The "Expletive-Deleted" Case - Entry 18

I sputtered and coughed myself awake, emboldened by the fact that while wet, I wasn’t yet dead...and further emboldened by the fact that Randy, lopside-hanging blond-wig and all, was standing and staring off down an adjacent corridor, looking none the worse for wear, considering the last time I got a good look at him he was a woman.

Turning and finding me awake, he smiled and adroitly explained how he managed to escape from Shinkleblossom’s clutches as she miscalculated which of the tunnels were to release the torrent of sewer-water that rained down on me; they too were hit full-barrel by the shotgun-tube of water that had knocked me unconscious, but Randy was able to anticipate the wave and ride it down into the open area where it gathered; it was at that point that Randy, while searching for air, found me bubbling out the last of mine, and yanked me up and out to safety. The question of Shinkleblossom’s whereabouts, however, remained open: Randy caught a glimpse of the old woman stopping dead and staring into the oncoming deluge before taking a face-full of rapid, tunnel-wide shooting water, but lost track after he was shot out of the tunnel like so much undigested corn after a frosh-week kegger.

He tried to explain to me the secret of Shinkleblossom, but I had already figured it out, thanks to her eerie sing-song screaming in backwards-talk: Mossol-Belk? The Nihs family? Mossolbelknihs was Shinkleblossom backwards, and Tabitha Shinkleblossom herself was indeed the Mossl-Belk that I recognized so vividly during my Tallhallowockian tribe Interweb research. She had tried to assimilate herself into our society, into our population, but in doing so had broken down completely both mentally and physically; her reasons for emerging as an old, vile woman let loose in the suburbs of Hammertown, as well as her self-impelled involvement with our small Detective Agency, were nonsensical at best, but what kind of logic could one really expect from one who had long ago crossed-over from the quasi-delightful streets of Hammertown to the frenzied, chaotic ones of Crazytown? Randy and I had our questions, numerous and complex, but swallowed them all in a gasp of air as the tide dropped: there, among the mildewed rubble of collapsed tunnels and the ruins of some sub-aquatic habitat, lay Mossol-Belk-nee-Tabitha Skinkleblossom, twisted and crushed, a corpse that somehow seemed more alive when dead.

Randy and I stood and stared, looking for any applicable sign of life, for what seemed like hours; the silence was finally broken by a few gurgles, a jumping noise that begat a rolling, thunderous laughter...Randy was laughing so hard that he was doubled over, tears inadvertently spraying from his face as he let loose the hideous demons that had been dogging him since his first encounter with Shinkleblossom. After he calmed to the point of being able to stand upright, I put my arm around him and said what every Lawson Detective Agency © Detective looks forward to at the beginning of every case: Let’s go have us some Brazil-Nut-Job Caramelized-Cinnamon coffee, as that’s the recuperation blend.

And since I already had an unpaid tab at One Duke, hey...it was on me.