Good Night Shell

Discussion in 'Tall Tales & Fabrications' started by Sheldon Scott, Mar 3, 2018.

  1. Sheldon Scott

    Sheldon Scott Supreme Member
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    “Good night, Shell,” she said.

    That’s what she said. But it’s not what I heard, because she murmured those words in a hormone-heated burning-velvet voice that could make “NO!” sound like, “Yes, of course, darling.”

    So naturally I said, still smiling hugely, “What? Good what?”

    But by then she had turned into a door. Specifically, the just-closed door of room 626, Dane’s room, in the luxurious Halcyon Hotel, a new thousand-room hostel cloaked in lush and softly-illumined greenery, resplendent on the edge of Beverly Hills. Yes, the Beverly Hills of millionaires and billionaires, in Southern California, right next door to Hollywood—where I live in the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore from whence I often occupy myself pursuing assorted evildoers: grifters and swindlers, killers and con-men, sophisticated crooks and slobbish hoodlums. Plus on occasion beauteous lasses—like the lovely who had just murmured invitingly in a voice hot enough to melt earwax, “Good night, Shell.”

    That’s me, Sheldon “Shell” Scott, private eye, former optimist.

    It was a really depressing moment, a lot like how the Prince must feel when he turns back into a frog. Because not only had there been that humongous kiss, or KISS—which I’ll get to in a minute—but this lady was transcendental, electric, almost glowing, bright and brainy enough to do cube roots in her pretty head, gorgeous as a South Pacific sunrise made entirely of naked angels, with the kind of eye-bruising body I might have invented myself if I’d had eons to get it just right.

    We had been—and now, alas, I was—dawdling in the thickly-carpeted hallway outside the door of room 626, having apparently just come to the end of a splendid October evening. An evening notable for icy-cold Martinis in the hotel’s Sybaris Lounge, followed by butter-oozing crab legs for her and red-rare prime ribs of beef au plenty jus for me in the Gourmet Room six floors below. Below Dane’s room, into which I had fondly imagined I might within seconds scoot with Dane Zanie, there to drink more Martinis, and eat the cute olives, and talk and laugh and—perhaps, perhaps—merrily explore a whole catalogue of sinful fantasies.
     
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  2. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    Oooer Shell ........................................ :p
     
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  3. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Do you need an accomplice?
     
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  4. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    Hi there Bill :)
     
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  5. Sheldon Scott

    Sheldon Scott Supreme Member
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    I'll keep you in mind Bill.
     
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  6. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    hi there right back to ya, Patsy Faye. you got everything going your way?
     
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  7. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    If only Bill ............ Nice to see you posting though, perks me up a bit :)
     
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  8. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Why thank you, Ma'am.
     
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  9. Sheldon Scott

    Sheldon Scott Supreme Member
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    Let me out of this thing!” I yelled.

    The shapely psychiatrist, the two doctors, both burly guards—everybody ignored me. The strait jacket’s canvas held my arms tight. My wrenched shoulder ached. My head ached. My back ached. Hell, I ached all over.

    My six-two was horizontal on a stretcher and the two bruisers carried it and my 205 pounds easily down the long corridor. I was as confused as modern art, and being in this stupid insane asylum didn’t help.

    Consciousness had just returned and my eyes wouldn’t yet focus properly, but I could see the two doctors, Wolfe and Yancey, walking at the left side of the stretcher. I shouted at them, “What the hell is this? Are you damn fools part of the staff, or patients? I’m Shell Scott, a private detective. And I’m not crazy. Do I look crazy?”

    They didn’t even glance around. Maybe that was the wrong thing to ask them, anyway. Inch-long white hair sticking up in the air like a scalp-sized cowlick, peculiarly angled whitish eyebrows, and a slightly bent nose may not be glamour, but they’re no indication of cackling gray matter.

    I turned my head to the right side of the stretcher and there, in her starched white uniform, was the lovely little psychiatrist with the shape that should have unstarched her uniform, and my eyes suddenly focused improperly. The stretcher veered left. I was carried into a room, lights blazed, and I was dumped unceremoniously onto a narrow bed, yelling like a fiend.

    Dr. Wolfe stared down at me, light glancing from rimless glasses perched on his bulbous nose. He looked like a silver-eyed owl as he said, “He’s getting violent again.” He left, returned shortly with a gleaming hypodermic syringe in one hand. I felt a stinging sensation as the needle entered my neck.

    Seconds later the light flicked out and all of them left the room. The door slammed shut and I was alone in darkness. All those characters thought I was goofy. Either that, I groaned to myself, or the inmates had taken over the asylum. The drug had started taking effect almost at once and I fought to keep from going to sleep; but, finally, I let my eyelids close. There was a soft, sharp clicking sound and I forced my eyes open. Somebody stepped inside my room, then pushed the door shut again. A thin beam of light shot from a small flashlight held in the person’s hand. Reflections sparkled from a large diamond ring on one finger of the other hand—and on something that was gripped in those fingers, some kind of blade, long, sharp-edged, like a knife or scalpel.

    “Hey,” I said thickly, my voice sounding muffled. “What the hell—”

    There was a muttered curse, and light flashed upon my face. The blade moved upward through the beam of light. And suddenly I was wide-awake, thinking: This idiot is about to stab me.

    The rest of it was just sound and movement. The yelling I had done before was nothing compared to this; everybody in the cackle factory must have heard me. I jerked my body aside, the jacket binding me, got my heels hooked over the bed’s edge, and rolled. The blade sliced across my back as I strained my leg muscles and felt myself slide, then fall to the floor. I rolled onto my back and drew up my legs to kick at the figure above me, but the flashlight winked out and the figure jumped past me. I heard a scraping sound like that of a window being raised.

    Rapid footsteps slapped in the corridor outside. The door opened again and lights blazed. A strange nurse stood in the doorway, blinking. Feet pounded in the hall and one of the guards came inside, then the little psychiatrist and another doctor. Hands lifted me to the bed again as Dr. Yancey came in, followed by Dr. Wolfe and another man. People were babbling at me. I babbled right back at them, much louder than they: “You’ve got a nut running around loose. Tried to stab me. Get this goddamned jacket off me.”

    Dr. Yancey said slowly, soothingly, “We don’t have any homicidal cases here.”

    “That’s what you think.” My thoughts were blurred, my muscles leaden from the drug. “I tell you, somebody tried to kill me. Went out the window.”

    The psychiatrist pressed a cool hand on my forehead. “Don’t get excited,” she said. “You must have dreamed it.”

    “The hell I dreamed it!"
     
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  10. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    Shell - I hope it 'was' a dream ................... :eek:
     
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