004 - Mincemeat

[deadly_ned]

Hello, Barge. My name is Ned, and I have a completely arbitrary and unrelated question to ask.

If you had a minute - 60 seconds - with any person currently dead and could talk and interact with them as normal, alive people would...

What would you say or ask them?

I suppose this question goes to the people who are currently...dead....and have alive people back home they're separated from as well.

It's an odd question, I know. But I've been...curious, lately.



Also, would the elf who took my wallet please give it back now? I hope you remember me; I was the piemaker dressed as a Franciscan monk. I hate to treat the network as my own personal Lost Connections newsletter but I really didn't know what other way to get in touch with you.

And if you're not actually an elf, I'm sorry for calling you one.

Comments

[deadly_ned]

Somewhere in the arbitrary rules of the universe, some might classify that as cheating. Or at least upending the board and making up your own rules as you go.

I remain as of yet walletless.

[routemistress]

Too right it is, lovey; ask me if I give a stuff for arbitrary rules of the universe.

...nah, I've checked, none of the ones I've got's yours. Good luck, pet.

[deadly_ned]

Do you give a stuff for arbitrary rules of the universe.


Exactly how many wallets do you have?

[routemistress]

[You do that straightfaced thing WAY TOO WELL, Ned. It's disconcerting.]

I do not, sweetheart. Not the world's smallest fig. Just one or two.

[deadly_ned]

Do you usually measure things in fig sizes.

I'll keep looking.

[routemistress]

It's the polite version of the thing I don't give any of when it comes to bollocks rules, lovey. Some'ow you make e feel like swearing might make your 'ead melt. Am I wrong?

[deadly_ned]

I don't mind it.


...Well, I do mind it and I try to use it sparingly and only in direct repetition or quotes of someone else's words. I'm not Miss Manners. I wouldn't know how to be.

But it wouldn't make my head melt.

[routemistress]

No, well, I'll watch me mouth round you anyway. Just in case.

[deadly_ned]

Please don't feel you need to police yourself around me.

[routemistress]

You ever seen someone's 'ead melt? Let me tell you, lovey, it's not pretty. Put me right off me lunch, that would.

[deadly_ned]

Yes. Yes, I have seen heads melt.

My head is not going to melt just because you say a four-letter word around me.

[routemistress]

Well, you say that now, but think 'ow I'd feel watchin' your brains dribble down your shirt front, sweetheart. No, it wouldn't be right.

[deadly_ned]

Iris, I really don't give a rat's ass if you curse around me.

[routemistress]

Language, young man!

[deadly_ned]

I-I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. It won't happen again. That was horrible.

[routemistress]

[She can't hold her straight face any longer; it cracks into the giggles, so that it's a minute before she can speak again.]

...Oh Ned, I am sorry. Your face. I couldn't stop meself.

What've you seen that's melted people? That's 'ardly natural causes for humans that I know of.

[deadly_ned]

That was. Oh. You were joking. Right, the. Yes. I should have...I'm sorry.

It wasn't a melted head. More like a half-melted whole body.

I, um.

I work with a private investigator investigating homicides.

Part time.

[routemistress]

It's an 'abit of mine.

[She's almost sorry. Not, probably, sorry enough not to do it again, mind you, but she might be gentler another time. Ned's just a little too literal to be a really satisfying target.]

...Oooh, now, see, that's interesting. Tell me about that one; did you catch who done it?

[deadly_ned]

Is it? I guess it's. Better than biting your nails or pulling your hair.

Yes. It was, um. See, there was a widow who owned a lighthouse with her young son and she was found dead and melted to the intense heat lamp of the lighthouse. Only it turns out she actually was no longer a widow because her husband, lost at sea, had come back from sea after being stranded for ten years and was finally rescued by a gay cruise ship. And then when the murder happened, the husband had disappeared and the deceased widow's young son had hired Emerson and me to find the killer and we were sure it would have been the husband but it turned out to be the jilted one-time affair of the man whom the widow had been seeing when she believed her husband was dead.

I.

It was complicated.

But it turned out all right. For everyone who survived. Not for the half-melted widow.