“Lost Songs”
Some sort of beginning.

          “I wrote a song earlier tonight,” he yells at me.  I turn to face him for a second, feigning interest: “What’s it about?”
          “I’m not sure, man,” he replies, “when I was trying to sleep this afternoon, it just started to come to me.  It told a story, though…like, of a guy; he woke up one day and…well, he did something different.  I can’t remember what!”
          Well, sounds like you got a real hit there,” I jokingly yelled.
          “…Asshole!  There was a deep meaning and emotion somewhere in it; I just can’t remember the lyrics right now.”
          “Do you children want to get fired!?”   Jake and I turned around to see Sylvia walking up.
          “What do you mean?” I yelled back.
          “What do I mean!?  You irresponsible…FOOLS are on the clock, sitting in a…EFFING strip club!”  Sylvia was like that: she tried not to curse in uniform, lest someone think she was anything but a proper lady, who just happens to be covered in blood by the end of most nights she works with us.  You can’t really work a four man job with three men.  Especially when one of those men is Sylvia…a lady.
          “I know we’re on the clock!” Jake yelled.  The next dancer was just starting her routine, so the volume kicked up.  “But we’re on break for the next twenty minutes at least!”
          “Yeah, just come and sit with us, Sylvia.  So what if we left you sleeping in the truck while we went in a strip club…again.”  I shrugged innocently, and as she sat down, she said what sounded like “who sums the ditches.”
          “So which of these chicks is hot to you!?” Jake asked, elbowing me in the shoulder.  One of them had dark hair, brown probably, but black under the red lights; you know, the kind all strip clubs have to hide those small imperfections in the dancers like scars…and bruises.  The other was a blonde clone of the brunette; they could have been twins.
          “I dunno,” I shouted back, “I like girls with dark hair.”  Sylvia’s hair glowed red for a second as she looked across the club.  That’s how jet black it is.  “What about you!?”
          “Eh!...Neither of these two are really…’in my league’ I guess!”  His shrug accented the volume of his voice.
          Sylvia leaned close to me, “Yeah, the only league he’s interest in is the fucken LITTLE league.”  I flinched a little, because she was close to my ear and her laughing shook my ear drum a little.
          “Amuse yourself!?” I asked her.
          “What!?” Jake asked.
          “She called you a pedophile!” I said.
          “Oh!...Okay!”  He shrugged and took a drink.
          I’m not sure if it’s the bass of some remix of a popular song or hunger, but my stomach was rumbling.  The rumbling reminded me what night it was.
          “Do we have time to grab some food before heading back to that hospital!?”  After asking, Jake put his drink down and looked at Sylvia, whom I was facing while speaking.  There was almost anticipation on his face.
          Sylvia nodded toward the door and we got up to leave.  As we made our way out, Jake exchanged words with the bouncer and I wondered how many times he was here without us.

          In the truck, Sylvia had some goofy new wave playing on the radio.  “We should suit up and go to Rocky’s.”
          “I could go for some pizza,” Jake said, rubbing his stomach.  “Don’t we get free eats there?”
          “Only if we show up in full uniform,” she replied.
          “How ‘bout you, Dave?  You cool with pizza?”  Jake patted the shoulder of my seat.
          “Yeah sure…I’m fine with it.”  I was miles away when they were talking.  Some nights like this I was always getting sidetracked in my head.
          “Are you all right, Dave?”  Sylvia rubbed my real shoulder.
          “I’m cool,” I said, “…Let’s just get…somethin’.”  With Sylvia rubbing my shoulder, I was two steps toward retarded that moment.
          “Seriously, man…are you all right?”  Jake shook my seat a little.  I shrugged it off.
          “I’m all right.  Let’s just pick up the pie and chill out in that break room with the couches.”  We weren’t reporting to headquarters tonight; they had us assigned to a random hospital in the city.  “I don’t care about wearing the full uniform if it’ll get us free eats from Rocky’s.”
          “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Jake said, pointing forward.  “Punch it, woman, we only got like ten minutes of break left.”
          I climbed to the back of the truck with Jake and we started undressing while Sylvia drove the last couple miles to Rocky’s Italiano.  The suits are typical haz-mat style because half of our work is clean-up.  The only difference is sometimes we would have a little fun with it…and weren’t too good to accept free food from almost a dozen places in town for possibly looking foolish for a couple minutes.  The suit covers every inch of your body, and there are a few typed of head gear depending on the situation we were up against.  For special occasions such as this, though, we had different heads to put on.
          “Hey, dude, do you want the panda this time?”  Jake asked, tossing the severed head to me over a stretcher.
          “I suppose.  Hey, Sylvia, you want the teddy bear again?”  We wouldn’t have had so many choices if night pay wasn’t so good; and, I do realize the double negative…just enjoy it.  Sylvia turned for a second and looked at the bear head.
          “Like she’s going to wear anything but the bear head,” Jake joked.  He peeled off his shirt, then took his shoes and pants off, stepping into the suit carefully.
          Jake is a few inches taller than me, and about the same build, but still slightly larger.  He tapped Sylvia and pulled a daredevil move, setting the cruise control while helping Sylvia hop over the driver’s seat onto the stretcher, then falling onto the wheel to keep control and flipping the cruise control back to “off.”
          “I almost forgot,” he reminded me, “ toss that pig head up here for me.”  Sylvia chuckles to herself, and I saw her mouth the word ‘fitting.’  I tossed the furry thing towards him and it made a soft bonk as it bounced off the windshield into the passenger seat.  I was sitting on the back bench in my boxers, handing Sylvia a spare shirt and sweater, bending low to reach the backpack in the bottom of the floor compartment.
          “You better get dressed,” Sylvia said, looking at her watch.  “We only have a couple minutes left of break.”  I handed her the backpack and she dug through it, pulling a big pair of boots out of its pouch; clinks of metal tapping metal rang out as she did.
          “Hey…watch out.  Those ARE loaded,” Jakes said over his shoulder.
          “I know they are.  I’m not the one who almost blew my leg off sawing the finger guard away.”
          “It’s impossible to squeeze a thick, gloved finger into the trigger without being able to fire only a lone shot.  The suit was thick enough, even in the hands, to stop a hypodermic needle from giving you HIV while you felt through a dead user’s mattress looking for that strange item that may have killed him.
          Sylvia undressed from her normal uniform and felt around another compartment for some sweatpants.  Looking at her, my chest hurt a little and time slowed just enough.  Her ass was pointed out just enough as she was bent over to accentuate the lines in her lower back.  After another second, it moved left to right, and I looked higher to see those dark green eyes looking back at me.
          “See something you like, stranger?”  Sylvia laughed.  Sometimes she said things that didn’t make perfect sense, because Sylvia’s an eccentric girl, quoting older than old movies and books, and sometimes catches herself before she goes too far…though not a often as she likes to admit.
          “Nah, Dave’s a fag.  He only likes those wholesome, NORMAL girls.  I swear, dude, you gotta have some split personality to want such a ‘normal’ life while doing this for a living at the same time,” Jake scoffed.
          “Hey,” I snapped back up to him,” statutory rape is normal to you, buddy.”  I stepped into my suit, and Sylvia pulled up her sweatpants while stepping into the boots.  They made her almost as tall as me or Jake, if he didn’t have shoes on.
          Jakes shoulders shrugged.  “It’s only wrong because society has taught you it’s wrong.”
          Probably to make him jealous, Sylvia leaned closer to me, “after we’re done here, you better hope the break room isn’t occupied because I might want you to…chow down.”  She looked down, winked, and let out a chuckle.  What I said before about Sylvia?  That’s an example…she would never say something like that if Jake wasn’t there…but he is, so she does.
          “Now, it’s nice, but the way you said that didn’t make the offer much more tempting,” I laughed.  The blood was hot in my veins.
          “Fine…maybe I’ll let Jake finally have his way with me, then.”
          “Oh, don’t you fucken play with me like that,” Jake said, parking the truck.  “Besides, get in gear, kids, break’s over and we have to get back to that hospital in half an hour.”
          I nudged Sylvia and, low enough for her alone to hear: “hey…don’t close shop just because you’re bad at advertising.”

          Jake locked the truck up in a parking lot a couple blocks from Rocky’s.  Sylvia pulled a small stack of picket signs from the ceiling compartment and handed the backpack to me, pocketing a nine millimeter; the pockets are big enough in the front to hold a number of specimen bags, which could be holding anything from fingers or dime bags up to larger chunks of other…specimen.
          I took the last two pistols out and pocketed them carefully.  I handed Jake a shotgun with a jagged, hand-sawed barrel, also his handiwork.  He carefully slid it into the big thigh pocket and grabbed one of the normal haz-mat head dresses from the rack.  When we put those on, here was no telling what was inside the suit.  Combine that with waving big, black boxes like you’re checking for radiation, and the street is empty of the few people actually out this time of night.
          In case you hadn’t realized, the boxes in fact did not contain Geiger counters...they did nothing, short of holding the fuzzy heads of a pig, a panda, and a teddy bear (respectively), as well as a few signs for Sylvia to use because her female voice would stick out too easily, especially if some hidden device might be recording audio.  Luckily, there was no one in sight, and Rocky’s was the only space fully lit.
          As the three of us made our way closer to the front door of Rocky’s Italiano, Jake leaned closer to me: “dude, I’m starting to piece that song back together…the one I told you about.”
          I turned and looked at him as we walked.  “Not now,” I said in a more garbled, deep tone.
          “You’ve been practicing,” he replied.  Everything gets a little garbled when you’re wearing the hood.
          Outside the front door, we looked around one more time and put on our respective heads, leaving the original hoods in the black boxes outside.
          “Remember,” Sylvia said in a whisper, “Bobby Virgino we’re looking for…ver-jean-oh, long ‘e’ sound.  We don’t need to look like asses in there.”  That new wave song from earlier was stuck in my head.
          “Let’s just get this over with before I develop an ulcer,” Jake said, rubbing his stomach with his free hand.  All seriousness aside, seeing a man of around six foot rubbing his belly while wearing a thick yellow suit and furry pig head is a perk for any night on the job.
          I just sighed, thinking how much I can’t wait to get back to the hospital…in the break room.