Deadbeat

Another story, courtesy of the Terrible Minds blog Flash Fiction challenge. This time, the challenge was to create a superhero remix. I chose to combine a superhero story with a locked room mystery. Perhaps the title is a little too on-the-nose?

Deadbeat

Glover stepped over a pile of splintered wood and into the apartment of one of the most powerful people in the world. His partner, Hollister, met him at what was left of the door.

“Why in the Hell is there already press outside? How did they know this was an Ultra?” After 10 years as a detective, Daniel Glover was used to having meals interrupted, but wading past film crews before he even saw a body pissed him off.

“OctoZeus discovered the body. You know he always attracts attention, especially after he smashed through the door.”

Glover glared at his partner. “You mean especially when TMZ is slipping cops two grand for tips on Ultras.”

Hollister looked away, then said, “The body’s in here.” Glover followed his partner into the room, which was more like a movie theater than living space. An 80 inch flat screen TV was mounted on the wall, with more than a dozen speakers scattered around.

In the center of the room, the dead hero was naked, slumped over on a cream colored sofa.

“Give me the rundown of what you’ve got so far.”

Hollister opened his notebook, but didn’t read from it. “Victim is Ian Thomas Brill, better known as the Human Beam. A level 5 ultra with the ability to create constructs of crystallized light.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t need the stats from his goddamned trading card, fan boy.”  Glover looked at the TV and noticed it was dark, but still powered on. “Maybe he finally died of embarrassment from calling himself ‘The Human Beam.’”

“When Brill didn’t show up for a scheduled meeting of the Honor Guard, O.Z. checked the place with his x-ray vision and saw the body. He punched through the door, but Brill’d been dead a while. It’s looking like he’s been dead since some time last night.”

“What happened to OctoZeus? You let him leave?”

“He… uh… said he heard an emergency signal.”

“Well, Hell, that’s okay, then. I need to try that next time the Captain calls me to his office. At a bare minimum, he destroyed evidence when he bashed the door in.”

“He thought he might be able to save him.”

“Yeah, and before that he was peeping into a private citizen’s apartment. You could have held him for that alone. I get that this is your first Ultra case, but you treat them like any other witness.”

Next to the body, Glover saw the TV remote. He pulled rubber gloves out of his jacket pocket and put them on as Hollister continued, “From what we can tell, the marks on his neck are consistent with strangulation, but it doesn’t look like it was done by hand and nothing nearby looks like it’s the weapon.”

To the right of the entertainment center, the lead tech walked out of the bedroom. She looked up from her tablet and nodded to Glover.

“Quiz time, Hollister. What are the known ways an Ultra can get into or out of a locked room?”

“Geez, there are a bunch. Teleportation or dimensional travel, using telekinesis on the lock, coming in under the door by shrinking or turning into a gas, ghosting through the wall.”

“Or.”

“Or floors or ceilings.”

“Anything else?”

“Doc Shock can travel through wires and… there’s one more.” Hollister looked around the room for ideas. “Time travel. Getting into the room when it wasn’t locked and then moving through time.”

“Any of those likely here?”

Hollister shook his head, “Not very.”

“Why not?” Glover picked up the TV remote and pressed the “Source” button. The screen came to life with the words “HDMI 1.”

“First, probabilities,” Hollister said. “Even without powers, locked room deaths happen all the time. If it’s not suicide, it’s from an illness or injury that’s not treated. Nobody bothers to lock a door after killing someone.”

“But this looks like strangulation.”

Hollister said, “True, but Brill was incredibly powerful and there’s no sign of a struggle. From what I’ve read, there’s a crystalline substance left behind when his solid light formations break apart. If he put up any kind of a fight, we’d see piles of the stuff.”

“Any sign of photonic residue, Jennings?”

The tech said, “Sure, there’s a bit of it all over the place, but that stuff’s like using glitter on a school project. Everyone he fought probably found it in their clothes for a month. His bedroom looks like the aftermath of a rave.”

Glover walked over to the entertainment center. “Any in larger quantities?” he asked. He felt around behind the TV, then used his hand to follow a thick cable to one of the cabinet’s lower shelves.

“Just that.” Jennings pointed to the victim’s upper chest and several small piles of sparkling dust. “Not enough to be from a fight. I already took samples.”

Glover pressed the power button on the Blu-Ray player, then another button to eject the disc. “So, he’s sitting here in his apartment. Naked. And someone strangles him without him fighting back.”

Hollister jumped back into the conversation. “I figure he was caught by surprise somehow. Maybe seduced or put into a trance. I can go through the list of Ultras he’s run into and see if any have that kind of power.”

As Glover pulled the disc out of the player, he said, “You’ve got a more important job, my friend. You’ve got to figure out how to tell his family he killed himself. And then come up with something for the press that’s not going to ruin the rep of one of your idols.”

“You think it’s suicide?”

“No.” He handed the disc to Jennings. “One thing your fan magazines don’t tell you is that these Ultras always have extreme tastes to try and live up to the rush they get from playing hero.”

He peeled the rubber gloves off and stuck them back into his pocket. “Looks like he was using his own powers for a little self-photonic asphyxiation and went too far.” 

Death Troll

This story is a little bit of a remix a la Stephen King/Richard Bachman with Desperation/The Regulators. Some of the same characters as the last one, although I never really described the woman in Console Freak. In my head, the photographer here is the same guy who "played" Tim in that. But the core of the story is based on the same photo of a priest shaking hands with a man in a coffin. A bit of a cheat this time, because the story picks up a couple of hours after that scene. 

The part that's fascinating for me in this one is how my brain takes me to places I don't expect. When I originally thought about the story for this, I envisioned it as an over-the-top crime comedy. Where it ended up is about as far from that as you can get. 

Enjoy:

Death Troll

The last thing Father Lynch wanted was for any mourners to show up, but there she was. The priest took a quick inventory as she walked in. Average height, hispanic, shoulder length hair in a messy side bun, dressed in black pants topped with a woven teal green shirt, a small black purse dangling from her hand. Overall, a clean, but uninspired look.

The photographer looked up from his camera and stared. They’d been through this routine more than a dozen times and this was the first time anyone had been here other than the priest and the body.

“Excuse me, is this where you’ve got my brother?” The woman walked through the maze of folding chairs that had been shoved aside to make room for two reflective umbrellas.

The priest looked at her, his mouth moving, but it was a full 3 seconds before words came out. “No, ma’am, you’ve got the wrong place. This is a private viewing.” He added a sympathetic look to his face as he moved to intercept her. While not a large man, Lynch easily filled the narrow aisle between the pews.

She stopped in front of him and looked into his eyes. “You’re saying that’s not my brother Ron?” she said. “I saw the notice in the paper. He disappeared almost 5 years ago and, to be honest, I figured he died a long time ago.”

Father Lynch was about to respond, then stopped himself and turned to the photographer. “You can go now. We’ve got enough pictures.”

“You sure? We don’t have as many as you usually need.”

“Go.”

Lynch turned back, locking onto the woman’s brown eyes. They stared at each other silently, as the photographer collapsed the towers of his lighting equipment. It was a small set-up, but still took him a bit of fumbling to carry it all in a single trip. The priest let her slip past as he went to hold the front door open.

The lock clicked as the woman called to him from the casket. “Hmm… I’ll give you credit. He looks a lot like Winston. Not exact, but close enough.”

“Who are you, really? Nothing was in the paper.”

“Sure it was. It was in the paper that showed up on my desk with a big ‘Fraudulent Claim Likely’ note on it.” She reached into the front pocket of her pants and pulled out a business card that she handed to him.

“I’ve been digging for a couple of weeks and the only thing I haven’t figured out is how you find bodies that look so much like the people in the fake policies. The real people’ve always been buried for months, so where do the fresh corpses come from?”

A hint of a smile broke through her anger as she looked into her purse and pulled out her phone. While turning back to the casket, she unlocked the device and activated the camera app.

“Los Angeles is full of actors, Miss Alvarez." Lynch spoke in a calm voice, while loosening the cincture around his waist. "No matter what type of person you’re looking for, an ad in the Pennysaver does the trick.”

Staring intently at the small screen, she zoomed in on the unidentified body in the casket and pressed the shutter button. The flash of the camera was followed by the flash of a satin belt crossing in front of her face.

The pressure on her neck was immediate and tremendous, restricting her airway so much she couldn't even choke out a sound. No matter how hard she tried, it was impossible to get her fingers around the belt or the man holding it as he forced her to the ground. “Every homeless person who dies on the street has at least one doppleganger who will jump at the chance to be in a film shoot. And in this town, no one misses either one them.”

As the investigator’s struggles ended, Lynch dropped her body to the floor and again applauded his own foresight in covering the viewing room with vinyl runners. They were so much easier to clean and replace than carpeting that refuses to let go of all that stray hair.

He stood up and looked at the two bodies.

“It’s going to be a lot harder to do this in reverse, but I’m sure I've got an obituary in my files for someone who can fit the part.” 

Console Freak

A little story, again inspired by Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge. This time, we had to select a bizarre stock photo and create a story around it. My photo was a man in a casket shaking hands with a priest. Here's what I came up with:

Console Freak

Every year, the gathering for Ron Winston’s funeral was a bit smaller. At first, it was a novelty that they all chalked up to his infamous eccentricity, but after 20 years the only attraction left was some top-notch food and wine. No one knew exactly why he hosted this annual fake memorial service and Winston always refused to answer questions about it.

The line of mourners passed Ron in his casket, squeezing past more than three dozen sympathy wreaths and arrangements sent by various vendors and friends. After the service, someone could make serious money selling admission to the small room as a haunted floral maze.

“Who’s the woman?” Paul’s whisper was more conspiratorial than respectful.

Regina looked up from her phone and saw her on the far side of the room. The woman was dressed in black, a practice that the rest of the mourners had long since discarded. Regina shrugged and went back to watching YouTube videos.

Father Lynch wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, then stepped away from the catering table toward Winston’s body. “We have a special request from Ron. He has asked that anyone who would like to say a few words do so here at the memorial gathering, rather than at the funeral itself. ”

Everyone in the room remained glued to their phones, except the woman in black, who studied the faces of the rest of the group. After a few moments, the silence was broken by Ron’s brother Tim, who pushed out of his chair. The largest man in the family, Tim looked down at the heads of his relatives, then across the room at his brother’s motionless body. He turned and headed toward the catering tables.

As Tim refilled his glass, the priest made another plea. “Please, someone, I know Ron really wanted to hear from those he loves today.”

“Ha! Right!” Tim said. “Okay, Ron, you want someone to speak? I’ll speak.”

Tim pushed past more than a dozen funeral arrangements, knocking two of them onto the carpet. The impact with the floor dislodged loose petals, leaving a corona of dust around the dead flowers.

He approached Ron, who was laying still in the silk-lined box. Tim reached in toward his brother’s lapels, with every intention of drunkenly dragging him out in front of the crowd. His fingers curled into fists before he withdrew them and began to yell.

“Why are we doing this AGAIN, Ron? This is the 20th time we’ve all had to go through this for you and none of us know why! Is it so you can hear all of us praise you once a year? You don’t get enough of that at work? We already kiss your ass at the office every day, so this stupid little gag has worn thin.”

Father Lynch reached up to rest a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Mr. Winston…” Tim pulled away from the priest’s hand and turned to face his family.

“Why do we still indulge him? Lorna, Ross, aren’t you as sick of this as I am? Do we just keep this up forever? It’s been 10 years since I started wishing he actually WAS dead in that box.”

“Shut up, Tim.”

Three mourners who still hadn’t looked up from their phones finally did, as Ron rose in the casket and looked out at the group. It was only mildly less shocking than seeing someone actually come back from the dead, because for two decades Ron had always played the part until everyone was long gone. In 2005, he had terrified a caterer who had come in early to clean up.

“You finally showed a little passion. It only took twenty years, but there you go.” Ron flipped the lower half of the casket open. “I was curious if any of you would start to understand at some point. But none of you did.”

He stood up in the pine box and gestured to the priest, pointing to the ground. After a moment of confusion, Father Lynch looked around, then grabbed a step stool that had been placed behind the casket.

“When dad died and I was left in charge, I was lost. I had no motivation to do anything, much less run HIS company. So, I started this little game to remind myself that I’m NOT dead yet, but that it’s coming. Maybe that’s stupid, but it gave me what I needed to push forward in life.”

With the stool in place, Ron climbed down toward the floor. “None of you ever figured that out, but more importantly, you never found your OWN motivation. At home, at work, I tried to get you all involved, but nothing took.”

He paused, looking over the faces of his brother, sister, cousins, aunts and uncles. While they stared at him, saying nothing, he poured himself a glass of red wine. “It didn’t matter to me what you did. I wanted to see you get passionate about ANYTHING, but it never happened. Your families, your jobs, charities, hobbies. You could have painted watercolors of demented clowns playing poker, if you wanted. As long as there was some spark in you.”

His expression softened as he looked at the woman in black, then he faced his family again. “Every year, you lived your lives the way you attended this ceremony. You just showed up.”

Ron walked toward the woman, while pulling a flight confirmation out of the interior pocket of his suit. When she saw the tears in his eyes, she smiled and wrapped his hand in both of hers. Smiling back at her, he raised his glass. “Well, there’s a real death to celebrate this time, so drink up.”

Throughout the room, a mixture of ring tones and buzzing came from the phones everyone clutched in their hands. “I killed the company. And you’re no longer employed.”

Ron Winston kissed the hand of the woman he loved. Together, they turned toward the priest.

“Now, Father, how are you at weddings?”