(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)
I pulled out my iPhone and fired off an email to sinister1@untraceableemail.com.Or typed his email address in the To: box anyway. What was I going to say to him? The whole ‘Good Stuff’ thing had been some kind of weird trap. Bruce was in on it. That much had been confirmed. It was probably safe to assume sinister1 was in on it as well.
If I couldn’t trust Bruce, I certainly couldn’t trust sinister1. Perhaps, just perhaps, Bruce had a good reason for sending me straight into a bomb blast. Maybe he knew I’d be blasted into a fresh body.
Maybe. It didn’t seem likely. But many years of friendship prior to his apparent attempted murder of me earned him a chance to explain himself. This sinister1 character wasn’t going to get that luxury.
Mission accomplished, I typed. Orlando safe and sound. Good Stuff research sabotaged. Contact me for next steps.
That would get their attention. I added Bruce’s email to the cc box and hit ‘Send’.
On the television monitor, the clock on Roberto Benigni’s bronco-riding went past my time. Hopefully, that meant that I would not be required for the next round. To be honest, I had no idea what the rules for this event were. Which was odd. They must have told us.
Maybe they’d told us in the last two days and that part of my memory had been replaced with…
The next obvious deduction hit me. Of course. The clowns I’d been ‘hallucinating’. The hog-tied corpse. They were this body’s memories from the rodeo filtering through. When I’d exploded, my exploding body’s memories of the last couple of days dropped in over the top of my rodeo body’s memories. But not seamlessly.
It all made sense. Where ‘sense’ was used in a very loose fashion, clearly.
The television confirmed my suspicions. Not about the memory replacement. But about Roberto taking my place in the next round. He was in. I, along with several other contestants, was out.
Bad news for my charity, of course, but I’d make it up to them somehow.
Perhaps an autographed, framed still of the butt-in-the-air shot the producers seemed determined to show going into each commercial break might sell well at some kind of charity auction.
My phone pinged. I looked at the email.
The sinister1 email had bounced back. With an error message reporting that the untraceableemail.com domain didn’t exist.
Weird. I checked the untraceableemail.com site.
It didn’t exist.
I suppose that was one way to remain ‘untraceable’. But it was still weird.
Less weird was the phone call coming in from Bruce. The email to him had gone through and obviously got his attention.
“Bruce,” I said, answering it. A little colder than my usual greeting. That’s just how I am with people who lead me into the path of a bomb.
“Hi, Kit,” he said. “Just got your email…”
“Uh-huh.” Let him do the talking.
Before he could say anything else, there was a knock at my dressing room door. A familiar head poked itself around the corner.
“Miss Wittgenstein,” said Orlando. “Are you ready to go?”
(to be continued)
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