Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Last of the Van Oppenschantz Marauders, by Dima

The greatest game known to mankind, Calvinpen, makes its glorious return to Cafe Chi, and this is one of the fruits thereof.  Total score for the evening below.

Aw, sh... Jeremiah was making a conscious effort these past few days to cut down on swearing, and so suppressed his natural reaction as the rock he was climbing crumbled in his grasp.  Shhh... iznacle!  he internally euphemized, and he sucked at the bleeding cut on his hand as he struggled to cling to the rope.  Eventually he steadied himself and continued his climb up to the third-story window.

I almost feel bad about damaging a national treasure, Jeremiah thought as he regarded the pebbles that had previously been part of the wall on the grass below him.  But the Goethehaus, he reflected, would be a pile of rubble within two decades anyway, and besides, with all the bad blood between the Goethes and the Van Oppenschantzes, it would have been a shame not to have committed at least some sort of vandalism while he was here.

“But, eyes on the prize,” he whispered aloud.  More than petty vandalism would be the result of these past years of planning.

Jeremiah felt his gloved fingertips reache
 the ledge of the window, and a broad smile spread across his face.  He raised a boot up to a protruding stone and pushed against it to hoist himself up to the window.  He reached through the ledge... and the stone gave way, flying off the wall, and Jeremiah’s smile was brought down hard on the ledge as he fell.

“Fu...” he quickly silenced himself, but then felt angry enough about the whole thing that he decided to let it out, if again with a less-than-satisfying replacement.  “Fu... ddernuts!”  That didn’t feel right.  “Muggyfuddernuts!”  Still no.  He sighed, angry and disappointed, and tried to suck in the blood that was filling his mouth.

It was at that moment that someone who had been watching in the background – yea, even a background character – appeared in front of Jeremiah at the window.  He grabbed the young man’s cut hand, causing Jeremiah to let out a muffled yelp, and dragged him into the building.  Jeremiah fell hard to the ground.

Sunnuvabagel!  This night was bringing him more injuries than he’d anticipated.  He raised his bloodied chin to look at the figure who had grabbed him.  His eyes swept up the black cassock, raised up to the white collar, stared up at the face of the priest.  Oh.  Wait.  He knew this face.  Was that... yes, it was.  It was Father MacKenzie.  As soon as their eyes met, the old Father MacKenzie whirled away from Jeremiah and started walking down the narrow hallway, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walked from the grave.  Grave?  Jeremiah looked down, and saw he was sitting on a pile of dirt with a tombstone at the head, a mock grave of sorts.  Well, this was odd.  Jeremiah finally found words.

“Father!” he whispered loudly, and the old priest stopped in his steps, but did not turn around,  “Father!”  Still no movement on the older man’s part.  “I haven’t seen you in... how are you... what are... how did you find me here?”

That last question finally drew a reaction.  Father MacKenzie whipped back to face Jeremiah, with a sneering, mirthless laugh.

“Jeremiah, you idiot!”  Father MacKenzie never had been the old grandfatherly type of priest.  “Any retard with an ape’s brain could have found you here!  What did I always tell you about posting on Facebook?  ‘Tonight is the night I avenge my great-great-great-grandfather.’” he raised his voice in mockery, “Such a moron!”  Jeremiah was confused, but raised himself to his feet and stumbled forward.

“But why are you here?”  The priest smiled again.

“To prepare this welcoming gift,” here, he gestured at the grave, “from my employer.  She is most interested in your mission here tonight.”  Another sneer.

“Your employer?  Why... who is your employer?”

“Oh,” Father MacKenzie put his fingers together as villains are wont to do, “I think you do know her.  Do you remember... THE CURATOR?!”  Father MacKenzie shouted the last, and as he did, the red-headed menace herself stepped out from a side hall and stood beside the priest, stroking her horn-rimmed glasses menacingly.  Jeremiah gasped as his mind flashed back to their first encounter.  It had been at a fancy dinner party.  A meeting of intellectuals, eager to show to each other how sophisticated they were as they wined and dined among the artistic treasures of the past few centuries in London’s National Gallery.  An event planned by gallery owners who were all about quomodocunquizing.  Jeremiah had of course been there, out-of-place, under cover, ready to liberate his next target, a long-enslaved Rembrandt etching.  He had just been about to swap the small treasure on the wall with the counterfeit under his coat, when all of a sudden, the ginger terror had appeared beside him.

“Guten Abend,” she’d whispered, almost seductively, “Ich bin der Curator,” and before Jeremiah could react at all, she yelled out to the gathered guests, “Ihre Achtung, bitte!  I hab’ hier ein Gaest der tinkt he can simplisch take unser treasures!  I sink nein, oder how about yous?”  And all the guests had pulled their submachine guns out from underneath their own fancy clothes and taken aim and fired at Jeremiah.  He’d dashed for the nearest exit, and it was only by a miracle that he’d made it out alive.

And here she was again, advancing on him with a dagger in all her vile auburn intensity.  She had him this time, and they both knew it.  Goethe’s notebooks would not find freedom in the Rhein tonight.  Jeremiah whipped a flash grenade from his belt and hurled it at the crimson monster, but she held up her hand and it vanished into thin air.  She smiled thinly, and drew close to Jeremiah.

“Ohne Blitz bei uns,” she whispered.  “No flash photography, please.”  And then he saw a flash of scarlet hair, and then darkness, and then the last of the Van Oppenschantz marauders was no more.


FINAL SCORE: 823.50