Free Warning! Do Not Read This Story! by Robert T. Jeschonek Page A

tape wrapped from utility pole to utility pole. The whole damned town was a crime scene.
    Sascha fell in step beside him, fishing in her macramé purse. "I know I've got some Excedrin in here someplace." Her helmet of short brown hair barely fluttered in the wind. Only the bangs twitched over her forehead, which was creased from the effort of looking for pills in the purse.
    Carrol hobbled up on the other side, still bracing her back with both hands. "My sinuses are shriveling up like raisins as we speak." She always hobbled; the back trouble was chronic. It made her look much older than her actual fifty-six years. "You people are paying for any surgeries resulting from this little excursion. You know that, don't you?"
    Sascha elbowed Buzz and gave him a confidential smirk. "Relax, Buzzie," she said. "If we didn't like you, we wouldn't be so chatty." She reached up and patted his shaved head.
    Buzz sighed. He had his doubts that having them like him was a good thing.
    When they reached the statie, she took one step too many into Buzz's personal space and stuck out her hand. "Sergeant Towers," she said.
    Buzz was blocky and tough, nowhere near a pushover...but the handshake was crushing. "Agent Mahaffey." Buzz fought to keep from wincing. "And our special consultants."
    Carrol and Sascha whipped out matching yellow business cards at the same instant, and Towers took them. "Okay then, Car-Roll. Sas-Cha." She read the names right off the cards, pronouncing them like they were spelled.
    "It's Care-role ." Carrol stuck her face forward like a turtle and squinted up at Towers. " Care-role . "
    "And Sah-sha ." Sascha smiled; she always played good cop to Carrol's bad. "The 'c' is silent."
    Buzz sighed. They'd run the same game on him when he'd first met them. The business cards were a setup. What better way to show who was the smartest person in the room?
    Not that they needed to prove a damned thing, from what Buzz had heard.
    "So." Buzz stepped away from Towers and stared at Lasco. From twenty yards away, the place looked perfectly normal...a desert town built of brick and adobe, windows glinting in the New Mexican sun. "What's your theory?"
    Towers lifted her hat and ran a hand over her blonde crewcut. "It ain't Jonestown."
    Carrol drew a filterless cigarette from a pocket of her olive drab vest and plugged it between her lips. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
    "Folks think it's Jonestown," said Towers. "But I'll tell you this much for free. Nobody here drank no Kool-aid."
    Carrol got the cigarette lit behind a cupped hand and scowled at Sascha. "You follow any of that, Sis?"
    "You mean it wasn't voluntary." Sascha nodded at Towers. "There was no suicide pact."
    Towers spat a glob of tobacco juice in the dust. Buzz hadn't even realized there was a chew in her mouth.
    "I mean there was no gee-dee suicide," said Towers. "But I'll be damned if I can figure out what did happen."
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    *****
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    I wish they'd never come to Lasco that day. Those damned sisters changed me for the worse.
    I went from classic to trash in less than twenty-four hours. I haven't been the same since.
    I'm not all there. Literally.
    It's a crime, it really is. I was something to behold. You can see it in the beauty of what's left of me, can't you?
    I'll be you're wondering--if I'm still so amazing, what must I have been like before? Well, let me give you a taste of my pre-LaVerge brilliance, so you can appreciate the injustice that's been done to me. So you can hate the LaVerges as much as I do.
    Here's my original opening:
    Once upon a time, a storyteller strode through the gates of the Incan city of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes Mountains. She looked young and indescribably beautiful, with long, yellow hair like the rays of the sun.
    The Incas welcomed her with a feast, and she told them the story of her life in return.
    "I am from a lost kingdom," said the storyteller. "Atlantis sank beneath the waves long ago, and I am its only