harryhero

Harry's here.

2007-01-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

Harry gets marked (new/old flashback)

2006-04-11T17:37:00.000-06:00

Harry stunned by the question, furrowed his brow, and choked back a bitter retort. Incredulous, he thought, why wouldn’t I feel it felt bad?
“I just do,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
Silently, he counted to ten and in those precious moments realized that his life was soaring away as if on the wings of a hundred wayward gulls. He forced his sore posterior from the inviting couch.

“Doctor,” he said in a too precise tone, “I have to leave…no, don’t try to stop me I have to do…uh, …what I have to do. Goodbye. I wish I could say thank you, well, I guess I could say thank you….Thank you.”

It was probably the most difficult thing our hero had ever done; more painful than facing a thousand vulture like gulls or a hundred toppling telephone poles, and even though his gut was twisting like pantyhose in the wind, he felt good.

He shut the door on the doctor’s querying, “See you next week, then?”

The stairs down from the recently vacated office were in stark contrast to its lavishly decorated interior. They creaked under his weight and the soft patter of rodent feet echoed behind each step. It was music to his ears. The door swung open under the renewed strength of his soul and when he stepped from the shadows, a beam of sunlight accentuated his rugged face as it caught the mark of a passing gull. Abruptly, the gull broke into a graceful 180-degree turn and nosedived toward him.

To be continued…

Harry off the Couch. (new/old material! - flashback continues)

2006-04-05T21:53:00.000-06:00

The doctor said nothing. Harry continued his story. Then, while he calmly recalled a tale of steaming engine rooms, tall dark strangers with bad accents, teak decks and tight ropes he jerked convulsively, screamed and thrashed madly at his face. Memories of being bound, gagged and left as fodder for the gulls came screeching into his trembling ego. The doctor was startled from his sleep as Harry flailed and crashed noisily from the couch, finally collapsing into a writhing, heaving, hysterical, and very empty blob. He sobbed cathartically. After the tears had dried on his blotched face, much as the salty sea spray had dried on his parched lips decades earlier, Harry spoke.

“I remember now,” he stammered. “The captain left me on the deck, t…t…t…tethered,…tied. There were b…b…birds, g…g…gulls mostly, everywhere, the noise, the stench, it w…was unbearable. The s…s…sun was bl…blinding…and waves were p…pounding against the boat. The spray was splashing over me, at f…first, it was s…s….soothing, and it fr…frightened the gulls. But they’d come back, again and again and again, gouging and scraaa….ahh…aatching at my eyes and nose and toes and everywhere…anywhere and the salty spray would dry on the scratches and gouges and in the cracks in my l…lips and…it drove me m…mad with th…thirst and pain. I must have p…passed out because s…suddenly it was twilight and c…cold and somehow a rope was frayed. It must have been from their constant pecking…endless pecking…pecking… pecking…pecking!”

Harry buried his face in his hands and pounded the floor with his forehead. The doctor wondered if his hand-woven imported Turkish carpet would withstand the abuse, decided it would, and cleared his throat.

“Hmmm”, he said, picking at the small hangnail on his left thumb then rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Harry slithered back onto the couch and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He gulped his way through a deep breath and stuttered as it seeped out of him. “I…It was pretty bad.”

“Let’s go with that,” said the doctor. “Why do you feel it felt bad?”

To be continued…

Harry on the Couch (new material from old - flashback!)

2006-04-05T18:59:00.000-06:00

He had been exploring a newly acquired fear of seabirds with Teamsters appointed psychiatrist Dr. Bemay, consequently had endured many weeks dredging up painful memories of various exploits in his past. Indeed, through the horrors of hypnosis and the revulsion of regression therapy, he had been wallowing in old adventures best forgotten.

Then, one fateful day…he squirmed on the luxurious leather couch. The doctor, lounging out of sight, in the matching recliner behind him, nodded his head silently.

“There really isn’t any life like sailing, really, oh yes, trucking comes close on a decent highway…but you can’t beat the wind and waves, wet cold rain gear, eating beans for months on end, rope burns, sunburns, pirates. Pirates?”, Harry felt a vague chill of fear as he repeated the word and paused. He could hear the rhythmic breathing behind him, and wondered if the doctor had ever been sailing.

He considered asking but did not, recognizing that this was his dime and his time and with that recognition, Harry, once again, felt safe and warm, he breathed in the sensuous aroma of the leather, stretched, and sank deeper into the soft cushions.
His eyes closed and his mouth opened.

“One evening I watched the rigging snatch the last rays of sun like a giant spider web and hold them against the darkening sky, a few drops of rain began to fall…I stripped down and let nature’s shower wash the salt and sweat from my body.” A small tear passed unnoticed across Harry’s cheek. “It was… uh… truly …” His voice trailed off and for a moment the only sound was the distant caw of a gull sailing in on a breeze through the open window.

To be continued...

Betsy Betsy Bang Bang

2006-04-03T15:10:00.000-06:00

Oh No, indeed.

But what of our hero steadfastly cruising toward the warm…Not warm! Cold. Cold water trickles down his back. He looks in the rearview mirror and is blinded by a glint of steel as it flashes down and out of sight. Quickly, he shifts Betsy into autopilot; she gathers momentum, faster and faster, at ever increasing speeds. She accelerates for a sharp acclivity near Whiskey gap and YES! YES! YES! Is airborne!!! A chorus of Betsy Betsy Bang Bang We love you, fills the air!

Sophia slips on the soapy teak floor and loses her grip on Harry’s gleaming straight razor. It flies through the air and bounces off the cab roof and spins downward, open blade, toward Harry’s unsuspecting noggin.

It is crowded in the skies but Betsy’s smart radar laser auto navigational locator system is a top-notch product from Canadian Tire. She swerves around pronghorns pulling a large man in a sleigh and careens around white boomers similarly engaged. The G-force pushes Harry deep into his seat as the huge red 18-wheeler heads for home across the celestial splendor. He has broken into a hot sweat, which neutralizes the trickle of cold water on his back. He snuggles under his car blanket, checks the screen for blips, and takes a deep breath. He has almost forgotten the odd glint of steel while basking in the satisfying rush of adrenalin coursing through his veins. It reminds him of that last session with the psychiatrist…so many years ago.

To be continued….

Sophie soaks.

2006-04-03T13:15:00.000-06:00

The black hole left by Sophia’s meteoric ‘drop of doom’, while regarded as an annoying pothole by the average tourist, became a Mecca for blonde schoolgirls and astrophysicists alike. However, dear readers, that is another story.

Meanwhile, Betsy torques along secondary highway number 37, a confident Harry at the wheel, a soapy Sophie sudsing in the Jacuzzi and the lively chorus of Jingle Bells reverberating throughout the cab. Harry’s voice - a likely candidate for a fourth tenor - mingles gaily with Betsy’s percussive pounding of the powdery pavement.

Sophia languishes, doing her face, applying Road Rash Repair, by Mary Kay - on special at $2.99 for the holiday gift-giving season.

She eyeballs Harry over the edge of the tub and sinks back. His powerful hairy toes turn her crank. In a flash, she sees Dr. Midas Maybe for what he is…an evil pencil-necked geek with a recently acquired auditory problem and propensity for rather dangerous wilderness games. Not that this was entirely new news to her. She had survived many other meetings with the master of masquerade. She rubbed the small scar on her forehead, drifted back in time, back into the frothy warm tub, and closed her eyes.

Images of a heavy oak door invaded her. Adorned with a brass plaque and proudly embossed with the psychiatrist’s name; it was swinging open under the renewed strength of someone’s –no- his -resolve. An image of the first ray of sun striking his face as he emerged from the shadows enveloped her. She remembered the moment when she recognized him; her hollow gasp muted by the splat of a passing gull. All of this and more swamped her memories, as the tub similarly swamped the floor. Then, memories blurred into a painful torrent of fists and feathers. What had happened? He had dodged and ducked behind the door, swiftly examined the gull, then flung it with an odd precision in her direction. She felt it; again, pierce her forehead at full force. Sophia plunged her head under the churning water, and rubbed her burning scar. Emerging, she popped opened her bottle green eyes allowing the single tear to trickle into the bubbles below. Had he knelt beside her limp body and vowed to right his wrongs or had her near death delirium deluded her? Dare she ask him? Does it matter? Wouldn’t it all stop if he ceased to be? Would she then be free?

She sneaks another peak at Harry and sloshes water over the edge of the tub. This hero dude, she ponders, ignoring the water as it trickles along the teak floor, has a thing or two to learn about a woman. Slowly she rises like Venus from the water, her green eyes glinting, the road rash freshly exposed by her recent plunge beneath the bubbles. Stealthily she reaches for Harry’s straight razor, and then, OH NO,…

To be continued…

Harry throws a wrench or two

2006-04-02T12:30:00.000-06:00

Harry gave his head a shake. He was on the road again, with Betsy firmly under control and heading home for Christmas, nothing mattered now except the warmth of his … but wait, look! Betsy’s high beams screamed out at him. Caught in their light is a maiden in distress! She is tied to the top of a tree like a Christmas angel and under the tree a grinch-like figure is flinging flames at the foot of the fir! Horrors! Yes, it is Dr. Maybe! He is going to torch Sophia! Harry leans on his 500-decibel horn and throws on the Jake brake. The protests of Betsy’s pistons, as the Jake brake retards, thrusts cracks in the icy air like the hips of a thousand arthritic cows!

Dr. Maybe shrieks, clutches his head, and staggers into the forest primeval (yuk), his tattered eardrums blowin’ in the wind.

With the accuracy of an eagle at 10,000 feet, Harry hurls the wheel wrenches at Sophia’s bonds. Saturated with her sweet sweat, the icy air has frozen them as brittle as brides’ biscuits. The ropes shatter like crystal. Sophia falls splat onto the snowy road inches from Harry, as he fiddles with his Beclovent inhaler!

To be Continued...

What really happened that night in the campground...

2006-03-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

He leaned toward her and brushed the still damp curl from her cheek. Their eyes didn’t meet. Though he searched for hers, she was firmly transfixed on the small bug inching its way across Harry’s broad shoulder. She squashed it and looked up. Their eyes passed each other like two drifters off to see the world, for now Harry had found a more intriguing sight. Nestled or tangled, he wasn’t sure, in her tresses, was a large grayish-yellow spider, carefully he plucked it from its nest and flung it across the tent. It hit the wall with a soft pop and slid into the folds of the waiting sleeping bag.

“Ewhh”, Sophie admonished, “couldn’t you throw it outside?”

“Later”, he said gruffly and reached toward her.

“Oh. Humffph”, she sighed, “I’ll get it then.” She grabbed the flashlight, found the wriggling victim, unzipped the tent, and stepped into the breezy night air.

"I'm going to give it a proper burial", she said and moved quickly away from the tent.

Then the green minty poison spun him into a fitful sleep.

To be continued or not….

What is she?

2006-03-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

What is she?....1960's........click on What is she? above

Volkswagon!?????

2006-03-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

But wait! Volkswagon sound system??/ How could that be?

Betsy runs away

2006-03-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

It was the swooning nudge against her steering wheel that carefully guided Betsy into the runaway lane, subsequently allowing Harry to eradicate the centrifugal gyrations of his body, plop himself firmly into the driver’s seat, wipe the blood from his eyes and ease her to a gentle rolling stop. Harry patted her dashboard and leaned back into her soft leather. Her idling motor sang harmonies with the Christmas carol cascading softly from her Volkswagen Phaeton 9VE Sound System.

“Hmmm, hum, humm. De dumm dee dum”, murmured Harry as he searched for the wet wipes.

Oh yes, clearly, Harry was no 67 pound weakling. Along with his other sterling attributes he owned Betsy due to a strict monetary code. In fact, his first heavy readings, (the book always clutched firmly in his little pabulum encrusted fist) were the adages at the bottom of his first savings account passbook. “A fool and his money are soon parted.” and “Opportunity comes to those with ready cash.” were permanently imprinted on his little gosling brain. (Pro Scrooge?)

These bon wits formed his financial credo. The dough he earned, as a teenager, selling 'quake' insurance in S.F. for the firm of Rigor, Mortis and Stone was stashed with the lettuce he made busking on Haight-Asbury during his lunch breaks. And when he saw Betsy, the time was right and the cash was ready. He peeled off the sawbucks while the salesman’s eyes yo-yoed! Yes-dear hearts, (or Virginia), there is a little Harry Hero in all of us, the good, the bad and the klutzish. However, enough of this maudlin psychoanalysis!

To be continued.

Footprints in the Sand

2006-03-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

The tap of Betsy’s steering wheel on his forehead knocked at the door to Harry’s dwindling consciousness. The vague views of her floor mats pried at the windows to his vanishing awareness. More molten memories meshed with his receding reality and he was lost once more to the years gone before.
Where was he now? An empty road, off in the distance, barely visible, a small house, sat shimmering like a mirage. Suddenly upon it, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the truck, and examined the slightly damaged dollhouse apparently lost and forgotten in the middle of the deserted pavement.

Harry hugged himself as the painful images played before him. There he was, struggling with the heavy cable, winching the dollhouse on to Betsy’s trailer, watching, then running, as the telephone pole snapped and fell in slow motion toward him. He flinched as the memory hit him like a ton of bricks or like a few thousand pounds of telephone pole.

A spray of sand rained around him. Now it seemed, he walked, leaving only faint footprints in the sand that dissipated with the rays of the setting sun. The wind was soft and warm. Then there were golden locks blown askew and left as one with the sandy soil. The parallel tracks across her abdomen led to a distant puff of smoke.
Unghuh. The muddled memories were too much and he succumbed to the blackness, hitting his head once more on Betsy’s steering wheel causing a slight rightward shift in the direction of her mighty Michelins. Still, she trundled onward.

To be continued…

Harry Flashes Back

2006-03-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

The familiar letters swam across the paper forming familiar words… T…H…. E space Q…U…I…C…K space, until the familiar sentence morphed into view. The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog, rendering it helpless, ineffective, and inert, the hapless creature that it was. Grade 10 typing practice…a shadow fell over the watery words as the paper spun out of the typewriter and into the garbage. Mr. Quagmire’s stern voice admonished him, fading into a tinny tunnel and dissipating into a barrage of bullets. Trapped between the flaming inferno of his demolished 18- wheeler and the eighteen members of the Badland Banditos, who were sniping at him from the protective humps of blowing sand dunes, Harry slithered, belly to the ground, into the satin lining of his traditional English pram and snuggled up to his velveteen rabbit.

“Goo goo, gaa ga”, he burbled up at his mother’s sweet face. His little pink fist dashed the last grain of sand from the corner of his lustrous baby blues.

“I nearly got my just desert. Yuk Yuk Yuk”, he punned. His deep laughter slide from his mouth and melted into the scorching desert sand. The blazing sun scaled his lips into a pair of deep-fried anchovies. He yearned for his baby bottle and cried for his Mommy.

Betsy thundered onward, even as the sands of time seemed to be running out in the egg-timer of his existence, Harry watched the images of his life dance across the black-red screen of his eyelids.
To be continued…

Harry loses control

2006-03-17T10:12:00.000-07:00

Huddled in a fetal ball on Betsy’s floorboards, hurling and hurdling, Harry wondered if this was it. He’d been here before. He could feel the tape rewind through his spinning brain and he closed his eyes against the inevitable life flashing before them.

“I know!” he screamed, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. How could he? “Show me something else this time”, he prayed, as the play button pressed down somewhere in the wrinkled wounded cortex of our damaged hero. Tears squeezed past his clenched lids, flew across the careening cab, orbited, and finally splattered against the frosty windshield simultaneously melting and freezing into crystallized confirmation of his pain. Then, they came, swimming up through the red-black scrunch of his eyelids, the mottled memories, inconsistent images, and painful pictures of Harry’s realm. Betsy sped onward

To be continued…

Harry heads home?

2006-03-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

Now Betsy’s cargo just happened to include Figgy Pudding, Shortbread, and Toblerone Chocolate Bars. Yes, there were cartons of woolly socks with stretchy tops, cases of books, both fictional and educational, spices, games, bags of Victory Oats for Floppsie and a bone for Flip. HOW FORTUITOUS!

Harry tooled down the road at ever increasing speed, double clutching the bull gear and pressing the gas pedal (yes, like a flower between the pages of a book) gently, with his powerful hairy toes, until the hum of the Michelin retreads told his clean but hirsute ears that he was cruisin’ at 95 kliks.

Perhaps, you were thinking, that Betsy was a Canadian made bucket of bolts, eh? Well, I ask you, does everything have to be automatic? Clearly, Betsy is no hot-wired hot rod hot-footing it down the hardtop. NAH, nah, nah. Her cadmium transmission meshed with an affinity greater than Crest and dental enamel. The cadence of her mighty power plant fell on Harry’s pink, yet shapely ears sweeter than violins, more melodic than Eine Kline Notch music, more gut wrenching than the Musak played on the Revenue Canada hot line on April 30th.

Nor is Harry a nut behind the wheel! He had been there, done that, measured uncharted seas in the Arctic, and from a helicopter, fought black flies in the bush; sweated in the army and loafed in the Caribbean, biked in Utah’s vast desert. He had wandered the Italian Riviera with nothing between him and terminal pollution, (e.g. regurgitated pink ice cream), except a plaid blanket! More importantly, he had learned to handle an 18-wheel drift at Jackie Robinson’s knee. (Indy ’78)

Now, you may ask, why is Harry down on the floor boards looking at his knees? Well,in a skid a 400 MPH.....you might find yourself there too!

To be continued…

CHRISTMAS EVE!

2006-03-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE!

A flashback of childhood memories rolled through his drowsy, yet prehensile, mind. He was a child again, and presents were piled like jeweled scree against the tree.

Floppy (the horse) wore a red ribbon in her mane and Flip, dressed like a sugar plum fairy, wagged his tale hysterically under his tutu. (Beats dog antlers) And somewhere, yes, there would be Ma and Pa in their old rocking chairs.

Pa would say, “GAS wot?” He’d chuckle, sniffing upwind and spitting downwind, “Harry’s a coming.”
Then, Ma’s loquacious answer: “Yup”.

THERE WASN’T A SECOND TO LOSE!

Throwing on an old lab coat, Harry leapt into the driver’s seat deftly adjusting the antimacassar across the back of the beaded seat.

A quick check for extra wires leading to bombs was negative.

He pressed the starter button, thrilling as the whine of the starter motor was replaced by the clatter of her mighty V8 diesel! (2000 Hp at 4500 RPM, 6000 torque at 4000 RPM, each horse the equivalent of an English gravitational unit of 500 foot/pounds of work per second!)

To be continued…

Snow falling on Harry

2006-03-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, back in the moment, Harry is as calm a Mexican jumping bean thinking about his lost loves, Betsy and Sophia. His powerful hairy toes are freezing in this sylvan wonderland. A light snow was beginning to fall.

Betsy! Missing in action! Harry is decimated for 23 seconds until his restricted, yet fallible memory kicks in. Then he knows how to find Betsy. Last Christmas, Sophia had given him ‘the clapper’ which he had wired into Betsy’s electronic wizardry. (One man’s engineering is another man’s magic). Now, he clapped (applauding his genius) and the fog ahead slowly glowed in opalescent splendor. Betsy’s running lights had responded in electrical fervor to his command! Three strides with his short, but powerful legs, took him to her side. Comforted by the warm purr of her idle, Harry took a deep cleansing breath and paused. Time resumed its usual pace and finally he spoke.

“Oh, Betsy” he groaned, “if anything had happened to you I’d…”

Though blinded by tears of joy, he plucked the spare key handily wired to the door handle, and in a trice was in her warm soignée extended cab. His soggy duds received ablution in the onboard Maytag, while his hairy yet powerful body soaked in Betsy’s commodious Jacuzzi. He savored goodly orts of liver casserole laced with tofu to replenish his spent muscles. As he flossed his pearly, yet powerful teeth, his subtle yet uncluttered mind ran like a video on rewind as he prioritized his needs:

1. He should cut his toenails.

2. He should read the Magrath Rag.

3. He should find practical applications for Planck’s Constant.

4. He should solve Fermat’s theorem. (White not?)

5. He should find Dr. Maybe and Sophie.

6. He should put on some clothes.

(It is a tough assignment. Can Harry handle it?) He gazed out the window as his keen, yet cluttered mind wrestled with the problems. Then he reached for his nail clippers. Time passed. The sun rose and set. Harry broke the clippers on his steel toenail and shivered. How long had he been sitting, naked on the edge of the tub? He decided to scratch number 6 from his list next and get dressed.
“Priorities can change”, he muttered as he pulled a thick sweater, underwear, socks, and jeans from the duffle bag stashed in the sleeping compartment. He slipped into his clothes, ran a comb through his curls, and crawled into the driver’s seat.It was dark. He switched on the headlights and furrowed his brow at the thick white flakes tumbling through the beams. He opened the door, stepped out and peered into the sky.

“What a big star in the east!” exclaimed Harry. Then it hit him!

To be continued…

Harry rolls over

2006-03-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

When we last left Harry, the forces of nature had saved him from a watery grave. A perfect 4-point roll upright shrouded him in a heavy fog, wetter than the underside of the river. He had raised his resolve and paddle to the foggy skies, and proclaimed:

Justice will rule and man’s torment shall be assuaged!

Then it hit him! He had forgotten to put on Betsy’s Denver boots. Where was Dr. Maybe? Has he stolen Betsy? Kidnapped Sophie? Where was Sophie? In fact, WHO was Sophie or Sophia, for that matter? Was she a Nurse in a Neurosurgical Unit, an outdoorsy killer in a bee-ridden wilderness, a quasi-interested waitress in a roadside café? Was she seeking revenge for the many years his foes had used her as bait? Would she ever forgive him or did she understand and join him in his battle to rid the world the evil and unattractive Dr. Maybe? Alternatively, perhaps she had been swayed by the evil man’s maniacal laughter and relentless determination to rule the world. Was she trying to help him or hurt him? Harry’s head swam with questions as well as with the frothy white water of the Milk River. He had flipped again. Again, he spins upright into the thick fog. He is as blind as a bat in the cold damp mist and doesn’t have sonar. He tries sucking the fog in with his wide but powerful lungs. Nope. Spruce trees tower darkly. The river gushes around his feet like a flooding toilet. A sensation he has experienced…when….was it…?

To be continued…

And now for a brief interlude...

2006-03-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

With thanks to, and in memory of, the genius of B. Kliban.
For more Cats click on title above for link to eatmousies.

HARRY IN THE LAND OF CAT STATIONARY

Harry usually felt that he could cope with the situation, but this was a different kettle of fish. Cats plagued very existence. And now, his personal stationary was infested. However, he bravely silenced the alarm clock and reached down from the bed, groping for his red high-tops. He encountered only a fuzzy heap of shreddings. A question mark formed in his brain as he rolled over and looked down.

Harry remembers and forgets.

2006-03-03T20:34:00.000-07:00

…It reminded him of suffocating in a coffin after a confusing and daring escape from a Spanish prison, accompanied by 29 angry ape-like men and his childhood friend Buck Brains.

Air…I need air…again…always… I need air. Harry struggled against the panic rising in his chest and the blackness descending over his eyes. He struggled against the duct-taped trench coat still holding him securely in the canoe. He struggled against his helmet wedged tightly between the rocks. He struggled against the bubbling white froth filled with tiny, beautiful glistening orbs of oxygen, so perfect, so logical, so - oh.

He understood everything now. A tiny smile appeared at the corners of Harry’s cold wet lips as the boulder suddenly shifted and his head popped to the surface. He coughed.

He coughed again. Reflexively, Harry plunged his paddle into the water and spun the boat around. Everyone was gone. He took a deep breath. And, with that deep breath all that Harry had known moments earlier, with omniscient certainty, vanished in the encroaching fog like a rainbow in the twilight. He had only a vague sensation of waking up in a Spanish graveyard, but that was yesterday and soon it would be tomorrow. Now it was today – this moment.

Focus. He heard Buck’s voice echoing through the decades. Breathe. Harry shook his head. Droplets of water spun out in a dance of light around him.

“Enough of this!” he declared, “Justice will rule and man’s torment will be assuaged!”

To be continued…

Way down upon the Milky River

2006-03-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Harry spun himself around on the stool by the damp pink counter. There was the unfinished business of a kayak race to conduct, and now was the time to do it! Harry threw open the door to the coffee shop, forgetting about the door’s spring loaded hinges.
Then it hit him! The shortest distance between two points is a straight line! Dr. Maybe was going to try to escape across the mighty Milk River with his short but muscular legs!

Out of nowhere or somewhere, …does it matter?….Betsy purred. Harry leapt inside the cab, forgetting the fiver, forgetting the bottle green eyes, and forgetting Sophie. His heart swelled with love and appreciation. Betsy. He kissed the steering wheel and took a deep breath as he reached under the seat: duct tape, trench coat, power bar, spare clothes, nail clippers…come on…Gasiorowicz, Quantum Physics, 3rd ed. ...where is it…?... and… KEY! Yes! Time stands still, then warps out to a slow crawl. He is focused, completely in the moment. Doing a rockfish turn, he peels out of the parking lot and peppers the coffee shop with rock spray. (Modified MacDonald caper, as Buck used to call it.) Off to the World Cup Canoe/Kayak races…Dr. Maybe looks like Barbara Bush in a mini as he struggles with the spray skirt. Harry grabs a maverick C1, knowing the canoe was the more maneuverable boat. Using his ubiquitous trench coat and handy duct tape, he whips up a spray skirt faster than Christian Dior whips up an Oscar gown. He launches himself into the foaming white “stick to your upper lip” Milk River.

Slipping like ‘Nessie’ through the rapids (stopping to surf the gnarly ones), he soon spots his nemesis struggling in an eddy line. He runs circles around him for a while, but not being able to withhold the competitive urge, Harry sprints across the finish line, raising his paddle in victory! Oops! He loses his balances and flips over! A bullet whizzes by. While inverted, the foaming water reminds him of the time when….

To be continued…

Drink and Dash (new material!)

2006-02-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

Harry sighed and wiped his nose where the fly had been. The disinterested waitress looked up, now mildly interested by the expelled breath. Was it hers or his? It did not matter because she felt suddenly captivated by the war between his angelic features and the dark beast percolating inside him. Fully interested now, she took a cautious step forward, spellbound by the rapturous display of the dilemma battling on the thirsty stranger’s face. Harry looked up at her and jammed his hands into his pockets searching for spare change. Nothing. He grinned sheepishly, nodded, and mumbled a word of gratitude. He was through the door before she could stop him. When he turned back her pained look of bewilderment thrust into his heart like a dagger. He made a mental note to make amends and sprinted into the trees surrounding the café.

It would be autumn soon and the leaves covered in summer’s dust left a musty aroma at every step. Harry hated autumn. An annual reign of fear and depression loomed up at him. His gut tightened with anxiety causing waves of bile to crash against his esophagus. The leaves crunched underneath reminding him of grade school, of fear and of a foreboding gloomy winter of oppression.

He grunted as he hit the ground. “Darn shoelace”, he grumbled and rolled over to attack the offending string, saw that he was still wearing his boots and grumbled again. He pulled his foot closer, brushed the leaves from the worn brown leather and scanned the ground for the travel agent responsible for his recent trip. There, beneath his boot, a little worn and crumpled, was a five-dollar bill. “Well, huh…”, he mused and recognizing it for the omen that it was, hightailed it back to the café.

“Ah, just had to grab some cash…” he said pushing the bill toward the waitress,who had seemingly recovered from his abrupt departure. She paused for a brief moment, took a casual swipe at the spilled water, and looked up.

“No charge for water”, she answered, raising her left eyebrow, and pushed the bill back at him.

“Think I’ll have some cherry pie and a coffee, then”, he smiled, only slightly, then shoved the bill toward a dry spot and sat down.

“Sure thing”, she said, as she turned to grab a cup, looking briefly over her shoulder to see if he was still there.

The pie was good. She was good. As he pondered about letting her keep the entire five dollars, he took a final swig of coffee, dribbling most of it down the cleft in his chin. He watched the drops fall in slow motion toward the sparkling pink countertop and saw them suddenly soaked up by the sports section of the Magrath Rag. Her perfectly manicured finger tapped the headline. “Maybe”, she said, “You should read this”.

He looked up. Her bottle green eyes were piercing into his brain. Did all women have bottle green eyes? He looked down. The words floated up at him amidst the dribbled coffee.

To be continued...

Harry has a drink of water

2006-02-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Harry sat down on the hard stool at the counter in the coffee shop. His stomach was still doing loop-de-loops from his night adventures, and to tell the truth, the memory of all the crème-de-menthes didn’t make things easier. He was feeling more than slightly green about the gills. It isn’t easy being green he muttered.

Harry ordered another glass of water. The disinterested waitress dropped the glass on the counter in front of Harry splashing its contents onto the pink countertop. Harry grasped the glass in both hands, tilted his head backwards, and took a mighty swig. Somewhere in a distant galaxy, a star exploded. He placed the glass back on the countertop spilling more of its contents on to the wet pink surface. Harry stared into the depths of the glass, stared through the churning waters of the glass, stared at the palms of his hands as they held the glass, and stared at the tattoos on his hands as they danced their chaotic dance of reflection and refraction in the glass. A fly landed on Harry’s nose, cleaned its legs, and left as Harry pondered the self-similar patterns of light and shadow on the glass. Somewhere in a closer galaxy, a star was collapsing into a black hole. Soon the prophetic waters stilled, and all there was, was, Harry Hero on the right and maybe, Dr. Maybe on the left.

To be continued…

Harry has a sickening sensation

2006-02-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

That was a real bullet, he thought, stunned. With a sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach, he leaned against the rock and broke open the pistol. It held ordinary high caliber bullets, the soft tipped kind guaranteed to blow a large hole in any soft tissue they encountered. He had just shot a man in cold blood, and been nearly killed himself. If she asks me to play hangman, I will say no, he thought. A stealthy scraping came from his left.
Harry melted into the shadows again and made his way up the hill behind the cover of the rocks. He caught one glimpse of a black figure in pursuit and changed course to drop down by the river. There, he ran into another group of black–clad figures. Fortunately, they only shot at him twice before he was able to get away. After that, he concentrated on keeping his head down and his feet in motion until the sun turned the eastern sky pink. By then, he was far from the campground. He flagged down a farm truck that dropped him off in a small town.

To be continued…

Harry uses a gun

2006-02-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

Harry, what the Sam Hill is going on here, he said to himself, wishing he could crawl into his cozy tent and sleep for about 14 hours. Maybe he ought to drink some coffee, but she had stored the stove somewhere, and he wasn’t the type to look through her things to find it. He settled for going down to the river and plunging his head into the cool water. Then he concentrated on finding the narrow path through the rocks to his lookout post high above the water.

Harry woke up when something ran over his leg. He rubbed his eyes, swearing to himself. He’d fallen asleep on spite of his best intentions. He glanced at his watch. It was just before two, the moon was full and silver in the sky, and he could see almost as well as if it was day, except where there were shadows. Wait a minute. He was supposed to meet Sophie at one. Where was she? The sound of splashing from the river below distracted him. He leaned out from his hiding place and looked down. Two black clad figures were climbing out of a rubber raft in the shallows on his side of the river, not far down stream. The raft carried some cargo, a bulky lump under a tarp. It had to be the red team, Harry thought. He rose from his hiding place and headed for the path that would take him down to the river’s edge. He stopped for a moment, reconsidering. Sophie had not said how many people were on the red team: she had just let him assume that there were two, the same as themselves. But there were more….
Harry left the path and made his way through the rocks. In minutes, he was close enough to hear their breathing. He pulled out his pistol and aimed it at the nearest figure, who was removing the tarp from the object in the raft. He sighted down his arm and let his breath out. He squeezed the trigger. There was a satisfying load explosion, and the smell of burning gunpowder. The figure jerked upright and slumped to the ground. Very, realistic, Harry thought, and drew a bead on the other man. The other man was pointing his pistol in Harry’s general direction, and he fired at the same instant Harry threw himself to the ground. Thus, the bullet aimed in Harry’s direction passed through the small pack he wore on his back and not through his head. Harry rolled to his right, away from the raft and was on his feet running through the scrub brush before he had time to figure it out. Then he did.

To be continued…

Harry eats and drinks

2006-02-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Something about the whole thing was wrong, but Harry was in too deep now. He met her green eyes with his own baby blues and said, “I’m your man”.

“Good,” she said briskly. “I knew I could count on you. Now let’s talk tactics.” For the rest of the afternoon, they studied the map and assessed their options. When the sun went behind the coulee rim, she cooked supper on an ultra-light backpacking stove. Harry washed the dishes, and when that was finished, she brought out a bottle of crème-de-menthe. Harry hated the stuff, but when she offered it to him in a crystal shot glass, with the firelight dancing in her eyes, he took it, and after the fourth one, it didn’t taste so bad any more.

“The game starts at midnight,” she said at 11o’clock.

“What?” said Harry; not believing his had heard correctly. “Midnight, as in tonight?” He had assumed the whole thing would start at some civilized hour in the morning.

“Yes, We should get dressed now.” She went into her tent and returned with an armful of clothing. “Here’s something for you to wear.” Harry stood up. He made it on the second try, more than a little unsteady on his feet. Why had she done this to him? He shook his head to loosen the grip of the poisonous crème-de-menthe on his senses. He went to his own tent and struggled into the black bodysuit, noting it had green patches on the front and back. They were the green team, he supposed. When he came out, she was staring after a tall man who was just disappearing behind a thicket of brush at the edge of their campsite. He could not read the expression on her face.

“Someone you know?” he asked, in what he hoped was a casual manner. She seemed not to hear him, so he said it again.

“Maybe”, she said, and he could not read her voice any better than he could her face. She handed him his gun, and slid her own into a holster that fit snuggly at her side. “It works the same as any pistol,” she said. “Point and shoot. You have 15 shots. Take no prisoners.” She laughed a brittle, bitter laugh. “I’ll see you at our check point at one.” And she turned and was gone, a shadow in her black body suit.

To be continued...

Harry camps out

2006-02-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

Sophie had the best of everything in camping gear and then some. In minutes, she had made camp, and was spreading out a large topo map on the grass. Harry was fully prepared to admire her thoroughness and cringed inwardly remembering that he had told her he had lost his own equipment. He revised his assessment when she opened a foam lined Cordova case and took out two guns. She was perhaps too thorough. She looked up and asked, “How are you at guerilla warfare?

”
“Huh?” said Harry. She laughed.
“Some friends of mine are staging a war game here. My partner couldn’t make it, and I need somebody to fill in. We have to stop the red team form crossing the river --- with these.” She gestured at the guns. “They shoot fluorescent dye. When you’re hit, you’re out of the game.” She gazed at him steadily. Her green eyes gleamed in the sunlight. “What do you say, Harry Hero?”

To be continued...

Harry clenches his fist.

2006-02-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

“Ah, here we are” and turned the Miata down a hill toward a green coulee. “You were going to Writing-On-Stone Park weren’t you? There’s not much else down this road.” And Harry’s nimble mind supplied him with a cover just like that.

“Yeah, and you know, I have to confess, I don’t know why.” She looked at him, with a faint look of curiosity. Or was it amusement? Harry couldn’t tell. He plunged on with his story.

“I was hiking in the back country, back there, and lost all my gear. No tent, no food, no clothes, no gear.”

“I have enough for two,” she purred. “You can use my stuff, if you like. Except I don’t have any boots that you could use. But perhaps you prefer to hike in cowboy boots.”

“Well it’s good for the snakes” he said, lamely. Was she toying with him? There was something about this girl, something…dangerous? Maybe. Harry clenched his left fist surreptitiously.

To be continued...

Harry hitches a ride.

2006-02-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

He walked for a long time down the road, with the asphalt sucking at his boots heels. He saw a garter snake stretched out flat on the burning tarmac and a highflying hawk. He played the game he always played when he woke from one of his fugue states. Where am? How did I get here? His only clue was a small red dot in the hollow of his left elbow, which he recognized as a needle scar. He had recently been injected with something, or had had something sucked out of him. His game was interrupted by a faint sound behind him. He stopped. After several hours of unceasing bee-drone, Harry’s ears were hungry for action. They focused on the distant hum, and Harry’s heart leapt gladly for it was a man-made noise: in fact, it was a car approaching; a 1994 bottle-green Mazda Miata convertible in need of a tune up-up to be exact. Harry knew these things before he could see the car; such was the acuity of his powers of observation and deduction. Before he had time to marvel at his skill, the car was there, barreling through the heat waves like a Titan rocket gone AWOL.

Harry raised his arm to flag the car down but it was already slowing before he got halfway there. It stopped beside him in a swirl of dust and the smell of hot oil. Harry looked up at the driver and the driver looked at him, and for a moment time stopped. It’s her, Harry thought confusedly, for alarm bells were ringing in his head, or maybe they were church bells or sleigh bells, and for a moment Harry thought he smelled lemons or laundry fresh from drying on the line on a windy spring day instead of hot oil. She took off her sunglasses and smiled at him, and Harry saw her eyes were the same bottle green as her car.

“Need a ride cowboy?’ she asked, and Harry heard the church again.

“Ummm, yeah,” he said over the echo of the bells. “Where are you going?” he said gesturing vaguely down the road. She punched the accelerator hard enough to snap Harry’s head back. “Do you always drive like this?” he asked, rubbing his neck.

“Not really”, she smiled. “Sometimes I drive fast.” They sat silent for a few minutes as the Miata howled up and down the small hills and dips in the road. Harry covertly studied her perfect profile, her golden hair, the muscles in her tanned and slender thigh as she worked the brake and the accelerator.

“What’s your name?” she asked at last.

“Harry, Harry Hero.” She smiled at him again, and again Harry half remembering that smile, that face.

“You look like a hero.” She said nothing more. After a minute or an hour, Harry said, “What’s your name?” and somehow knew the answer the answer before she said “Sophie.” He thought about his situation, and had just about decided to confess his loss of memory, when she said briskly, “Ah, here we are”.

To be continued...

Harry comes to.

2006-02-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

Harry came to suddenly, in one of those mind-jolting lunges of consciousness that had plagued him all of his life. He had no memory of where he had been, what he had done, even who he was. It was why, in one of his earlier lives (for it seemed to Harry that he had not one seamless life that he could call his own, but only one dim episode after another) he had had his name tattooed in large letters on his right palm. He always recognized those bold letters as his name, and after discovering them, he would seize on them and feel whole once more. “I am Harry Hero”, he thought and it was enough. Less clear to him was the inscription on his left palm: Maybe. He looked at that cryptic word now, and thought Maybe. Maybe Not, it seemed to make no difference either way.

Harry looked around. He was standing beside a road. On either side of the road, crops were ripening in fields that stretched to a horizon made blurry by the heat of high summer.

The pavement was soft under the heels of his cowboy boots, and the only sound was the thick, fuzzy droning of the bees labouring under the weight of the pollen stacked up on the harry legs.

“Take it easy little fellers,” Harry said, for he was suddenly lonely there by the side of the road, and the bees were the closest things to him on the evolutionary scale that he could see in all that hot, green landscape.

He looked to the right, had he been going that way? Maybe. Maybe Not, Harry sighed. Sometimes he thought he was being melodramatic. He started walking to the left, to the east, to the sinister side to the maybe side.

To be continued...

Fireblade Rocket

2006-02-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Harry’s stretcher turns into a Fireblade rocket with wheels, and Christmas lights on top. There was a Christmas tree inside. The tree had a star on top of it that made the light shine.

All the good guys and bad guys are on the farm. Harry stands up on the stretcher. The rooster cock-a-doodle doos and they run away fast. The bad guys just stay there and the farm animals kill them! The cows kill them with their horns. The sun shines, the sky is blue and the good guys find a shady spot. They have a picnic because they are hungry. The horse can talk and sit down. (Floppy –the original?) A lid falls on their heads, and there is an apple in it. Harry had an idea. “Let’s make a car.” They use the lid for a wheel. There are many lids. There are many wheels. Then they ride away in the car.

To be continued...

Whales and Pencils and Trucks! OH MY!

2006-02-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

Harry rolled over and his dream continued about Floppy and Betsy. Floppy is a killer whale. Betsy is a truck. Betsy gave Harry a whale for Christmas. Harry said, “You are crazy! I don’t need this st…stuff. I am a person not a truck or a killer whale. Then Harry wakes up. Floppy and Betsy are calling him.

“Come out! You slept all day. We didn’t get any food."

to be continued.

Harry's Christmas Dream

2006-02-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

Harry felt comfortable on the stretcher. He was dreaming about having Christmas with Floppy and Betsy. Floppy is Harry’s pencil that talks and Betsy is Harry’s semi-truck. Harry decided to arrange a hay ride. Betsy might not fit on the wagon but Floppy would. So off Floppy and Harry went but Betsy stayed home. When they got there, no-one was there. How Mysterious, thought Harry. He went looking around for the owners of the place, but still he found no 0ne. So he and Floppy walked home. While they were walking, Floppy said to Harry, “How strange that no-one was there.” Harry just nodded. When they got home they went into the garage. Betsy was smiling. Harry peeked inside Betsy and everyone yelled surprise!!! Merry Christmas Harry. Harry was surprised. They had a party and went on the hay ride.
Harry rolled over and his eyes fluttered. He was almost awake when he dosed off again.

To be continued...

Sophie does rounds

2006-02-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile….Sophia de Costa, chief night nurse for the past thirteen years, is going about her regular 2 AM rounds. As she walks mechanically from one room to the next, checking vital signs and making quick scribbles on charts, she wonders why she ever got into this job in the first place. Her romantic dreams of life-saving melodrama seemed light-years away from the bed pans and dressings that she nonchalantly changed every hour. Ha! Remember that young doctor ten years ago? She thought he was more interested in than her long legs and green eyes. Yeah, turns out he was. Oh well, Father O’Grady says sins of intention are not quite as mortal as the real thing.

Oops! Almost woke Mrs. Silva. Sorry, old girl. Don’t want you whining all night for a cup of lukewarm tea with exactly one and one-half tablespoons of canned milk. Now, onto this new patient in 408. What’s his history? Toenail transplant?! Give me a break! This is our taxpayer’s money? OK, here we go—how can he sleep with the moon shining on his face?…Oh, look at him! He reminds me of my Harry. (Doesn’t everyone?) Will I ever get that man out of my system? That chin, those barely visible laugh lines at the corner of his eyes. Wonder if….
Mercy! Look at his chart! Can it really be? A LOBOTOMY!!! No, No, No! this will not happen! Where’s that lab coat? In the hallway closet…Quick before old McGregor looks up from her re-runs. Harry my love; for it is you….there will be no surgery done on you. Let them look for you in the morning. Sophia will take care of you. Hold on now!

Hmm, these sins of intention will just have to be dealt with one of these days!

Pre-op assessment

2006-02-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

When Nurse Tenderlove returned with the loaded syringe she was herding yet another sheepish support staff member who was bleating apologetically. “I think Patsy and Betty are on their coffee break…I…I…don’t know this patient,….I…I can’t…and I have to….”

“I do not care to hear excuses!” Nurse Tenderlove glared at the muttonhead. “Just do as the Doctor orders and do it now!”

Dr. Maybe made appreciative googoo eyes at Nurse Tenderlove and turned to the nervous ninny. “Expose his gluteus maximus,” he demanded, pulling his thin wet lips so tightly over his yellow teeth that each word was squeezed out through his bulbous nose. She stared numbly at the agitated and hairy man in the bed but did not move. “His rear end!, snorted Dr. Maybe. “His behind!”

“Oh,” she smiled weakly, then discreetly revealed the upper outer quadrant of Harry’s taut tush. Dr. Maybe plunged the syringe into Harry’s muscle without hesitation.

“This drug will begin to take effect in ten minutes. The security guards will be here soon. When you have their assistance, prepare him for cranial surgery. Do you understand?”

She nodded meekly as Dr. Maybe stormed from the room, then spun on his heels and hovered like a hurricane in freeze frame. “Shave and prep his toes as well,” he sneered and whirled away.

Harry heard the disappearing devilish Dr. Maybe barking an order to page the neuro and ortho surgeons. A sickening lethargy washed over Harry and he was pain free as he drifted into a deep sleep. The stereophonic hatred of Nurse Tenderlove’s and Dr. Maybe’s remote laughter echoed in his anesthetized ears.

Harry opens his eyes.

2006-02-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Harry flexed and extended his prehensile hairy toes, swung his flexible left limb up to his right wrist and wiggled his big toe. The scalpel sharp, steel toenail glinted in the neon lights. Harry smiled as the memory of his good friend Buck, came flooding back to him……

“This toenail may wear out of few socks, Harry,” he had said, “but it will get you out of a bind someday.”

….Harry shut out Buck’s image, no time for memory lane now, he thought, and deftly began to slice at the wrist restraints.

Abruptly, the door flew open. “WHAT IS GOING ON…NURSE TENDERLOVE! Get in here PRONTO!’ Harry turned to the bellowing voice of Dr. Maybe, opened his eyes and finally faced his long lost nemesis who was sneering savagely down at him.

Nurse Tenderlove blasted into the room, coffee stains dribbling down her starched whites. “Get me 20 mg of Versed! Yesterday! And, call security AND the O.R.!”, he barked at the icy nurse as she skated from the room. “We’re going to do an emergency lobotomy and nailectomy on this psychopath before he harms anyone”, Dr. Maybe explained to the vapor trail that had been Nurse Tenderlove. He cackled at Harry who struggled in futile desperation against the still intact restraints.

To be continued…

Coffee break.

2006-02-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

While Harry struggled quietly in his stuporous state the substandard support staff were enjoying chocolates with coffee. The tasty treats brought in by the grateful loved ones of former patients distracted the aides from their duties. Therefore, they failed to notice any changes in his condition. If they had recognized the significance of his increased blood pressure and steady pulse they might have informed the overworked and bitter charge nurse. They might have suggested that the hairy patient, as he had come to be known, was in need of more sedation. But they did not. Fortuitously for Harry, the Support Staff, or S.S., as he came to think of them, knew and understood very little. Their inaccurate assessment enabled Harry to secretly play ‘possum, plan and peruse his drugged dendrites for clues to his predicament. If only he could recall the names of the loathsome loquacitor and the wintry woman who bound his brain with chemical restraints and cackled evilly over his bed.

A new dawn broke. The S.S. squeaked into the room and Harry listened to their idle chatter as they prepared his morning bed bath, his mind coiled and ready, his body purposefully limp.

“Tomorrow off with your beautiful curls, Hairy”, giggled one of the silly supports as she slopped a wet cloth across his faking physiognomy. Harry twitched.

“We might as well cut it today”, said the other, “and give him a final shave tomorrow, just before surgery.”

Harry’s eyes popped open in shock and the giggler screamed. He slammed his eyes shut and went limp with fear.

“D...Di…Did you see that?!”, the screamer stuttered.
“See what?’
“His eyes! He opened his eyes!”, the screaming stutterer explained.
“Very funny. Quit fooling around, Patsy, that scream nearly put me into a cardiac arrest. Now, speaking of a rest; it’s time for coffee. Let’s go.”
“But, I’m sure,…I…,” the explainer protested.
“Patsy, listen, Dr. Em. Told us, and I quote: ‘this unfortunate mass of tissue is an encephalopic alcoholic with a massive brain tumor and a history of violence who will likely never open his eyes again.’ It is our job to keep him clean and quiet until he goes to surgery. We’ve done that. Now let’s go for coffee before I die of hypocaffinanemia.”

“Hmmmm, oh yah, I could use a chocolate donut," relented the protestor, "maybe it was just one of those reflex responses the physios always talk about.” Harry listened to their shoes squeak down the hallway.

‘Phew, I nearly blew it that time,’ he thought.

Suddenly, it hit him squarely in the Ah Hah! region. He gasped. Dr. Em…Dr. M….Dr. Maybe! And his devoted sidekick Nurse Tenderlove! Harry finally became oriented to the second sphere of awareness. This must mean that I am in the Vegas Vagus Neurological Institute soon to become the guinea pig of the dastardly chief surgeon and evil swine Dr. Maybe! I have to get out of here, now!, he concluded correctly to himself.

To be continued….

Harry gets a shot.

2006-02-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

“Twenty milligrams Haldol! STAT! “ The wicked words were barely discernable in Harry’s cloudy cortex.
“Sub Q?”, came a query.
“Eye Em!”, exploded the reply, “Now!”
Instantly, the polar paws were on his gluteus maximus and a faint whiff of alcohol preceded a sharp jab into his flesh.
Harry’s jaw clenched. The glacial grabber was kneading his muscle into a mass of frozen bun dough.
“That should be sufficient, Nurse”, a nasal voice dripped. The arctic appendage slowly slipped form Harry’s firm backside while the voice ran on. “Please ensure that the staff keep Har…eeee..ah..uh, I mean, this hairy, uh John Doe.. sedated until I am ready for him. Doctor Slaughter will be arriving in a few days to assist with the operation. Until then he is not to leave this bed.”
Harry’s brain backstroked. Foggy faces bobbed above him muttering jumbled jargon. The muddled gibberish that had been simmering like alphabet soup in his Broca area boiled into gray hash and just as Harry’s tenuous grip on reality slipped into a halcyon haze, the faint but unmistakably vile voice of the vicious vixen plowed a bitter seed of horror into his dirt black consciousness.
“Sweet nightmares, Harry. Heehheeeeheeeeeeeh!” she hailed in a blizzard of jaded laughter.
How long the maniacal laughter ricocheted through his sedated synapses Harry knew not. He did come to realize, however that her ghastly guffaws had prevented the total loss of his conscious state. The malignant fear that had rooted in his fertile consciousness had germinated into a beanstalk. A beanstalk which enabled him to climb from his drug induced suppression and peer cautiously over the cloudy edges of somnolence into a distant earthbound clarity. The minutes slipped into hours, the hours into days and Harry did suffer with uneasy remembrances of a blazing inferno deep in his past.

To be continued….

Trepan or not trepan...

2006-02-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

“Well, my dear, I appreciate your enthusiastic cooperation, but I do not believe this is the appropriate location for such a procedure. If you could enlist the help of our most congenial friends, perhaps we could transport him to the institute for safekeeping.”

“Of course, Doctor”, agreed the chilling voice.

The soft squeak of rubber soles faded into silence. Harry fought a losing battle with the sandman. His was a fitful repose, wrought with wailing sirens, slamming doors and muffled voices. He felt his limp carcass fly through the air, land with a careless thud and settle into a bumpy ride. The fast paced slap of flat feet echoed rhythmically with the rapid rattle of rubber gurney wheels rotating over rug. He became vaguely aware that he was on a stretcher careening through seemingly endless hallways. The stench of chlorine bleach, formaldehyde and sewage flowed around him in nauseating waves. Flashes of bright light punctured the gritty mucous slits of his eyelids and stabbed at his retina. “Unguhh”, he moaned reflexively, as his massive mitts flew up to protect his baby blues from the blinding pain.

Unghn” , he whimpered anew, as his arms came to an abrupt halt in mid-reflex. Cold claws clamped around his wrists and pressed them into his heaving abdomen.

“1…2…3!”, counted a voice. His body flew again and then crashed into Siberian sheets.

“Restrain him!”, ordered the oddly opaque, yet somewhat familiar voice. In a flash the frigid fingers secured canvas backed leather straps around Harry’s hairy wrists and a swift bilateral jerk splayed his arms outward where they were neatly secured to the steel bedrails.

And it continues.....

2006-02-03T17:50:00.000-07:00

When he reopened his eyes, he felt immobile. He looked down at his toes. They seemed to be in a sandy beach, with occasional cocoanut palms swaying in the offshore breeze. Harry looked out over the waves, and saw a large approaching cloud bank. He looked upward, and saw gulls wheeling overhead.
As he wondered at his altered state, the typhoon struck, and he grimaced as his palm hairs were uprooted. The pain was too much, he yelped and faded out again.

*****

When his eyes opened for the third time, Harry was wheeling over the island, watching as the heavy winds shredded the shoreline. He stretched his wings, and soared on the fringes of the onslaught. Soon the storm passed, leaving havoc in its wake. Darkness fell again, as quickly as a tropical sunset after the rain. Strangely though, Harry kept some sense of consciousness, and perched on an uprooted palm, listening to the white noise of the surf. When dawn came, he flapped off with his brethren, towards the glowing orb in the eastern sky.
.

*****

But suddenly he was wrenched from his idyll by a familiar loathed voice. “He is prepped, Doctor. Would you like me to pay our flat footed friend or assist in the trepanning?”

To be continued….

It continues in the inevitable, almost required, sequence.

2006-02-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

When Harry regained consciousness., the cell around him was enshrouded with mist, and the staff was nowhere in sight. The cell door swung a jar of peanut butter back and forth. Harry staggered to his small, yet hirsute feet, his cranium playing the last movement of the 1812 overture. He stumbled out the door, and into the street. The fog thickened. In the distance, our hero could hear the approach of a tractor unit, downshifting and popping the brakes. “Betsy?” he posited.

From the fog, a shapely figure appeared, clad in a red metallic jump suit, with chromed protuberances. Heavy rubber hippy sandals enclosed her magnesium shaded toenails. About her aerodynamic sleeper was a polyethylene strand skirt, with Yosemite Sam accessories in abundance. “Betsy?”, Harry wondered aloud.
“Come with me, Horatio” , breathed the high octane unit, in a voice reminiscent of a four-barrel carb full out. And she extended her large yet shapely hand. A strange inverted 3-legged “h” tattoo, encircled by the digits 1 to 5 was prominent on her walnut-stained palm. Harry grasped her appendage and followed her into the gloom. In the distance, the fog seemed to clear, and they promenaded down the boulevard toward the clearing.

Harry itched to return to the hoosegow and vent his spleen on Sin City’s finest But Betsy, as he thought of his succorer, urged him on. “We must cross this bridge, Horatio,” she rumbled, “and then you’ll be your old self”
“I feel fine.” Harry responded, “What do you mean?”
“This isn’t what you think, my knight of the road”, Betsy soothed.
“Listen Honey,” Harry protested, “what’s going on? I feel fine. Whaddya mean, old self?”
“You’re having a bad night,” Betsy said. “That knock on your noggin did you no good.”

By this time Betsy had conveyed Harry toward the clearing in the fog. A narrow suspensing bridge crossed a raging torrent. Torrents don’t like bad prose. They crossed over the bridge, and into a steamy jungle. The screeching parrots and rusty monkey gyms lent some atmosphere to the increasingly uninspired story.

Suddenly, a sharp pain lanced through Harry’s skull and he fell face up into the path.

To be continued...

The beginning of a bad night.

2006-02-03T09:40:00.001-07:00

“Take it easy there, Bud,” Harry snarled, as the cop twisted his arm higher behind his back. “I’m just here for the night, right?”
“Quiet punk! We know how to handle stumblebum Canucks like youse, here in Vegas,” the porculent flatfoot grunted in return, and gave an extra twist as they reached the cell block. Enraged, Harry threw the cop with a rolling hip lock, and attempted a cross-face chicken-wing. “Hah! I learnt that one from Charlie on the Mekong, punk,” sneered the blue nit, brandishing his sap. A ten megaton tactical thermonuclear device exploded on Harry’s bald spot, and he faded into the faux Navajo tile floor. As our hero’s consciousness faded he saw a size twelve spit-polished battleship approaching his mid-ships at ramming speed.

To be continued...

A Transcendental Poisoning

2006-02-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Harry sat down and ordered the special de jour. When it arrived he was pleased with the presentation and was delighted with the sumptuous taste until…GASP!

The poisoned food had taken effect leaving Harry in a vacillating state. “Why do I continue to eat at this transcendental dive” He pondered.

The bang of his front door succumbing to the force of the long arm of the law woke Harry from his abysmal sleep. What a sinister dream he thought to himself. But here I am safe in my own bed after a lovely meal.

In a flash the police were all over him

To be continued...

Harry hits a home run

2006-01-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

Luckily, Harry noticed that one of the bars in the cage had been replaced with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Using the portable HarryFax in his coat pocket , he immediately sent a message to Cito Gaston. It said:

Please show this note to Joe Carter NOW.

I need to know:

Where is the easiest place to break a Louisville Slugger baseball bat?

RSVP pronto:

Harry H. Hero

King Jack Diamond Hear Street

Las Vegas, Nevada

P0K 3R5

When the reply came to Harry’s house, his faithful dog, Dollar tracked Harry's heroic scent to the trapped hero.Creeping carefully behind the fake foliage in the Luxor lobby, Dollar weeded her way to the cage and pushed the crumpled (and slightly slobbered upon) paper through the bars to the captive Harry.

Quickly, he read Joe Carter’s response:

Good to hear from you again Harry.

The easiest place to break a Louisville Slugger bat is right at the bottom of the black paint.

Your friend, Joe

Luckily, Harry had been gardening before his adventure began. Swiftly he pulled the trowel from his back pocket and used it to chop the bat in half; but it stuck fast. Anxiously, he pushed at it with his mighty foot and it gave way, suddenly flinging him out of the cage. Harry was exhausted and hungry from his ordeal so he decided to go to Chez Tish’s for a bite. A place where it was usually safe to order a salad.

To be continued...

The fiendish trap is sprung

2006-01-31T19:08:00.000-07:00

Harry followed the lady into the Luxor Hotel casino. At the slot machine he put in a quarter and pulled a lever. The handle hit some secret scissors that cut the string on a balloon. The balloon floated up to the ceiling and hit a mouse motor that made a jack-in-the-box fly open. The lid of the of the jack-in-the-box flipped a bowling ball over some more scissors that cut a rope. Attached to the rope was a one ton cage that fell down and trapped Harry right where he was standing.

To be continued...

Harry crosses the street.

2006-01-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

Sashaying in front of him, was a perfect heart shaped ass. Clandestinely clad in rump revealing burgundy shorts of satin. A glamour crime in many states; Harry thought it a crime that such perfection was covered with even a hint of clothing. Relishing the view for the remainder of the block, Harry also observed that the lady clutched two hefty bags to her tightly tuned torso. “Body by Tonka, brain by Mattel,” thought Harry, “If she changed the quarters to bills she would have less to carry and more to spend.” The enormity of his realization hit him as the WALK light flashed on. He followed the apparition from the Lucky Lady Casino, across the street to Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino. Realizing that even if he was on the right track, he would still get hit if he just stood there, Harry reached a hand out hoping that it would not be met with thin air.
“Greedy boy” came the sultry response. “Burgundy valentines must be given, not taken.”
“Unless they are there for the taking,” replied Harry.
“Follow me” she said, with a flip of her tortured tresses and contact number two was a done deal.

To be continued....

Harry doesn't finish his coffee.

2006-01-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

Reaching between the heaving mounds of her ample bosom, the painted, puffing tart extracted a crumpled, aromatic valentine of burgundy foil and glitter.

“From me,” she breathed and slowly shimmied her porcine posterior toward the nether regions of the restaurant. Harry sensuously ran the heart under his nose and inhaled before opening it to reveal the following message:

A Lucky Lady carries a massage from Lady Luck to Sam’s Town. Her burden is heavy, but were it less so, she would have more.

Harry leaned forward in his chair and pressed his forehead in the vicinity of his third eye. “AFGO” he sighed, “Another Friggin’ Growth Opportunity.” Or was this burgundy valentine a red herring/ Their aromas were similar.

ISTP personality that he was, Harry began to quickly, logically and unemotionally analyze the information the message contained.

Lucky Lady – Ladies, to Harry, came in three varieties, the two-legged kind, the four-legged kind that carried jockeys and the four-legged kind with tails that chased after fake rabbits. Any one of these could be a Lucky Lady. In the past Harry had sampled them all.

Heavy Burden – Life had taught Harry that heavy loads were not always physical . The most burdensome were visceral and emotional. If dogs and horses did not suffer from emotional angst Harry could probably eliminate a lot of suspects.

More for less – More happiness with less pain? More success with less fear? More winning with less skill? Who would possess these qualities in Las Vegas?

In order to cast as wide a net as possible, and to allow for serendipitous events, Harry left the Sum Dey after tipping the ash tray dripping waitress with a well worn, hard earned quarter. Back in the leaping Lada, our hero returned to the strip, where he often strolled to stimulate his sluggish mind with the cacophony of sights and sound… The aroma of excitement,loss and greed assailed his nostrils and... ZOUNDS!! What was this that assailed his pulsating pupils?

To be continued…..

Harry Makes Contact

2006-01-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas loomed, looking a lot like Lethbridge. Harry slowed the leaping Lada and urged it to the off ramp leading to the seedy restaurant district. Soon he reined it to a halt before the Sum Dey Café (Peking/Lebonese our Specialty) “A bad Café”, recalled Harry. He resolved not to order a salad. He sidled through the cracked glass (not diamond) door and slid into a booth.

“Irish coffee, keeps you alert but erratic”, said the waitress. An ash dropped off her cigarette into Harry’s frothy cup. “That’ll curl the hair on your toes.” She said. Harry blanched. How did she know about the hair on his toes? Could she be the operative he was expecting?

“Valentines are burgundy” he ventured.

“Only when they come from me” she replied, and the contact was made.

To be continued......

The Game was Afoot. circa 199...

2006-01-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

A gentle zephyr ruffled Harry’s still luxuriant curly locks as he ambled up the walk to the back door, sat on the step and tugged off his rubber boots. Down the valley he could see the modest pinnacle of the Luxor. “A naïve domestic bungalow”, punned Harry, “but I am amused by its presumptuousness.”

He stepped through the plate diamond French windows and frowned. The HarryFax was whirring. The idyll was shattered. Reality intruded.
Then as always, Harry brightened. His pulse quickened, and he felt the rush from his artificially augmented adrenals. The game was a foot.

For as lowly and sordid the life of a hero, the life of an ex-hero is stagnant and stupefying. Humming a bar from Don’t Fence Me In, Harry strode to the HarryFax, and tore off the missive. It read:
Maybe baby I feel blue
Maybe, baby I need you
Maybe, baby you’ll come to
Sum Dey

Zounds! Clearly a call for help, from one of the forty who had accompanied Harry on his Voyage into the Cave of Convenience. (Harry’s code name had been All Baby)

So Dr.Maybe was on the loose! The notorious Nabob of Nasty had almost neutered his nemesis in a nook in Numtijuh in November.

“Asphyxiation?”, wondered Harry, “Or Cyanide? What is the precise shade of blue?’

But that detail could be cleared up when Harry made the rendezvous. Grabbing his cape, he sped out the front door, leapt through the dangling passenger door of his trusty Lada, fired the remaining two cylinders to life, and clattered off to the seedy restaurant area of Vegas.

Harry still wondered about Vegas. He was sure it was a mix-up. His mind wandered back to that last meeting with the Tri-Lateral Commission….

“Harry “, they pontificated, “we hear you are retiring now that the world is safe. What would you like as a reward?”

“As a symbol of my new life,” replied Harry, “I am renouncing the consumption of meat. I am becoming a vegan.”

“Fine”, replied the Commission, “your wish is our command.”

…there was a confusing week spent orbiting the star of Vega in a used space capsule. Harry was more than a little annoyed when he finally got home. He assumed the house on the outskirts of Las Vegas was the Commission’s way of making amends, and fulfilling Harry’s desire. Harry could appreciate the economy of thought.

to be continued...

The Not So Constant Gardener

2006-01-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

“Life is good,” pondered Harry, as he set down his watering can. “What more could an ex-hero want?”

Yes, finally after many sleepless nights and heroic helpings of Dioxin, the cabbages were beginning to prosper. The carrots (Oh, sturdy carrots!) were never in danger, but now they stood particularly straight and tall beneath the crisp Christmas desert sun.

Yes, mused Harry, he felt much better about the world these days. He did miss his old friends, Konstantin and Yuri, not to mention Leonid. Mik, sadly, had sold himself to the vice of the paid printed word. But they had made their choices, at Harry’s insistence, Ron and Georges had reluctantly gone along with the grand scheme. Sometimes Harry felt he should talk to Bill, but always decided to gore that ox when he came to it.

A healthy slug slithered from the saffron. Harry did not even clench it with his powerful hairy toes, but gently lifted it to the saucer of beer. “An adversary deserves to die happily,” philosophized Harry. “Look at Kim, the least scrutable of the dictators, who had finally listened to Harry’s Reason, and made the final toast with a smile on his lips.

to be continued....

Harry Digs Deep circa 2003

2006-01-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Harry was working through a thin time in the hero business, not just the plot. Employment as a plot digger in the St. Hubert mausoleum on the left bank kept the wolf from the door; but the hours were long, and the conditions poor. But, there was heroism in serving humanity's last needs. At least that's what Harry told himself. But on nights like tonight, when the wind was blowing the blossoms off the chestnut trees and into the sticky mud that he piled ever higher, he knew it was just the absinthe talking.
"Ah, if only fair Marie had not left for the New World," he moaned, in perfect pitch with the howling wind. Then he remembered Sophie, and how he had lost his anguish in her arms. Also his lunch, but let's not talk about that.
One last shovelful of muck, and the new grave was deep enough. Harry clambered from the grasp of the sucking wound he had created in the bosom of Mother Earth, and then hauled his rickety ladder out as well. A light rain began to fall, adding to the gloominess of the night. Off in the distance a hound howled.
Harry took the old tarpaulin lying beside the grave, and pulled it over the mound, to keep it from being washed back in to the grave, in case the rain picked up. He then began the long slog back to home, Boaty Betsy, his converted coal scuttle tied on the east bank of the Seine. The hound howled anew, and a shiver went down Harry's back as he wound his way through the graveyard. "Stop, right there!" came the voice vaguely French, yet tinged with a hint of Boris Karloff.
Harry's mighty thews twitched and he dove behind a nearby tombstone, while ripping open his shirt in preparation for action. .... When Harry regained consciousness, daylight had returned. He was propped against the tombstone, a cake of blood on his craggy brow. The sun was brilliantly shining down, and the tweety birds were tweeting. Nearby, an elderly paissant was sitting cross-legged, seemingly dozing in the balmy summer heat.
Harry swiftly rose to a sitting position, which, in Harry's case, is usually an error. A loud clang and sharp pain welcomed him into darkness once more.

Harry has a Good Sleep circa 1979

2006-01-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

The moon! But of course! Suddenly he was overwhelmed with the return of his memory. Death Valley had never been like this. It could only be the Goddess of the Night where he lay wounded but alive. "And how could that be?", he queried to himself, for no-one else was near. Groaning, he turned his head just managing to stretch the black pupil of his reddened eyes thus enabling himself to make out the life support system that lay beside him. Too soon, consciousness escaped him and the misty mirages of senseless sleep overcame his tormented ego, giving rise to his true self. Through the fog etched the soul of his existence proclaiming its right to be heard. Clawing, clinging, and climbing one tiny string to awareness; it came. It came, relentlessly, beating the path - the royal road - to consciousness. There were countless images of synaptic statements vented from the vortex of our hero's fixations writhing ever forward. But then, just as they neared full throttle REM, deep sleep invaded forcing the Id-beasties to reconsider. Hours later, the dawn of Luna awoke simultaneously with the dawn of Harry's beingness. It cascaded the heavenly light across the worn features of his face and likewise the heavenly light of his soul across the worn features of his Dasein.

Floppy the Horse circa 1976

2006-01-24T22:22:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, back at the ranch Floppy the horse whinnied alarmingly as the world disappeared around him. "Gee Whiz!" he exclaimed, "I am the only surviving sentient being in the universe. What will I do?" Just then a sleekly lined silver object pulled up beside him and a small hatch opened.
"This is the end!" gulped Floppy.
"Not so, small but furry quadruped." a soothing, sonorous, sibilant, sycophantic, stereophonic voice whispered in his ear.

Harry Gains Insight circa 1976

2006-01-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

The galactic night air whirled in a frenzy about our hero’s helmeted head, though he was still, too still. ‘Cross the jagged surface of an unblemished asteroid plain he could see the rising stars and was duly impressed by the unspoiled light. When the shadows slowly moved about his form in time-lapse speed he knew his time was near. They had spoke of the dawning of the stars and he had doubted their green slits, but now he knew that all they spoke was correct and the time for him to reach eternal tranquility was encroaching like a roach upon the last stale crust of bread in the slums of New York. The beauty was overwhelming but lost its profundity on the anxiously anchored hero, for it was then, to his left, that he saw the inevitable three figures, each with a blazing form of the four cornered star on their small chests. He laughed silently when the three creatures addressed his knees.
“ Beep, beep.” they sallied. Yet he understood, and thereupon realized that it was he who was small.
“ I am small!” He flung his tormented body to the ground and kissed their webbed feet. They only beeped knowingly.

Betsy circa 1976

2006-01-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

“She was a beauty. No one could deny that. Her sleek form rose tall and majestic among her kind and she was long and slim and sensuous on the snake like roads that wound through the empty reaches of mountain hinterland. The glint of sun on her chrome was near to blinding. Yet all those who knew her would seek that sight for she was beauty itself.” Harry sighed.

He missed the times they had shared together and longed for the worn, yet solid feel of her mahogany wheel; the smell of burning rubber as he challenged the hairpin curves, and defied the steep slopes and their parallel chicken shoots. These things had been his and hers; and now the times they had tooled the turns of the tortuous tracks could only be seen through misty tears that welled in his baby blues. They had trailed no-one and now she was ...she was...where was she?

The sun broke over the peaks where darkness hid then scurried from its last refuge. The sharp wink of the first ray found its way to the heart of a lonely lady and did not comfort her. Nor did it, her miserable man in the moors many miles missing, moaning.

“Snap out of it!” the doctor planted his palm firm and fast on our hero’s tear stained face. “It’s just a dumb old truck!”
Harry found no time to gasp, the smoldering gun was his answer.

Sophie circa 2003

2006-01-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

"Do you always drive like this?" he asked, rubbing his neck.
"Not really," she smiled. "Sometimes I drive fast." They sat silent for a few minutes as the Miata howled up and down the small hills and dips in the road. Harry covertly studied her flawless profile, her golden hair,...

Sophie on the Tracks circa 1977

2006-01-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Down the road where our hero traveled the print he had left in the sand dissipated with the rays of the setting sun. The wind was soft and warm. Her golden locks were blown askew and left as one with the sandy soil. The parallel tracks across her abdomen led to the distant puff of smoke.

Gathering Dinner circa 2003

2006-01-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

After a short toilet, Harry went overboard, and hung from his mighty arms, harvesting snail below the waterline using the sensitive hairs on his insteps to identify the crafty mouth-foots, and then picking them off the hull and flinging them to the poop deck with clever manipulations of his prodigious halluxi.
After a sizeable mound of mollusca were squirming on the teak, Harry lofted himself back onto firm footing, and gathered up the ill-fated slugs, descending to his well equipped galley.

A NOTE TO OUR READERS

2006-01-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

The previous and subsequent eight posts are a small taste of Harry Hero. If you are seeking a chronological - not logical - storyline begin reading at The Not So Constant Gardner.

Suddenly...circa 1995

2006-01-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, a sharp pain lanced through Harry's skull and he fell face up onto the path.

It was a dark and stormy night. - the beginning

2006-01-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Through the winds a cry was heard. Meanwhile, in close (but far off) Paris, our hero, Harry Hero was on his way to work. What was he doing? Everyone knows that heroes don’t work. So the plot thins.Meanwhile, back on a ranch in western Canada (notice the Canadian content) the cry had subsided by daybreak. The blistering burning sun which fusions 2.4 gigatons of hydrogen with helium each microsecond started to remove the rain that had fallen in the night.A fair maiden is found bound to the railway tracks in the middle of New York. Very few people knew of the desert of the sand in New York. Our hero continued on his way to work and spit out his gum before he tried to walk. He boarded the subway in lower underground Paris. This in its self was unusual at this point in time in the cosmic reams of space, for where was his horse? Was it in for its 20,000 kilometer check-up? Or had Kojak solved the whole thing and traded it in for a tootsie roll?