Four Chapters From The Detective Plum files

(Working chapter 1)

---Black bile oozed between Grandfather's lips, and
dripped onto the attendant's bloated abdomen. The
drip became a trickle, which became a steady stream,
and soon he was vomiting a thick torrent of the
shining liquid.
---Where it touched the attendant, it boiled and
frothed and formed a sickly lather, and as it
bubbled it ate away at the flesh. The skin on the
man's stomach was becoming liquid and starting to
slide around. Beads of blood sprang up where the
upper layer had been completely dissolved.
---Grandfather's head lolled forward, and underneath
his bushy, flaking eyebrows, his blind eyes rolled
insanely. With a sudden fluid movement of his arm,
he unhooked the straight razor from its holster and
flipped out the dull blade. It was just as he
remembered.
---His obscenely gnarled hands trembled, and his
breath was rapid. Grandfather hunched over the
attendant, reaching out and stroking the places that
had been prepared by the mucus. His jaw still hung
slightly open as he bent down for a closer view...
---And Grandfather began to shave.

(Working chapter 2)

---Plum opened the miniature door and stepped inside.
He was in what seemed to be a reception room; against
one wall there was a booth occupied by an obese young
man, and ahead of him a wide corridor quickly turned a corner.
The room was small and lamp-lit; the dim light and yellowed
wallpaper, thought Plum, made it somehow seem underground.
---There were vast piles of coats in every conceivable place.
Space had been cleared in the middle of the room, but Plum
had  to step over heaps of dark cloth before he even had
enough room to shut the door. The highest of the coat-towers
loomed, threatening to topple over. In his mind Plum knocked
into one and it came tumbling down, pressing on him and
making him breathe musty air.
---The man, whom Plum thought of as the attendant,
was intently staring at something underneath the counter
of the booth and fidgeting. Perhaps he was playing with a
puzzle; at any rate he did not acknowledge Plum, and he
seemed to be holding his breath.
---“Pardon me,” said Plum. “May I leave my coat here?”
---The attendant frowned, still concentrating on the activity.
After a moment he let out a long rushing sigh, then finally
looked up at Plum, somewhat accusingly.
---“One pays inside. This is the cloakroom.”
---“Yes, I thought it was,” explained Plum. “I wondered
whether I might leave my coat here?” He gestured vaguely
at the piles as if to justify his question.
---The attendant glanced underneath the counter again,
then back at Plum. He seemed to make a calculation.
“I'm afraid this room is full. You'll have to put it in the back.”
He jerked his thumb toward a doorway Plum had not noticed;
it was in the booth's shadow, framed by stacks of coats.
---“A-ha, thank you.” Plum took a step toward the doorway,
then hesitated and looked to the attendant to make sure he
had properly understood. However, the man was again
absorbed in his unknown occupation, and Plum felt that
further questions would somehow provoke him.
---He made his way around the front of the booth,
stepping over a discarded fur. There was a thick wall of coats
just inside the doorway, long enough so that no light
escaped underneath them,  and for all Plum knew the next
room was completely dark. He turned sideways and pushed
against the mass with his shoulder;  it briefly yielded, but
only to swing back and bear down on him. He had a sudden
fear that if he continued to push, it would simply surround
him and he would be unable to move.
---After a final heave, though, he was through, and he found
himself standing in a long, narrow chamber with a low ceiling,
lit by an exposed bulb. Around the perimeter, forming a
rounded oblong, was a high railing, onto which hangers were
affixed; the hangers, of course, bore coats of all sorts.
The space between the rails was not great,
but Plum could move comfortably enough, and he
began to look for a free hanger onto which to hang his own
overcoat. However, the coats were very densely packed,
and it was impossible to tell which hangers, if any, were
empty. He supposed he would have to reach blindly
into them, though he felt a sinking reluctance,
for no reason he could name.

(Working chapter 3)

---Grandfather slept restlessly. He had finished
working for today, or perhaps he had finished yesterday's
work and there was no more for today. It was of course
possible that there would never be more. However,
he was prepared; he wore his vest, though it was
not his usual practice to retire clothed. He was glad
he wore it; the vest gave him an excited, nearly sick
feeling, and he knew he could rely on it. And without
having to touch it, he knew too his razor was in its holster,
secured to the vest. At times he felt an unbearable urge to
grasp the smooth bone handle and hold it tightly,
but he did not act on it. Once it occurred to him that
perhaps he could not move his hand at all, but he
dared not risk trying, in case he turned out to be right;
and since there was no outstanding
work, there seemed no good reason to do so.
---Although he had been sleeping for some time,
Grandfather did not dream. At least he did not remember
ever dreaming, though he often half recalled events,
and thinking about a recollection later it sometimes
seemed to have been a dream. Now, though, he knew
he was dreaming, because in his recollections his heart
did not beat, and his hands did not twitch, and he had not
seen so clearly in a very long time. The mucus rose in his
throat; it was warm and thick. He felt an overwhelming
anticipation.
---In his dream, Grandfather was surrounded by dark,
heavy coats, and there was work to be done.

(Working chapter 4)

---Plum fought back an urge to tear ass out of there,
and never look back, but he had a job to do.
He looked towards his goal. The end of the room
and hopefully, a way out. Row upon row of coats,
one at waist level, the other at eye level. He could
make out the ruddy glow of a flickering light, and what
sounded to him, like a one winged moth
attempting to commit suicide up around the corner
and off to the left where the coats ended.
---He pushed on, suddenly, something sharp and
hooked snagged his shoulder forcing him around
with a startling flash of pain. A wire hanger that had
fallen into the envelope pocket of a ladys rain
slicker had done its dirty work on his left bicep,
making a suprisingly deep and probably filthy puncture
wound.
---"I fucking despise wire hangers" he said, matter of
factly towards the idiot behind him working
the entry counter, now clearly out of view, and probably
earshot at this point. "And fur, for that matter,
you fat bastard".
---By a stroke of sheer luck, next to the rain slicker there is
a vacant spot for his coat. He hangs his coat as his arm
begins to throb as only a puncture wound can. He can
also clearly feel the warm trickle of blood running down
is arm towards his chilly exposed wrist in time with the
rapid beating of his heart; which was now ringing out
like a bass drum at his temples. He loved the night
shift, and since the death of his partner Luke Handy,
almost a year ago to the day, he has been working the
Graveyards, and wacko cases that no one else in their
right mind in the department would take, like this one.
---I mean, who ever heard of a crazy old blind man in
a suped up wheelchair killing folks randomly and with
no preference, other than a good clean shave,
working the Metropolitan area with no set pattern
over the last seventy years? No one, but Plum, and a few
others: Luke, before he was viciously murdered, and
bled dry like a fly in a Widow's paradise, and the
Chief. That's why he was assigned this job, Plum was
glossaphobic, and had an intolerable stutter when
dealing with the Press, and this case was one more
killing away from being a media circus.
---He's no fool, he knew that he was the mayor's
secret weapon for a quick re-election, or maybe just an
expendible scapecoat for the Chief.
But there was something else troubling Plum, what did this
Grandfather do before he was in a wheelchair? Maybe he
hadn't always been in that chair, he was probably somebody's
son, father, husband. Plum snickered at the notion,
then, noticing a twinkling of light sparkling from a
small pin on the rain slicker's collar, he takes it down,
and investigates.
---A shriner's fund donation gold-member-clip-broach,
clearly only gold plated, but still not the kind of gift that a
charity gives away flagrantly to their various philanthropists
and donaters for being penny pinching Jews either.
There is something else too, the pin is older than
him by thirty years, making it well over a clean half a
century old, but that's not the only odditty, for the first time
Plum has also begun to notice that all of the coats in the room
are, strangely enough, from all sorts of different time periods.
Some are from the twenties, the sixties, the eighties, and others
are more recent styles, some aristocratic and glamorous,
while others are cheap and lower middle class.
---This freak observation is coupled by his noticing of a very
queer odor in the coat room that is practically verging on
nauseating. The putrid smell is both quite pungent
and overbearing. A cross between Elizabeth taylor's
White Diamonds perfume, mothballs, body odor,
and men's Old Spice. There is another more powerfully
disturbing smell mixed into the other more mundane smells
Almost, most certainly, unnoticable to the
untrained nose, but definitely there to the beak of
the wise. The smell of fresh urine and working bile.

Intermission.

By -Dark_Angel- and horus8.