What Lies Beneath the Bandages

by Richard Zwicker

About the Author: Richard Zwicker is an English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His works have appeared in "Penumbra," "Hybrid Fiction," "Heroic Fantasy Quarterly," and other semi-pro markets. Two collections of his short stories are "Walden Planet" and "The Reopened Cask."

Excerpt

In celebration of concluding a case, Igor and I were walking off a late dinner. A light rain began to fall when we’d reached Geneva’s most notorious waterfront street. In the dark, it looked deserted, but I knew prostitutes, thieves, and vagrants lurked among the old, misshapen buildings. At seven feet tall, with a flat head and hulking shoulders, no one ever accosted me more than once, while Igor was more at home here than the room I subsidized for him. Yet we both hesitated when a scream shattered the silence. Thinking someone needed help, we ran toward the cry and saw a young woman slapping away the bandaged hands of a mummy.

“Hey!” I yelled. The mummy turned stiffly in our direction, shook its right fist, then fled. Igor and I pursued the assailant for about 100 feet, but for a mummy he was fast, and we weren’t. As we clumped back to the woman’s side, she saw Igor’s hunchback and my protruding electrodes and screamed a second time.

“I assure you, we pose no threat,” I said, backing off. “My name is Frankenstein. I’m a detective, and this is my assistant Igor. Are you all right?”

She looked us over, something that rarely did us credit.

“I think so.” She was short, wearing a hood and overcoat. While it wasn’t expensive, it looked warm and fashionable, not the type of thing worn by the lower classes. Her eyes flashed anger instead of fear.

“Why were you being attacked … by a mummy?” I asked.

“You’re really detectives?”

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