Chapter One

So this is unedited, unrevised, and I'm not entirely sure it makes sense. But it's the first chapter, written yesterday and posted today because my internet cut out before I could get to Blogger. 

Charles B. Stranger wasn't the most typical man you could probably name. Normal gentlemen did not have facial hair like his, nor kept poisonus spiders as pets. Normal gentlemen tended not to live at the bar. Normal gentlemen were married and on their way to kids, a nice career, and maybe even a white picket fence, if they were traditionalists, by the time they turned thirty-one. Charles reflected upon this as he walked along, and decided normality was over-rated. He liked his sideburns.

Charles, more often called Stranger by his friends - it seemed more fitting than a name shared by the Duke of Wales, although they wouldn't have been able to articulate the thought - was a stoner. He was a bum. He was the very epitome of the kind of fellow protective young mothers would point at in the street and whisper to their children, 'Behave, be polite, and stay in school, or that's what you'll turn in to.' He was the sort of fellow whom young rockers looked up towards, because he had seemingly fought the Man and won. He had, on the surface, no cares beyond making sure he had the money for rent every month, and he unfailingly managed to produce it (although from where no one was honestly quite sure).

Underneath, however, Stranger felt his name quite fitting. He was a stranger. He saw the world through lenses that were of a color decidedly not rose. He wasn't sure what color they may be, but only that they revealed to him the nastiness of the world. He was rather put out with it, to be completely honest. He was a cynic, a pessimist, and a skeptic, depending on exactly how generous he was feeling that day. He could find the nasty bits that people tried to sweep under the rugs of their everday lives without trying, or indeed, without wanting to. It was a curse, he felt, and that simply reinforced his general feeling of put-upon-ness.

As Stranger walked towards the bar, he reflected upon all of this, and decided, for the fifteenth night running and the twenty-second night that month (it was the twenty-third) that he should definitely go relax at Malcolm's, to ease his grudge against life. He barely drank while he was there - it was more about the people-watching, seeing people without their normal inhibitions blocking and obscuring their true motives. He felt more at home, knowing that anyone sober would be able to see people the same way he did all the time.

Unfortunately for him, it was just as he was about to round the corner and view the last stretch of sidewalk before those welcoming, homey doors, that a grieviously familiar, elderly pickup pulled up next to him. A voice, even more familiar than the car, called from the window, 'Hey, Stranger, you've been missing some calls back at the flat. You should really go and take them. It'sprobably important."

"Bugger off, Jim," Stranger said, ignoring man, car, and somewhat more difficultly, the smell of man and car. "If someone wants me, they know where I am."

"Not this caller. He, hah, thinks you spend your time at my place. Honestly." Jim, a rotund man with a beard mostly sprouting from his neck, covering what was likely a second and third chin, shook his head. "Keep telling him you're not there, but he won't listen. Sounds a bit posh, too."

Stranger sighed, and sent a longing glance towards the cornere. But the time to walk back, make the phone call, and return, wouldn't be too overly long. The good people-watching didn't really begin until the first bottle of tequila was opened, and that wouldn'y be for an hour or two yet. He shook his head at the prospect of watching an entire bar suffer from both the placebo effect of colorful liquor and the nasty effects of Malcolm's stuff, and turned back towards his flat.

"Hey, I'll give you a ride," Jim offered, leaning out his window, generosity oozing from his very pores. "It's a ways back."

Stranger, still more than able to smell what had, long ago, oozed from Jim's pores, shook his head. "I'll make it. Go and enjoy your pork roast."

"I will, thank you," Jim said, with a leer, and revved his engine, peeling away from the sidewalk. Desperately trying to banish thoughts of just what happened at Jim's pork roasts, Stranger made the (very short) trek back to his abode. He was living one block away from MAlcolm's, a fact that never ceased to please him, and one floor above Jim, a fact that never ceased to irritate him. However, when noises from below grew too irritating, he took solace in the fact that Jim could very well have moved in above him.

The phone was ringing in Jim's apartment, Stranger could hear as he unlocked the building's front door. He mentally cursed the wiring company who'd manage to switch the lines going between the two floors, not for the first time. Every call for the two months since the repairs had gone to the wrong floor, and unfortunately enough for himself, all his calls had ended up in Jim's room. Which meant, by virtue of extrapolation, that to take any calls to his home line meant he had to wade through the detritus scattered across Jim's floor. He'd honestly considered just stopping his land-line, but that would have meant giving people he didn't like yet needed to have contact with his cell number, which was a prospect that did not appeal.

Stranger held his breath as he pushed open the door to JIm's flat, and vaguely wanted to cross himself as he crossed the threshold. He wasn't religiou, but it could never hurt. Jim's room had that effect on people.
He got to the phone (the journey to which was an epic oddessey around islands of moldering cloth, piles of half-eaten pizza, and Charybidis-like stains), which was still ringing incessantly, and said, "Hullo."

"Hello, am I speaking to Mr. Charles Stranger?" said a somewhat nasal and quite pompous voice on the other end. The voice of someone who talked to people and moved money around for a living, Stranger would have bet a hundred dollars.

"Yes."

"Oh, good, good, yes. I've been trying to contact you for the past half an hour," said Money Pusher reproachfully. "I kept getting ahold of a rather unpleasant man who shouted at me about pork."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that," Stranger said, rather less than sincerely. "I've been having issues with the phone lines. Why are you calling me, though?"

"Nice, good, blunt, I appreciate that, thank you," said the voice that Stranger was gradually growing to really and truly dislike. "You see, it's a matter of an inheritance."

Money pushing, exactly right. He awarded himself an extra beer later. "I see. For whom and who died?"

"Your uncle Percy is now regrettably deceased," said Money Pusher, once more reproachful. "Quite a distinguished man, we were all quite sad to see him go. In any case, you're the person to inherit the majority of his estate."
Stranger vaguely remembered an Uncle Percy from a long time ago, an old man who gave hundred-dollar git certificates for birthday presents. Lottery bells started ringing in his skull. But his natural mistrust of anything seemingly too good to be true kicked in, and he asked, "What exactly did his 'estate' consist of?"

"Twelve dollars, an elderly radio, and an extensive, varied, and," here Money Pusher coughed slightly, obviously a little uncomfortable, "'unusual' collection of what he termed 'paraphenalia.'"

Stranger considered about thumping his head against the wall, before thinking better of it. Later, perhaps, where it was less likely he'd contract some form of herpes from the contact.

"So I inherit, essentially, nothing but paperwork?" he asked.
MOney Pusher coughed again. "The collection may be worth something, to the right investor, although they would have to be of a... unique constitution."

From what Stranger remember of old Perce, the collection was likely all about either shooting defenseless predators or smoking tobacco. He could see both getting this hemming and hawing reaction from Money Pusher. Political incorrectness had that sort of effect on his type. "I see. Do I have to go soemwhere to pick it up?"

"Oh, no, sir, the collection shall be mailed directly to your address. I'll come with it and we can do the paperwork then."
Stranger closed his eyes to try and stem the headache building behind them. "Fine, good, great, do that. I'll be home most mornings the rest of the month, come then."

"Duly noted," said Money Pusher, and hung up. Stranger counted himself lucky that he hadn't gotten himself tied up any further, and made a hasty, though very, very careful, retreat to the door for a breath of fresh air. A highly necessary breath.

'Paraphanelia.' That sounded slightly ominous, honestly. And he now owned a 'quite extensive' collection of it. Perfect. Making his way back towards Malcolm's, he decided that this wasn't exactly a cause for celebration, but he'd drink to it anyway.

He sighed happily as he rounded the corner and the place came into view. Then he was immediately distracted by an explosion no more than thirty feet from him. He whirled, but not quickly enough, and was hit in the head by a duck as it fell from the sky.

Newly dead ducks are highly unpleasant when impacting your skull after a free fall of fifty feet. Stranger found this out in detail.

Cursing inventively, loudly, and with great fervor, he shook his head and wiped his face off on his shirt sleeve. A smear of duck blood - well, mostly duck blood - was let behind. He grimaced and looked around. An unfortunately familiar face was looking innocently up at the sky. Stranger got the impression that if the face had known how to whistle, it would have been.

"Godammit, Clark. No guns in the streets, alright?"

"You're no fun," Clark said, scowling. He was a trustfund kid, going to school at Yale because his father had the funds to get him there and keep him there despite his son's less-than-stellar record. He also thought he was tough, and proved it to himself be hanging out at Malcolm's and shooting ducks in the street. THus, his was a perrenial thorn in Stranger's side, because he was the one left to deal with the kid. Everyone else just ignored him, laughed at him, or was paid off by the elder Clark.

"Maybe not," Stranger said. "But you just nearly killed me with a ballistic duck. That wasn't exactly fun either. Now put the gun away or I'm going to have to take it." Shit, he felt like the kid's father - or maybe his mother, considering what he knew of Clark Senior.

"Dude, you can't just take my gun," said Clark Junior, frowning.

Stranger started crossing the street, giving the kid a Look. The kid reconsidered his opinion, and hastily shoved the gun back in his jacket. Stranger returned to his sidewalk.

"GO home and kill ducks on you 90" plasma," he said. "Safer and less likely to get someone else hurt. And dress this duck, or give it a decent burial or something." Then his conscience twinged at him, as Clark slouched across the street towards the late waterfowl. "And, just a suggestion, but you might want to flip on the safety on your gun." As the kid fumbled about, pulling the gun from his jacket once more, Stranger turned and continued towards the bar. At this rate, he'd never get a drink.

---------

"What do you mean, you'll not be open the next two weeks?" Stranger exclaimed, putting his pint down on the bar perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. "Why not?"

"Because it's getting, both metaphorically and, unfortunately literally, ratty," said the eponymous Malcolm calmly, wiping down a glass. "When I'm losing more bar nuts to rodents that patrons, there's an issue. And exterminator and a cleaning crew will be coming through, and making the place good as new. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while now, honestly."

"But the place is fine as it is," Stranger said. "Sturdy as hell, and not going anywhere." He brought down his fist on the bar for emphasis, and the facing along the edge fell off in his lap. "Um."

"Exactly," said Malcolm, smiling like a long-haired, be-burnsided Buddha. "And it'll be sturdier and less likely to disappear after the two weeks."

"Could you at least let the regulars in?" Stranger asked, pleading a little. "We wouldn't mind the dust of a renovation."

"You might mind toxic fumes and rat poison. Just find another bar, man.
You'll be fine."

Stranger sulked. He couldn't help it. The bar being closed - that was absurd. That was stranger than inheriting 'paraphenalia' from a stodgy uncle. That was a sign that the universe itself was suffering from structural damage and was in danger of collapsing in on itself. In the entire ten year span he'd frequented the place, it had been closed once, for one day, because the place had caught on fire and the bar had exploded. Even then, Malcolm had had it up and running for the regulars as soon as the fire marshalls had let him. So the thought of the place being closed for an entire two weeks was as foreign as the idea of going to Jim's willingly. It was just not an idea that could properly fit into his brain. And hit another bar? After ten years of the slightly musty, comfortingly creaky aura of Malcolm's? Inconceivable.

"Ah, cheer up, there," George said, encouragingly. "Think of it as a chance to get pissed in the comfort of your own home for once."

Stranger glared at him. Curse the man's constant positive attitude. "You've forgotten that I don't have a penthouse like some people I could name," he said. "Some of us, in fact, come here specifically to find comfort not found in their ratty flats."

"Then just deal with a different kind of ratty for a while," George said. "Go somewhere and pick up a woman, maybe. Oh, hey, sweet thing," he said, turning to watch the highly attractive form of the woman who'd obviously just slipped him her number. Stranger cursed him again, him and his dashing good looks and money. No one who spent as much of his time stoned, drunk, or stoned and drunk should have the kind of obscenely good career that George had. It defied the laws of man and nature. It defied rational thought. It bugged the hell out of him.

A moment or so later, after GEorge had finished flirting and carefully pocketed the number, he turned back towards him and said, "Or we could do something interesting. Maybe hit New York for a week or so?"
Stranger shook his head, still in a sulk. "We're not all rich, George."

"Eh, you can stay at my penthouse," he said, doing a horrendous Bronx accent. "Wine, women, and song, all night long."

Stranger was actually considering when he remembered what he'd told Money Pusher. "Crap, I can't, I told some lawyer that I'd be home every morning for the rest of the month. So I'm stuck here in town."

"Then we'll just find something interesting to do here in Boston," George said carelessly. "Something to break through this callous, jaded exterior of yours, something you can enjoy."

"... You're annoying, George."

"I know, but I buy you some wicked awesome stuff, so you put up with me."
"God help me, I do," Stranger sighed, and downed the rest of his pint.