Key Weird 01; Key Weird Read online

  “You must be local then, knowing all that. Name’s Taco Bob, I’m just passing through.”

  “Friends back home call me Roadkill Bill, Roadkill for short. Just passing by and stopped in for a quick one myself, barmaid filled me in on the beer thing.” We reached over the state line and gave a good handshake. “This your first time in Florida?”

  “Yep. Come here to try my hand at something different. Thought I’d give saltwater fishing a try, catch some of those Marlins and Sailfish and Tarpon and such.” I went on a bit more listing off some of the fish names I could remember from fishing shows, leading up to how I was hoping to come up on the Ultimate Fishing Experience. The more I went on, the better it sounded, at least to me. My new acquaintance didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.

  “Well, I wish you luck on all that. I’m headed to Texas myself, hope to do a little ranching.”

  My attention wandered off, again. Three athletic and captivating young women started taking turns throwing a fish across the room into a barrel, and I was concentrating more on them than on the fella talking to me. Two of the women were the ones in the bikinis, the third sporting a team jersey saying, “Sirens”. I was spellbound. I even forgot about the crossword I had laid on the bar.

  “…and that’s when I decided to quit the fishing guide business in Florida and get into possum ranching out West.” This brought me back. With a Herculean effort, I drug my eyes away from the three temptresses, and looked over to see Roadkill paying his bill. He rose.

  “Nice meeting you Taco Bob. I gotta be getting down the road.” And he was gone, leaving me with a mouthful of questions.

  I wouldn’t have minded another beer, nor would I have minded seeing the cute barmaid bending over that cooler digging out another frosty mug. But upon pondering my current financial situation, I determined it prudent to hit the trail again myself.

  I was so much into being in Florida, I didn’t want to go back to Alabama to get my truck. The three mesmerizing mullet throwers broke into an enchanting song about their team, but I somehow walked across the state line and got to the door without stopping to listen.

  I’m not normally a clumsy person, but for some reason I wasn’t paying attention when I stepped outside, and stepped right on George Dalton’s foot. It’d been a while since I’d seen the wiry little devil, so I might not have even realized it was him if it hadn’t been for the big hunting knife he was pulling out of his belt with obvious intent.

  Luckily, my reflexes took over long enough to give George a good kick in the knee as I spun back around for the front door. Blind fear being the great motivator it is, I was able to run through the bar and slip out the back door with a speed and agility than surprised many, including myself.

  There appeared to be a marked increase in the noise level from inside the bar as I drove in a timely manner from the parking lot, and on into Florida.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  4

  Home Sweet Cult

  The southern California cult scene. Strange people, stranger ideas. Tula fit right in, and was learning fast.

  “Hi, I’m Brad!”

  “So, you worship sharks?”

  After weeks of checking out cults she was up to S in the cult guide and still hadn’t found what she was looking for.

  “Sharks are so misunderstood! They respond to love just like we do!” The guy at the reception desk of Shark Luv Inc. was giving Tula a good looking-over and showing a lot of teeth, which she noticed were sharpened into points.

  “What about sex? You’re not having sex with sharks, are you?” She’d seen some strange shit lately, and figured she might as well get to it.

  “Heavens no! We just cuddle!” The guy pulled out a big stuffed shark from under the desk and started kissing it. She’d seen worse.

  “No human sacrifices, torturing, or poison drinking?” Brad was really getting into it, dry humping the shark and trying to French kiss it. Yeah, that was pretty weird all right, but she’d seen weirder.

  “We only love sharks! Nothing strange here!” The guy went to the carpet on top of the stuffed shark without breaking rhythm. “Moonfish will be here in a minute to show you around!”

  Moonfish came in all smiles with typical glassy-eyed cult enthusiasm and the same pointed teeth. She stepped over Brad humping on the floor without a glance.

  “Come with me and I’ll show you the sacred shark-feeding tanks!” Moonfish kept smiling, gesturing towards the back door. She was missing an arm.

  “Okay, sure. Let me just put something in my car first.” And Tula headed out the door, put her ass in the car and got the hell out of there.

  ♦

  “How’d the shark people go?” Tula’s roommate was home.

  “Not bad. I remembered I’m allergic to being eaten though, so I had to pass.”

  “Too bad. Hey, that really cool writer guy that wrote the book about dreaming is giving a talk at the bookstore this evening if you’re interested.”

  “Maybe. You going?”

  “Can’t. Just started working on a new spell that’s going to take all evening. Can I borrow your red candles and cloak?”

  “Sure. So this guy is cool, huh?”

  Her roomie, a supposedly reformed mall rat, was cooking up a potion in the kitchen. Beckoning the gatekeeper of shoe sales, probably.

  “Way cool, and mysterious too! He’s like a sorcerer or a shaman or something! I think he’s also rich and lives in a big mansion.”

  This last bit caused one of Tula’s eyebrows to raise.

  “Oh, really?”

  ♦

  Bookstore smells. Squeaky plastic chairs. The man had charisma, grace, personality. The man had style.

  After the talk, she waited until the groupie types that were shamelessly throwing themselves at the writer thinned out so she could have a serious and mature word with the man.

  “I, uh, really love your books!”

  Tula was wearing her best all-black outfit and trying hard to act mysterious. She looked hot, and knew it. The man’s name was Charlie Spider, and he had a few years on her, quite a few, but his eyes smiled at her in a way that aroused more than just her curiosity.

  “I can see your aura is strong, you are obviously a woman who knows what she wants. Perhaps you would like to come by later. I could show you something I’m working on for my next book, a technique called Dreaming Awake for the Sensuous Woman.”

  ♦

  The mansion was huge, impressive, and a long way from pricing disposable diapers at the grocery store. When Tula walked through the doors of the grand old house, something happened inside her. It felt like she had come home.

  ♦

  Lotion, bath salts, glycerin soap, shower gel. All made with the best chocolate. She couldn’t decide.

  “I can’t decide, they all look so good.”

  Charlie smiled his devilish smile.

  “Why don’t you try a little of each?”

  Charlie was great, especially at first. He pampered and charmed. He filled her head with stories of magic, and told her frequently how special she was, especially when she was in his bed.

  “You remind me of the powerful Mexican sorceress in Oaxaca that wanted to turn me into a crow. She had a penchant for writers, that one, mystical writers in particular. Said she was doing the world a great service turning the worst of us into birds, then dispatching them to another dimension.”

  Charlie paused to light his medicine pipe. They shared a few puffs of the sweet smoke, but the storyteller seemed to have forgotten his story and was dreamily brushing her bare breasts with the back of his hand.

  “So what happened? To the sorceress?” Charlie looked up, surprised.

  “I have no idea! When she turned me into a crow, I flew out of there as fast as I could and never went back!”

  ♦

  Charlie was a trip, all right. But as much as she was taken with the famous writer, she didn’t really mind sharing him with the other women living there. Someho
w, there always seemed to be enough of Charlie to go around.

  Money didn’t seem to be a problem, which was cool. The only thing that sucked was he wanted all his girls to keep their hair short and dress rather plainly. So much for erotic fashions.

  Charlie also had this thing about giving the women new names. He gave her a name that she would still have years later. They even went through the legal process to change her name to Carol. Carol Derrière.

  Most of the other women at the mansion studied martial arts, sorcery, or took college courses. Though Carol liked to dabble in the odd occult practice from time to time, she devoted most of her time to pursuing the finer points of lounging and relaxing. And partying. God, but they had some great parties. It was an environment that allowed her to see others, especially those outside the Spider Cult, as the inferior beings she had always suspected they were.

  Other than the clothes thing, Carol was quite content with her life as a pampered lady. She had found her calling. There didn’t seem to be anything that could possibly go wrong.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  5

  Panama City Welcomes Taco Bob

  “Only bad thing about smoking fish is they’re hard to keep lit.”

  I decided to check out the Redneck Riviera. That’s what they call the panhandle area of Florida around Panama City. Something to do with all those beautiful white sand beaches just a beer can throw away from Lower Alabama, known locally as LA.

  Panama City damn sure has some of the nicest beaches I ever seen, all right, and the place was thick with Spring Breakers. Some of the gals there at the beach were a sight for a man who’d lived the last few years in a place where the nearest woman was in a town miles away. Since I was making all these fresh plans for the future, this put me in mind to leave a little room in there somewhere in case I should happen upon a lady who favored men with a promising future in trophy fish, and a solid background in possums. You never know.

  I came up on a little RV park not far from the beach where I could stay cheap. The widow-woman running the place offered to let me do some odd jobs to pay the rent and make a little pocket money. I liked the place right off, nice and quiet for crosswords and finger counting. There was swimming and fishing close-by, friendly people, and that sea breeze coming in off the gulf. And no Daltons.

  ♦

  Several days later I still hadn’t seen any Daltons, and started to relax. I’d kept busy though; besides doing my park chores, I’d built a little camper on the back of my truck mostly out of free wood pallets from behind a lumber store. I traded in my cowboy duds for shorts, t-shirts, sandals, and a straw hat. I even caught fish. Not real big, or any great numbers of fish, but enough Spanish mackerel to warrant another trip to the lumber store for more pallets to build a smoker. So I was smoking mackerel and handing out samples to the folks in the campground.

  Most evenings a few of us sat around a bonfire telling stories and having a drink or two. One night, after the other folks had gone on to bed, eighty year-old Gus from Michigan came up with a jar of genuine moonshine. So we sat there in the dark where the bonfire had burned down, commenting on the various and sundry attributes of corn liquor and life. When Gus finally started running low on stories about himself and his wife traveling around, he asked how I ended up in the Sunshine State. I condensed my last long years of living in Texas into a few short minutes narrative between nips of ’shine before going for the wrap-up.

  “I decided since about all I got to show for them years of hard work possum ranching is a pick-up truck, and a somewhat better vocabulary from doing so many crosswords, I might as well try something I always been wanting to do, like big-time saltwater fishing.” Gus grunted either an agreement or a desire to hold the jar. I passed the ’shine and continued.

  “Remember that show used to be on TV with that fella traveling around the country looking for the Ultimate Fishing Experience? That’s kinda what I was thinking. What got me in mind to head this way first was finding an old road map of Florida laying on the seat of my truck. Found it there the same day the sheriff told us we had to leave. Never did figure out where it came from.” I took the offered jar for a meditative slash.

  “That, and I’m trying to avoid any kind of close personal contact with some folks known back home as the Dalton Gang.” I took Gus’s silence as a sign of his keen interest.

  “They’re a bad lot all right, them Dalton’s. It ain’t so much Lenny, but George’s meaner’n a snake in a shook bucket. Luckily there’s just the two of ’em, so it’s not really much of a gang, though Lenny’s big enough to make two of most men.”

  Gus started making little snoring noises, so I helped him back to his RV so he wouldn’t do a header into the bonfire coals and wake everybody up screaming and hollering, all on fire and everything.

  With Gus tucked safely away, I took it upon myself to finish the rest of the jar of White Lightning least someone accuse me of being a social drinker. I vaguely remember standing in the surf with my fishing pole making long casts and singing ol’ possum rancher songs.

  ♦

  After I had sufficiently recovered the next day, I caught more fish for the smoker. I gave the lady running the park some of the smoked fish and told her it was time for me to be moving on, since there was still a whole lot of Florida for me to see. She said she hated to see me go so soon, since I had been a big help to her around the park, and slipped me a little extra money for gas. She had a question too.

  “Helping you with those crossword puzzles while you’ve been here has got me doing them now.” She gave me a frown, but her eyes were smiling. “I got a question for you before you go. What’s a 6 letter word for ‘small messenger or gift’? Doesn’t make much sense to me, but it starts with an i, third letter is d.”

  I worked that a little. Didn’t sound right to me either. “How about Indian?”

  “It fits all right.” She shrugged and wrote it in.

  I saved some for eating on the road, and handed out the rest of the cooked fish to my new friends there in the park. When word got out that I was leaving, they wouldn’t take no for an answer, and paid me for the fish. Since I was leaving the smoker there, I put Gus in charge and told him about the marinating and seasoning. We shook hands all around that evening, and I got to bed at a decent hour for once so I could get an early start for the East Coast.

  ♦

  I slept good that night in my little homemade truck camper, overslept a little in fact. It was a sharp metallic click that woke me up finally. I had a bad feeling about that click, and real slowly opened one eye.

  “Morning, Taco Bob! Looks like it’s going to be a nice day! Too bad you won’t be getting to see none of it!”

  Looking up the barrel of the large caliber handgun pointed at my nose, I had far too good a view of the crooked grin of George Dalton. I went ahead and opened the other eye, then noticed Lenny standing outside looking around in the early morning light.

  “Morning, George. You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man in his own bed, would you?”

  “I don’t see why not! I been waiting five years for this, so you’ll excuse me if I savor this magical moment here just a bit before I blow your head off.” I could see Lenny looking in, all anxious. The man was big as a refrigerator, and almost as smart.

  “Hey George, are we going to get us some breakfast? I shore am hungry.” George pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead and rolled his eyes.

  “Lenny, I TOLD you we had to kill Taco Bob FIRST, then we’d get some breakfast! Remember?” I could see the bear-sized man outside looking embarrassed.

  “Uh, okay George. I remember now.” George went back to giving me his full attention.

  “The big dummy’s got a point. This shooting people first thing in the morning does tend to make you hungry. Reckon I better get you shot so I can turn Lenny loose on a breakfast buffet somewheres.”

  George held the gun with both hands, closed his eyes, and I could see his trigger finger just a
few inches away start to flex. I was close to soiling myself when I heard Lenny clear his throat.

  “George! Hey George, uh, I think we got company.” My executioner’s eyes popped open and we could hear a squeaky voice coming up to the truck.

  “Is Taco Bob still here? I thought he was leaving early this morning! You sure are a big thing! You like to try a strudel? That nice policeman who stops by here every morning can’t eat too many because he’s on a diet, so you can have a few.”

  While Gus’s wife held up the pastry plate for Lenny, George was having second thoughts. Then we heard: “Oh, here comes that nice policeman now!”

  George looked truly heartbroken; killing me obviously meant a lot to the man. I think there might have even been a tear in his eye just before he jumped out of the camper, grabbed Lenny by the collar, and high-tailed it out through the woods.

  “What’s wrong with them boys?”

  It was the big cop that came around the park most mornings. He was sporting a sizable girth and a double handful of strudel. Little ol’ Mrs. Gus stood there grinning holding a big plate of her famous pastry. I didn’t think it would do much good, but I mentioned it anyway.

  “Morning, officer. That would be the infamous Dalton Gang; career criminals specializing in robbery, burglary, kidnapping, extortion, and most recently branching out into prison escaping.”

  “That so?”

  I got the feeling the man didn’t believe me. He seemed more concerned with selecting his next pastry off the platter than chasing dangerous felons.

  I politely declined a strudel, slipped into my truck, and got out of there as fast as I could. I made sure I wasn’t being followed by any Dalton Gangs, then aimed east for the oldest city in Florida.

  ∨ Key Weird ∧

  6

  Charlie Spider

  “Charlie’s holding out, I just know he is!” Carol was obsessed. She paced the hardwood floor of her bedroom.