Work

My hands are rough
my feet are cold
my knees are stiff
and my back is numb.

And when they aren't
my work will be done.

Rocking At The Cave Man Hop

There is no exception to the angst

not even in being well-read

intelligent and full of pondering

and playing the world in your head

like a Rubik’s Cube

trying to twist and configure everything

back to its origins

from the mixed up chaos it is.

Perhaps even more so

when confronted with the reality

that putting two thoughts together

in a world of wet gossip

is akin to dog-paddling upstream

with busted haunches

through a coral reef of crass concordance.

And still….

And still

the bedroom sophisticate must look down

at his forearms

at sixteen—or sooner—

and wish to use them to level the world

the reptile sleepily dorming

in the pleasure center of his brain

giving a moist hot hiss

and a caressing flit of its tongue

against the grumpy gray matter

goading him on

while the caveman in his blood

grabs his priapic cudgel

that wood tool of destruction

to beat out his timpani of haste

and frustration.

Beating out the blues

to a blue beat.

No dinosaur is safe.

Once Upon An Art School Education

Once upon an art school education

I was imparted with the pricey platitude

that “beauty is in the eye

of the beholder”

and those that couldn’t see that

were blind

to which I offered

anyone who’d be holding their eyes

wouldn’t be doing much seeing

on their own part,

and garnered a backhanded

critique of my cleverness

from our fish-out-of-tartar sauce professor:

a MAD Magazine Royston Ellis

who catted and groovied

like his tenure depended on it

and dressed like a coffeehouse bongo bum

straight out of Peter Gunn

replete with Maynard Krebs goatee

and turtleneck that was all mock-tortoise.

Later I was broom-saddled

with the Wicked Witch of the Midwest;

a real cauldron stirrer

in a pointed tweed hat

who saw fit to criticize her meal tickets

for not coming to the table pre-prepared

and languished over praises

of her own fabrications—

acrylics of dead twigs

on blue mud backgrounds

in hand-sewn books

that couldn’t be read—

and proved that she

earned every inch of her ugly.

I was angry when I left,

Feeling cheated and abused,

But despite—or perhaps because of—

Their best efforts

It was a learning experience;

And wasn’t that what I had applied for
After all?

Comes A Soft Rain

The sound of car doors slamming sends the dog to barking

and I arrive in the living room

to see,

out the windows,

a string of vehicles hugging the curb across the street

on this pale gray day

like dormant cars of a train waiting to be loaded.

And toward the end of the line

is that old hearse the color of stainless steel

with the novelty lights shaped like old lanterns pressed into its sides,

and its coachman standing by its hood ornament,

clearing his throat and looking up at the sky.

Old Earl arrives in his purple van

and I shoot him a smile and nod at his back

through the window.

Even if he can’t see me, it’s the gesture that counts.

Old Earl—who reminds me of

a less vaudeville version of my grandfather,

slowly paces himself up the church steps

with plastic-wrapped lilies in his cracked wax hands.

And then

as the first throaty moan of that old organ

grieves that it’s being pressed into service again,

comes a soft rain from the

respectful sky,

a brief fit of weeping to pay its regards

and send stragglers scurrying

into the chapel,

followed by a split in the clouds

like dry skin cracked at the elbow

to let the sun beam down white-hot.

A coincidence clear enough

to cause a circumspect cynic like me

to reexamine all those heavy-handed

meteorological metaphors

used by those taffy-fisted screenwriters
in Hollywood.

Tatters of Blue

The gold-kissed blue of summer
has once again paled
and stifled itself in the dingy
grey sweater of winter

The trees have gone
nude, shed their scales
and plumage
as if to show how much
stronger they are than me
in my coat and hat and gloves
and still shaking at the joints
while they stand firm
and dormant, yes–
but steadfast all the same

And I notice
a break in the clouds

Despite itself the blue
sky couldn't help but
peek from its hiding place
to see what it might be missing,
to see if anyone was
actually searching for it

(It's a game we play with it
in Minnesota
for six long months)

Just a patch–
three small holes–
like tatters of blue on concrete
and it has made my afternoon.

Chagrinning Jester

Watching the westward sky
steeping in its evening blue
as jellyfish clouds swim by
the sun a rosy smear on
the horizon line

By the sundial the day is done
but before tomorrow I must yet lay
with all the mistakes of today

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: Z is for Zombie Jamboree

Z is for ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

I was walking one night
Around Lake Winona
When I met a lady
Who knelt on the shore there
She was using a bone
That she held in her hand
To carve a shape into the wet sand
I said to the lady “Miss, what you doing?”
“I’m calling a loa” she answered while moving
She writhed in the moonlight
And chanted some words
And into the shape
She threw feathers from birds
I asked her why she 
Would call on this thing
She said she could hear the
Night voices sing
The wind on the water
The wind in the trees
The caw of the crow
And the knock of my knees
And it would be selfish
She explained to me
To not celebrate 
The music with a party
She pointed ‘cross the water
To Woodlawn Cemetery
And said she was raisin’ the dead
For a zombie jamboree.
Jump through the fire 
And twice ‘round the stones
Hear the night wind
Playing on the xylabones
She held out her hand
And said “Come dance with me
And the living dead at 
The Zombie Jamboree.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: Y is for YOUTHFUL VESSEL

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: Y is for YOUTHFUL VESSEL

Whether Haggard's "She-who-must-be-obeyed"–the eternally youthful Ayesha of Kôr; the curse of la strega, passed down from generation to generation; or young Helen Grovsenor, Imhotep's princess Ankh-en-es-amon reborn centuries later; or even the network of vitality operating under the tender flesh of young mortals, sought out by the ivory-fanged vampires; the wicked have always sought eternal life through new youthful vessels.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: XX DOUBLE FEATURE XTRAVAGANZA

X is for X-RATED SPECS

“I assure you, sir, that it is on the up-and-up!” The short, bearded man leaned over his booth and produced a slip of yellow paper.

X-RATED SPECS – ADULT AMUSEMENT FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE

CERTIFIED GENUINE OR MONEY BACK

PFSR. RANDY GADGET.

“It’s not really in our line of stock,” Chad said, trying to brush off the little man and continue his tour around the auditorium. He and his sales associate Sandra Bellows were looking for new acquisitions for their client, THE POPNECKER NOVELTY CO., purveyors of fine junk to be advertised in pulp magazines, comic books and the like.

This was hardly something that could be peddled to the general public. Hell, it would get Popnecker Novelty blacklisted from the trade, and he would be out of a job.

“What do we have here?” Sandra asked, stepping up to the booth. Chad hadn’t heard her approach. She grabbed at one of the pairs of cheap-looking black-plastic-framed glasses and unfolded the bows.

“Uh, Sandy I don’ think you should…”

“Someone finally perfect a set of X-ray Specs? Hope it’s better than the old make-you-see-double kind that produce—“

Sandy was staring at Chad, and her mouth was agape, her face fire hydrant-red.

“These…these aren’t…”

“X-Rated Specs!” Professor Gadget piped, pride in his voice. “First of their kind! Guaranteed to work!”

Sandy didn’t say anything, just continued to stare.
“Uh, yeah…”

She took the specs off and slapped them back on the table.

Chad was unsure how to proceed. The entire situation was beyond awkward. “You ok, Sandy?”  

“I don’t think these are for us,” Sandy simply replied. “Chad, I saw some new, improved hand-buzzers over on the other side of aisle B, next to the fake vomit vendor. I think it might be a marketable product.”

Apparently Sandy had been unfazed, or hid it well.

“I’ll meet you over there,” Chad said, eager to walk away and relieve some of the tension that seemed to surround the booth like invisible gelatin.

After Chad had vanished from eyesight, Sandy turned back to the small, bearded Professor Gadget.

“I’ll take two pair,” she said, fishing her wallet from her purse.

X is for XYLABONES

The music of the night: the wind whistling through headstones in an abandoned graveyard; the skitter of dry leaves, windblown, raking across dry concrete; the galloping beat of a frightened heart pumping in one’s ears. The melody of mystery! The harmony of horror!

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: W is for WEREWOLF

W is for WEREWOLF

“You new in town?” The bartender asked more out of politeness than actual curiosity. He set the beer on the bar top and dabbed at some moisture with a towel. Besides, there was no one else in the joint, and with the way the white sky was starting to crumble and flake to the ground outside, there wouldn’t be many in for the rest of the evening.

“Yeah,” the guy said, curtly. “Just moving through. Looking for a job. Thought maybe I’d find something over at KPM.”

KPM was the foundry on the west end of town. It had become the life-blood of the community, now employing a good third of the town and several of the smaller surrounding communities. And those who didn’t work there owed the success of their businesses to the vitality that it helped stimulate.

“Yeah, they’re always hiring. Thing about factory work: one guy gets sick of it and quits, there’s always three more willing to step into his place on the line.”

The stranger didn’t say anything; he just sipped at his beer. He had an odd look about him. Nothing measurable, nothing that raised any caution, but almost as if he’d had a gut ache or a fever but was trying to ignore it.

“Say, uh, don’t take offense, friend, but are you ok? You look like you might not be feeling well. You want me to call a cab or something?”

The stranger produced a noticeable shake. Maybe it was the chills, maybe he had a flu coming on.

“Naw, I’m—I’m alright. I just…can you point me to the restroom?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bud said. “Back past the Pabst sign. That corner over there. Take a right around it. Second door on the left.”

Five minutes passed. Then ten. After fifteen minutes had lapsed, Bud began to get concerned. Maybe the guy slipped out the stock room door and skipped out on paying for his drink. So it was a three-dollar beer, no big deal. But there was a principle to the thing. Or maybe he was really sick. Like really sick. Maybe he needed help.

Bud wandered back to the restroom. The door was unlocked. He rapped his knuckled against the door. “You alright in there? Your beer’s getting warm.”

No response. After waiting and listening for a second, Bud pushed the door open. The room was empty.

Now he was angry. So the guy did skip out.

It was against OSHA standards and building code, but maybe he’d have to start locking the rear door while he was open. He only used it for deliveries anyhow, and they came once every couple of days, and early in the afternoon. After that, the only one to use it was himself after he’s closed up for the night. Should an inspector pop in, he could always run back and unlock the thing.

There was a clink of glass in the stock room.

So, he thought, the guy hadn’t left after all. Maybe he’d ask to use the bathroom and then head to the stock room, help himself to some top shelf liquor or something.

The rotten slob…why, he was going to get a good wake up.

“Hey, stranger. I think maybe you should come out. Come out now and pay for whatever you grabbed, and we’ll call it even. No cops.”

No response from the darkness. Just a smell. A heady musk redolent of a wet dog. Bud reached around the doorway and flipped on the light. The clinical paleness of the single fluorescent shop light flickered to life and buzzed like an angry wasp.

There was another noise. More clinking.

“Look, friend,” Bud growled. “I’m past irritated. Out you go. Let’s go. I’m counting to ten and then I call the cops.”

There was a low bestial growl. Something came out from behind a stack of empty liquor bottle boxes. It was too quick to see clearly what it was, but Bud felt it. Felt the hot, sour breath on his face, felt the icy razor slice of something sharp and fringed with bristly fibers seconds after he realized it had cut him.

His vision purpled and flooded with spots and he lost consciousness. He heard a loud howl as he faded.

*            *            *

A middle aged man, his flannel-covered gut distended over his camouflage pants, sat down at the bar. “Where’s Bud?”

The stranger set the man’s beer on the bar top in front of him and wiped at some moisture with a hand towel.

“Bud left town for a while,” the bartender said. “Something about needing a vacation. Guess the stress was really killing him.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: V is for VISIONS OF DARKNESS

V is for VISIONS OF DARKNESS

There was a noticeable heat building behind Carla’s face. It wasn’t anger or frustration, but the actual heat of the small room, bare save the covered table with the ball, and the overpowering stink of whatever incense was burning in the ceramic burner on the side table to the left. That and the increasing embarrassment she was succumbing to as the minutes dragged on, and this old faker gave her banal generalities for forecast as she traced the lines in Carla’s palm with dried-up fingertips.

 She hadn’t even wanted her fortune told. It wasn’t a novelty she’d normally acquiesce to, but it had been a birthday gift from her stepmother.

“I believe I’ve given you all that I can from your palm, dear. Now, let us consult the crystal ball.”

Madame Rosa closed her eyes and bowed her head, kneading the air around the curvature of the ball. Suddenly the interior of the ball lit up. Probably done with a foot-activated switch, no doubt, Carla mused.

“There is something…”

Carla had to admit, the old bag certainly had the carnie palm reader bit down pat. She was giving Maria Ouspenskaya a run for her money.

Madame Rosa froze, her eyelids retracting. Slowly her face tilted upwards, gaping dumbly at Carla.

“A bat!”

“A bat?” Carla repeated. “What kind of a bat? What about it?”

“A large bat. It’s coming for you dear. Oh my, oh my. I see visions of darkness in your future child!”

Carla was getting a bit frightened.

“What do you mean?” she begged.

“Leave this place, child. Hide somewhere. Something evil is hunting for you, and it aims to have you!”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: U is for UNDERWORLD GROTESQUE

U is for UNDERWORLD GROTESQUE

He didn’t use no stoolies, this guy. Word on the street is he’s paid double—sometimes triple what the other trail guys get. He’s got a natural gift for picking up a scent, see. His nickname’s The Schnoz. He turned a defect into a goldmine, he did. His real name? No matter. No one’s used it for so long, kind of like a ghost that might haunt his mailbox on occasion, that’s all. Ain’t no one who used it to his face lived long enough to pass it on anyhow.

Most guys got a head they work for. Not The Schnoz; he’s strictly freelance. And he always gets his guy. So, buddy, if you says this guy is on your dust, I’d find a nice plane to jump outta, somewhere between here and Hong Kong, and maybe, you don’t die in the fall, you could be safe for a few years.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: T is for TERROR ON THE TRAIL

T is for TERROR ON THE TRAIL

The fire finally blossomed like a cactus flower, orange and pink and dancing with the strokes of the evening breeze, and was just starting to melt away the chill of the desert as the bruise of night set and deepened from yellow and purple to deep, dark blue. Grant stoked the chunky ash beneath the kindling and watched the flames undulate, transfixed by their dance.

He had been three days off the beaten path, with not so much as a lost coach or a hungry coyote for company. Just scrub brush, pear cacti, and sand. And the heat. And after three days basting in his own sweat, having the desert filtered through his pores, sand sticking to the perspiration on his body so that his skin felt like roofing shingles, Grant was ready for a break.

And it was here in Whistling Valley that Grant broke. It was fitting, since the town seemed fairly broken itself. What remained left of the small community was a Main Street overgrown with scrub and sentried by dilapidated false fronts. The Red & Black Saloon, Gundersen’s General Store, First Bank of Whistling Valley—they were all masses of dust-tattooed boards, heat-cracked mortar and filthy, shattered glass. The wind played through the standing debris, producing a thin, blue whistle. However applicable the town’s moniker had been before it became a ghost town, it certainly, perhaps ironically, fit now.

Grant had made his bed in the livery, now a mess of probably-mouse-infested straw, under a warped canopy of shaggy wood beams. Just enough cover to hide himself, should the need arise, from any vagabonds whose curiosity may be piqued by his fire, and the necessary setup for retiring his horse for the night.

Grant wondered what made a town like Whistling Valley dry up and crack. Of course there were hundreds of small settlements between here and anywhere with the same story—miner hits ore, town blooms around lucrative mine, then turns into a ghost town once the mine collapses or its fecundity wanes. The same story dots the landscape from Minnesota to New Mexico: over-logged mill towns, over-mined mining towns, towns that dried up when their water supply did after a drought or became too polluted to use. And all that was left to memorialize Whistling Valley was a ramshackle, open-air sepulcher.

There was something different about this place, though, from the other empty carapaces of homesteads he’d traveled through. There was something unsettling about the boughs nailed to the front doors of the small, ramshackle homes, about the way the cross that would normally stand erect from the peak of the church roof like a mast on a ship, was snapped from its base and lying in the street.

Of course it could just simply be the product of a high wind.

After a meager meal and few hours of sleep, Grant woke. The whistling of the aptly named Whistling Valley, that he’d gotten used to. It took some hours of restlessly pulling his hat down over his face, as if making things even darker would somehow assuage his sleeplessness, but now there was a new sound. Something dry and jointed. It reminded him of the clack of knitting needles and of dim, lantern-lit evenings in Birch Creek, watching the darkness and the nodding shaggy heads of the pine trees while his mother busied herself so as not to think about his father—her husband.

Perhaps, he reasoned to himself, it’s the dry creak of the chains holding the general store sign to its pole above the business’s door. Or an animal scrounging around the junk-cluttered yard of a building looking for mice to eat.

No, it was an even beat. Like footsteps.

Perhaps this was a ghost town after all, in more than name.

Grant rose from his makeshift bed, brushing the straw from his clothing.

This was when he noticed that he’d just now noticed his horse was gone.

And then he saw…it. Standing in the street outside of the dilapidated saloon; it was a human skeleton, still patched with some mossy clumps of fetid human flesh, green and gray and dry as the dirt it should’ve been resting in. The creature tipped a glass bottle to its lips. Grant watched a surge of liquid, silver-by-moonlight, spurt from the bottleneck and splash through the empty, throat-less gullet.

It wore a holster on its hip.

Grant’s gun was in the saddlebag that had been strapped to Goldie, his horse. No chance of using that right now. Then again, he decided, it probably wouldn’t matter if he did have it. What possible use could a bullet be against something that was already dead?

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: S is for THE SEER

S is for THE SEER

The maître d' ushered the small group through the Puce Platypus nightclub, back through the bustling kitchen, down an unlit staircase towards the basement. Just off the first landing, halfway to the cellar, was a door.

            "Wait if you please," Creighton begged with the utmost politeness. "I will see if he will see you."

            The thin man disappeared behind the door. The two guests could see his silhouette move behind the pane of rippled glass inset in top half of the door like a large fish moving under the surface of a lake.

            Creighton returned. "He will see you. Please come in."

            Marvin Tracy and his wife hastily entered the room. They found the chamber dark, with their host sitting at a tabletop that appeared to float in the darkness, lit only with the small glass orb on its wooden pedestal before him. Coruscating within its glass shell was a green light.

            "The Seer!" Marvin muttered. "Thank you for seeing us. It's about our daughter–"

            "Mildred, yes I know," The Seer recited in a dead tone. "I know all about the kidnaping. I've seen visions of the man responsible. At least, the man who took her. By force. But there is a plot behind this…"

            "Yes," Tracy answered. "Money. I've got plenty, but I'd give every red cent to know that Mildred is safe!"

            The Seer bowed his turbaned head. "I do not charge for my services, Mr. Tracy. And at this juncture, should the hoodlums who've taken your daughter demand a ransom, I suggest you stall for time. Of course you're a wealthy man, but even wealthy men need time to convert assets to cash. And they will undoubtedly ask for cash."

            The Seer, his head floating disembodied above the glowing ball, in the dark of the room, narrowed his eyes towards the distraught couple.

            "But there is another element to this that has not been revealed. I see bats. I see a large bat the size of a man. But perhaps it is not what it seems," The Seer narrated. "Perhaps it is a man dressed as a bat. And a ransom that that man has stacked against himself!"

            Marvin Tracy's eyes bulged at the description. Mary Tracy gasped, fell backwards into Marvin's arms. He nearly missed his wife as she fell backwards, the room was so dark.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: R is for RADIO CONTROLLED MENACE

R is for RADIO CONTROLLED MENACE

The steady march of pedestrian traffic on the busy avenue seemed to falter to a stop when the man raised his hand and pointed at something emitting a loud buzzing in the blue. “Look! In the sky! What is that, some kind of crazy foreign bird?”

Ida Mae James, on her way to her job as head librarian and no one to suffer fools, tisk-tisked and corrected him. “No, sir. That is an airplane. See the pill-like structure of the body? No feathers. The wings are stationary. They do not flap to control movement.”

The man looked at Ida Mae as if her admonition had produced an unpleasant odor. “You don’t say.”

“I do, and further more…”

The object descended, veering down towards the crowded sidewalk.

As it approached, a young girl exclaimed, “Why, it’s tiny! It must be a toy!”

“Must be some kind of a promotion or something,” someone added.

A newcomer ran into the crowd garbed in a scuba diver’s wetsuit, his face completely hidden behind a diving mask. “Hardly a toy, young lady,” said the tinnily timbred voice of the stranger. “It’s a drone, and it’s loaded with enough explosive power to decimate this entire block. Everyone get away!”

Panic quickly trumped the novelty of the situation, and the mass of onlookers scattered like spooked rabbits.

The Eel, Harbor City’s amphibious avenger, raised his left arm into the air, fist clenched tight and bowed slightly downward from his wrist. There was some sort of contraption bound to his forearm with rubber straps—it looked like a miniature speargun. Through the glass of his mask, The Eel watched the distant device, following it with his hand as if it were an irritating fly he were intent on catching.

The small plane veered upwards and circled back down, building up momentum as it approached its quarry, who kept focusing up his raised forearm as one would aim through the scope of a rifle.

“Little closer,” he muttered, seemingly to himself.

“There!” A concealed release in the thumb of his glove was pressed and triggered a pneumatically projected spear, which shot upward and into the body of the small radio-controlled plane. The inertia of the spear pushed the toy-like terror a few feet into the air before it had a chance to detonate into a brilliant cloud of orange fire, the heat of which baked an artificial tan onto all who were caught in the wake of it. The shockwave generated by the blast shattered storefront windows up and down the block and tossed bystanders to the pavement like rag dolls.

 “Jesus!” cried a man, pulling his stout, stubby form off the ground. “Didja see that?” he asked everyone and no one in particular. “Say, whatcher name, fella?”

“You must be from out of town,” Ida Mae Brown interjected, smoothing the wrinkles in her dress. “That, sir, is The Eel. He’s Harbor City’s sworn protector!”

“Yeah?” the man gasped in a voice that could announce radio without a microphone and still reach the listening audience. “Well where’d he go?”

The Eel had in fact used the confusion of the hubbub to vamoose, hot in pursuit of the remaining drones operated by the nefarious Radio Commander, Master of Remote Control Chaos!

“Eel, huh?” the man repeated. “Guess it’s a fitting name how he slipped away and all.”

The tame joke produced an unexpected chortle from Ida Mae Brown. And whether it was genuinely funny, or just a reaction to the intensity of the previous moment, or just an example proof to the theory that laughter is contagious, soon the entire street was in an uproar.

The man from out of town simply shook his head. “Sheez,” he mused, “this place is nutty. I think I best catch the next boat back to Patterson.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: Q is for QUOTES OF DARKNESS

Q is for QUOTES OF DARKNESS

“I don’t see the big deal,” Howard spat. “Just a book. What’s he gonna do, lob it at someone and bonk their noggin?”

The wrinkled old man shook his head. “Knowledge can be dangerous. This wasn’t an encyclopedia or a collection of poetry, you dimwit.”

The cop’s eyes narrowed at the insult.

“It was a book of arcane rituals and summoning spells. Words in their purest root form, combined with deadly recipes for building host vessels for possession, the conjuration of spirits and demons…”

“Aww, it’s all Halloween bunkum. Lot o’ hoopla for guys who wear mascara and listen to music that sounds like someone tryin’ to extract a running chainsaw from a sheet of stainless steel.”

The old man sighed. “Despite the more comical pop-cultural permutations of the dark arts, the fact is that they are very real and very deadly. This Sumerian tome that was taken, was taken for a reason. No other book in the shop was touched, I tell you! Someone who knows what it is and plans to use it now has it! And we’ll all be damned if we don’t stop them before they have a chance!”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: P is for PURLOINED PLANS

P is for PURLOINED PLANS

The unremarkable green sedan stopped at the mouth of the alley, then pulled away and drove on, after Agent Q stepped out of the car and headed down the narrow passage, past the overflowing trash cans and rain soaked refuse. He slowed his pace as he approached the angled base of a fire escape, and using the fingers of his right hand, pushed an L-shaped bracket on the side of it as he continued on.

A small section of the brick wall behind the fire escape swung inwards. Q passed through the dark aperture. The wall closed behind him with no trace of a door for any who might’ve followed.

Q moved down a dark hallway, stopping when he reached the single door at the end of it. He fished a keychain out of his pants pocket, and found the small, round-headed silver key that opened it. Flipping on the light, he stepped inside and closed the door behind himself, pausing to hear the locking mechanism click into place.

By all outward appearances it was simply a cramped maintenance room. There was a grubby mop bucket off to the side, some mops and brooms stacked in one corner, a floor drain framed with a lip of concrete about an inch and three-quarters high, and a large water main pipe bulging out of the far wall with a bright red valve wheel on the side. He twisted the valve wheel ten degrees to the right, and waited. He heard the faint his of hydraulics activating, and the room descended.

When the incognito elevator reached its target level, three floors sub-basement, Q stepped off and into another hallway; this one a brightly lit corridor walled with teak paneling and padded with plush alpine green carpeting. There were office doors intermittently spaced on either side, but the one Q wanted was at the end.

“Sit down, Q,” Reginald said. He looked considerably older since the last time Q had met with him face to face. “Another bit of bother that needs clearing up. This time the client is…well…us.”

“Us?” Q said, trying to make himself comfortable in the stiff-backed chair that sat facing the agency director’s desk. It was small and hard and made one feel like they were back in grade school. Q fought the urge to run his hands under the seat to look for waxy blobs of old chewing gum.

“Yes. A madman calling himself The Bronze Panther has stolen a number of dossiers from out intelligence office in Paris and headed back to Ceylon. A great deal of our personnel have been compromised.”

“Including me, sir?”

“Impossible to tell,” Reginald said with a sigh. “The office was a mess. We still don’t have all the pieces put back together, and even when we do, it’ll take some time and lucky guesswork to know exactly what he got away with.”

“And I’m to go to Ceylon and retrieve these documents and tie up any loose ends regarding the spreading of said information.”

“Correct, Agent Q.” Reginald dropped a manila envelope on his desk. “Everything you need is in there. The usual passports, papers, intel we were able to glean on this Bronze Tiger.”

Q grabbed the folder and stood. “Is there a deadline?”

“Success,” Reginald said in a quiet and firm tone.

“Understood.”

With that, Q was gone, back to the top level and the green sedan that would be waiting in the parking lot of a restaurant three blocks west.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: O is for OMINOUS TOTEM

O is for OMINOUS TOTEM

The Seer was inwardly amused at the sergeant’s irritation at having to lower himself to consorting with a “press-hungry public shamster” as he’d put it, but kept the amusement to himself. No need to test the limits of sergeant Zucco’s irascibility.

Zucco cleared as throat with gusto. “You’ve doubtless heard about the string of murders in the Bryn Mawr area of town?”

“Indeed I have. I get the paper, sergeant, just like everybody else.”

Zucco replied,  “Looking for your own picture, no doubt.”

“No,” the Seer said, sitting down at the table and raising his coffee cup, “I only subscribe for the comics.”

To his surprise, this elicited a curt snicker from the callous cop.

“We’ve hit a wall,” Zucco continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ve been ordered to see if there’s anything you can add to flesh out the details on this nonsense.”

“What could I do to help?” The Seer asked. “I’m simply a, what was it? A public shamster?”

“Probably, but you seem to have a lot of useless trivia in that turbaned skull of yours about stuff like this, so here you go.” With that the sergeant put a small paper bag on the table in front of The Seer.  The kind you might bring home donuts in, or a small liquor bottle.

Cautiously, The Seer separated the edges of the mouth of the bag, and found a smooth, oddly shaped object with his fingers.

“What the devil?” What he produced from the bag was ghastly, and like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was a small figure, kneeling on all fours and grasping a skull in the primitively carved fingers of its right hand. It had a square-ish head with a series of rings carved around its neck, and a ghoulish open maw filled with tiny needle-prick teeth. Titling it towards the light hanging over the table caused the two eye cavities to glare a blood-colored reflection. Deeply set within the sockets were two red gemstones of some type.

“What is this?” The Seer begged urgently.

“What I came to you for, smart guy.”

“Where was this?”

“On the back of the body of the latest victim. And there’s been one exactly like it on the bodies of each of the last six.”

It was odd to say the least. It had the patina of aged wood or bronze, it’s ochre-hued form marred with splotches of green and brown. It resembled highly polished sandstone, but it didn’t feel like rock at all. Or wood or metal for that matter.

The Seer clasped the object between both of his hands, bowed his head until his chin was balanced in the center of his clavicle, and touched the seeing stone on his turban to the totem.

His mind exploded with a firework show of images; of natives slogging through fields of tall grass and palm trees under the crack of a whip, of a chair like no other he’d ever seen, hewn from a rock that matched the tiny chips of red that made up the statue’s eyes. There was a collage of pain, of sacrifices and blood, and at the perimeter of it all, a figure. The Seer couldn’t quite make out the form’s features, but there was a malevolent aura as hot as red steel radiating off it.

His head jerked up, his eyes flashing to the sergeant. He set the totem down on the table.

“Sergeant, I have to ask what will sound like a very silly question, but I want you to answer it honestly.”

“Whatizit?”

“Are you sure that there were individual totems on each body? Is it possible that it was simply the same totem—this totem—every time?”

“’s impossible,” Zucco spat. “Other ones were all tucked away behind lock and key in the evidence room.”

“Call and make sure, there’s a phone behind you.”

Zucco sighed, rolled his eyes beneath a heavily furrowed brow, and turned to the phone.

“Yeah, Zucco. Hey, go open the evidence lock-up and check on those figurines we found with the bodies in Bryn Mawr.”

There was a pause.

“Yeah? Y—wait a minute, how the hell could…” The surly sergeant turned to The Seer, the color flushed from his face. “What’s the deal here you Ouija board bandit?”

The Seer motioned towards the statue, not wishing to touch it again, ever. “This thing is alive, sergeant. It isn’t the killer, but it’s what the killer is killing for. Not to steal, but because this thing needs the blood of the victims.”

“You’re nutty. Why?”

“I don’t know. But I can assure you unless we find this psychopath, and soon, there’ll be something far worse than a madman with a knife running loose in the city.”

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: N is for NIGHT WATCHER

N is for NIGHT WATCHER

He’d been there every night for several weeks now. Some nights she didn’t even go to the window, but she knew if she did, the shape would be there under the streetlight. After she’d been grabbed outside her apartment a few nights back, by that—that thing, she’d made a point to always have Jason, the building’s night door man, wait for her outside the front door, where she could be within his eyesight after stepping off the bus at the corner. If anyone, or thing as it may be, tried to gamble a grab, Jason could be there to intervene.

Every night. Under the streetlight. Staring up at her window from the corner across the street. She’d called the cops, given a report. Of course they thought she was bonkers. At least she thought they thought that. The sergeant who filled out the report came to the conclusion it was some nut in a monster mask, trying to get a fright out of her for a gag, working up the goony voice.

Millie wasn’t so sure.

That face…the face that had been burned into memory and the darkness that waited for when she closed her eyelids…there was something familiar about it. The eyes. She couldn’t place it, but she felt that it might not have been a mask, and maybe, perhaps, even not an attempted attack but a cry for help.

If Jeremy were here, he’d know what to do.

Where was he?

She edged to the window slowly, trying to stay out of the glow from the streetlights and shop signs below. She didn’t want the monster to know if she was home, and if he saw her, who knows? Would it—or he?—come up and try to get in?

And the memory of that hand on her shoulder—those clawed fingers! She had a hunch that maybe Jason wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to contend with. Not for someone like that.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: M is for MANSTER

M is for MANSTER

As she turned the corner, past the circumference of light provided on the sidewalk by the streetlamp, Millie got the gooseflesh premonition that she was being watched. It didn’t mean she was, nor was it uncommon to happen when she was walking alone at night. It was her body’s natural reaction to the dark and the quiet mixed with the setting of the unpopulated city avenue.

This time, however, her intuition had grounds for concern.

She didn’t see it approach. First there was the empty metallic clunk of a kicked stray soup can. It was trash day, so there was loose garbage all over the place, blown out of the back of the garbage truck as the bins were being unloaded. Not that there wasn’t trash strewn all over all of the time anyways. This was Saint Paul, after all; street trash was to the capitol city in the way that rain was emblematic for Seattle, or jazz was to New Orleans.

Millie spun, focused on the blackness behind her. Nothing. Maybe it was just a stray cat looking for dinner.

She kept on.

Then she heard another sound—the syncopated tread of footsteps. They were moving at an odd time signature. One short step, then a thudding drag. She started walking faster, the steps to her apartment building a block ahead.

There was a moan—a formless gasp that sounded like it was produced by a mouth unsure how to properly produce the syllables.

“Mee-leee.”

Her heart jumped up into her ears, pounding like timpani.

Don’t turn around, she ordered herself. Whomever or whatever it is will give you a start, and that will cost you valuable seconds you could be bustling your backside towards the door. Jason the doorman should be on duty by now. He’ll know what to do with—

Her train of though was interrupted by the clamp of a heavy hand on her left shoulder, forcing her to a stop. A quick sideways glance at the hand showed a set of green, scabby fingers, each ending in a long talon-like nail.

“Mee-lee. Izz Jay-wuh-mee.”

She turned, and found herself face to face with a hideous creature, a flat green face coated in scaly lesions, baring shark-toothed fangs in its gaping mouth. The man—the monster!—was dressed in a baggy black trench coat and a wide-brimmed  slouch hat, like The Shadow wore.

“Mee-leee!” the creature repeated. “Izz Jay-wuh-mee…”

Millie fell backwards, pulling away with all of her might. A piercing scream burst forth from her lips. Without looking back, she made a beeline for the door of her apartment building.

The creature—this Manster—did not give chase. Rather he sighed, raised the collar of his trench coat, tilted the front of his slouch hat down further, and walked off into the night. Had his face been visible in the getup, one could’ve seen the streetlight on the corner highlight the small tears racing down his swollen cheeks like small glass beetles. He had to find the man who did this to him and get him to change him back.

And if not…then, the world was soon to be down one scientist, he thought. There would be no middle ground.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

The strip was active all right, it was a veritable midway alley of hard liquor and games of chance. Every garish neon sign, animated and not, beaming its licentious potential to every broken heart, frayed morality or simply life-weary individual who dared to take a gander.

The Widow’s Den, The Voodoo Room, The Ticklish Tiki, The Puce Platypus; each housed their own brand of debauchery and a devoted clientele of hoodlums, chumps and holster hounds waiting for the next job offer or cheap thrill