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Hmm... I guss it counts as last night that I went out? Yes...
I had told Cindy I was going to Barton for the evening. I hadn't told her want I was going for. No, I thought as I carefully put on the mask I'd fasioned from second-hand store odds and ends, that wouldn't do at all.
Unfortunatly, it wasn't quite my choice. We crossed paths in the kitchen, where she was sitting at the table, pouring over a newspaper. She looked up...
"What do you have on your face, Dawna?"
"A disguise," I said , quickly grabbing the hat I'd gotten for carolling, and tugging on my new, pastel striped, hidious-but-warm coat.
"Disguise?" Cindy's voice dripped disbelief. "Dawna, you're attracting attention..."
"But it's pretty clear that I don't want to be recognized," I interupted. "Which is a bonus where I'm going."
"Which is where?" she asked scepticly.
"A scoop," I said, putting on my hat.
"Well, if you're going to play undercover reporter, you could at least put on a proper diguise..." I recognized a rant in the making, and quickly opened the door.
"Cindy, please! I know what I'm doing!" And with that, I was out and running down the road.
What I was really doing was investigating something I'd read in a tiny snippet of an article in the paper. There was a slave auction going on in the old arena in Barton. I knew that slavery was a grey area of sorts legally, with a very fine line between the paler and darker greys. So I was going to see it for myself! I figured that people coming to buy slaves wouldn't always want to be known, so I thought my disguise would't be too obvious.
The auction itself was a great dissapointment. It turned out that the girls (they were all girls) were selling themselves mostly to pay off debts or support their families. It seemed well on the light grey side of the line, nobody else was masked, and after looking around, I quickly tired of getting odd looks and sniggers, and cleared out.
I looked into the brightly lit windows of the Barton Pub, and dicided to go in and get a cup of tea. A sign advertising hot chocolate changed my mind about that, and quickened my steps inwards. I had my hot chocolate and was looking for a place to sit when I saw a group of people sitting around a large table, pouring over something. A closer look revealed it to be a huge, mostly black, jigsaw puzzle, the last peice of which a skinny girl was putting into place. I looked closer to read the words in white across the black surface...
"Hey, watch what you're doing with that!" I had nearly spilt the hot chocolate all over the puzzle. I put the cup down, still staring at the white words: "THIS SUMMER. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE." Underneath, much smaller letters spelled out "(OMFG)" I could only echo the sentiment.
"Where...did you get this?" I asked the skinny girl.
"Not mine, it was sitting here and we dicided to put it together," she said with a shrug. "I sure hope it's a joke..."
"Yeah, right!" a large blond woman, who appeared slightly drunk, shouted. "That's the stargate down there!"
"Stargate?" I asked, bewildered.
"Yeah, the one that showed up by the wall..." she went on.
"No, no, no!" a cute boy with messy brown hair shouted even louder. "Can't you see? That's Gaia down there, and the Zurg ships are attacking!"
"No," the woman yelled at earspliting volume, "can't you see the people? They're getting sucked through the stargate!"
"Will you two please SHUT UP!" I shouted with my fingers in my ears. "Thank you," I said as they did, both looking quite peeved. I looked back at the puzzle. The boy was right, our planet was clearly at the bottom of the picture, below the words, and a fleet of spaceships was in the top left corner, above them. Superimposed on Gaia, as if seen in a crystle ball, were all the most famous of Gaians... Ian, Rufus, Cindy, Sasha, all looking agast or tearful. But all the most famous of Gaians? Not quite!
"The Gambinos aren't there!" I said, only to get an imediate sarcastic response from the woman.
"Neither are the Von Helsons, you know!" she snapped.
"Of course not!" the messy-haired boy put in. "They're dead!"
"Well..." The woman chuckled. "This summer, eh? That's after April Fools..." She lurched off toward the door.
Sometimes, when you get a clue for something you're trying to solve, it takes you a moment to recognize that it's a clue. That moment was the moment that me and the boy stared at each other, before he muttered something that sounded like "Spit!" but wasn't, and tore after her. I stared at where he'd been for a moment, then folowed at an equal speed...only to trip over him, where he lay curled up in a moaning ball in the doorway.
"What happened to you?" I shouted at him, but all he could do was moan and clutch between his legs. It was all too clear that he would be useless for too long.
The woman was nowhere in sight by the time I ran outdoors. I spent a futile ten minutes looking for her, before admitting to myself that she could be anywhere. I'd made a scene for nothing...but it wasn't really my fault, I thought, it was the boy's. As if in answer to my thoughts, I saw him limp out of the pub and toward where I stood by the fountain.
"That was the dammed Sniper!" he fumed as soon as he got near me. "Bloody b***h gave me a kick in the..."
"Please," I said, even though I felt like swearing myself. "There could be children about."
"Yeah, right, at this time of night?" he fumed, then brightened up. "You got a phone we could call the police on?"
I shook my head, having left the annoying cell phone behind to avoid being called by Cindy. "Sorry, I left it at home...not that I think it would do any good anyway."
"What d'ya mean?" he asked. "We found the Sniper!"
"No," I said tiredly, "we found a suspect. Not a very good one at that, since she'd had too much to drink. Do you know how many people pretend to be the Sniper to get people worked up?"
"You mean you think she wasn't the Sniper?" he asked, looking bewildered.
"There's three possiblities," I said. "One: She is the Sniper, and planted that puzzle there as a warning of sorts. Very illogical. Two: She is the Sniper, but had nothing to do with the puzzle, and just couldn't resist taking advantage of it. It might even have given her ideas." I thought I saw him blanch. "Three: She was not the Sniper, just a loud, attention-seeking, drunk. Most likely, and what the police would assume."
"You forgot four," he said thoughtfully. "That she's the Sniper's girlfriend."
"Good one," I said, smiling.
"I think that's it!" he said. "I didn't think the Sniper was a woman anyway..."
"Nor did I," I said. "Nor do the police, or nearly anyone else for that matter."
There wasn't much else to say. "Well, I'm going home," the boy finally said. "See you some other time, maybe..."
"Wait a sec," I said. "What was that stargate she was talking about?"
"Oh, some thing the Zurg put up by the Great Wall Of Gambino before they made themselves scarce," he said with a shrug. "No controls or anything, and it dosn't seem to do anything."
"You mean, no controls on this side?" I said, a nasty feeling starting to creep into my mind.
"No, I looked at both sides of it," he said. "You can go there too, you won't find any!" He walked off before I could explain that I meant the controls might be on some counterpart stargate on a Zurg planet.
The night seemed much colder as I trudged home than it had been when I walked into town. My spirits drooped even more when I saw that Cindy's new blue car wasn't outside the house, and that the front door was locked. However, the back door had been left unlocked, clearly so I could get in. I took a hot bath, made myself a cornburger sandwich, and came upstairs to write while I waited for Cindy to come home. She's still not, and I'm starting to worry. What could make her leave so late and not come back for so long? The possibilties are endless and some are frightening, and I want some sleep tonight, so I'm not going to theink about them. Or the puzzle, for that matter...if I can not think of it, that is!
I just realized that I never even asked that boy his name...