by John Mackie
Darly turned, took a cleaver from its resting spot on the table behind him and leaned down out of my line of sight. I saw a flash of steel, then heard the sharp impact of metal on wood, followed by an odd clicking noise, like fingernails on a countertop.
“Dere.” he stood up, with the cleaver in one hand, and a small object in his other. I registered a beak and a streak of blood. “Pa gen pwoblem. Now you won’ be transportin’ no live animals.”
Holeee shit. That was the...
Around the corner of the table came a flapping, staggering bundle of copper-coloured feathers and scarlet blood. I was frozen in shock, fear, outrage or disgust. Or all four.
The body lurched out into the main floor of the shop, then suddenly shifted direction, heading right towards me. I was still unable to move, and watched as it hopped twice on one leg, then skipped and did a pirhouette, until it brushed up against my leg.
“Yeeeoooowwww!” I popped off the floor like a Jack-in-the-Box, scrambling to climb onto the store counter and knocking various bottles, pamphlets and a stapler flying in all directions. “Get it away from me!”
I’m loathe to admit it, but that last outcry sounded like a five year old girl confronted by a bee at a neighbourhood picnic.
“Oh ho, ami. Don’ be scared. It’s just a bird.”
Darly rounded the corner and grasped the bird by its legs, a plastic bag in his other hand. He slid the body into the bag, legs still twitching, tied it off, then turned and dropped the bag into a cardboard box that had apparently once contained a four-slice toaster with a bagel “function” and a slide-out crumb tray. He folded the lid closed, then dropped it on the counter in front of me.
“Not live transport any more, ami.”
Twenty minutes later I was driving along the Queen Elizabeth Way, or QEW, one of the main lifelines of Southern Ontario. Unfortunately, this particular lifeline was as clogged up as my brother Ted’s arteries after consuming an eight slice with anchovies and double cheese.
Spending two hours on the highway was the last thing I needed. We were halfway through a full moon cycle, and I was dead on my feet. Our daily deliveries had jumped fifty percent, and we were looking at a record month. Great news on the business side, but not so great on the sanity front.
Clay had warned me full moons were busy. And this was a harvest moon. Worst of the year, apparently.
Still, even he was surprised by our numbers. After all, hadn’t scientists disproven the whole full moon thing? My theory is that rather than trying to prove whether the moon influences human behavior, scientists should ask whether human beliefs influence human behavior. All skeptics should be directed to the library – look up Crusades, Jihad or Trekkie.
Like it or not, believe it or not, working on a full moon at Arcane Transport was like finding blood in the toilet. Not a situation you want to face.
I eyed the box sitting on the passenger seat, and realized I was already in a situation I didn’t want to face. Could chickens come back as ghosts? Would I be haunted by a headless bird for the rest of my life?
The console shook with a wicked guitar riff. Salute Your Solution, The Raconteurs. I’m a sucker for cool ringtones.
Call from the office.
“Big Toe Bakeries. We’ve got seriously cheesy buns.”
“Augh. That’s disgusting.”
Kara Sinclair, my dispatcher, receptionist and office manager. Also the subject of many a pleasant daydream, provided her boyfriend Chad doesn’t drop by the office.
“Hey.”
“No – really. That’s disgusting.”
“I’ll come up with a better one for next time. What’s up?”
“Clay asked me to give you a call, see if you can pop in at five? He said the Expo guys called back.”
“Really? Interesting.” Huh. The Global Occult Expo was an annual “multi-denominational” conference and tradeshow – the largest gathering of magic-types in the world. And this year it was being held in Toronto.
Clay and I had heard some rumours that the organizers were having issues with the preferred transport company that the venue had identified. I guess the regular courier wasn’t too thrilled to find out they would be shipping gallon drums of cow blood.
The show was opening a week Thursday – nine days from today – and would run from Thursday to Sunday. Over a hundred exhibitors, speakers from all over and nearly fifteen hundred attendees.
“Any sense as to whether we’ll get the business?”
“Clay seemed to think so. He was going to call you, but he’s been in with the Glen Morrow guys all morning.”
Better him than me. Glen Morrow Funeral Home was one of those customers – Clay called them root canals. Need them, but sure don’t want them.
“Was Harvey able to get a copy of the program guide?”
“He picked up a pack of them. And I pulled the list of exhibitors off the web.”
“Were there many...”
“More than half of them are current customers.” That was why Kara was so indispensible. She had a brain, and wasn’t afraid to use it. “Of the rest, there are a few locals we no longer work with, a couple small accounts you might want to touch base with, twenty Canadian companies with no real presence in Toronto, and the rest are foreign.”
Winning the Expo had been a goal of Clay’s since it was announced a year ago that Toronto was to host it. When he heard the organizers had opted for a traditional courier, he had been crushed. This most recent news, though... I thought maybe the full moon was turning out to be good luck for us, after all.
I’m a foolish, foolish man.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN A. MACKIE is a freelance writer and author. He previously practiced as a lawyer, drafting contracts and serving as a target for his friends’ lawyer jokes. John lives in the outskirts of Toronto with his wife and three children, and is hard at work on the next Arcane Transport Delivery