Part 18: The Missing Link: Two Seventeens Do Not Make Nineteen
Previously on ASiT: We discovered a part was missing. We found that part. It wasn't so great, so we burned it and wrote another. Here it is, after the wait.
"How do you feel, there, Detective?"
Dan the Dry opened his eyes, expecting to view the ethereal beauty of Pretty Wife as he had last seen her in Cozy Development near Cul-De-Sac, where that late model blue, beautiful testament to American engineering--that Buick--had so callously mown him down. But Pretty Wife and Cul-de-Sac--the outdoors entirely--were nowhere to be seen.
Instead his eyes came to rest on Dad--not his dad, surely, but the man in charge of their operation, known to all simply as "Dad," short for "Detective Agent Dragnet," the man in charge of the operation to which he, Dan the Dry was assigned.
"I feel a little lost," Dan answered. "Like someone could skip entirely over this part of my life without consequence, and come back to it later--and even then it might not prove interesting, or even necessarily germane to forward plot motion. Also, my head hurts."
"Hmm," the older man seemed to consider this admission for a moment, then helped Dan prop himself up and take a drink. "Have some of this, Dry. You'll feel better in no time at all. Ready to shoot the moon--or this rotten meat known as 'C.H.' that we've been on the trail of for so long, yet have only recently come close enough to actually put our hands on, primarily through the deft work of yourself and Detective Sassy."
"Thanks for the sum-up, Chief," Dan said graciously, "this large gauze bandage on my head was obscuring some of my short-term recall."
The older man known as Dad sniffed. "My boy, that large, nearly comical, poorly wrapped head bandage of yours has been obscuring a lot of things over the past 48 hours for those of us investigating this case." He cleared his throat, hesitant, as always, to mix emotion--even for a fallen, or at least tripped, colleague with business. Looking at the Dry he couldn't help but think of Detective Stranger Dinner Guest, and a 6-year-old car crash, and whether the decision he had so resolutely made that night, to wash-out a bridge just outside of Smalltown, had been the right one.
Det. Stranger had come out of that scrape with a head bandage of his own--and worse (or better, depending on how you thought about it)-- amnesia. Amnesia that not only made Det. Stranger forget his new pre-honeymoon wife, but also his father--this man, known to all as the mysterious "D-A-D," who had sacrificed _both_ his children in one night, in an effort to save them from each other, his past life from the knowledge of his present, his first wife from the knowledge of his second, his son from the knowledge that he had nearly consummated a marriage with his own half-sister. And now he, "Dad," worked toward a new goal, thinking it was a small price to pay, his son's estrangement from him, if it could protect his daughter at this time and somehow save her from the unknown mistake her second marriage had been as well.
Disappearing was never easy, though all those years ago it had been the right choice, he told himself. It was only that disappearing was so messy, because without him around it seemed that no one knew how to behave, or how to make well-reasoned decisions.
And here he was, as always, anonymously cleaning up the mess the others left behind. The door creaked open behind him, where he had been caught in a reverie, looking out through the drawn drapes, and Det. Stranger entered. "How's it going, Dry?" Stranger asked.
"He'll be fine," Dad interrupted, perhaps too aggressively. "I nursed you back just fine, Stranger, didn't I?"
"Good as new, Dad," Stranger agreed. "Good as new." Dad's heart wrenched at the way Stranger addressed him. His son could never know that his own head injury had been so much worse, its side-effect of amnesia both a blessing and a heartbreak. And his condition exploited by the man he should call father, as should his half-sister/forgotten-wife.
"Well, boys," Dad addressed them both, "let's see Det. Dry here gets some rest before Det. Sassy gets back from getting us all some coffee at the 7-11. We've got some corruption to expose, and we're gonna need all our strength to bust open a can on C.H."
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...to be continued...
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Disclaimer: This fiction is intended as parody only; the characters, plot, etc., are the intellectual property of its authors. This story is not in any way affiliated with the Lifetime Channel, Lifetime Television, or the Lifetime Original Movie franchise.
by: Neftzer and friends (AAB, TRVMB, JMG, KLS) (c)2003
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