[3lack3ox]

Synopsis: Sam Neff is a struggling detective with narcolepsy and a spotted past...a past which now seems to be coming full circle.


Chapter 1: A Chance Meeting

“Of all the Truck stops in Truckstopville, she had to walk into mine….

…but I digress…

I first met Linda Malonie on the coldest night in June. I was a struggling Private Eye just trying to make a living; she was a dame just trying to get by. I sat behind my office desk on the third floor of a rat-infested, termite-filled, hole of an apartment taking slow drags on a cheap cigar, sending the smoke rings up dancing onto the thrift store chandelier I had bought from a three toed Italian. He said it was Turkish, I said it was two dollars, only one of us was right that day. As the smoke swirled around the faux crystals I realized that someone was coming up the stairs. Maybe the Landlord, I had borrowed three dollars for coffee and a chocolate biscotti; he was probably coming to collect that...or possibly to collect the four months rent that I still owed, I figured it was a toss up as to which one. Teh door swung open and there she was, Linda Malonie, an eye candy devil in a red dress. Doctors say that red meat is bad for my heart, but triple bypass surgery never looked so good. She had the distraught look of a damsel in distress, bloodshot eyes wide like a stoned lemur, she looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. Silently she tossed a manila folder on my desk, then casually reached over my desk to help herself to my lighter. She pulled out a slim cigarette, quite dainty in contrast to my five cent stogies, and the ash burned red.

I opened the folder and without a word shared between us I looked at the pictures inside. Photos of a dock, photos of ships, crates, and men in black unloading them. In black and white they sat eerily still, different ships, different country codes, different men, all one name, ‘ACME Medical Co.”

The smoke billowed from her lips as the word trickled out…

“Mytoplasm”

Mytoplasm…that was a word that I haven't heard in a long time. I asked her to sit down, only to realize that the only chair in the room was the one I was sitting on. That, however didn't matter. Before I could blink, she quickly grabbed the wastebasket next to my desk, flipped it over dumping the contents out onto the floor and took a seat.
Clever girl…we gazed into each others eyes for what seemed to be an eternity…

I awoke to a gentle tapping on my forehead.

"Hello?" she said.

Damned narcolepsy. It had plagued me since childhood. Funny, the only time in my life when it subsided was when I was drafted into the foreign legion. Like a hung-over, penniless uncle, it kept rearing its head at all the wrong times, but never when you needed it.

"Are you OK?" she whispered.

She was close now. Real close. Her breathe smelled of black licorice, unpleasant to most but not me, at that moment it was as if I were staring into the eyes of a giant, red Good & Plenty which made me want her even more, since there are no red Good & Plenty's and I always thought that if they ever added a new color red would be my choice. My sweet tooth ached…

It was then she pulled away and sat back down. I quickly stuck my nickel cigar back in my mouth to hide the drool that was eking from my lips. The moment had passed. I felt like I would imagine the captain of the Titanic felt shortly after striking the iceberg, but before he knew they would sink…relieved. I would need to watch this one very carefully.

I kicked my feet up on the desk and thought back to the last time I had heard the word "mytoplasm"…my days in the foreign legion.

The "chicken salad" was terrible. Did these people even know what chicken was? I doubt it. Month after month I had eaten this gruel, and I was about fed up. ‘Join the Foreign legion’ they said, ‘see the world’ they said, ending up in remote Mongolia without a decent scotch would make any man jaded. The foreign legion wasn’t all that they had made it out to be. I had scrawled my name at the bottom of the enlistment papers with promises of fame, fortune, and beautiful dames buzzing around my head. Those lofty dreams had long since vanished, my meager pay piddled away in card games which was one of two things that kept me from going insane; the other being a "Zoltar" machine which no one could ever use because of a child that continually dumped quarters into it muttering what sounded like "I want to be BIG." over and over again. Where DID he get all those quarters? One couldn't possibly sell THAT many chiclets in a town of this size, but then again Mongolians always did have terrible breath. The days glazed over like the skin that was forming on my "chicken salad" until the only thing I could see were my dreams sinking into the bottom of that plate of gruel…

We had been stationed in that small Mongolian mountain town for 8 months, watching over a greenhouse of Polygala, a rare blue flower that grows on the eastern Mongolian mountains. Although I had no Idea of what Polygala was, we were to guard it. Our sources had said that someone wanted the Polygala…wanted it bad. Didn't seem that way though that is outside of the local drunk, Bonko, who was always trying to figure out a way to smoke it, no one seemed to care about it much.

The nights were getting worse. It was taking more and more alcohol to make the toothless native women that we had lovingly named "the gummers" look good. Some nights it was all fun and games, some nights it was sullen, and eerily calm. It was on one of those nights, when the air felt too still and the bourbon felt to cold, it was on one of those nights that I met the Doctor...Doctor Van Klompinstein.

I was sitting at the bar with my bottle of Bourbon, the only thing I had left to show for the paycheck that I had received earlier that day. At some point in the evening I had elected to bypass the use of a glass and went straight to drinking from the bottle. It would seem that I had lost more than just my money that night…my dignity had disappeared as well. I sat at the bar in what I hoped wasn't a puddle of my own urine when the door flung open.

In the doorway stood a man in full medical attire, scrubs and all. This was not, however, your typical doctor. He stood about 6' 7", 285 lbs. A monster of a man. Sure he had the stethoscope, and the oral\anal thermometers tucked safely in his pocket, and even a glistening white name tag which read "Dr. V K". All of this seemed normal well as normal as you could expect since we were in the remote hills of Mongolia which were only accessible by plane in the dead of winter and this "doctor" seemed to show up out of nowhere without so much as a jacket of any kind, but no one really thought twice about it…except me. Maybe it was something in his eyes, or in the way he presented himself, or possibly the hook and claw he had for hands…although I couldn't put my finger on it, something was out of place…and I intended to find out what.

He pulled up to the bar in the seat next to me.

In a thick German accent he said "Vishkey, please."

The barkeep pulled a paper cup from a dixie type dispenser on the back wall. Glass was hard to come by in this remote location so the people there had to make do with what they could get.

"I'll take zi whole bottle." he muttered, as he tossed a wooden nickel on the counter.

The barkeep blinked in disbelief, handed over the bottle and walked away with his nickel, a confused look on his face.

Now was my chance…

"Your accent…Bavarian if I'm not mistaken. What are you doing so far from Munich?" I asked the doctor.
I actually had no idea what it sounded like…I had heard the line in a movie once.

"Very gut." he said as he turned to face me. "Und you are?"

"The name is Sam, Private First Class Sam Neff." I responded.

"Vell, Private Neff…" he whispered, "how vould you like to make a little money?"

I should have stayed in the barracks that night...

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Authors Note: This is the 1st half of an odd composed by me and my brother via email. We are in no way serious writers and do it purely for our own enjoyment...I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it. I know it reaches at some points...but for us that was all part of the humour. Have Fun!