Late Blog

I'll be finishing up Flight and Fancy in just a bit.

Cheers,
-Jason

Flight and Fancy: Part 5

A bullet whizzed by my head, trimming off a stray eyebrow hair. The hair floated gently towards my lap and was halfway there when it was bisected by another bullet. The two pieces continued to drift down, the next seven rounds missing them all together.

“Hey,” I said, trying to make myself heard over the gunfire. “I really do appreciate this, I do, but-“

“Quiet!” the Dame interrupted. “I’m saving your sorry ass.” She crouched beside me, her shoulder brushing my arm and quickly reloaded. She leaned back out and unloaded, her .38 firing exactly 7.3 times. She ducked back as the Mountebank returned fire, each of his bullets tipped with a smiley face.

“And I’m overjoyed to see you. However, could you do me small favor?”

“What?” She said, as she pulled another speed loader out of her pocket and reloaded. The Dame was wearing one of her dark suits again, complete with black gloves and a pair of oversize sunglasses.

“Could you maybe stop using me as cover?”

The Dame didn’t pause. “You’re the only thing big enough to hide behind.”

I began to point out the flaw in her logic, but she unloaded again, directly in front of my face, briefly deafening me. I glanced over at Donna. She had fallen asleep in her chair, a tiny rivulet of drool running from the corner of her mouth.

I took a deep breath as the bullets continued to fly past me. There was already a pile of bullet casings around my feet and I sent a silent ‘thank you’ into the ether that the Dame wasn’t dropping the searing hot brass onto my lap.

A shoe flew by. I have no idea where it came from.

The Dame and the Mountebank continued their shoot out. I sighed and began idly tapping on the chair back with my right hand. One, two, blam, blam, blam. Three, four, blam, blam, blam. It was a tango in bullets, accompanied by Donna’s rhythmic snoring.

The Dame dropped behind me again. “Dammit,” she said. “I can’t seem to hit him.”

I sat up straight as a metaphoric light bulb flicked on in my head. Then it switched off again. And then on, repeating a pattern. I then realized that I don’t know Morse Code and that if I was going to have an epiphany, I should do it in a language I understood.

“Hey!” I said when the fire ebbed for a brief moment. “Stop shooting! This is pointless!”

“Is not!” the Mountebank called back, from somewhere off to my left.

I silently counted to ten, despite every fiber of my being wanting to shout back ‘is too!' “Could you please stop shooting for a second?” I said in the next lull. “None of us can get more than winged anyway.”

“Why?” the Mountebank asked. I could hear a fresh magazine being slammed into his pistol. And then I smelled cookies.

“Because we’re all main characters and this is the first shoot-out.”

The Dame poked me in the ribs. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, its simple. We’re all main characters. That means that no of us can get killed. Sure, somebody might get winged and be miraculously fine the next day, but none of us are going to die. We have to have at least two more shoot outs before that happens.”

I turned to the Dame. “How many shots have you fired?”

She shrugged and glanced down at her brass casings. “A lot.”

“And you,” I said to the Mountebank.

 “One hundred forty eight,” he said instantly.

“So, the two of you have shot around three hundred rounds at each other from maybe fifteen feet away and haven’t hit anything.”

“That is,” began the Mountebank. “Kinda odd.”

“Plot armor,” I said. “None of us can die just yet.”

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” asked the Dame.

“It’s gonna go like this,” I said.

Next: Part 6

Flight and Fancy: Part 4

The Mountebank pointed behind me. “You. Find out who brought Dana-“

“Donna,” Donna corrected.

“Donna,” the Mountebank continued, “And then bring me his duodenum.”

“Yessir,” Donald said from behind me. I heard a door open and for a brief second, what sounded like tap-dancing in the distance, then the door shut.

“And now,” the Mountebank said, as he pulled a straight razor out of his jacket pocket. “The question is what to do with Dina.”

“Donna,” both Donna and I said together.

“Whatever.” The Mountebank flicked the razor open. It probably should not have sounded like a cat puking. He stepped directly behind Donna and lifted her chin with one hand, the razor ready over her face.

“Wait,” I said. “You don’t need to torture, maim, kill, or otherwise inconvenience an innocent woman.”

“I don’t?” The razor began making slow swings above Donna’s face. The saxophone began playing the theme to Jaws.

“Of course not,” I continued. “Even if I may have seemed, how should I say, disinclined to help you that doesn’t mean I may not, at some point in the future, render some assistance.”

“Is that a yes or no?” The razor swooped closer.

“Ummmm . . .”

The razor paused and the Mountebank glanced over at me.

“Maybe?”

“Oh for Pete’s sake!” Donna suddenly said, causing the saxophone to miss a beat. “You,” she continued, with a glare at the Mountebank. “Either use that razor or I’ll shove it so far up your ass you’ll be able to shave your tonsils.”

“And you,” she said, turning to me. “Man up and tell this freak to suck it.”

“I was trying to save your life.”

Donna rolled her eyes. “I work at Iggy’s Buffet. One of our cheese pizzas is more dangerous than ten of him.”

“Really?” the Mountebank said. “Do your cheese pizzas come with razors in them?”

“When the chef’s having a bad day,” Donna replied. “Yeah. And as long as we’re talking, what’s this ‘friends with shooting’ crap,” she said, looking back at me. “Are you or are you not in love with the Dame?”

I tried to shrug, forgetting momentarily that I was handcuffed to a chair. “Well, I don’t dislike her.”

“Wait,” said the Mountebank. “Why is this important?”

Donna nodded towards the door. On cue, I heard it swing open, followed by the click of stiletto heels and the high-pitched bark of a .38 firing.

The saxophone clattered to the floor, accompanied by the unmistakable ‘thud’ of a body hitting the floor, bouncing twice, and then settling with a wheez and a fart.

A quarter rolled out of the newly dead man’s pocket.

“Hi,” the Dame said.

Next: Part 5