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.Movies	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 2234 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, based on Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Any resemblance to person(s) living or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter List
- 8
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Spooky came back without saying anything to me. She had a satchel, which probably held either a forensic kit or her detective staff. Customers came and went, Sister Sarah wanted to talk about the fact that in Psycho you never actually saw any knife hitting flesh in the shower scene, but people were still sure that they saw the wounds, I got a letter of appreciation from the local pizza delivery, that day's MY NAME IS nearly sold a porno to a cub scout… For us, a typical sort of day.
My bosses sent a coded message in an Election Day flier that belatedly warned me that the Prince was on human soil. They encouraged me to keep an eye out for him. This phrasing could either mean making sure he wasn't in the middle of the street when the cars stampeded, or to make sure there were no witnesses when he went into full spoiled brat mode.
Not that anyone would ever admit to thinking that our next king could be a brat. That was a think-between-the-lines sort of unspoken caution. I don't even know why I'm committing it to paper here. I guess because of the way things turned out, maybe?
Anyway, at some point after lunch, he turned up at the movie store. I didn't hear him come in. First thing I knew was that His Royal Uriah, stood at my counter and politely asked if I could explain 'monster movies' and the attraction. That lead to a discussion of the difference between 'stands taller than we (really) do' monsters (Godzilla, the other Godzilla, King Kong and Yet Another Godzilla) and those monsters like serial killer Hannibal, who walk among unsuspecting humans, hiding in plain sight and normal for all appearances. Just, uh, just like we really do. Ahem.
So of course, when Spooky came back down, the first thing she heard Uriah saying was, "So, he kills them and eats them? And this is….entertaining? Interesting." I wanted to shout: By which he meant INTERESTING as in a revealing fact of the human psyche, not I'M INTERESTED AND MUST GO EAT ME A HUMAN OR THREE. I made a mental note to bring it up again later. I was sure I was on film right then, so I tapped my finger to remember this later.
Spooky drifted closer to the two of us, listening in. Uriah nodded at her, but kept wondering aloud about what this said about the human psyche. "I mean, especially once you realize that all their humor involves a victim."
Spooky was about to argue, I think, when the front door opened. Bill came in… With Winnie. "Detective Barasano!" I said happily. "Winnie. Come in, come in."
"Dick!" Uriah said cheerfully.
"No, this one's Not-Dick," I corrected him. It's okay to CORRECT the Royals. They don't want to look stupid in front of the lesser species, so it's perfectly okay to point out errors.
"Notadick!" he said, shoving his hand out to shake.
Bill laughed and took it. "I guess you've heard about my brother."
"Yes, we're all interested in Mary's backstory," Uriah said.
"We?" Bill asked. He stopped shaking, but didn't let go.
"Uriah's from the organization that's taken Mary in," I said.
"The convent?" Bill asked really, really quickly.
"Well," Spooky said, "it was actually the dick that said 'convent.' We just found it a convenient label."
"Should… Should I be alerting you guys to the CIA?" Bill asked.
"They won't like you bothering them," Spooky lied glibly. I mean, seriously, she just slid into the role. I always have to imagine that I'm in a given story, as a character. She just comfortably makes it up as she goes.
"And we're not political," I added, which is a comfortable truth. "We're no threat to your way of life, your cherished beliefs, or your parking places."
"Yes," Winnie said softly. "That's all true."
"Oh! And this is Winnie," I said.
Uriah offered his hand. "Ah. The fortune teller."
"Yes," she nodded. Her eyes went distant when she touched him. "You…. You have rather a lot of pets, don't you?"
Uriah yanked his hand away from her. "I, um. Well, yes. That's true." Then he laughed and brushed at his shirt. "Do I need a lint brush?"
"No, I saw…cages," she said.
"Hamsters?" Bill asked. "Do you own a pet store or something?"
"Something like that," Uriah murmured.
Bill lost interest and handed me an envelope. "I'm taking Winnie to the Car Show. Since I was in the neighborhood to pick her up, I figured I'd drop off a letter to Mary."
"You're going to make Winnie jealous," Spooky teased, taking the envelope herself.
"It was her idea!" he said defensively. "She tapped on the pocket of my jacket and said, 'Let's get that out of the way.' Like she was really psychic!"
"Just like," Winnie said, rolling her eyes.
"A-heh," Uriah, Spooky and I said in impromptu chorus.
The couple left. "Obviously, he'd have followed up the mystery of my fate if he weren't so interested in the contents of Winnie's pleasant blouse," Mary said from the counter.
"I think it's a peasant blouse," Spooky said.
"No," Uriah and I both said. "It's a pretty pleasant blouse." Spooky hit me.
Uriah made his excuses shortly after that. Tugging at his collar, he edged towards the door. "I'll be going. Just wanted to get comfortable finding my way around. I'll be back." He looked around the room theatrically. "Human buildings make me a little claustrophobic." He left, not noticing Spooky's gasp.
She spun on her heels and started slapping me vigorously. "OW!" I lied. "What's that for?"
"He's guilty!" she snapped. "You can't deny it!"
"Guilty of what?"
"The abductions!" Mary shouted.
"He used YOUR EXCUSE!" Spooky pointed out.
"Maybe he really is claustrophobic! Some of us are, the first while we're down here!"
"And Winnie says he has people in cages!"
"PETS in cages!" I clarified.
"And what are little people to you guys?"
"Aggravating!" I said, rubbing at the spot she was slapping me. It was merely posturing, though. Another year or two of hitting me with her bare hands and it would start to chafe. Maybe. "Look, as the Heir, he's the steward of the Royal Menagerie. Animals collected by previous monarchs, or their progeny. Animals presented by other nobles as gifts. Animals from the human scale that wash up on the shore. Most of them are tiny, and caged, and HIS."
"Then why did he act guilty when she said that?" Mary asked.
"Yeah, why?" Spooky added.
"Well, most people react that way when the find out that the woman's really got a touch."
"The Sight," Mary corrected.
"Right, the sight," I agreed.
"The Sight," she insisted. "I have to hear the capitals."
"Fuck Off," I intoned so she could hear the capitals.
"Back on the topic," Spooky said with a smile, "most people just assume it's a trick and convince themselves it's not real," Spooky said. "Like Barasano."
"You can't judge my people's reactions by the way humans behave," I pointed out. "This is not evidence!" At that thought I pointed a finger at Spooky. "And speaking of evidence, what were your findings on the dumpster?"
"Inconclusive," she said with a sullen glare. I saw no reason not to smile happily, so I did. I may even have gloated. But then she went on. "At least as to guilt. We confirmed it's a dumpster and what diner it came from. And…." She glanced at the door Uriah left through. "And there's something else.
"My people think… They think someone was in the dumpster at the time." She looked at me, her expression sick. I probably looked the same looking back at her. So much for gloating.
"I'll pry it open," I said. "Cutting torches might compromise the evidence."
"So you believe?" Mary asked.
"Not a word of it," I said. "It's all circumstantial. But we need to know. If we're ever going to solve what's actually happening, we need to know."
"I don't want to go," Mary said.
"Hell, _I_ don't want to go," I said, giving her a quick smile. "But I gotta." I turned to Spooky. "Send your detective people, but make sure they're all human sized."
"Why?"
"Last time I discovered a corpse, I threw up my last four meals. Down here, that qualifies as flooding."
"Eugh!"
----------
The dumpster had a lot of bad food in it, but no body. The detective Spooky sent with me certified it. "Those bones are all chickens or pigs," he swore. "Not humans."
"You're just saying that so you won't get washed away in bile," I said.
"No, no, really!" he stressed. Forensics guys have no sense of humor. Or maybe it was because of his shoes. They weren't particularly waterproof. I stuffed the dumpster back under the culvert and we headed back to the shop. Then I had a thought and went back to grab the evidence.
We went back to the shop by the back door. I slid the crushed dumpster between the back wall of my store and the dumpster I rented. When I stepped into the movie shop, Spooky was there. And she already knew all about what I'd dragged home. "What are you doing with the dumpster?"
"I thought we might be able to figure out who crushed the thing," I said. I walked past her into the store itself. She turned to follow.
"How are you going to do that? There were no fingerprints we could use, and no body inside, lucky for my team's shoes. And socks. And probably their belts." Typical Spooky, she already knew everything that had happened out there.
"Nope. I thought we'd ask Winnie. Just for some ideas."
"You're going to ask a psychic who's dating a police detective about what may be a crime which may involve a giant that neither of them are supposed to know about and could certainly expose the whole surveillance operations of two nations that are not yet prepared to reveal themselves to humans of this world?" Her eyes bugged.
"Yeah," I said.
"Okay," she shrugged. She tapped on my coat pocket. "But I want to be there. Just to see the look on her face when she sees a giant in her mind."
I picked Spooky up from the floor and retrieved the dumpster. Then I headed towards the front door, nodding at the day's MY NAME IS. He was a Harriet, though I'd have sworn that was a girl's name? Mary stepped out of her blind and showed me that she was, indeed, a primate.
"Yes, you have an opposable thumb," I said as I stepped by.
"Pick me up!" she shouted. "I want to go along!"
"I'm not adding YOU to the mix!" I said. "No people the size of a tarot card within arm's reach of the fortune teller. She might shuffle you against your will."
"You're taking Spooky!"
"She can hide just like vermin in the walls," I pointed out.
"Hey!" my pocket protested, but she backed me up with Mary. "You haven't mastered those skills. Not in any building but this one, anyway. Wait here."
JUST as we reached the door, of course, Uriah stepped up onto the sidewalk. "So, what's this?"
"Art," I said. Well, it had been my first thought. I could still sell it on the humans' weeBay AS art. Not a lie. Really. "We're going to go get it evaluated."
"We?" he asked. Then his eyes dipped towards my pocket. "Ah. Ahhhh, it's a joint effort. Trying to understand human art, and thus humanity itself. And sharing the experience for the mutual benefit of both nations."
"Why are you talking like a press release?" I asked.
"Bad habit," he said. "I'm in charge of the press releases. I was, um, thinking about how we might…release this."
"Oh. Okay. Well. Come along, then. We can all see what the evaluation tells us." My pocket objected strenuously. If there was a way to physically express vulgar language, Spooky was kicking like a sailor. But we were on the populated street at that point and she was trapped in my pocket.
I hadn't quite squeezed the dumpster all the way sealed, so it was dripping a bit. I left it under a concrete street bench rather than drip on Winnie's floor, and we went inside.
The Prince was fascinated by the arcade. There was a hanging sign indicating that the medium was with a client, so I let him look around while I stood close to an air vent. So Uriah was closer to the doorway where the readings took place when Winnie's mother came out.
And she came out with an axe to grind. Really. It was a fire axe. She flew out swinging, hitting Brobdingragian Royalty about the head and shoulders with the sharp end of the axe. Which couldn't have done much good for the edge.
She was swearing the whole time. I think it was swearing. I didn't know the language. But after you master a few, you notice certain things about when people use profanity. Short, terse phrases shouted at the top of one's lungs while attempting murder are either vulgarities or rather immediate demands for the presence of one's gods.
Mother just hauled back and swung, over and over and over. Uriah shrieked once in surprise, then tried to take the axe away from the crazy. She had the advantage, though, she wasn't afraid to hurt him. I stepped up and waited for the backswing, then slapped the axe upwards, out of her hands. Or so I planned. The wiry little minx had a death grip on the axe handle and actually rose up in the air with it.
The edge thunked into the ceiling and held her there, little booted feets kicking and flailing through the air.
"MAMA!" Winnie rushed up behind me and grabbed the little woman around her skirts. She begged her mother to let go of the damned axe, right fucking now.
"What the hell?" Barasano shouted from the doorway to the back offices. He had half-drawn his weapon, then put it away.
Mama finally let go of the axe and dropped. Uriah reached out to ease her fall, to keep her from knocking Winnie down. Mama twisted in Winnie's arms and bit his Highness' hand. I grabbed Winnie's shoulders to pull the pair of them away from milord Uriah. I lifted and spun, pushing them both towards the detective. He caught them, holding the pair as Mama fought and twisted to get down onto her feet.
Bill begged for the crazy little monster lady to explain why she was attacking Uriah. I noticed he remembered the name from the brief introduction. She rattled out some gibberish and Winnie looked worried. "She says, um, she says that she knows what you are. That she knows what you do. That in, um, the Old Country, they know how to take care of, I don't know the word. People like you, you, um, bad person, you."
She turned to me and Uriah and shrugged. "I don't… I don't know what she's talking about."
"Neither do we," I lied. I can lie FOR the Prince, obviously. If it's in his interests. "We'd better leave, we're…upsetting her." I turned and took Uriah's elbow. "Come along, now." And we made our escape.
"What about Spooky?" he asked.
"She isn't ready to come home," I said. Have to get the film out of the cameras, for one thing.
Out on the street, a dump truck was going by. I grabbed the dumpster and hurled it up on the back. We were done with that.
"Peter," Uriah asked as we walked swiftly home. "Peter, why did you throw the art away?"
"It's not art," I said. "It's evidence."
"Evidence? Of what?"
"Of what you've been doing in the Downs," I said. Can't lie TO the crown. Nope.
"I don't understand," he said.
I turned and grabbed his lapels, pushing him against a wall to get his attention. "Some people have been disappearing from the homeless population," I said swiftly. "Abducted or worse, no one knows. The only evidence we have is that someone, while giant sized, has crushed a dumpster with his bare hand. That limits the number of suspects.
"That woman back there is a psychic. I was hoping she'd touch the dumpster and either describe a specific giant, preferably not you, or a machine made to make it look like a giant crushed the dumpster. Instead, she instantly wants to kill you, because of what 'people like you' do.
"Spooky's going to want your head. So will the humans as soon as she calms down enough to explain to Barasano what's going on. "So right now, your one and only chance is that the abductees are still alive and you can release them. Where are they? Are they okay? Tell me, then go hide behind the Guards until we work out-"
"Peter, I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "I swear!"
"You're an asshole," I said. "Seriously." His eyes bugged. "Know that I cannot lie to a Royal. But it's been common knowledge in the nation that you've been a bully, you've teased and taunted and not-quite-tortured people for a few centuries.
"It's been getting worse and worse and people are just conditioned to accept it. Cover for it. Move on. It's patriotic to ignore it. Our love for our nation demands that we protect you, even from yourself.
"Clearly, you've gone past the larval bully stage into serial killer. Or you're on the way. I hope, for your sake, that you didn't eat anyone. But it's over. We are not in a condition to tolerate your jackass, bullying, always get your way style of living."
"Oh," he said. "That."
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