by MC, Doctor
It was dark twilight when I brought the footlocker from my car to my bedroom. I keyed the padlock open, and opened the footlocker’s lid.
Inside were two old photo albums, and a brass oil lamp.
If you’ve read any “Aladdin” story, you know what the lamp’s shape was. But the oil lamp had nothing special about its metalwork, and its finish was mottled and lusterless.
In short, I was unimpressed with that oil lamp.
But hey, I figured I might be able to sell it for a few bucks on eBay, or use it as a prop for Halloween parties.
I set the lamp aside.
I started leafing through the photo albums, and figured out quickly that they were the reason that Uncle Warren had wanted the footlocker kept secret from his relatives.
The pictures in the first album started in 1942. There were yellowed black-and-white photos of Uncle Warren in uniform, and photos of young uniformed men who had to be his war buddies. There were photos of palm-tree’d Tunisia, the Pyramids, and the Sphinx, and of lions and hippopotamuses. All G-rated stuff, right? But there were also photos of naked young women, black- and brown-skinned, and photos of young Warren getting blowjobs from young women.
Actually, there were lots and lots of photos of Warren getting blowjobs from women.
About three quarters of the way through the older photo album, I turned the page and—I freaked out.
****
On the left-side page were two photos of a serious young woman who was looking at the camera. She was fully dressed (unlike many of the women in the album), wearing Middle Eastern clothing. Oddly, while her hips and everything above them were in focus, her legs were out of focus. Uncle Warren had captioned her photos with the puzzling words, “Fatima, who changed my life. June 3, 1943.”
Immediately below these photos, and their strange caption, were these words that had been written in 1943: “I will die on May 7, 2010, a Friday.”
What the hell is going on? I wondered.
The rest of that first photo album, and all of the second, were naked women posing for the camera, and Uncle Warren getting sex.
But now the women were gorgeous (by Forties and Fifties standards), and the sex was outrageous. Uncle Warren was getting plenty of blowjobs now, from breathtaking beauties, but now he also was involved in bunches of threesomes.
Uncle Warren had a photo of himself in 1944, appearing onstage at a Victory Bond rally in Hollywood with a blonde actress (whose name you might know), and appearing with a line of brunette chorus girls; Uncle Warren’s next photo showed this same blonde naked, cocksucking my uncle, while a brunette dancer ate the blonde out.
I looked at every photo in both albums. It didn’t help; I couldn’t figure out how what I was seeing in the photos, had happened. How had Uncle Warren suddenly become a sex god? Who was this Fatima, and what had happened between her and Uncle Warren? I couldn’t begin to guess.
****
So this was my “inheritance”: two pornographic yet puzzling photo albums, and a souvenir-stall “Aladdin’s lamp.” I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to buy pornographic 1940s photos, so…
My only hope of gaining any money from my “windfall” was through the lamp. Which in turn meant: I needed to polish this sorry excuse for a lamp before I could hope to sell it.
I drove to the store, bought some brass polish, came home, and reassigned my rattiest pair of briefs to brass-polish duty. I dipped the cloth in the brass polish, and rubbed everything against the right side of the lamp. The result?
The lamp shook in my hand as if a frantic rat were trapped inside of it. Then green smoke came out of the lamp’s spout—lots and lots of green smoke.