles crack I wondered who that hurt more but at least I was still on my feet. Moving against the wall so I could survey the scene, I drew my gun, now my chunky friend wasn’t exactly doing terribly well in the life stakes as was but somehow he had even less flesh and even less life than before so at least someone was having a worse night than myself. Smiley was about to get up for round three but a few bullets made him think twice and he stayed down.

“You idiot! What have you done you stupid girl! I am the future ruler of the….” Four bullets I owed him was it? I may have miscounted and he got a few more, I wanted to make sure when I put him down he stayed down. Perhaps relaoading and going again was a bit much but I’m a careful girl you see.

“Now lets get you out of here,” at that moment I was on top of the world, opening the cage I helped her out and I know she was impressed.

“Well you sure know how to use that gun”

“I don’t like to brag, I’m not the best shot in the world but she carries real big bullets” I am not sure if this was a flirty conversation or not…..

“Have you forget about me now the blonde piece is here?” I suddenly remembered there was another prisoner here, a shrill voice piped up and moving away from the cage I peered in but all I could see was a small, dirty jar with green water in it at the back.

“Oh I’m sorry Jon! Let me get you” Bending down to pick the JAR up I got a good luck at what was inside.

“Is that a fetus, with a Scottish accent?!”

“Don’t you be thinking about throwing around insults lass, you humans don’t look so good to me!”

“Humans? You. Aren’t. Human?”

“Can ye not tell? I’m a Lion! King of Beasts”

“It’s a long story I’m sure you can imagine and I am not drunk enough for that yet. By the way I’m Nikita, well, that’s what I call myself, can’t really remember my old name” Ahhh Nikita Everstone, what a ring to it.

That’s basically my story, leaving the house we decided to head out to the bar for a drink where Lion or not, fetus in a jar or not that little dude belts out a tune. Before you walked in with all the questions we decided since Nikita doesn’t have anywhere else to go and Leon *he picked it* is, well, a talking Lion fetus in a jar with a Scottish they are gonna come home with me. Maybe now with some extra help I can take on more cases. Gonna need a bigger flat that is for sure. 1:30am…….. You know the rest, I need another drink.