THE BODY ON THE BEACH

                                           The Body on the Beach

The Body on the Beach

 

It was a bright sunny day on Lepitor Beach, the surf lapping gently. The beach almost deserted, except for a lone man lying down a hundred yards away, which caught Edna Lustski’s attention. She stood in the sun next to the red tent that was large enough to hold a dozen sun lovers and their dogs and kids.  But today there was only her husband, Mr. Lustski, plus their ancient dog, Rex.

 

Edna, wearing a straw hat and a bikini that had lost all hope of ever looking sexy on her darkly tanned, greatly wrinkled body. She squinted and put an equally wrinkled hand across her brow for a better squint.  She extending a thin arm and pointing a boney finger.  “Arnold, I think that man over there is dead! He hasn’t moved!”

 

Her husband continued to lie on his back, eyes closed, his ponderous belly making a mockery of his Speedo trunks. “He’s probably just sleeping.  Look my way. I’ll show you how it’s done.”  Rex the Ancient, lying beside him didn’t move.  Long ago, Rex was a championship barker, but these days he found it was not worth the trouble.  He did open one eye then quickly closed it.

 

“Arnold!  I tell you that man is dead!”

 

“He probably saw you staring and is playing dead. Anyway, how in hell would you know at this distance?”

 

“Well, how would you know without opening your eyes.” Frustration festered.

 

“Go closer and give him a kiss.  If he doesn’t scream and race to drown himself you’ll know for sure he’s dead.”

 

“Man lying in this sun, with no sunglasses or umbrella?  Impossible!” Edna walked the beach in the man’s direction, leaving tracks in the sand. Slowly. Then slowed her pace even more, like a woman not ready to go on her final date with Jesus.  She got closer, then closer until she was standing over the man. He was lying on a dark blue beach towel, not moving, her straw sun hat casting a shadow across his chest.  His eyes were closed, his mouth partially open, the hairs on his chest blowing slightly in the gentle breeze, his bald head a roasty brown.

 

She nudged him with a thick, yellowish big toenail poking out the front of her sand-colored beach sandals. He didn’t move. Well, maybe he did. Maybe not. Didn’t look like he was breathing, but with her sun glasses on….. She nudged him harder, more like an unfriendly kick in the ribs.

 

The man’s eyes flew open!  He rolled toward her and gripped her leg like a steel vice.

 

Her hand went to her mouth as she sucked in enough air to fill a balloon, and fell back onto the hot sand and appeared to have stopped breathing.

 

The man knelt and put an ear to Edna’s mouth, then jumped to his feet and yelled for help.  “I think this woman is dead! Somebody help!”

 

Mr. lustski stayed on his back, eyes still closed, and yelled, “How can you tell?”

 

Rex didn’t move either.

 

 

 

 

 

Dead is Dead by Mort U. Arry

                              

Yes dead is dead unless you want it to be something else, but it will cost you. 

 

 ---Al Most, Attorney at Law, and other stuff

 

Just because a man has been shot and stabbed it don’t mean a crime was committed.  Most likely it was a shaving accident while deer hunting.

 

---Sheriff Tally Hoe

 

The devil works in mysterious ways.  Can I get an Amen and another slice of that peach pie?

 

---The Reverend Sally Forth, Preacher at the Eve Was Right Church of the Garden.

 

The people deserve to know the truth, I guess.  Maybe not.  We’re still discussing it.  And what is the truth, really?

 

---TV talking head Alice Fair, The Mourning Hour

 

AnD sO It BeGaN

 

It was early evening when a figure moved through the shadows of the frigid night, one foot at a time, although he preferred hopping on one leg in time to the music that played loudly in his head that would fit perfectly into a 7 ½ sized hat, if he had been wearing a hat. Instead, he wore an XL black panty hose, with only one eye-hole, a trick he’d learned riding with The Overripe Persimmon Motorcycle Club, when Rocky “Big Eyes” Rhode caught a bumble bee in the eye and needed a flat heat screwdriver to dig it out. Afterwards he was just known as Rocky.

 

But, back to the avenger:  Perhaps he should have cut one leg off the pantyhose to keep from tripping.  He was not a quick learner and still limped from the second and third times.

 

Under his arm was a Salver model 14mQ, loaded with a full clip of 7.66 millimeter, highly polished brass cartridges with steel piercing bullets, made especially for him by the little known Happy As a Fragrant Clown Gun Shop and Ice Cream Parlor in South Philly.  The gun was so accurate he could correct a squirrel’s astigmatism at a hundred yards,  but it was another learning process. A few squirrels mistook headlights for sunrise.  Some of their friends stood on street corners, cups in their tiny claws, waiting for nut donations.

 

The target, Wiber Willright had a titanium plate in his head from a previous attempt on his life.  The first assassin tried to do the job with fossilized deer antlers, mounted on the hood of a black and red 1954 Chevy.  The killer didn’t survive the Chevy blowing a rod that pierced his heart.  With the new assassin there would be no mistakes. He was a professional and knew to keep things simple, mostly.  You find, you kill, you get paid; you spend your money on expensive whiskey and cheap women, or that was the plan.  So far he’d found no cheap women and he took this job because he was also running short of whisky.

 

Willright, lived on Casanova Avenue in a heavily gated community, if you could call one house and sheep farms a community.  The gate was so heavy it took two men and a harnessed donkey to drag it open.  The donkey would rather have been frolicking with a very cute filly in the back forty, but no one had asked him. Sadly, frolicking was still a distant dream.

 

Willwright had not previously had a heart condition, but after the near miss, his heart pounded every time the gate creaked open, or he saw deer antlers, or the donkey brayed.  Nor was he fond of 1954 Chevys.  These days, he mostly sat in his massively fortified home, in front of the TV, on a couch once owned by Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger, doing obscene crossword puzzles, asking himself questions, such as what rhymes with snore and banal pecks?

 

Not short of ideas and possibilities, his assassin reached the gate and paused to change into this boots with the soles sewed on backwards,  so trackers would only know where he’d been, made for him in London in a shop with a sign on the front that said, NO soul resides in this establishment and that means you, you soulless heathen!

 

Using an old trick he’d learned in survival camp, after he’d been lost for several days, he whistled.  Loudly.  The donkey stampeded.  The men’s attention was on the animal that had mistook the whistle for someone calling the frolicking filly.  Raging hormones pulled the gate open by several feet.

 

The assassin saw his chance, managing to slip through and stumble into the bushes unnoticed.

 

He quickly and almost silently cocked his Salver model 14mQ, especially designed with a soundlessly clicking clicker.  It was then he discovered he’d left the 14 bullet clip on his dining room table, along with his see through socks.  

 

Damn, the boots hurt his feet, chaffed his calves, making him say very naughty things. He regretted not paying the extra $600 for the double padded cheetah skin bouncy heels.  Fortunately, he had sprung for the sparking electric laces and internal, automatic athletes foot sprayer.. 

 

With no squirrel piercing ammo, he would have to improvise.  He tapped the side pocket of his French commando, 1959 Rothschild wine and Brie scented pants. Fortunately, he had brought his self guided Lightening Tomahawk; built in a tiny New Mexico pueblo by who else! Tommy Hawk, the noted rifle stock manipulator and gun sight schemer, known for once selling a gun sight to a blind fortune hunter.

 

As he approached the house, two robotic pit bulls growled and ran metallically toward him.  His electric bootlaces quickly shorted their circuits. They barked no longer, but began to moo and mow the lawn.  

 

One window was open.  Unfortunately it was the window to the sixteen car garage.  Then his luck changed.  Willwright appeared at the window near the eight-foot high custom made sixteen pane beveled front door. The killer had seen doors like this, made by Johnny Appleseed’s great grandfather, the apple tree slayer.

 

The quiet avenger threw the hatchet-tomahawk, which went through the window, but bounced off the titanium plate in Willwright’s  head.  Blood streamed down his shirt and he rushed upstairs to change and desperately search for his Ranger Rough Rider flintlock buffalo long rifle, purchased at a cigar store in northern Maine and kept in a locked gun case, inside a locked gun cabinet, in the locked safe room in the basement.  He could only find two keys!  Where the hell had he put the key to the save room?  Then he remembered it was in the Trust and Hope Savings Bank, in a safety deposit box, only available on Tuesday and Thursdays from 9 to 9.15 a.m.  “Well, darn it,” he said.

 

By this time, the avenger had made it through the broken window, using his 4 gauge, stainless steel, handmade window smasher and bottle opener. He quickly retrieved his Tomahawk and began climbing the stairs.

 

Willwright stood on the top step looking, bewitched, bothered and bewildered. This time the Tomahawk found a perfect resting place in Willwright’s chest.  Dang, he thought, as life ebbed; he should have remembered to put on his Kevlar vest when he was changing into a clean shirt.

 

By the time the time delayed house alarm went off and the cops responded, the avenger was long gone. 

 

Sheriff Tally Hoe and his team of detectives saw this for what it was.  Obviously, Mr. Willwright had heard his dogs mooing and gone to an upstairs window to investigate, carrying his high tech hatchet, then had a heart attack and tumbled down the stairs.  The Sheriff reasoned that since Willwright was hunting for a possible intruder, “We’ll call this one a hunting accident.”

 

Alice Fair of The Mourning Hour wanted to know, “What about the broken window?”

 

“No idea.  Windows break all the time.”

 

Al Most, Attorney at Law and stuff, asked if Willwright had an attorney.

 

Nobody knew, but Mr. Most thought he might be able to find a distant cousin and help him settle the estate, or join a profitable business venture, turning used inner-tubes into horse condoms.

 

The Reverend Sally Forth described Willwright’s passing as an act of providence, adding that Willwright never gave a cent to her church, refused to give her another piece of peach pie, and got what he deserved.  After several snifters of medicinal brandy, she dropped to her arthritic knees and recanted, ready to do the Christian thing and forgive all number of sins done by people she didn’t know and had never met, but leaving out several of her parishioners.

 

The avenger?  No one knows for sure, but a man, wearing a size 7 ½ hat and carrying what appeared to be a new, custom made hatchet, stopped at the Come And Get Me Wholesale No Tell Gun Shop to buy several boxes of dark, XL panty hose that were on sale, with no questions asked. Limit four.

* Yes, this is satire, a take off on thrillers.  If you know any of these people, don't tell me.  I don't want to know.*

 

 

Harold Judy Good

Harold sat at a table for two in the bright Florida sun.  At least he sat there for a while before his thinking cap overheated, a black ball cap.  The front read, Love to Hate in red letters. Flashes of sun blocked out the keyboard.  The back of the hat read, also in red letters, You’re My Dream Bitch.  He found this persuasively obnoxious, and a clever disguise.

Once back in the shadows of a large, green canvas awning, he began to type again, a novel of love and deception.  The working title was Hurt So Good.  

 

Harold rather fancied his name de plume, Judy Good.  Hard to believe a bachelor, using a woman’s name could sell books, but he already had half a dozen on the shelves, and just knew Hurt So Good would be his best.  Couldn’t miss.  His technique was to write whatever came into his mind and tickled his fingers.  Afterwards, he could make any necessary changes. 

 

His first romantic novel, Countess Jupiter Is Not Pregnant, did very well, as did the follow up, Oh Yes She Is. However the third part of the trilogy, The Count Has His Doubts, slacked a bit, with several wives writing that he/she had ruined their marriages.

 

But, this next one would be super. Hurt, as he called it, began on the Italian Riviera, with a fisherman’s daughter falling into a net, half drowning before a fabulously good looking millionaire dove off the deck of his passing yacht and saved her.

 

He was the third multimillionaire to dive to her rescue.  Matter of fact, her father had given up fishing completely and was satisfied with just netting.  He spoke perfect English, but broken Italian worked better, especially if the yacht flew an American or British flag.

 

“Help-O!  Help-O!  Mia Butiful dog-ter is she to drown-O!”

 

Adolfo Gleason had waited years for a chance like this; in fact he had tossed many a maiden into the briny just for practice. “Scream louder!” His hands cups as a megaphone.  “Duck your damn head a couple of times!”

 

The last one, Gloria Morning, a Bulgarian stripper, actually could not swim and when she yelled and went under, coming up and sloppily paddling like a terrified house cat, the screams were real.

 

“One of the best!” was Adolfo’s comment, “Really great thrashing,” he said with a glamorous show of perfect, glistening white teeth.

 

Over supper, he suggested Gloria try it again in the blackness of night.  
Against vicious protestations to the contrary, mostly in rapid fire Bulgarian, including an un-translated, “I will strike significant damage to your particulars”, he tossed her overboard. This time the show was really terrific, including the struggle on deck. So terrific in fact, he paid for her year’s stay in a psychiatric hospital, so afraid of water she couldn’t wash her hands without paddling the air and wetting herself.  Doctor Leroy Felter found it amusing and loved to see her do her hippy-hop dance in the hot tub, held down by four very masculine nurses. Then, when unannounced, he joined her, well, it was a real show.

 

One night she escaped, but she didn’t get far.  After changing her pronoun, she forgot to change her given name. She booked a room at the Motel de Jour or de Hour, awaking and screaming loud enough to wake the owner, in the middle of a rain storm.  He plodded through the downpour and seeing the crazy woman on her hands and knees, ripping up carpet with her teeth, he called the police.

 

Dr. Felter welcomed her back with a broad smile and his pet name for her, Hot Tubby, and a smiling shriek of “Take Tubby to the Hot Tubby!”

 

A year later, when she turned catatonic, he pronounced her cured.  She no longer feared water, or conversation, or deodorant, or playing I’ve got a secret. She also found a fondness for bondage, and laboratory animals, and humming the Bulgarian Love Chant.

 

Judy Good (Harold) turned the page and wrote on at a fevered pace. Time to go back to Adolfo and his newly found fisherman’s beautiful daughter, whose name was Triumphina.   She had large….let’s see, he thought.  What the hell should be large that wasn’t a cliché?  Large hair?  No, too Texas.  Must be Italian.  Large spaghetti pots!  Readers might see that as a euphemism, but it was good, and he’d save it for later.  Ah, big nostrils!  Huge nostrils!  Nostrils you could put your fist in!  Maybe that was overdoing it, but at least sizeable nostrils.  Also a large smile!  He’d run with that.  A smile so large lobsters thought it was a trap!  Wolves ran in fear.  Let’s give her a snicker, too.  Let her snicker every time she smiled, which made her sound like she had a serious sinus problem, but after all, she’d almost drowned so many times, she probably had an Ear, Nose and Throat doc on call.

 

Ah, but her father was certainly fond of Adolfo.  Much better than the last one, Francis of Assisi, whom he had taken to calling Ass-i After being poked in the eye when Ass-i genuflected.   But, Ass-i was rich.  Very rich.  Paid off well when Triumphina reported she was with child.  Not a huge lie because although she wasn’t p.g.,  she did have two kids.

 

But, Adolfo!  What a catch.  Rich as a Cardinal, and with a huge yacht which Triumhina’s father liked to gape at out of his one good eye. Adolfo could be the end all and be all and a clear frontrunner on the trail to riches.

 

How to end this enticing tail?  Judy Good pondered it, then smiled.

 

Trumphina’s father did not bother to tell her that this was the last inning and they were so far ahead Babe Ruth and the entire 1927 Yankees could never catch up.

 

It was the dark of night and he didn’t notice much of anything, but gasped when he got to the fishing boat and saw his daughter jump over the side, into the net!  Who let the net out? Woof Woof, Woof Woof. Why did she jump now? 

 

He climbed on deck and raced to the stern.  He’d seen Triumphina jump, but why didn’t she come back up? Her super large nostrils didn’t even blow large bubbles. A hole in the net told the story.  He looked again and the two cement blocks that usually held the folded net in place were also missing.  Plus, a bit of rope lay near where the net should be.

 

Then a solid board caught him in the back of the head and he also fell overboard and through the net.

 

Adolfo stepped out of the shadows, moved closer and looked down at the water.  No bubbles, although there was the chance the fisherman’s body would eventually rise. 

 

Of no concern. He’d be on his yacht, half a mile from the dock, and on his way within a couple of hours. No one knew him or about his connections to anyone here.  He smiled.

 

Ah, home at last.  The spaciousness was calming.  And alone was even better. Adolfo started to call Stevenson to get his ass in there and fix him a perfect Manhattan, and perhaps a few crackers the cook had conjured up, along with a plate of oil cured olives and slices of aged Manchego.  He’d forgotten he’d given the crew the evening off.  Just as well; if they were questioned, they couldn’t say when he had gone or where he had gone, of when he returned.

 

Ah, yes, a drink.  He poured whiskey over ice and listened to it crackle.  Then he heard a noise, just a slight creaking.  He went back to sipping.  Got to be the boat.  It did shake a little bit.  Not enough to spill his drink.  Took a lot to shake this big bitch of a boat significantly. 

 

Then he heard another noise.  A small boat tapped and scraped against the yacht.  Must be the crew.

 

She stood with a gun in her hand, a small black automatic. Gloria Hot Tubby.

 

“Don’t do it,” he said solemnly, but the ice in his glass did shake a little.

 

She motioned toward the stairs that led to the deck and pointed to a rope.

 

The police ruled it an accident.  Obviously the man had started the boat, caught his foot in a rope and fallen overboard.  The boat was anchored and must have churned in tight circles for an hour or more before someone reported it. Simple. Death by drowning.

 

Dr. Felter sat quietly in his office.  Evening had come, the patients were off to bed, the nurses, except for the ones on the wards sat quietly reading, or sipping coffee.  And then he heard a noise…

 

Judy Good (Harold) reread the skeleton sketch of his story.  And with a few changes, it could be really good.

There were no giant holes, just character nudges.  Toss in some real romance, and a castle or two in Ireland or Scotland.   He could sub a castle for the fishing boat and toss a wedding in there and the mandatory breakup.  Then, right before the wedding, when the bride found who she was really in love with….  A Lard reclaiming lost lands. He’d keep the Adolfo name…Yes, an Italian Lard by marriage, living in Scotland. Some scoundrel and scandal never hurt.   But, where would he put the yacht/castle?

 

No real beauties, but that could be overcome. Christ, get rid of the big nostrils and add some bosoms worthy of a salacious mention….Dr Felter would have to go….no, wait a sec, he could be a knight with a large…. ah dungeon…lots of room for whips and chains and swordfights in the stone corridors.  Suppose Dr Felter’s name was Sir Buford Longshanks.

 

He could do this!  The story almost wrote itself!

 

He signed and turned his hat around.  The waitress walked over and slapped him hard enough to give him a concussion.  “Naughty, naughty lad,” she snarled. “Your hat is an affront to womanhood!”

 

“Would you like to be in a book?  I can fit you right in.”

 

 

 

Scrambled English

 

English is a funny language, difficult to understand.  Lots of homonyms and worse, lots of words that are spelled the same, but mean different things.

 

Elephants have trunks, so do trees, and travelers, and so do trains on a trunk line.

 

Which brings up the word line:  A telephone line, a party line, drawing a line in the sand, giving your girlfriend a line, standing in line, a fishing line, a clothesline, a beeline, a punch line. Standing in a lineup. Delivering a clever line.

 

Naughty Words

 

Naughty words carry their own weight, but if you say them in a more dignified manner….

 

Quote a Bible verse: Go forth and multiply.

 

Enjoy intercourse with yourself!

 

You’re a vagina!  Has a certain crowd appeal.

 

Test a man before you call him an idiot. “You’re no smarter than a toadstool!”  See if he stops to ponder the pros and cons.

 

Drop a brick on your foot?  “Coitus!”  Draws a crowd of octogenarians faster than free fried chicken.

 

Words that don’t have an opposite but need one:

 

Unruly – ruly?  He and his wife were ruly, and shared a love of regular verbs, but divorced over the use of  pronouns.

 

Awesome  - awesomeless?  When the rancher belches with her mouth full, she looks awesomeless, and unsettles the cattle who fear earthquakes.

 

Disgruntled – gruntled?  He smiled a gruntled smile to hide the pain, until the Novocain wore off and he suddenly disgruntled his lunch.

 

Ineffable – effable?  He’s so effable I can describe him in one word:  But, let’s talk about you, beautiful.

 

Inert – ert?  Confucius say, golfer who put ert firecracker in shorts, likely to lose balls and have bent driver.  That Confucius is such a kidder! 

 

Incorrigible – corrigible?  That virgin is too corrigible, unlike her sister who is well known and liked by many.  

 

Disheveled – sheveled?  Unlike her unruly hair; her front teeth are are quite sheveled and admired!

 

Innocuous – nocuous?  Nothing’s as nocous as the obvious.

 

Intrepid – trepid?  He is so trepid, he got caught catching a cold.

 

Nonchalant – chalant?  So chalant, she worries about being underdressed in a nudist colony.  I agree she’s barely presentable.

 

Nonplussed – plussed? You can tell she’s been plussed. And enjoyed it. And looks forward to her next plussing, and afterwards a celebratory cocktail.

 

Overwhelm(ed) – whelm(ed)?  That whelmed man can juggle hot coals while Salsa dancing and still remember the name of his arresting officer.

 

Postpone – prepone?  National dog breath week is preponed.  When cat owners found out, they turned away in disgust.

 

Ruthless – ruthmore?   “A little ruthmore can go a long way and a buxom Ruth even morer.”

 

I’ll give you a tip.  I’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg.  But, feel free to relax and tip back a couple, and try not to tip over your drink.

 

Now let’s take a look at “draw.”

 

You can draw a card, or a tree, or draw your gun, or draw a line in the sand, or draw straws.  Put your clothes in a drawer, or wear your drawers.

 

So, is English a difficult language?  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.  Please do so quietly so at not to draw attention to yourself.