Tag: extra-dimensional

Story, The Best Results Blog

The 8:00 PM ferry

Dogsandbikes.com

Is my life better or worse since the bag, SFW mused, watching the docked Gambit recede from the stern of the ferry. She opened her handbag and gazed into its blackness wondering what happened to all the things she put inside that disappeared then reappeared. Walt gazed back, unseen, still stunned by what he’d seen from the other side of  the open bag. She relaxed forward on the railing as the sun slowly dropped toward the horizon.

“I don’t remember seeing you on the ferry out here,” a man said. She recognized Macallan’s voice. “Mac,” she said, turning, inching close in to him like she would a lover. This wasn’t a flirtation, but a sudden need to be encircled by someone familiar. “In fact, I swear I saw you get on that boat over there with someone a few hours ago. Different dress, but she had your walk.”

“Do I have such a distinctive way of walking?”

“Did you know that a person’s gait is as individual as fingerprints?” Did I leave fingerprints? She began thinking about details. Could she just sail away on the 8:00 PM ferry trouble-free? Now there was Macallan to consider.

“You know,” he said. “Alethia has family here. We don’t get here as often as we’d like but I’ve seen hundreds of sunsets and this one’s going to be a good one.” She nodded. There will be a story tomorrow about a yacht abandoned on the island, and a search for the owner. Hopefully they won’t find the body or the dress. Maybe a witness saw them together. Maybe she left fingerprints or something else behind on the boat. Macallan will quickly piece it together so she decided she would tell him what happened before they docked at Mykonos.

“We’re out here on this ferry in another part of the world and I’m hoping you can clear something up for me. This has been eating at me for weeks.” She smiled. “How did you do it? How did you get those clothes out of my store?”

“Mac, who is this?” a woman’s voice said. SFW turned toward her, extended her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Susannah Fontaine-Williams.”

Let’s leave things as they are for today and end with the cloudless sunset that didn’t quite live up to Macallan’s prediction.

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Story, The Best Results Blog

The lone witness

Dogsandbikes.com

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Breathing hurt. Susannah Fontaine-Williams quickly peeled off her suddenly blood-stained dress. She poured what was left of her bottled water on her hands and wiped clean the blood with the unstained parts of the dress. She tossed the dress and the bottle down the cistern into which the tall Greek man had staggered and fallen with the knife buried hilt-deep in his gut.

For a moment she stood naked in the shadows, save for the sunhat that had remained firmly on her head. She strained to listen for sounds, anything, approaching voices, footsteps, a dying man struggling in the sickly green water. But all was quiet. She pushed the gravel with her feet to make sure her hearing still worked. Except for a lizard standing atop an ancient wall, there wasn’t another creature in sight.

From her bag, she pulled the cute blue and white striped dress she had shoplifted in Santorini a few days earlier. Though she hadn’t tried it on first, it fit perfectly. She sat on the edge of the cistern, closed her eyes, and caught a vivid glimpse of an alternate life. She sat by a swimming pool dangling her feet in the cool water watching Bob Williams playing with their triplets. He picked up their daughter, tossing her gently and she splashed down, holding her nose to keep the water out. “Me next, daddy!” the boys screamed. 

Story, The Best Results Blog

Lovin’ the Ruins

Dogsandbikes.com

“Because Delos was sacred, as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, no births or deaths occured here. The sick were not permitted entry, nor were pregnant women. That island,” Tassos pointed to Reinia, “the sick went there to die and that is where the women gave birth.” “Didn’t thousands of people live here? What happened to all of the people?” Susannah Fontaine-Williams asked. “Ah,” Tassos replied. “I assume you mean after the invasion. 20,000 people lived here – all were either killed or enslaved. But the interesting thing is, no human remains have been found on the island to this day.” The late afternoon sun burned and SFW clinged to the slowly lengthening shadows. She leaned against a shaded wall startling a lizard, sending it scampering over the rocks. “We call them ‘crocodelos,'” he said.

“Try to envision it as it was found more than a century ago,” he went on. “Rubble everwhere. Much was covered by vegetation, like over there on that hillside. Only a third of Delos has been excavated and recovered. It is very slow going. Most of these buildings were three stories high. It’s hard to picture, isn’t it?” She nodded yes, closed her eyes, and her TV mind played a documentary of toga’d people conducting their affairs and discussing philosophy on the crowded narrow streets as warships filled the harbor on the eve of Delos’s destruction.

Ruins and rubble.
Ruins and rubble.

The afternoon heat radiated from the stone, marble, and rubble. Susannah Fontaine-Williams felt just a touch faint and longed for a glass of cold water, chased by that sublime Cuban rum cocktail they served at the pool bar in Mykonos.

Tassos proved to be a thorough guide, walking her through the enormous agora, to the theatre, to the Temple of Apollo and finally to the museum and the little refreshment store. He showed her elaborate tile floors, translated the Greek inscriptions for her, and described the many cisterns and wells and other clever ways the Delosians gathered, saved and used the scarce fresh water. “Let me show you the hidden cistern,” he said. “Very few people get to see this.”

A ship’s horn sounded and she peered over a wall to see the 5:00 ferry pulling in to dock. They came to what may have been a courtyard surrounded by walls with a large cistern to one side in the shadows. “Look,” he waved her over. “The water’s such a bright green,” she said. “It’s the minerals,” he said. “Mostly limestone. Very acidic.” He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. She thought she would have to endure a kiss, but instead, she felt his hands gently on her neck and she tried to take a step back. He pressed his thumbs on her windpipe and she gasped for air. “You’re my first American celebrity,” he said, squeezing just a little bit tighter.

The 5:00 ferry unloads.
The 5:00 ferry unloads.

Want to know why this post’s title is immensely clever? Check out “Love in the Ruins” by Walker Percy. 

Story, The Best Results Blog

The billionaire’s gambit

Dogsandbikes.com

Susannah Fontaine-Williams lay on the prow of a strange man’s  yacht propped back on her elbows, wishing she had her wide-brimmed floppy hat to shade her from the hot sun. The fast boat etched a creamy V through the Aegean Sea at nearly 50 knots.

She had already bought her ferry tickets to the Island of Delos when a man who introduced himself as Tassos offered to speed her there personally on his yacht. It was the kind of opportunity that presented itself to her frequently when she traveled alone, and the sort of offer she rarely refused. Who would? It didn’t hurt that he was striking.

But she hesitated an instant, perhaps because he had one blue eye and one brown one. In that moment between yes and no, Tassos convinced her, explaining that he had made his fortune in shipping which allowed him to indulge his interest in archaeology. “I will be your personal guide on ancient Delos. I can show you things you could not possibly discover on the tour.”

Before boarding the 60-foot craft, she’d said, “I thought you said you had a yacht.” She had then taken a look around to see if there might be someone else with a larger boat waiting to whisk her away.

She reached into her bag hoping that maybe she had stuffed a hat in at some point but knowing she hadn’t. Her hand felt something smooth and cold and pulled out an ivory-handled dagger with a leather blade cover. She gasped, not with surprise, but at the knife’s intricate beauty. She turned it over, unsheathed it, rubbed her thumb along the blade.  “Sharp,” she thought. It had the symbol of the ankh delicately carved on the fat part of the blade on both sides.

She tucked it back in the bag, remembering where so she could study it later at her leisure. She rooted around some more and pulled out an unfamiliar floppy sun hat which she placed upon her head. It fit perfectly and the wind did not blow it off.

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The view from the deck of The Gambit as it approaches Delos.

 

Story, The Best Results Blog

White out

Dogsandbikes.com

A long time ago my people would correct errors in any number of ways. For large or infuriating mistakes, we liked to rip a page from the typewriter, crumple it, and toss it into a wastebasket. For smaller mistakes, we would turn the platen to easily get to the line in question, then apply whiteout, a product used to obscure letters and words, then turn the platen back to the original position and resume typing.

The editorial committee have determined (or is it has determined?) that the last chapter, The Hyphen Backstory, is a catastrophic error and in fact doesn't work for the overall storyline we've got going. I do happen to be in Greece and I was swept up in the moment and thought wouldn't SFW not only travel to Athens but in reality have a secret family? This is, of course, completely ludicrous. Nonetheless, I swore a solemn oath not to delete any more posts in the SFW adventure and so I must ask the both of you to disregard the last post. Consider it a dream or a fantasy, possibly even an hallucination. While there may or may not prove to be a Bob Williams there certainly can be no triplets.

I apologize for any inconvenience, but I really can see no way to resolve the story if the previous chaper is not disregarded. I'm open to suggestions, however. Anyway, thanks for your time. If anyone needs anything, please feel free to comment or drop me a line. Thanks.

Story, The Best Results Blog

The hyphen backstory

Dogsandbikes.com

 No one asked Susannah Fontaine-Williams about her hyphenation. She didn't avoid talking about Bob Williams, it just didn't seem to come up. They'd married on the Greek island of Phraxos when she was just 20 or 23, depending on whose story you believed, produced an adorable set of triplets, then went their separate ways. Still deeply in love they recoupled several times yearly usually with the changing of the seasons. For those brief, blissful periods, mostly spent somewhere in the Mediterranean, they seemed to be nothing more than a passionate young couple traveling with overachieving triplets (more about them later).

She always brought something exotic for Bob and their threesome so most times, she'd check an enormous bag and despite her frequent traveler status, have to pay for the extra weight. But not this time. She whistled as she breezed by curbside check-in at JFK and straight to the TSA pre-screened line with nothing but a carry-on suitcase and a stylish handbag created by a mostly unknown designer.

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Macallan finds nothing in SFW’s stylish, yet functional bag

Dogsandbikes.com

The head of security at Neiman’s, Macallan, saw what he saw in the monitor and radio’d the doormen to stop the blond talk show host as she left the building. The man everyone called  Single Malt very much liked Susannah Fontaine-Williams. They’d met a few times in the massive department store and she chatted with him as if they were old grade school buddies who’d somehow lost track of each other over the years. She remembered his wife’s name and how old his kids were. He made a point to DVR her show though he seldom had a chance to watch it, what with the crazy hours and the side jobs.

So when Darrel’s voice came over the radio, “She’s here boss,” he felt more than a tinge of sadness as he made his way to the 52nd Street entrance. He found Susannah Fontaine-Williams and Darell talking  basketball. “If I was the NBA comissioner, Miss Fontaine-Williams…” “Please, Darrel, just call me Susannah already.”

Darrel continued, “…first thing we do is get rid of at least six, maybe eight teams. Talent’s too diluted.” She nodded appreciatively. “Then, I order the refs to start calling ‘traveling’ again. Anyone can make Top Ten if you can take four steps to the basket!”

“Mac!” SFW squealed. Macallan watched her face and body language and thought, wow, for someone caught shoplifting on camera she is one cool customer.

“Miss Fontaine-WIlliams,” he started. “I mean, Susannah, I hate to ask you this, but I need to have a look inside your bag.”