Just plain bad ...

The clock was ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Marking the hour. Ticking down towards the final deadline. Myron Brockton broke out in a cold sweat that immediately soaked through his seer-sucker shirt.

He could feel the minutes slipping away like sand through an enormous hourglass. An hourglass that towered over him like a behemoth. Heading toward that inexorable midnight deadline. He ignored the feeling of his thin shirt clinging to his sweaty chest and glanced at his Elmer Fudd watch: 11:50. Only ten more minutes. Ten minutes to midnight. And then, that would be the end. Midnight. The final hour. The end. Only mere minutes away. He paused, struck by the puddle of moisture at his feet. He slid as he tried to walk through the huge puddle of his own perspiration.

Myron took in a good long breath and wondered if he would make it. Only ten more minutes. Well, nine minutes now. Myron realized that he had already spent a whole minute just thinking about the ten minutes that were left. That was one minute that he would never be able to get back It was gone. Just like that. Myron imagined the sound of fingers snapping. Marking the lost minute. Minute number one of ten. Leaving only nine. The gears turned. The seconds ticked. The minutes ticked too. All of them just kept on ticking.

Suddenly his eyes met another pair of eyes. They were dark, smouldering eyes, eyes that seemed to envelop him with their sensuous feminine warmth.

“Carmelita!” he called out. Suddenly, he felt a warm, caressing, Spanish hand in his. She was pulling him towards her, her hot Latin breath surrounding him like some kind of rapturous beneficent force of nature. She wrapped her long, tanned Mediterranean arms around him and gentled cradled his sweat-soaked body next to her slim-yet-toned sun-kissed athletic form.

“Myrono!” she cooed lovingly. “Ti adore!”

Suddenly, Myron felt her stiffen and pull away. He looked up to see the police captain standing before them in the total pitch black darkness. El Capitan was tall and ramrod straight, with a dark complexion, pale, watery eyes and tiny freckles. His nose was lined with tiny red spider veins and blackheads. But his cheeks were round and full and puffy, as though he was holding acorns in them. No wonder his men knew him by the nickname: The Gerbil.

The Gerbil moved silently through the inky black total darkness until he was standing in front of Myron and Carmelita.

“So, we meet again.” He said wryly, his nostrils flaring. Myron noticed the Gerbil was still wearing the same tie he had worn earlier that day, the one with the teeny tiny zigzag design overlaid with mermaids and cherubim. Yes, even the minute stitching on the underside of the tie did not escape Myron’s precise eye.

Wait. Myron heard his brain tell him. What’s that tiny stitch there? Myron craned his neck forward and squinted as he scrutinized the tie. Yes, that was it. The rare Persian double backwards cross-stitch. The trademark of the true craftsman. Myron knew from all his years of study that expert carpet-makers always used the special stitch in their designs. It was enough to tell Myron that the Gerbil was one of the Carpetaggia. Finally, all the pieces fit at last. Myron fixed The Gerbil with a cold, hard stare, his eyes narrowing in the darkness.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We meet again, Carpetaggius.”