Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle here with chapter nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant. This week has been a bit more normal. My novelist’s ankle is healing up well although she is not fully recovered. As she is moving around better, the Maltese and I do not require the services of…Him, although he says he still does some of the work. However, I have not been going out on my usual walks much. This has made me melancholy and I stare out the window at the open road and hope for a time when I shall gleefully traverse it. The Maltese was given a much-needed bath today, and I was granted a pass. I will be getting one tomorrow so I can put off my horror until then. I am looking forward to the New Year and am making a resolution to write even more stories and perhaps some genres I have not penned before. I hope you all had a marvelous New Year’s Eve. I stayed up till midnight and rang in 2024. I was told I could not partake of the sparkling cider as it has too much sugar for my teeth. Next time I will have a few laps of it anyway. And on that thought, here is chapter nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant. S’il vous plaît profiter.

Certified Sadistic Accountant

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Nine

Curtis drove home to his duplex and parked in the driveway. Earl was no longer sitting on his porch. Curtis killed the engine and sat looking out the window. A light rain began to spatter on the windshield. He still had Haven’s collar clenched in his left hand. After a moment he looked up in his rearview mirror and saw his landlord’s truck pull up and park. His landlord hopped out of his vehicle and walked up to the driver’s side of Curtis’s car.

“Hey there, Curtis,” he said.

Curtis rolled down his window. “Hello,” he said.

“Ray told me about your dog.”

“Yes.”

“Well, he and I had a little tete-e-tete while you were gone and we thought it was downright odd your little dog got loose, us knowing you to be a fastidious type of person and all. So, I thought maybe you and I could look at the security footage of the outside of the duplex.”

“Okay,” Curtis didn’t want Ray to know about the surveillance he’d covertly installed inside his apartment.

“You can come over to my office and we’ll have a look-see. You know where my office is?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Alright, then. I’ll meet you there.”

Ray hopped back in his truck and Curtis followed him over to Ray’s offices. Ray owned several duplexes around the area. He’d made his money working as an engineer and then settled in Curtis’s small town. Retirement didn’t suit him, so he purchased the duplexes, fixed them up, modernized them and did well enough to buy himself the truck he was driving and take his wife on a month-long trip to Europe.

“Every year,” Ray said, “we get more and more folks from out of state moving in who think they are going to be living in a better place than they left. But the problem is they bring their former state’s problems with them. My thought is maybe the reason your little dog broke out was because one of these out of towners broke in.”

“You think Haven got out because someone broke into my place?”

“We’ll see. If your place did get broken into, I’ll change the locks. Got a new and improved lock system. I’ve been putting them in my other units. I’ll make your and Ray’s place a priority.”

“Thanks, Ray.”

“Not a problem. Let’s take a look-see at the video. Say, how is your little dog? Is the vet keeping her overnight for observation?”

Curtis sighed. “No. Haven died today. The vet said she sustained injuries from getting hit by a car.”

“Hit by a car? I’m sorry, Curtis. That just sucks. Let’s see if we can get a good look at whoever’s on the tape.” Curtis and Ray headed into the office. Ray moved behind his desk and turned on his surveillance system. “Let me rewind the video a bit and see what we’ve got.” Ray rewound the video all the way back until they saw two people in hoodies walk up to Curtis’s front door. “And look at what we have here.” The two men leaned in and studied the two intruders. “Ever seen those two before?”

Curtis focused, trying to get a good look. “They look familiar, but I can’t quite place them,” he said.

“I wonder if it’s those guys in that house down the street that just got rented.”

“Maybe…no. There’s something familiar about them though.

“Can you make out their faces at all?”

“No.”

“Neither can I. I’ll see if I can get a closer view.” Ray attempted to adjust the zoom on the surveillance, but it didn’t help. Then they saw one of the two people picking the lock. “Wow! I am changing you and Ray’s locks immediately. You should check around your house and make sure nothing got stolen.”

“I don’t own much of value. I don’t understand why anyone would want to rob me.”

“Crooks aren’t always the sharpest crayons in the box. Sometimes they just break into places for the thrill.”

“Yes, but they seemed to be targeting me specifically since they had a key to my apartment.”

Curtis and Ray continued watching the tape which at this point was basically staring at Curtis’s front door. “You know,” Ray said. “It looks like they left the door ajar. Kind of stupid don’t you think? Draws attention…” Suddenly, the door opened wider. A moment later one of the hooded criminals burst outside and ran towards the street. “There’s Haven!”

Curtis watched Haven sitting on his front lawn still alive and full of pep.

“Hey, buddy,” Ray said. “Are you okay?”

Curtis realized tears were running down his cheeks. “Yeah, sure,” he said quickly wiping one away with his sleeve. “I’m just anxious to catch these guys.”

“Look! The other one just ran out the door.”

Curtis watched the second criminal who seemed frazzled. The criminal lurched forwards and Haven turned and ran towards the street. A few seconds later they saw the delivery truck with the neighbor’s flowers screech to a halt.

“I’m sorry, Curtis. This just sucks.”

“Well,” Curtis said quietly. “At least I know I didn’t leave the door open and cause Haven to escape.”

“Earl and I never thought you did, buddy. That’s why I wanted us to watch the tape.”

“Unfortunately, I still can’t recognize these creeps who broke into my house.”

“Well, your residence is basically a crime scene now. We should call the police and have them check inside to see if they can lift any fingerprints or find some DNA or something.”

Curtis nodded. “Yeah, we probably should.”

“I’ll give them a jingle and see if I can’t get a couple of officers to come over and have a look-see.”

“Could you restart the tape from where these two jerks show up on my porch. I sincerely believe they look familiar, and I’d like to see if I can identify them.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: OLDBOY (2003)-NETFLIX

Finally, at long last, one of the masterpieces of the new millennium is now beautifully restored and remastered and streaming on Netflix. From its mesmerizing opening to its shocking ending and everything in between, this is an exercise in masterclass storytelling and cinematic moviemaking. I will warn you right off the bat this film is for genuine cinephiles only. This is not for the casual movie watcher. This is not for kids. This is not for the faint of heart. This is a twisted film in every sense of the word, and I mean that in the best way. As Roger Ebert said in his review of the film, “But content does not make a movie good or bad — it is merely what it is about.” And the less you know about this movie going in the better the experience is going to be.

On a dark and rainy night in 1988, twenty-five-year-old Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik in the role of a lifetime), a loud vile drunken businessman finds himself in jail acting erratically. After his friend bails him out the two men stop at a phone booth on route to Oh Dae-Su’s little girl’s birthday. Oh Dae-Su calls home and drunkenly tells his family he will soon be there. He hands the phone to his friend partway through the conversation. His friend talks to his family and when he hangs up, Oh Dae-Su is nowhere to be found. Only the shopping bag carrying the little girl’s present, a set of white feathered angel wings is lying in the wet street. 

Oh Dae-Su has been kidnapped and finds himself in a bizarre prison: a strange hotel room with no windows and no way out where he is to stay for fifteen years. Once he is released into the middle of a green field in 2003 inside a suitcase (a scene likely borrowed from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 1994 masterpiece White) he finds he has five days to locate his captor and find out why he was imprisoned. If I told you more, it would be a crime.

The gorgeous cinematography was done by Chung-hoon Chung, the film was expertly directed by Park Chan-wook. The story is loosely adapted from the manga series Old Boy written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi. And the fantastic top shelf screenplay is written by Hwang Jo-yun, Lim Jun-hyung, and director Park Chan-wook. Rounding out this impressive cast are Oh Dal-su as Park Cheol-woong, Seung-shin Lee as Yoo Hyung-ja, Ji Dae-han as No Joo-hwan, Kim Byeong-Ok as Mr. Han, Kang Hye-jeong as Mi-do and Yoo Ji-tae as Woo-jin Lee.