Good afternoon. Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce chapter forty-nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant. Yesterday my novelist went and got her Covid shot, and her Flu shot she has been quite tired today. I asked her to assist me with my intro and she snored. She is most difficult when she is groggy. I am surprised she was even able to get my drinking water changed this morning. She really should take my needs into consideration when she gets inoculated. Her sleepiness is most disrupting to my life. Especially since I have a garden party with Bernard this afternoon. I have become quite a celebrity with Bernard and the other bunnies as a fairytale writer. In the late afternoons we sit out on the grass and all the bunnies gather round and I tell them fairy tales. They are especially fond of the one about the troll that lives in the abandoned tree house. Every night the troll climbs down from his tree house to hunt squirrels although the local squirrels led by Sergio dismiss this idea as fiction. That said I am desperate to finish up here so I can go be admired by the local wildlife. And so, I will wrap it up here and quickly introduce chapter forty-nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant.

Certified Sadistic Accountant

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Forty-Nine

After Fia secured the door to the attic, she hurried down the stairs and burst outside. She spotted Grady’s minivan and headed towards the driver’s door. Someone came out of the van and ran for the garage. Hanging back in the shadows, she watched the figure open the garage door and hurry inside. Fia ran for the van, peered into the window, and saw Curtis slumping over in the passenger’s seat. She tried to open the passenger side door, but it was locked.

“Curtis!” she yelled pounding on the window. But he was not moving. She tried pulling on the van’s side door, but it too was locked. She ran to the driver’s side door and tried to open it, but to no avail. “Curtis!” she yelled again, pounding on the windshield. But Curtis remained motionless.

Fia turned to see the figure who’d run into the garage start to pull Curtis’s Aunt Odette’s Vespa out of the garage. Fia snuck through the shadows searching around the ground as she went for something to use as a weapon. Suddenly, she spotted an old-discarded wooden rake and slowly picked it up. She moved towards the side of the garage.

The figure revved the Vespa’s engine. Fia got into position holding the rake like a baseball bat. Her heart pounded as she waited for her opportunity. The figure coasted the scooter forwards and as she did Fia swung. The end of the rake hit the driver square in the face causing her to fall off the vehicle. Fia proceeded to whack the passenger several times. “Where’s the key’s to the van?” she demanded.

“Stop hitting me!” Makenna shouted back. She reached out and grabbed the rake’s handle pulling Fia down to the ground. The two women grappled for control.

“Give me the keys he’s not moving!”

“I don’t have the keys!”

“What do you mean you don’t have the keys?”

“I jammed them into him.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he wouldn’t shut up.”

“He’s dying in there.”

“I have a Vespa to ride.”

Makenna pulled the rake out of Fia’s hands and swung it at Fia’s head. Fia rolled out of the way and hopped to her feet. She reached for the rake, but Makenna jabbed the pole’s end at her. Fia stumbled back.

“We’ve got to get him out of there, Makenna!”

“He can rot in there for all I care.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.”

Makenna jabbed the rake at Fia again. Fia jumped back and realized the only way to help Curtis was to let Makenna escape. “Go ahead and take the Vespa.”

Makenna backed up towards the scooter, her weapon ready to jab again. Fia stood and watched her. Makenna, rake still in hand hopped on, revved the engine and took off. As she was peeling out of the driveway, Fia ran to the minivan and peered into the passenger side window. “Curtis! Curtis, open the door!”

Curtis remained slumped over and motionless against the passenger side door. Fia pulled her phone out of her back pocket and dialed 911.

“911,” a female operator said. “What is your emergency?”

“My friend has passed out in a van, and he isn’t moving,” Fia said.

“Is he sleeping?”

“No, I can’t wake him up.”

“Are you in the van with him?”

“No, I’m locked outside.”

“What is your location?”

“I’m at 1800 Big Lake Drive.”

“Is the van parked in the front or the back of the residence?”

“It’s in the front facing the road.”

“I’m dispatching a unit out there right now. They should be there in five minutes.”

“Please tell them to hurry. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I think he may have been assaulted.”

“Did you see someone suspicious around who may have attacked him?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe them?”

“When are the emergency responders supposed to get here?”

“In a couple of minutes.”

Fia peered into the passenger side window. “He’s not moving.”

“Alright I’ll stay on the line until they get there.”

Just then Fia heard sirens wailing in the distance. “I think they’re on their way.”

The blue and red flashing lights of the police prowlers came racing down the road and spun into the driveway. Fia saw the lights of neighbor’s houses flip on. The officers got out of their car just as the siren of an ambulance came into earshot. The ambulance whipped around the corner and plowed into the front yard of Aunt Odette’s house.

This was followed by the sound of a fire engine screaming from the opposite direction. The red leviathan snaked its way into the driveway and pulled up beside the ambulance. Two firefighters jumped off the truck. One of them was wielding an axe. He ran up beside Fia. “Which side is he on?”

“The passenger’s side,” she said.

The fireman ran over to the minivan, lifted his axe and smashed it into the driver’s side window sending shards of glass everywhere. He reared the axe back and struck the window again. Then he reached in and unlocked the driver’s side door.

His partner leaned across the seat, grabbed Curtis and dragged him out of the van. “Looks like we’ve got a bleeder here!”

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: AMERICAN FICTION (2023)-PRIME VIDEO

This week’s pick was last year’s winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. And although I would have picked The Holdovers in this category, this is a fantastic script well worthy of the prize. The film was written and directed by Oscar winner Cord Jefferson based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett. It’s the story of a professor and novelist who strives his entire life to write profound literature. And he is successful at it except for one thing: his books are not best sellers.

Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (brilliantly and drolly played by Academy Award Nominee Jeffery Wright) is a literature professor living in Los Angeles who wants to be a great author. He does not want to be seen as a great author because he is African American, he wants to be seen as a great author because his books are outstanding. He gets irritated when bookstores put his works in the African American Studies section instead of the Literature section. He gets frustrated with his family because his siblings Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and his brother Clifford (Sterling K. Brown) are both doctors and praised for their intelligence while he is ignored. Especially by his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) who has Alzheimer’s disease and touts Clifford as a genius despite his hedonistic lifestyle.

When Monk’s university puts him on leave over verbal conflicts with students, he travels out to see his family at his mom and dad’s summer home in Boston. While there, Monk meets next-door neighbor and lawyer Coraline (Erika Alexander). He attends a seminar where a first time author he despises named Sinatra Golden (Issa Rae) published a successful novel called We’s Lives in Da Ghetto chock full of black stereotypes.And then tragedy strikes.

Nearing his wit’s end, Monk sits down one night and pens a satirical melodramatic novel about the black experience. He takes it into his agent Arthur (John Ortiz) and says it was written as a joke, but Arthur sends the book out anyway under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh causing all sorts of pandemonium for Monk.