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Profound Writer
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ontari-ari-ari-o
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,267
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The Man in the Paisley Tie
The seed for this story was planted last summer and grew into something quite different than planned. I collected it again and began anew. I'm still working on the ending, but thought I'd get some input before an absolute ending is decided.
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The man in the paisley tie was large. His clothing seemed to only just succeed in holding his massive proportions within their grasp, and without a single exception everyone who spent any amount of time with him scurried about in constant fear of being suddenly introduced to one or another part of his anatomy when the strain became too much for his poor, harried vestments to bear. Their apprehension was increased by his tendency towards extreme jollity, for, not content with only threatening them with sudden exposure, he added to this a weapon of terror: a boisterous, belly-shaking laugh which he used at any provocation. An excellent example of its rare power is demonstrated in the following example. Miss Edith Fitzpatrick, one of his many secretaries and a rather sensitive woman built along the lines of an underfed Victorian house sparrow, was institutionalized after a client told a particularly funny anecdote and the roaring, shaking, earth-moving laugh broke through the ever-ready flood gates and caused an already loose button to pop playfully from his vest. The mere suggestion that this Jericho was about to come crashing down was quite enough for her.
Even his wife, not a big, blowsy woman as may have been expected, but a delicate, fawnlike creature with large, timid brown eyes and masses of soft gold hair, was dismayed by the man in the paisley tie. And though she only ventured to think vaguely that it was time he bought a new suit, somehow when he was in the vicinity, she was overcome with a strange trembling, her hands fluttering wildly before her face. Her gaze usually traveled erratically around the room like a drunken bluebottle, landing near but not on her husband.
The man in the paisley tie had that all too frequent sense of style know as 'tasteless'; cheap vulgarity seemed to be his stock in trade.(He was not wealthy enough to afford rich vulgarity, although he would have succeeded at that, too, with the proper amount of funds.) The paisley tie which distinguished him was not just any paisley tie, but a screaming neon sign board complete with flashing lights. His suit was once recommended to a carnival as a rare specimen of costuming, ideal for clothing the bearded lady in the highly suspenseful melodrama in which she portrayed an evil bootlegger. His hat and spats...we thankfully refrain from mentioning.
As this man bounced along in life-- one can hardly say that he 'walked'-- he was blissfully unaware of the reactions of those in his path. The fact that he was extremely nearsighted may have had something to do with this, but it could just be that his equally fuzzy brain could not comprehend the idea of anyone disliking him. It was this naïveté or ignorance that brought him into a singular predicament.
At eleven o' the clock on this particular morning, the man in the paisley tie took his usual place at the end of the fish and chips line. Unlike usual, however, he was promptly accosted by a tall, attenuated man with a cadaverous face and a shock of white fluffy hair which caused him to resemble a rather large dandelion gone to seed.
"Johannes Fishbank."
"Yes?" Our paisley-tied man replied. For this is, in fact, his name.
"Andrew Lake." The man spoke with a surprisingly hearty voice. "I'd like to introduce you to my partner, Amos Wethrby." A small man with the expression of a nervous hamster and an attache case clutched beneath his chin, nodded timidly in Fishbank's direction.
"A circumstance has arisen-- over which we have no control, I must assure you--which dictates your hasty removal from this city."
"Bu...wha...?"Johannes Fishbank's mouth opened and closed guppy-like for a full ten seconds, during which time Messiers Lake and Wethrby took him by the elbows and hustled him off down the street.
Later in a dilapitated barn, Fishbank was seated uncomfortably on two chairs before a vaguely familiar personage. Was it the nose? Johannes wondered. No, it could not be the nose, for surely he would remember the owner of such a ... such a...words failed him at the precise moment the figure broke the uneasy silence.
"MISTER FISHBANK," it boomed, "YOU HAVE BEEN BROUGHT HERE FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL SAFETY. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO LEAVE, WE CANNOT ANSWER FOR THE CONSEQUENCES." Probiscus, he finished triumphantly and realized that he had spoken this word aloud. Beady eyes glared and Fishbank coughed.
"Ah'm sure Ah don't know what you mean. Why am Ah here? Exactly?"
"Your presence in the city at large--and no one can deny that unseemly circumstance-- is not only unwelcome, but unhealthy for any of its inhabitants. Therefore, certain people have taken steps to dispose of you. Fortunately for you, they have failed and we have succeeded." Fishbank's eyes bulged unnaturally and for a brief moment the figure before him knew fear: could he, would he...explode? Fishbank released the breath he had been holding and the figure snapped his fingers.
Two people entered the room. One, a willowy man in a snow white lab coat and a well-polished forehead, raised a monocle and stated royally, "It cannot be done."
The other, a crewcutted individual with a muscular head, objected, "Never say never, that's what my gramps always told me." The other snorted inelegantly in profound disbelief. Without another word, the two strangers beckoned him and, hoisting himself from the chairs, Fishbank rolled after them in the same frame of mind as a prisoner going to the dock.
Three months later he looked back upon that day as his salvation. Six months later as a miracle. A year and he had begun to feel blasé. The process of shucking off the old man and taking up the new seemed endless, but nevertheless he soldiered on.
On the exact anniversary of the date of his kidnapping, Johannes Fishbank was returned in an unmarked vehicle to his house. The spectacles perched on his nose and the slight hunch in his back gave him the look of a scholar. The conservative blue pinstripe suit was fitted to a nicety about his shoulders. He did not wear spats and the hat perched jauntily on the back of his head was a handsome blue-grey fedora. Good humour still was written in the laugh lines by his eyes, but somehow it was tempered by something deeper, something like tough endurance in the face of insurpassable odds. The key in his lean hand turned smoothly in the lock and he strode inside his domicile, the picture of svelte grace.
"Honey, Ah'm home."
The end.
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A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
P. G. Wodehouse, Uneasy Money
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