THE UNKNOWN PLOT

By Jo

PART TWO: Cheese it! It's the polizei!

"You there...in the oak tree! Come out with your hands over your heads!"

It was a female voice, new to epidom. Himself, responding to it, shouted back, "How the

%$#@& do you expect us to come out of the oak when we don't know how we got IN?"

"Your theory is full of holes," she rejoined. She was Swiss. She knew all about holes.

The oak was actually now also full of holes, several of the retractable branches having only

partially retracted when their retractors were startled by the woman's shout. It may also

have had something to do with the way Thalamus, a large male German shepherd was gazing

up at them, his intelligent eyes moving quickly from one pair of little dark beady eyes to

the next.

Thalamus, highly trained and used to the wiles and ways of the more criminally-minded denizens of the world, thought to himself that the eyes staring back at him were probably more

dastardly than he had yet encountered. They glowed with an inordinate amount of intellect

and possibly evil intent.

Joimus, closely pressed against the General, took her time slowly moving past him then reaching for a knothole that had been revealed in the dim light coming in through the partially-retracted

branches. "What if I...?"

She pressed on it; it clicked, and sank into the wood of the oak with a grinding, grating sound

not unlike that produced by three dozen crocodiles flossing all at once.

Himself held his breath, waiting for the doom that would inevitably follow. It was Pittsburgh,

after all, and Joimus had pressed the knothole. How could anything but doom be waiting for

him in such circumstances?

A door, cleverly concealed in the outer bark layer, swung widely open and John Brennan, who

had been assigned, probably not by random chance, the position of leaning on it from the inside,

tumbled out across the sidewalk right up to the boots of the woman, who stood there, sunlight

gleaming on her blonde hair as well as the barrel of the Uzi she had pointed down between his

eyes.

"Hello, John," she said smoothly in her delightful accent. "You didn't think I'd find you in

there, did you?"  She pronounced her words beautifully despite the long gutting knife

clenched in her teeth.

"You...you want...me?"

"I not only want you, John Brennan," she smiled, placing a boot on his chest, "I have you."

Thalamus took a few steps forward and sat on his lower legs. John looked helplessly up at

her face. "But...but...why?"

"Prison break. You broke your wife out of the Allegheny County Jail yesterday."

Joimus strode out from inside the oak, sizing up the woman, noting the word POLIZEI printed

on her blue uniform. She was obviously with the G-20 police reinforcements that had been

brought into the city. She'd had no idea the reinforcements had come from so far.

"Hello," she said pleasantly to the woman. "Perhaps I might be able to set a few things straight."

"Don't listen to her!" Himself said loudly, stepping up beside Joimus. "Her straights are

always very crooked."

The policewoman narrowed her eyes at Himself. He looked all too much like Brennan,

especially his swollen nose. "Are you with him?" She indicated John, still lying on the

sidewalk due to the boot and the dog behind.

"I am him!" Himself stated.

Her eyes widened. "Then you are also under arrest."

"He can't be arrested," Joimus protested, "and neither can he." She looked down at John.

"Do you deny he broke his wife out of prison yesterday?"

"I do. I deny it implicitly."

"Explain!" the policewoman said, the longbow on her shoulder threatening to become

entangled with the stock of the Uzi.  She kept looking from Himself to John and was only

further discombobulated when a couple dozen other men, all bearing remarkable resemblance

to Brennan only with less swollen noses, pushed their way out of the oak.

"You are in an epi," Joimus explained, a small smile on her face. "Do you admit to that?"

"I'm...I'm not sure. Is that what you call this poor excuse for a storyline?"

Joimus cleared her throat. "Indeed."

"All right, so I'm in an epi. What possible difference could that make?"

Maximus whispered in Joimus' ear, "That's almost a line from...."

"I know, dear, I know. But it's neither here nor there at the moment."

"We are definitely here for the moment," a young man in blue toward the rear ventured.

"Shush, Lachlan," Joimus frowned, "I have important fish to fry right now."

Brennan rolled his eyes up at her. "I have an Uzi practically touching my third eye and

YOU wish to...cook?"

Joimus sighed. Characters. They just would say things she'd never think of writing. What

was one to do with them? "Matters to attend to, John, matters to attend to."

"Oh. Well, go ahead then."

The policewoman had narrowed her eyes again. "I'm Swiss. You expect me to understand

all these weird linguistic references?"

"Epis," Joimus tried again, "have their own universe, their own canon."

"Are you saying you're concealing large weaponry about your person, Ma'am?"

"I'm saying that in epis, all the male characters are not married, have no relationship at

all with any women from their movies. It is the only way they are free to have their current,

though somewhat recently changed, beloveds."

"Yeah!" Zeebee spoke up emphatically. "No Donna for my Biebe."

"I thought you were ZB Boxerlady," Essie said. "Why aren't you with Jim?"

"It's...it's complicated," ZeeBee sighed. "I had no idea I was even IN an epi until just this

moment."

"And...and she put you, ZeeBee, with...with Biebe?"

"ZeeBee Biebe. She liked the sound of it."

"How very...strange," Essie said, shaking her head. "I asked for Zack and got him, but you,

you didn't even ask for Biebe?"

"She couldn't have Jim even if she'd asked for him. Braddock's mine. Everybody knows it."

Marilyn had the actual boxer's hand tightly gripped in hers.

Sure enough, everyone nodded. They all did know that. Well, most of them anyway.

"Listen, gang," Joimus sighed, "I know we need to establish who is with whom, but right

now we have to save Brennan from walking the plank."

"Humpf!" humpffed the policewoman. We haven't made a prisoner walk the plank for a full

seven months. Now explain this about Brennan more reasonably.  We have security tapes that

clearly show him breaking his wife out of prison yesterday. How are you going to get around

THAT, eh?"

"He's in an epi. He has no wife. He can't break a wife he doesn't have out of prison. Simple

as that."

The policewoman pondered those words seriously for a while then looked at Thalamus for

his opinion. Thalamus immediately got off John's legs and began licking his chin. The

policewoman took her finger off the trigger. She'd learned to trust Thalamus' judgment. "No wife, eh?"

"No wife," John smiled.

"Not even one?"

"Not a single one. I'm free, completely and conveniently free."

The policewoman's lips curved slightly up and she lifted her Uzi smoothly over her shoulder,

placing it into the quiver with her six other Uzis and her supply of hand-made arrows. "Free,

you say?"  Now that she was no longer holding the gun, she extended her hand down to him.

Brennan took it gratefully and rose to his feet. "And you, are you...free?"

"This is my first ever epi chapter. Of course I'm free."

"May I call you something besides 'the policewoman'?" he asked with a wide smile.

"Doree. It's a contraction but she's stuck me with it."

Joimus looked innocently up at the oak leaves above their heads. She knew there were more

'ee's' to come but had decided, probably wisely, not to spring them all on the poor, unsuspecting

reader all at once. A large wimmenfolk epiexchange was confusing enough in itself and needed

to have its new layers peeled gradually back like an onion. She'd just take her time so readers

wouldn't get discouraged and go out and stand in traffic.

While Joimus was innocently looking up at the oak, she saw something that generated a little

catch in her breath. They'd been so distracted by Brennan's possible arrest, they'd forgotten

the real danger, the danger that even now...

...was cooking up something so awful that it cannot even be spoken of. Well, not in this

chapter anyway. 

ON TO PART 3

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