i have no choice but to post this...
they have my recharger.
Chapter 4: In Which We Discover No Maracas…
The Convent of Saint Whoop-ass was only a hundred or so feet away and I managed that in an itinerant stagger that took less than two minutes. I always say, ‘the shortest distance between two points is a curly line’.
Apparently Haggis had decided to stop in half-were so we entered through the side door, so as not to shock the parishioners, and went immediately to Sister Stew’s office.
I say ‘office’ in the loosest application of the term. There was a desk, yes, and a lap top, and a plant and several chairs, but one entire wall was Big Intelligence Gathering Dynamic Electronic Absolute Linker -Divergent Management Basic Apocryphal Security System; anacronym BIG DEAL DUMBASS. This state of the art security monitoring system was all controlled from the laptop on the good Sister’s desk. She could tap her keypad and direct any one of a dozen satellites to focus anywhere in the world.
The other three walls were covered with weapons. If Leonidas had had this arsenal at Thermapolye, they’d be speaking Greek in Baghdad today.
But my attention was drawn to the monitors on the wall. I flitted closer
“SISTER SUSIE!?” I was shocked sober. I reached into my cleavage, and pulled out my flask. Seconds from unconsciousness I emptied the clear liquid down my throat. 151, it burns…but it keeps the engine running.
She’s not Sister Susie any more,” Stew said. “Once Ol’ FashionedGirl got reassigned to Viti Levu…”
“That’s in Fiji, right?” Haggis asked.
“Yes, Sunshine coast as a matter of fact.”
I shook my head. Poor OFG, The Sunshine Coast of all places, nothing but nasty business there.
“Once OFG was gone, first Sister Susie stopped knee-capping pimps with that smiley faced bat of hers, and then she left the order and opened her own place, Grandma Susie’s.”
My attention was caught by a familiar, smiling, floppy eared maven.
“QuickWit! I thought he gave up the cantina business.”
“Jay, Jay, Jay , Jay , Jay.”
[FONT="]I turned; it was a cool blonde woman in a red coat with big black polka dots.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Auntie Bug, the best damned covert operative that liquor can buy.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“They call him ‘QWitter’, because he never gives up.” Auntie Bug tossed her coat on the chair revealing an itsy bitty teenie weenie red and black polka dot bikini. She wears it everywhere she goes. “Jaycinth, remember, your anger makes him happy! Sister Stew condemned him to Cell Block 9 and he still thinks it’s a joke.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Well it was, a little,” Sister Stew confessed. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I sent Cray in two days ago. QWitter continues to serve those lumps of warm cream cheese wrapped in turkey bologna that he calls a ‘Burrito’. He must put something in them, cause people keep eating them.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Where’s Cray now?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Still there, haven’t been able to extract him yet. Too dangerous.” Buggy said, yawning.[/FONT]
[FONT="]There was something else there, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Stew, can you give me the archive on monitor seven for the past five minuets?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Sure, Jay,”[/FONT]
[FONT="]While she worked I took another swig. My finger stopped shaking. Good. The image in front of me clarified.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I put my finger on it.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Robeiae! I thought his rude days of nefariously hatching convoluted and obtuse plots was over. I thought the eggplants. . .”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Look here,” Haggis said. He had fully were’d and jumped up on the twins to get closer to the screen. He morphed a paw back into a hand to indicate the figure that now walked into view.[/FONT]
[FONT="]It really creeps me out when he does that.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Rhymegirl!” I exclaimed. “How did QuickWit lure her into his weird and twisted network of perverse and seamy schemes?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Haggis looked at me and yapped, “Quicky rescued Robeiae from the onslaught of mindless sparkling Orlando Bloom faced eggplants gone wild after R.T. . . ”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Haggis was drowned out by the rumble of thunder on an otherwise frigid afternoon.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“…farted that fart last year. And, well despite his faults, Rhymegirl and her legion of cute little, fluffy, soft, button-nosed bunnies, adore him.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]I growled.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Hey, that’s my line!” Haggis barked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Already deep in thought, I ignored him. In the church above us, the organist played [/FONT][FONT="]‘In da gada da vida’[/FONT][FONT="] That spike haired punk must have exchanged the music again.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The screens in front of me displayed the truth. It wasn’t only Sister Susie, uh ‘Grandma Susie’, it was all of them. The Cantina at the Edge of Forever, Mscelina's All Night Sports Emporium and Maternity Ward, The Bent Nail, The Blue Bordello. All of them.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Led by soda-drinking evil in an evil soda-drinking-bunny suit.[/FONT]
[FONT="]And not a one of them paying franchise taxes in any form.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I didn’t need a financial statement to see where this was going.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I looked at the people gathered around me.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s time to conduct an audit,” I said. The room suddenly became so silent you could hear a pin drop.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Auntie Bug keeps a box of them handy for occasions such as this.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Jaycinth, are you sure?” Haggis asked. “I mean, you could start with a poetry slam or. . .”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Audit, Dawg.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“…writing contest. . .”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Audit.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Or even a crit marathon. . .”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We need to collect what is due the Cabaret. That begins with filthy lucre and ends with cold cash.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What about R.E.S.P.E.C.T.?” Auntie Bug asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Two out of three ain’t bad,” Haggis said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We’ll talk the Burrito Bunneh, first. Let him know how we feel,” I said. It would be tricky. I knew. I’d seen DL Hegel. The woman is a Tigress, but I can do her one better. All I do is avoid the roundhouse. . .[/FONT]
[FONT="]In reality I wanted to put off facing the former Sister Susie. She’s heck on a skateboard with a crossbow and accurate up to 10,000 feet with a grenade launcher.[/FONT]
[FONT="]And she makes a mean PB&J. I wanted to avoid messing with her for as long as possible. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Ok, then,” Sister Stew said, “You’re going to play with the Bunneh first. You’re going to want to take along a [/FONT][FONT="]few toys….[/FONT][FONT="]”[/FONT]
[FONT="]She waved her hand in a familiar gesture. Yeah, the display around me was magnificent, but . . .[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I want to see what you got in the play room.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Jaycinth, don’t you think that’s a little…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Play room.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Look, she’s got this nice Colt .45. . .” Haggis said as he looked over the weapon he’d just liberated.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What are you? A cowboy?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Haggis put the gun back. “Okay Stew, like the AHEM, uh, Lady said, we want to see the playroom.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Sister Stew smiled. It was the kind of smile that made even the most heinous gang-banger back off in abject fear.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Sister ‘Nightmare’, gotta love her. Gotta love her, or die. I prefer life. I get more booze that way.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Still smiling, Stew pushed a button on her desk. A bell chimed faintly then the far wall slid backward four feet, then to the left revealing a room the size of an auditorium. Two nuns I didn’t recognize were pushing an open crate of Benelli’s toward another nun with a clipboard, standing on a ladder near the shelving.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Benelli’s were M3 with an 8 round clip, and the nun with the clipboard was Sister Regdog.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Hello Jaycinth, what’s up?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]I love Regdog, She’s always so positive, if the world gives her lemons, she makes pies, and if the world gives her fertilizer, she makes bombs.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We need something vewy, vewy, quiet,” Haggis said, “we’uh huntin’ wabbits.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Quiet?” Sister Regdog laughed so hard she fell off the ladder and in to the crate of guns.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You allright?” one of the other nuns asked as she saved a video to post on Youtube later.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Fine, Sister Cella, just fine.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Well, we’ll leave this with you. There’s a ‘Cold-War-Underworld-Thriller expecting a shipment of Tommy-Guns, and Sister Synonym and I are gonna jack them suckas three ways to Sunday.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Right,” Sister Synonym agreed, “It’s not everyday you get to take a load of Tommy-guns from a CIA Don.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“CIA Don?” Haggis asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“If you’d asked, I would have told you not to ask,” Regdog said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“If I’d asked if I could ask something, I would have, in fact, asked it,” Haggis said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Yet I would have told you not to ask, before you asked, if you waited to ask until I could ask you,” Regdog replied.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What?” Haggis asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What indeed?” said Regdog cryptically. She looked at the guns tangled in her hair, pulled them out and handed one to each of us.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“To start with, there’s nothing better than a Benelli M3 with an 8 round clip and I just happen to have a bunch of those right here. Now follow me.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]She trotted along the wall forcing Haggis to morph human to keep up. Not only did he tear my bustier, he was wearing Speedos. [/FONT]
[FONT="]A ten thousand year old were-Chihuahua in a Speedo. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Are you thinking what I’m thinking?[/FONT]
[FONT="]Good. You deserve it, and the mind-bleach store is closed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“…and what about these Desert Eagles? They’re handy for close work and they have a 10 round clip.” Regdog tossed a few guns over her shoulder and trotted away cackling in delight. I stuck the gun in my skirt band and tucked the ammo between the twins.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Now I have these nice P90’s. Reflex scope, 50 round clip. Choice of tax collectors everywhere.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“She knows her stuff,” Haggis said in awe as he added a weapons belt to his outfit. Now all he needed was…clothes.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“A couple of AK47’s, thirty round extended, and I’ll toss in these nice 50 round Uzi’s, who doesn’t like an Uzi, right? Am I right?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Haggis agreed and I nodded. There was something else I wanted, something that would level the playing field something, something…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Haggis kicked my shin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You’re muttering again.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I need…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not the polyurethane, Jay,” Haggis said. “The poly always gets you in trouble.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“No. I want to make a statement. I want something that will IMPRESS on that bunneh I mean business. He’s gonna be an example.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“No, Jaycinth,” Sister Stew said, shocked. “Just because I have them doesn’t mean they should be used!”[/FONT]
[FONT="]I ignored her. I’d seen what I wanted just leaning on the wall. Three of them. Three of the most beautiful anti-personnel weapons you could ever imagine. [/FONT][FONT="]The Camo Blaster Shooter[/FONT][FONT="] . Hits targets up to 40 feet away, easy to re-load. I planned to have a sweet time with qWitter and his crew.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I pulled down a couple Camo Blaster Shooters and loaded them as the rest looked on speechless. I took a swig from my flask, turned toward Haggis, stepped on my wing, and fell flat on my face.[/FONT]
-------------
thrilling!
hair-raising!
gripping!
ok. i admit that i probably wouldn't use those words but it sure as heck looks like trouble is brewing. the good news,.....it looks like quickwit is in for a world of hurt and the only way to enjoy that is to tune in next week.
hp dot matrix weekly has said that "cabaret dogs is one of the best series of the year!"
the soundtrack is available here.
