Message-ID: <24378asstr$959685001@assm.asstr-mirror.org> From: Saynesberry@aol.com X-Original-Message-ID: <60.38d92da.26648040@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: {ASSM} The Saga of Blanche, Part VIII: Fade to Blanche Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 07:10:01 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: gill-bates, apuleius, dennyw, english The Saga of Blanche, Part VIII: FADE TO BLANCHE by Frank Saynesberry Well, I'm about to lock up the so-called offices of Grimbros Investigations for the last time. The beaten-up old filing cabinet stands in the corner, all four drawers yawning open and empty; the few files I didn't burn are stashed in a big cardboard box, underneath my cherished MD 20/20 wall clock, ready to be hauled out to the car. Just another empty "office suite" now, probably waiting for a wrecking ball. The only trace of myself I leave behind is on the far wall, which is a mess: in moments of boredom, I used to lean back at my desk and have "target practice" by engraving Janet Reno's initials on the wall in bullet-holes. Well, it'll give the landlord an excuse to keep my deposit; that should make him happy. Those were simpler times.... I know, you're waiting to hear about Blanche and the Dwarves. I'm getting there, okay? We've finally gotten to the last chapter of this story, and you've been patient with me. I appreciate it. Sometimes, y'know, I think you want me to tell the story nice, and easy....or maybe some of you guys on auto-scroll want me to tell it nice, but kinda rough. You know, like a big gang-bang, with all the Dwarves fucking Blanche 'till her eyes pop out, and then fucking the sockets....but there's just one problem. Y'see, it didn't happen that way. So now I'm gonna finish telling you what happened .... but it won't be easy. 'Cause this is the case I could never walk away from ..... Well, enough of this Proud Mary bullshit. Let's get to it. ************************************************ The last time we saw Coyreen, the Porno Queen, she had just been neatly impaled, from her pussy to her throat, on one of the long, curving tusks of a concrete statue of a woolly mammoth, standing in the midst of the La Brea Tar Pits. In a space of 48 hours, she had been directly responsible for the violent murders of a Sunset Strip hooker, an Engineering student from USC, an off-duty policewoman, a burned-out porno actor and junkie, a church choir leader in Watts, and, finally, Chang, the biggest, strongest, and most determined of all the Devil's Dwarves. Had she not died in the Tar Pits, she probably would have also killed her husband, Miles O'Smiles, but she never got the chance. She had also come close to killing Blanche Snowe, who now lay in a post-electroshock coma at Watts General Hospital, with the injured Dwarves Chief and Snap. I got the story of Coyreen's death from the only person who could possibly have told me: Vitaly Arkhoff, her former masseur, who was hiding out temporarily in the San Fernando Valley. When he returned Chang's body to the Dwarves, he had been met with cold, suspicious stares: if the Dwarves appreciated his gesture, they didn't show it. (Of course, two of the surviving Dwarves were still in the hospital, so the group hadn't really had a chance to evaluate the situation.) After very gently placing Chang's massive corpse in the waiting arms of Burt and Nacho, Vitaly had looked them both straight in the eyes and said simply, "Zee woman keeled him. I'm sorry. But beeg elephant keel zee woman." Then he had turned, climbed back in his HumVee, and driven away. Later, Vitaly would learn that the Dwarves were not angry or upset with him at all. In fact, after I told the Dwarves what had gone down that night, they unanimously voted to make Vitaly the Seventh Dwarf, replacing Chang. When I conveyed their invitation to him (I was beginning to feel like Kissinger, commuting back and forth between Watts, the Valley, and Palos Verdes, where Miles lived), he was astonished. "Well, Vasily, why the Hell not?" I asked him. "It makes sense to me. You know you're not gonna want to work for Miles O'Smiles after this, and I really can't see you just blending into some nine-to-five routine. No offense, but you're just like the Dwarves (shit, you're just like me!), an outsider. You understand 'em. They understand you. And then there's Blanche. Seems to me like you'd be one big happy family." The big man thought about it, but, ultimately, decided not to take them up on their offer. "Meester Greembross," he said, "I would like to be with zee Dwarfs, and Mees Blanche, but....." he shook his head, trying not to give offense, "Me and Dwarfs are all outsiders, yes, but .... ze Dwarfs, zey are American outsiders. Vasily watched zem, when zey weren't looking. Zey even look like America: deef'rent colors, deef'rent lankwages .... You don't see it, because you are American, too. But Vasily will always be Russian, a Russian outsider. Ze place for me is ze Rodina, ze Motherland." And that is where he went: back to his beloved "Zaint Petersburg," with a suitcase full of large-denomination American bills and a single unframed photograph, which he would cherish until the day he died. It was not a photograph of Coyreen. *************************************** On my last visit to Miles O'Smiles, I gave the porn magnate two things. First, and most important, were the facts concerning Coyreen's death. According to the LA County Coroner, and now in the professional judgment of the Grimbros Detective Agency, her death was nothing more or less than a horrible freak accident. I spared Miles the bloody details: he didn't need to spend the rest of his life visualizing the woman he loved skewered on a mastodon's tusk. I simply told him that she'd been driving under the influence of cocaine (which was true enough), and that her car had been struck by a much larger vehicle (also true). She wasn't snuffed by rival porn bosses, or thumped by the cops, and she definitely had not committed suicide. I hope the truth eased his mind; it was all I had to offer. Oh, the second thing I gave him? The retainer he had paid me when I first took the case. (In fact, I had put his original retainer down on the nose of that lucky nag Prince Charming, and had won it back at six-to-one odds.) It's not that I hadn't earned the money; it's just that, as things turned out, I couldn't accept payment for this particular case. Because this is the one that got personal. ******************************************* I had interviewed everyone who was anyone in the Coyreen case. I'd interviewed Miles, and Vasily, and all the Dwarves except Chang. (Yeah, I finally got to interview the Chief and Snap, who had both been released from the hospital after being patched up.) I'd interviewed the office staff at O'Smiles Productions, where Blanche used to work as a secretary; I'd interviewed Miles' tech staff, the bright boys who had created the mirror.exe program, and who were astonished to hear how the program had rewritten itself and plunged Coyreen into a homicidal mania. I'd even talked with the Under-Assistant West Coast Promotional Director of 'N Synch's record company, who said, No, of course the group hadn't done any "custom" recordings for O'Smiles Productions, dammit, didn't I know how BIG these boys were? Didn't I know that these boys just finished a tour of fucking JAPAN? .... Right, right. Anyway, I'd interviewed everyone except Blanche Snowe. So that's where I went next. It had been 48 hours since Coyreen's attack with the electric stun-gun, but Blanche still lay in a coma in the Intensive Care Unit at Watts General. I walked into the door of the Emergency unit, and made my way through the long white line of security guards and nurses by keeping my head down, mumbling to myself, and greasing a few palms: I'd been here many times before, and the staff knew me, and we all knew how the game was played. When I finally got inside the ICU, I had a brief chat with the attending physician, a dark-skinned young woman whose name-tag proclaimed her to be Razi Prazwitappichakthanom. I had not seen her before, so I flashed my phony police badge at her and started grilling her about Blanche. "How much of a charge did she get, Doctor, uh - - - " I peered down at her name tag again, trying to get it right. "Doctor Praz...Prazwittip..." "Call me Dr. Razi," she said in a neutral tone of voice. "Everyone calls me Dr. Razi. But I cannot tell you how much charge she got. Was not a single charge, you see. Was continuous discharge for multiple seconds. Altogether, even though I must say I am not the electrician, I think we can safely estimate she did receive a very big charge." "Isn't it unusual for a victim of electrical shock to go into an extended coma like this?" Dr. Razi looked bored, but maintained a polite, if put-upon, tone. "As I say, I am not the electrician, but yes, I think that since electricity burning victims rarely, if ever, respond in this manner, then, yes, it would seem to be unusual. You will please excuse me." Before I had a chance to ask her if Blanche would ever recover, she turned on her heel and went to read some x-rays hanging on a nearby light table. Okay, sister, I thought, I'll just check out the damage myself. I had already been told that Blanche was located in one of the farthest cubicles in the wide, dimly-lit ICU; and, once I got past Dr. Razi, she was simple enough to find. She lay in a steel hospital bed, just like all the others, with all the miraculous life-support paraphernalia clustered around the head of the bed: a forest of tubes and tapes and graphs and readouts and electronic gadgets that would puzzle an astronaut. In fact, I had to gently weave my way between several of the machines before I could even see her.... Lying there, as if on a bed of rose-petals, her arms folded across her breast, her skin luminescent, pale, yet brilliant, like the full moon; her hair as black as the deepest corner of the farthest galaxy; her lips red as blood against her snow-white skin....seemingly asleep, or perhaps resting, or perhaps dead. But such perfection, such unexpected, undreamed-of beauty! If she was dead, then death was more beautiful than life; if she still lived, I wanted her to live forever. I think I gasped; I know that I felt slightly dizzy; but once I got my sea legs, I edged closer to her bed, and stood looking down on her. And then, as the machines hissed and whistled and hummed around us, I felt an overwhelming compulsion to lean over, and kiss those lips, whether they were cold or warm. And they were rather cold at first, although indescribably soft and heartbreakingly sweet; but then, to my amazement, they became warmer, and I opened my eyes and saw color rising in her cheeks, the very palest pink rushing to replace the stark whiteness; and as my lips lingered on hers, her eyes suddenly opened wide: the clearest, darkest, brownest eyes I had ever seen, sparkling with life, but unimaginably deep; and we were literally looking each other in the eyes, when I felt her arms reach up and clasp my neck, pulling me closer. And now there were tears coming from those eyes, and from mine as well, and I felt her little body shake as she whispered heavily in my ear, "I knew you'd come! Are you a prince?" And I could only respond, whispering into her ear, "No, dear lady, I'm a dick." And she hugged me tighter, and the machines went into overdrive as her vital signs became normal, in fact robust; and we kissed and kissed..... And finally, after gathering ourselves, we managed to slip past Dr. Razi, and the entire staff, and ran to my waiting car, my pride and joy, my 1965 white Mustang convertible, and we headed straight for the Dwarves' house. And, yes, we lived happily ever after. THE END -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Archive: Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository | |, an entity supported entirely by donations. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+