Authors: Josh Lanyon
N
O, YOU CANNOT GO BACK TO BED AND START THE DAY OVER. Come on, man up! The story is moving now, it’s too late to stop it. You know that. If you keep standing there with the deer-in-the-headlights look, it’s going to roll right over you.
Let’s try this again.
__________
If you decide to go to lunch at Claude’s, click here
If you decide to skip to the part where you and Detective Riordan have sex, click here
F
rom a lateral recess shoot two enormous tentacles — black, wavy as serpents, covered with hair, armed at the extremity with a strong double claw.
(Editor’s note: It might be useful to pause here and explain that “lateral recess” refers to a cave in a nameless African jungle and not any particular person’s anatomy.)
Anywho, the enormous tentacles reach forth noiselessly to within a couple of yards of where you stand, then two more follow with a quick, wavy jerk. And now behind these, a head, as large as that of a man, black, hairy, bearing a strange resemblance to the most awful and cruel human face ever stamped with the devil’s image — whose dull, goggle eyes, fix on the appalled ones of its discoverer — that would be you, though it’s easy to see how you might have forgotten in this endless stream of WORDS — seeming to glow and burn with a truly diabolical glare.
Wait. What was the question?
You stand staring into the countenance of this awful thing. Your blood curdles to ice within you. Is it the Fiend himself who takes such unknown and fearful shape to appear before you here in the gloom of this foul and loathsome cavern? Then, as your eyes grow more and more used to the dim shades, you make out a huge body crouching back in the recess, half hidden by a quivering mass of black, hairy tentacles.
Eww.
When the hell does Jake show up?
For a few moments you stand there — WHY? — then with a cry of horror you throw out your hand to ward off an attack. One wouldn’t expect that to be very useful, but the four tentacles already protruding are quickly withdrawn, and the fearful creature, whatever it is, seems to shrink back into the cranny. One last look upon the hairy heap of moving, writhing horror — upon these dreadful red demon eyes, and you, who have faced death again and again without shrinking, must struggle to resist the impulse to turn and flee. You do resist, of course, because people are watching — yet it is with flesh shuddering and knees trembling beneath you that you retreat, step by step, backwards, until you stand once more in the full light of day.
Vampire — insect — devil — what is this thing? From the length and thickness of those frightful tentacle-like legs (or leg-like tentacles), stretching forth from the cranny, you — who have (as previously mentioned) oft times faced down death but are currently running full steam ahead until you gain the ridge dividing the hollow — estimate that the creature, when spread out, must be eight or ten feet in diameter.
You look back. IT has not followed you from the cave. Why?
At this juncture of your meditations your mind becomes alive to two discoveries — one, that you have gained the farther end of the ridge; the other, that immediately before and beneath you, just over the slope of the ridge, lies the body of a man.
Uh oh.
Uh. Oh.
C
autiously, you set down the bag with the burger and fries on the floor.
From the sounds of destruction, it doesn’t appear that the intruder or intruders have noticed that the side door is standing wide open — or that the delicious aroma of fast food is now filling the shop.
Quietly, very quietly, you sneak down the nearest aisle of bookshelves, picking your way over the tumbled books and broken vases and smashed statues. If you can get to the faux fireplace in the back, there is a very real poker you could use as a weapon.
You duck down as you reach a section of shelving where all the books have been knocked out, leaving a makeshift window between the canyons of shelves. You crouch down and continue to the end of the shelving unit. You risk a glance around the corner. You can see the fireplace, but the poker is nowhere in sight.
Shit! Now what?
Suddenly it is dead silent in the bookstore. Not so much as the scrape of a page disturbs that unnatural hush. The hair rises on the nape of your neck.
It’s only too likely the intruder or intruders have belatedly noticed they are not alone! Your only chance now is to get out while you can.
You turn around to make your way back the way you came, but a giant shadow looms up over you. You only have a second to stare into the empty brown eyes of a complete stranger before the poker comes crashing down on your head.
Unfortunately, your overstrained heart can’t take this double shock. Crushing pain settles on your chest and you struggle for breath as you fall back on a mound of noir fiction. A pair of immaculate loafers steps into your line of vision. A deep voice speaks from overhead, but you can’t make out the words. Just before your vision dims and grows dark, you remember your mother telling you fast food would be the death of you…
A
s you reach the upstairs landing, you realize you didn’t bother to lock your living quarters when you went downstairs to greet LAPD’s finest, and now two members of that crazy tour group are wandering around your apartment.
That’s a little unsettling. Through the open bedroom door, you can see a heavyset woman pawing through your underwear drawer. Meanwhile, there’s an elderly man in a blue Hawaiian shirt tugging on the bookcase in the living room. He has sparse jet-black hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and a camera around his neck. In a minute he’s going to yank the shelves out of the wall.
“Can I help you?” you ask, and he jumps a foot.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see the woman in the bedroom slam shut the drawer and head for your bathroom. Holy moly!
The elderly man clears his throat. “I was just examining the workmanship on this bookshelf. It’s very fine. Yes sirree, a very fine piece of carpentry indeed. Mahogany, isn’t it?”
You have your faults, but bad manners are not one of them. “I’m sorry, Mr. er…?”
“Harrison. Henry Harrison.” Mr. Harrison smiles with wide and open friendliness.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison,” you say, “but these rooms are not part of the tour.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Harrison’s smile fades and he looks very disappointed. “But this is all part of the original structure, isn’t it?”
Yes, the upstairs rooms were all part of the original structure, but they are still not part of the tour. You explain all this politely, and Mr. Harrison finally exits stage left. You hover in your bedroom doorway waiting for the lady in the bathroom to finish up. Finally you hear the sound of the toilet flushing, the sink running, and the door knob turning.
The door opens and a woman with dark frizzy hair steps out. She smiles politely, but offers no explanation as she scoots past you and heads for the hall and the bookstore entrance.
You open your mouth to…well, to do what? This is such a weird, unhappy day. What’s one more weirdness? Besides, you can hear Mariah clucking after her straying chicks.
You see the lady with the frizzy hair safely out of your apartment and downstairs. As you reach the ground level, you notice Henry Harrison examining the paneling behind the faux fireplace, and he offers a guilty smile as he spots you. Mariah calls time and the tour departs as unceremoniously as they arrived. You lock the door firmly behind the last stragglers, ignoring grumbles that Cloak and Dagger Books was a letdown. There are days you would even agree.
Back upstairs, you shower, dress, fix yourself coffee and head downstairs once more to reopen the shop. You call the temp agency you used to use before Robert returned from the Heartland and started working for you. They promise to send someone.
You hope it’s soon because the quiet is already getting on your nerves.
No sooner do you think this than the phone rings again. This time it’s a reporter: Bruce Green from
Boytimes
.
__________
If you decide to talk to Bruce Green, click here
If you decide you’re hungry and you might as well take Claude up on his offer of lunch, click here
S
eriously?
Mel?
Okay. It’s your funeral.
(I hope that’s just a figure of speech, but after all, this is a Choose Your Own Adventure story.)
You catch Mel, who happens to teach film studies at UC Berkeley, in his office between classes.
“Hello, stranger,” Mel says, his warm voice growing even warmer.
You chat briefly and then you tell him about Robert. Mel is naturally horrified. Er, naturally Mel is horrified. (Although horror was all too frequently a natural state for him during your years together, come to think of it.) He’s even more horrified to hear that you seem to be a suspect in the investigation. This is the kind of thing Mel’s parents warned him about. Well, no. You actually
don’t
seem like the kind of person to get involved in a murder investigation, but they always knew you’d be trouble.
But to give Mel credit, he doesn’t seem to doubt for a second that you’re innocent. He even asks what he can do to help.
You realize there really isn’t anything he can do. Not now. You start to feel self-conscious about calling him. You wind up the phone call quickly despite your impression that Mel wants to keep chatting.
Before you hang up, Mel asks, “Are you taking care of yourself, Adrien?”
“Of course. Always.” You try not to sound testy.
“Are you —? Have you —?”
Found someone? “It’s complicated,” you lie. What’s complicated about being alone and lonely? “Are you still with Phil?”
“Paul,” Mel corrects gently.
“Right. The former student.”
“Former grad student.” Mel’s voice is extremely neutral. “Things are okay.”
Yeah, clearly not. And you can’t help feeling bitter satisfaction.
__________
Happy now, you goof? Click here
R
obert’s apartment is not sealed yet. No official yellow tape stretches across the front door proclaiming it a crime scene. Does that mean the cops haven’t had time to sift through Robert’s things? Is it possible they could be that sloppy? That slow? That gimlet-eyed Detective Riordan doesn’t seem like the type to overlook anything.
You hesitate on the walkway, listening to the palm fronds flapping in the breeze and the dull roar of the nearby Hollywood Freeway. Nobody seems to be around and you’re never going to get a better opportunity than this.
You unlock the door, push it open, and step inside — only to find yourself face to face with Detective Riordan himself.
“Well, well. Look who it is,” Detective Riordan remarks.
Is he talking to you or is Detective Chan also in the apartment somewhere? It’s your last coherent thought before the beige carpet heaves up to hit you in the face.
When you finally come around, you’re lying flat on your back on Robert’s none-too-clean floor and Detective Riordan is straddling you. He seems to have ripped your shirt wide open and he’s rubbing your chest with his big, powerful hands. Suddenly life just got a lot more interesting — especially when he leans forward and covers your mouth with his own.
__________
If you kiss Detective Riordan back, click here
If sanity reasserts itself and you shove him off, click here
W
hen you arrive at Café Noir, Claude ushers you to a booth in the back where you can close your eyes and relax for a few minutes. You listen to Piaf singing
“Non, je ne regrette rien,”
and you try not to think about what Robert’s last moments must have been like. In fact, you try not to think about Robert at all because if you let yourself go down that path, it’s going to be hard to find your way back.
It’s funny how you can spend every day with someone and yet still be going in completely different directions.
Eventually Claude reappears and sets a plate of linguine before you. The sharp-sweet scent of garlic and basil wafts from the tangle of pasta. You’re surprised to find that you actually are sort of hungry. He opens a bottle of wine, fills two glasses, and sits down across from you.
You don’t want to ask, but you have to because even you can’t help but notice Claude is acting a
little
suspiciously.
“So what really happened between you and Rob?” you ask.
Claude hedges, but what it comes down to is pretty much what you suspected: Claude and Robert had a little fling followed by a big bust up. Claude says the details are his business, and you agree. Except…
Except Claude wrote some, er, colorful letters and poems that he thinks may come back to bite him in the ass. In a manner of speaking.
“You could get those letters back, Adrien,” he says to you. “Listen,
petit,
you’re his best friend. Were. You’re his boss. You could come up with a legitimate excuse for going over there.”
“No. No. No,” you say, showing exceptionally good judgment for once.
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t —”
“Read my lips.
Non.
”
__________