The Hilarious Dead Guy's Last Chance Undies

By Lorain O'Neil

Explosive colonoscopy angst!

Seven-year-old Polonia Appleseed cowered in terror the night her Daddy died and killer unknown escaped, a pair of sparkly-hearted men’s underwear the only clue.
But Polonia’s grown up now, and with all the suspects gathering after her Uncle George’s unfortunately fatal buttocalypse, Polonia’s decided to let one rip of her own: lure the killer out of hiding by doing exactly what her Daddy did, scam millions right under everyone’s noses!

She IS kinda hoping for a better result though.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lorain O'Neil
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017

Book preview

Haunting the

Rainbow

by

Lorain O’Neil

Cover Photo: 1918 flu virons courtesy CDC

copyright 2019

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Sample chapter from Coquina Hard [historical fiction]

Sample chapter from The Liar Charms [humorous urban fantasy/suspense]

Sample chapter from The Hilarious Dead Guy’s Last Chance Undies [humorous mystery]

Sample chapters from Alien Advantage [humorous adventure]

Sample chapter from A Kiss From Moët [humorous magical realism]

Sample chapter from Firecrystal Deep [humorous romance/suspense]

Chapter One

March of 1918

On Saturday, March 9, 1918, at an Army base in Kansas now known as Fort Riley, they were burning the nine tons of manure produced weekly by the base’s horses and mules when a dust storm kicked up. The dust and burning manure created a stinging yellow soup that caused the sun to go dead black.

And across the globe, one hundred million people were going to die. Horribly.

No one knows for sure if that’s where the flu virus did its gene shuffling dance of mutation, but mutate it did, into the most lethal killing machine ever unleashed upon humanity.

Live round particles about a millionth of an inch wide with surfaces covered in spikes and mushroomlike protuberances, flu virons were relatively harmless. They would meet, exchange genes, be pests more than anything else. The flu didn’t kill often and when it did it was the old and the weak that went. But this 1918 flu viron (now referred to by scientists as The Mother of All Flu’s) had a markedly different origin: it didn’t acquire its new genes from another flu viron but from a source still unknown today. The result was that the random rearrangement of its spikes and mushrooms that occurred was a configuration the likes of which the human body had never before seen.

In other words the virus hit the jackpot.

Freed from the limitations of its predecessors, the virus could foil its conquered host’s immune response, feasting on and dispatching people in the prime of their lives. Jumping airborne from victim to victim, doctors were helpless. If the epidemic continues its rate of acceleration, the Surgeon General despaired, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few weeks.

It was not an exaggeration.

But come that Monday morning in Fort Riley, it was just Albert the company cook reporting sick to the hospital. By the end of the week five hundred soldiers had joined him while others shipped out to fight in the trenches of World War I carrying something far more deadly than any human weaponry.

By early summer the virus had launched itself across Europe, Russia, Africa, China, Japan, New Zealand ―twenty million people alone would die in India.

By September the War was winding down and soldiers returning.

And America’s nightmare began.

✵✵✵

2017, September

A hundred years later Eileen Saffron trudged up the hill to the Rainbow Hotel with ever decreasing enthusiasm, clutching her cell phone and hoping for a reprieve from her nightmare. She did not want this job. It stunk. But it did offer a free room for two months (which she was pretty sure she could parlay into more if she played her cards right), a bit of money, and for someone with no other place to go it was better than… what? Still, she kept hoping her phone would contain the miraculous salvation of a When can you start email in response to the myriad of resumés she’d sent out.

But nada. So far the only thing her efforts had received was this pitiful offer from some hotel lady.

Well it wasn’t like you didn’t know what a history degree would get you, dumbass, the vicious part of her said. Yeah but I thought the Library Science minor would save me.

Hunched beneath a bulging backpack and dragging her oversized wheelie, Eileen knew a normal person would have taken a taxi from the train station. But she also knew (or deeply suspected) she was not normal so her decision to hoof it to save what nominal cash she had she chalked up to her lamentable Only Me category.

But smart sacrificing you her other little self added quickly.

So smart we ―I― just graduated college with enough debt to sink a small country. No home, no nothing, unless you count schizoid relatives which I’m probably gonna be one of if I hear that voice again. And this job of rousting about an old attic looking for dusty papers to index and archive for a―

She stopped short as the hotel came into view.

Who the deuce are you? she heard behind her. This is private property y’know.

She turned and there was a man, a husky man with a surfeit of lacquered auburn hair that did not appear entirely organic. ‘Hoary’ was the first word that popped into her mind, hoary atop a face like a walnut with a bad case of dental denial.

Whew! Lardbuttosaurus alert!

Maybe I’m one of the guests, Eileen fired back.

He sneered. "You don’t look like a guest. Besides, season’s over, everyone’s gone out, not in."

I, she said drawing herself up to her full height risking a fall over backward from the weight of the backpack, "am the new historian."

The man’s jaw dropped in astonished awe.

"They finally got one?" he exclaimed.

"Who are you?" she retorted.

Me? Everyone knows who I am. I’m Havel Russo. So Mary knows you’re coming?

Who’s Mary?

She owns the place.

"I spoke with a Lavinia―"

Buggers! You’re gonna be traipsing through all that stuff, aren’t you? Stir up the ghosts you will. Just like last time.

Ghosts?

The Rainbow’s full of ’em. Good luck to you. He turned and sauntered away, not, she observed, help her tote her things up to the building.

And what a building, all surrounded by neatly trimmed rose hip bushes. The house obviously hadn’t been built as a hotel but as a regal mansion for some lordly affluent person in the early 1900’s she presumed. Pure Italianate architecture. Three stories and maybe a half, a gently sloping roof crowned with a metallic bronze cupola tower (whatever did they use those things for?), the house was rectangular except for one end rounded in a wall of heavy lead glass windows. A long veranda skirted the ground floor holding up second floor balconies above. The house was made of flat stone though not one Eileen recognized, with lavish overhanging wooden eaves meant to look like they were buttressed by a row of decorative corbels ―they weren’t, as two of the corbels were missing. Overall the building had the look of a once impressive private home gone just a tad to seed. If it weren’t for its million dollar location ―right on the Rhode Island coastline― Eileen took for granted it would have been torn down long ago.

But that didn’t make sense she puzzled. A developer could build a dozen summer cottages on the site, more if the surrounding forest was part of the deal. Why keep an old ghosty house on it?

Who cares, her louder self said. Get going. As she got closer she could hear the ocean pounding away in the distance, a melodic sound.

She tried not to cry. She didn’t want to be here. Eileen wanted a place. A place in the world. Didn’t have to be fancy, just secure. Some place where she could work, get a paycheck (a decent one), buy a car (used totally okay), a place where she belonged and nobody could kick her out. This just wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She’d obeyed the rules, done her homework and done it on time, gotten primo grades, graduated. Never shoplifted (like all the other kids) or done drugs. She’d been honest, worked hard, and what had it gotten her?

The Rainbow Hotel.

On off season, she grumbled. And she knew right then that all the lessons the world had taught her about fairness and integrity had been a load of crap. What it took to get somewhere, to win, she didn’t know, but it sure wasn’t doing what she had done. Trouble was she didn’t know any other way.

We’ve only got a coupla months to figure it out she told herself not bothering to clean up that mental ‘we.’ For some reason, in her private cognitions thinking of herself as ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ was painful. It was just more comfortable to feel herself a small intimately intertwined group than a single whole person… alone. She knew it wasn’t real, never made the mistake of saying that ‘we’ aloud, but wondered if it was the first symptom, the voice she’d heard calling her name being the second. She’d actually been relieved when she’d heard the voice in her empty dorm room. She was crazy! Officially. No one could expect anything from her now because she was no longer responsible. Mental derangement, a positive plus. And so she’d waited for the blasted thing to say something else but it hadn’t. Looking it up on her outdated bought-for-ten-bucks-from-a-rich-kid tablet she’d discovered it wasn’t even schizo to hear your name called, most people heard an unknown voice call them at some point in their life. It was a normal human experience that denoted nothing. So she was still stuck in the real world, no crazy pass out like…

And you would never want, not in a kajillion years.

But dang, she was the right age, twenty one, just when the symptoms of schizophrenia would often emerge in a beforehand healthy person. And what about all her piffling physical problems, stuff she would have been far too embarrassed to ever tell any physician about? But none of them had panned out under schizophrenia either, the closest she’d found them listed under was stress.

Well la-di-dah, she had stress.

Stress? After graduation, the College had let her live on campus through the summer but with a Fall move out deadline ever looming. And now the result: her solitary trek lugging her world’s belongings to an old hotel that… didn’t want her.

Huh?

A flash of sunlight from the bronzed tiles of the cupola tower’s roof had stabbed her eyes for just a millisecond leaving her with the inexplicable feeling of attack, a warning, vague but cold throughout her gut. The hotel seemed to be looking down on Eileen, didn’t want her. She recoiled, a prickling feeling crawling along her skin.

And she mastered it.

This is just like walking into a store and feeling like everyone’s looking at you, judging you. You know it’s not real, they couldn’t care less. It’s false. C’mon, move forward…

Plucking up her will ―which was vast― Eileen ignored her jitters and clattered on, reaching the portico in quiet personal accomplishment. Another battle fought, won. The door swung open.

Before her stood an exceptionally well dressed woman in her sixties, a pleasant and, Eileen could see, totally fake smile plastered on her face.

Hello, Eileen smiled albeit in equally contrived social propriety, "I’m Eileen Saffron, from the―"

Yes, yes, the woman said standing aside in the colonnaded double doored entranceway, we’ve been expecting you. She peered out to the front drive. Where’s your car?

I don’t have one, I took a taxi, Eileen lied, stepping inside.

This time the smile on the woman’s lips was genuine.

My mother will be delighted to meet you, she was a student at Connecticut College too. Graduated back when it was only for women.

Eileen was astonished, this woman had a living mother?

My mother is one hundred years old and sharp as a tack, the woman said. A surprise to everyone, including her. She was born right here, in the pandemic.

Eileen didn’t know about any ‘pandemic’ and didn’t care.

I’m Lavinia Brown, we spoke on the phone.

It was hard for Eileen to pay attention as she gazed around the entrance room. It’s freakin’ perfect. Unlike the outside of the house, the inside was like stepping into a museum or time traveling to… Eileen wasn’t quite sure but to a time way long ago.

This is beautiful, Ms. Brown, Eileen erupted managing to stop herself from saying ‘and it’s a hotel?’

Thank you, Lavinia said, we do try to keep it up. Eileen heard a strange note of anger, hidden, but there. But please, call me Lavinia. My mother is the ‘Ms.’ in this house, not me.

How could anybody be angry belonging to a place like this, Eileen wondered. The windows were swathed in billowing white organdy, the room filled with the fresh tang of the sea. A staircase luxuriant in claret red carpet ascended majestically up one side of the room, crossed horizontally over to the other side under a fleet of tall narrow windows, and then on upwards to the floor above. The flooring was a deep chromatic wood, most of it covered by a huge Persian rug though worn, not unduly. Ponderous ornately carved furniture dotted the room, with mirrors in gilded frames and seascape paintings abounding paneled walls, all bordered in brilliant white wainscoting. Beautiful!

Is that the girl? Eileen heard called out.

It is, Mom, Lavinia answered, gesturing for Eileen to follow.

Eileen did, past opened applewood doors inlaid with stained glass, across an elegant sitting room lit by chandeliers, and then through French doors to the end of the house that was rounded in a wall of floor to ceiling windows.

A glass conservatory, Eileen realized, probably once crammed with exotic palms, ferns and orchids, now a solarium maybe closed off when it got cold to save on the heating bill. Seated in the room, in the kind of upholstered mechanized recliner chair that lifts one’s butt up, directly under a strong beam of sunlight, was a mortally thin wrinkled woman next to a metal walker. Eileen caught the scent of rosewater.

Hello, the old woman practically chirped. I’m Mary Lyçon, and you’re… oh dear…

"Eileen Saffron, the―"

Lavinia, is her room ready? Perhaps you’d best check.

Sure, Mom, Lavinia said shooting a knowing smile at Eileen and turning to leave.

And close the doors, please, there’s a draft.

Eileen didn’t feel any draft, but old people?

They’d feel a draft inside their coffin.

Lavinia closed the doors behind her leaving Eileen and Mary alone.

I understand you want me to index and archive some papers you have here in the hotel, Mrs. Lyçon, Eileen began politely.

"I am Ms. Lyçon though you may call me Mary."

Ms.? Not many women of your… generation… go by that. She stopped. Eileen had never met anyone of Mary’s generation. How many centenogerians could there be?

"Well it came in quite handy for me. You see I am a Lyçon, but due to a brief marriage I became a Brown so when my husband died ―Battle of the Bulge― I decided our daughter bearing his name was legacy enough to him and I went back to my own. As to papers you refer to, as far as I can estimate, eight deceased family members had their papers dumped up in the attic here post demise and that’s right, I want it all archived. Perhaps that’s just ego, but this house has been here for a long time, and the Lyçons too, we’ve been through a plethora of history that I’d like to preserve. The town library doesn’t have room for all the actual paperwork so I’d like you to… what do they call it again? Oh yes, make it all ‘digital.’ Put it in a computer. So after I die and Lavinia no doubt cleans out the attic and throws everything away, it will still be here… in a manner of speaking. Lavinia assures me she’s put all the equipment you’ll need up in one of the rooms. But in actuality, Eileen, that’s not the primary reason I’ve hired you. There’s something else I want, something more."

What?

I want you to solve a murder that happened here in the house.

"What?"

A murder. If you can unearth the who I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars. Crack who did it, I’ll pay you another five thousand. Not to criminal standards, just convince me.

"Murder? Here? Go to the cops!"

Questionable they’d be interested seeing as how it transpired a hundred years ago. During the pandemic.

What pandemic? Your daughter said something about that.

I get so annoyed they refuse to teach kids about the pandemic, how they eliminate that epoch from the history books top to bottom. Preposterous! You ever hear of World War I?

Of course! I was a history major, Mrs…. Mary.

How many people died in that war?

Twelve million, Eileen said promptly, proud she could pull up that fact so easily.

And how long did it take?

Four and a half years.

"Well smack in that war, influenza hit the world. The flu. And it killed between fifty and one hundred million people and it did it in four and a half months. More soldiers died from the flu than from the War! Good Lord, more people died from that flu than from all the fatalities of all the wars fought in that entire century!"

Um… well… I could look it up, Eileen said mystified, still thinking about that fifteen grand and wondering if this woman was batty, real batty, or dangerous batty.

"You don’t need to, I know all about it. I was born in this house during the pandemic, my mother only sixteen years old. But we both survived. Several other Lyçons did not. One of them however, apparently had some facilitation getting into the grave and that’s what I’d like to get to the bottom of. I don’t know there’s an answer up in the attic, but if there is, I want it before I go to my grave. Interested?"

This is like… for real?

Oh yes. My daughter Lavinia will give you a binding contract if you wish. Binding in that yes, I’ll pay.

She knows about this?

She’s the one who found the historian before you.

Somebody else looked through the stuff? What’d they find?

We don’t know. He died. So the job’s yours if you want it.

Ten thousand dollars. Fifteen if she tracked down whodunit!

How do you know there was a murder?

"Like I told you, I was born here. And I spent most of my life here ―with my family members. They all knew about the murder but I could never get them to talk about it, nor the pandemic. Just like in history books, the pandemic was a totally taboo subject in my family. But I listened, I caught snatches."

You mean you eavesdropped.

Precisely. And the way they all shushed me up as a child whenever I asked about it I’m sure that every one of them knew about it. A Lyçon murdering a Lyçon!

What did you overhear?

I overheard a conversation between my Great Uncle Nahor and our cook about a Lyçon smothering another Lyçon to death right here, making it look like a pandemic death.

Who?

"They didn’t name names. And while I can tell from my relatives’ dates of deaths who died during the pandemic, I only know for sure that one of them died during the pandemic from the pandemic ―or supposedly did."

So check the cause of death on their death certificates.

The prior historian did that. The cause of death is not listed for any of them.

That’s not surprising. Back then if somebody came from a laudable family but died from something considered unseemly, they left if off the death certificate. My mother told me her grandfather died from throat cancer but they omitted that from his death certificate because back then cancer was a rather sordid affliction.

Well I want to know.

Why did you wait until now to look into it?

Because I was a dunderhead dolt! I lived here with my mother, Rdell Lyçon, until she died at ninety one. Pursuing information about the Lyçon murder while she was alive was like throwing gasoline on a fire. Disastrous results the few times I tried.

So after she died you had years to look into it. Why didn’t you?

I did. But with similarly disastrous repercussions.

What?

"All of the Lyçon history is stored up in the attic. If there’s an answer to who was murdered here in the pandemic and by whom, it’ll be up there, I’m sure. The attic just needs a thoughtful, methodical search. So I went up there to start one."

And?

I had an accident and became physically incapable of going back.

Why didn’t you just send your daughter?

No! She may be a Brown by name but she’s still half Lyçon and I don’t want her going up in that attic.

Why not?

"Look at what befell me."

"You think the attic did that? Like it’s alive or something? That’s cuckoo."

"Well then think of it as luck. Or just the foolish foibles of a one hundred year old cuckoo. Lyçons have foul luck around here if we’re not careful. And I think that attic is particularly bad for us, especially when we’re rifling around to unearth Lyçon secrets."

So why didn’t you just hire somebody else to go up there and do it for you?

I did. My handyman refused so I hired the historian I spoke of. But unfortunately that historian wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the pack and he too had an accident ―not up in the attic. But you? You’re young and obviously smart so it just comes down to one question. Do you want the money?

Well sure but―

Let me show you to your room, Lavinia said, sticking her head in through the doors. I trust Mom has made her offer to you. I put you on the third floor, connected to a room that has an entrance to the attic. I wouldn’t be surprised if every piece of paper ever associated with anyone from the Lyçon family in more than a hundred years didn’t end up there. We weren’t overly successful at breeding so it all somehow filtered down to here.

Um… well… ah… thanks. Eileen nodded to Mary, dutifully following Lavinia from the room relieved when she saw Lavinia pick up her backpack which had been deposited on the entranceway floor. How long has this been a hotel? Eileen asked tugging her wheelie along up the staircase (clonk, clonk, clonk).

"Since the Depression. My mother can tell you more of the history of