Chapter 12: the really short chapter where all hell breaks loose

[from an unfinished, and unstarted, mystery novel]

Frank sat up with a jolt. A sound had awoken him, but stubbornly refused to last long enough be identified. Confusion and curiosity were swept unceremoniously aside in favor of dizziness and nausea. He closed his eyes and sat there in bed. One minute passed and he opened them again and looked slowly around the room.

Jackie was gone. Frank dimly recalled drunken attempts to remove underpants, uncoordinated fiddling with one another’s parts and, possibly, an orgasm. He giggled at the sheer romance of it.

He finally decided to get out of bed and stood up and made a rough attempt to shake and stretch the chains of encroaching middle age from his aching body. After a few moments he decided he had succeeded as much as he was going to and plodded nakedly towards the kitchen. Some rogue organ in his side threatened to explode as he reached up into the cabinet for a coffee filter, but he paused and the feeling passed.

Once the coffee was brewing, Frank climbed into the shower to see if the hot water could wash away some of the grogginess. At one point he thought he heard the phone and stuck his head outside the shower curtain, but was greeted with only silence, so he grabbed the shampoo and went to work on his thinning hair.

As he was toweling off, the phone rang again. He considered not answering it, but thought it might be a prospective client, or even Jackie. With a sigh he walked into the living room, leaving a trail of wet footprints across the hardwood floors. He picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.

“Jesus Christ, Frank! Don’t you ever answer your fucking phone?!?” shouted a slightly familiar voice on the other end.

“Who the hell-“ Frank started.

“Listen, you’ve got no time, buddy. You’ve apparently asked the wrong questions of the wrong people and it has gotten back to even more wrong people, if you catch my drift. You have to get off the grid. Get out of town – NOW! They know who you are and this thing may be bigger than you ever could’ve guessed.”

Frank tried again to ask the identity of the overagitated caller, but was greeted with only a dial tone.

Then he heard two car doors slam outside. Then footsteps coming up the stairs to his garage apartment. Unsure of where he had left his gun, Frank reached instead for the supposedly ancient ceremonial dagger the crazy old gypsy lady had given him. Remembering her ridiculous words (“This dagger, it’s name is Horatio, it will be the only man you can trust when the time comes…”), he hid the knife behind his back just before his front door exploded inward in a hail of splinters.