-=+Fiction6+=-
"'TURN THE TRUTH AROUND, AND SEE HOW IT READS FROM THE OTHER SIDE' wrote the man on the Chariot card, in quickly drawn neat block letters, and then rubbed his elbow on it and the words disappeared. It looked for a second like he was going to speak, but then he froze, and Madame Venga puffed a horrifically dense cloud of smoke at me. It was like being assaulted by a wet and somewhat diffuse angry cat, that smelled of poorly burned cherry wood.
"I coughed once out of politeness and then stood up. 'I'll show myself out,' I said, and turned to the door.
"She never even bothered to say goodbye.
"I walked three blocks to the corner of Mercer Ave. and caught the bus to Kentown. While it rattled along I thought about the truth. I hadn't seen much of it in my life, like most people, and I was a bit wary of it. I thought about the various things I knew, and decided that there were three things I was pretty sure were 'the truth'.
"One: Someone, or -ones, had hired me to investigate a murder... a murder that had not yet happened when I was hired.
"Two: I had not killed Angela St. Ives, and neither had the Wide Man, because we were sitting in the same booth at the Hotel Marrones having lunch when it happened.
"Three: My death was desired by parties unknown. There had been 6, maybe 7 attempts so far; Once with a knife in an alley, twice by poison, twice by sabotage, once by a sniper's bullet, and then the shootout, which may or may not have been started in order to get me dead.
"In addition, I had some bits of information that were not necessarily the truth, but begged attention nonetheless. First, the fact that no one seemed to know who the person was that hired me, including myself. I had received an unmarked envelope containing the details of the case and a rather large amount of cold hard cash. The details were unerring, despite having been in my possession at the time the murder occured. Second, I had been given a second unmarked package with two finely-matched pistols and about 500 rounds of ammunition, the ammunition being made of silver. And as a side note to that, I had used my own gun when I showed up, and in a chase had fired two rounds into the dark figure I was pursuing, which had no apparent effect whatsoever. And finally, I was currently attempting to follow instructions written for me by a man IN a tarot card.
"So far that last seemed almost normal ... "
(more later, too tired to go on right now)
"I coughed once out of politeness and then stood up. 'I'll show myself out,' I said, and turned to the door.
"She never even bothered to say goodbye.
"I walked three blocks to the corner of Mercer Ave. and caught the bus to Kentown. While it rattled along I thought about the truth. I hadn't seen much of it in my life, like most people, and I was a bit wary of it. I thought about the various things I knew, and decided that there were three things I was pretty sure were 'the truth'.
"One: Someone, or -ones, had hired me to investigate a murder... a murder that had not yet happened when I was hired.
"Two: I had not killed Angela St. Ives, and neither had the Wide Man, because we were sitting in the same booth at the Hotel Marrones having lunch when it happened.
"Three: My death was desired by parties unknown. There had been 6, maybe 7 attempts so far; Once with a knife in an alley, twice by poison, twice by sabotage, once by a sniper's bullet, and then the shootout, which may or may not have been started in order to get me dead.
"In addition, I had some bits of information that were not necessarily the truth, but begged attention nonetheless. First, the fact that no one seemed to know who the person was that hired me, including myself. I had received an unmarked envelope containing the details of the case and a rather large amount of cold hard cash. The details were unerring, despite having been in my possession at the time the murder occured. Second, I had been given a second unmarked package with two finely-matched pistols and about 500 rounds of ammunition, the ammunition being made of silver. And as a side note to that, I had used my own gun when I showed up, and in a chase had fired two rounds into the dark figure I was pursuing, which had no apparent effect whatsoever. And finally, I was currently attempting to follow instructions written for me by a man IN a tarot card.
"So far that last seemed almost normal ... "
(more later, too tired to go on right now)