I am cheating just a little with my Flash Fiction Friday this week. It contains elements of actual events. Is that okay? Cormac? JJ? Anyone? As usual, starter sentence in blue.

"The old camera had been in a box for decades, the pictures never developed, and now with the prints in his hand his blood ran cold from looking at the images that came from it."

He was staring at the image of a woman he had seen just days before... and she looked EXACTLY the SAME. Same frizzy bleached hair. Same crazed look in her eyes. Same drawn-on eyebrows. Only her clothing had changed; she had traded the trampy 1960's era mini skirt and go-go boots from the picture for tight jeans and a mini-shirt. But it was her, all right. How could he ever forget?

But what was her photo doing inside Grandpa's camera?

Grandpa wasn't around to ask. He had died in the 1960's. Well, that's when he disappeared, anyways. Did that lunatic-fringe drunk woman he met the other night have anything to do with it?

That evening he had met up with some friends from high school at an Austin, Texas rooftop bar. They were laughing about old times and new ideas when she sashayed past them with a brawny, mulleted man who was way too young for the likes of her. She was odd from the very beginning, with the monkeys hanging off one of her two large handbags, and her obviously inebriated state. But she got odder.

When Brawny stepped away to get a drink or use the men's room, she surveyed her fellow bar patrons, then stood up in the aisle between the tables. She stood painfully close to him, HIM of all people, and started to do calisthenics. Calisthenics, in the middle of the bar. She bent at the waist so her abdomen was nearly touching her face, its flesh taut, but not supple and luscious like a University of Texas cheerleader. Instead, it was dry and papery, like one of Ed Gein's lampshades. He sat absolutely still, suppressing a shudder and keeping his eyes straight ahead at all costs while his friends laughed.

When she failed to get a reaction out of him with her sexy moves, she sat back down and proceeded to take pill bottle after pill bottle out of her purse. The non-monkey purse. By that time, Brawny had returned.

More people sat down, and she got up and flitted from table to table, before returning to her seat to rifle through several wallets filled to bursting with untold numbers of credit cards. Finally, she and Brawny left.

The waitress came over and apologized to him and his friends, saying the drunk woman had unfairly monopolized her time, and had given her numerous credit cards that all were declined, and then accused her of stealing one of them. They all had a good laugh over the silly woman. The waitress left, and he and his friends resumed their earlier conversation.

Until she returned. Sans Brawny. This time, after sitting down heavily and noisily in the seat at the adjoining table, she jumped back up and began spinning a tale about how Brawny was supposed to be her knight in shining armor, but had left her instead. And the bar had lost her ATM card, so she had no way to get back to the airport. So could he please, please give her a ride to the airport?

Luckily, his friends rescued him this time and they extricated themselves from the crazy drunk woman. He thought that he had seen the last of the woman. But now this photo...

The day after he found his grandfather's old camera sitting in a box and had the photos developed, he was enjoying the newspaper with his morning coffee. The police had found an unidentified man's remains. It was difficult to determine exactly how long the corpse had been in the dumpster behind the Iron Cactus bar and restaurant, since it was mummified and drained of all its fluids. Atop the skeletal remains was a glorious mane of brown hair. Mullet-style.

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(This is hastily written and probably crappy. I wrote it in 20 minutes so I can go meet some friends for coffee. I apologize.)