Unfortunately the stench hitherto mentioned in mine previous oeuvre has now permeated into my bedchamber and has taken on the disgusting odour of much ignominy.
As the dim shackles of night were cast asunder and the liberated dew of morning came running naked from its internment, alone was I in my hinterwear, nose pressed curiously against the vents of my vestibule and chamber assessing the extent of the arid whiffs of shame.
Deftly, I crept like an otter through the grey lit halls of my abode, past the horror knocking shop of old Mrs Fairweather as she brought another navvy to his hopeless climax for cash. Still the whiff endured.
I followed its calling down the steps, my hands groping against the banister and tiled wall. I felt my way precariously like a first time sex pest, grasping at petticoat and bloomers. A shard of sunlight cut through the darkness like a prism of contentment. The light fell on the door of apartment number 69 – old man Curbishley’s hovel.
Curbishley, a former academic and one time trustee of the now defunct Ramblers Engineers And Rotary Polemic And Skilled Structural Artist Group Endeavours, lived alone and ventured out only to pick up the Morning Star and whistle venom at the scantly clad milk white legs of priss school mams.
The smell, now almost knocking me out of my paisley patterned slippers, issued forth from under the door like a badly timed quip at a spastic fundraiser. Jasper, my erstwhile cat companion and procurer of much lols came between my legs and nudged the door ajar with his lion-like face.
I followed my cat inside. I turned into the kitchen and called Curbishley’s moniker into the darkness.
I heard a simple miaow as if Jasper had reached the conclusion of a letter chock full of heartache from his sweetheart back home whom he pined endlessly for in some muddy trench in Europe. But this was no noise of wartime cat heartache. This was Jasper’s oft used croak to inform your humble narrator of some great ill.
I met the source of the rotten pong at last -
- the badly decomposing body of Charles M Curbishley.
RB
Randolph Falcon’s jaw snapped tight at the sight of Victoria Hoffman on the stoop of Falcon Ridge - or rather, the Hoffman mansion.
Thick dark hair spiraled around an oval face that was painted in shadows by the faint dusky light filtering through the aspens and pines. She was petite but voluptuous, the contrast of her femininity so stark against the rugged San Juan mountain ridges and cliffs backing Falcon Ridge that his gut clenched in response. She seemed small and vulnerable, almost as lost and abandoned as the stray birds he found injured in the wild. Yet, the gentle slope of her chin flared with determination as she hedged at the twelve-foot entrance, the faint whisper of unease swirling around her, arousing protective instincts in him that he didn’t want to feel.
Randolph had been alone a long damn time.