The Ilium Obligation (A Matt Savage Adventure) Chapter 16

[seymoure]

Boris & Natasha Want a Rocking Horse

 

“I wish I had an answer to that because

I'm tired of answering that question.”
-Yogi Berra

 

“You are going to tell me what I want to know,” she spat at me like a cobra.

“Like I have a lot of secrets.”  I pulled back more than cool would have permitted. Then again, cool and I aren’t even roommates, much less friends.

“Where is the horse?” she asked with an insistence that told me that it was the last time she was going to ask. I knew her tone was a lie. If she killed me, she had no idea that any one else knew the answer.

That gives you a little power. It was a bit like knowing you have great hole cards, with nothing much showing.

“Try a stable.” My hope was that the tremble in my voice was one of those things that you can notice but others can’t hear. I wanted to come off much more Travis Magee than Dorothy Gale, which was what I felt like.

The new crop of stars and birds circled my head as the incredible slap of the pistol rang through my face. Unconsciousness was a blessing. It was an alternative to the absolute harvest of pain that would greet my waking.

She really scrambled my brains in response to my ill-conceived witticism.

Hours must have passed.

When I crawled back to the edge of that dark canyon, and up to the blazing bright light that being awake promised, I saw her standing in the middle of a group of men. They were all massive figures and hovered around her like a cadre of uncles protecting a Prom Queen niece from the slavering male world.

One of them noticed that my eyes were open and told the others such.

Two men picked me up and returned me to the seat where my first inquisition had taken place.

She slipped onto a seat next to me and leaned in with a cloth that she used to clean my face. It was indescribably cool on the skin.

“Let’s try this again.”

© C. Wayne Owens
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