Athanasius Finch: Private Dick | ONC 2020

Water, Sun, Vampire, Vegan.

I stood in front of 696 West Penn Street for a solid five minutes to determine if the water bottle I stole from Stinky Pete hadn't been laced with his homemade acid he made by melting cigarette butts and birds beaks with a magnifying glass on an overcast day. 

What stood before me could be considered a building in the same way a segway could be considered a viable form of transportation: only when nothing else is available and most likely chosen because of the influence of narcotics. 

Which brought me back to the theory that I had been unintentionally drugged with "Stinky Pete's Patented Facemelter Jamboree"(patent pending). But when the usual splitting headache and sudden urge to listen to Mumford and Sons didn't materialize, I had to believe my own eyes. 

696 West Penn Street was a patchwork of mismatched tiles and ceramics loosely stuck together with what seemed like tacks and staples. All three stories looked like they were ripped from vastly different, more successful buildings that probably went to college and had their shit together until they were unceremoniously shot in the back of the head and chopped for pieces to make this Cronenbergian Frankencentipede of a building. 

It didn't help that the thing was bigger at the top than at the base, and it was bent slightly to the right, which made it look like -- and pardon my French -- le petit verge. 

Still, it was the address. There was a plaque near the "door" -- and I say this in the most flattering way a wooden plank with a chain and combination lock could be called as such -- that read "Sir Athanasius Finch, P.I." It was a rather fetching plaque made with black quartz, which made it a shame that someone took a red sharpie and turned the P into a B and added "TCH" after the I. 

I knocked on the door three times with a firm hand. You have to make a good impression on the building you are about to enter after all. But I might've knocked a bit too hard as the building swayed a little with every knock, accompanied by a cacophony of creaks as melodious as that one time I witnessed Slightly Cleaner Pete use a cat as a pillow without consent, which made the cat use his face as a scratching pole without his consent. 

This and more tales can be read in my upcoming book titled "Cats: Violence Is Never An Answer, It Is A Question(And The Answer Is 'Yes')."

But it might as well have been a cat, as a piercing screech came from the other side of the door.

"Help me, help me!" yelled the voice, which sounded both bored and over-acted at the same time. I waited for a few more seconds to see if it wasn't just some loud Nicolas Cage movie when the voice came again. 

"I've fallen, and I have found myself in an in...inha...inhabited? Inhabited to get up!" 

It was a woman's voice to be sure, and one that told me that the user was not unlike a lox on top of a cream bagel: smoked. At least three packs a day. 

"If only there was someone who could come here and save little old me! Wait, old? Well, fuck you, too!" 

Another voice, this one manish, with an emphasis on the "ish'" talked back. "Mayhaps if thee could stick with the bloody script and avoid thy womanly wiles, we might hippy-hop this conundrum."

"Oh, womanly wiles?" said the mannish woman with indignation. "Well riddle me this, Shankspear: what in the living fuck does 'Gravity hath confabulated with the devil to give me the vapors'?"

"Do not issue the bard's name with exabrupts, you viper!" 

I gave three knocks on the "door" which made the duo shut up again. "Is it a good moment? I can come back later." 

The manish voice spoke yet again, but in a high falsetto that best resembled a castrati. "Please, kind stranger. Thou are sent from heaven above, use the power of your sole to bring down this wretched point of egress and save my maidenhood!"