Home

If ever there was want of home, I have it. It calls to me over the miles upon miles of ocean waves. It beckons me with sweet siren song, driving me mad. I consider for a moment swimming home, but my brain pipes in, "Wait to fly. It's much faster."

Though it's only briefly been my home, it is home still to me. Home sweet home, as the saying goes. And home I want to be.

Farewell, sunny Africa. You've been good to me. Now I'm off to where the buffalo roam, and the wheat fields stretch out like a sea.

The Case of the Fourth Wall

Shamrock O'Malley and I sat in our study, as we often had before.

"Like old times," I reminisced.

"Indeed," Shamrock noted, "Except for the convoluted way in which I somehow came back to life. I dare say if this were a story and not real life, I would say the author of our tale wasn't really trying."

"In any case," I said, "things are back to normal."

"Quite right," Shamrock agreed but not for long, "though if the events of today would foreshadow anything, it would be that our new adventures just won't have the spark they had before I died."

~~~
More cases from the files of Shamrock O'Malley

Mortobo

Mortobo spied the gathering mob of the village. He drew his knife. "Stay back," he called out as the people drew near, "or I shall bring lightning down upon you."

The people mumbled among themselves hesitantly, and the elder of the village was pushed forward.

"Mortobo," his voice shook, "you are no longer welcome here."

"No one commands Mortobo!"

The elder motioned to several warriors of the village. Five approached the witch.

Crack!

Lightning flew from Mortobo's knife, and one man fell dead. The other four charged.

Crack! Crack!

Another two men fell before an ax was lodged in Mortobo's head.

Beauty

Crickets still sound the same on the other side of the world. I imagine they are crickets. If not, they are excellent imitators of that which they have never seen nor heard.

Everything is beautiful here, even the ugly things. But I cannot help missing that which is not here, what I have left behind.

I close my eyes and I see more clearly than when I was there. My hand can reach out and touch what is so firm in my imagination.

With opened eyes the immense beauty of this place only reminds me of the beauty I left behind.

The Case of Science

Continued from The Case of Doctor Walton, The Case of Zombie O'Malley, The Case of the Gypsy Amulet, The Case of the Magician, The Case of Another Detour and The Case of the Anachronistic Quote.
~~~

Meriwether O'Malley did not acknowledge us as we entered his study. He was huddled over beakers of various colored liquids.

"Dear brother," my zombified friend, the late Shamrock O'Malley said.

Meriwether coughed and continued to stand over his chemistry set.

Shamrock and I shared glances. Shamrock's left eye fell out of its socket as we did.

"Dear brother," Shamrock tried again, "I am in need of the miraculous powers of science to free me of this gypsy curse!"

Meriwether looked up slowly. "De-zombifying Chamber on the left," he said.

"Well, that's rather a convenient development," I proclaimed.

"It's SCIENCE!" Meriwether shouted.

~~~
More cases from the files of Shamrock O'Malley

Johannesburg

Johannesburg is a city that sprawls over the African landscape. You can drive for what seems like forever, and you'll still be in Johannesburg. You'll drive past the quaint suburbs, the skyscrapers of the business district, the shantytowns filled with little more than shacks, the rich walled-off living areas. You're still in Jo'burg, as the locals call it

But you begin to wonder if there are actually any locals at all, or if we all have been caught in the unrelenting gravity of Johannesburg. Some have just been here longer than others. You cannot seem to leave even if you try.

Brought to You by the Letter Q

"Hey kids! It's Grusto!" a grimy puppet declares, "We're going to have all sorts of fun learning about the letter . . ." he waits for the letter to be superimposed upon the television screen. It is a Q. "Wait . . . What? Q? Are we serious? Is there any less useful letter?"

"Hey there, Grusto!" an odd-shaped puppet enters the frame.

"Who are you?" Grusto asks.

"I'm the country of Iraq," the puppet's shape now kind of makes sense, "My name ends in the letter Q."

"You know what else has a Q in it?" Grusto asks. "Quagmire. Can you say quagmire, kids at home?"

~~~
More episodes of "It's Grusto!"

The Case of the Anachronistic Quote

Continued from The Case of Doctor Walton, The Case of Zombie O'Malley, The Case of the Gypsy Amulet, The Case of the Magician, and The Case of Another Detour.
~~~

"My brother Meriwether heads the Academy of Science," Zombie Shamrock O'Malley was beating himself up (and bits of him were flying everywhere), "It's so obvious! Why hadn't I thought of it before?"

"Perhaps it's because you lack a quarter of your brain," I observed through his skull.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, my dear Doctor Walton," O'Malley explained to me, "Therefore; it should be a simple process to reverse the gypsy magic that turned me into a zombie with one of my brother's technologies."

I momentarily dreamed of the bygone days when I would have called this ridiculous.

~~~
More cases from the files of Shamrock O'Malley

Thor

"It's Thursday, Pieter. Where are your sheets?" Sylvia says.

"I wasn't aware that Thursday was sheet-day," PJ mumbles.

"I want those sheets now."

"Yeah, yeah," PJ sits at the lunch table and mutters, "I've been home for three months and it's never been sheets on Thursday."

"Thursday is derived from 'Thor's Day,'" I quip, "Thor being the Norse god of thunder . . . and bed sheets."

PJ smiles, "How silly of me to forget."

"Where are those sheets?" Sylvia calls from several rooms away.

"You better get those bed sheets," Alan says, "or you will have to deal with the god of thunder."

The Compound

"Do you ever think of outside?" Matthew casually asked.

"That's crazy talk," Joey said, "There's nothing but inside."

"Why is it called inside, if there isn't an outside?"

Matthew and Joey lived inside the Compound, a large building with no windows or doors leading out.

"What we have here is special," Joey said, "You'll let all we've got pass you by because you're daydreaming about some fantasy 'outside.'"

Matthew had been digging through the wall of his compartment with a spoon. After twenty meters in, he was ready to give up until a small beam of light pierced his dark tunnel.