Complete with Burglary, Trilling Wookies, and Delectable Collectibles, Mystery Writer's Written a Different Kind of Vegas Story
With just four days left in this month's competition, Mystery Writer returns to bring our entry tally to a grand total of three. (We'll get another, shant we?) Without further ado, MW gives the Smackdown a story of bumbling burglars who've seen maybe one too many episodes of Antiques Roadshow in a story called:“In A Galaxy Far Far Away"
by Mystery Writer
“Have you ever seen a bigger goddamn lock?”
“Jeez, it’s the size of your head.”
“What the hell does Grandma have in here that’s so fuckin’ valuable she needs this mother on the back door?”
Leroy and Herman looked at each other and smiled. They knew what secrets the little shop held. “Gerty’s House of Delectable Collectables” had a mint collection of H & R Daniel tea cups and saucers circa 1825 with hand painted roses and a rare scroll pattern, absolutely pristine, no chips and no restorations and they could fetch between $400 and $600 per on eBay. How Leroy and Herman loved the internet and knew their tea cups.
“Gimme the bolt cutter. We’ll do this baby right,” Leroy said. The self-appointed head of this two-man crime family, Leroy held his hand out for the requested tool, still studying the huge lock.
Herman handed him the red rusted bolt cutter.
“I thought it was bigger,” Leroy said hefting it in one hand, weighing it visually against the bulk of he lock.
“Go ‘head, cut that mother off,” Herman said, encouraging his larger partner. Herman looked up to Leroy mainly from a physical standpoint, as he was only five foot six. Even with his steel toed work boots, with the extra thick soles and shoe lifts, Herman craned his neck when he talked to Leroy.
“Where did you get this rusted piece of crap?” Leroy said.
“Dad and I were building a shed, and we had this guy put some rebar in before we poured the cement floor and he left it. Never came back, so we kept it. Borrowed it from my Dad, to cut some barb wire fence. Had it since then.”
“He didn’t cut shit with this thing.” Leroy clamped the jaws of the bolt cutter around the hardened steel hasp and grunted as he applied pressure to the twin handles, one of which was missing the rubber grip.
“Arrrrgg,” he grunted, straining against the metal, his muscles bulging, but ineffective against the heavy lock. “Fuck this.” He slammed the tool against the wall. The thud broke off a piece of brick, splintering and hitting Herman in the leg.
“What now?” Herman asked helpfully.
The two collectable crooks stood silent in the dark alley. The glare of Vegas, visible from a space station, barely lit the narrow alley behind the small strip of specialty stores. Overhead a trio of search lights lit up the sky. They were from the new light show at Circus Circus, just a few blocks north, installed a month ago. Herman still had not seen the show and stood mesmerized looking at the bright lights occasionally spinning and dancing overhead.
“You’re going to have to go through the wall,” Leroy explained.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Herman said, his attention at least partially on the job at hand.
“You climb through this window and go through a vent or something and get the shit and come back again,” Leroy said, pointing to a small, dark, and dirty window in the wall of the shop next to Gerty’s.
“What do you think we’re in, a fucking movie?” Herman said. “A vent? I may be small but I ain’t that small. A frigging vent.”
“Just a thought.”
“Well, think again.” Herman looked at the window. It did look a lot easier to breach than the metal door with the padlock better suited to a national guard armory.
“Well, just get through the window and we’ll figure out what you do after you’re inside.”
Herman looked at the window; it still sounded a lot easier than it looked. “How long we been here?” he asked.
“You got a date?”
“No, wise-ass. The meter.”
“Meter?”
“The parking meter.” Herman was pleased, he had thought of something Leroy hadn’t.
“I thought you got it.”
“Nope, not me.”
“I told you to.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, go feed the thing, last thing we need is a ticket.”
Herman felt in his pants. He wore them baggy and when he sunk his hand in they about came off his ass. He pulled them up while digging in his pockets. “All I got is a couple of those fake coins for the slots,” he said.
“Shit.”
The alley got quiet again.
“You know they should take chips.” Herman held the two five-dollar coins in his hand: a small reward for a slight-of-hand trick his father had taught him, and always good for some quick dinner money. He could barely read the name of the hotel he’d stolen them from.
“What?” Leroy asked.
“We’re in Vegas, right? The parking meters. They should take chips.”
Leroy’s night was not going well and he thought for a brief second how much better it might be if he could punch out Herman. “Piss on the meter,” Leroy said. “Get in the goddamn window.”
The alarms previously diverted, were still active having been bypassed by Leroy. His time in the Navy had been well spent, learning a lot about electronics and even more about alarms. The entire crew from the forward East Bay Number Two electronics shop on the Shiloe, a guided missile frigate commissioned during
“I’m not going. You go this time.” Herman was taking a stand.
“I can’t fit through the window,” Leroy said, stating the obvious. His three hundred pounds of bulk filled most of the narrow alleyway. “You’re going to have to do it. Here, I’ll give you a boost,” he said bending over with the familiar “ommpf” he uttered for even the mildest exertions. He clasped his hands together to form a fleshy foothold.
“You know I can sound like Chewbacca,” Herman said, disregarding the schoolyard stance of his partner in crime.
“Who?” Leroy straightened, the “ommpf” a little less audible.
“Chewbacca from the Star Wars movie.”
“He the funny looking one that lives in a swamp?”
“No, that’s, Jar Jar Binks. Chewbacca’s the hairy one that rode around with Han Solo.”
“I liked that guy,” Leroy said. “But Solo never would have come back. Not in real life. That shit didn’t happen.” It was an authoritative statement.
“None of it happened, it was just a movie.”
“Yeah, but Solo never would have come back, he had the gold. Shit man, like the lottery. I hit the lottery, I am gone, color me green. And gone.”
“Chewbacca,” Herman returned to his subject, “was a Wookie. I can talk like a Wookie.”
“No shit,” Leroy was intrigued, “Go ahead, let’s hear.”
Herman reared back and took a deep breath.
“Hhrrrrrrrrrr. Gggrrrrhhhhhhh.. hhhrrr.. grbbblllllll..rrrrrrrr!”
“What was that?” Leroy said.
“Fuck, I don’t know. He’s angry as hell and killing storm troopers. It’s in the book, ‘Shadows of the Empire’.”
“You read that shit?”
“I got every book Chewbacca’s ever been in,” Herman announced proudly.
“Shit, that’s cool. Say something else. Say ... ‘fuck you’.”
“I can’t fucking say anything. Only Han Solo knew what the fuck Chewbacca was saying.”
“Go on. Say ‘fuck you’,” Leroy insisted
“Jjjrrrrrrbbbllllllll …. Hhhyytrrrrrlllllll,” Herman trilled.
“That’s fucking insane, you sound just like the guy.”
“He was a Wookie.”
“Whatever. Okay. Now get in the fucking window.”
“I want Chewbacca,” Herman said.
“What the hell are you talking about now?”
“I go in the window but I want Chewbacca. Gerty’s got a never-opened Chewbacca with his plastic blaster. I want it.”
“What for?”
“For me.”
“You know the rules: nothing but what we came for. No money, no nothing, just the shit we got planned. It’s the rules.”
“I go in the window I get Chewbacca, that’s the deal.”
“You’ll get us caught.”
“No, I won’t, I’m not going to sell it.”
“What the fuck you want it for then?”
“It talks.”
“So what are you going to do, have a conversation with a doll?”
Herman just looked at the ground.
“I don’t fucking care,” Leroy said. “Get your Chewbacca. Just get in the fucking window.”
“Give me a boost.”
A few minutes later Leroy stood patiently in the still deserted ally. He could hear Herman through the open window and saw a brief flash of his flashlight as Herman searched for a way to break into the adjoining shop.
“You see anything?”
“Jrrrrrrrbbbblllll…. Hhhhrrlllkk…hhhllllll… hhhtteelllllllrrrrrrr.”
“Yeah, okay, get me the Han Solo doll.”
“Jjrrrrlll.”
“But make sure the fucking thing talks.”
posted by Miller Sturtevant | 9:24 AM
5 Comments:
Just so I'm not "defending" Brian's work only . . . I have some bad news for Nathan.
While Brian and I were at dinner with my parents last night, discussing X-MEN 3, I asked my mom, who is a nanny for a 10-year old, an 11-year old, and a 14-year old, if the kids knew who Chewbacca is. She said they did not, that they knew nothing about Star Wars.
Then, my dad said, "you know who knows nothing about Star Wars? Lil, in my office? We called someone Jabba the Hut and she had NO IDEA what we were talking about." So she probably doesn't know Chewbacca either.
Of course Lil is not "over the age of 10 . . . born in America in the last 25 years," but neither are Brian, my parents, or the readers of this blog. We are all over 10 and born in the last 28-60 years.
Anyway, they named a few other people who they thought probably don't know who Chewbacca is.
I say, give mystery writer back their point.
I liked this. I like that you took the time to write, "The glare of Vegas, visible from a space station, barely lit the narrow alley behind the small strip of specialty stores. Overhead a trio of search lights lit up the sky. They were from the new light show at Circus Circus, just a few blocks north, installed a month ago. Herman still had not seen the show and stood mesmerized looking at the bright lights occasionally spinning and dancing overhead." That, for me, was a good paragraph, and went a long way at setting up the kind of place Las Vegas was for these men. Not the glitz of the strip, but the other part of Vegas, the part that people live in and work in. The place where they keep the antique shops.
I didn't understand the sentence: "The alarms previously diverted, were still active having been bypassed by Leroy." If I stared at it long enough, I might be able to figure out what you meant, but it's not readily apparent, and it ought to be.
The Chewbacca non sequitur was funny and not at all set up by what came before, and I liked that about this story. It's unconventional. The conversation about Chewbacca that follows is pretty hilarious, and had me laughing out loud a couple times, and grinning throughout. I thought the last few lines amounted to a fizzling, but overall, strong stuff.
(8)
for those would be future crooks the idea of diverted means the electrical connections are still connected to the monitoring company but thye are not really working. This is what means by bypassed. So you can open a window and not set off the alarm. Not arguing with your score. I was pleased that you enjoyed it and that you laughed outloud .. that made my day. Thanks
Everyone seemed to really like this story, and I am not doing this just to be contrary, but I honestly wasn’t impressed. I felt the style was very inconsistent and I was a bit bored. And yes, I know who Chewy is and I still wasn’t charmed. The writing did not make me interested in the characters, Vegas, Star Wars or burglary. There was nothing artful about the phrasing. It was all a little awkward and forced. Were the others just thrilled with the fact that you included a Wookie reference in your story? And how did Leroy know nothing about Chewy but know all about Han Solo?
Another complaint…you have random bits of minutiae that really don’t add to the story. Yes, all good stories need detail to flesh them out and help the reader create those vivid pictures in his or her head, but here, they are just congesting the story. There are a lot of other things, but I am running out of time to write. Suffice it to say, I really didn’t like it. If this was a book, I would have put it down after the first few paragraphs. The idea was cute, but the writing needs a lot of work.
I give you a 1 for the idea and another 0.5 for the Wookie: 1.5
I know we're under the gun to vote today, because it's the last day of the month, but I'm afraid I won't be able to go on and on with a critique. I'm at work, and I'm busy, so...
But, I did enjoy this story a great deal. I don't think it deserves the 1.5 Treva handed out, but I also don't think it deserves the 10 Brian O'Malley handed out either. This was a great little story about two people breaking into Gerty’s House of Delectable Collectables. That's funny in its own right, and it makes for a great mental visual, I think. And for these two guys to really be "learned" in the way of tea cups for the sole purpose of stealing and reselling them is quite genius. I wish I would've thought of that one.
I did have problems with the story, which mainly centered on how I'm not quite sure you gave thought how to end it. It seems to ramble for a bit, which happens when the path to the end (throughline) wasn't thought of before writing. And, it seems as if you wanted to throw in a punch at the end for a quick laugh with the dialog:
“You see anything?”
“Jrrrrrrrbbbblllll…. Hhhhrrlllkk…hhhllllll… hhhtteelllllllrrrrrrr.”
“Yeah, okay, get me the Han Solo doll.”
“Jjrrrrlll.”
“But make sure the fucking thing talks.”
If the characters that started out in the beginning of the story had stayed until the very end, this story would've been really tight, I think. Still, when I think of Herman doing Chewie noises, I cannot help but think of Crane's silly face making all the... wait a second... Is "mystery writer" Peggy? Hmmmm... the world may never know.
Anyhow, great work.
8.5
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