Time Noir

by David Raymond

Genres: Alien Contact; Humor & Satire; Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

From best-selling author, David Raymond—

Dr. Freddy Fluid is not your typical gorgeous superhero. His eyes flicker like stardust, he can breathe underwater, and obsessive-compulsive disorder has him wound tighter than a two-dollar timepiece. Freddy knows what will happen one minute into the future—in the next. Freddy’s psychiatrist girlfriend, the ever graceful Grace Whisperer, lives entirely in the moment—in the now.

When Freddy is abducted by an omnipotent alien, he learns the fate of the Universe lies within his brilliant mind, which is as stable as a canoe full of clowns in a cyclone.

Meanwhile, all over Miami, colorful characters are vanishing, finding themselves afloat on an alien vessel. Elsewhere on the spaceship, Freddy takes an excruciatingly comical journey into his psyche using everything from acupuncture to ayahuasca to balance next and now in order to prevent the Universe from—as the alien warns—kablooey!

 

Read more

Release date: December 1, 2022

Publisher: David Raymond

Print pages: 318

Content advisory: 18+

Sample

Sea-crets

In an oceanfront penthouse on Miami Beach.
I’ve always had dual settings: breathlessly fast or Buddha slow.

I can’t remain in between. Oh, I’ve experienced that state. I light on middle-ground for a nanosecond, a fleeting tourist. I know, I know, that’s the existence most others live. For me, going the speed limit is not an option. I blow through life, a tormented shooting star. I can’t be contained by any space. I don’t fit. Never did. I’m not even sure I belong here. I think I come from another time, another place, another dimension. Hell, maybe another planet? The Planet of Obsessive Thoughts and Perpetual Motion, ruled by a mad, dragon-riding barista, brandishing a never empty blender of expresso, hot sauce, and marbles. Drink this. Don’t mind the glass shards. Free refills! And, no, we don’t have any damned whipped cream. Fire-breathing dragon—Duh! Another planet would explain a lot. Still, I long for middle-ground; if only for a moment’s respite.

Water. Water slows me down, so I stand in the shower, long, long after I am clean, gazing out the window into now. It’s a Miami Beach day. The kind of day the sun levitates over the ocean like a giant orange, waves break like foam on a café con leche, and it’s hot enough to fry plantains on the sand. Lucky for me, I like it hot. I delight in the steamy water washing over my body as I regard the waves. Water quietens me. As long as I am wet, energy envelops me, a misty blanket of comforting skin, my own membrane too slow for the job. Water. My personal force field. Protecting me. Imprisoning me. Allowing me to remain in the moment. In the now. Water stops my cells’ constant, frantic vibrations I can’t contain on dry land.

My relationship with water has been this way as long as I can remember. The wetness of the shower reminds me of my childhood. When I was 4, I worshipped my time in the bathtub. Playing with my toys—small boats with orange and blue snap on tops, plastic fish, and of course rubber duckie. If I held my yellow duck underwater and squeezed out the air, it filled with water I used to rinse the shampoo from my hair. It took forever, but I enjoyed the experience of the erratic streams hitting my head, gently pushing the hairs around my scalp. Even at 4, I felt it. The sensation of water molecules washing over my skin, harnessing the excess energy escaping my cells. I stayed in that tub until the water turned ice cold, Mother whispering through the door, “Freddy Fluid, get out of there, my exquisite little fishy, before you grow gills.” Mother said it 3 times. Always 3 times, softly, consecutively, each repeated sentence the same cadence. I think that’s what started my obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Some days, I do more counting than a stripper sorting out singles at the end of her shift.) After the third “little fishy,” I forced myself to open the drain, shivering in the coldness of the empty tub until the last drops of water glugged down.

I loved my bathtub, but in life, most good things have a shelf life. Some good things leave with such force you are vacuumed headlong into a dark, slimy well. Sometimes the force of a good thing leaving is so intense, it creates a vortex the size of Sedona, attracting more good things to you. Other times, if you’re lucky as a rabbit’s foot like me, a good thing leaves and transports you along on its wondrous journey, only at the time you feel like the rest of the rabbit—limping along with a missing foot. When I was 5 years old, Mother took me on a journey. A road trip to Naples Beach. Unlike Miami, the sand was white and silky soft, the water shallow, warm, and calm. Bliss! We stayed in a hotel. There was no bathtub. To say I freaked out would be an understatement. Mother slept through all of it. Or so I thought.