CASEY JONES AND THE DUMPSTER FULL OF DEAD HOOKERS AND THE DINER FULL OF WEREWOLVES
As my eyes open and the fog that is my sight begins to clear, I smack my lips to try to get rid of that familiar copper taste in my mouth. Yep, I’ve been chloroformed. Which is unnecessary because once I’m asleep, you could dump my body in British Columbia and I wouldn’t wake up on the way there. Judging from the smell of art erasers and gay pride, I realize I’m in West Hollywood. Further judging by spaghetti stained walls that rise up around me, I’m in a dumpster. And judging by the hard mushy-ness underneath me, I’m lying a number of dead bodies.
If the warm bulge on my thigh, combined with the fabric I can feel on my arms and legs, uncovered as they always are due to my Hawaiian shirt and shorts wardrobe, is any indication, I’m on top of man who is dressed as a woman. Given that the bulge is still kind of warm, I’m guessing the he-she under me hasn’t been dead for long. Thank you Law and Order: Special Victims Unit for that tasty, little tidbit. I reluctantly roll over and count six dead bodies. If they’re all men, then some of them were better at being women than most women I know. But not Ms. Five-o-clock Shadow that I’m laying on.
I check Ms. Five-o-clock Shadow’s watch to find out the time. 3:30 am. I don’t know what disturbs me more: the dumpster full of dead tranny hookers, the fact that it took an hour longer than it usually does for me to wake up after being chloroformed or the fact that the dead tranny hooker under me still wears a calculator watch. I quickly contemplate the theory that I’ve traveled back to 1987 somehow, but decide that it’s very unlikely that I have done so. Normally, when I time travel, I get this distinct ringing sound in my ears.
A quick dislodging and purse snatching later, I find myself behind the Red Lemon on Santa Monica in West Hollywood. The Claim Jumper’s near here. Where else can a man such as myself get a burger at four in the morning while holding six dead hooker purses? Pretty much anywhere in West Hollywood, I suppose.
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My booth at The Claim Jumper is dismal, just the way I like it. When I walk into a terrible diner at four in the morning, I want to be absolutely sure that my silverware is dirty, my food has been spit in and that the waitress has at least six STDs.
Speaking of, I ask for a burrito, which they don’t serve, and end up getting a cup of coffee and some eggs, bacon and hash browns. When she walks away, I get to purse diving. The contents of the purses tell me very little. Pretty much what you’d expect to see from the purse of six dead he/shes. Compacts with garish make-up, wallets empty of cash and identification and a tampon, which just confuses the hell out of me.
I arrange the contents of the purses out on the table to better understand the picture of the pickle I’ve gotten myself into. After a few minutes of “why me” and “doesn’t this crap happen to anyone else” and further mumblings of “I wonder where the hell my car is,” I notice I’m not alone in the Claim Jumper. And the others inside notice me as well.
When you’ve been at this as long as I have, you notice the subtle difference between things. For instance, the difference between ‘lit’ and ‘illuminated.’ You’d think such semantic arguments wouldn’t be important, but for a private eye such as myself, they become paramount. Another subtle difference is the one between ‘cokehead’ and ‘werewolf.’
Cokeheads and werewolves are both nocturnal. Cokeheads because they just stay up all the time, and werewolves because three nights out of the week they hunt and stalk until the moon goes down and turn back into humans. I don’t know if you’ve ever turned into a wolf at night, but trust me, it’s an unpleasant and draining experience. You tend to sleep all day long. Like me, I suppose, only without the laziness. The second thing they have in common is the sniffing. The cokeheads do it because the drug they inhale destroys every little thing about the inside of their nose and are relatively unable to filter out the pollutants in the air, causing a constant need to sniff. Werewolves do it because even in human form, their heightened senses remain, even if it is to a lesser degree. Admittedly, in Hollywood, it’s difficult to tell the difference, but not impossible.
So, I’m in a diner full of werewolves. No big deal. It’s not a full moon, so the worst they can do is kill me. Or, at least, I tell myself. It’s kind of hard to concentrate on dead man/woman purse contents when you’ve got roughly twenty human-formed werewolves staring at you. That’s my experience.
I ignore the glaring, glowing red eyes as I focus on the tale unfolding itself in front of me on the table. The dark red lipstick. The compact with the broken mirror. The scuffed up nail clippers. The broken mascara container. The compact with the broken mirror. The other compact with the broken mirror. Another compa…huh. Six dead he/she hookers, six purses devoid of id, and six identical compacts, all with the broken mirror. That’s an interesting coincid—
Sniff. “Hey. Hey, how’s it going?” Eddie Munster, not the Eddie Munster, but a guy that looks like Eddie Munster, only twenty years older, with an eye patch, fifty pounds of former muscle and bald, but other than that, he’s Eddie Munster, sits down on the bench across from me at the booth.
“So much better now that you’re here, My Love. Please tell me you’ll make me the happiest man in the world and marry me.” I pat down my pockets. “Damn. I promise I have a ring, I just didn’t think I’d see you tonight.”
“Yeah, alright. Look, we don’t want any trouble—”
Eddie’s head jerks to the side like a squirrel hearing a pastrami sandwich being thrown to the ground six and a half feet away. Simultaneously, the werewolf nation cocks their heads in the same way. Oh, what I wouldn’t surrender to give a rat’s ass what they’re hearing.
I snap my fingers in front of his face. He snaps to attention. “It’s a good thing you don’t want any trouble, because I’ve got a pocket full of silver bullets.” Oh, how I lie!
Sniff. “Now, how did you know we’re all werewolves?”
“You’re werewolves? I just thought you were cokeheads. You know what they say about cokeheads.”
“Look,” sniff. “We don’t want any trouble, but we’re here having a sort of…support group—” Sniff. “-meeting.” He looks around and licks his lips. Oh. Good. It’s the waitress.
“Here’s your coffee with spit.”
“Spit, huh?”
“Yeah. Not enough?”
“No, that’ll be fine. Say, does that come on the food, to?”
“Not normally. But I’ll hook you up, sweetheart.”
“You know what? That’s okay. I’ll just take the bacon. And if I could get the spit on the side in a cup, that’d be great.”
That lovely grating noise comes from the bottom of her throat. It is quickly followed by an oyster that dangles out of her mouth and over my coffee. And then comes the plop. Following her stately egress.
“So, yeah. Could you leave?” Sniff.
“Oh, are you still here? Look, if you’re going to threaten to eat me—”
“See, that’s just it,” Sniff. That’s what this meeting is for. We’re trying to get it so that we don’t eat people anymore.”
“You want to hear a story?”
“I guess.” Sniff.
“Way back in eighteen ot seven, the Beruvian premiere ordered the creation of seven magical mirrors. Each of these mirrors had the power to turn a person’s soul to stone, or so they say. These mirrors would search the world for the most sorrowful, sad individuals the planet earth has to offer. It would convince them they were beautiful beyond their wildest dreams. Then, slowly, their soul would solidify into granite, and they would die a painful, horrible death.”
Sniff. “Is that true?”
“Probably not. I suppose it could have happened, but I’m pretty sure I just made that up. But, supposing it were true, what do you think the odds are that all seven mirrors would find their way into compact mirrors. Then, what would the odds be of said compacts coming into the possession of seven transvestite hookers on the same stretch of Santa Monica Blvd.?”
“Pretty darn high.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Look, I don’t want to get violent…”
“Fine. I’ll leave. But, remember, and I’m saying this to all of you, if you eat a person, I’ll shoot you with a silver bullet!”
I put the six compacts in the least tacky of the purses, a decision that puts me back a minute, and then I bolt out the door.
@2 years ago
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