© 2013 Marvin E. Fuller
The Big Yawny. A million stories clutter its streets, nightmares and sweet dreams alike. Not the greatest of cities, but it's my city.
I looked out upon my city of lost dreams dripping gloomily down the streets as surely as the rain splattered my window, pondering how I would pay the rent that week. Would I disturb my landlord if I paid by cash rather than by check? I doubted it. Money was money, and my landlord was a vampire for the stuff.
While I pondered such not-so-deep thoughts, she walked in. I suppose I could say she was a classy dame, oozing sophistication and poise like an overworked horse poured sweat, but the rain falls on the classy and the shabby alike. Still, she managed to make a drowned weasel look good.
Yes, I said "weasel". She stood about four feet high with sodden chocolate brown and creamy white fur under her soaked jacket and skirt, the wet remains of a hat tamped over long brown tresses. She seemed to quiver with agitation, more so than other weasels I'd known. Whatever had brought her to my office had certainly unnerved her.
"Are you Bob Swiggle, PI?" she asked as soon as the door closed behind her.
"Close," I replied, offering her a chair. "They call me a PU. Not nice, but what are you going to do?"
"Ah," she blinked at me, unsure of how to take that. While my joke hadn't gotten any laughter out of her, it did have the desired effect of getting her slow down before she made me dizzy. I watched as she dripped into my chair, trying to pull her thoughts back together. That reminded me, I needed a new hair dryer.
"So, what can I do you out of today?" I asked.
"Oh, Mister Swiggle, I've had such a terrible experience!" Her eyes began to fill with tears, like chocolate suddenly dunked in a glass of water.
"Oh? What happened?" I wondered if I would need to drag the details out of her. Getting an unnerved weasel to calm down and give you the facts you need often required finesse and a few well-placed slaps. Again, I tried the humor. "Mugger? Drive-by politician? You rode public transport?"
"Worse, Mister Swiggle!!!!!" I swore I could hear every exclamation point in her words. I wondered how she managed to breathe. "I was," she gulped, "called by a telemarketer!"
Oy.
"He's a really scary telemarketer!" she tried again when her statement failed to elicit the proper response from me. "He calls on my radio and knows every move I make! I can't go anywhere without him trying to sell me something!"
"Easy enough to avoid. Just don't answer the phone," I told her. Needless to say, at this moment, I figured she either needed to get into the real world – easier said than done in the Big Yawny – or be dragged off by some white-coated individuals for a nice comfy padded cell somewhere. Even this city had its limits, and people like my weasel guest already danced near them.
"But Mister Swiggle!" she objected. "I don't have a telephone! I don't even have a cell phone! One fried my brain three years ago, and I've never fully recovered!" That pretty much clenched my doubts about her sanity. At least she sounded more articulate under stress than many weasels did.
"He talks into my brain!" she furtively glanced back and forth. "It's like those government conspiracy nuts who claim the government's planted a bug in their teeth!"
"I see," I hemmed and hawed for a moment as I debated whether to call the police or the hospital first. The irony of her last statement didn't escape me as it did her.
At that moment, a couple of ninjas decided to make a dramatic entrance into my office. The complete non sequitur left me gaping at them like a buffoon, the more so since one of them appeared to have forgotten his pants.
I'd like to say I saw this one coming. After all, dreams in the Big Yawny sometimes had a certain real quality about them. However, having never experienced any ninjas smashing through my office door before, I sat there bewildered as they scooped my weasel client out of her seat and stuck a sheet of paper to my desk with one of their mini-trident weapon thingies. With a silence covered by my client's panicked wails, they quickly slipped out of my shattered door and into the shadowy hallway beyond.
Stunned, I didn't move for a minute or two, as if I'd taken a few brain-zappings myself. Eventually, I figured a wisecrack might help break the mood, but I couldn't think of any. I reached out for the paper and tugged it free of the ninjas' weapon thingy, resolving to look up what the darn thing was called when I had the chance. I glanced over the paper. As I thought, a note had been printed on it with painstaking care. Unfortunately, it happened to be several notes. Those ninjas had left me a musical score. With my limited musical abilities, it could have been Turkey in the Straw or The 1812 Overture.
To someone who didn't understand the Big Yawny, this strange scene would have been nothing more than some surreal fantasy concocted in a lunatic's daydream. Anthropomorphic weasels normally don't wander in out of the rain, much less complain about cell phones zapping their brains, nor do ninjas bust down doors to leave sheet music tacked to detectives' desks. These sorts of events just don't happen in real life.
If only.
Not so in the Big Yawny.
Like I'd said before, dreams had a certain real quality here in the city.
No one really knew why. Scientists have come from all over the world to study the phenomenon, to little avail. Some think this city used to be an Indian graveyard, others guess there's some sort of dimensional anomaly floating around. Hypotheses abound, each more outlandish than the last, but no answers had yet to be found.
For the moment, I just wished the ninjas had opened the door first. Replacing the door was going to put another crimp in my checkbook.
