Exceptionally fine writing I deleted from “Enigmatic Machinery—A Timeslipper Mystery,” before sending out the manuscript this morning:
Her eyes were all the colors of the rainbow.
“Two bits says you can’t hit that spittoon from over here, little girl.”
We were in love, if that’s what you want to call it.
She was beautiful, like some kind of model. A fashion model, probably.
“Whiskey, straight up,” he snarled. “With a Diet Coke,” he added. “And a glass of ice,” he again snarled.
She was beautiful, like some kind of model. And now here she was on the cover of Vogue.
“This town tain’t big enough for both casinos.”
I started thinking, if Lincoln (Honest Abe to his friends) had been six inches taller, it would have been a shoulder wound. Was that the solution?
Her nose was perky, like a precious jewel, and every bit as shiny.
“If you’re lookin’ to stir up trouble don’t come to this here town, please.”
But not just any cover of Vogue. The issue was dated April 14, 1865!
We were like two peas in a pod, with two other peas on either side.
That was the year I fell in love. It was the year I grew a beard. Totally unrelated.
Her name was Charlemagne, but she called herself Charlie. Both stupid names for a girl.
“We don’t cotton to terrorists ’round here.”
Her ears were like orecchiette, literally “little ears” in Italian. Only they were regular size.
Her name was Loralie, but I called her Sis. She thought it was creepy.
The celebrated actor’s .41-calibre bullet bounced harmlessly off the Great Emancipator’s stovepipe hat, only that day reinforced with 22-gauge stovepipe.
She was like a fast car, only not as expensive.
“Old Man Jenkins up the road is paying fifty dollars a head, and it don’t matter which kind.”
“You can’t say that!” I admonished her.
“I just did,” she retorted.
“O.K., fine,” I rejoined. “Shouldn’t.”
“Oh,” she replied. “Got it. Thanks.”
If she was a dog she would have been an Afghan hound. But she was not a dog. She was a human female, and the Afghan part was mostly the haircut.
“Captain!” the first mate shouted. “There’s an enormous kraken, the mythical sea monster said to appear off the coast of Norway, only we are five nautical miles, or 5.75 land miles, off Long Beach Island on the Jersey shore, attacking the starboard bow!”
“Remind me,” the captain barked. “Is that right or left?”
She was like one of those frogs that glowed in the dark.
As the supersized kraken ripped into his loins with its powerful fabled beak, the captain sighed angrily as he looked down at his always pristine white uniform, now drenched in blood that would never come out.
Her name was Cathy and she called herself that. Just Cathy.
Her breasts were clusters of grapes, like in the Bible.
I offered to put her through clown school.
Her hair was black as night and her skin was white as snow. She had been dead approximately six hours.
“After all this adventure, I wondered, doctor,” I asked the professor, who preferred the doctoral honorific though he was only a Ph.D. “Why did you call it the Enigmatic Machine, anyway?”
“Because Time Machine was taken, dummkopf!” he spat back in a thick German brogue, clenching his tweed pipe gruffly between his uneven teeth.
She had an ass for days.
“Who wants a snack?” ♦
