Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (35 page)

Nigel looked at Celina. Celina looked at Nigel. Nigel, half smiled, blushed a little, and looked at where he presumed the sky would be through the dust. Celina brushed her red hair away from her face and kissed Nigel squarely on the mouth, something that took Nigel completely by surprise but made him feel warm and tingly.

"What was that for?" he asked.

Celina shrugged and grinned mischievously.

"Seemed like the right thing to do."

"Oh, okay, as long as we're both on the same page." Nigel grabbed Celina and kissed her with as much fervor and passion as someone who had just died and come back to life could muster.

The rain that had momentarily stopped became bored with doing nothing and began to throw itself toward the Earth once more, which helped clear the dust a little.

Celina and Nigel helped Gerald to his feet. The three of them made their way through the dust and rubble and emerged out onto a roadway lined with fire trucks. Police cars were just arriving and an emergency response team milled around drinking coffee and telling blonde jokes. A fireman noticed the three survivors, and they were all quickly questioned, then wrapped in blankets and seated on the back bumper of an ambulance.

None of them really had any answers to the questions asked. They couldn't rightly say what had happened, as it still all sounded completely crazy to them, let alone anyone who hadn't even shared the experience.

"What about all the other workers?" Nigel asked Celina.

A young fireman brought them all tea, which Gerald sniffed suspiciously. Since becoming human, all he'd had to drink was alcohol.

"On the security cameras it showed the elves were holding them in the storage warehouse which is over there." Celina pointed to the far end of the compound where a large steel structure sat quiet and undisturbed. "It has a reinforced structure to protect many of our old prototypes. Aside from being wrapped in bubble wrap and packaging paper, they should all be okay."

Nigel quickly relayed the information to a nearby officer who released the employees of Majestic Technologies.

The bomb site had started to attract attention and either end of the street was cordoned off and manned by the police who did their best to look menacing, daring anyone to step across the line. Chester decided to challenge the menacing looks of the police as he ducked under the yellow caution tape and ran full belt down the street toward Gerald.

"Mr. Miller! Mr. Miller!" he shouted.

Had it not been for Big Ernie and Itch running into Chester and knocking him over, he would likely have been caught up in the explosion too. The two criminals themselves, both very much wanted by the law on counts of extortion and threatening grievous bodily harm in the form of hanging people off the edge of buildings, were now in the back of a police van. Fuzzbucket had permanently attached himself to Big Ernie and had no intention of letting go.

A police constable took up the chase after Chester, who was running with his arms flailing, a bad habit he'd never been able to get rid of.

"Who's he shouting at?" asked Nigel.

Gerald went over what Heinrich had told him, very specific instructions involving a small, pudgy gentleman who would be happy to see him and refer to him as
Mr. Miller
.

"He's here for me, don't worry I'll take care of it," said Gerald.

Chester ran up to Gerald and gave him a big hug, holding him tightly.

"Oh thank the heavens," said Chester, "you're alive!"

"Umm, yes," said Gerald. "It's, uhh, good to see you again, Chester."

Chester released Gerald and looked at him.

"It's an honor to see you again, sir! What happened? Why are you here? We got a report that you were hit by a bus in Portugal."

Nigel and Celina, happily holding hands, glanced at each other and shrugged.

"Uhh," said Gerald.

Nigel suddenly put two and two together.

"I'm sorry, Chester, is it?" Nigel grabbed Chester's hand and shook it firmly.

"Yes, I'm Mr. Miller's bank manager."

"Ahh, yes, of course you are."

Nigel put his arm around Chester and gently moved him away from Gerald who was doing his best to remain calm.

"Mr. Miller has had a most trying experience. First that whole bus business in Spain."

"Portugal," corrected Chester.

"Yes, and then this whole bomb thing, it's all been quite horrifying, as I'm sure an astute gentleman like yourself can understand."

"Well, of course," said Chester, "It's just that when Mr. Miller vanished I was quite beside myself."

"Really," said Nigel, "I had no idea that bank managers took such an interest in their client's well being these days."

"Well, Mr. Miller is no ordinary client," said Chester, then whispered, "his fortune is rather substantial."

Nigel's mind clicked over; there were definitely parts of this scenario that didn't fit, but Death had told him to look after Gerald.

"Of course," said Nigel.

"Who are you anyway, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Doctor Reinhardt," said Nigel.

This caused Celina to raise an eyebrow and smile.

"After such a traumatic episode, Gerald, uhh, Mr. Miller has decided to undergo my total emergent treatment. He'll be staying with me for a little while and we'll be in contact with you shortly. Where is it you're from again?"

"Upper Ramsbottom," said Chester quietly.

Nigel gave the man a sincerely apologetic look. "I'm sorry," he said.

"You get used to it," replied Chester.

Gerald had been concentrating hard, searching the fragmented memories of Raymond Miller's mind. Something came to him suddenly like a brick to the head.

"Ba Ba Black Sheep," blurted out Gerald.

"What was that?" asked Nigel.

Chester nodded knowingly.

"Good to see your memory is still intact. I'll be expecting your phone call, then." Chester hugged Gerald again, bid farewell and left.

"What just happened?" asked Nigel.

Gerald took a sip of tea calmly, as if he'd been inhabiting other people's bodies all his life.

"The man whose body I have is very rich. His name was Raymond Miller I think. Raymond and Chester had passwords with which to control the flow of money from one place to another. They also had passwords for emergencies and passwords for discretion."

"So what does 'baba black sheep' mean?"

"It means
everything's fine, can't talk now, will contact you later
."

"And you have Raymond Miller's memory?"

"I dunno, sort of. Parts of it, lots of it. Hard to say. I definitely know that I'm rich, though," said Gerald and smiled. "Not that I really understand what that means, or what money is for that matter, but I have a lot of it. And to think that all I was this morning was a penguin."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that," said Nigel, but the words went unheard as Gerald noticed something over Nigel's shoulder and took off at a run.

"Where's he going?" he asked Celina, who also didn't hear, as she'd seen what Gerald was looking at and taken off after him.

Nigel stood there awkwardly before joining in the sprint.

Emergency crews noticed the three of them running, and saw what happened and promptly converged on the scene.

The rubble of Majestic Technologies was unmoving, with the exception of one tiny area to the far side of where the warehouse once stood. Here a tiny, grubby elf waved wildly from what looked like the remains of a metal filing cabinet. The jingle of the bell on Eggnog's hat wasn't as jingly as it normally was, but for the most part, the elf appeared unharmed.

Gerald, being the first to reach him, helped him out of the filing cabinet drawer.

The Emergency Response Team climbed over the rubble and helped dislodge the stuck elf.

"What is that?" asked one of the officers.

"That," said Celina, partially out of breath, "is my, uhh, little brother, he was visiting me at work when all this happened."

"Why's he dressed like a Christmas elf?" asked the officer.

"He's very festive," said Nigel.

"Why's he dancing?" asked the officer who was observing Eggnog doing The Sprinkler.

"He's happy to be alive, obviously," said Celina. She motioned to Eggnog. "Come here umm, Bobby."

Eggnog looked at Celina and shuffled his way over to her with all the grace that a dancing elf can call upon.

Celina picked him up with amazing difficulty, as each elf weighed approximately one hundred and eighty pounds.

Nigel helped support her, and together with Gerald, they made their way back across the rubble.

"Is anyone else hungry?" asked Celina.

"Hungry?"

"Well, all I've had to eat today was some yogurt."

"All I had was fish while I was still a penguin, and then some peanuts," added Gerald.

"Now I think about it, I don't think I've had anything all day," said Nigel.

Celina put Eggnog down on firm ground so he could walk.

"Okay, so I say we go out and get some food and talk everything over. I hardly think our lives are going to be the same after this mess. It really makes you wonder what kind of a cosmic presence moved us around all day so that we'd end up right here, together."

The four of them walked through the police line and made their way through the crowd. Eggnog was the only one who really drew any stares, but after a stern look by Celina that would have made her dead ancestors proud, most onlookers decided it was best to look in other random directions.

All the while, Nigel tried to reflect on the day as best as a rational mind could.

"You're right, the whole thing's mind-boggling," he said. "But I think a large part of it had to do with a fish."

Jeremiah swam around his little bowl, oblivious to the events of the day and with absolutely no memory of helping to influence any part of it. Jeremiah the prophetic goldfish simply swam without the knowledge that he was indeed a powerful, cosmic, spiritual, and unique creature.

He suddenly felt a stab of excitement.

"Good grief, there's a castle in here!"

THE END . . .

                    almost . . .

6 Months Later

The enquiry had lasted a little under six months. Although responsibility for the Majestic Technologies bomb was unofficially immediately claimed by the IRA, there was still a lot of speculation about Nigel, Celina, and Gerald's involvement. The enquiry involved several interrogations of Nigel in particular, as he infuriated his interrogators by telling them anything except what they wanted to hear which ranged from stories about polar bears to theories that the bomb was a direct result of a butterfly hitting the window of a fast-moving vehicle driven by a drunken beaver somewhere in northern Alberta, Canada.

Gerald and Celina underwent their own interrogations. They dismissed Celina as being an employee in the wrong place at the wrong time. They let Gerald go as soon as the official investigators discovered that he was none other than Raymond Miller and was consequently wealthy enough to buy their jobs out from under them.

The investigators grew weary of Nigel, who had developed a habit of giving them all a headache. Giving people headaches appeared to be the extent of Nigel's current telekinetic abilities. He could also change the channels on the TV by thinking, and while walking the street during a heavy rainstorm three months after the Majestic Technologies bomb, he had sneezed and inadvertently thrown seven cars, a bus, a small dog, two cats, and twenty-threepassersby six feet into the air. His abilities were there, he knew they were there, but he had yet to master them.

The authorities charged Itch and Big Ernie with extortion, and they were put away for a three-to-five year stretch in Strangeways Prison in Lancashire. After much pleading and appealing, Big Ernie gained permission to keep Fuzzbucket, who was no longer an unholy vessel for the Prince of Darkness, in his cell. Police tried to return Fuzzbucket to Mrs. Jones, who opened fire with an ancient shotgun, barely missing the cat but injuring a police constable so that he couldn't go to the bathroom right for many months after. Mrs. Jones was serving a three-to-five year stretch in the mental hospital wing of Strangeways Prison in Lancashire. The cat was then handed over to Big Ernie, who had grown to love the cat now that it was cute and not quite so evil-looking.