Chapter Nine: You're Finally Here And I'm A Mess.

Her head was held at a question mark angle. One eye was blackened shut, the other was unfocused. Glassy? Drugged? The red dye of her hair had bled out a little, revealing sweaty, mouse-brown coloring underneath. Channels of the fire engine color snaked out of her hairline and met up with and merged into the patchwork pattern of bruises and cuts. Her nose was a jagged lightning bolt shape, one nostril plugged with a brownish gel of old blood. One cheekbone looked almost crushed to powder and her jawline was taut as an inner tube. Thin black cords of rope dug into her chest and upper arms, holding her into the chair. Her clothes were rumbled and wet and torn. Her hands were bound with yellow plastic handcuffs. Her hand rested in her lap. Several of the fingers on each hand looked swollen or torqued. The nail of one pinky was missing. So were her shoes.

Martin looked at her. Made himself memorize and catalogue every scrape, every raw bit of flesh. He felt like his chest was full of something molten and heavy. His jaw and his hands clenched. His bandaged fingers didn't even protest. He wanted to scream something like, 'Let her go now!', but he knew that such an impotent command coming from him would be laughed at and ignored. Martin looked at her. At Maddy MacGuffin. His Maddy. She was the most beautiful, trampled thing he had ever seen in his life. He quietly made her a vow: These people will pay for this. He unclenched his jaw but kept his fists. He could feel his heartbeat through his broken, bandaged fingers.

Otto Cherry was looking at Maddy, shaking his head sadly, making tsk-tsk-tsk sounds. It was the sound and look of seeing a horrible scratch in the paint job of a car that doesn't belong to you. And as quickly as he made it he stopped and turned to look at Martin with his Paul Newman eyes.

"But enough of lies, liars, and Wonderlands...this..."

A wave of his long fingered hand took in Martin, Maddy, Butch Pierce, The Folding Room, and himself.

"....is a little more personal than all of that. wouldn't you say?"

Martin pulled his plain brown eyes off of Maddy's broken form and met Otto Cherry's bright blue eyes. He nodded.

"I have a job for you. A task."

"I have a job. I'm a file clerk."

"Ha-ha. So you are, Mister Hollys. But this particular job would utilize you as a courier of Wants & Getz."

"I don't work for them."

A ripple of annoyance swam under the surface of Otto Cherry's face like some prehistoric fish.

"You do though. You may never get a W2 from them but you do work for them. They sent you here. To me. As a peace offering. So I wouldn't crush them down to paste."

"I don't work for them."

The prehistoric fish leaped forward and Otto Cherry made a hissing noise.

"Lights!"

The Folding Room went black. Endless deep. Empty black. Martin could still hear the stony breath of Butch Pierce, the quiet wheeze of Maddy MacGuffin, and what sounded like Otto Cherry clearing his throat. Or reciting the names of every creature from the Cthulhu Mythos. Suddenly, strange marking began to appear on Martin's trenchcoat. They glowed in greens and purples and blues, with little accents in reds and roadrunner yellows. The symbols were as meaningless to Martin as high level mathematics. Spirals. Loops. Whorls. They pulsed on and off, making the faces around Martin seem like they were at a music-free rave.

"Here is your contract. A letter to me. An apology from the Lolas for their former courier's treachery and their Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy. And finally, an peace offering of sorts...you. My personal courier. Gratis. Lights."

The lights seemed to crawl back into existence like they were tired.

"Former courier's treachery?"

"Yes. The former owner of your coat there. Miles Regan. He kidnapped my daughter...or, I suppose, one could argue that they ran away together."

"Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy?"

"Well, from what Butch has gathered from her, she's very much in love with Mister Regan. And Regan convinced her to steal an item from me and bring it to Cassandra Fiver.

"The package I delivered to The Shining Wire."

"Yes, yes, that's the vial that Cassandra Fiver had her little double agent here steal from me. One of my Unused Thoughts, as much good as it will do her...she won't be able to understand it...and she won't be able to sell it to Wonderly because he'd be too afraid to use it against me...but I don't care about that. I care about finding my daughter."

"You want me to find your daughter?"

"Abigail Cherry."

Martin felt his heavy molten chest, his fists, his broken fingers. The trenchcoat felt like it was made of sheets of metal, like all the symbols floating and glowing on it had atomic weight. She's lovesick, I'm lovesick, he thought, and we're both broken by it.

"Why should I help you?"

Almost before Martin finished the question, Otto Cherry picked up the stun gun from his desk and placed it against's Maddy's arm. There was a loud electric sound and the smell of ozone and fire. Maddy's chair flipped over backwards and she landed with a choking noise on her back.

Martin closed the distance between (betwixt?) him and Cherry and with his unbroken hand, he landed a punch to Cherry's mouth. Then, Butch Pierce had him in a choke hold. Cherry dabbed at his lips, the blood bright on his face and fingertips. And he laughed.

"That's precisely why you should help me, Mister Hollys. Because you are the only one who cares that I just took a cattle prod to this poor girl. Not her employers, they've written her off and just hope that I don't take any revenge on them for their dubious involvement. They may have been at this game longer than me. But I play it better. No, not them, they don't care. Not Cassandra Fiver, or Wonderly, or her former paramour, Mister Regan. Butch, let him go."

Butch Pierce did as he was told. Martin swallowed at the air, not like a prehistoric fish, not like some creature that reached its evolutionary peak millions of years ago. Martin breathed in more like a fish learning to walk on land. Learning to perform a magic trick. These people don't know me, he thought, I don't care how many files they have.

"None of them care about her. Only you. And I don't care about any of them, I just want my daughter returned to me. Because you care about her and I care about that...that's why you are going to find my daughter for me. You are...unpredictable, if foolish. My men are predictable and prudent. I think you will success where they have failed."

"I'd like a moment to speak with Miss MacGuffin."

Otto Cherry smiled and he retreated a few steps back and suddenly he wasn't there. Butch Pierce followed him.

Martin turned to Maddy, lifted her chair upright. Her one good eye still stared into some middle distance between her nose and Martin's face.

"I'm suppose to say to you, 'Wanna disco' and you're suppose to say, 'More crackers please'. So we'll know each other. So we'll trust each other."

"Miles? Is that you?"

Maddy's eye just floated upward and downward like a drugged balloon. Martin almost touched her cheek with his hand.

"But that's not what I want to say to you. I know it's a childish, Neanderthal impulse to want to save you. But, frankly, you look like you actually need saving. Like non-metaphorical saving. I know I don't know you. But I would like to. I don't really know that much about myself and all these people certainly don't know anything about me. But the little bit about myself that I know, I want to tell you."

Martin brushed aside some sweat and blood and make-up and tears and a strand of hair with his hand.

"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled, and loaded with sin."

Maddy's eye went still for a moment. The eyebrow above that eye scrunched down with confusion, then raised itself up into a surprised arch. She opened her mouth. It was full of saliva and blood and teeth. She tried to work her lips and tongue and teeth and cheeks into words.

"The...guy...from the...red pa...go...dah?"

Martin stood up and smiled a little half smile. He noticed that his blue flower tattoo was missing another petal. He rubbed at his palm with his bandaged fingers.

"The girl with the golden googles."

"Aha! Made any escape plans yet? Butch, take Miss MacGuffin back to her room"

Martin watched as Butch Pierce dragged Maddy away. His impulse was to follow them but Otto Cherry placed a strong hand on his shoulder and held him back. He nodded at Martin's hands.

"That is an interesting trick."

"Thank you."

Otto gestured to Martin's bandaged fingers.

"I could get you something to...fix...those fingers. But I find a little pain keeps me sharp."

Otto rubbed his busted lip with a little too much pleasure.

"Come on, Mister Hollys, let's get you cleaned up and on the case."



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Thank you for joining us all again in the wild weird world of Martin Hollys....coming up next:

The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Ten: Come A Little Bit Closer