A native of upstate New York, Devin prefers the countryside over cities, and dogs and cats over humans. His interests include throwing paint on canvases, walking through the woods, and exercising. His favorite word is urchin, though he’s never used it in a sentence. He can be found on Instagram @devinjamesleonard

Publications:

GROVERS MILL – The Yard: Crime Blog

CATCH AND RELEASE – The Yard: Crime Blog

TAG – Nat 1 Publishing LLC

BLOOD BROTHERS – The Piker Press

ROLE WITH IT – Fiction on the Web

MIND THE FIRE – Yellow Mama Webzine

THE CARGO – Bare Hill Review

DEAD INSIDE – Dragon Soul Press

DOG DAY MIDNIGHT – BarBar Literary Magazine

Gopher Broke

Ollie Anderson was fast asleep, having a dream he’d never remember, when his roommates JT and Desmond roused him with the effort of shaking a drowning victim back to life and asked him where the gun was.

He sat up in bed, rubbing his knuckles against his eyes, and grasping to hold on to that dream that was already out of his reach.

“Gun?” he said. “What gun?”

JT and Desmond exchanged fed-up looks, an expression Ollie had grown accustomed to since moving in with them. They were always asking him questions, and then the shared frustration would dawn on their faces because he never had the answers. It wasn’t Ollie’s fault his memory was shoddy. Sure, he partook in drugs and alcohol, and would even huff glue and spray paint in a pinch. He enjoyed psychedelics and hallucinogens as much as the next guy—Okay, maybe a little more than the average fellow—but the mind-altering substances, although they’d killed plenty of his brain cells over the years, were not at fault for his troubling and complete absence of memory.

Ollie always had issues with short-term recollections. Pieces of information and segments of his day would vanish from his brain as if they had never happened. Whether it was a lack of focus, inattentiveness, or a serious head injury, the cause of his ailment was unknown to him. Even if he discovered the root of his condition, Ollie would have soon forgotten it.  

What were they asking him this time? A gun?

Desmond, the head of the household, shut his eyes and sighed through his nose while sitting at the edge of the bed. “Ollie,” he said, “what did we talk about yesterday?”

Ollie yawned and shook his head. “I don’t even know what we’re talking about right now.”

“The gun,” JT said. “The one I told you my friend borrowed and wouldn’t give back?”

More head-shaking from Ollie.

“The prop!” Desmond shouted.

Ollie’s eyes lit up. That’s right, the prop gun, a fake M16 rifle. It was black and heavy and looked exactly like the real thing. They needed it for their short film. JT was a filmmaker, Desmond was an actor, and Ollie was whatever they needed him to be. Most of the time, Ollie was a scene partner for Desmond, sometimes helping JT behind the camera, and always the gopher, an errand boy (JT had taught him gopher meant Go-for, as in go-for-this, go-for-that). Last night, he now remembered, JT had asked him to go-for the prop gun his old acquaintance had borrowed and refused to return, by breaking into his garage and stealing it back.

“That’s right,” Ollie said, nodding. “The prop.”

“Did you get it?” Desmond said.

Ollie peered around his bedroom, simultaneously searching for the prop, the answer, the memory. “I don’t know.”

“You went to his house,” JT said. It sounded like a statement, not a question.

“I don’t know,” Ollie responded.

“You don’t know if you went?” Desmond said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what do you know?”

“Nothing—I don’t know.”

Desmond sneered at JT. “I told you this would happen. For the thousandth time, I told you he would do this.” To Ollie, he said, “You really need to see a doctor and get your head examined.”

“For what?” Ollie said.

“For—!” Desmond roared, then took a calm breath, and muttered. “Your memory, Ollie.”

“I don’t need to go to the doctor. There’s nothing wrong with my head.”

“What did you have for dinner yesterday?”

“I forget.”

“You—!”

JT patted Desmond on the shoulder to settle him. “We’re getting off track here, guys,” he said, then to Ollie, “Just tell us what you can remember. Walk us through yesterday.”

“Well,” Ollie began, “I woke up—”

“Fast-fucking-forward,” Desmond interrupted. “I’ll tell you where to start. We told you to steal the prop. We gave you the guy’s address. You left the house at nine o’clock last night. What happened next?”

Ollie stared at the ceiling, thinking about it. Thinking long enough for JT and Desmond to throw their arms in the air and groan.

“We’re just gonna have to go over there,” JT said, “and retrace his steps.”

#

His name was Dan Trimble, Ollie remembered on the drive over. He was twenty-two years old and had grown up with JT and Desmond. The three of them used to make videos together, mostly short skits, to post online for their friends and family to watch. JT had mentioned he’d gone to Trimble to retrieve the prop gun he let him borrow four years ago when they were still in high school and, when JT went to get it back, this Trimble guy had claimed the rifle belonged to him. And since he wouldn’t hand it over willingly, JT and Desmond had sent Ollie to sneak into Trimble’s parents’ garage, where he lived, to get it back. Ollie remembered now, pulling up to the house, that they put Ollie on the job because Trimble didn’t know Ollie, and wouldn’t recognize him if he got caught. That, and because Ollie was their gopher.

            Desmond steered into the empty driveway, parked in front of the garage, looked at Ollie in the backseat via the rearview mirror, and said, “Does this place look familiar to you?”

            Ollie nodded, even though it didn’t.

The house was a basic one-story bungalow, with an attached garage on the right-hand side, with a large sectional door. The door was on rollers, meaning when it opened, it raised straight up and onto a vertical track on the inside. Some of these doors came with small windows on the top panels, but this one didn’t. It meant they couldn’t see the interior without going inside first.

Ollie, Desmond, and JT exited the car and approached the garage, rounding to the right in search of a way inside. That’s where they found a traditional door, left wide open. The doorframe, where the deadbolt would have been set had the door been shut and locked, was chipped and splintered, most likely from a tool used to pry it open.

“Oh, yeah,” Desmond said. “Ollie was here.”

“How can you tell?” Ollie said.

Without answering Ollie’s question, only giving him a look that suggested Ollie was a moron, Desmond reached into the entry and flipped on the light switch before stepping inside. Ollie and JT followed, and broken glass and pieces of plastic crunched beneath their feet.

The inside was in complete disarray. A bedframe lay in the middle of the room, with the mattress and box spring tossed to the concrete floor. A small couch in one corner had its cushions removed and thrown to the opposite side. Whatever had been on display atop the shelving attached to the walls was now on the floor, broken to pieces. Clothes and broken dresser drawers littered the cramped space. It was evident that this place had been ransacked and completely demolished in the process.

JT looked at the chaotic scene, his eyes wide with understanding, and simply said, “Yep, Ollie was here.”

“Hold on,” Ollie said, raising his hands. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“You got another explanation for what happened here?”

“Yeah, it looks like someone broke in and trashed the place.”

“You did,” Desmond said. “Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know. A thief?”

“You were the thief, Ollie.”

“How am I a thief if I was coming here to take back what already belonged to us?”

“You know what I goddamn mean,” Desmond said. “Speaking of which—where the hell is it?”

“Where is what?” Ollie said.

“The gun—the prop.”

“I’m almost positive I don’t have it.”

“Then it must be here still,” JT said.

“Or he lost it after he stole it,” Desmond said.

JT and Desmond waded further into the cluttered garage, flipping over items, their heads swiveling as they searched. Ollie remained at the doorway, watching, thinking, studying the room, trying to spark a memory. Had he actually come here last night, tossed the place, and forgotten? He sincerely didn’t know, genuinely could not recall. But that didn’t make it not true. There were plenty of instances where Ollie couldn’t remember something, and many occasions where JT and Desmond had to retrace his steps like a couple of detectives and uncover the truth.

He really ought to ease up on the glue. At least see a doctor.

A buzzing mechanical sound droned. Ollie, JT, and Desmond looked up at the ceiling, where the electric garage door motor hummed and the rollers spun up the tracks. The door was rising.

“Quick,” JT said, “in the house.” He opened the door connected to the side of the house, darted inside, and Desmond followed. Ollie skirted across the garage, from the outside door to the inside door, leaped into the house, and shut the door just as the garage motor quit its purring.

Hustling through the house in a panic, he caught up with his friends peering out a front window.

“Shit, it’s Trimble,” JT said.

Desmond slapped him upside the back of the head. “Why the hell did you have us run in here? The car’s outside. He already knows someone’s here.”

“I forgot.”

Ollie snickered. “Maybe you should get that checked out.”

“Heat of the moment mistake, Ollie,” JT said. “Come on. We’ll sneak out the back, pretend we were waiting for him out there.”

They shuffled to the rear of the house, sneaking out through a sliding glass door into the backyard, and ran to the back of the garage. As they rounded the corner, they slowed to a walk and made their way to the front. Coming toward them in the driveway, with two bags of groceries in hand, was Trimble. He was a short, scrawny man, wearing sweatpants and a tank top that appeared baggy over his slender frame, not an ounce of muscle on his body. Despite being the same age as JT and Desmond, he looked about twelve. His left eye was black and blue and halfway swollen shut, and his bottom lip was split and puffy. He halted upon noticing them.

“Oh,” he said. “You again.” Rather than being distraught, he seemed more irritated by this unannounced visit.

“Which of us might you be referring to?” Ollie said.

“You.”

“Well, that confirms it,” JT said.

“What do you guys want?” Trimble said, and walked into the garage, not even bothering to look around or acknowledge the mess on his floor. He moved as if his place always appeared this ravaged.

They followed him inside, and JT said, “Say, Trimble, what happened here?”

“Ask him,” Trimble said, glancing at Ollie.

“We can assure you, he doesn’t know,” Desmond said.

Trimble couldn’t seem to find a flat, clean surface amidst the debris to place his groceries. He swept away pieces of glass with his shoe, dropped his bags to the floor, and said, “I gave you the stupid gun. You trashed my place and beat on me after I gave you what you wanted. You said you wouldn’t come back, but here you are.”

Ollie couldn’t believe it. Sure, he was a big man, built like a bouncer at a biker bar, with a long beard, and scary as all hell. But Ollie was as soft as a pillow and didn’t have a violent bone in his body.

“Are you sure it was me that did all this?” he said doubtfully.

“Well, not you, per se,” Trimble said. “It was that psychopath you were with.” He glared at Ollie. “What? You don’t remember?”

“He doesn’t,” JT said.

“Hang on,” Desmond said. “Go back. What psychopath? You mean Ollie wasn’t alone?”

Trimble shook his head. JT and Desmond considered Ollie with their usual gaping faces of pure confusion.

“Who the hell is he talking about?” Desmond said, and before Ollie could open his mouth to say he didn’t know, Desmond said, “You don’t remember. Got it.”

Trimble snatched up his grocery bags, hugging them to his chest, and gestured to the messy room with his chin. “So, what is it you guys want? As you can see, I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment.”

“We’re just trying to figure out what happened,” Desmond said.

And JT added, “To my prop gun.”

“What?” said Trimble.

“Where’s my prop gun, Trimble? If you gave it back to me like I’d asked, none of this would have happened.”

Trimble nudged his chin at Ollie. “I gave it to him. Ask him.”

“He doesn’t know!”

“Then ask his henchman! He’s the one who left carrying it!”

“We don’t know who this guy is. Ollie doesn’t even know who he is.”

“Well, neither do I. Either way, it’s out of my hands. We’re done here. Leave, or I’m calling the cops.”

They left, and on the drive home, they muddled it over, especially Ollie, thinking up Ollie’s friends, his acquaintances, someone who’d fit the profile of what Trimble had called a psychopath. He couldn’t think of anybody. His only friends were the two guys he was currently sitting in the car with; them, and their fourth roommate, Logan, who was JT’s older brother. But Logan was just a drug-dealing degenerate who rented the extra room in their house. He was no friend of Ollie’s. Even when they were together in the house, he avoided him at all costs. He never would have recruited Logan for this gopher mission.

Ollie reiterated everything on his mind, saying, “You guys are the only people I hang out with. And Logan.”

“You wouldn’t have asked him to go with you,” Desmond said.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“And Logan wouldn’t have gone if he had,” JT said.

“Plus, Trimble knows your brother’s face,” Desmond said to JT. “All those videos we made in high school? He would have seen Logan hanging around. Would have recognized him.”

JT nodded in agreement. “He said he didn’t know who Ollie’s henchman was.”

“Who the hell could it be, then?”

Silence in the car. No answers.

Then Ollie said, “So, do we know where the prop is, or…?”

Desmond turned his head to the backseat. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.

#

In bed later that night, half asleep after a day of retracing his steps and searching the house for the prop gun, and finding nothing, Ollie’s door crept open, and JT’s older brother peeked his head inside.

“Psst,” Logan whispered. “You ready?”

Ollie squinted. “Ready for what?”

“What we talked about.”

“You and I talked?”

“Are you messing with me?”

“I don’t know.”

Logan frowned. “What?”

Ollie frowned back. “What?”

“Get your ass up,” Logan hissed. “And don’t wake the others. Top secret, remember?”

Remember…what a riot.

Ollie got up and got dressed, no more questions asked, and tiptoed out of the house and into Logan’s car, where Logan was waiting for him. They backed out of the driveway and drove away to wherever Logan presumed Ollie knew they were going.

Staring at the road ahead, Logan said, “You didn’t dress the way I told you.”

Ollie stared down at the blue jeans and white hoodie he’d just thrown on. Logan was wearing all black, top to bottom, with a beanie on his head to match. His clothes were so dark that all Ollie could see of him in the lightless interior of the car was his ugly mug.

“How was I supposed to dress?”

“The same as me,” Logan said, “like I told you.”

“When did you tell me this?”

“Jesus Christ—last night.”

“You’re gonna have to remind me,” Ollie said, “what we’re doing. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember last night, or you don’t remember what we’re doing?”

“All of the above.”

Logan winced at him, but it was more sympathy than anger. “The job we discussed—we got bills to pay, money to make. I need you for muscle. Ringing any bells?”

Ollie shook his head. “What time was this when we discussed this job?”

Logan shrugged. “Yesterday—what’s it matter?”

“Been trying to retrace my steps. I did a gopher run last night for JT. Fumbled it, I guess.”

“You what?”

“Fumbled.”

“No—gopher. What’s that?”

Ollie tried to explain, saying, “Go for this, go for that. A gopher—like on a movie set. He’s the guy that handles any task that needs getting done.”

“Ah,” Logan said, “so that makes you my gopher tonight, then.”

“If only I knew what I was going-for,” Ollie said, and then, “Say, you didn’t come with me to handle a job last night, did you?”

Logan cocked an eyebrow. “I ain’t nobody’s bitch,” he said. “I’m the goddamn showrunner around here.”

Whether that was a yes or no, Ollie didn’t know.

When Logan pulled off the road and they snuck a hundred yards through the woods and came out onto a dark backyard and approached the sliding glass door at the back of the house, Ollie couldn’t determine if he was having déjà vu—a false sense of memory—or if this house, this garage attached to the house, had come from a legitimate recollection. It sure as hell looked familiar, though.

Logan approached the glass door, quietly jiggled the handle, found it locked, and so skirted over to a back window. Ollie followed close behind him and quietly uttered, “Have we been here before?”

Logan slid the window open. “Not that I’m aware,” he said, and climbed through the window, disappearing inside. A moment later, the door slid over, and Logan waved Ollie in.

Tiptoeing through the darkness, Ollie followed Logan and whispered, “Whose place is this?”

“I’ll explain later,” Logan said under his breath.

Quietly, they made their way through the house, sneaking along the carpeted floor, down the hall, and past the bathroom until they reached two doors. Logan entered the room on the right, creeping the door open and stepping into more darkness. He flipped the light on, and Ollie stopped at the doorway and looked. It was an office, a small room with a desk on one wall and a few shelves on the other, and a closet. This room didn’t look familiar at all to Ollie, so it must’ve been déjà vu before.

Logan rummaged through the desk drawers first, then rushed to the shelves, did a quick scan, and then opened the closet. Ollie remained in the doorway.

“Don’t just stand there,” Logan murmured. “Look!”

“For what?”

“Something worth stealing.”

The hallway light behind Ollie shot on, and before he had a second to react, Logan hissed at him, “Shut that goddamn light off.”

“What the hell!” a voice screeched at the back of Ollie’s head. He swung around, and standing in the doorway opposite the office was the vague resemblance of a skinny kid whose name Ollie should have known. Don? Tremble?

“Trimble!” Ollie said.

“Not you again,” the little man huffed.

Astounded, Ollie spun back to the office, where Logan casually stood close by. With Logan on one side of him and Trimble on the other, Ollie’s shoulders were practically brushing them both as he stood between them in the narrow hall.

“This is Trimble’s house,” he screeched.

“Ah, he remembers,” Logan said.

“How could he forget?” Trimble said. “He was just here today,”

“And last night, too,” Logan said, smirking because he knew something Ollie didn’t.

“It was you,” Ollie said. “You’re the psychopath that beat on Trimble?”

Logan didn’t offer any confirmation, only grinning as if he were being complimented.

Behind Ollie, Trimble said, “You mind telling me what the hell you two think you are doing here—again?”

Without turning around, Ollie raised a finger above his shoulder to quiet him, and said to Logan, “You mind telling me what the hell we’re doing here?”

 “Kid told us his parents were away,” Logan said. “He was supposed to be sleeping in the garage. How was I to know he’d be in the house?”

“I had to stay in my parent’s room,” Trimble said, “because you trashed mine.”

“Shush,” Ollie told Trimble, still facing Logan. “I don’t get it. JT said Trimble knows you, so how come he told us today he didn’t recognize you?”

“Because,” Trimble answered for Logan, “he said he’d come back and beat me all over again if I ever mentioned—”

“Shut up,” Ollie said. “Logan, how did you end up with me last night?”

Logan crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder on the door. “You told me JT had a job for you. You said you were worried you’d mess it up, so I came with you. After this knucklehead told us he was in the garage all by himself, we came up with the plan to come back and steal whatever his folks had in the house.”

Ollie pressed his fingers to his temples, wincing, forcing himself to remember, but couldn’t recall.

In the silence, Trimble said, “Guys?”

“Shut up, Trimble,” Ollie said. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” he asked Logan, “I asked you if you came with me last night, and you said it wasn’t you.”

Logan shrugged. “I didn’t say it wasn’t me. I said I wasn’t anyone’s bitch.”

“Technically, you were my gopher.”

“Was not.”

“What’s a gopher?” Trimble inquired.

“Butt out,” Logan said.

“Excuse me, but you are in my house!”

“You still could have told me it was you,” Ollie said to Logan.

“You said you didn’t remember. I didn’t feel like wasting my breath explaining.”

“Well, explain it now!”

“Explain it on your way out of my house,” Trimble said, returning to his parents’ bedroom. “I’m calling the cops.”

“I’m out of here,” Ollie said, and stomped away.

Calling after him, Logan said, “Be right there. Just gonna say bye to Trimble.”

#

Home on the couch, Ollie and Logan were quietly sharing a joint, each with a beer in hand. Ollie continued to rub his temples, though he couldn’t determine whether it was helping restore his memory.

“Wasn’t expecting Trimble to be in the house,” Logan said. “That’s my bad. Don’t tell JT about this.”

“It’s not me you need to worry about,” Ollie said.

“Who, Trimble? He won’t talk. He knows I know where he lives.”

Life would be so much simpler, Ollie thought, if he could just know things like everyone else. No, knowing things wasn’t the problem. Remembering was. Occasionally, he’d have a fluke, a rare moment, where something sparked. Like now, for instance, a moment of rewinding and playing it back in his mind: Trimble mentioning the henchman who turned out to be Logan was the one who left carrying the rifle.

Ollie said, “Logan, what’d you do with JT’s prop?”

“Prop?”

“The fake gun. The M16.”

“That thing’s a fake?” Logan said, astounded. “I went out there and beat some kid up to snag a fake gun?”

“I thought I told you that.”

“Do you remember telling me?”

“No.”

“Then you didn’t.”

“Okay,” Ollie said. “So, where is it?”

“It’s in my trunk.”

“You couldn’t have told me you had it this whole time?”

“I did,” Logan said. “You must’ve forgotten.”

“Well, JT will be happy to have it back. You mind grabbing it?”

Logan waved him off with a flick of his hand. “I ain’t your gopher, Ollie. Go get it yourself.”

And he did.