Story by Neville Cole
PART ONE: BUCK UP BUTTERCUP
Harry staggered from The Bottled Blond sweating like he’d just run a marathon. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. His face was blotched, his pupils like pin pricks, but he had a smile from ear to ear. Harry fell into a waiting pedicab and blurted out two words: “Coach House.” As the driver pulled away Harry surveyed the scene like Caesar in his chariot returning to Rome until gravity got the best of him. His head fell back and his jaw dropped open. It was quite glorious. The lights above Indian School Road were comets bursting across the heavens. Harry finally keeled over for good just as the Coach House came into view. That big, dumb grin was still on his face. Then his penis exploded.
* * *
Tom could not believe it. His career was in flames. Twenty-five years with a perfect record and now this. A Performance Improvement Plan no less! Sixty days to prove himself all over again, or else. To make matter worse, it had been less than six hours and he’d already failed the very first objective. He could not bring himself to call his boss and tell her the bad news. His hand would not physically reach for the phone.
Objective One: Notify manager immediately of any issues or concerns that could lead to a potential schedule delay by phone or IM (not email).
Instead of sticking the plan, Tom sat in solemn silence and stared at his inbox waiting for the next shoe to drop. His cell phone rang. He tried mightily to ignore it. It kept ringing. He picked it up. It was Harry. Perfectly awful timing, as always.
“Harry?” Tom said quietly. “What do you want?”
“Tom Hopwood?” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes,” Tom answered. “Who is this?”
“Mr Hopwood. This is Detective Ramirez from the Scottsdale Police. I am afraid I have some bad news.”
* * *
Harry looked around. He was dizzy and confused. He’d blacked out and woken up in some pretty strange places before but never anything like this. In the shadows, a man in a tan houndstooth suit and teardrop crown fedora lit up a cigarette.
“Where am I?” Harry whispered hoarsely.
“This would be the morgue, brother.” Said the man in the hat in a cloud of smoke and vapors.
“The morgue?” Harry stammered.
“Yeah, pal.” The man said moving into the light. “Hate to break it to you, but buddy, you’re dead.”
“Dead?” Harry repeated.
“It’s takes some getting used to, I know.” The man said reaching out his hand. “Believe me. I’ve been there. Name’s Dick. Dick Downes. Dick Downes Detective Agency. Mind if I ask you a few questions? While things are still fresh on your mind.”
“Dead?” Said Harry again.
“Why don’t I give you a moment. You still need to adjust. How about a drink? Hair of the dog?” Dick pulled a flask from his coat and handed it to Harry. “Mind you, drinking ain’t the same when you’re dead.” Dick dropped his cigarette and pressed it under the toe of his gumshoe. “Neither is smoking, for that matter; but, good news is, this stuff can’t kill you anymore and, even better, it never runs out. I’ve had this same flask and the same pack of smokes since ’62! Don’t do nothing for me and it won’t for you. It’s the all about the ritual. Keeps me going somehow.” Harry took the flask from Dick and stared at it for a moment. It was glowing slightly in the darkness. So was his hand. “Go on,” Dick urged. “Take a hit. I don’t know why, but you’ll feel better. Harry took a sip from the flask. He felt a slight tingling sensation but there was no taste at all. “I got a theory that buzz is electrons or some kinda sub-atomic particles just knocking around. Hate to tell you but that’s one of the few feelings you got left. You might as well enjoy it.”
“How am I dead?” Harry asked taking another sip from the flask and returning it to Dick.
“Well, that’s what I’m here to find out, pal” said Dick tucking the flask back in his pocket. You died under what we call mysterious circumstances.”
“Mysterious?” Harry couldn’t seem to manage to say much more than repeat the last thing he heard.
“I’ll say,” Dick laughed. “You had a massive heart attack in a pedicab and your dick exploded. That was some night, brother. What the hell happened, anyway?” Harry reached down between his legs. Everything was still in place.
“Dick exploded? What are you talking about?”
“Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.” Dick was back in the corner leaning against the wall. Harry unzipped his fly. His penis was still there but was ripped open from shaft to tip like gutted fish. “Jesus!” Harry exclaimed.
“Don’t worry about it, bub.” Dick said quietly. “Not like you are ever gonna need that thing again. Believe me. Those days are done and gone.
“What the fuck is going on!” Harry suddenly shouted.
“Alright!” Dick said, suddenly back next to Harry. “Now we are getting somewhere. Anger is part of the process. Here’s the thing, brother. You are what we call DNG. Dead Not Gone. For some it’s just temporary; for others, well, like me, it’s probably permanent. My job is to figure out what happened to you and…” Dick lit up another smoke.
“And…”
“File a report.”
“A report? On me?”
“Yeah, you got it. See, until the powers that be figure out what happened to you. Until they read my report. Well, they wont make a decision on what to do with you without more evidence.”
“Everybody goes through this?”
“No,” Dick shook his head. “No. No. Some people it’s obvious. Some people got a long record. Some people got witnesses. A lot of people got it all worked out before they kick the bucket. Then there’s the likes of you. You got very few witnesses. Mysterious circumstances and all. Right now.” Dick exhaled a string of smoke rings and watched them drift away. “Right now, your best hope of wrapping this up quick is someone turns up at your funeral and gives us a clue. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise?”
“Don’t worry, bub. I always nut it out eventually. I’ve been at this seventy years or more and thirty before that while I was still alive. You’ll get your report. Buck up, buttercup! So, unless you want to mope around with the rest of these stiffs all day, what do you say we get out and do a little haunting?
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
These things don’t happen to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
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Dunno..comes close!.. Steve’s big adventure.
There is a degree of rather boyish vulgarity about this tale, as it takes place amongst a group of lads entering into their young adult years. Steve was renting the small room out the back of Mrs Zalups House that she used to have as her painting studio…Her boys; Maris and Harry were close friends of Steve, and since the passing of Mr. Zalups , money was rather tight in the household. The room Steve rented had no plumbing or kitchen, but that was no impediment to the young man..he was glad of a secure place to live after his parents separation.
We were all at the age of showing a keen interest in the opposite gender..mostly just a frustrated desire rather than a reality. But Steve did meet a girl…down at the caravan park..a hotbed of youthful desires and urges in the summer months.
Steve had met this girl..but of course, at that age, any sexual contact was mostly just clumsy fumbling….The older boys who were a tad (but just a tad) more experienced teased Steve on this…until one day he confessed that he and his girl had sexual intimacy.. of a kind..they had rubbed their genitals against each others..no more as she was having her period..
“Oh you silly bastard”..one older boy exclaimed “You’ll catch the pox doing anything while she is on the rags!”
“Rubbish!”…Steve hesitantly challenged..”You’re bullshitting me…aren’t you?”
‘Nah, mate…he’s dead right” the other older boy backed “ You have to disinfect yourself down there” he motioned with his eyes.
“Wash it with Dettol you mean?”
“Nah!..you gotta use a stronger disinfectant”
“Like what?” Steve was interested now.
“Turpentine”. The older boy advised “All over them”.
Of course this was contested by several parties but the older “more experienced “ boys insisted and even confessed they too had to use this method in their encounters with the dreaded “monthlys” of their girlfriends.
We will construct the scenario of that afternoon’s events from an eye-witness (Maris) who was just there out the back steps fiddling with the carburetor of a motor-bike. His mother ; Mrs. Zalups, a conscientious Latvian matron in her mid fifties was at the Hills-Hoist hanging out her washing…she held up a tablecloth and took one of several pegs held between her lips and was in the process of hanging it on the line.
Steve had been seen coming from the shed moments before carry a bottle of “Diggers Mineral Turpentine”..he entered his room and reached for a shallow bowl into which he tippled half the contents of the bottle….He then proceeded to drop his daks and standing close to the edge of the table, he lowered his genitals gingerly into the fluid in the bowl.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of having mineral turps spilled on their skin will testify as to the uncomfortable burning sensation experienced..a sensation that is felt some moments after the actual contact.
Steve soon felt this burning sensation in the most alarming manner over his genitals…He let out a shrieking howl and clutching his genitals in a firm grip, stumbled in a blind panic from his room to the back verandah, his trousers around his ankles forcing a lumbering, stumbling lurching forward.
According to Maris..:
Steve stood there in frozen indecision howling and looking toward Mrs. Zalups, both Maris and his mother were of course not aware of Steve’s predicament and all they could see was a maniac clutching his penis and balls and with yelling incoherency started lurching toward Maris’ mother..In truth, Steve was heading with utmost dispatch toward the only water supply in the yard..; the tap near the Hills-Hoist..right next to Mrs Zalups, who, gulping in wide-eyed wonder at the maniac heading her way spat the pegs , screeched, threw her arms in the air and ran away to the furtherest end of the yard…Steve immediately flung himself under the tap and poured water over the point of pain. A continual whimpering like that of an injured puppy emanating from his lips…Maris swears also there were tears in his eyes. Perhaps that was a tad un-manly of Steve.
Mrs. Zalups later confided to Maris ; “Dat boy, Stevie…I tink he be a bit crazy!”
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Missing something left field to frazzle the bejesus out of Harry Zalups for setting up Steve and missing a strong arm to make his brother confess to their mum the agony Steve was suffering and why.
I am really mad at Harry and Maris. 🙂
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Ah..don’t be too angry at Harry and Maris…they were just bumbling kids then..much like the rest of us.. https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/maris-zalups/
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My angst is equally attentive of the potential for Tom, Dick and Harry of Nev’s yarn that each is facing an uncertain future, if indeed it transpires Harry has anything appreciable we can call future, any of them for that matter. It is unclear to me if Harry and Dick’s conversation is between two delusionals who only imagine they have substance.
That raises question for me that Tom may be dead or may be passing, perhaps about to be told he is (he is to hear ‘bad news’). I recalled he could not “physically” pick up the phone and then he did.
Consider Ramirez himself might be a twilight world character.
… except Dick, yes, has raised with Harry the potential to be undead and so logic still tells me Tom might, too, have died and come ‘undead’. The linguistic dilemma to consider is Tom, Dick and Harry cannot exist in different statuses.
The story to date fits equally the notion of Tom, Dick and Very Nervous Harry, no doubt about that. 🙂
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That exploded dick has wounded my male security for all time…could such a thing happen?…and if so…..O-M-G!….I await resolution..let us hope (indeed hope) it is a good resolution.
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BTW…I see your bio says you are from SA. regional…what part if I may inquire?
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Haha. Nah. I’m really mad at Maris and Harry. I’m a mum. Mrs Zalup would be hopping mad too what they did to Stevie. 🙂
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I have to ramp up my privacy for a bit, ff so I would rather not say here where I am. I know SA passing well, however as I have lived in SA on and off variously and in different regions. I recognise the places I have seen you refer to.
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Well….that made me stand up and notice!…good one..kicks off nicely, looking forward to how it turns out..the worst possible scenario to an owner of a dick!
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