Key Weirder Read online

  With my flats boat on the trailer behind my old truck, I left out of Key West. It was another beautiful tropical morning, and I was fired up and looking forward to seeing what was waiting for me up the road. I’d gotten my camping and fishing supplies all sorted out the day before. I had plenty of cash, plenty of time, and an open mind. I figured I was set.

  I’d stopped by the Mallory docks for the daily Sunset Celebration the evening before, looking for a friend I hadn’t seen since my return from the Everglades. Ponce the Cat Juggler was nowhere to be found, though. I tried inquiring as to his whereabouts amongst the mimes, musicians and assorted local oddballs hanging around the dock. All I got was shrugs, blank looks, and several opportunities to purchase postcards, drugs or time-share condos.

  A quick stop by the place where the sole surviving descendant of Ponce de Leon had been staying with his cats got me nothing but strange looks from the landlady. This got me to worrying, since the last time I’d seen Ponce he was still talking about taking off, looking for a fountain of youth like all the Ponce’s before him had. Often with tragic results.

  I decided to make a serious effort to find the man as soon as I got back from researching my upcoming bestseller.

  ♦

  The highway going through the Keys has gotta be one of your more scenic drives anywhere. All size islands in a row connected by bridges, over some of the most gorgeous water in the world. I guess I might’ve been a little sad leaving Key West, but I had every intention of coming back.

  I seen a new little drive-thru place called Governor’s Chicken Burritos along one lonely stretch of road, and would have stopped but it was still early and the place was closed. I remembered the time I seen a feller wearing a shower cap and a skirt run out on that same key and grab a fresh roadkill ’diller off the blacktop. I was still thinking about that when a red Corvette coming from the other direction blew by, just a gettin’ it. I seen brake lights in the mirror. The ’vette did a u-turn, following along behind in the traffic. Had to be tourists.

  The plan was to work my way around the state for a few days and try out some spots for trout fishing. Wanted to check out the area on the east coast of the state first, then jump on over to the panhandle and come back down the west coast. I took in all the fine scenery going on with the water every shade of blue stretching out to the horizon as I cruised over bridges thinking about trout.

  There’s several kinds of sea trout found in the waters around Florida, but the most popular is the Speckled Trout. If you find yourself with a streamline fish with a big mouth and lots of little spots on the sides, chances are it’s a Speck. They’re mostly inshore all along the coast of Florida, but come winter they sometimes go up the rivers looking for warmer water. Most of your trout are about one or two pounds, but they get bigger and are called gator trout. Those were the ones I was looking for.

  I decided to give Miami a wide berth and head on up to the Cape Canaveral area first. There were several reasons for this. Mainly, I was driving an old pickup truck with a homemade camper on the back, and pulling a boat full of gear. A city the size of Miami just didn’t feel right.

  The area a little further north around the Cape was supposed to have some of the best trout fishing in the state, so I figured why not just start with that. Playing into my decision making process was also the fact that Mary Ann, a young woman I’d been involved with romantically in a big way in the not too distant past, had been calling and leaving messages for me at the house where I’d been parking my truck. She wanted to see me again. She was in Orlando, and Cape Canaveral was conveniently close by.

  Mary Ann and me had met up in Key West not that long ago and had hit it right off. We spent some quality time together, and I was pretty well heartbroken when she all of a sudden up and left for Orlando one day. I called her the day before I headed out on my trout fishing expedition and what she had to say on the phone was weighing heavily on my decision to head for the middle of the state first. In fact, I ended up thinking more about her than trout fishing that morning driving up through the Keys.

  ∨ Key Weirder ∧

  4

  Plotting and Planning

  Julian was back after spending the night in a motel room smaller than he thought possible.

  The marker for the Southernmost Point in the Continental USA was a lot bigger than it looked in the picture Julian had seen on the Internet. It was really big, and heavy. The original plan of renting a small truck and hiring a couple of men to help him load it was going to need some fine-tuning.

  Walking from the motel, the radio in a passing out-of-state car had been blaring “Tequila Breakfast”, so that was back in his head.

  Taking pictures of tourists every few minutes was disrupting his planning, so he stood a little further back, over by the fence. Staring at the monument, he tried to concentrate. An image of the earnest townsfolk of Brownspot waving goodbye at the bus station came into his mind. Perhaps a larger truck, he thought, and even more men to help. In his mind, Julian started to hear the first few deep notes of “A Fistful of Dollars” over the “Tequila Breakfast” line about coconut trees and warm ocean breeze. Maybe some kind of mechanical lift would work. The music was getting a little clearer, he could hear the trumpet start to come in. And not just a lift, but maybe…

  “Excuse me?”

  Julian slowly turned to meet his next pushy, middle-aged photography instructor. The music stopped, all the music. Even the line about conch fritters and beer was finally gone from his head. Silence.

  “I hate to bother you and all, but could you take a picture of my friend and me? I would really appreciate it.”

  This was different. Blonde, big eyes, big smile, about his age. The friend the same but with brown hair. Both very slim and very female in shorts and tank-tops.

  “You just have to look through…”

  Before she could finish, Julian cut in while taking the offered camera, “the viewfinder on the top and wait for the blue dot, then press this.”

  Big friendly smiles.

  “A little closer ladies! That’s it! This camera should be proud to take pictures of such beautiful ladies! Another? No, I don’t mind at all! Let’s see those smiles!”

  They were from Gainesville, taking a break from school and didn’t know anyone. Why didn’t he meet them at a bar called Sloppy Joe’s in a little while and they’d buy him a drink for being so nice and taking their picture?

  Julian watched them walk down the street towards Old Town. They walked nice. He kind of liked the blonde, and would feel bad later about not meeting them at the bar. It’s not that he hadn’t planned to, he had. But he got an even better offer a few minutes later from a redhead from North Carolina.

  ∨ Key Weirder ∧

  5

  Mary Ann and Taco Bob

  “Trout was the furthest thing from my mind.”

  Between the explaining and crying and holding and love-making and talking and understanding and more love-making and eating and laughing, we weren’t getting much sleep that first night, so we decided not to go fishing the next morning.

  I’d managed to get lost a couple of times looking for the little apartment on the outskirts of Orlando where Mary Ann was staying with another woman. By the time I found the place it was almost dark. We had some serious talking to do, so after I came in and met the roommate, Mary Ann and me sat out in the truck.

  As soon as the door closed, she put her arms around my neck and looked at me with those big sad eyes. “I was such a dumbass to leave you like I did. Can you ever forgive me?”

  With a woman like Mary Ann pressed up against me, it was hard not to feel forgiving. I indicated amnesty was a distinct possibility, but otherwise kept quiet. I let her sit back and tell me about her past – something she hadn’t been big on doing before.

  “At the ripe old age of nineteen I thought I knew a helluva lot more than I really did. I had it in my head I couldn’t live without this guy I knew, so I moved in with him. That’s whe
n I found out he was a crazy control freak. So, I got out of there and ended up staying with friends in LA, hiding from the whacko.

  “Then I met this guy at a party, an old guy, but a real smooth talker. Turns out he wrote books on sorcery and the occult, and lived in a big mansion with a few other girls. What can I say? I went for it. Figured it would at least be a good way to lay low for a few months.

  “The old guy started calling us the Witchettes and the name stuck. Eight years later I’d been with him longer than any of the others still around. A lot of girls came and went over the years, and he eventually lost interest in me. He turned into a manipulative old bastard with his little harem, always wanting new girls. But I stuck around because…well, I’m not really sure why I stuck around.”

  Mary Ann started losing it a little, so it was time for me to come up with a warm hug and a cold bottle of water so she could go on with her story. Turns out the fella was Charlie Spider, head of the Spider Cult and writer of several popular New Age books, including one on dreaming that I’d read some of myself. That book explained that if you looked at your hands several times a day and purposefully counted the fingers, sooner or later you’d do it in your dreams. According to the book, when you’re dreaming you’ll usually have too many or too few fingers. The trick then is to realize you’re having a dream, and that everything going on around you is not real. This is what the books called waking up in a dream, or lucid dreaming. What all you were supposed to do next I wasn’t too sure about, since I hadn’t read that far in the book. I figured I better check it out soon though, because I’d found my hands in dreams a couple times lately.

  I spoke up to say I was familiar with Charlie’s books.

  “Well, you might know he died not too long ago then. He was always so full of life and so sure of himself. We were so used to him being there and running everything, and I mean everything, and then he got sick.” Mary Ann looked at me and I could see the tears shining in her eyes from the streetlight. She put her head on my shoulder as a yellow Porsche hummed slowly down the street.

  “When he got sick, it was like his life was being sucked out of him a little every day. He went from this intense, dominating force to a shriveled old man in just a few days. It was awful. When he died, I just wanted to go, to get as far away as possible.”

  Mary Ann said when she got to Key West she was broke and got a job at the bakery there where I first seen her. She also got a job dancing at the local topless club a couple of nights a week.

  She told me the night before she left town she’d been on stage when one of the women from the Spider Cult had come in. She wasn’t sure if the woman named Carol had recognized her or not because Mary Ann was wearing a long red wig over her buzzcut blonde hair. She decided she didn’t want to hang around to find out why, or even if, Carol was looking for her, so she’d packed her bags the next morning, told me goodbye with little explanation, and cut town.

  “I should have stood my ground, Taco. I’ve gone over it a thousand times since then, and there’s no reason for those people to be looking for me. There’s nothing they could say or do that would make me want to go back there.”

  Thus commenced the first serious round of hugging and crying and assuring and reassuring. She wanted us to go inside to her room, and we managed to get most of our clothes off for the next step of the reconciliation process, which didn’t seem to require any talking.

  ♦

  Later on while we were sitting in bed eating ice cream, I told her that the topless place there in Key West closed for a few days not long after she left. The word around town had the owner and one of the bouncers doing the mysterious disappearance thing. They’d last been seen going out in a fishing boat with a young woman and everyone right off figured mob hit because the old man had some shady friends in Miami. Rumor was the cops thought the bouncer had taken the contract to off the old man and then disappeared himself. There was some talk the feds were looking for him in Kansas, but after the bar reopened under new management with half price drinks, people started forgetting about the whole thing.

  I told Mary Ann what I was up to with fishing around the state for trout and maybe writing about it.

  She stopped licking out her bowl and proudly announced, “Well I got a good job with a security consulting outfit here in Orlando, and I bought myself that nice little Toyota you saw out front.”

  She gave me a self-satisfied smile. I countered.

  “I been working on becoming one of your better grunt fishermen down there in Key West. I’m hoping my expertise in procuring grunts is going to help me in my endeavors to catch more and bigger trout.”

  She give me a funny look with those big eyes.

  “I’m pretty sure I can get a day off to go with you and check out your fishing skill.” She then started licking out my bowl. I stretched out comfortable and leaned back on the pillows with my hands behind my head.

  “You’re sure welcome to come along, ma’am. In fact, you play your cards right, you might even get the opportunity to try your hand at some challenging trout fishing yourself.”

  She gave me a laugh and said I was as full of shit as ever, then went to get the last of the ice cream. I was lying there on the bed, working up a nice contented smile. Mary Ann came back in the bedroom and said she’d forgot to put the ice cream back in the freezer and now it was kind of runny. So we ate the hard part and started pouring the melted part on each other and laughing and licking. Things were going so well, I snuck a count of my fingers to make sure this wasn’t going to turn out to be just one of my better dreams. Mary Ann saw what I was doing, grabbed me by the ears, and raised my face up to hers.

  “Count your fingers if you want, but let’s not talk about the Spider Cult anymore. If I never hear another word about those people it will be fine with me.”

  ∨ Key Weirder ∧

  6

  Carol

  Back in Los Angeles, the Spider Cult was doing better than ever. Head Witchette Carol Derrière slipped off her bed in the Spider Mansion and stretched lazily as she walked toward the window. Outside on the lawn, several of the remaining Witchettes were practicing new exercises for the Spider Cult Workshops and Seminars they gave around the world. Carol approved.

  “My, that looks like a lot of work. It also looks like a lot of money, and I do love money.”

  Carol glided over to her desk and took another look at some calculations from their accountant. The Head Witchette had set to work making the Spider Cult as profitable as possible as soon as she recovered from her ordeal in Florida. The sales of handbooks, T-shirts and videos from the workshops were up nicely, as were the royalties from Charlie’s line of mystical self-help books. Carol smiled contentedly.

  “Perhaps I should dress? A little shopping might be nice.”

  As busy as she was, Carol still found time to develop an appreciation for erotic, yet refined, apparel. She’d found that a strict regime of uninhibited shopping sprees to the boutiques of Rodeo Drive helped keep the stress within manageable levels.

  Someone was at her bedroom door.

  “Yes?” It was Heather. Shy, quiet, unassuming, and detestably thin Heather. “Come in, dear. What is it?”

  “Someone’s here. It’s Charlie’s nephew, Jeremy. He wants to borrow money again. I told him we didn’t have any money, that you were the only -” Heather started to cry.

  “Where is he now?” Carol didn’t want Jeremy around the mansion because he was a sneaky little perv. There were other reasons as well.

  “I think he went into the kitchen. He, – he put his hands on me.” Again, more tears.

  “Look, Heather. You need to learn to be more assertive in these kinds of situations.” Carol put a reassuring arm around the svelte blonde. No matter what Heather ate, she never gained an ounce. Carol ate one little bon-bon and her ass swelled to the size of a dirigible. “Go down to the kitchen, look Jeremy in the eye, and say ‘No!’ Then give him a good shot in the face with this.” She handed over a
can of mace the size of a fire extinguisher.

  Heather’s face brightened. “Thanks, Carol! You always know just what to do.”

  Carol shooed her charge out the door and started back to her desk. She had a thought, and went to the little secret hiding place in her room.

  She hadn’t seen the two gold idols in a while. They felt good in her hands. They were a little something she’d found in Charlie’s room soon after he’d died. No one else knew about them. No one except Jeremy.

  Carol was thinking about Charlie’s diary when a bloodcurdling scream came from the kitchen downstairs. She smiled.

  “Good work, Heather.”

  The idols went back in their box, and the diary came out. Carol read again of the tremendous power the Chacmools supposedly possessed. Of course there was a catch – there was one missing. The diary said that the complete set of three Chacmools was needed for the power to manifest itself. Then, when the three Idols were placed on the body of a person who had entered into the realm of lucid dreaming, not only would that person be able to control the dream, but the dream would become reality. There were a lot of possibilities here, not the least of which would be having control over anyone she wished. Carol hadn’t mastered lucid dreaming yet, but she figured she’d cross that little bridge when she had all three Chacmools.

  But she’d already struck-out following the trail of the third idol to Florida, with Jeremy in tow. It was days of frustration and uncomfortable associations, followed by the worst night of her life in a disabled boat in a mosquito-plagued swamp during a thunderstorm. The next day she was so out of it she didn’t pay much attention to the fisherman that rescued them. She was so sick she didn’t even notice the bag she sat on in the fisherman’s boat was bruising her ass. Back at the mansion at last, she’d checked the bruise against one of the Chacmools. It was a perfect match.