I ran out of inspiration for chrysalis, and started something new... So without further ado: 1569 words of finding wisdom.


Spoiler: Finding wisdom, Part one
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On the third day of my search for Wisdom, I chased a pickpocket into a fairytale.
I had followed a trail of strange and vague clues and it had led me to the city. I rented a tiny room in a ratty motel on the outskirts of a ghetto.
Locating missing people is more of an art than a science, and like most art it doesn’t pay as much as the artist would prefer. Also like a lot of other artforms, it frequently brings the artist face to face with some pretty philosophical questions.
When my clint called and asked me to locate a girl Wisdom, my first question was; What kind of a name is Wisdom?
That’s the kind of question you keep to yourself though. So I asked the client why he though Wisdom was missing, and he invited me to his mansion to talk about it.
The mansion in question was huge, oppulent and slightly worn looking. All those adjectives also applied to my client.
Arthur Dunning Grayham the third was as tall as me, even though he was sitting down. He wore a crisp white suit, gold rings on seven out of ten fingers and reclined in a leather chair worth a five digit number of dollars.
His beard was well trimmed, but turning grey. His eyes were inteligent, but there were bags under them, big enough to make me think he hadn’t slept for a week.
“Axel Cobe?” His voice was a deep rumble, the question was a formality. He knew who I was, his butler had told him when I arrived, and most likely he had seen my picture twenty times before deciding to hire me.
I nodded.
“I appreciate that you came so swiftly.” He began.
I cleared my throat. He stopped speaking and eyed me with a certain ammount of surprise on his face. This was not a man who was used to being interrupted.
“I am glad you called me, you are glad I came. Theres is business to discuss. You have someone you want me to find. I have bills to pay. Skip the preamble, and let me get on the job.” I spoke softly, and looked him in the eye as I did.
He didn’t answer for a full ten seconds. I watched his face, looking for the moment where surprise would turn to anger. Against my expectation, the moment didn’t come.
Arthur’s mouth opened into a brilliant smile, and he let out a rolling chuckle. Then he shook his head and looked at me as if he saw me for the first time.
“I had heard you were a straightforward man,” He said seriously. “But I didn’t expect you to be so blunt.”
“Sooo…” I spread my hands in a questioning gesture. “Am I hired?”
He gave that a few seconds of thought. Hes gold ringed fingers steepled undr his chin as he considered.
“Tell me what you have already found out about the case before you came here.” He said seriously.
“You are Arthur Dunning Grayham the third.” I stated. “Your ward, a young lady called Wisdom has gone missing. She has been gone for just under a day, but you are certain she is not just spending the night at a friend’s house. She isn’t the streetwise type and you fear for her safety, but you have yet to recieve a ransom note or anything like it.”
He stared at me, silently trying to figure out how I knew that much just hours after he had contacted me. He had as much as told me most of it himself.
He gave me the name Wisdom, and the adress of his mansion. It wasn’t rocket science to figure out who lived at the adress, or his relation to the girl. The next clue was the lack of police. If the boys in blue weren’t here, it meant that Arthur hadn’t contacted them. So he either didn’t believe Wisdom was in real danger, or he had other reasons to avoid involving the cops.
He had contacted me though. So he wanted her found, probably on the down low, which was fine by me. That’s my job after all.
“You are hired.” He said after almost a minute of silence.
“Good.” I gave him a half smile. “Give me all the details you have and I will get your ward back. Soon.”
“We have not discussed your sallary.” He objected.
“You contacted me.” I shrugged. “You know what my services cost.”
An hour later, I left the mansion. In a manilla folder under my arm I carried the clues that would let me find wisdom. I didn’t have much to work with, but I have found more with less in the past.
Wisdom had left the mansion twentytwo hours earlier, she had not been seen since. Her credit card had been used once since her disappearance, and she had left a strange garbled message on the mansion’s answerphone.
It boggled my mind, that the mansion was old enough to have a landline and an answerphone. What was this? The nineties?
I used the first day of my search to run down the location of the credit card charge and find out where the call had come from. Both pointed to a cheap bar on an old street near the middle of The City.
That was my first stop then.
I had a gut feeling, that Wisdom was going to take some finding, so I booked a motel room. That night, I fell asleep in a well worn bed, staring at wallpaper from the seventies and listening to a garbled answerphone message on repeat.
That sort of thing helps me think.
I spend day two pounding the pavement, canvassing and asking dangerous questions. The boring part of finding things takes up ninety percent of the allotted time. It takes patience to be good at your job, and I am very good at my job.
My questions and all my nosiness hadn’t yielded a lot by the end of day two. I had a fair idea about who was moving behind the schenes on the streets of the city. Several people had given me the impression that the could point me in the right direction.
Upon closer expection they seemed to be mistaken, or outright lying in the hopes of getting a reward for giving me information.
The bar where Wisdom had bought a soda and made her call, gave me only the vaguest of clues. I showed the bartender a picture of the girl. Pale skin, hair like snow and eyes so blue you could drown in them. Not a vissage one easily forgets.
The bartender hadn’t forgotten her, but he could only confirm that she had bought a soda and made a call from the old phone they lend out to customers. I was about to leave, when he added thoughtfully, that he though there had been someone with her.
After fifteen minutes of further questions, all I was left with was a vague description. A skinny guy in a long coat. Short black hair. No description of the face, the bartender had only seen him from behind and from the other end of the room.
In the end I went back to my motel room, sank down into a ratty chair and pressed play on the voice recording.
I closed my eyes and listened to the whole thing for something like the hundreth time.

“Arthur.
Please don’t scrrrsc, I am scrrsc danger scrrsc not alone. There is something I must scrrrsc.. cannot help me find it. I will return scrrrrrrsc.. that which was promised to me.
I will scrrrsc. Bye.”

There was the clicking sound of wisdom hanging up the reciever, then the message started over. I pondered it as my mind drifted to sleep. What was hidden under the bits of static? The message could mean anything, more or less. It all depended on what had been left out.
I fell asleep before it repeated for the fifth time.
I dreamt of chasing a girl, Which looked a lot like the picture of wisdom. She ran through a maze of red rosed and old newspaper cutouts. I finally caught upp to her in fromt of an article about the Fifth Street Burglar and how he had been apprehended.
In the dream I grapped Wisdom by the wrist and tried to pull her with me, out of danger back to the mansion. But she twisted and struggled in my grip. Then suddenly the picture of the burglar rose out of the oversized curout and attacked me. I fended of the black abd white immage of the criminal, but Wisdom took the chance to skamper.
I tried to yell a warning at her, but found myself sitting in the ratty chair, yelling into an empty motel room. Next to me my phone was blaring a ring tone.
It took me five seconds to realise that someone was calling me. When I finally fumbled the fone up to my ear, my voice sounded rough and sleepdeprived.
“Yeah?” I asked into the phone.
“There was another charge on Wisdoms credit card.” Arthur said on the other end of the line.
After a second I realised the significance of the statement. I blinked my eyes open and forced some life into my voice.
“Where?” I asked getting out of the chair.