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 Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 8:44 pm
"This is minor trouble," Arjun replied. "Everyone is scratching everyone else's back in this town, or haven't you caught on yet? When one goes down, they drag the others with them. So no one's going to talk. Or if they speak it'll be strings of lies..."
Arjun held up one magazine from the neat stacks of issues of Writer's Monthly and waved it at her slowly for emphasis.
"For example," he made a little flourish with the free hand, motioning to the magazine as a magician would before his trick.
But as he did so something fell from between its random pages. He had expected the usual magazine detritus of subscription requests and various sponsor offers but a photograph slipped out and landed with a little click as its crisp corner struck the counter top and promptly laid flat.
"Hello," he said and picked up the photograph to take a closer look. "It's our man of the hour."
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:19 pm
"Can't say I have, Maestro," she responded carefully. Shalisa leaned against the counter in front of the coffee bean display, wiping grounds off her hands and onto her slacks, "But I bet my dad does. He's a cop, you know!"
She liked to think there was still something good and great still left in the world. Or she tried, at least, but her father's stories always told her otherwise. Even with everything cracked as it was, at least there were still chivalrous men around upholding the law like sheriffs in the old westerns-- like her pop. A grin wiped away her otherwise pensive expression, placated by that thought-- and the beginnings of what looked like a magic trick.
Her brows leapt up as the glossy photograph hit the counter, "Wow! You're like Harry Potter-- how'd y'do that?"
Shalisa crossed the small space, tail twitching.
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:35 pm
"Yet another stack of books I'd prefer to see on the bottom of a bonfire," he mused under his breath. "It wasn't my doing, it was-"
He moved to look at all the other magazines and lo and behold, all were tainted with the same portrait photograph of Vardaman. Suit and all, it was him with a false signature and some sort of ghastly attempt at an inspiring quip. Arjun gave an audible groan as though someone had poisoned him. He slid the photograph back into the magazine and slowly, as though handling a serpent in a delicate mood, placed it back on its stack. It appeared that everyone buying a magazine that day was rewarded with that photograph.
"So you'll be pinning these to your ceiling tonight, I suspect?" He shot a sideways glance to Shalisa. "Yes, I'm quite aware of what a star citizen your Captain America of a father is. All polish on his shiny tin star, yes... Tell me, do his spurs jingle when he walks on hard floors?"
Before he could take another jab, an older woman he clearly didn't recognize wandered by and tugged at the end of his hair playfully. Before he could even turn around to see who it was, she disappeared into a crowd of people.
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:04 pm
Shalisa picked up the magazine Arjun had abandoned, staring at the familiar cover with quiet adoration. She already had this issue, thank you very much! It had come in the day before, a perk when a person had a subscription to the magazine. The young girl had to keep herself from hugging it, hiding her unhealthy obsession for the popular author to retain whatever dignity she may have had. Instead, she flipped through the pages mechanically.
"He's a wonderful writer, I'll have you know!" she defended, tail bristling in embarrassment (because that had been exactly what she had done). "Makes me wonder where he is now, though, after that whole media leak mess. I'm surprised he's still doing interviews."
Shalisa paused on a full page photo of the author, clutching his latest novella; he was staring out from her grasp with a charm the male protagonists in his recent stories were drowning in. But when Arjun started taking potshots at her father, her slender fingers tightened their hold on the page, sending a rend across Vardaman's handsome face. She glared at the tall boy through her bangs, smile gone and eyes dark.
"No," she said, shutting the magazine and slapping it back onto the stack. "But the spurs tend to get snagged on skin and hair when he's walking across peoples' backs."
She turned away, busying her hands with rearranging the various bottles of chocolate and caramel syrups lined across the counter.
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Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 6:56 pm
"Really? Who knew he had it in him to be ruthless?" he mused, glancing at her tail with a strange expression.
Tails seemed like rather a pointless attribute, all things considered. Humanoids didn't need them for balance and with only the rare few were they prehensile. And yet somehow they were all born with these long, elaborate tails that probably got caught in car doors and dunked into puddles and ponds or the spokes of a bicycle. All the horrible ways one could damage their tails occupied his mind momentarily as he looked around the room.
When he caught the glance of various girls his age, they turned away giggling and began talking in hushed voices to each other. He wondered then how much money each of their families owned and how many he could systematically bring to financial ruin until the other ones caught on. But then he saw the gaze of another female... one not quite so young as the others... beautiful, or remnants of what once was probably a drop dead bombshell of a woman now slowly turning grey and the lines at the corners of her eyes were beginning to form. She was middle aged and eying him with a much more calm, contemplative demeanor. Arjun did his best not to panic.
"Dear God," he threw his gaze down onto a magazine and pretended quite furiously to read it. "It's Mrs. Laramie, that publisher's wife!"
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:08 pm
Shalisa had resorted to drawing fat little sheep on the tip(ping! not a city in China!) jar to channel her frustrations. She suddenly couldn't wait until she was off work so she could go straight to her kick-boxing class and take out her aggression on some hapless newbie. God, would that be satisfying. With a blissful sigh, she doodled a ram crashing into the scribbled 'S' on the plastic jar.
"What publisher?" she almost sang, leaning Daisy's Arjun's way. Shalisa nosily peered over the counter at all the people milling about until she landed on the only one that looked like a 'Mrs.'. Then she looked to Arjun.
Then back at this Mrs. Laramie.
Then at Arjun.
Then she ducked down with a shrill giggle, shaking the tip jar (all pennies and nickels and dimes) to cover up the sound of her laughter. Oh-- oh! Guh-roooss~
"You know, once at my high school... my old high school, before I turned eighteen and got a job--" she 'ahem'd!' importantly. "-- this boy, he was in my chemistry class. Well, our chem teacher, boy did she mack on him somethin' fierce and so poof!" Shalisa wrapped both hands around the cup before ripping them away and wiggling her fingers like they were the falling ash of an explosion.
"They got caught-- after class! Needless to say no one sat at that chemistry table ever again.... By the way, that's called the thunderbolt, my son," she teased, adopting an Italian accent as she put her thumb, fore and middle together with a nodding hand gesture. Shalisa took the opportunity to scrawl one of Zeus's bolts on the back of Arjun's hand with the permanent marker to demonstrate.
"Like that."
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Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:10 pm
Arjun pulled his hand away and made to wipe off the mark.
"You're pretty juvenile for someone with a job like this," he retorted. "One would say a job like this was too much for you. That's Angela Laramie, the wife of the very wealthy Mr. Joseph Laramie of, naturally, Laramie Publishing. What he lacks in creativity for a name, he makes up for with devastatingly good business sense. But the poor man's health has been diminishing and so he sends Mrs. Laramie to handle his business for him."
He ventured another glance in her direciton. To his horror, she was still gazing at him from above her spectacles, attached from either end with a string of faux pearls.
"That's not all she's been wanting to handle," he clutched at his chest as though to draw his last breath.
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:23 pm
"Or am I?" she shot back, bouncing briefly on the balls of her feet as she returned the Sharpie into the depths of her hair. "I mean, I've kept the job for this long...."
She rolled her eyes in thought as she spoke, as if to say 'just sayin'!' She had other jobs before this one, abandoned only when her employer would catch on-- never because she was irresponsible, oh no! Shalisa chewed on a hangnail, staring at Arjun, though her eyes were out of focus. Pops had yet to figure out that his daughter, instead of attending her afternoon classes, was out making money.
"Yikes," she provided (quite sympathetically, honest!), blinking back into attention. His plight was pretty funny to her, really, if not a bit weird-- she made a face as if talking to a baby in a stroller, "Jus' gotta shtop bein' sho darn cuh-yoot, Daisy-face!"
Shalisa made to pinch his cheek.
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Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:19 pm
Elsewhere in Augustine, trouble was afoot. About five feet and six inches of skinny trouble was prying open an improperly shut window in a quaint narrow, two-story home amongst a whole line of them. Since the places were newly refurbished (and the elderly who were kicked out to "stimulate growth"), about only one in every three were currently occupied and Jeremy Squire was hastily slipping into the first floor into the kitchen of an occupied home.
Hastily stuffing the current residence's toy poodle into a cupboard, using the cozy looking, woven rag rug as a blanket to muffle its squeaky toy-like bark all the while.
"There's a good... erm... fluffy rat," he said in a hushed voice. "Be a good little thing and stay out of Daddy's way."
With that, he wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve in anticipation and golden yellow eyes beneath fox red hair darted about to see what he could swiftly pocket and be on his merry way.
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Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 10:08 pm
It took Momo some forty-some-odd minutes to remember where Reed lived and an extra ten to actually find it, and when he finally did, he stood in front of the door, staring up at the awning on the verge of a medical breakthrough. Yes, right there on Reed's doorstep, one Modesto Stamps, a common man of a common background, was about to figure out the cure for cancer.
His lips parted, shut, and sucking at the last flakes of catnip clinging to the roof of his mouth, Momo's sudden, aching remembrance for his absolute need of ramen took up every square inch of his mind and the medical phenomenon was promptly forgotten.
Momo peered into the peephole on Reed's door, leaning against it with all of his weight until it popped open; the lanky feline tumbled in with a hushed 'whoa!' catching himself like a gymnast did as they hit the mat. He didn't even think to check in with the owner of the apartment. Somewhere - if there was a bit of sobriety to his name - in the back of Momo's mind, Reed should have been well-acquainted with the brown feline's thumping entrance. Even so, he thought it polite to at least lift his hand to the couch as he crossed the space (thinking it a proper greeting even if the red-head was turned away, asleep, or worst-case scenario, dead), bee-lining straight for Reed's scanty kitchen, where a symphonic clatter of mismatched dinnerware and cabinetry could be heard as hurricane Momo landed.
After a while, the noise paused for a breath-- a long, long breath. Momo shuffled from the kitchen, his brow slightly wrinkled and a plastic bowl in his hand. His stumpy tail ticked.
"Hey."
He looked down at the bowl, looked back at the couch, was distracted momentarily by the T.V. .
"Hey. You ran outta Maruchan." Momo turned the bowl over in his hand as he moved to the couch, folding himself half over its back, "This is a nice blue. But you're outta Maruchan."
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:43 pm
Reed's head SHOULD have shot up from his bed. Reed's ears SHOULD have heard all the noise Momo was capable of producing. But frankly, he had spent the previous day bored out of his mind on this so-called vacation. His car was impounded god-knows-where and all he could do was empty his fridge, watch novellas, and sleep.
After last night's liquor induced coma, Reed didn't stir from where he lay face down and head firmly pressed into the disarray of sheets at the foot of his bed with his large cat's feet on his pillows and looking as though he were in a dead man's float on Spiderman sheets and mismatched pillow cases. One pillowcase looked to have the faded remains of a Care Bear and the other of the Tasmanian Devil. It looked like an eight year old's bed.
But any eight year old who slept in that bed would soon be rescued by protective services. The sheets were in dire need of soap and a priest.
So instead of any acknowledgment for Momo, all Reed did was grunt a few times into his sheets and turn on his side.
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Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 12:13 pm
Momo's ears swung back, head lifting like a lethargic reptile's. That'd been a grunt, hadn't it? Ooor some sort of weird, dead-man's noise. Reed wasn't dead though, was he? Man, if he wasn't, that was some messy business. He pushed himself to stand straight (or as straight as Momo could stand), and shuffled to the door of Reed's room. Well. Well! wow. He'd never seen his friend so... immobile. Welp! He was in dire need of mobility.
Thumping the bowl against his thigh, Momo clambered onto the bed and 'TIMBERRR'-- thump! right onto Reed like a felled and bony sapling.
"Wakey-wakey, eggs and Momo's got no Maruchaaan," he crooned, rolling over Reed's prone body like a cat scratching its back. "Did I wake up before you today, bra? Don't be dead, man. I'd be sad all day. C'mon."
After a moment, Momo resigned himself to laying on his back, balancing his empty bowl on his face.
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