The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection

by David F. Berens

  “RayRay?” Alain looked at the blind boy out of habit. “You in for meat?”

  RayRay shrugged. “I can eat any of the above.”

  “Okay, good,” Alain said and pulled out his phone. “I’ll call and get two mediums. Who’s got cash?”

  The others exchanged glances out of the corners of their eyes.

  “Shit!” Alain said. “Okay, I’ll get this one, but you jerks owe me.”

  “Done.” Becky said, and picked up a twenty-sided die and handed it to Samantha. “Now, can we please get on with finding this troll?”

  4

  Samantha Smiling

  Samantha Eliza Dawn took the bright red die that looked like a twenty-sided diamond. Rolling it around between her fingers, she consulted her character sheet and some notes she’d made about RayRay’s incredibly detailed setting for their most recent campaign.

  “Is there a weaver,” she asked – looking at RayRay, who obviously couldn’t look back – “or tailor in this town?”

  RayRay cocked his head to the side. “Why, yes. Yes, there is… just down the main road a bit. You see a green sign with gold outline that reads: Tapestrano?”

  He waited for her to issue the command.

  “Tapestrano, eh?” she asked. “I’m going there. You guys coming with me?”

  “I’m in,” Becky said, quickly raising her hand.

  “I’m not going in there,” Alain spat with disdain. “Where’s the tavern, RayRay?”

  The Japanese boy moved his head slightly toward Alain’s voice. “Sadly, after asking around, you find that there isn’t one... hasn’t been one since the—”

  “Wait, what?” Alain interrupted. “No tavern? What the hell kind of town is this?”

  “Unfortunately, Alain-san,” RayRay said in a dodgy Japanese accent, “you discover that the building that once held the tavern is a burned-out mess of ash and blackened beams.”

  “Well, hell,” Alain retorted, throwing up his hands, “what am I supposed to do while the women-folk are off shopping for clothes?”

  “To discover things about the town,” RayRay said patiently, “you must ask the locals.”

  Alain sighed. “Okay, okay. Is there anyone in the street?”

  “There’re several people walking around. A man with a red beard, a woman with a shawl tucked tightly over her hair, and a—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Alain held up a hand to stop RayRay. “I ask the guy with the beard if there’s any place to get a drink.”

  “He tells you the tavern was burned in a raid last month,” RayRay said. “He believes it was the troll.”

  Alain pursed his lips and sniffed.

  “But,” RayRay said, smiling behind his dark glasses, “he says there’s a brothel near the outskirts of town.”

  “Boom!” Alain clapped his hands together. “I’m there. You girls have a good time looking for cloth, I’m gon’ get me sump’n sump’n out at the—” He paused waiting for RayRay to supply him with the name of the brothel.

  “Oh, uh, the Home of the Belly Djinn,” the Japanese boy said.

  “Yeah.” Alain nodded. “The Home of the Jelly Bellies.”

  “Belly Djinn,” RayRay corrected him.

  “Whatever,” Alain said. “I’ll start walking. Bye girls.”

  Samantha arched an eyebrow at him, while Becky rolled her eyes.

  “Okay,” Samantha said, glancing at her sheet. “I’m going to the Tapestrano.”

  RayRay smiled. “As you wish.”

  Samantha hadn’t always been a role-player. In fact, before Alain had invited them into the F-art group and then subsequently to his home to have RayRay run a campaign for them, she hadn’t known what it meant to play at all. She’d only said she’d play just so she wouldn’t have to leave the group… they had become friends… good friends.

  Her only friends.

  So, she rolled up a character, a magic-using elf, and called her Mantha. Naturally, RayRay had suggested she make her elf a Dar-elf from the North – a dark-skinned race of elves that lived by a questionable code of honor and dubious motives. Samantha strongly opposed that, declaring it was racist of RayRay to even suggest such a thing.

  “If I gotta be black in the real world,” Samantha had said, “I ain’t gonna be black in this one.”

  RayRay had quickly backed down from his suggestion and apologized. He hadn’t meant any disrespect and had explained that he’d thought of the Dra-elves as a strong and beautiful race of beings.

  “Please forgive me, Samantha. I didn’t realize you were black,” he’d said.

  And that’s when it occurred to her that RayRay didn’t – couldn’t – see her as a black girl. To him, she was Samantha… just Samantha. And then it was her turn to apologize. And after finding out that the Dra-elves were ten times more powerful with magic, she’d decided to be one, and proudly. Her fifteenth level mage was the most powerful in the group… by far.

  They played for months before Samantha began to realize that she enjoyed it… no, that she loved it. Perhaps because it was a world in which she could do anything, be anyone, go anywhere she wanted. A far cry from the world she lived in.

  But lately, things had gotten so much better. And ever since she’d met Tayler, she’d started to realize that she had dreams, goals, ambitions… and she actually believed they might come true.

  Aged just thirteen Samantha ran away from home. Her father, an angry hulk of a man, would come in from work with whiskey on his breath and blood on his knuckles. Whatever beating he’d taken down at the bar he would then take out on Samantha and her mother. Her beautiful mother, God rest her soul. She deflected most of the anger away from Samantha, but so much abuse had eventually taken a final, mortal toll on her. She officially died of natural causes, but Samantha believed her mother had simply decided she didn’t want to live anymore. She left the earth to find peace. Samantha prayed that she would.

  The only problem was that without her mother around, Samantha began to suffer all the beatings; sometimes with his hands, other times with his belt. Once he hit her so hard that she thought she’d lose a tooth.

  When she turned twelve, her body started to mature. Looking in the mirror, she began to see a young woman looking back, not a little girl. Unfortunately, it changed the way her father looked at her too. He would go from saying she was a slut and that she was screwing half the town, to breathing heavy on her neck and rubbing his lips against hers. He never touched her, but she began to fear that he would… eventually. On some especially drunken night, he would forget who she was and then he would...

  Samantha decided she wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen. She packed the few things she owned – a couple of sundresses, a toothbrush, a tattered Bible, and a comb for her hair – and after her father left for work, she walked out the door with a pillow case slung over her shoulder.

  She walked right past the school and down to the highway, and a couple hitched rides later, she landed in Carrollton, Georgia. Before long, she was discovered living in an abandoned tractor-trailer behind the Southbound Industrial Park.

  From there she was placed in a foster home. And, unlike so many horror stories she’d heard, her foster home was loving, caring, and supportive. Jeff and Betsy Avery took her in as their own child. Anything and everything she needed was provided for her… as well as things she never dreamed she’d own. A bed… her own bed!

  On her sixteenth birthday, they’d offered to buy her a car, but she said she wanted something else. She wanted a set of oil paints and some canvases. Along with a small silver Honda Prelude, they bought her a painting starter kit from the local art store, and she began to paint. She soon discovered her love for painting imaginary dresses, gowns, and blouses she’d want to wear herself.

  Other people began to notice too, and ask where she’d copied the painting from so they could buy the clothes. Betsy and Jeff Avery immediately began to feed her passion; art supply trips every Saturday, trips to museums, trips to galleries...
they did it all.

  Then Samantha had found it. A small brochure tucked in a plexiglass display at the art store downtown. Savannah College of Art and Design.

  That’s what she wanted. And so, the tuition was paid. Jeff and Betsy rented a truck and moved Samantha in, all three with beaming smiles on their faces.

  Meeting Tayler caused the next crack in her wall. He’d looked at her like she was beautiful… but not like, I want to do you, beautiful. More like… I really want to capture you on canvas beautiful. And she had let him. She didn’t love Tayler, no, he wasn’t her type, but she’d grown so close to him that many of their friends thought they were dating. He took photos of her and taped them to his dorm room wall, and he drew sketches of her, insisting that someday she should sit for him… so he could paint her.

  She refused, not willing to believe she was worthy of the paint he would waste on it... but he insisted and persisted. He asked her every single day.

  “Please,” he begged. “I must capture you.”

  “Tayler,” she said, “I’m free. I never want to be captive again.”

  “Then let me set you free,” he pleaded. “Immortal beauty like yours must be painted so that it will last for all time.”

  “No,” she said quietly, and would often cry after she’d turned him down.

  But one day she was finally able to shake off that nasty, dirty, guilty feeling her father had hung on her shoulders, and let Tayler paint her. She let go of her inhibitions… she smiled. And when she saw Tayler’s stunning, beautiful, breath-taking painting… she smiled inside too.

  Samantha rolled the twenty-sided die: seventeen. That was a high enough roll to allow her character, Mantha, to convince the owner of the fictional store to show her the magic cloth she was after. RayRay described it as a color-changing cloth, sometimes appearing gray, sometimes green, and sometimes blue. Mantha haggled with the merchant, and rolled again to confirm she was able to talk him into the lowest acceptable price. The elf-mage walked away from the man carrying the cloth she would fashion into a magical Cloak of Concealing. Becky Patton clapped slowly at the display of gamesmanship.

  “Stunning,” she said, grinning. “Absolutely stunning.”

  “Thanks,” Samantha said, winking. “Now let’s go find an ale.”

  “Sweet,” Becky said, “but I’m definitely not going to the home of the belly buttons or whatever.”

  “The Home of the Belly Djinn,” RayRay corrected her in exasperation.

  “K, cool,” Samantha said. “Now, RayRay, tell us where we can get those ales.”

  “Roll your die to see if the locals will tell you where to go.”

  He held up a blue twelve-sided die and Becky took it from his hand.

  “Six or better and you get your drink,” he said.

  Becky rolled the die. “Seven!”

  Samantha and Becky high-fived.

  “Alright, RayRay,” she said, “spill it. Where’s the booze?”

  “After receiving many strange looks from the townspeople, you bump into an old man with a patch over one eye.” RayRay launched into his campaign-master story voice. “He claims to be Sir William of Murrell, and says he has a fine brew from the barleys on his farm.”

  “Take us there, one-eyed Willie.” Samantha smacked her lips. “We’s thirsty!”

  RayRay pursed his lips, then finally said, “Sir William of Murrell beckons you to follow him.”

  5

  Alain’s Meltdown

  Alain laid out the pizza on the nearby kitchen table and returned to the game. The girls, having finished their turn, went to eat.

  “Okay, then,” Alain said, as he clapped his hands together then rubbed them vigorously as if trying to warm them, “whatcha got for me in ye old Belly Djinn, RayRay? I walk in the door and look around.”

  RayRay turned a page in his notebook. He ran his fingers over the page and grinned.

  “Roll for initiative, Alain-san,” he said with a smile.

  “Wait… what?” Alain stopped rubbing his hands together and held them out, palms up. “I just wanted some nookie…”

  “Roll.” RayRay held out the red die.

  Alain looked at it suspiciously before finally taking it and giving it a half-hearted toss. “Ouch,” he said as it rolled to a stop. “Three.”

  RayRay whistled through his teeth, and rolled his own special four-sided die. Feeling the numbers, he winced. “Finegan is attacked by four creatures,” RayRay said, “two from the left and two from the right.”

  “Dammit,” Alain said, tracing a finger down his character sheet. “What do they look like?”

  “The Belly Djinn’s lighting is low,” said RayRay, “but the best you can tell is that they look like dragon-men.”

  “Crap.” Alain picked up Finegan’s sheet. “I don’t have anything good enough to beat a shape-shifter! All my gear is just average… ugh. RayRay, don’t kill me again, dude!”

  “I’m merely the campaign master,” RayRay said with a shrug. “You chose your path.”

  Alain Montgomery was lucky to have rich and influential parents; otherwise, he would never have gotten into SCAD. He’d been through every subject in school, and could not have failed more spectacularly at all of them. His elementary school math teacher, the algebra tutor he’d had in high school, and his art professor, had all been influenced by his parents to let him squeeze by in school. With a low C average, he’d scooted through the system thanks only to the greased palms of his teachers.

  His art professor had gone as far as to convince Alain that art was his best talent and that he should pursue it as far as he could. Alain wasn’t stupid, and knew that the other subjects in school were a complete mystery to him. He could, however, put a brush in some paint and slap it on a canvas.

  During his senior year of high school, he was even voted “Most Artistic” – though what he didn’t realize was that it was a facetious honor at best. On the day the yearbooks were handed out, he found that the page immortalizing him, as such, had an accidental and completely unfortunate typo. He was listed as Alain Montgomery – Most Fartistic. At first, he’d laughed along with everyone and tried to hide his shame and hurt feelings. But as the laughter developed into more vitriol and hate, he began to lash out at his classmates.

  He was given detention and almost expelled before mommy and daddy could intervene. After meeting with his parents, the school psychologist claimed Alain was so advanced that he was bored with the school’s curriculum and that his teachers and classmates simply didn’t understand him.

  When the time came to choose a college to attend, Alain discovered his art professor had attended SCAD. With a little more palm greasing, the professor had written an incredibly glowing recommendation letter for Alain. He was admitted upon receipt of the check paying his tuition in full… for all four years.

  Having all new friends and acquaintances had been a Godsend for Alain. In the beginning, no one knew him, no one made fun of him, and no one laughed at him. In truth, there were a lot of students who were a lot more targeted than he was… until he had to produce his first painting.

  His painting professor, James LeFleur, had begun this semester’s Intro to Oil Painting course as he had begun it for the last thirty years. The title of the lesson was always: Paint Savannah. It was a fairly simple task for those reasonably adept at using oils. Get a canvas, find a local subject, and paint it, all within twenty-four hours – no hovering over a painting for months – get it done. Boom. It wasn’t really designed to grade the students, but more of an exploration of their baseline ability at painting. To imply that Alain had a baseline would be giving him a lot of credit.

  The subject that at least fifty percent of the entering students chose was the famous fountain at Forsyth Park. Built in the 1840’s in a huge park – a copycat of the greenspaces found in the Parisian urban planning model of the day – Forsyth Park’s most recognizable feature was the very European flavored fountain in its center. Students painted it, movies fea
tured it, book cover designers photographed it… it’s an iconic image that comes to mind when one pictures Savannah in their head.

  Alain went down to the park, sat up a small easel, pulled out a small palette, and began to work. He was surrounded by no less than ten others, all doing exactly the same thing. His brush moved quickly in broad strokes across the canvas, and before long the image began to take shape. Proportions were wrong, shadows were improperly placed, colors were muddied, and everything about the work was amateurish at best. It looked more like a child’s finger-painting than it did the work of a SCAD student.

  However, Alain was oblivious. For his entire life, he’d been protected from the fact that he stunk… at everything. His parents, his teachers and his friends all walked on eggshells, hiding the fact that Alain Montgomery just sucked at life and those around him covered it up… until the day the painting was due.

  Students in the class formed a circle around the room, their paintings resting on an easel turned away from the class until they were called upon. In turn, each would display their work, describing their subject, their method, techniques, and their intentions for the piece. As it happened, Alain was last to present. He was already miffed, as the others had displayed their pictures and at least a dozen other fountains had showed up before his. But he’d always been told his work was good, so he was confident.

  He flipped his canvas around, and at first, there were shocked faces, open mouths, and blank stares. But the longer it was displayed, the more the laughter erupted. Professor LeFleur had hushed the students, but it was that feeling you get when you’re in church and you’re not supposed to laugh… you just couldn’t help it.

  Alain struggled to present his work over the roar of the laughter and eventually he just gave up. And that’s when he knew… he was a terrible artist.