Lombardus: The Trident Clown

Prologue (II) ☬

I have a haiku
This chapter's written in Om -
- niscient point of view

"Don't be a mule, Dinwiddie. Just give up let the dead, die." A fat detective said to his fellow, absently curling his handlebar mustache around his index. Mr. Index seemed to be enjoying his duty as a hair roller for Mr. Handlebar.

"Don't be a cerebral narcissist, Fleckenstein," the one called Dinwiddie retorted. "I can swear he's not. I saw him twitch."

Dinwiddie was a fidgety man and was born myopic, in all senses. Although he was good at covering these defects up at work, few knew of his conditions in the agency. Even fewer had dared shown interest in asking him why his eyes are always caged behind medicated glasses. One of these few was homicide detective Fleckenstein.

Dinwiddie's diminutive stature, mole-like facial features and narrow-mindedness are what quite gave him away as a typical people pleaser; someone who's always trying to prove a point but gets tossed aside like used toilet papers.

The fat detective named Fleckenstein, on the other hand, had this conscientious air around him. He believed in critical thinking and not guesstimates. He also had a pouty face, the kind that doesn't believe in miracles, happenstances or magic. If something strange happened before it, the features would contort into an unbelievable scowl. Like he's doing right now.

"Don't be ridiculous." Fleckenstein dismissed a freckled hand with a scowl.

"I'm not." Dinwiddie blinked as if the river's alluvial deposits had passed through his spectacles into his eyes. "I know what I saw."

Fleckenstein sighed and patted his companion's shoulder. "Dinwiddie, I know I am a couch potato and I agree I watch TV a lot and I'm supposed to be imagining things, not you. But, if you're in dire need of a new pair of glasses, you can always call a bro. I'm here for you."

Dinwiddie bit his lower lip in spite, looking slightly offended. Then he did something that was either brave, stupid or both. "Watch this, Fleckenstein."

And so he slid down the river bank to examine the body. Touching the lifeless body, he withered right on the spot. In the form of a shadowy blob, his life essence got sucked out, and flitted into the holes in the dead man's chest. The punctured chest of the lifeless body rose up as if inflated by a bicycle pump, then fell abruptly and became still.

Fleckenstein's pouty face would have easily made the front cover of the Scream movie at that moment. His expression was aghast. He could hardly believe his bulged eyes. He had to rub them when they stung. "Dinwiddie?"

Dinwiddie's body was now white and withered. His knuckles, lips and veins had bluish tinges around them, as though he were beaten black and blue all over before a killing blow. He wasn't moving.

Somehow, Fleckenstein figured Dinwiddie was never going to argue with him again. Dinwiddie wasn't going to reply.

Instead, the first dead form did the reply for him. The eyes fluttered open. They were a striking blue; the color of ocean deep. Tendrils of wet, brown hair covered his face like seaweed. He had an aquiline nose that looked like it exhaled pride before death. His ghost-white skin was faintly flushing pink yet something was off about it - Lozenge-shaped scales kept shimmering on it, making him look rather mermanlish.

Something fishy?

Staring into the ocean eyes of the living dead, Fleckenstein zoned out of reality as if he was lost in that ocean. Meanwhile, he remained where he was.

He found his imaginary self re-watching a movie in the town's ghastly local cinema. The movie was a playback of Planet Zombies: Reincarnated.

Gulping lungfuls, he shook his head, zoning back to reality. What he saw was terrible that he agreed he doesn't like the idea of a zombie-infested Earth at all.

Suddenly, like giant raindrops, large globs of water floated up from the river in accordance with the rise of the dead man. With a casual twirl of his coloring finger, the watery drops morphed together like cells, shaping into a golden trident. He gripped it tight. His lips moved. The water under him churned and bubbled violently.

Right before Fleckenstein's eyes, a shoal of piranhas with razor-sharp teeth emerged. Their bodies were gray except for their underbellies which have reddish tinctures. Their eyes were round, black and hungry.

If you think small fishes cannot make acoustic sounds, dear reader, think again because these ones do!

The sound rang a bell. He had heard them before. In point of fact, he's seen these creatures once in the National Geographic. The red-bellied piranhas - aggressive of all carnivorous piranhas.

They lived up to their name by turning the water blood-red. They reduced Dinwiddie's body to skeletons, eating away at the flesh and surprisingly, leaving out the heart.

Fleckenstein's shoulders slumped. All hope of retrieving Dinwiddie's body for burial or investigation was eliminated.

"Did someone gave me a new name?" The three-holed man hunkered down to collect the pulsating heart from the mouth of the leader fish.

The fish made a low drumming sound, like, Have it. It's for you, anyway.

The resurrected took it. With the heart in hand, he dug it into his bare chest. The middle hole gaped. His hand fitted through, crudely transplanting the dripping organ into his lacerated chest. When done, the holes sealed back, as right as trivet. Then his scaly skin went esquamulose - as smooth as a baby's skin.

"Dinwiddie actually sucks but I love it."

Fleckenstein tried saying it is impossible but his lips were trembling so badly, that all that came out was, "Im - im - im - im - "

Imagine the dead was speaking. It all doesn't make sense. In Russia (or any other place in the world), the living speak for the dead.

Fleckenstein freaked out in fear.

Why shouldn't he? His friend just got transferred, (Not that kind of job transfer you're thinking). His friend's body just got cleaned by a school of human-eating fish that aren't even native to his town. A heartless man just planted a heart into himself without the help of a cardiosurgeon. To cap it all, the dead was alive and the alive, dead. His non-magical brain questioned why he wasn't freaking out more.

How stranger could this get? Everything was happening too fast for his brain to comprehend. But something happened faster.

The detective's leg did.

Fleckenstein ran off into the woods, terrified by the sight he just witnessed. Stopping only to catch his breath, he realized he must have covered thirty miles in three minutes.

That's a new record for a V.F.V.B.I.A (Very Fat Valsburian Bureau of Investigation Agent).

Photo: A shoal of red-bellied piranhas swimming underwater in an aquarium

Don't be scared. The Clown won't sound creepy if you VOTE ⭐ here