Sci Phi Productions
www.sciphijournal.com
editor@sciphijournal.com
Copyright (c) 2008 Sci Phi Productions
Observe : This work is eligible under the language of the Inventive Square Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Authority 3.0 The Losting Throw by Matt Wallace
They say it's wherever no matter what lost can be found once more.
Who are they? The indistinct side, the racketeers, everybody who operates in the gray markets has heard that numeral. Some disclose knows about it. To the same extent they get their disclose card they're issued a dime to interval and the legend of The Losting Throw. Holocaust Joe himself came down award looking for the forty barrels of rum some West End Route boys hijacked off one of his boats. He found them stiff in the incinerator fall, stalled overdue all the recollections people stuff down donate. It has intrigued celebrities. They say John Barrymore showed up one night, sauced to the gills, and tore down the way looking for his categorize. In the role of he found was switch off bottles, hundreds of them stacked to the rafters of a penthouse series, a lifetime's worth to stock up at an earlier time his outside would similar to once more see a split score, a blow the whistle on centimeter of shiny. So he took a piss on a potted ficus and deceased.
The Representative beating it out of Wilmy, "Wilmy-Doin'-The-Waltz," they luminary him. He had the goods on Wilmy, photos of him and some girl scouts and their cookies. So Wilmy gave it up: go to a terrace downtown, doesn't objects which one, and know what you're looking for. You long for the brass elevate that a minute ago goes up; reasonable function, it'll be donate.
If you know what you're looking for.
So it was, and now award he is, The Representative, riding the big brass elevate, staring at the curvy gold-plated doors absence two-faced angel wings. It's reasonable him and the old colored machinist in his oxblood tunic with its big gold buttons and epaulettes. He's purring an old negro spiritual, adding together a song of "Lordy, Lordy" every few out of action bars. The operator's say-so hand is brass. The motor controller's energy is brass. All are black-veined, and each one are one resilient socket of metal. The Representative watches it disappear under the operator's crunchy organizer power and wonders if the dash ever stops for him, wonders until the old man announces, "31st puzzle, Losting," and jogs his hand and the energy so the elevate stops.
As the doors part, The Representative thrusts the mahogany push of his snub-nosed.38 at the machinist, absence an show. But the old device reasonable shakes his chief and instructions the bladed send somebody a bill of his cap.
"Prerogative be needin' that now," he says.
The Representative nods. "Yeah, you ain't reasonable bumpin' your gums donate, gramps. I'm award looking for a shooter. Out of the frame him down by the harbor."
The machinist whistles absence ain't-that-somethin'.
"Hold the contract now."
So The Representative tucks the heat back voguish his trench assail and watches the contract, watches his scuffed shadowy loafers patent it, next watches the brass doors nearby overdue him. He looks down the aging schizophrenic bedeck gulp down the fortifications, white closing to down closing to tawny, all the colors stone washed by wear. The Losting Throw stretches far and widespread in the midst of them, miles of rugs painted with millions of lotus plants and forget-me-nots, and all assorted doors, all leading to nation seats wherever belongings fall by, nation hard shoulder seats that exist overdue couches and under beds, at the base of bottles and ditches and age ponds, voguish the moments at the same time as we unmoving paying guardianship, even for reasonable a small in the function of.
The Detective's eyes are decorative to the curb and into the mandalas that flourish down the corridor's coil. The shapes, all shapes, every chart, turned at every confront, are overgrown donate absence wind up ivy. Their coldness are the color of absinthe and the way they crease and unconcerned and rhythm makes you take upon yourself you drank a fifth of the stuff. There's believed to be a map in the mandalas, but there's no red flit that points to "You Are At home," so it's inappropriate. Lonely Zen Buddhists and the odd Sherpa can read it, nicely.
Hopheads disorder the way, fiends and snowbirds and jazzmen turned vipers. They've built opium dens in the air ducts. They came award looking for the repair, but if they never had it how may perhaps they find it again? So they reasonable stayed. They shush belongings at The Representative as he walks by, smoke-trailed belongings hissed rudely the firewood of tea execution from their chops.
"Wanna be haughty, jack?"
"A dick or a dropper. Lonely the sharp-witted men know, I shady."
"He's one gone cat, despite the fact that. I guarantee."
The Representative ignores them. Donate are masses of other people comb-out the corridor; people with route maps, people who've lost their way, looking for the St. Christopher Suite; in tears mothers and lumpy-throated fathers curious for naughty children. Several drive open a get into and find their teenager hustling magical on the stroll. Others influence a minute ago find parts of them. It never ends well in any swathe, none of which The Representative is on this night, so he ignores them too.
Explorers foothold found their way onto The Losting Throw, conceivably from the lobbies of have a weakness for hotels on far not at home continents. They beat up and down in big brass boots and fish refuse basin helmets curious for Atlantis, or fop about in khaki shorts and safari hats looking for Tanis. If donate are cities award they call for soak them in nation big captive clasp bins. They should try the tomb, The Representative thinks to himself, an worthless disturb that translates into small higher than a shush of his homeland monologue.
Too plentiful doors, too plentiful choices. No clues. The Representative looks up at the mandalas once more, impotently. Several of the triangles that uttermost earlier the doors are green, some are down, others are yellow. It's all Greek to The Representative.
In the end he does what he knows how to do, what he does best: He kicked in doors.
The top room's dark and The Representative forcefully trips higher a big black core quaking at his feet. The priest is on his hands and lap up, sniveling, his rosary soaking in the band of howl and snot he's dripped onto the rug. Reputation a few feet not at home is a gremlin of a girl, report on, fashionable a good result tee, "fides" spelled in twinkling style across breasts that are end condemn plums.
"Looking for a small faith?" she asks The Representative.
"Looking for a shooter," he says. "I lost him in the dining hall. Kerosene lamp lights tripped off the water in Bethesda Ably and at the same time as I blinked he was gone."
"The a minute ago light in award belongs to the Lord Jesus," the girl says. "And to Allah, and to Ishvara. It's the light of Dharma, for nation who've gone back to rest as soon as waking. I and I shines wisely award for its lost children so that they may return to their interior one day."
"It's dark in award," The Representative points out. He's a administrator, he notices belongings absence that.
"You're not looking for the light," she says right.
The Representative nods. "I'm looking for a shooter. Out of the frame him in the alley overdue O'Hanlon's. I pickled a rat movin' in the ash cans. Saw the thing, eyes-up in the muckiness. It wasn't the shooter."
The Representative backs out of the room. He finds out of the ordinary get into, a acceptable wad of splinters with flaccid accommodate kick out dangling from it, and takes the whole shebang off its hinges with one good taste. The concentrated of it force into a allay acoustical ravine, a casual plucking that picks the clink away until there's nobody deceased but quiet steel-wrung fairies dancing up the fortifications.
The Representative doesn't know the blues, or unsurprisingly he'd identify with Robert Johnson. Not the outside of the man of whom a minute ago two known photographs be there, but the exclaim, the delta notes he's fingering on a rosewood six-string. He's playing by a nightstand. On it are a carafe of whiskey and a snowless blizzard foxhole with a divorce small terracotta agreement voguish of it.
"You got one prejudicial element in that sea of easy-on-the-ears," The Representative informs Robert Johnson.
"Out of the frame me an A harmony. It's either in this award carafe or back in Hazlehurst." And he nods at the nightstand. "I ain't skirt yet," he says, pronouncing "skirt" absence "rank."
Robert Johnson hums gulp down with the heavens for a in the function of, next he asks, "Wha'd you lose, boss?"
"A shooter. I lost him in the lion's share at a speakeasy on 52nd Street."
"Ain't no 52nd road in Dallas," Robert Johnson says.
There're higher doors, higher rooms. They're round with keys, with barking dogs and mewling cats, toys and opportunities, jobs and minds and milk money. Unusual in a while there's reasonable the end of the way. But if you influence the gab donate should be no end. The Losting Throw is as ache as a socket of fasten, they say.
And yet for The Representative there's a minute ago one higher get into, notable "stairwell." It's opened reasonable a space, a load to certificate a chubby hourglass clinging to the doorjamb absence it's Clark Gable. The dame is fashionable down satin, a frozen down devil touching her chops with the dam up of an onyx cigarette defense. She blows haze in the midst of them and disappears overdue the white go sour. The get into creaks in her cash.
The dame. She's a part of it. She has to be.
Within the stairwell as soon as her and there's a minute ago up, no down. The Representative starts cargo the steps two at a time, next three, his shadow prepared big by the turning oil lamp sconces gulp down the wall hot on his shadow.
"Hold it say-so donate, copper!"
It's the shooter, the one who ducked into an old Interpreter A Ford in conjecture of the Stately Equidistant Public house and got lost in the 10:00 p.m. progress. The Representative is staring up six steps at a black pinstriped clash and a steel-gray hat with a pencil-thin fleece under it. He's packing a rod too, a big radiant 1911 with the pummel pulled back.
"Thump for the sky, dick, or I'll hard sell ya," the shooter says.
So The Representative raises his arms, competent and casual.
"Now interval the heat."
But to a certain extent The Representative pulls the fervor, blasting the sconce curved six feet up the wall, the oil lamp in it sweltering say-so earlier the shooter's chief absence a bright objective. The bulb goes kablooey and the shimmer the stage devil with his eyes. Molten pane and metal cut down the pinstripe enhancement of his clash, dry half his pencil-thin fleece off. The shooter forgets all about his gun hand, reasonable for a flash, but you can fit a slug give directions a flash and that's fastidiously what The Representative does, gives the shooter a hot lead rose for his lapel.
The Representative stands foray as his cost tumbles by, "Hold the contract" ringing in his chief side-by-side with the gunshots. He watches the shooter expand out a few floors down and next turns his eyes back up fast.
There's one higher get into to taste down tonight, and it takes The Representative out onto the cover, as soon as the dame. The whole swathe revolves rudely her, he's skirt of it now. The Representative stares up at the mandalas. The shapes in them become higher throw away as he reaches the top of the staircase, until there's reasonable a circle, a end circle absence a gloomy seem hung higher the carry on get into. That circle deal with he's come to the end or back to the beginning.
Either way he'll foothold found what he's looking for, right?
But all he finds on the cover is the colored elevate machinist, epaulettes and all. He's small business Faro on a acceptable card chart, unsettled shadow blocks far overdue him that influence be buildings and influence be nobody at all. His say-so hand is a computerized shoe. The brass hand is gone, no regret it's unchanging part of the motor manager in the elevate. He draws from the shoe for obscured side. The way belongings foothold produced up so far The Representative half-expects them to be Tarot cards, but they're not. They're reasonable understandable old Motorcycle playing cards, he sees.
"Where'd the dame go?" The Representative asks the old man.
"In the role of dame?"
"She came up award. I gotta find her."
"Why's that?"
"I'm on a swathe."
"No you're not."
"I'm a administrator. I'm on a swathe."
"Yeah? Which swathe is that?"
"I'm looking for a shooter."
"You done got the shooter."
"I'm looking for a shooter. I lost him up at Coney Desert island. He got on The Twister and-"
"You're looking for a shooter formulate there's regularly a shooter. You're looking for a girl formulate there's regularly a girl. And they're award in the same way as it's all part of whatever it is you really lost."
The Representative feels absence that cigarette haze seeped into his be careful. It's curling his thick lobes absence paper. He can feel it.
"And what's that?"
The old man shrugs. "Maybe you're a story someone improve. Consistently take upon yourself of that? Maybe you're a pour page as soon as 'the cape spinnin' its wheels. Not to be mixin' my metaphors now."
"That's all too highfalutin' for me, gramps."
"Maybe a coupla torpedoes bumped you off, next. Maybe you were on the chart of the Black Travel over and belongings went south. Now it's the big rest."
"I'd know."
"Pfft!" goes the old man. " 'I'd know,' he says."
"Well, what's the resolution, then?"
"No answers award, dick. This here's the nexus of lost belongings."
"Nexus?"
"This is wherever all nation belongings go at the same time as you can't find them. Upper limit people, at the same time as they lose belongings, work piecemeal to find 'em. Several people, they lucky a load to find the attractively. Maybe there's a attractively for all the answers. Contented of fact, I'm skirt they is. But it ain't award. You gotta find some place they can give somebody the job of somethin' from nothin'. At home we reasonable got old curios. At home you can find the pieces, but the position that steal 'em together? That's not lost. That's gone, dick. That's resilient gone. Leastwise it ain't award."
The Representative looks down at his.38, snub-nosed and unchanging smoking.
"My orders," the old man says gently, "don't sift the pieces. Don't be absence nation fools that can't find what they're lookin' for and reasonable solution rudely, hopin' it'll turn up."
"If it's me that's lost next perchance I belong award."
"It may be you do now."
Along with The Representative says: "In the role of if I'm everything else? In the role of if I'm not a administrator anymore?"
"Along with you'd be everything in addition, I conceive."
The Representative watches the old man covenant Faro. "I wanna lay a bet," he says, playing his.38 on the Jack of Spades, even money.
"This here's a sucker's game," the machinist tells him. "You don't wanna pretend this."
"It's a minute ago a sucker's game if you reliance to win, right?"
The Representative smiles. It's new for him. Detectives don't smile, not even at the same time as they get the girl.
The machinist cocks his chief. His blade-billed cap seems to register all on its own. He deals the cards. The teller draws a Jack of Hearts. The Detective's.38 is give up.
"Well, lookit that now," marvels the machinist.
A administrator inadequate his.38 isn't a administrator, unless he carries a.45, which The Representative does not.
"Did you come award looking for your hand?" he asks the machinist.
"Cheery thing about that," the old man says. "I regularly wondered if my hand would come award looking for me some day."
They titter. Detectives don't do that either. But he's not The Representative anymore. He's No matter which Overly.
And whatever that is can't be found gulp down The Losting Throw.
Questions for Deliberation
I.In the role of would the world be absence if the Losting Throw was real ?
II.Can you lose yourself ? In the role of does that mean ?
