🕑 Added 2024-10-24 06:57:54 +0000 UTC
Tale #127: From the Mouth of Madness (And Babes):
(Content tags: Slow-burn, eldritch setting, somewhat noir, wetting, possible regression)
My name was Robert Duvall and my scene was the private dick game; and I don't mean the kind you get in the VIP room at the local sausage parlor. No, the only kind of filth and debauchery that I got up to in my work was the kind I investigated from behind the scenes.
Cheating husbands, corrupt city officials, dirty cops, ambulance chasers, missing persons, the whole shebang.
I was good at what I did, even if my keen perceptions weren't always fast on the draw. I'd been a cop once, but that hadn't been the life for me; too many bozos in blue who were all too cozy for a night on the take.
Maybe I was a little dirty too, but not because I let myself get bought like a piece of prime rib. I just had some disagreements with how the arm of the law was meant to be swinging and I was a little too quick to let it swing at the nearest jabbering jaw.
Going private was the right call for an ornery bastard like me. I was finally able to trade in worries about perps pleading the fifth for pleading for a fifth of my own at the local watering hole. Client selection wasn't a matter of waiting to see whose ticket got punched, but instead became about being the one to decide whose ticket was worth a damn.
My place was a crackerbox in the part of the city that you didn't usually want to find yourself, but I still did pretty good for myself. It led to a clientele that was as seedy as a teenage boy's tube-sock, but they always paid in advance and it kept things lively for an old fuck like me.
Paradise was never meant to last forever though, and I'd frankly been getting sloppy. Every detective has a case that makes him hang his hat and call it quits, and if they don't, then that usually means that they got prematurely packaged in a pine box or went for a dip with concrete flippers.
Her name was Morticia, and honestly, that should have been the first and only red flag that I needed. Long legs on a dame can do funny things to a man's vision though, and it got me feeling a little colorblind.
With a vice between my lips and another being poured in front of me, I was already ripe for a Sunday morning confession, so what was one more bad choice?
She was an odd broad, even at that first meeting. Wore a big hat and smoked her cigarettes long; as pale as a porcelain doll, but with the most vibrant lipstick that I thought I had ever seen. It was like she'd stepped right out of a Nagel painting and she was about to sing 'Rio' for me. She spoke softly, yet her words had thorns to them, like a leather-clad lady in one of the special gentleman's clubs my work so often took me.
She was after someone, or two someones, I suppose would be right to say. Her shitbag ex-husband and her darling baby boy. Apparently the creep had split after she'd filed for the divorce and he'd disappeared into the night with their child.
I was never one for kids, but I also wasn't some kind of heartless monster. This beautiful creature had my deepest sympathies, and after discussing my modest fee structure, it was my honor-bound duty to take the case.
The last place that she'd heard hide or hair of the jerk hadn't been inside town. That had been the first real complication to a case that would become more complex than setting the clock on my VCR.
Harlow Harbor.
I'd never even heard of the place, and the road map inside my glovebox hadn't either. In this great big country of ours, it was just another tiny shithole that speckled the coast and didn't get basic cable. There were a million places like that, where a touring family of four was capable of temporarily doubling the population.
She gave me some landmarks to go off of and a general idea of where I was supposed to be heading. She said she'd been too scared to go check it out for herself, and that her ex-husband had a nasty temper; I assured her that I too had a nasty temper, and a nastier forty-five for anyone who tried to test me.
The drive down the coast was peaceful enough; a carton of stogies, plenty of rest stops to get more coffee, and a nice big bag of sunflower seeds. I had the station set to some radio-format Twilight Zone episodes, and a mixtape for when the signal got twitchy.
The closer I got, the more desolate things seemed to become. Other cars on the road became more sparse, and places to stop became nonexistent, as if I was driving off the face of the known Earth. As the night grew darker, a fog was rolling in from the water.
I don't remember how I got there. One moment I was zipping through dense fog and the next I was sitting parked outside a motel. It was the worst case of road hypnosis that I'd ever had; I could've splattered a half dozen hitchhikers or deer for all I knew. It'd been a long drive though, and there was no point in getting too caught up on pesky details.
From the look of the motel's sign, which said 'Harlow Inn', it looked like I'd at least ended up in the right place. That was a victory worth etching into the 'W' column.
"I'm guessing you don't get many visitors out here, do you?" I'd asked the man at the front desk.
He quite frankly looked like ten pounds of shit in a one pound bag. Slumped forward with sunken eyes and pale, clammy skin. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then his had a decade's worth of grime clinging to the panes. When I'd entered the motel, he'd hardly looked my way; he'd only focused on me when I'd stepped directly in front of him and asked for a room.
"No...Not many, no. Very few, so few, yes..." His words hung like portraits of a man that hadn't known sleep since the days of Nixon. If I had been pressed to guess, I would have assumed he was a nutcase with a drug problem.
I watched as he fumbled a key from the wall and dropped it on the counter. He stared at me, but it really looked like he was staring past me, as if some grand spectacle was right out of view.
"So, uh, what do I owe ya?"
"At check out. You pay what you owe when you check out; not before, only after."
I wasn't convinced this guy would be lucid enough to remember that I'd rented a room from him by that time, but I wasn't so honest that I'd let that stop me from scooping up that room key. It might actually be better that the front desk man didn't remember I'd blown into a town where a traveler would stick out; I didn't want to go spooking my mark.
The motel room was as small as I'd expected, but a lot cleaner than I would have thought. In my line of work, I'd gotten used to crashing in the worst roadside haunts this side of the country; with how strung out the assumed owner was, I would have thought this place would have been falling apart.
But no, the carpet looked vaccuumed, the sheets looked clean, and the desk looked dusted. There was no television, but I could make do without it; I doubted this town got basic cable anyways.
After quickly settling in and yanking off my clothes, I took a shower and got into bed with my flask. Investigation could wait to start until tomorrow morning, once I was as fresh-faced as the supposed brat I was searching for.
My dreams were restless that night. I couldn't remember much about them when I awoke, but I was put in an uneasy mood. I made a mental note to remind the dope fiend up front about replacing the batteries in the carbon monoxide detectors. Peering outside my window, my brain still halfway underneath the blanket, I could see that morning had come, but the street was stuck in a thick fog.
Great. It'd be real easy to investigate when I couldn't even see five feet in front of myself.
I started to get dressed for the day, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it felt like something obvious; like I was somehow about to be the kid that showed up to school in his underpants. Chalking it up to the sandman's money-shot in my eyes, I threw on my jacket and lit up a cigarette.
There had to be a good place to get breakfast around here, and where there was food, there were answers.
Klein's Diner sat a couple of blocks away, which I deduced by picking up a town map from the front desk. The man I had checked in with last night was nowhere to be seen, and while there was a bell on the counter, I didn't see it necessary to pull him from his slumber to inquire about the maps. If nothing else, I'd have him add it to my bill later.
I shuffled down the road. I could hear buoys ringing in the distance, but the fog was too thick to find where the seawall began; I saw silhouettes of people walking in the distance, but I heard no words. Harlow Harbor was like a ghost town.
Klein must have been out, because when I stepped into the diner, I was greeted by a sweet young woman with curly red hair. Considering the mental image I got from hearing about a 'Klein', my loins weren't complaining.
"Well, hello there Peaches! Can't say I've seen you around here before. You just blow into town?" Her accent sounded decidedly out of place for which part of the country we were in; looks like she wasn't from around here either.
"Yeah, just doing research for a novel. Table for one, smoking, and I'll start with a cup of coffee."
The woman giggled, "Well aren't you Mr. Man? You can take whichever table you like and I'll go get your coffee."
She walked away and I walked forward. The diner, like my motel room, was shockingly clean. Made sense when I thought more closely about it; if they had almost no customers, then there weren't any messes to be made in the first place. I took a seat at a table near the window and was agitated by how obnoxiously tall the chairs seemed; my feet didn't touch the ground!
I pulled the ashtray close, like we were going to tango, and then I unfolded the oddly colorful menu on the table. I wasn't usually one for a sweet breakfast, but the pancake plate sounded exactly like it'd hit the spot.
She returned with my coffee and put it down in front of me. "I brought some cream and sugar, honey. Have as much as you'd like. You know what you'd like to eat?"
"Pancake plate. With strawberries and some bacon."
"I'll let the cook know and we'll get that whipped right up for you!"
Coffee was supposed to be black and bitter. That was the way I'd been drinking it since my first job in high school. Still, the waitress had gone through the trouble, so I idly started to dump spoonfuls of sugar into the cup and then I poured cream in until the mug was in danger of flowing over the top. It tasted very sweet, like the 'coffee' you'd prepare for a kid to humor them.
It didn't taste wrong though. It tasted like it'd pair well with my pancakes.
While I waited, I lit another cigarette and pulled the map back out. Might as well be productive in these moments and make a plan of action on how to survey the area. Reaching into my coat pocket, I realized that I'd remembered my memo pad, but I'd forgotten my pen. Searching the table, I saw that someone must have left a small box of crayons here.
Without any other options, I shook a red one out and tapped it against the map. The town was small, which I already knew, and I'd already been in two of the landmarks on it. I circled the motel and the diner, just in time for the woman to bring me my plate.
"Here ya go, sugar! I told old Ronnie back there to make it with love." The waitress cooed, "If ya need extra syrup, it's on the table."
I guess I hadn't noticed it on the menu, but the pancake plate was decidedly an item that belonged on the child's menu. The pancake stack had a face on it, made with the fruit, bacon, and whipped cream that topped it. A small part of me considered turning it down and asking for something a little more fitting, but I didn't want to come across as insecure.
"...Thanks. So, uh, miss..."
"You can call me Charlotte, sug."
"Charlotte. You have a distinct accent; are you from some place else?"
"Well, I'm from all over. Never like to stick around in the same place for too long. Been in Harlow for a few months now." She smiled.
I nodded my head and poured some more syrup onto my pancakes; I'd let that soak in a little before I started eating. "Why here?"
"It's nice and quiet. Ain't never run into no trouble in a little town like this."
I resisted the urge to mention that you wouldn't run into any excitement either. This place was like living inside a coffin. About as cheery as such too. "Uh, right... Well, you must know everyone by now, huh? Such a little place, I bet tourists stick right out."
She smiled again, "That's right! Especially the cute ones."
My cheeks got a little warm at the oddly coddling tone of what I construed as flirting. "Heh... Anyone like you? Someone who came into town and just decided to stick around?"
"More people decide to stay than you'd expect! I think they see how charming this place is and decide they never want to leave."
I stuck my fork into the pancakes, "Anyone like that recently?"
She nodded her head, "Yup. A man and his darling little boy moved in a couple of months ago."
Asking more than that was a big risk. If I acted too interested in that specific pair, then it'd become obvious that my intentions were more than just an idle curiosity. The last thing I needed was scaring this guy off. The vague description fit the profile pretty well, so I could at least deign to confirm that my mark was in town.
"What's there to do around here?"
"For a cutie like you?"
A warmth came to my cheeks. I wasn't usually so easily flustered by the flirting of a pretty young woman, but for some reason she had me downright bashful, like I was a schoolboy!
"W-well, I...I suppose you could say that."
The waitress gave me a sly look, "Well, there's a park on the south end. Maybe you could have some fun there?"
Before I could ask her to clarify what she meant, the door to the diner opened and the bell above rattled to announce it. It was a man in a long coat, and he had glasses that'd fogged over. The woman ran her hand through my hair and smiled, before stepping away to go greet her customer.
It felt odd to me that she'd been so forward. I wasn't an ugly guy, but I also wasn't some prize to be held up; a waitress like that was close to half my age, and her naive optimism should have been repulsed by the jaded, nihilistic aura I exuded.
I ate another bite of my pancakes, my legs idly kicking under the booth. As I did, I suddenly felt something warm around my crotch that was chafing my thighs. Dear lord, had I really blew a load in my boxers from such a mild tease?
No, it felt like there was a lot more than a 'hair trigger' could produce. This was something else, this was--
--Had I pissed myself? When could that have happened? I hadn't even had anything to 'drink' yet! My coffee was very sadly unspiked, and I hadn't at all reached for my flask, so how could I have had such a ridiculous lapse in control?
Another mystery would precede that one though. Looking down at my pants, I noticed a problem with my deduction.
Why weren't my pants wet?
As I'd soon come to discover, there was a lot more going on in Harlow Harbor than some rinky-dink case. There was a madness over this foggy little town, and it'd be coming for me, if I wasn't already embroiled in it.
