Smith's Monthly #17
Copyright Information
Smith’s Monthly Issue #17
All Contents copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and interior design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © by Mskorpion/Dreamstime.com and Evaners/Dreamstime.com
“Introduction: Welcome to Patreon Supporters” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith
“The Empty Mummy Murders” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover photo by Renier Janse Van Vuuren/Dreamstime.com
“Squatter’s Rights on the Street of Broken Men” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Rolfimages/Dreamstime.com
They’re Back copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Polygraphus/Dreamstime.com
“A Life in Whoopees” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover Roland Stollner/Dreamstime.com
“Between Showers” copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art Brynjar Gunnarsson/Dreamstime.com
Warm Springs: A Thunder Mountain Novel copyright © 2015 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2015 WMG Publishing, cover art by Customposterdesigns/Dreamstime.com
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Contents
Short Stories
The Empty Mummy Murders
Squatter's Rights on the Street of Broken Men
A Life in Whoopees
Between Showers
Full Novel
Warm Springs: A Thunder Mountain Novel
Serial Novel
They're Back: A Poker Boy Short Novel (Part 4 of 4)
Nonfiction
Introduction: Welcome to Patreon Supporters
Subscribe to Smith's Monthly
Copyright Information
Full Table of Contents
Introduction
WELCOME TO PATREON SUPPORTERS
In the back of this issue you might notice a list of names. Walter White Cat and I are thanking those wonderful people for being supporters of my blog, my writing, and this magazine through the website called Patreon.
For those of you who don’t read my blog regularly, Walter White Cat is my cat who sticks with me all the time and naps with me. In fact, as I write this, he is sleeping on my other chair here in my office.
Patreon is a wonderful way for patrons of the arts to donate a small amount per month to an artist or a project such as this one. Lots of musicians, graphic artists, comic book artists, and writers have accounts on Patreon that allow others to support the artist or writer’s work.
Throughout the country, many, many artists are managing to chase their dreams thanks to wonderful support from people such as the ones thanked in the back of this issue.
Also, many of the Patreon supporters are getting an issue for the first time. So for those of you new here, welcome to the craziness.
In this issue is a full Thunder Mountain novel, four short stories, and the last chapters of a Poker Boy short novel serial.
Starting next issue will be even more fun stuff, including some nonfiction. Plus a new novel and more short stories.
Every issue tends to be a surprise.
All sixteen of the previous issues are still available for sale in local bookstores and online in both paper and electronic editions. All sixteen have a full original novel in them, plus short stories, serials, some nonfiction, and even a few poems.
So welcome, Patreon supporters to this crazy project. I hope you enjoy it.
I know your support, and the support of the subscribers to this magazine, mean a lot to me. More than I can ever express as a writer.
I just hope I keep you entertained with the stories and novels. And that you want to keep coming back for more stories.
Thanks, everyone.
Now onward.
—Dean Wesley Smith
February 1st, 2015
Lincoln City, Oregon
For the second time in his life, Poker Boy finds himself trying to help a woman stalked by the alien-looking Silicon Suckers.
He failed the first time and they killed an old girlfriend of his.
This time the Silicon Suckers have killed three other women. Can he save the woman asking for help and more importantly help her save herself?
THE EMPTY MUMMY MURDERS
A Poker Boy Story
ONE
It was a good ten minutes into the conversation over vanilla milkshakes and a side of fries with Scary Mary, as her friends called her and she called herself, before she got to the point.
Scary Mary deserved the name. She had bright red hair tied up so tight on the top of her head that it pulled the skin of her face and scalp upward. She wore more makeup than a bad rodeo clown, and had breasts that must have arrived at the restaurant a good minute ahead of her.
Her tight red dress, if you could call the small piece of cloth covering her largest assets a dress, I’m sure didn’t cover her butt when she slid into the leather booth at The Diner. But I didn’t look. In Vegas you saw all types, and a long time ago I had learned to not judge a person by their look or a woman by the expanded size of her chest.
Some friend-of-a-friend had given Scary Mary one of my real-world names and told her I might be able to help with her problems.
As Poker Boy, I find people to help in all sorts of ways. Sometimes I find them, sometimes they come to me, sometimes my boss, Stan the God of Poker, assigns me the task of helping someone. It never seems to make any sense how I find the people who need saving, but I do. Just as I find the people at poker tables who need me to take their money. It seems to be a natural way of the world.
I had told Scary Mary to meet me at The Diner in downtown Las Vegas. The Diner serves the best milkshakes on the planet, and the waitress who is always there is Madge, a superhero in the food service business. The Diner is decorated like a fake 1960s diner. I am convinced there were no places in the 1960s that looked anything like The Diner, with records stapled on the walls and photos of Elvis, Marilyn, and James Dean on most walls.
But the booths were comfortable and the milkshakes huge and made like old milkshakes from the 1930s. And it was where my team met when we had a job to plan.
It was two in the afternoon. No one but Madge was with us in The Diner, and she was working up behind the counter. Scary Mary and I were in a booth near the front door. It was a perfect time to get to the bottom of her problem.
Scary Mary kept looking at me in a worried fashion, so I sort of turned on my Trust-Me power and let it wash over her. I had on my black leather jacket and black fedora-like hat that was my superhero uniform, and I could feel the power they gave me drawing from the nearby casinos. It should be more than enough to get Scary Mary to talk.
After a moment she blushed, which looked washed-out next to her blazing-red hair and beside her thick, blue eyeliner and red lipstick.
“You’re not going to believe me and I just don’t know what you can do to help,” she said, her voice deep and throaty.
“Try me,” I said, turning up my Trust-Me” power a little and adding a little Empathy power to it as well. “You would be surprised at what I might be able to do.”
“That’s what my friend in the poker room at the MGM told me. But you just won’t believe me.”
&
nbsp; “Let me decide that,” I said.
She signed, looked both directions. “I’m being harassed by aliens.”
“Oh, no,” I said, sighing and stirring up my milkshake. This felt like a problem I had had three years before with an old girlfriend. She hadn’t let me help her and she had ended up dead.
“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me,” Scary Mary said, clearly disgusted.
“Oh, I believe you,” I said. “The aliens you are seeing have large heads, big eyes, and are gray. Right?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, jumping a little in the booth in excitement and almost knocking over her milkshake with the large extensions on her chest.
I sighed again. “Those aren’t aliens. Those are creatures called Silicon Suckers. And my bet is they are after your breasts.”
Both her hands went to cover a few inches of the mass on her chest, her eyes wide, her mouth open.
Silicon Suckers are the reason the UFO nuts think there are aliens visiting earth. They have big oblong heads with long thin excuses for chins. Their bodies are thin, humanoid, but all gray in color. Their feet are huge and they walk like they are floating through the air without a sound. And they have lived in their caves in the deserts for far longer than there have been humans around.
What drives me nuts about them are their huge eyes. They don’t seem to blink, and that can just unnerve a guy, even me, a superhero.
They have no smell, but can suck moisture out of an area faster than a hundred dehumidifiers on full blast. And for some stupid reason, of all the people and superheroes and gods that exist, I am the one who has become the go-to-guy for dealing with the Silicon Suckers.
I keep wanting to tell people I play poker for a living, I work for Stan, the God of Poker, and I do my best work in casinos helping people who come into poker rooms solve their problems. As far as I know, Silicon Suckers don’t even know what poker is.
Now here I was again, talking to a woman who needed help with the Silicon Suckers. If this trend didn’t stop, I might start being called Silicon Sucker Boy. And I would hate that.
“So what have they been doing?” I asked, dreading the answer.
She still had her hands firmly planted over small areas of her massive breasts.
“What do you mean they might be after my breasts?”
“First tell me what they are doing,” I said, sending as much Calming Power as I could generate her way. I wasn’t in that good of control of that superpower yet, but by simply trying to calm a person, I sometimes could.
She took a deep breath and then nodded. “I first saw them in the parking garage off my apartment, out near the airport. They just stood there, staring at me.”
“Two of them?”
“Yeah,” she said. “At first I figured them for nutcases from a convention, but they are very skinny and I couldn’t see costumes.
“You’ve seen them more times?”
She nodded. “A couple of dozen times and twice they got into my apartment. Made the place so dry I was afraid it was going to burst into flames.”
“Silicon Suckers live under the desert and take moisture out of the air,” I said, nodding. “Have they tried to touch you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and shivering.
I stared into her worried eyes and knew I was way out of my depth. Any question I might have next about changes to her chest would sound bad coming from me. I needed some help.
“Hold on just a minute, would you?” I asked. “I want to call a friend to make sure there haven’t been any other sightings lately.”
She nodded and I motioned for Madge to come over as I stood.
“You interested in a hamburger?” I asked Scary Mary. “On me.”
She nodded and I turned to Madge who had heard me. “My normal burger, one for Mary, and a shake and burger for Patty as well. I’ll be right back.”
Madge nodded. She would entertain Scary Mary until I got back with Patty. With luck, it would only be a minute.
TWO
I stepped outside the door into the warm fall day, then jumped to a spot in front of the MGM Grand main hotel lobby check-in desk. Then, before a camera could pick up my sudden appearance, I pulled myself and Patty out of the flow of time.
I loved being able to teleport, and even more being able to stop time. Actually, I couldn’t stop time but it looked like I could. I actually just could step between moments in time. And I could take others with me into that moment, which made everyone else look frozen around me.
My girlfriend, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, had just finishing checking in a woman with two kids. The woman and the two kids were frozen in place moving away from the counter and Patty was smiling at me.
“Thank you,” she said. “I needed a break.”
“My pleasure,” I said, smiling back. Just seeing Patty always made me smile. She had long brown hair that she had tied back while working. Her wonderful brown eyes were deep enough for me to get lost in and I had many, many times. Today she had on a white blouse and black slacks and a light tan MGM jacket that was the uniform of the day. She looked good in anything, but I was in love with her, so my opinion was clearly not one anyone could trust.
“So what’s happening?”
“I need some help with a woman who’s being visited by Silicon Suckers,” I said.
“Oh, oh,” Patty said. “Does she…?”
“Bigger than I thought possible,” I said, indicating how large Scary Mary’s breasts were.
“And you want me to help you question her about them?”
“I screwed this up once,” I said. “I’d kind of like to get it right if her breasts are the problem.”
Patty knew about my old girlfriend and how she had refused to give back her breast implants made out of silicon from a sacred Silicon Sucker’s burial ground. The Silicon Suckers had eventually removed the breasts through her ass, for some reason the only way they know of to get inside a human body, and it had killed her.
Failing to save her always felt like one of my biggest mistakes.
Patty nodded. “Meet me in the hallway down near my car. I’ll be right there.”
I nodded and jumped to that spot while also stepping back into the flow of time. In Vegas a person couldn’t just jump around through space without also being careful to not be picked up on cameras. Patty and I had a regular camera dead spot.
It took Patty exactly four minutes to get off work and meet me. Her boss at the MGM Grand knew what she did and that sometimes she just needed some time away. In fact, her boss was another superhero working the same area.
I jumped us out of there the moment Patty hit the camera safe area and back to a spot just in front of The Diner.
I led the way inside, telling Patty what I had ordered her. Madge was just heading back to the kitchen and Scary Mary was sitting nervously in the booth twisting the straw in her milkshake. Clearly Madge had stood and talked with her for a few minutes while I was gone.
I introduced Patty to Scary Mary and then said, “Patty knows all about the Silicon Suckers.”
Patty nodded as Scary Mary sort of beamed behind all the makeup.
“I’ve seen them a number of times,” Patty said. “And even been down in one of the caves they call sand castles.”
“Wow,” Scary Mary said. “I thought for sure I was going insane.”
“Far from it,” Patty said. “But these creatures are very dangerous, and we need to try to figure out what changed for you that started them visiting you.”
“That way we have a chance of stopping them,” I said.
Scary Mary nodded and I hit her again with another wave of my Relax and Trust-Me super power. She seemed to calm a little more.
Patty, who was sitting beside me in the booth, patted my leg and then leaned toward Scary Mary. “So what day exactly did you first see the Silicon Suckers?”
Scary Mary twisted her face and layered makeup around, clearly trying to think, then said, “May sixte
enth.”
“So, anything major happen the week before that?” Patty asked. “Anything change?”
“I got a new job,” Scary Mary said without hesitation. “Five days before. I remember because it was May Eleventh, one year from the day exactly that I had my sex change operation, and I figured that was a good sign.”
So Scary Mary used to be Scary Martin, but I doubted that was going to have anything to do with this case. Patty clearly didn’t either because she said nothing. Again, this was Vegas. We had seen most everything.
“What was your new job?” Patty asked.
“Dispatcher,” she said. “Desert High Sand and Gravel. I used to drive a truck, but after my operation Ben, the owner, said that once I got recovered, he’d find a place for me. And he did.”
“What happened to the previous dispatcher?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Sharon? She vanished one day,” Scary Mary said. “No sign of her but her ex-husband was knocking her around at one point so they’re looking at him.”
Patty sighed and looked down.
I would bet anything that the previous dispatcher had been killed by the Silicon Suckers. But it would never be proved. Somewhere, at some point, the trucks that Scary Mary was sending out were doing something to anger the Silicon Suckers. And since she sent them out, they were blaming her. And clearly they’d blamed the woman who had her job ahead of her.
Then Patty asked a question I hadn’t thought to ask.
“Did any other dispatchers disappear besides Sharon?”
“Joyce,” Scary Mary said. “And there might have been another, but I’m not sure.”
Then, suddenly she realized where we were going. “You don’t think that these aliens caused them to vanish?”