Crime Spells

I wanted to ask her when the growth spurt on her chest had happened, but refrained. Some things you just don’t ask a woman, I have learned, and that’s one of them.

Suddenly, she stopped talking, afraid to tell me about something. She had been fairly graphic about her past husbands, what they had done to her. Some of it I couldn’t believe she would just tell a stranger like me. Granted, we had a past, but after not seeing this woman for over twenty-five years, I was still a stranger.

She studied her salmon, forked it a few times, studied it some more, forked it again, all the time trying to say something. Whatever was now stopping her must be really something. It was, more than likely, the reason she had looked me up.

I used my Ultra-Intuition Power on her again, but I could see only blackness.

Deep, deep blackness.

Not good, not good at all.

I needed another superpower to help her out, get her to tell me her problem. I focused across the table at her, leaning forward, clicking my mind into a friendly, giving mode. A moment later I felt the superpower click on.

Empathy Super Power to the rescue.

I could make her feel better, I could make her trust me. My Empathy Superpower sort of radiated good feelings to another person, so it really wasn’t empathy, by the standard dictionary definition, but Empathy Superpower was the only thing I could think to call it. I had tried Feel Better Superpower, but that had seemed silly. And so did Trust Me Superpower. So until I could come up with a better name, it was called my Empathy Superpower.

She looked up at me, her gaze holding mine. “I just feel like I can talk to you, and that you’ll understand.”

Empathy Superpower working just fine.

“I will,” I said, easing my hand across the table between the water glasses and salt shaker to touch her hand.

Touch always made my Empathy Superpower even stronger.

“What’s bothering you?” I asked.

She looked embarrassed for a moment, then took a deep breath and blurted out her problem.

“Aliens are trying to steal my breasts.”

I knew there were no such things as aliens, at least at the moment on the planet. There had been in the past, and I am sure there would be again. They visited all the time. But right now they weren’t around and hadn’t been for at least five years.

But there were many, many other things that normal people confused with aliens. And there was an entire dark world that existed along with the light world we all lived in. It was against creatures from that dark world that I, and other superheroes, fought so often.

“Aliens?” I asked, keeping my touch on her arm and my super Empathy power turned on. “What do these aliens look like? Have you seen them?”

She nodded. “Gray, short, with long fingers and little round mouths.”

“Big heads?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, staring into my eyes. “Big for their bodies.”

I could feel my stomach twist. She was even more trouble than I had thought.

“And they want your breasts?”

She nodded.

I sat back, pulling my hand away and shutting off the superpower. “You’re not dealing with aliens. Those are Silicon Suckers, a very dark creature of the underworld.”

“Silicon Suckers?” she asked. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve had to deal with them a couple of times over the years,” I said. “They’re not a nice bunch, and you clearly have something they want, or they wouldn’t be showing themselves to you.”

I knew exactly what they wanted, but I was going to have to work into telling her what it was.

Silicon Suckers are a race of intelligent creatures that have existed on Earth far, far longer than human beings. They live in the deserts, burrow in the sand, and have the ability to change their appearance and blend with about anything. In this country, the Phoenix, New Mexico, and Las Vegas areas have the most trouble with them.

“Silicon Suckers?” she said. “My breasts are silicon implants.” She was clearly starting to understand what the little guys were after.

I almost said, “Really, I hadn’t noticed.” But I stopped myself before that gaffe and instead just nodded. Then I moved to the next question.

“Where have you been living?”

“Vegas,” she said. “I’ve been working as a blackjack dealer at Circus Circus for the last six years, since I left Bastard Husband Number Two.”

“Good for you,” I said, actually impressed. I knew how hard and how special it was to become a dealer on the strip. “When did you have the implants put in?”

“Twenty years ago,” she said. “I did it between Bastard Husband Number One and Bastard Husband Number Two. But I upgraded them six months ago, and that’s when the gray aliens started showing up.”

“Oh, oh,” I said.

“Oh, oh?” she asked, looking very worried.

And she should be worried. I didn’t know how to tell her what had happened. The fight between good and evil, between the superheroes and the dark forces is always tough to explain to a mere mortal, especially when it concerns a body part.

Finally, looking into her worried eyes, I decided to approach the problem by showing her I knew what had happed.

“Dr. Doubleday did the upgrade. Right?”

She looked at me as if I had lost my mind, then nodded. “How did you know that?”

Actually, I wasn’t reading her mind or using any other superpower. I had dealt with Silicon Suckers for a friend of a friend in Vegas five months before, on an adventure that also rescued three dogs. On that trip, I had discovered that Dr. Doubleday had been using a very special silicon mix taken from pure natural sand and then refined down into a very special silicon gel.

The problem was the sand he had been using was from a sacred Silicon Suckers burial site. Julie, my old girlfriend sitting across the table from me, had a real problem. She had dead Silicon Suckers for breasts.

“I know because one of the things I do is help people as I travel around the country playing poker,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve heard about you. Some people call you Poker Boy.”

Since she clearly looked as if she didn’t believe what she had just said, I let it pass and went on. “I helped a previous client of Dr. Doubleday. I assume you tried to go back to him after the Silicon Suckers started showing up and playing with your breasts. And I bet you found him missing.”

Now Julie was looking at me as if I were the alien.

I knew for a fact that Dr. Doubleday had given his life for trying to improve his craft and find the most perfect silicon implants. After what he had done to the Silicon Suckers’ sacred resting place, many of us in the superhero world thought he got off light by only being killed. His body will never be found. More than likely parts of Dr. Doubleday are tinting car windows everywhere.

“How did you know he wasn’t there?” she asked.

“Doubleday is dead,” I said. “Killed by the Silicon Suckers.”

She sat there in silence, first staring at me, then down at her salmon. Finally she said, “Let’s assume that I believe what you’re saying.”

“No weirder than thinking aliens are trying to steal your breasts.”

She shrugged. “True. So what do I do?”

I put another bite of steak in my mouth, savored the flavor for a moment. There was only one answer to her question.

“If you’re going to want to live, you have to give them your implants back.”

“I’m not going to do that!” she said, her hands going to the monsters on her chest as if to protect the big girls.

I kept eating, staying calm. “You have no choice. If you don’t have the money, I can pay for an exchange operation for the silicon implants you have now. All they want is those implants. They don’t want you to be flat chested.”

There was no chance at that point that the rest of her salmon was going to be eaten. She scooted the plate away and stared at me.