Wayward Characters
Part One
The writer sat in the office of the private detective, anxiously fidgeting with the ostentatious cuff link at the end of his sleeve.
The venetian blinds were pulled most of the way closed, allowing only a few slivers of light into the room. This gave the setting an almost colorless feel, countered only by the blinking neon red sign perched on the outside of the building. The sign was unreadable though the thin slats of the blinds, but the persistent buzz it emitted was audible throughout the office. A plant in desperate need of water wilted on the corner of the detective’s desk, and a wistful horn provided a mournful, jazzy soundtrack. The song came from a music school run by the Romanian woman who rented the floor above them, providing an uneven, but oddly appropriate accompaniment to their conversation.
Detective Max Cillian was not impressed by the man’s nonsense pitch. A doughy, sweaty figure with a pencil-thin mustache and an ill-fitting suit, the writer introduced himself as Paul Sebastian. He said his mother was the famous children’s author, Vivian Sebastian, as if that was supposed to mean something to Cillian.
Sebastian also mispronounced the detective’s last name. He said it Silly-ann. The detective shot him an annoyed look and corrected him. It was Kill-yun. Then he heard the man out while Sebastian told him he’d been writing his first children’s book on his mother’s old Prime Meridian typewriter, when his three main characters simply walked off the page and disappeared. He hadn’t been able to find them since.
The detective waited for a punchline that never came. He pulled his feet off his desk and sat up straight in his chair, tipping his fedora back on his head. The writer pushed an unfinished manuscript across the desk. At a glance, it looked every bit as awful as Cillian expected.
The book was titled Moonbeam Junction. Cillian groaned and skimmed ahead. Set in the titular town, the story followed a talking koala bear, a horse, and an ape. For reasons that were never explained, the ape spoke with a Canadian accent. The three of them frolicked under a rainbow, learned valuable lessons about sharing and proper manners, and appeared to operate some sort of business that revolved around trading captured moonbeams for hugs.
Then, on page seven, the fourth wall broke when the ape accidentally knocked the koala off the page. This unexpected development, along with the discovery of a previously unknown world beyond Moonbeam Junction, brought the tedious story to a screeching halt. Rather than retreat back to the safety of their established narrative, the ape and the horse tested their boundaries, called out to the AWOL koala, and on page eleven, they exited the book as well.
That’s what it said on the page. The horse and Pierre the ape stepped off the page and joined the koala in the real world. After that, the rest of the pages were blank. Cillian couldn’t blame them for wanting to escape such drivel, but he still felt like he was being put on. He wondered if Watkins had hired this guy just to mess with him. “They’re characters in a book,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “They’re not real.”
The writer chuckled. The condescending expression on his round face made Cillian want to punch him. “You’re obviously not a writer,” he said.
Cillian rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t type all this?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I discovered the words on the page after they had escaped. I suspect they typed them themselves.”
“Maybe someone is playing a prank on you,” Cillian said. Or me, he added silently.
The writer disagreed. “It’s not a prank.”
Cillian sighed, fighting exasperation. “Then just type that they came back.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Sebastian told him. “I no longer have any control over them. I never had any control over them. I’m just a conduit. Their actions flow through me and I record them. But now that they’re out in the real world, I don’t even have that connection with them. I want them back though, and I’m prepared to pay you to find them. Ten thousand dollars for each character you return to me.”
Cillian raised an eyebrow. Even if Sebastian was nuts, he couldn’t shrug off that kind of money. Truth was, he was in rough shape. He’d been sleeping in his office for six weeks, ever since he got evicted from his apartment. And he might lose this place too, if he didn’t pull out of this tail spin soon. Cillian owed back taxes to the IRS, and even worse, he was in serious debt to Dizzy Laureno. Dizzy was already threatening to send his leg-breakers around, and Cillian didn’t even have enough to cover the interest on his debt.
Maybe Sebastian knew that. If the writer had done his homework, that might explain why he’d come to him. Right now, Cillian was probably the only detective in the city desperate enough to hear him out. But Cillian was no sucker. No matter how good a payday sounded, it was worthless if he couldn’t collect. And he had no idea how he was supposed to deliver on such a ridiculous request. Still, when you were in a jam like him, every little bit helped.
“Ten thousand up front,” Cillian insisted.
The writer was ready for such a demand. “Sure,” he said. “As long as I’m convinced you will treat this case seriously. I understand your skepticism, but I expect professionalism nevertheless. If no progress is made in thirty days’ time, the advance must be repaid.”
Cillian agreed without argument. He didn’t think it would change the end result of the case, but he could act like he cared for ten thousand dollars. Besides, if Sebastian wanted to raise a stink, he was far more comfortable being in debt to the writer instead of Dizzy.
To prove he was acting in good faith, Cillian made a show of investigating over the next few days, even if he felt like a fool doing so. First, he poked around the zoo. None of the animals were talking, however, so he asked the zookeepers if any koalas or apes had recently broken back in. They shared a sideways glance and called security, who escorted him out and told him he could come back when he stopped acting so weird.
Next, he visited the racetrack. Cillian was well known there, which partially explained how he’d ended up in debt in the first place. But when he asked the guys in the ticket windows if any horses had shown up and tried to enter themselves in a race, they refused to take his bet on the 4:45 heat. None of them felt right taking money from a lunatic, and it was obvious Cillian had suffered some sort of breakdown.
After that, he hit the jazz clubs on 18th Street. The bartender at one of them assumed he was setting up a joke when he asked if anyone had seen a koala, a horse, and a Canadian ape lounging about. When Cillian hinted he was serious, the bartender smelled his breath and checked his eyes. “You don’t look drunk,” the bartender growled. “But I’d advise you to sober up a little before you come around here again.”
Fortunately, Sebastian called the next day with an unexpected break in the case. “It seems my runaway characters might have stolen the emergency credit card from my desk before they escaped,” Sebastian said. That’s convenient, Cillian thought, but he didn’t interrupt. “I just checked the statement for it and there’s a charge for a flower shop called Lead Roses, and I know I didn’t buy anything there.”
Cillian gulped. Dizzy owned the flower shop. He operated it as a front to launder his cash, and made a nice profit on the side, supplying floral arrangements for gangster funerals. Cillian wasn’t too keen on the idea of running into him, even if he did have the money to pay him off. He was hoping to handle that transaction through a third party and not push his luck, but now he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
He pulled his collar up as he ducked into the shop, relying on the brim of his fedora to his face. Cillian slunk from row to row, excusing himself under his breath as he pushed past the other customers. His right hand gripped the heater concealed in his pocket, just in case, but neither Dizzy or any of his goons were around. That was a lucky break. But he nearly fainted when he saw who was working behind the counter.
A walking, talking koala bear stood on a milk crate so she could see above the arrangements in front of her. The bear wore an apron and a pair of reading glasses that rested on the edge of her large, wet nose, and she moved with the measured, deliberate mannerisms one might expect from a koala. Her voice was entirely human and surprisingly gentle, reminding Cillian of his grandmother. Yet her appearance was not completely natural.
The bear’s fur was a mixture of bright purple and pink, and her features were somewhat rough and uneven. She looked like a hand-drawn sketch of a stuffed animal come to life, which made sense, because that’s what she was. Cillian couldn’t deny that, even if he really wanted to. And he did, because it defied everything he understood about reality.
But what really threw him for a loop was how everyone else in the shop reacted to her. They went about their business, and asked her questions about certain flowers, or made small talk about the weather, as if she were a normal woman, and not a cartoon bear. She rang up their purchases and handed over their change with her furry paws, wishing them a good day and sending them back out into the rain.
Cillian hung back and watched her, and she gave no indication she suspected anything was wrong, even though it was clear he saw her differently than everyone else. Finally, after the last patron exited the shop, she acknowledged his presence. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“Sebastian sent me,” he said. He wasn’t sure how he expected her to react. This was all unfamiliar territory for him. He braced himself for the possibility she might bolt, or that she might take a swing at him with one of her sharp, retractable claws. But instead, her round shoulders slumped, and she sobbed before breaking down into tears. She was relieved.
The koala was homesick. Leaving the comfort and the security of the book was a mistake, she confessed. Moonbeam Junction might have been corny, but the real world was hard and cruel. And while she was a bear, more or less, she worked for a real animal, toiling away for ten hours a day to afford a bug-infested apartment and food from a greasy spoon that made her sick to her stomach.
Ever since they made a break for it, she’d been dreaming about going back. Stubborn pride and fear kept her from crawling back to Sebastian. She didn’t want to let her friends down by chickening out, but more than that, she wasn’t even sure if Sebastian could put them back on the page. Or what if he was angry and refused to take them back? The koala didn’t think she could handle that. But now that she knew all was forgiven, she was eager to return. And before he took her back to the writer, she told her where to find the horse. However, she warned him the others might put up more of a fight.
To be continued…
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Pulp. I hate leaving you on a bit of a cliffhanger, and I really debated whether I should split the story in half or not, but Substack and Gmail, in particular, are made for small doses, so I hope no one will be too upset. I promise you won’t have to wait a week for the rest of the story, but if you haven’t already subscribed, take a moment to do that now so you won’t miss the conclusion. And if you feel inclined to share this, or any of my other stories, I’d be very appreciative.