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Chapter 1
I
stared at the letter in my hand. I
was making the same face I made a few moments earlier when checking my phone
messages. It’s not a pretty
face. You wouldn’t like it. Dear
Ms. Bombay, Your
application has been accepted. We
are thrilled to have you as a contestant in the new television programme,
Survival! We received thousands
of applications for the show, but quite frankly, your video blew everyone
away here at CAB network. I
don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defuse an explosive device so
quickly. You are exactly what we
are looking for. In a few days,
you should receive a complete package in the mail with all of the information
you will need. I look forward to
meeting you next month. Sincerely, Bob
Toole Executive
Producer, CAB Well,
that wasn’t right. I never
applied to be on Survivor. True, it was one of my favorite
shows. But I think I’d
remember submitting an application.
It’s not like I go around videotaping myself defusing bombs
every day. Okay, there was that
once but I just wanted to see what it looked like in third person. It was my little egoist guilty
pleasure. No one knew I had
it. Or at least, I thought no one
knew. So,
maybe that’s what Bob is talking about. Hmmmm. If I didn’t send it in, who
did? “Mom!”
The unanimous shout came from my two teenaged sons, Montgomery and Jackson
Bombay. My name is Mississippi
Bombay, but I prefer Missi. “In
here,” I responded suspiciously.
Did they do this? Monty
and Jack popped their heads into the doorway simultaneously. Fraternal twins, you’d never
look at them and even think they were related. Monty was tall and gangly, with dark
hair and green eyes. Jack was
short and stocky with a shock of unruly red hair and freckles. In spite of their physical
differences, the boys shared one, obnoxious personality. “Do
I need to ask?” I waved the letter at them. Monty
snatched it out of my hands and began to read. “Cool! Mom, this
rocks!” Jack
grabbed it from his brother and scanned the page. “Ohmygod!” He shouted it
as one word. “How cool are
you? Why didn’t you tell
us?” From
the looks on their faces, I surmised they didn’t do it. “So
you had nothing to do with this?” I had to ask just to make sure. I haven’t survived this long as
a single mother of twin boys without confirming everything. Usually twice. They
shook their heads. “We
would’ve if we thought you were interested,” Monty started. “But
we never dreamed you’d want to go on the show!” Jack finished. I
swiped the letter from Jack and put in on the table, “Well, it’s
obviously just a joke, so we’ll forget about it.” I now had other ideas. After all, I came from a family of
assassins. A prankster or two in
the gene pool was to be expected.
You
heard me right. Assassins. The Bombay Family had a monopoly on
the biz since Ancient Greece.
Every blooded member of the family begins training at the age of five
and works until, well, forever.
My grandma was just forced into an early retirement or she’d
still be taking on contracts. Not
that she needed to. She was on
the Council. That’s the
geriatric crew who runs the operations, dishes out assignments, and kills off
renegade family members.
That’s right. This
family business isn’t exactly optional. And if you screw up or screw over the
family, the Council will take you out. I
looked around from my mental meanderings to find the boys gone. Oh well. Where could they go? We live on a small, private island off
the coast of South America. Speaking
of mental fragmentation - I’ve been experiencing that a lot
lately. Maybe it has something to
do with being 45. Or it could be
that I haven’t had sex in a long, long time. Being widowed will do that to
you. Well, that and the isolation
of being on an island no one but my immediate family lives on. Or it could be the bizarre nature of
my work. Besides killing people
for a living, I’m a bit of an inventor. It’s my only creative
outlet. And it was one more
service I could offer the Bombays.
What
do I invent? Oh, this and that
really. Hairdryers that can blow
your head off, lilies that can suffocate you, explosive jockstraps . . . the
usual bric-a-brac I guess. My
mind began to meander again and I started thinking about Pop Tarts. I LOVE Pop Tarts. But only the chocolate fudge
ones. I could eat those for every
meal. The
Pop Tarts made me think of Kleenex, which reminded me that I still had a few
finishing touches to make on my latest explosive device. I headed for the lab. “Mantisnuts,”
was the secret word I spoke into my security system. The door popped open and I went in
thinking it was time to change my password. Maybe something like bananaface. Did praying mantis have
testicles? I wasn’t
sure. At least in the figurative
sense they did. It takes balls to
make love to a woman you know will bite your head off afterward. On
a table in the middle of the room was one of those Wacky Wall Walkers. Remember those? Real big in the
‘80’s. I had several
back then. Anyway, for those of
you who are big hair and shoulder-pad challenged, they were these sticky
little octopuses (octopi? What is
the plural anyway?) you threw at a wall or sliding glass door (sliding glass
doors were also very big in the ‘80s) and it kind of flopped, ass over,
um, tentacles all the way down the wall.
You’d think something like that would be a failure, wouldn’t
you? But the inventors of that
stupid little toy (did I mention that I owned several?) made millions. You never know what will hit it big. It
was with that in mind that I decided to work with the gummy little bastards
as some sort of explosive device.
Remember Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible? The first one – not the crappy
sequels. Anyway, he had that
stick of gum he just had to fold in half and stick on the aquarium at that
restaurant in Prague and it blew up?
Of course, it was ridiculous.
Have you ever tried to fold a stick of dry gum in half? It snaps in two, doesn’t stick
to itself - doesn’t stick to anything really, so it wouldn’t have
worked in real life. But
that’s okay cuz I liked the movie. The
trick with the Wacky Wall Walkers was to get just the right compound that
would ignite as it struck a solid surface, and wouldn’t affect its
inherent gumminess. I
didn’t want to overdo it, but I wanted something that would do the
job. I wasn’t sure what the
job was yet, but it didn’t matter.
I loved working in my lab.
I could work with whatever I wanted and the family didn’t give a
damn. Ha. An
hour later found me behind my blast shield as I blew up my fifth piece of
glass-coated dry wall. I was
having a pretty good time too. That is, until the alarm went off. I’d set it to high because I
wanted to know if anyone came into my lab unannounced. “Hello,
Mississippi.” York Bombay
stood in the doorway. I
couldn’t stand that man. My
mom’s cousin York was a creepy old dude. Of course, his father, Lou, was much
worse. Thank God he’s still
locked up with Grandma and the other former Council at that maximum-security
nursing home in Greenland. I
folded my arms across my chest and made up my mind to definitely change my
password. How the hell did he get
it, anyway? “What’s
up, Uncle York?” He
forced a grin and reached over to fondle Charo from my b-list bobblehead
collection. I made a mental note
to scrub them with Chlorox later.
“Well,
my dear, the Council requests your presence. Tonight at seven.” |
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