"Curious."
     "Inspector Oak, you have returned."
     "Bar the door, lest midgets disturb us."
     "A gangster's girlfriend, three feet tall. How did she die?"
     "I hear calliopes, Inspector. The carnival is in town."
     "They all die of sorrow, all the ones we minister to."
     "Pass me my gloves."
     "Of course, Inspector Elm."
     "This man here is wheezing. Get him an easement."
     "I have found eleven fingerprints."
     "Games of skill are not beneath an Inspector's dignity as long as
there is no prize."
     "A cushion, or this pneumoniac palliative?"
     "He is WHEEZING."
     "The ring toss, the dart throw, the bottle-topple, the two-in-one..."
     "Now nine. I may have misplaced two slides. But here are three more!"
     "...the miner's delight, the penny-pitch, the gumdrop lottery..."
     "Burn marks along her pinky. I do not see why."
     "Sir, what can you tell us about this tragedy?"
     "The massing crowd will splinter our door if we let them."
     "..."
     "Sir?"
     "If that disease has not robbed him of speech the sight of this
gruesome ichor may instead."
     "..."
     "Worthless. Pass me my gloves."
     "The rifle range, the pot-and-pan derby, the feather touch..."
     "Inspector Ash, would you say that Inspector Oak has changed?"
     "Perhaps our victim held cigarettes between her fourth and fifth
fingers."
     "In a reckless lifestyle one comes to think idiosyncracy is harmless."
     "..."
     "The only witness strains to tell us -- what?"
     "Inspector Yew, go and recruit two more Inspectors, then bring them
here."
     "This sickly man, he has an extra finger on each hand."
     "Each of those Inspectors will get us another two."
     "I would say he has changed."
     "Mmm."
     "Finally, the test-your-strength machine."
     "Pass me my gloves."
     "We will outnumber them eventually, you see."
     "She is not even dead, to judge by the signs."
     "Family dinners will be called arraignments."
     "If I might take the extra palliative myself..."
     "Class reunions will be called special investigative committees."
     "..."
     "Intimate trysts will be called patrols."
     "The worst problem with skill is that it must be applied alone."

written for Sammy Klein while standing up 11/21/02

See #29 and #61 for more. I'm figuring out what kinds of laziness are good for me, and what kinds aren't. Yesterday I borrowed lots of little bits from my life and they made a good glue for the story. Today I just borrowed from my own writing and it feels enh. This wasn't terribly satisfying except for the carnival part and the description at the end of what will happen when everyone's an Inspector.

The question of how to interweave the threads in something like this doesn't get clearer from doing it on the fly several times. Maybe if I sat down with #29 and a scalpel I'd come up with something better, but for now I try not to make it too predictable or too baffling, generally by drifting until I feel like I've gone too far, then overcorrecting.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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