Dear diary,
The next day passes slowly. My old man is outside watering the lawn. Our dog stands next to him, wagging his tail. I am home on summer vacation. My name is Lord Bryan. I am a British lawyer.
There are only four people who reside in our neighborhood:
Executive Stevens, who lives on his motorcycle;
Executive Bonny, who owns the eyeglass factory;
Executive Albert, who works at the filling station;
and Executives Betty & Midge, who are UNE FEMME.
(There is also one police station and one butler.)
So, like I said, the next day passes slowly. You can see the wind moving in the grass, and the water from my old man’s sprinkler is being filmed in slow-motion; that’s how balmy and relaxed our community is. I’m out wandering around in a field, just thinking about life and British law. “God, I love British law. I chose the right profession.” — Those are my thoughts.
Suddenly the night comes. It is a dark and stormy night. Executive Stevens is tearing around the corner near the woods when the rain starts to fall, and he narrowly avoids being hit by a piece of lightning. All the other neighbors also take the newspapers out of the pockets of their greatcoats and hold them over their heads, while they escape inside to shelter. Then everyone puts out the lights, and the castle becomes blue on its interior, signifying that it’s too dark to even see your hand holding a dagger as you sneak down the hallway to commit bloody murder.
Now, with the whole neighborhood having retreated into their respective huts or caves, to wait out the storm, all we hear on the soundtrack is the rain and wind and thunder.
Then the storm dies down, and there is eerie silence. Suddenly we hear a scream.
Upon hearing the scream, I think to myself: “Someone has been killed! Everyone is a suspect!” — Those are my thoughts.
Now, British law is different from U.S. law, because of the wigs (by which I mean fake hair, not the political party). They place white wigs on the heads of judges in Britain, whereas the U.S. did away with that aspect of justice.
So, when I begin investigating the source of the scream above, I aim my camera inquisitorially at Executive Stevens (for I’ve wisely begun to film a documentary about this mystery, in hopes that luck might bless me with an interesting outcome, which will be entertaining for the masses to watch as a series show when I finish editing it), and I say:
“Where were you when that lady just screamed? And who did you kill!? Answer me, or I’ll call the police!”
So Executive Stevens confesses to the murder, and he claims that the butler was his accomplice. But this turns out to be false — neither Stevens nor Devlin (that’s the robo-butler’s name) had anything to do with killing the town’s most beautiful and accomplished damsel — she was the prom queen, in fact — Executive Stevens only claimed to have done the deed, in hopes that, by falsely fessing up, he might avoid further torment; for I was tormenting him with my hardball line of questioning. — The truth turns out to be that, at the time of the crime, Executive Stevens was just innocently riding his motorcycle up and down the hallways of our shared castle. We found this out when we reviewed the feed from the security cameras. As expected, the assassination was accomplished by the two C.I.A. guys who will eventually come and investigate it.
Moving on from suspicious neighbor to suspicious neighbor, for my true-crime documentary, next I question Executive Albert, the owner of our neighborhood filling station, and he seems also to have been the main suspect, because he had a reason to want the young girl dead — for she was deeply in love with him, and she had written many letters proclaiming her feelings; but Albert kept giving her the cold shoulder, despite her good looks, because of his marital status. (Albert is the husband of a jealous, angry woman.) It is important for married people to remain miserable; that’s why Executive Albert shouted “No!” when the lust-filled maiden showed up at the cash register of his filling station wearing her cutest outfit along with her prom tiara and cried: “Impregnate me!” — So after initially writing his name under the heading “WHODUNIT” in my British law notebook, I must now blot it out and strike it from the record; because, yet again, my gut feeling proved to be a bum hunch.
Now, while wandering aimlessly, I discover a severed ear in a cornfield. This leads me and Devlin to the steps of the eyeglass factory. (Devlin, the robotic butler, has decided to accompany me, after being chased by crop dusters all the way from his office in Manhattan.) I tell Devlin to press the doorbell of the eyeglass factory, while holding in plain sight the severed ear that we found. Devlin rings the bell. The door creaks open and we see the attractive elderly Madame Executive Bonny (who owns this factory) wearing a nightgown and holding a bloody dagger. “May we come in?” I say. “Sure,” sez my latest legal opponent.
Executive Bonny teaches me all about the history of her eyeglass factory. She shows me how the lens-burnishing station works, and she demonstrates how to inspect the finished lenses. She permits me to operate the anti-reflective coating machines, while I capture everything on film. “This is documentary gold,” I whisper to Devlin the android butler. Devlin the butler bows politely.
Now one thing that really throws me for a loop is that Executive Bonny hated the small town prom queen who was recently slain in cold blood with a dagger after one of her boyfriend’s (the prom king’s) ears was cut off; and it was well known that Bonny would stand often in the middle of the town and wildly berate the young damsel, expressing her jealousy of the girl’s enchanting beauty and saying in a loud voice: “Beware, I will kill you soon!” while wielding the same dagger that was eventually found lodged in the poor girl’s heart. — The reason I use the phrase “all this backstory really throws me for a loop” is that I am currently so beguiled by Executive Bonny’s flirtatious performance that it’s hard for me to see how perfectly she fits the bill for “Prime Suspect Number One”. (The sight of the contours of her physique beneath the nightgown that she is wearing while she gives us this tour of her factory ends up turning on my android co-sleuth Devlin — one can tell when this robo-butler is turned on because his eyes glow red and begin to strobe — which makes me realize that I should probably feel seduced as well, therefore I follow suit.) So I cross Bonny’s name off the Killer List and say “There’s no way that such a sultry business owner could ever do something so atrocious as ignore a small-town’s mores: Bonny is therefore conclusively innocent.” I send this note to the British Law Institute, and they file it under “Facts”.
Moving on to the next potential culprit, I deduce that Executive UNE FEMME also cannot be the killer, because she was dining with herself while painting a portrait and writing a screenplay during the moment when the murder was committed. But I interview her nevertheless, and she ends up sustaining the longest inquisition in my movie (I just finished the picture last March and sent it to the Cannes Film Festival, and it won the Palme d’Or — then, when they handed me the trophy, I used it to slap all the judges while spitting at them and yelling “I refuse this prize: I don’t believe in award ceremonies: You are causing the Goddess of Cinematic Art to become a Bitch Whore: shame on you!”) but this is only because I find her nose and spectacles charming.
Now, like I said, when the C.I.A. guys show up, they solve the mystery promptly and for good. “Hi guys,” I greet them at the train station when they arrive; “are you going to introduce yourselves, tell us your names?” And the agents answer: “No.” Boy are they efficient. They find out that our small town’s most beloved member, the murdered prom queen, goes by the name of Jezebel F. Khrist, and her dad is the murderer.
“Eff Christ!” I gasp. “Isn’t that blasphemous?”
“Talk not to us of blasphemy, man,” sez C.I.A. guy #1; “we’d redact the LORD God from his own creation, if he dared to love the world. No, when we told you that the case involves a victim codenamed Jezebel F. Khrist, those last two syllables were not, I repeat, not intended to be interpreted as the popular catchphrase that you just mentioned — we simply meant that the dame’s middle name begins with the letter F.”
“A-a-ah, now I get it,” I say, greatly relieved. “So then her initials are ‘J.F.K.’ — I see: that makes sense!”
“Good luck guessing what the ‘F’ actually stands for,” sez C.I.A. guy #2, “cuz we’ll never tell you.”
“Hmmm,” I tap my chin in contemplation. “Wait! I think I know: it’s likely the same middle name as Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar, who always tag their record-high scores in pinball as ‘J.F.C.’ — therefore our small-town darling’s full name is—”
“Look, we’re leaving now. We’re sick of your bullshit.” Both C.I.A. guys now step into the railcar and their train pulls out of the station. I wave goodbye to them, but they apparently do not see me.
I now look down at the place where my friends were standing just a moment ago, and I see several suitcases stacked up, and each item of luggage has a note pinned to it which reads “DAMNING EVIDENCE ABOUT THE J.F.K. ASSASSINATION — DESTROY PROMPTLY VIA BONFIRE”; so I look up at the train, which is now just a speck in the distance, and I shout:
“Guys! You seem to have forgotten your luggage!” But it’s not clear whether they heard me.
“Can I help you, sir?” sez the night porter at the train station, when he sees me standing before a mountain of bloodspattered suitcases and yelling at a train that is no longer there.
“No,” I pat the porter on the padded shoulder of his uniform, “thanks, but there’s nothing that you or I can do now except start a bonfire right here on the steps of the train station. We MUST destroy this evidence, without delay.”
I take a cardboard matchbox out of the breast pocket of my smoking jacket and retrieve from it my last strike-anywhere kitchen-match. The porter assists me in finding a good-looking, full-bodied, attractive larger woman wearing a sundress, who is willing to let me use her ample bottom to make the wooden match ignite. Now we can dispose of the evidence properly. (It was important to me that I find a willing adult to consent to serve as my striking surface — I don’t like to go around just flicking matches on folk’s behinds without their permission.) Thus, after only about an hour and a half, we end up standing before a vast heap of ashes; and the atmosphere smells of burnt plastic.
“Thank you so much,” I engage in a firm handshake with the porter.
“You’re very welcome,” sez the porter with earnest pride; “it’s literally my job to help people with their luggage.”
No comments:
Post a Comment