The Empty Mummy Murders
A Poker Boy Story
Dean Wesley Smith
Copyright © 2011 by Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover photo Renier Janse Van Vuuren/Dreamstime
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The Empty Mummy Murders
A Poker Boy Story
Dean Wesley Smith
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 tight on the top of her head that was so tight that it pulled the skin of her face and scalp upward. She wore more make-up 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.”
“Let me decide that,” I said.
She signed, looked both directions. “I’m being harassed by aliens.”
“Oh, no,” I said, signing 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 vanished, more than likely killed.
“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 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.