Call me Immunity. My friends call me “Private I,” because that’s what I do—I’m a private investigator, a detective, a shamus. I track down criminals and make sure they don’t get away with any funny business. Take this one case. Now I know there are a whole lot of bad girls in the city, but this one floozy—let’s call her “Flu” for short—she was a real piece of work.

I wasn’t prepared for Flu the first time we met. I ran into her at what I like to call my “second office,” a half-legal seedy little nightclub joint down by the docks. She was leaning on the piano, pretending to sing the blues. One look at her figure and long blonde hair and you knew she hadn’t been hired for her singing voice. We got acquainted. Matters got real friendly; I was too distracted to notice the three tough guys sitting in the corner. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in the gutter, no wallet, high fever, a pounding headache and a throat that feels like I’ve been gargling broken glass. Damn Flu.

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Liberté, égalité, fraternité . . . foreskin? Who knew that penises had anything to do with the French Revolution?

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Scene: A Royal Air Force station in Great Britain during World War II. Two medics, Tom and Fred are enjoying tea and toast. An officer arrives and orders the medics go out with a stretcher to retrieve a captured German pilot who was wounded when he ejected from his plane over British territory.

Tom: Dash it all, Fred, doesn’t this bloody Nazi pilot look just like the Nazi with the broken femur we just sent back through the POW exchange a few weeks ago? How could he be up and flying again so soon with an injury like that? He should have been bedridden with his leg up in traction for months!

Fred: Crikey, old chap, I do believe you’re right! [Addresses the Nazi pilot] Here now, tell us how you managed to get up and about so soon after cracking your femur?

German Pilot: Nein.

Tom: Come on, old boy, tell, are doctors in Germany so special they’ve got you cured already?

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I’m writing a screenplay for the next big Hollywood blockbuster. The main character is a Harvard-educated doctor who conducts research on a remote South Pacific Island in the 1960s. The doctor realizes that the native people on this island are suffering from a devastating epidemic. He notes the symptoms of this mysterious disease: first, the infected victims begin to tremble; they lose the ability to walk and begin to laugh a terrible, demonic laugh; dementia and death soon follow.

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