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Subject: {ASSM} {GALAGO} The Soul of the Party (-jcx)  (no sex)
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The Soul of the Party  (no sex)
----------------------------------------------------------
(Being a collection of bad puns, non sequiturs
and other diversions combined with
'The True Story Of How jcx Saved The ASSM Gala'.)
----------------------------------------------------------
© 1999 - jcx
All comments to <NOSPAMjcx100@hotmail.com>
(If you can't figure out how to mail me...
then you're no better than a SpamBot!)

Special notice: This was written in support of ASSM, only
they and 'asstr.org' may do with it as they see fit.
No-one else may archive nor repost it. See
</donations.html> to learn how to
contribute and thereby assure the continued existence of
ASSM.

Thanks to Janey for her guest appearance in this story.
----------------------------------------------------------
*** Warning ***

This is pretty light-hearted; there's nothing really capable
of corrupting minors, but just in case... Don't read this in
places where they don't like to see you reading this sort of
stuff; you know... developing countries, countries with
'benevolent' dictatorships, countries with 'state parties',
countries with 'religious' political parties and most of the
southern states of the USA (ouch! just joking folks!).

The only real danger comes from a few jokes that are way
past their 'best by' dates. You have been warned.

*** End of Warning ***
----------------------------------------------------------




I don't think that I managed to get the smell of sulphur out
of that room for years after. But it all started innocently
enough...

---

It had been a hard week. So hard that guys in dirty
raincoats had been knocking on my door all day, making
offers to buy it, cut it into small lots, paint it blue and
sell it on ASS. That hard a week.

Fate had walked into my office in the form of a nice girl;
tall, but with the right curves, short ash-blond hair,
milk-white skin. A demure twin-piece covered the sort of
dream body that private dicks like me only get to dream
about. You know the sort of girl; they like to help little
old men with top-heavy wallets cross the road to the
registry office.

I offered her a seat.

"No thanks," she replied, glancing down at me, "I've already
eaten."

She eased herself onto the edge of my desk with the
consummate ease of spreading butter on warm toast. Before I
found myself gazing at her creamy thigh, I hadn't known that
long skirts slit that high could still be considered
clothes. Mummy sure was right when she said that looking
after the milk would help me grow up a big boy, I thought as
I picked up my chin from the desktop where it had landed and
set it back into place.

"jc..." she whispered huskily, as a thousand pneumatic
drills started up in the street outside. "I can... call you
that?". Delicately she placed her hand under my chin.
Ignoring the saliva dripping down, she forced me to gaze
into the persuasive fathoms of her eyes. I was drowning and
just preparing to clutch at her.

"jc... I've got a little job for you. Dust off your best
suit and stay sober for an evening and I could make it worth
your while."

As if to give a clear sense to her words, she slipped a hand
under her jacket, revealing cleavage as deep as my ex-wife's
pillowtalk and four slips of paper found their way onto the
desktop. They were green and had nice large numbers printed
on them.

10:10:9.5.... Argh! Someone had dug up my stories from Deja!
That's what happens when you believe a guy who sells you a
second-hand anonymiser. I didn't need to look, I could see
the writing on the wall from here... 'Book Ends', 'Penny
Drops', 'A Fair Cop'... and 'Shroedinger...'. I was
cornered.

"ASSM's having a reopening Gala... but we've heard that on
the big night there's going to be trouble..." she breathed,
"Someone wants to knock off all the best writers."

"That sounds somewhat on a par for ASS," I quipped, "Block a
bunch of bawdy bards back in the barn and you're sure to
bring on some big bang-banging."

Visions of a mega-orgy filled my memo pad... Hey! this might
just turn out to be a good week after all.

"No, dumbo. Not 'knock off' like that, 'knock off' like
assassinate; the permanent kill-file in the sky!"

The horror of the situation sank in like a knife in a soft
steak. Sure, besides the fact that half the writers there
would probably want to kebab the other half - I mean,
flame-wars on ASSD are so common that my screen gets
napalmed at least 3 times a month and *I*'ve never yet been
in the line of fire! But bringing together all that kick-ass
talent in just one room was like a red rag to a bull for all
the zealots, censors, fundamentalists and other readers of
ASS.

"We need someone to mingle in the crowd, survey the action,
tail the suspicious characters... take the heat away from
the stars..."

"But why me?" I squirmed, "And I can't just turn up there,
like that, uninvited..."

She moved round to face me square on... presenting a couple
of very persuasive arguments.

"Firstly we needed someone who is expendable... If they get
Bronwen, Maria... Uther Pendragon, Daphne, Virago, Denny,
Frank... Homer even... folks'd notice the drop in quality on
ASS. If you get caught in the flack... quite frankly even
your landlord won't miss you - being as he hasn't heard from
you in the last six months anyway! Secondly, only folks who
have posted stories to ASS can get in."

I felt my determination go limp...

"Oh, and one last thing, jc."

"Uha?"

"Only those who contributed a story to the ASSM reopening
get to go to the Gala... so you'd better get working... the
deadline's Thursday!"

---

The days slipped by like the three lemons on that slot
machine on my last visit to Blackpool. As the deadline
approached, inspiration was crawling as fast as a cockroach
and life was about as exciting. This was a schedule as tight
as a virgin pussy, and I could see no easy way to pull this
thing off... I reached over and grabbed the phone. The line
was dead, as dead as those folks from ASSD would be if I
didn't get my act together. Crushing the phone down on the
roach I left my office and went downstairs to Manny's Diner
- 24 hr service - to meet with Sam.

---

Most people thought that for Sam the bar was the place where
he spent most of his days and nights, Chez Manny's. But Sam
was my lawyer. I'd known him since school; he was the one
who negotiated us, well him at least, out of fights in the
play yard; he was the one with the bright ideas for bringing
in extra pocket money, like having the girls pay to watch
the boys in a peeing contest; he'd been best man at my
marriage with my childhood sweetheart, and later he'd
handled my divorce - he persuaded me that I was lucky when I
got the sentence commuted to 12 months, 6 of which were
suspended. It was only afterwards that I found out he'd
known my ex-wife since school days, too, knew her in the
biblical sense as they say. Ours was a turbulent friendship,
but you couldn't help but like Sam; besides, as he'd already
fucked me, while fucking my wife at the same time, there
wasn't much worse he could do to me.

I quickly put him in the picture.

"You were always one for trouble," he said, stepping down
from the frame. "What am I supposed to do for you this
time?"

"Organise a meeting for me with 'Beezlebub, Lucifer and
Partners'," I replied, mentioning the largest practise in
town. They only took hot cases, but their reputation said
that they went through hell and high water for their
clients. Well, hell at any rate.

---

"John Mephistoles," I read aloud the name from the business
card, "Junior partner! What sort of service are they trying
to faust off on me?"

"Don't worry jc," hissed Sam, "this guy's hot, a real bright
spark. Just explain the situation and he'll devote body and
soul to the case. These guys are real miracle workers."

I had been expecting to see the usual signs. You know,
forked toes, the pointed tail, small horns on the head...
but John laughed... "Lawyers do have a bad reputation, but
we just do a devil of a hard job, that's all! Besides, look
at Sam! It was his third wife who gave him his horns, and
his ruddy complexion is obviously due to the long hours that
he serves at the bar."

We agreed on a price. It was a bit more than the arm and the
leg that I'm been expecting, but I was desperate; in
exchange for granting me three wishes, 'Beezlebub, Lucifer
and Partners' got the soul of the first person to enter my
office the day after the ASSM Gala. Sam witnessed the
document. "Just a formality", murmured John reassuringly.

He wiped the blood from his pen with a starched kerchief and
then stowed the papers away in his briefcase. He handed me a
thin wad of papers.

"Your first wish," he said.

All the sheets of paper were blank, this wasn't quite what
I'd expected; I pointed out that suffering from a severe
form of writer's block, I was hardly expecting to write the
story for myself.

"Written in invisible ink," John smiled, "We wouldn't want
this falling into someone else's hands, would we?"

He held the first sheet up to the candle next to him. Words
slowly took shape on the paper...

"{GALAGO} The Soul of the Party (-jcx)... I don't think that
I managed to get the smell of sulphur out of that room for
years after. But it all started innocently enough..." I
read, " You mean...?"

"Yes!" said John, snapping shut the briefcase and standing
up to leave. "It's the story that's going on now... That's
your story! It has already been mailed to Janey BTW. We took
the liberty of forging your header!"

"But that's..." I protested.

He cut me short, so short it'd make Homer look like a giant,
"Unethical?" he asked. "You didn't come to us for ethics;
you came for results. And that's what you get!"

"But I could've written that story myself!"

"Yet you didn't!" he smirked, "You preferred to have us do
it for you. So you have to pay the price. It's too late;
you've signed now!"

"Sam, why didn't you warn me?" I shouted.

"But you didn't ask!" came back the reply. "I can't know in
advance what you want, but I thought that you already
realised that... You see, they can only give you what you'd
have got anyway, even without their intervention! They can't
change the future anymore than you or I can. You'd have got
all this anyway, sure, but not in the same form, not as
quickly. And you couldn't wait, remember? Caveat emptor -
let the buyer beware - *you* asked for the contract, not
they... so as far as they, or any court of law is concerned;
this is an agreement that you entered into of your own free
will."

Holding the last page up to the near-consumed candle, I saw
that it was blank!

"Hey!" I protested again.

"Of course we can't write the end of the story, it hasn't
happened yet! Can you imagine the disastrous consequences if
we published the end of the story in the middle? Most of
your readers have already left you, and the remaining three
are going to leave as soon as they figure out the punch
line! Does a story with no readers exist? If no one hears
the sound of a tree falling in the forest, does it really
fall? *We* can't take the responsibility of letting the cat
out of the bag!... Your story is writing itself as we go
along."

In a puff of foul-smelling smoke he disappeared as fast as a
paycheck on a Friday night, leaving Sam and me alone in my
office. Holding the next page up to the light I saw that
indeed what he had said was true.

I read, "In a puff of foul-smelling smoke he disappeared as
fast as a paycheck..."

---

I woke up with a hangover from the night before; I put her
into a taxi and went over to Manny's to get a liquid
breakfast. It wasn't going to be easy: the hair of the dog
nearly choked me. Sam tapped me on the back and stopped the
story from ending prematurely.

I asked Manny for something stronger than this French
mineral water that I usually drink - clean living was
obviously not my line.

"Now that you've got your invitation for the Gala, how do
you plan to execute the mission...", slurred Sam. He had
been in a strange shape since our meeting with John
yesterday... today he was looking rather windswept, with a
shapely brunette in tow... and talking about a new concern:
a catering firm he was managing while the sleeping partner
was taking an extended siesta - five years, all expenses
paid.

"Sam," I replied, "With all the respect due to our past
friendship. If I can't tell the readers how the story is
going, how can I tell *you* without giving things away too?"

Sam glumly accepted this logic and pushed his empty glass
across the counter towards Manny. The sound brought his lady
friend back into the story.

"Haven't you forgot something, Honey?" she purred.

Sam jerked his thumb towards the girl..."Fill her up Manny!"

Manny looked back across the counter and raised his
eyebrows.

"You sure, Sam?"

"Manny!..."

Manny wiped his hands on a cloth, reluctantly moved round
the bar and took the girl off to a back room from whence
emerged diverse cries, panting and 'Oooooh!'s' that
confirmed that Manny's 24 hr service was everything that it
was reputed to be.

"Hmm. He could have looked after us first," grumbled Sam,
reaching over for the bottle..

In actual fact, Sam had me more stumped than a cricket
pitch. I had no idea how I was going to carry out this
mission. I'd spent the last evening getting nowhere, trying
desperately to decipher the notes that Mephistoles had left.
All I'd managed to do was avoid hitting my foot on a empty
bottle of mineral water when I'd gone to look for some more
coffee in the darkened kitchen. And even that paragraph in
the story promptly changed itself when I reread it.

I'd even tried mailing Janey pleading with her to send me
back a copy of my story, claiming that I had accidentally
killed my copy... but she wasn't answering. Maybe she wasn't
going to... I mean, she knows what I get up to at the
Gala...

Taking my best existentialist outfit - black slacks, black
turtle-neck sweater, black jacket - from under the mattress
where it was being pressed, I slipped on my beret and dark
glasses, dropped a packet of 3 - Gauloises Sans Filtres, of
course - into my pocket and headed for out; stopping only to
straighten up my elegant black moustache in front of the
mirror.

---

Arriving at the Villa early, I flashed the covering letter
that Janey had sent me at the list-bot on the door, but he
let me in anyway. Inside, the place was vast; list-serves
were preparing trays of hors-d'oeuvres, a news-feed in the
other corner was stacking high the bottles of champagne.
This was going to be some fiesta. In the ballroom -
appropriately enough - a table was weighed down with a huge
sculpted centrepiece portraying a couple deep in the sort of
thing that folks get up to in stories on ASS... life-size,
and a wonderful pink colour!

There seemed to be nothing amiss with the organisation for
the Gala, so I could only presume that the miscreants would
be trying to slip in later. My plan for the moment could be
summed up in three words... get a drink.

I tracked down the news-feed and asked for a whisky; he
insisted on passing it all down the line rather than handing
it over directly... Eventually I was able to wander away
nursing a tumbler of alt.beverages.

Making my way back to the entrance hall I passed by the
buffet table with its masterful centrepiece. I stepped back
in awe to contemplate it when a thought struck... There was
no need to waste good drinking time! I didn't have to stay
sober tonight; my pact with John Mephistoles meant that
whatever happened, I would solve the mystery! I was headig
back for another consultation with the news-feed when I
stopped, dumbfounded: the centrepiece was sculpted in Spam!

Sure enough we found the bomb inside it. All was set up to
smother the good folks at ASSM with Spam right in the middle
of the opening ceremony! I *had* foiled the diabolic plan
after all!

In no time the attendants had removed the object in
question. The original command, 'Leda and the Swan' - they'd
decided to honour the zoophiles, don't ask me why - sculpted
in ice was found, hidden in one of the cold chambers, the
bomb in the Spam sculpture was defused by one of the Villa's
resident debuggers.

All was back in place and in order when the list-bots
started announcing the first guests...

---

I left early and got back to my office before midnight.
After sending out a few mails, I settled down in my armchair
with a bottle of pastis and spent the night watching test
match reruns on cable TV; Ah! 1959 was a good year...

---

Next morning, trouble came knocking on the door about the
same time as John Mephistoles...

"What's all this with there being a problem in the
contracts?" he smouldered through the billowing clouds of
smoke as he materialised in my office.

Trouble took the form of Sam, who sat with a reproachful
expression in the armchair opposite. The two exchanged
glances...

"I'm sorry but there's a major flaw in your contract!" I
explained patiently. The empty bottle of pastis rolled from
the desk top to the floor. My breath must have smelt about
as fresh as Sam looked...

"Contractually you owe me three wishes... I've only got two
so far, and my wishes must be executed _before_ your part of
the bargain!"

John laughed; his face breaking into a large grin; even Sam
relaxed.

"jc! Don't worry! You get your wish and then we get our part
of the deal. That's no problem - what do you want? Now
you've met the fabulous creatures at ASSM, how about a night
with..."

"No! I know what I want." Although for a moment my
resolution did waver at the thought of one of those
authoresses... "Please take me back in time, to just before
we sign the contract."

"What?" Sam and John both looked at me in amazement.

"Oh, do you mean it's not possible? In that case..."

"No, no, it's just that most people want the wine, women and
song... sex and drugs and rock and roll... fame and
fortune... this is the first time that we've had this sort
of demand. But a contract is a contract... We'll honour our
part - are you ready to honour yours?"

---

"John Mephistoles," I read aloud the name from the business
card, "Junior partner! What sort of service are they trying
to faust off on me?"

"Don't worry jc," hissed Sam, "this guy's hot, a real bright
spark. Just explain the situation and he'll devote body and
soul to the case. These guys are real miracle workers."

I had been expecting to see the usual signs; you know,
forked toes, the pointed tail, small horns on the head...
but John laughed... "Lawyers do have a bad reputation, but
we just do a devil of a hard job, that's all! Besides look
at Sam! It was his third wife who gave him his horns and his
ruddy complexion is obviously due to the long hours that he
serves at the bar."

I read the contract over carefully.

"Thanks Sam, but I've changed my mind!"

"You can't!" he shouted, indeed red in the face now, "You've
already signed! You can't "un" sign what you've already
done!"

John was now quietly laughing.

"But I don't contest the contract," I stated calmly, "You're
carrying out your obligations, but you can't force me to
sign, you said that yourself. John. You're the brilliant
lawyer, what do you propose?"

"Well as I see it, jc, there's no problem. The initial
contract has been carried out, although we'll need to talk
about your part in a moment. As for Sam's protests... as far
as I'm concerned, in jcx's own and personal time/space
continuum this is a separate and new contract and if he
doesn't want to sign, that's up to him!"

Sam appeared stunned at this pronouncement, and sank back
into the chair like the Titanic in the arms of an iceberg.

"Now for your part of the *initial* bargain," John continued
coolly, "I believe that your soul now belongs to 'Beezlebub,
Lucifer and Partners'!"

"Hmm. I don't think so. If you remember - and I'm sure that
you do - the contract states that you get the soul of the
first person who enters my office the day after the ASSM
Gala. I arrived here _on_ _the_ _day_ of the Gala, and I
haven't left here since... someone wanted me to only arrive
the next morning, but it didn't work. Check your records and
you'll see that I'm right..."

As John conferred by mysterious means with his Senior
Partners, realisation started to paint itself on Sam's face,

"You mean... no! When I arrived, John was already here, so
all he gets is his own soul!"

I looked at John, who was sitting on the arm of the chair
his hands clasped round his knees... rocking slowly...

"I don't think so," I stated, "Technically, John
materialised himself in my office, so he didn't enter it...
Isn't that the situation?"

John nodded.

"But then... how does this story end?", asked Sam beginning
to panic.

"I'd suggest that you ask John to pass you the copy of the
story that he has in his briefcase, then you can get all the
information for yourself."

As there was no longer any need for the invisible ink the
end of the story was clear for all to read.

[END]

Post script: As I have received quite a few protests in the
past about the sudden endings on my stories, I have, this
time, provided a post script to wind up a few straggling
threads. Please don't come to expect this favour each time.

1 - Knowledgeable readers will of course have recognised
that Sam, as soon as he realised that he was in a story,
should have got the hell out of the place; one of the first
rules of whodunits being that the author gets severely
chastised if she introduces the villain in the last
paragraph. Owing to budgetary restrictions on this story and
the special effects needed to carry it all out, I'm sure
that you knew by about the 42nd line that Sam was out to be
the baddy; I just hope that this revelation didn't spoil any
enjoyment.

2 - As for those who need psychological motivation... well
under the cheery rubicund mask, I hope you realised that all
was not as rosy as all that - I mean, look at how he handled
my divorce! And does Sam the Spammer really need to print
that on his visiting card? Remember his catering business...

3 - Final point. This is not an erotic story! Ouch! I'm
afraid that I have to agree with you there. But I decided,
quite arbitrarily I agree, that it was still relevant to ASS
and ASSM - It's up to you, dear reader, to agree with my
judgment or not!


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