Return of Cleo DeJune

Return of Cleo DeJune

‘…. Speaking of never using the currency in favor of lackluster bartering in lesser services, Alice has returned and refused to wait at reception. She has stunned three guards, with and without using one of our trademark tasers, and put a pistol to Stephanie’s from Bungy Resources’ skull for her access identification. How she got that relic through four security checkpoints puts me at a perplexing loss, but you have about forty-seven seconds left at best.’

“I should’ve known hiring a Detective with a starlit sales pitch, including she was always armed, would be my folly. I hope the guards still remember her from last time.”

Detective Alice Scarlett missed her meeting with the co-founder of Nova Nexus Defense and Strategy Inc. by a complete solar rotation. However, her smoldering, frazzled red locks clashing with her tattered coat covered in slime or saliva to a clever eye upset the employees. Especially when she launched her coat in some random cubical amongst the sea of hunched two hundred and twenty words a minute club. Most of that was the extra digit, she thought to herself. She paused her train of armed fans to light a green-skinned smoke stick before picking up the power walk down the center aisle. The plumes as she passed left employees coughing with the added benefit of activating the low-level flame-retardant system from the ceiling, misting overhead as she passed. Finally, she zeroed in on his office door. The rattle she caused once her shoulder bashed it open to his photos, degrees, and awards on his desk startled his guest and shook a painting to an annoying tilt just off-center.

Security gave her a wide berth with 60,000-volt batons at the ready, as their co-worker’s chatter ensued as prairie dog beings popped up from their fogged stain glass dividers of varying vibrant shades of orange for a subtle view. Their demands in whispers; they at least demand they do something about her windpipe blackening the air like a wintertime smokestack from the industrial ages. At least while she held the door open for Sultaneous’ 7:00 o’clock to leave nineteen minutes early, she directed the plumes into the trembling gaggle. With the office to herself, almost, she flicked it in the lead guard’s face with her final exhale and vanished before the air dissipated.

Any invitation to a dignitary, upper-class socialite guarantees elegance and grace in chair form and a drink of some kind to facilitate loose-lipped cross-cultural negotiations. Maybe that’s how he explained it to Detective Scarlett, understanding by her human features that she was an out-of-towner, but she stole his drink anyway. What’s a day late for her scheduled debriefing with Saltaneous Maximus in her existence of infinite wiggle room; dire news is dire when she gets it to you. It tasted like some kind of toucan milk, sprinkles from ice cream, and sizzling from the kick kin to Everclear. Pouring the drink meant the sad end of the rarest species of miniature potted palm; however, the toxic breath she directed toward him put the tears in his eyes. She could have sunk for eons of comfort in the plush blue devil of lumbar supporting seating equipment, but she planted her skinny ass on the corner of his desk, taking down a few trinkets.

“You’d make an amazing addition as my defense counselor,” he stated nervously.

“If you see what I’m covered in, spit, burns, leech marks, expecting me to initiate another one of your farces is unbecoming.”

“Can I conclude one of your infamous leads has brought you here? Forever bolstering your trademark bewilderment to express your upheaval of my managerial methods?” they asked, readjusting in his chair, centering himself amongst the screens and external storage devices. He held his arm out politely, inviting her to less intimate accommodations. Her stillness during the pause didn’t bother him as much as the blink-less stare he took as an eerie hostile attack on his person.

Alice reached into her graphite grey vest’s tiny pocket suddenly, but his flinch seemed excessive. Then again, her exhausted sigh didn’t match the jarring situation; she flopped on his few loose documents staining them with the blood of his people, oozing from one end a fresh teal mini slab of meat. Shock sent him into the wall behind his desk, but the glistening jewel arrangement wrapped around it drew him back in. “That’s not what’s ripping my mental stability apart with rage currently, but carrying those all last two months—sorry, rotations is a stone-cold runner-up. Shit, I’ve dealt with piercings and tattoos to throw your lover into a frenzy, but I mean, can it function with all that around that—”

“Where’s the rest of him,” he asked solemnly.

“Doesn’t exist. Not anymore, I should say. I love learning how despicable my clients are through the fucking gall of their most celebrated foils. This isn’t a clue, I should advise; this is your countdown clock.” The whimsey in her tone enraged him in the way after a best man tells a joke at the reception that outs the cheating husband but continues to recount the tale for laughs.

Despite this feeling seeming incorrect to him at that moment, it didn’t change the way he said, “What lunacy! What do they want? You lack clarity amid another one of your overly dramatic metaphors again. If my brother is lost to me, be clear, damn you.”

“In all my travels, you think I’d read more on the topic of—never mind.” Finishing the drink, he didn’t remember offering, she stood to an immediate wobble. Once that was played off, like a glove, she power passed the glass on the inch-thick glass tabletop cracking the base almost into a leak. The sharp clink was quickly followed by a rattle from a gem falling from the deep green ring. She paid that no mind as she strolled around the office. “They, your enemy, if you want, your frenemy claims when the ring is bare, you’ll be worse than dead. I’m no believer like you’re soon to be, but I’m hired to maintain the temperament. Yet it appears they have discovered how to release the void. Not just space beyond your lovely orange sky, mind you. Huh, really, I figure you be familiar by now at least.”

“Can your teatering on my everlasting ounce of sanity please express the vile savage plaguing my—”

Detective Scarlett found her way to the curtain switch, exposing her to the spotless picturesque view of a reimagined earth, a haven blended with lush mother nature cradling the structures protecting them from her elements. If she didn’t know any better, which is honestly how she prefers to function, she’d conclude earth had been cheating on humanity with a far more advanced species treating it better than they ever could. But she knew all too well where she was, to her unbridled dismay. It had been here too long. What stunned Sultaneous was the floor-to-ceiling window he thought he would have noticed when he first got the office and Promotion. He figured it was kind of sudden. “Time is odd everywhere and fickle too, once toyed with. It’s using other cosmic forces that are the problem, but as I said, I don’t read on the subject. But it adapts, forever scrambling to heal, repair, pick your poison. Everything breaths, everything dies, and everything nearly fights to remain regardless.”

Joining her by the window, she stepped away to give him an unobstructed view of the family portrait providing the only source of an emotional conversation piece in the minimalist’s attempt at clutter. It didn’t bother him at first, merely flabbergasted to have this kind of subconscious landscape visible from his centered office, given his policy for cold distance, down to the colorless stationery gifts more to aid with work than morale. When his peripherals picked up on the anomaly, however, he lost interest. “Where—what. Where's Gradden? He’s supposed to be there.”

“Your little souvenir is probably the only reason you remember his name. Poor Cleo, though.”

“Who?” he said, unable to unlock either of his three eyes from the painting.

“Nothing. A slip-up. What I need from you, Co-founder of the Nexus Corp. Sultaneous Maximus the First, is—”

“Why would I do anything for you after you botch an investigation so destructively and can’t remember the name of MY company? My Brother is missing, my assassin is out there--” His rage had gotten the best of him, and a prize from the council had paid the price as his kick of the plinth from his massive feet sent the vase flying until it dented into complete disfigurement. After civility returned to a decent quiet, the ring of nineteen gems and crystals, fourteen remained.

“Tell me your grandfather’s name?” she asked.

“Such nitwittery from someone I once respected. I could almost feel sorry for you.” She let him stew for a minute, functioning on her classic tactic simply summed up with the phrase; don’t think about the three-legged dog. Which leg was amputated? A childhood that could bring peace of mind to any high-stress pseudo-executive becoming bitter cement rooms with cold floors amongst passive-aggressive strangers, seemingly altering events as he thought of them. Piecing together what his memories should look like in a healthy mind, he slowly dawned on the gaps where relatives, friends, colleagues should be, including names and birthdays. Rotations spent in foster care, serf trekking through governmental procedures he didn’t understand, passing him from what used to be servants but were now volunteer caregivers, each with a unique explanation of why they were simply done with him. The more he pinpointed his life as of late, the hows and whys left him with mind-shattering inconsistencies, and with that, he turned to the ring; only ten remained. “Ali—Alice, what have you done? My head—it’s awful.”

“The mind must be coping with every position in spacetime you’ve ever occupied being unwritten or rewritten from the roots. You should probably have a lie-down.” The sofa she politely gestured to didn’t fit his standard decorum, but that’s not why he returned to his desk. At least it was familiar-ish.

“This, this can’t be,” he stated, head in his hands at Detective Scarlett mouthed the words.” Three deep breaths later, “Impossibilities aside, what can we do?”

“I have a guy seeing about the fallout, but a reversal is out of the question. That leaves you talking through those secrets preventing me from doing my job identifying the bastard or bitch that hates you this much.”

“Why would I hire YOU if—”

“You didn’t,” she interrupted, “everyone on the list you gave me is begging for change or biodegrade by comparison. I’m missing the one person you continually underestimate. Being shy at this point is killing you.”

“Who else is there? A disgruntled employee, Greg, from the merger? I don’t know of anyone in my life that has ever been that close to me.”

“Yet this person is systematically ruining your life in grave detail, so meticulously, they’ve maintained your causality timeline to watch you squirm. That’s not a passerby whose caffeinated beverage you plastered on their shirt one morning six years ago. Now it’s eight.”

“My mind is unraveling; what’s—this wasn’t here before. I don’t think I’m the same person I was when you barged in.”

“Is one of these your covenanted ‘NO SHIT’ awards I heard so much about? Buddy, you’re in a different outfit.” A glance at his sleeves jolted him to the nearest reflective apparatus finding it near some in-office bathroom he actually wished he would have had all along and definitely would add once this was over. This notion quickly diminished, feeling that he had an attire reduction down to his undergarments. Scars appeared across his face, and his hands had been subjected to years of abuse, stiffened by some joint disorder he would have medicated instantly. To his credit, he fought long and hard about not slinging that mirror into the nearest expensively colored walls but a second glance at his tattered homely attire that faced one or two urination accidents, and this reflection had to go.

“These are impossible circumstances. I only mention to be polite at this point. Something I don’t feel you deserve since your charade is lasting this long despite impending doom ticking away. Fine, I’ll continue to humor you. It would have to be the only similar face in your closing repertoire of suffering from now and before this began.”

Sitting back down behind the now oval desk became the haunting challenge of his life, and though he was cautious, another gem fell. Hands over his eyes, he shut them tight. He popped his third eye open for a second for a peek at the ring, and the severed member fighting his stomach and colossal brain, held onto his brother the best he could. Faces flooded his view along with the appropriate interactions from birth to now; meanwhile, Detective Scarlett checked out, annoyed, staring at his determined expression, awkward he hell with three eyebrows.

For credibility’s sake, she always leans towards withholding over lying constantly, but for Sultaneous, she inadvertently made an exception. It may have been his refusal to participate in share time on the Clear Conscious network, missing title on the desk and door, and having two extra letters for seventy rotations. The absolute astonishment he displayed on his face resembles that of a homeowner very unhappy with the makeover despite the television cameras, except someone new stood before him on his front porch with their keys. “Hold on,” he blurted, “I know you. Where did we meet?”

“See, memory wipes here are serious. No ties, not connection.”

“His cowardice knows and soon knew no bounds,” Cleo DeJune stated.

“Wait—Detective, I don’t understand.” He uttered, terrified, pale with teal cheeks blushing like a rash all over. Possibly a real rash, according to the filth growing on his clothes. Three gems remained.

“According to my notes, an attempt was made on your life at some point. My evidence led me to your original business partners and long-term companion. I couldn’t help but doubt your innocent act when records clearly stated you were divorced—that’s just what I call it. I mean, in mortal danger, shit like bitterly ended relationships and stolen career positions are betrayer fuel. When my associate Mr. Adams found her on the wrong side of a void breach, well, it began to add to guilt in your old life, I guess I should say.”

“That Mr. Adams friend of yours was far too crazy to be around after the switch began,” Cleo added.

“He needs to get out more.”

“Where’s my brother!” he shouted, grabbing the ring and everything dangling from it.

“What, brother?” Cleo uttered smugly. "Your family saw how you came out, and, well, they called it quits."

“He had a brother?” she stated before her bearings returned.

“Silly man. You don’t even remember what you did to me, what you made Gradden do. That’d be a different conversation. I’m now glad I don’t have to have to sully my office with it.” Cleo then grabbed the desk identifier and turned it around slowly.

“What are you even doing here?” Detective asked.

Every award lay in a cabinet structure into the wall to his right, none of them his. The nine o’clock desperately trying to reschedule wasn’t calling for him. And the silver and blue-lined plaque read Ms. Cleo DeJune—Maximus. “Truthfully, the staff never understood why I took the name of a family with one destitute last heir with no ties to this place outside the hostage situation—this hostage situation, but I guess I have to drop it now. One Gem remains,” Cleo said.

“Anything you want to tell security. Maybe ‘I surrender?’”

His clothes had been more stained in blood than he couldn’t remember bathing in. The ring tightly gripped in one hand; he oddly noticed a pistol in the other. He was covered in spit-laced snot from those who spit on him for his gross brutality making his way to her office. Guards outside knock feverously on the crudely barricaded door. She shouted, “we’re calm, right, Sultaneous?”

“No. NO, no, NO!” he screamed, “I know who I am—I’m supposed to be here. You—you’re lying trash can’t do this to me!”

“Talk to me, Ms. DeJune. We’ve got no eyes on from here,” Her head guard shouted.

“We can settle this, Mr. Maximus. I know what happened to your family wasn’t fair. The planet was different back then; if you can find it in yourself to hold it together, there may be hope for you yet,” Cleo said passionately while kicking her feet up on the desk.

Panic left him scrambling, sincerely betting the ring on his forehead, attempting percussional maintenance on his overheating mind. Waving the weapon around felt like being forced to swing dance on an ice rink against his will. It was all disorienting him, disjointing his unstable place in the grand scheme of where he thought he belonged.

“Poor nitwit just needs a helping hand and a little help to understand. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

She turned around to grab her long brown trench coat from one of the four hooks on the wall when his trembling shot grazed her shoulder. Cleo hit the floor yelling, “NOW!” prompting her team to fire through the glass, firing violently into Sultaneous, bursting him through the thick window before anyone thought to stop shooting. However, Detective Scarlett got two headshots from a gun in her waistband just in case the fall wasn’t enough.

Alice Scarlett log: Oddity

‘Reviewing my notes of the sixty-rotation run to relive the ordeal the tamest way I could, brought me to a perplexing dilemma. At some point, he did hire. Gradden went missing, and enemy number one sent her to double-check the files I drunkenly combed over where I found out about their scrubbed marriage. Up until the words came out of my mouth, I had been there to expose him to the fact that she was still out there. Getting sequential life went out the front door into oblivion since I first expanded my sources of work; I’ll have to accept that now. But as of my return home, I hadn’t spoken to Mr. Adams regarding this case as he was on some journalistic endeavor; I happily wanted no part of. Later, when speaking to him on the subject, he claimed a case where a man was shot through a window carrying a dick in his hand would not slip his mind so simply. I reluctantly agreed. Just before leaving, however, he mentioned something about some article on a missing woman who married into a crooked family.