One of Those Nights

"I'll not have you touchin' my little girl!" He grabbed his daughter roughly and a little too familiarly around the waist and hips. "Not when I myself have barely---"

He caught himself just as someone playing an organ offstage hit about fourteen keys simultaneously, musically (if not exactly euphoniously) underlining the shock registering on the faces of those present. Violet's eyes were darting left and right and even -- as a tiny figure scampered by her, headed into the pub -- downwards for a sec. Sister Margaret looked as though she was about to pop Jack one in the snoot. Joe's mother fell backwards through the door still swinging from the dwarf's passage.

And from the alley came a roar: Bill, unleashed by fury, of a sudden moved by hatred of his rival more than he was content to let his disappointment of a son be beaten to death, it was Bill now leaping into the fray.

"He'll be touchin' whatever he wants to touch, Jack McGilligan," Bill's voice boomed, "and whoever come to that!"

Sister Margaret, cool as usual but a little disoriented by the turn of events, turned and popped not Jack but Bill in the snoot, and the old drunk crumpled to a heap there on the sidewalk. The organist, having dropped and then reassembled the sheet music for all this month's shows, struck up "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling." It was a weird but not-bad selection.

Violet writhed out of Jack's grasp and bolted into the pub. Sister Margaret, rubbing her knuckles, seemed to forget her position for a moment. "What," she wondered aloud, "what in the hell

The Mask's Black Secret

What the hell was that?” Swotsy scanned the evening gloom.

“Cats. Just a bunch of cats. This whole town is filled with godamned cats.”

“Yeah, well, looks more like rats to me. If those little fur balls are cats, they’re the smallest ones I’ve ever seen. What are they, pygmies?”

Violet looked at her and then began to laugh. She bent over double, coughing as she sucked in the cold air. Despite the pain she couldn't stop and howled even louder.

“And what, may I ask, is so funny?” Swotsy was in no laughing mood. The situation was coming apart at the seams and it looked like Violet might be doing the same.

“Not pygmies.” Violet tried to stand upright, but didn’t manage. Her entire frame shook with manic laughter. “Those are, they’re . . . dwarf cats,” she finally choked out and then burst into tears.

Joe sat by himself, stretched out on a town square bench, hidden behind a cluster of snow-clad maple trees. It was cold, biting cold, but somehow it didn’t register with him in the least. His mind was far from snow and cold. The tiny piece of paper he held in his frozen fingers fluttered carelessly in the wind, a miniature white flag.

He had a nasty burning sensation in his stomach, as if he’d eaten lava for lunch. It briefly crossed his mind that he might get sick; that he might in fact vomit. He took a deep breath. The air was glacial, yet his mind was on fire. He felt like he’d been strung up in a furnace and hung out to burn. Slowely. ‘I’ve gone to Hell’, he mumbled out loud to no-one. Pearls of sweat beaded across his forehead.

That last ingredient in the beauty facial. The Black Mask. It couldn’t be and yet there it was, written in the unmistakable flowing script of his mother. No wonder she had kept it a secret. Christ, not secret by half enough. Dwarf juice. Crème de Nain. It couldn’t be, yet . . . A hormone, an enzyme, a molecule – what did he know? Something particular to the dwarf metabolism, something unique. Something found only there. Alice probably didn’t know exactly what it was either. It was just something that worked. The final ingredient leading her down the path to preternatural beauty.

His mind turned over, puzzling pieces falling into place like a bang-up Tetris session. But of course! Gideon Stone. Murdered. The papers had mentioned that he looked more like a prune than a human being when they found him. Sucked dry, a mere husk. And now Joe had uncovered the culprit. His mother, his own loving mother. Loving? Had he said that, thought it? She had murdered Gideon Stone - mariticide. She had milked Stone's diminutive body of its precious life fluids, like he was some kind of chemical cow. But not only Stone. Surely there had been other ‘suppliers’ as well. Ten, twenty; how many? It was too awful to imagine. How many batches of that evil concoction had she brewed over the years? A witch, that’s what she was, straight out of Macbeth. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Those chemistry classes at night school when he was a kid; it had seemed so absurd at the time. Not now. And the circus, of course – a plentiful supply of ‘small people’ for her to sample from. Yes, all falling into place, the blocks tucking snugly together, arranging themselves into a horrendous satanic structure. And then it dawned on him. Why had they moved here in the first place? What did this sleepy little town have to offer that a hundred others couldn’t give more of? One thing and one thing only. Dwarves, this town was chockfull of dwarves.

The Will

Inspector Smith-Jones looked down at her feet. She sighed. Size 43 boots. Ever since she was a little girl her feet had been a problem. What had the specialists called it? Supermegapodiatry, that was the loathsome terminiology. The other kids had called her SuperMeg. These monstrous feet had been following her around her entire life, hounding her. No matter where she went, there they were. Another sigh. Well, everybody had their cross to bear.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with those popular films, ‘Lord of the Rings,” she finally said.
“Lord of the Rings? Of course - those fantasy movies with all those weird creatures and what-not.”
“That’s right. You might remember that there were dwarves featured in that film. Well, the director, Peter Jackson, is a real stickler for details. So he hired several real dwarves as consultants, to, you know, add authenticity to the film. Clive was the assistant to the head of the dwarf division.”
“I didn’t know that. I’ve been out of touch for years. I’ve been abroad.”
“Then you also couldn’t know that Gideon Stone, Head Dwarf, befriended Clive; he became his mentor. The two were inseparable, two peas in a pod. It went so far that Gideon re-wrote his will, making Clive the sole inheritor of his rolling estate in Northumberland. As you might imagine, that didn’t sit too well with everybody. What I’m now going to tell you is, at this point, confidential information. I didn’t say it, and you didn’t hear it, is that clear?”
“I’m not so sure I want to hear it. I’ve got a lot on my mind just now,” Joe said. He felt himself sliding further down the hill, closer to an opening abyss.
“Oh, you want to hear this, my friend. Because at the very last moment, the name on Stone’s will was changed. Clive was removed and your mother’s name written in. Yes, your mother had become Gideon Stone’s secret lover.”
“What? No, this can’t be!”
“Yes, and what’s more, two days after the will was changed, Gideon Stone was found murdered, shot fifteen times in the heart with a .44 Magnum.”
“Do you think Clive . . .”
“No, Clive had a solid alibi. And anyway, he loved Stone as his own father. Who shot Gideon Stone? I thought that should be pretty obvious by now. But perhaps even more interesting for you is Clive’s alibi. He couldn’t have killed Stone. Joe, I just lied to you about that horrid painting. I thought I had to. That painting is Clive’s alibi. It’s part of the will. You see, on the night Stone was murdered, Clive was . . .