Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and the Loose Change Collection Agency

  Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and the Loose Change Collection Agency

  Written by Dan O’Brien

  Original Artwork by Steve Ferchaud

  Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and the Loose Change Collection Agency is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2013 Dan O’Brien

  Original Artwork © 2013 Steve Ferchaud

  Original Cover Image © 2013 Steve Ferchaud

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1495209253

  ISBN-10: 1495209253

  For more information visit:

  http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.com/

  Other Titles by Dan O’Brien

  Bitten

  The Path of the Fallen

  Cerulean Dreams

  The Journey

  The End of the World Playlist

  Hobbes Family

  Mondays with Mephistopheles: Rhys

  Water

  Deviance of Time

  The Portent

  Book of Seth

  The Twins of Devonshire and the Curse of the Widow

  A Very Dystopian Holiday Reader

  Publish Your Dreams

  The Ocean and the Hourglass

  For my father, who thought a children’s book was worth doing. I love you, Dad.

  Robert Pendleton opened one eye as the light of a passing car flashed over the window, shattering the darkness into prisms. He rolled onto his back on the beat-up couch and yawned as he reached his hands up and rubbed his eyes unceremoniously.

  He looked out over the darkness at the digital clock. The red digits spelled out a quarter ‘til midnight––nearly fourteen hours of sleep. He smiled and grabbed one of the cushions of the couch, burying his head in it. Just enough sleep, he reminded himself. Robert felt that anything less than twelve hours of sleep was very nearly too little.

  He grasped blindly for the TV remote.

  Groaning as he lifted his head, he looked at the empty table––his eyes drawn by another flash of a passing car. He couldn’t see clearly, but he knew that the remote had been there before he had fallen asleep nearly half a day ago.

  “Could have sworn….” he mumbled as he pushed himself up and brushed his hand around the top of the table, finding nothing. “Where did….”

  Another groan escaped his lips as he lifted his body to a sitting position and threw aside the cluster of pillows that he had gathered around himself. He reached out for the lamp, but instead knocked it to the floor with a resounding thud.

  Robert muttered as he stood up from the couch, and then sank to his knees to search around in the darkness for the fallen lamp. Reaching around on the shadowed floor, shards of the broken lamp scattered like pieces of light.

  He turned his head, peering beneath the large space underneath the couch and saw the reflection of the buttons on the remote. The off-gray piece of machinery was underneath the couch––only darkness lingered beyond it. He reached out as he spoke again.

  “How did it get all the way down there?”

  Robert flexed his hand and strained as he twisted his back to reach farther; yet, the remote remained just out of reach. He pulled his arm away with a huff and craned his neck to the side, staring underneath into the darkness below the couch.

  His eyes widened as he saw the impossible: there was something beyond the remote. He shook his head and closed his eyes, whispering to himself that he didn’t see what he thought he had.

  “I saw a little man,” he whispered to himself as he opened his eyes once more and nearly gasped as he did so.

  The figure was closer now and he could make out the outline clearly. A tiny man rested just beyond the remote.

  “What in the name of…?”

  “Not here in the name of nobody, laddie. I be a friend though,” crooned the miniscule figure as he interrupted Robert and stepped forward, placing a hand on the darkened and slick surface of the remote.

  A tam-o’-shanter crested his bright red hair, the shaggy mane blending perfectly into his equally crimson, neatly trimmed, beard.

  A billow of whitish smoke drifted from the long-stemmed pipe that he held clenched between his lips.

  Robert fell back and knocked aside the adjacent table. Rubbing his eyes, he spoke a single word: “Leprechaun.”

  Robert heard the voice again, the thick Irish accent clear as the little man spoke. “That’d be like me calling ye human all the time, not very polite that’d be.”

  He opened his eyes slowly and saw the little man, the leprechaun, perched on the couch. Reclined back against the armrest, a pipe snug between his teeth, he snapped his fingers.

  The light of the overturned lamp flickered on and floated back to the now right-side-up table. Robert watched in disbelief, his mouth hanging open and a bewildered look plastered across his face.

  Robert pointed shakily. “Not a leprechaun?” he asked, the confused expression deepening.

  The leprechaun sighed and stepped off the edge of the couch and landed upon the air as if it were another floor. The smoke from his pipe followed the tiny sprite as he stopped close to the huddled man. He tipped his tam-o’-shanter and pulled the pipe from his lips.

  “We haven’t the time for this, laddie. I require your help, Robert Pendleton, and I be afraid that I have little time for lengthy introductions. You can call me Colin.”

  Robert’s face twisted in befuddlement.

  “Colin, the leprechaun,” he repeated––a long pause before he breathed once more.

  “Just Colin, less you want me to be calling ye Robert, the human, all the time,” chided the sprite as he blew a colossal bundle of smoke from his lips.

  Robert opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. His head was spinning. “What can I do for you, Colin?” he finally managed to say.

  The leprechaun eyed him for a moment and then as quick as Robert could blink, the sprite was resting comfortably on the couch once more. “That’s better, laddie. Though I imagine you be thinking of pinchin’ yerself to see if this be real. I can assure ye that this be no dream.”

  Robert nodded numbly.

  “I be from another world just outside the one you know. A place of magic and wonder,” began the leprechaun, ignoring the vacant look on Robert’s face as he continued. “And in this place, we sprites live quite happily. You’ve heard of a leprechaun’s pot-o-gold?”

  Robert nodded once again, though this time he stifled a chuckle. The initial shock had begun to wear off and now the sheer silliness of the encounter was getting to him.

  Colin eyed him with a bemused arch of his eyebrow. “This funny to ye?” queried the leprechaun with a sidelong glance.

  Robert abandoned his restraint and laughed outright as tears streamed down his face. Between bouts of mirth, he managed to speak: “I’m talking to a leprechaun.” The last word sent him into an even deeper fit of laughter.

  The sprite clipped his pipe back into his mouth and glared at the laughing man. “I be much more than a mere common leprechaun, ye oversized oaf. I be Colin McMasters, director of the L.C.C.A. And that be nothin’ to laugh at,” chastised the leprechaun, his eyebrows knitting stormily.

  Robert leaned back and wiped the tears away from his eyes. “L.C.C.A.?”

  “Loose Change Collection Agency, but we prefer the acronym as it rolls much easier off ye tongue,” answered Colin with a straight face.
<
br />   “Loose Change Collection Agency,” Robert repeated slowly, taking in each syllable.

  “What are ye, an echo? That is what I just said. Think about it: we leprechauns have to be fundin’ our pots-o-gold somehow. Profitable industry it be, make ye head spin how much we be getting from ye humans’ couch cushions the world round,” replied the chuckling sprite.

  Robert shook his head. “You want me to believe that a bunch of leprechauns and sprites steal…”

  “Oh begorra, watch the words ye be throwin’ round,” warned the sprite with a glare.

  Robert raised his hands in mock defense. “Whatever you want to call it; procure then, loose change from couches all over the world?”

  The sprite touched his chin with a miniature fist and nodded, adding a knowing shrug. “Sounds about right, laddie.”

  Robert found himself eyeing the sprite with a serious look. “Even if I believe that there are leprechauns and that this organization really existed, don’t you think someone would have noticed?”

  Colin McMasters shrugged. “Don’t seem to be missin’ ye socks when the Scourge be grabbin’ ‘em,” he replied defiantly.

  Robert resituated himself and sat on the couch next to the leprechaun. “The Scourge?” he queried with renewed interest, forgetting for a moment the absurdity of talking to a leprechaun.

  The sigh came to the sprite once more, a particularly haggard look on his deceivingly youthful face. “That be the reason for me visitin’ ye, Robert. The Scourge is the gremlin that be terrorizin’ me people.”

  Robert cracked a smile, but the sour look on Colin’s face chased it away as quickly as it had come. “A gremlin is your problem?”

  The sprite took the pipe from his lips and tucked it into the faded overcoat he wore. The mirth from his voice was gone. “As I was saying before ye interrupted, the mirror world of this place you call home, where we sprites live, is a peaceful place, one of wonders. That was until the Scourge came down from the dark mountains of the north with his army of lost socks.”

  Robert bit his lip as he fought the rising laughter, stopping only because of the desperate look on the leprechaun’s face. “An army of lost socks?”

  “Where did ye think they disappeared to?”

  Robert looked at the leprechaun, dumbfounded, and then leaned back against the armrest. He thought idly about the many times he had lost socks without any real explanation. “You want me to believe that there is a conspiracy involving a gremlin that steals socks from random dryers in order to build an army to destroy all of the leprechauns?”

  “And steal our pots-o-gold, can’t be forgettin’ that,” added the sprite.

  Robert sat back against the cushions of the couch and stared up at the darkened ceiling, mouthing the absolute absurdity of his situation. “A gremlin leading an army of lost socks to conquer the leprechaun nation and usurp their pots-o-gold,” he repeated, attempting to rationalize.

  Colin watched the human carefully. “I hate to be rude, but we not be havin’ much time and I’ve yet to tell you why I have come to you.”

  “Oh?” replied Robert without enthusiasm.

  The sprite extended a hand out and a globe of light filled it, the undulating colors and shades bleeding into one another. A figure emerged, a gray-skinned creature with black talons and blood-red eyes that gleamed. Its head was flat and misshapen. Razor-thin ears flattened back against its skull finished out the creature’s face. The leprechaun spoke the creature’s name: the Scourge.

  Robert pointed at the globe in astonishment. “That thing is the Scourge? It’s horrendous. Not exactly going to be winning any beauty contests, is it?”

  Colin closed his hand and the image of the Scourge vanished along with the iridescent orb. “We be beings of illusions and mirth, not bred for war as this gremlin be. It cannot attack the nation of magicks alone. But with his amassed army of soiled sock drones, he could overrun all of the sprites of my realm.”

  The leprechaun looked downright pitiful.

  The flamboyant and confident being that had so easily startled Robert was a sorry image to behold indeed. It was Robert’s turn to sigh as he regarded the pleading sprite. He found himself wanting to help Colin, though his logical mind still insisted it was simply a strange and disturbingly real dream.

  “I can’t believe I am saying this,” he began.

  The leprechaun’s crestfallen face transformed into a weak smile as Robert continued. “How can I help you, Colin McMasters of the nation of magicks?”

  The leprechaun hopped to his feet and looked at the human through glassy eyes. “Well met, Robert, I knew you had it in ye,” Colin McMasters proclaimed exuberantly.

  Robert grunted and waved his hand dismissively, though he was happy that his answer had brightened the mood of the distressed leprechaun. Colin snapped his fingers and another orb appeared; and for a moment, Robert expected the horrid features of the Scourge.

  Instead, he saw a downtown avenue, one that he knew well––and a rundown laundromat that he knew resided there.

  Robert pointed to the orb.

  “I know that place,” he exclaimed.

  Colin nodded impatiently. “Of course ye do, laddie. That is why I came to ye. Now listen closely….”

  Morning had begun to creep over the hillside as Robert ditched his cruiser in the alley next to the laundromat.

  He rubbed his eyes; the presence of the light made him feel far more tired than he was––especially when he had been up all night speaking to Colin. Or perhaps to himself: he wasn’t exactly convinced that it wasn’t a dream.

  As he neared the entrance, he recalled the tiny leprechaun’s words: humans could not pass through to the realm of the sprites the same way that Colin was able.

  However, humans could enter the mountain home of the Scourge using one of the evil gremlin’s portals. Robert shook his head at the situation once more. Just an elaborate dream he reminded himself, it would be best just to enjoy it.

  The interior of the building was warm and already bustling with the poor and desperate people who did not have washers and dryers of their own.

  Washers were organized into tidy lines that formed rows and aisles. The dryers framed the walls two-high like abstract art. His attention was immediately grabbed by the one thing that Colin had told him to look for: the large washer set in a dark corner at the back of the room. An economy washer meant for mammoth loads.

  It was by far the largest thing in the room.

  Robert moved toward it.

  The urgency in the thick Irish accent of the leprechaun’s words was not lost on him. He navigated the sea of bodies, niceties soon dissolving into more negative declarations. A crudely painted sign hung over the door of the washer. It spelled out in faded black letters: OUT OF ORDER. He reached out despite the absolute foolishness he would feel when he stepped inside and nothing happened.

  “Here goes nothing,” he mumbled as he looked into the empty chamber and saw only a stretching darkness, an unnatural shadow. He reached a hand out and groped the darkness––and felt himself pulled in. The click of the door closing behind him was distant as he fell end over end.

  His scream resonated, drowning out everything else. The darkness soon became the acerbic color of rock as he collided with the solidity of earth once more.

  His vision blurred as he landed face down. Coughing hard, Robert inhaled a mouthful of dust. He pushed himself upright and wiped away the stinging in his eyes and the dirt all over his face.

  The world came into focus around him: the echo of the recess, the deep mountain chamber, and the heat of distant forges that flared around him.

  Of course, it worked.

  In a dream, anything was possible.

  “The leprechaun wasn’t fooling,” he whispered in awe.

  He stood and massaged his knee tenderly. The fall had bruised it, the throbbing painful as he touched it. The jagged outcroppings of the rocky chamber resembled the jaws of a gargantuan beast, a mythic monster about wh
ich he had often read.

  The hideous image of the Scourge came to mind once again: the cruel features that made up his foe, the enemy for which he had been sent. When he had asked the mirthful sprite how he was supposed to defeat the malevolent gremlin without a weapon, Colin had simply shrugged saying that he, Robert, would know what to do when he saw the Scourge.

  Crunch.

  Swoosh.

  The sounds drew Robert’s attention and though he should have been petrified by what he saw, he could not help but laugh.

  Three human-sized socks stood before Robert with steel pikes held by tufts of cottony material that resembled burdensome gloves. One wore a thick crimson stripe that ran the length of it––and the other two were without any real marking. But, they all shared the same faded musty grayish brown that made them appear more the part of the soiled sock imagery than Colin had warned him of previously. Robert’s smile faded as they lowered their pikes and menacingly jabbed them forward toward the ill-prepared human.

  “Hold on a second here…socks,” he stammered, the illogical nature of the event at hand made his word choice rather difficult.

  Encumbered and overwhelmed by the sudden disorientation, he was incapable of rationally approaching what was happening to him.

  Chalk up another strange occurrence to what still seemed like an incredible dream. The sharpened end of a pike pricked his arm and Robert jumped back in surprise, rubbing the reddened part of his arm gingerly.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked––though after uttering the words, he realized the utter futility and stupidity of them. How could he have believed that, even for a moment, these socks were capable of intelligence? That, of course, was when the impossible happened.

  “Scourge,” echoed a masked voice.