Today, our story has 877 followers on Twitter. Another great week, and I’ve got to thank you for continuing to help write this story through Twitter and Facebook.
Now, let’s recap the week.
Climbing down from the Abita Beer truck, Bobby Grim heard the driver saying that Savoy Landing was Bayou Manchac's last boat launch, the end of the farthest road into the swamp. “Sure you wanna be dropped here? I ain’t back for another two weeks.”
“I told you, I’m a hunter,” Grim said, “I’ll survive.”
The shack next to the launch had rusted tin nailed on the sides covered with faded yellow paint and a picture—maybe a coffee cup—with some words: Morning Treat.
By a single gas pump and a dead Jax beer light, a hand-stenciled sign swung from a post and read: No Deliveries Today.
The front wall, eight-feet wide, covered with various sized wooden planks, held more stenciled signs: Pig Feet, Gator Balls, and Coon Meat. The shack looked dark, the front door open or missing. All quiet, till the voice of Rush Limbaugh shouted something about Femi-Nazis.
Grim followed the sound through the entrance.
A chest-type home freezer sat just inside the door. In the shop’s center, a table with two chairs. A plastic-lettered cafe menu hung behind a rusted deli counter, white with a Barq's logo. Post office mailboxes with peeling brass-colored paint covered the left wall. On the right, shelves filled with food, for people, fish, and deer.
Behind the counter, a fat lady in a Harley shirt broke a crawfish in half and sucked both ends before speaking. "Who the hell are you?" Something red and yellow oozed down her chin.
"How much to rent one of your air-boats?" Grim pinched a hundred dollar bill from his roll.
Fat Lady wiped her chin with a Post-it note. "Thirty an hour, you got I.D."
"How much if I don't?" He peeled off six hundred, lining the bills across the counter.
"Maybe I'll tell the owner somebody stole the thing. Like maybe it just floated off or something."
"When will you see him?"
"Her."
"When will you see her?"
"Another week, next Friday."
Grim counted another four bills. "The boat floats off next Thursday, right?"
Bouncing through Bayou Manchac, the air-boat disturbed a gator large enough to splash some green gunk on Grim’s map. He slowed to clean it and to make sure the gator wasn't in the boat.
He pushed the throttle forward and rounded another bend, then slowed in front of the target’s camp. The recruiter described the target as the only hunter in the swamp with his picture on the wall of his camp. This camp's walls were insulated in old campaign billboards, half painted over, each sporting a photo of the same man and the some words, red and blue, and reading: Rube Rarick for Congress.
Wearing white rubber boots he'd found in the boat, Grim tromped through the mud to the back of the camp and opened the door with a crowbar.
Inside the camp, hung next to a framed newspaper article touting the congressman's escapades as a lone hunter, he found and removed the dustiest of Rarick's four bows. Looking for arrows, Grim opened the camp’s only locked door, by removing the hinges and slid the deadbolt from the jam.
No windows in this room, and Rarick wouldn't start the generator till gator season, another two days. Lysol, odd smell for a hunting camp.
Grim never asked the company why when they chose a target, but he usually knew before the job ended. Most often, some creep needed to be put down, but he knew too much for the law to do it, so they called Grim. This job was no different. He flicked his lighter. No photos this time, just women's clothing in various sizes, stapled to the walls and ceiling—a shiny pair of ankle-cuffs bolted to the floor.
For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, I got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are helping create a crime fiction short story posts of less than 140 characters.
As I said before, you could watch me fall on my face in an experiment gone wrong, or you can guide my actions, and together we can invent a new medium—a pulpy sort of Tweet Fiction or Twitter Pulp.
Our plot: When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.
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