Master of Plagues, D. B. Reynolds [best books to read fiction .txt] 📗

now.”
“Tell me what?”
“Close to graduating from NYU, I had put together this prank that me and other classmates pulled on some nerdy, dorky type of guy.”
“What type of prank?”
“I’d purchased this outright gorgeous mechanical sex doll from a sex shoppe in Brooklyn to be a part of the prank.”
“Was this guy a virgin or something?”
“Yes, he was. Anyway, we placed this mechanical sex doll in the bed with hundreds and hundreds of white slimy maggots. We had two guys to bring him to this rat and roach-infested motel in the South Bronx. Once he got there, we had him believing that the doll was a real woman. He pulled back the covers and saw the doll covered with all these maggots.”
“Damn!” Diane denounced. “Anthony, how cruel of you guys! You all could’ve thought of a more civil prank than a mechanical sex doll covered with lots of maggots.”
“Aw, we were just having fun.”
“That’s a cruel, sick way of having fun.”
Anthony humped his shoulders and took in a deep breath. “Would you like to know what he told all of us before we left the room?”
“Can’t wait.”
“He told us that what we’d done to him, it would come back to bite all of us in the backside. Sure enough, that gargantuan rat snuck up in my office and bit me from behind.”
Anthony pulled his pants down to give Diane a visual of what had happened.
“This is why I believe he had something to do with me getting bit back there.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Stuart Duffelmeyer.”
“Why would you believe he had something to do with it?”
“I just do, Diane.”
“But, Stuart’s a human being, not some giant-sized rat.”
“This dorky goofball told all of us that we’d come crawling back on our hands and knees to beg for his forgiveness. The rat the size of Hulk Hogan, that thing also told me that I’d come crawling back on my hands and knees to beg for his master’s forgiveness.”
“What master?”
“Same question I asked. Who in the heck is this rat’s master?”
“Sounds like strange occurrences which stretches way beyond our comprehension.”
“The rat also told me that his master sent him to plague me.”
“Plague you?”
“Yes, like in The Bible. Like the story of the Egyptians that were plagued by frogs and lice and diseases.”
“Where’s this Stuart Duffelmeyer now?”
“Last I heard, he owned and operated some pet stores and vet clinics there in Manhattan and other parts of New York.”
“Where are your other NYU classmates?”
“I don’t know and don’t care,” Stuart expressed quite pompously.
“Have you ever thought about finding this Stuart Duffelmeyer and apologizing to him?”
“Never!” Anthony grumbled upon impulse. “Not in this lifetime, not in the next lifetime, nor in a trillion millenniums to come. I don’t care about giant talking rats or plagues or anything else. It will be him who comes to me on his hands and knees to apologize to me. It will be him who feels the plaguing wrath of Anthony Aldolphus Greenstein in the end.”
Had Anthony known the supernatural powers Stuart possessed, he’d immediately change his tune. His problems hadn’t even begun. His future sorrows were great. Afterall, it was Anthony who gave birth to the prank. It would be him, in the end, who’d come up short. And that was the gospel truth.


CHAPTER—33

ENERGIZING THE ELEMENTS

Saving fifty dollars on a car from Hertz rental in Chicago never mattered one bit to Stuart. The savings might’ve afforded him to cover a few meals while staying in the Windy City. His love for convertibles encouraged him to rent a fire red Corvette with power mirrors, power windows, tilt steering, and a V8 engine. The car came equipped with all the features he needed to make his trip far outside the city limits of Chicago.
Stuart entered Interstate 55 with a full tank of gas. The trip from Chicago to Peoria only required two-thirds of a tank. The north-south highway journey of one-hundred and thirty miles took him just under two hours. A panorama view of downtown Peoria diverted his attention from the road from across the Illinois River. It wasn’t a bad idea to drive through downtown to check out the Peoria Civic Center and O’Brien Field.
Single women leaving their condominiums and riverfront lofts looked over in the street to watch Stuart cruising through in the fancy Corvette. He waved and they waved back. What they saw behind the wheel was a successful young man packed with potent doses of self-assurance. Eccentricly, the face of Laura Rivenburg popped up inside his mind. She wasn’t his wife, but he’d been reminded of how he’d met an attractive and kind-spirited woman who was definitely a keeper.
He cruised on through downtown Peoria and along Grandview Drive, considered the “world’s most beautiful drive” since it ran through Peoria Heights. Stuart drove another eight miles west of Peoria and parked the Corvette. The area claimed nothing but barren flat lands and thick wooded fields. Tornado emergencies were reported many of times in Peoria. Stuart knew he’d come to the perfect area in the state of Illinois.
The National Weather Service picked up many tornado warnings on their Doppler radars and storm spotters in the exact location he decided to take a rest. Motorists were often afraid to travel nearby during tornadoes. They’d been cautioned to take shelter under highway underpasses or abandon their vehicles and hide in low-lying areas. He glanced down at his watch. It was several minutes past seven o’clock. The skies were perfectly clear. The sun had set far in the east. Temperatures climbed to the middle nineties.
Stuart reached into his baggy slacks and brought out the consecrated magical talisman. Like always, he used fierce mental concentration. He ran all ten fingers along the ever powerful Hebrew lettering. The skies high above turned dark gray. Even on a perfectly sunny day, heavy thunderstorm clouds had clustered together. Right from where he stood, within a four-block radius, a funnel-like tail emerged near the ground. Winds twisted and turned at phenomenal speeds. These were the remarkable beginnings of a raging tornado.
The enormous forces of the tornado grabbed Stuart off the ground and inside its hollow corridors. The winds were strong enough to snatch every strand of hair off his head, every tooth from out of his mouth, and every nail from off his hands and feet. The sensitivity in his eardrums caused an irritable popping sensation. This ritual might’ve been the greatest challenge he faced. What he forgot was how he had clashed with the ‘tornado alley’ within the state of Illinois.
The warm and moist air advanced through the eastward cold front to create thunderstorms around the massive tornado. Basketball-sized hail spun around the corridors, missing Stuart everytime it shot from one side to the next. Stuart couldn’t believe he withstood winds at over two-hundred miles per hour.
Telepathic messages were exchanged between him and the humidity levels and temperatures of the monstrous tornado. Suspended between the masses of air which rotated horizontally, Stuart blew a gust of strong wind from his chest. As with the consecration of other legion members, he followed through with much success.
Stuart rotated his head and felt the mighty winds from the tornado. “From this day forward, you will be addressed as Major Joezer, the Hebrew word ‘Joezer’ meaning he that aids. Your Universal powers will aid many helpless souls on this Earth.”
A few seconds was all it took for Stuart to be placed back on level ground. The intense winds, dark clouds, and large hail from Major Joezer, had disappeared within a flash. Wondrously, there were no power outages. Homes and businesses suffered not a speck of damage. Stuart brushed hair back and drove off in the convertible Corvette.


CHAPTER—34

WRATH OF THE WILD WINDS

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago were happy to have the Honorable David Nguyen as one of their chief judges. Years after receiving his juris doctorate from NYU’s School of Law, he looked at job prospects from major law firms and criminal courts in Chicago. The windy city had much to offer him in terms of career choices. David was almost crippled from amazement when he learned that the President of the United States had appointed him top judge.
The big appointment catapulted him into a position of mandated royalty. His first year after arriving in Chicago, David met a beautiful Irish lady named Verna McReynolds. Her long fire red hair, which flowed down her back with deep wavy texture, caught his attention right away. Those dark red freckles around her eyes and nose tickled his senses. Verna had a certain class about her that David found irresistible.
The couple soon ran into problems after they started dating. David’s parents believed he should’ve kept the tradition of the Nguyen family bloodline pure. Translation: They wanted their son to marry an esteemed Korean woman. Threatening to exclude him from the family business, it didn’t affect his choice to continue dating, and then later marrying Verna. Love was love in their eyes. Verna’s family, more particularly her parents, believed she should’ve married a rich and handsome Irish boy. Marrying someone she loved and treated her right leaned more towards her personal sentiments.
Five years into their marriage, Verna presented David with a daughter and a son, three year old Vida Nguyen, and two year old Darrell Nguyen. They were blessed with the most gorgeous Eurasian children on Earth. Verna decided to be a stay-at-home mom since David earned an upper six-figure salary. A one-hundred and fifty-thousand dollar home in the Chicago suburbs suited them just fine. She didn’t mind being a domesticated woman since it’d been a family tradition for many years.
Much activity went on inside the Everett McKinley Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago. Criminals from every spectrum were transported inside the skyscraper at 219 South Dearborn Street. During his short tenure as chief judge, David was noted for his economic analysis of law and his legalist approach to judicial interpretation. Not a court session went by which didn’t raise his interest level. He stepped up on the bench with his black robe swinging side-to-side.
“Next case on the docket,” announced David, a fresh