Fifty Shades of Easter

The Adventures of Agent Diamond and Charming Guy:

  Fifty Shades of Easter

  A short story by Elizabeth Bent

  Copyright 2015 Elizabeth Bent

  Acknowledgements

  This story was inspired by a Facebook status—my friend Jessica R. mused whether it would be entirely inappropriate to say “Jesus is aroused” instead of “Jesus is arisen” and the title “Fifty Shades of Easter” just came to me. I admit I immediately imagined what such a title might lead to on, say, an episode of Family Guy or a similarly satirical, politically incorrect show; however, I don’t know any of the writers for those shows, and so I’ve taken the title and made a (very chaste) story out of it myself. It is dedicated to Jessica and, as always, to my Muse.

  I designed the cover and its flaws are wholly my fault.

  Elizabeth Bent

  April 4, 2015

  Charming Guy picked up the brightly coloured flyer on his desk.

  “Easter Egg colouring,” he read. “A fundraiser for the Church of Our Holy Rosary.”

  Agent Diamond walked in with two cups of coffee.

  “Cream, three sugars,” she said, placing a cup on his desk. She glanced at the flyer in his hand.

  “Ah, so Yukiko gave you one of those as well?”

  Charming Guy scratched at his perfectly coiffed hair. “Guess so. You want to go?”

  “Isn’t that thing kind of for kids?”

  Charming Guy cleared his throat.

  “This year’s theme is ‘Fifty Shades of Easter’”, he read, barely keeping a straight face.

  Diamond picked the flyer out of his hand.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said.

  “I think we have to go, don’t you?”

  Diamond sipped her coffee. As she swallowed, her mouth twisted into a smirk.

  “I just had an idea,” she said. “It’s a terrible, terrible, evil idea.”

  Charming Guy tapped the flyer with his cup of coffee.

  “You want to circulate these to Ottawa’s fetish clubs,” he said, grinning.

  Diamond hung her head while Charming Guy laughed out loud.

  “I’ll get more flyers from Yukiko,” he said.

  * * *

  It was a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon on the Easter weekend when Agent Diamond and Charming Guy walked up the steps of the Church of Our Holy Rosary. They were met at the top of the steps by a grandmotherly woman who took their money and directed them into a side door, into a room filled with folding tables covered in dollar-store plastic tablecloths. On each table there was a basket of hard-boiled eggs, cups of vegetable dye, crayons, and sheets of Easter-themed stickers. About half the tables were filled with children of varying ages, a few weary adults among them trying to maintain order and minimize stains.

  Diamond took her roll of electrical tape and a pair of scissors from her purse.

  “You’re really going for the eggs in bondage?” Charming Guy asked.

  Diamond shrugged.

  “It’s decorating,” she replied.

  As soon as they had chosen a table and sat down at it, Yukiko detached herself from a group of church members and bustled over to them. Yukiko worked in their agency’s accounting department, and earlier in the year she had asked Agent Diamond to catsit for her, with disastrous consequences.

  “So,” Diamond said, placing her tape and scissors on the table. “’Fifty Shades of Easter’, eh?”

  Yukiko beamed.

  “Isn’t it a great name? We wanted something that would evoke all the different colours you can get with Easter eggs.”

  Diamond grinned widely and Charming Guy coughed into his fist.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “It’s an excellent name.”

  Charming Guy made a strangled noise.

  “Would you like some punch?” Yukiko asked, gesturing at a punchbowl on the other side of the room that was filled with pink liquid.

  “That’s a great idea,” Diamond said, and wandered off toward the punchbowl.

  Charming Guy felt a pang of guilt, looking around at the innocent room and Yukiko’s wide eyes.

  “Yukiko,” he said, “There’s a slight chance that—”

  Diamond came back with two cups of punch. She gave him one cup and raised her eyebrow, and Charming Guy bit his lip.

  “Chance of what?” Yukiko asked.

  “Chance that some people we know might come by,” Diamond said. “We circulated your flyer around a bit.”

  Yukiko beamed at them.

  “That’s wonderful, guys!” she gushed. “Thanks so much!”

  Diamond smiled serenely, and Yukiko bustled off.

  “I feel kind of bad,” Charming Guy said.

  Diamond tsked at him.

  “It will be payback for the shredding of my arms and ankles by that damned cat,” she replied.

  Charming Guy shook his head.

  “Wow, you can hold a grudge,” he said, and Diamond gave him her best evil grin. Considering all the time she had spent in the past around evil masterminds, it was actually a rather unsettling grin, and Charming Guy wondered for the thousandth time what it might take to turn Agent Diamond away from law and justice, and toward plans for world domination.

  Someday, he thought, he might get her drunk and ask, but for today he would simply wait and watch to see what kind of spectacles might unfold.

  They didn’t have long to wait.

  Diamond had just scribbled “BALLS” in white crayon on her egg, then put it into a cup of blue dye when Yukiko came running over to them, a frightened look on her round face.

  “Diamond, Guy,” she said, voice a bit shaky, “something’s happened.”

  Both agents felt a bit abashed at how frightened Yukiko seemed to be. What, wondered Diamond—had someone come dressed as zombie fetish Jesus?

  “What’s the matter?” Guy asked, a pensive look on his face.

  “There’s been a threat,” Yukiko said in a stage whisper, and Diamond looked around. Nobody nearby seemed to be paying attention—there were a pair of toddlers trying to drink cups of dye and a weary mother covered in stickers and half-eaten Cheerios gently wrestling the dye away from each pair of pudgy fists in turn.

  Diamond and Charming Guy followed Yukiko out to the front walk, where the grandmotherly woman that had taken their money stood, ashen-faced, holding a folded, letter-sized piece of construction paper.

  “This is Diane,” Yukiko said. “Diane, these are some of the people that I work with.”

  Agent Diamond didn’t know what Yukiko might have said about the spy agency they all worked for, but whatever it had been, it had clearly impressed Diane, who straightened her cardigan and patted her hair.

  Or, Diamond thought, following Diane’s gaze over to Charming Guy, it was just Guy’s effect on straight women again.

  “Can I see that?” she asked, gently taking the construction paper from Diane’s grip. She read the letters pasted across it, letters clearly cut from the pages of a glossy magazine.

  STOP THE EGGS, it read, AND PAYPAL ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS TO Dr.Sinister@peepmail.com BY 3 PM OR THEY ALL DIE.

  At the bottom of the page there was a small photograph of a yellow Easter Peep marshmallow chick skewered by a toothpick. There seemed to be ketchup or cherry juice coming out of the wound the Peep had in its chest.

  Diamond frowned.

  “I’m pretty sure this isn’t Dr. Sinister’s email address,” she said, showing the letter to Charming Guy. “He always uses a pseudonym and minions—this really isn’t his style.”

  “One thousand dollars and Paypal isn’t really his style either,” said Charming Guy. “Nor is a paper letter like this one.”

 
“How was this letter delivered?” Diamond asked Diane.

  Diane cleared her throat. She was slightly flushed.

  “One of those toy helicopter things,” she said, “those square ones with all the propellers. It was decorated with Easter stickers and had this letter dangling below it on a string. I thought it was someone playing a joke.”

  “Where is it now?” Charming Guy asked.

  Diane shook her head.

  “It flew off as soon as I took the letter,” she said. “I—I don’t know where it flew off to.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Just a few minutes,” Diane said, and looked quizzically at the agents as they looked around. There were a number of buildings nearby with accessible roofs, as well as the church parking lot and a few trees.

  “I don’t suppose you saw where it came from?” Diamond asked.

  Diane shook her head.

  A long black car covered in skulls drove into the parking lot.

  “I’ll go search the lot for clues,” Charming Guy said, eyeing the car.

  “One thousand dollars is all we have in the office cash box right now,” Yukiko said, on the verge of tears. “This would bankrupt the church—we need it, and the money we raise today, to pay for repairs to the vestibule roof.”

  Diamond nodded. Her mouth set into a thin line. Charming Guy was familiar with that look.

  “Yukiko,” she said, “How many people know what’s in the cash box?”

  “Only a handful that were at the last council meeting,” Yukiko replied. “But everyone there was a regular church member—surely you don’t think—”

  “Can I have a look at the office?” Diamond said. “Guy, find out what you can about the delivery of this letter. The lot’s a good place to start. Oh, and we should call the police, this is actually their jurisdiction.”

  Several people dressed in black clothing, much of it involving leather, were emerging from the black car. The woman who had been driving snapped a leash onto the neck collar of a man that had been in the back seat.

  Diane adjusted her glasses.

  “Goodness,” she said. “Who are they?”

  “I’ll go find out,” Charming Guy replied as he hurried away, toward the group. They had opened the trunk of the car and one tall man was pulling out a duffel bag.

  Yukiko made an irritated noise.

  “My cell phone’s not working,” she said. “I’ll use the office phone. Here, Diane, you keep watch for anything unusual until the police get here. Agent Diamond, the office is this way.”

  Diamond and Yukiko went back into the church, leaving Diane alone on the sunny steps. Diane’s gaze wandered back to Charming Guy, who was now in the parking lot talking to the group of, in Diane’s mind, bizarrely dressed young people.

  “Are you here for ‘Fifty Shades of Easter’?” Charming Guy was asking them, giving his most brilliant smile.

  The four people dressed in black looked quizzically back at him.

  “We certainly are,” the woman holding the leash said.

  Charming Guy gave them a roguish yet apologetic look.

  “There’s actually no fetish stuff going on here today,” he said, scratching his chin.

  “That,” said the woman, walking up to Charming Guy, “is really a shame. You’d look great tied to a cross.” She pulled a riding crop out of her boot and tickled his chin with it.

  Charming Guy’s smile dimpled.

  “Not entirely my thing, I’m afraid,” he said, and all four of them laughed.

  “We know it’s just egg colouring today,” said a second, shorter woman with bright pink streaks in her long black hair.

  “And you’re OK with that?”

  “Sure we are. It’s a fundraiser. This church helps the homeless.” Behind them, the man rummaging in the duffel bag pulled out a roll of electrical tape.

  “Eggs in bondage?” Charming Guy asked. “My partner brought electrical tape as well.”

  “We also have chains,” the pink-streaked woman said, holding up some costume jewelry, “and we brought Peeps and some cardboard to make a diorama.”

  “Who’s your partner?” the woman holding the leash asked.

  “Diamond,” Charming Guy said. “Liz Diamond.”

  She laughed.

  “So you must be the famous Charming Guy,” the woman holding the leash said, smiling.

  Charming Guy’s eyebrows quirked upward. Diamond knew these people personally?

  “You all know her?” he asked.

  The woman with the leash cocked her head.

  “She knows me,” she said, a little smugly. “I’ve been around longer than these guys,” and she indicated the rest of her group.

  “We all know of her,” the pink-haired woman said, fiddling with the jewelry she was holding. “As in we know her mostly by her reputation.”

  Charming Guy was immediately fascinated.

  “I’m Daphne,” the woman with the leash said, holding out her hand. Charming Guy shook it.

  “Erika,” the pink-haired woman said.

  “Taso,” the man who had pulled the electrical tape from the duffel bag said.

  “And that’s Roger,” Daphne said, indicating the man on the leash. She pulled some pink bunny ears out of her voluminous black leather purse. The purse had a few cartoon cat skeleton heads dangling off it.

  “Here you go, Roger,” she said, putting the ears on Roger’s head, and he carefully adjusted them.

  “Are there a lot of people up there?” Daphne asked, and Charming Guy nodded.

  “Families with little kids,” he replied.

  She sighed.

  “Here Roger,” she said, and Roger turned, offering her the D-ring on his collar where the lead had been attached. She took it off.

  “I never get to properly walk my pets in public,” she grumbled.

  “So, about Agent Diamond,” Charming Guy began, but Daphne interrupted him.

  “I call her by a different name,” Daphne said. “And if she’s kept this part of her life hidden from you it’s not up to me to reveal it. Will you come and decorate eggs with us?”

  Erika slid her hand along Charming Guy’s arm.

  “Yes,” she said, quirking her head up at him, “you should come along with us.”

  Charming Guy paused, then pulled himself away.

  “I have work to do,” he said, regretfully.

  “See you later, perhaps,” Erika said, waving at him with her tiny hands. One of her palms had a spiderweb tattoo on it.

  Charming Guy waved back, then surveyed the parking lot. It was unlikely that the drone pilot would still be here, but there was always a chance—

  Something caught his eye, and he looked back at the church. What was that, on the roof?

  Casually, he pulled out his agency sunglasses and put them on, fiddling as he did so with the controls that turned what appeared to be a pair of ordinary sunglasses into binoculars.

  He looked casually away from the church, then back again.

  There—that had been someone’s shoulder, vanishing behind a roof peak.

  Someone was on the church roof.