Part I:  The Emperor’s New Mind

Wake up.
My mouth feels as if a gang of cockroaches had played poker in it all night, smoking cigars and getting drunk. Faintly I remember that it was actually me who did these things, except for being a cockroach of course. My throat is raw and hurts as if I’d eaten spaghetti made of barbed-wire.
Come on, open your eyes.
Slowly my eyes adjust to the sweaty, smoke-reeking semi-darkness of my cheap, run-down bureau in the fifth floor of an old, dowdy building in a wrecked part of a wrecked city.
Through the drawn Venetian blinds small golden-brown rays of dirty sunlight shine on the chaos of my desk. Large piles of paperwork, day-old coffee mugs, several empty whiskey glasses, two ashtrays filled to the rim, everything inseparable glued to the table by – I’d rather not go into that.
I stretch my arms, yawn noisily and turn around in my chair.
“Stop right there.” I hear a female voice say.
I’m staring at a gun.
I don’t see the person holding it. My eyes are focused on the steely barrel. Then I avert my eyes and look to the floor.
“Mind if I light up a cigarette?” I ask casually. “Don’t worry.” I add, “I’ll be as slow and as careful as a…”
“Shut up.”
I nod and my hands slowly wander into the left pocket of my crumpled, worn-out, dark-brown coat – yes, I’ve actually slept in my coat –, extract a cigarette from the half-empty pack, put it into my mouth, fumble for my lighter and light my cigarette.
I let my head fall back on the padded backrest of my chair, look up at the ceiling, which is about the color of the sediment in my coffee mugs, inhale deeply, then blow out a thick trail of smoke.
I stay like this for a couple of seconds, then sit straight up and look at the woman pointing the gun at me.
I’ve never seen her before.
My guess is she’s about thirty-five years old, something over average height, something under average weight.  
Can’t really say for sure, thanks to the hangover and the light, everything’s still a bit blurred.
She’s wearing a business suit, black pants, pinstriped grey shirt, a… well… blurry kind of necktie. The shirt’s one of these especially cut to make a woman’s breasts practically burst out of it. Looks pretty decent though. As far as I can say, that is.
Oh, yes, her face. Medium-length dark-blonde hair with some black strands tied to a French twist with a small tail. A grim stare, cold, calculating blue eyes, like the ones you see on a close-up of a wolf on Discovery Channel. First signs of crow’s feet, more creases than I’d expected, a little scar over her left brow, her nose is slightly crooked. Looks like she’d been beaten up pretty badly once. Still quite a looker, I must say. I wonder what she looks like naked.
Well, of course this is denial, but what else I am supposed to do?
“Well, good morning.” I say and take another drag from my cigarette.
“Shut up and listen.” she replies. Her tone is not really hostile, but dead-flat and impatient.
“In twenty-seven hours, you’ll be dead.” Just like that.
I say nothing and smoke. As usual my hands have begun to tremble a little.
“If you won’t do exactly what I’m telling you.” She adds after a far too long and in my opinion far too dramatic pause.
Can’t say that I’m really impressed at the moment. I stand up.
“Look…” I say when she swings out and hits me exactly on the nose with the butt of the gun so fast I can’t even start to bring my arm up.
I collapse into the chair and put my face in my hands.
“You… fucking… broke my nose…” I groan.
I grab the dustbin and put it in front of me to bleed into it. My eyes well up with tears. Blood’s running out of my nose and out of my mouth. I spit out several times. I hate this way too well-known bitter metallic taste.
“Now will you listen?” she says, her tone still unwavering apart from the last word, which she practically hisses.
My head’s throbbing. For a second my vision’s going black. I shake my head a little to become more clear-headed. Bad idea.
I look at the woman, who’s still wearing the same expression.
Massaging my temples, I croak: “Could you first hand me that bottle over there?” and gesture towards a bottle of Cutty Sark on the file cabinet behind her.
“Will you listen then?”
I nod.
She quickly glances at the bottle and grabs it with her left, the right hand still pointing the gun at me. The second she looks away I grab one of the empty whiskey bottles on my desk, jump up and plunge at her. Before my arm is even stretched out for the blow, she hits my wrist with her left elbow and the empty bottle is sent flying against the wall. With the right she brings the butt of the gun down at my nose before I can react.
Again. Can’t believe it.
Moaning, I fall back and bury my face in my hands.
“Next time you try anything like that I’ll smash that bottle into your face, understand? The only thing that will break is your face, not the bottle. Trust me on this. ”
The nausea brooding in my stomach suddenly creeps up and I puke into the dustbin.
I hear her putting the bottle on my desk. Then she retreats back into the corner.
“Now I will say this only once. In the next hour, you will receive a phone call. You will do exactly what you’re told. Otherwise you’re a dead man.”
I pour myself a second glass of whiskey and down it in one go. The alcohol burns in my throat and washes the taste of blood out of my mouth. At least for a second.
“What if an ex-client calls and tells me to go fuck myself? Am I gonna do that, too?” I ask, trying to regain my cool. But it doesn’t work.
“Very funny.” And then, in a grave, menacing voice “I know your name.”
“Wow. I’m stunned” I reply. “So you can read.”
“I don’t mean the fake initials on the door of your office.” She says in her flat voice and pauses. “I mean your real name.”
I run through a list of people from the past who knew my name, but they are all dead.
I say nothing.
“Now fold your arms behind your head, keep leaning over the bin like you do now, and don’t move until you hear me shutting the door.”  She says and I hear her walking away and opening the door.
“Wait,” I plead. The door doesn’t close. “What do you want from me? What is going on?”
“To have a promise fulfilled.” The door shuts.
Quickly I swing around, grab the gun out of my desk drawer and take aim at the silhouette behind the opal glass, which vanishes the very instant I see it. I try to stand up but my stomach knocks me down again. I’m just fast enough to swing around again and puke once more into the dustbin.
Fucking Hell.
I hate it when days start off like that.
Rattling I retch out the last remains of bile, vomit and blood out of my throat and mouth into it. Pressing my hands gently against my nose I sit with my head leaned forward for about ten minutes, then the bleeding slowly stops.  
The phone rings. With shaky hands, this time not caused by any withdrawal symptoms but by being scared shitless, I answer it with a rather unintelligible “huh?”
“This is your ex-client Carlos, and I have a message for you,” booms the angry voice on the other end of the line, and then breathes in heavily. He probably did not call to wish me a good morning, which  I’m afraid is only partly because it is well past noon.
“YOU CAN G…” I hang up.
After so much excitement I relax by leaning my head over the dustbin again.
Ten minutes later I manage to swing the chair around again and rest my head on my desk.
Everything spins.
Fucking hell.
Just as I am about to get up the phone rings again.
“The Emperor Penguin is about 100 cm in height and weighs 60 to 80 pounds. It’s natural habitat is the Antarctic Continent. There are 39 documented breeding colonies with about 220,000 breeding pairs. The Emperor Penguin’s neck is colored a light…”
What the hell? I hang up.
Pondering on what on earth this was about, I finally get up and into the bathroom. I even manage not to puke again until I reach the toilet. My stomach is already emptier than my bank account, which I never thought was possible, but I still retch and spit out. I kneel there for I don’t know how long, unmoving, my face resting on the toilet seat, until I feel a little better.
Then I examine my face in the mirror. Carefully I run my fingers across my nose. Still hurts like hell. My nose is way too swollen to really tell whether it’s broken or not. It will probably need a couple of days till I know. If I’m not already dead then, that is. The collar of my shirt is a mix of clotted blood and dried vomit, and the rest doesn’t look so good either. I throw in a couple of ibuprofen pills, and wash my face with cold water. This too hurts like hell. Only now I realize that there are several other bruises on my face, which before were covered by blood, and that I have a black eye. I throw in a couple of vicodins and head for my wardrobe when the phone rings again.
Fucking hell.
After like the fiftieth ring I reach the desk and pick up.
“Yeah?”
“Be at Rick’s in 30 Minutes.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” I reply.
There’s a threatening silence on the other end of the line. Then a hoarse, rattling croak: “Your excuse better be damn good… don’t” – if the word was a car he would slam on the brakes at full speed – “fuck with us. Your reason better be good.”  
I clear my throat. “Well, I have to do grocery shopping first.”

After having gazed through the door spy for approximately 7 years, Mrs. Critkins opens the door.   
“Oh, hello Mr. MacNeilage! How very nice of you to stop by!” Mrs. Critkins sings in her high-class British accent, which to me sounds rather like a cross between a twittering pigeon, a mouse someone just stepped on, and someone completely out of touch with reality.
Handing her a plastic bag, I say: “Hello Mrs. Critkins, your grocery.”
“Oh, wonderful!” she replies. And then “Come in, come in!”
“I’ve just put the kettle on, could I interest you in a cup of tea?” she asks as I sit down at her dining table in the pompous, kitsch-laden living room of her two-room apartment.
“No thanks, I’d just like a glass of water, please.”
After bringing me a glass along with a pitcher filled with water she returns to the kitchen. Two minutes pass. I grab the pitcher, swiftly get up, and water her flowers. My last visit is a while back so some of them are almost wasted away. Hearing noises from the kitchen I hasten back to my chair and sit down.
“Oh hello Mr. MacNeilage, how nice of you to stop by!” Mrs. Critkins says upon seeing me.
“Could I interest you in a cup of tea? I’ve just put the kettle on.”
“No thanks, I’d like a glass of water though, please.” I answer.
Mrs. Critkins has Alzheimer’s. She lives one floor above me. Her daughter asked me if I could see how she’s doing from time to time and do some shopping for her. We met when she asked me if I could do something about her mother’s stolen handbag, seeing I was a ‘private investigator’ and all. I thought If I helped her maybe she’d screw me, so I racketed up some thieves operating ‘round here and got it back. Plan worked out. Daughter’s married, so it’s just that uncomplicated wham-bam kind of thing once in a while. But now I’m stuck with helping that old lady out now and then. What can you do.
After refilling the pitcher, Mr. Critkins  goes back  to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I water the rest of her flowers, put the pitcher gently back on the table, sneak inside her bathroom, lock the door and start rummaging through her medicine cabinet. Old people’s meds sometimes can give you a hell of a trip. I’m already so familiar with the old woman’s med’s I know the right dosage by heart. I sit on the toilet seat, throw in the mix of pills, and get wasted… My heart-beat starts racing, my pupils widen, and I start to shiver, I slump down and suddenly euphoria rushes through me – then darkness. And I whisper: “I Saw a man clothed with Rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and Read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled.”