Other stuff
Jun. 20th, 2005 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickleAm exhausted from first day of TESL (9 am - 3 pm and 2 hrs of homework) so will not say anything about that. These 4 weeks are going to be hell, though, and practicum starts next week. !!!
So, here's what I did my last few free days: Hero's Manual.
Chapter 4: Carpeting Made Easy
Things were not going well.
The carpets weighed tons. There were many carpets, some in the room, some in the hall, some rolling down the stairs unchecked.
Quasi was tired of chasing them. He was also tired of nailing them down, prying the nails off again and nailing them down right-side up again.
In an open act of rebellion (number 51 since that morning’s Throwing of the Hammer), Quasi stomped off for a calming cup of tea (which Vicky had finally convinced him to prepare), stepping and crawling over the piles of carpet in his way; he refused to move them, at least for the time being.
He also refused to clean up the mess his master’s pet had made. On about seven carpets. In three different attacks. Some of the creature’s fury had ebbed now, though, ever since Quasi had brandished the candlestick, but he nonetheless sported a few nasty bruises to show for the day’s fiasco.
Quasi had been dreading this day for weeks. His Master had finally received one of his handbook’s extras, World Domination: Tools of the Trade, a month previously and, having read only the first chapter (“Fables and Foibles”), had immediately set to ordering every carpet he could find. Boxes of them had been coming in steadily, bearing carpets, rungs, mats and rags, made from a variety of materials, ranging from what Quasi understood to be highly unclean worm by-products, cotton, linen and matted sheep’s wool.
After the exhausting task of wrenching the boxes open, returning the odd live llama or kangaroo, and cataloguing the whole mess, Quasi had a personal grudge against every single floor covering. Except the mummy’s rags; the poor man was wandering around half naked trying to pull himself together. Quasi’d offered him one of Vicky’s old aprons, but the mummy had shrieked and ambled off down the stairs carrying his right arm over his head like a club.
One late night, after a rigorous polish of the kitchen’s silverware, Quasi had snuck a peak at his Master’s book. Apparently, Vicky had read that there was a carpet somewhere in the world which could fly, carrying upon it a passenger. Apparently this was an essential tool for world dominion, although Quasi wondered what one would do if it ever caught on something. Suppose it unraveled? This, then, was the reason why Quasi now found himself setting one carpet after another onto the floor, setting gingerly onto it and then, after a brief respectful pause for the lack of anything happening, nail it to the floor. No point in wasting a good set of carpeting.
The butler shook out another dusty carpet, dragged it over to an exposed corner of the hall, stepped on something best left unmentioned and then tripped over a rebellious carpet. Vicky found him a few hours later at the foot of the stairs, staring at his grape-detail candlestick, and, thinking better of it, scurried away again.
Chapter 5: Into the Dark Closet
At the Dark Closet, haven for ghouls, vampires, werewolves and all other manner of monster, an almost naked mummy had just walked in. He had a kitchen apron on, saying “Kiss the Cook’s Ass.” This, in his case, might result in his having it handed back to him in a dustbin. He ambled up to the bar, where he completely ignored the following conversation because he was staring at the lovely Miss Frankenstein, a lady who appeared to be having the same physical looseness as he. Unfortunately, she was too occupied with a werewolf to notice.
“Go away, Quasi. We don’t serve normies here.”
“What do you mean?”
“ ‘S there anything wrong with you?” asked the barman, squinting his jaundiced eyes. “Physical-wise, I mean?”
“No!” squeaked Quasi, a tad too quickly. He coughed and repeated the negation.
“There you go then. We’re a Thing of the Night bar only, and so serve only monsters and th’ like. ‘N monsters look like monsters. You,” he said, poking Quasi in the chest, “look like a butler.”
“An evil butler,” offered Quasi.
“Nope.”
“I’ve got a diseased mind,” he insisted. “Terrible soup of a mind, full of nasty dark, er, things.”
“It look diseased?”
“Well, I don’t know how you’d –”
“If Hank there stuck a cleaver into your head, would the insides look off?” asked the barman, quite seriously considering these actions within he realm of both alcohol provider and client. Besides, it often took much more than that to kill his customers.
“No,” said Quasi. “Because he’s not going to.”
The barman, nicknamed Pretty Face, was of impressed by Quasi’s threatening look. “Sorry then, Q., old boy. Only physical deformities make the monster. And this here,” he waved a claw about, “is for monsters, not evil minds. Some of my customers are quite decent folk.”
“I’m sure,” mumbled Quasi, still stunned at the injustice of being refused a beer. Oh, and recognition as an evil Thing of the Night, of course. He looked around the bar, not about to give up yet. “What about him? He looks normal enough.”
“No reflection.”
“And those two?”
“Werewolves. Bit hairy in the toes this time of month.”
Quasi cast about desperately for a normal face. “Well, what about that chummy couple?”
“Look,” fumed Pretty, “Red Eye’s got a red eye, and that there with him is Frigid Frida, succubus by trade. Not very keen on her customer this evening, though.”
Quasi was crestfallen. Seems that he didn’t even have a mole out of place, or a slightly disfiguring scar. They’d been all the rage at Butler School too: the other students had said it’d surely get them a place with some mad, rich scientist. Damn his butler studies! He’d failed to acquire even the slightest stoop! That...that was something he could do.
Quasi slumped down in his stool and looked up hopefully at Pretty Face.
“You can’t keep that up forever, Q. Too much butler blood in you.” The pale man beside Quasi looked up from what might have been a Bloody Mary. Or possibly a Sue. Quasi watched as he reached into a gold case, slipped out a set of teeth and put them on. “Go home and steal your Master’s gin like a good boy.”
Quasi didn’t bother to correct the error in that statement. Neither did he mention, as he walked out of the bar, that Vicky’s gin stock was as low as Quasi could safely take it. He’d stopped diluting it back up in the hopes that his Master would realize the crisis and ask Quasi to buy more. But crises had to crawl into Vicky’s bed and scream into his ear before they registered.
And that Quasi had tried already.
Shortly after Quasi’s exit, the apron-clap mummy was able to put his current experiences with loss of appendages to the good use. The werewolf who’d been slobbering all over the attractive lady suddenly sprang up with a howl and threw himself to the ground in the centre of the bar, where he began to froth at the mouth and rub at his lips.
Instantly, a man rushed up to the writhing form and began patting and jostling the werewolf who’d been unfortunately trying to neck with Frankenstein’s sister (who mysteriously appeared just days after the village was town apart by a monster, and weeks after Dr Frankenstein was questioned regarding suddenly empty caskets).
“My bolt! He swallowed my bolt!” screamed the woman over the werewolf’s howls.
“By the Blackberry!” gasped the man as he crouched by the werewolf. He jumped onto a chair and shouted out to the bar crowd. “Clap! Damn it, ghouls, clap those claws! And you, bogeyman in the corner,” roared the man, “clap for the werewolf!”
The clap-leader was one of those men who always had a boyish look about them, as if they never had truly grown up. He also seemed to believe that any wound, dismemberments and beheadings included, or poison of any type (e.g. silver or garlic) could be cured by clapping loudly and shouting, “I do believe!”
Miss Frankenstein ran into the bathroom, accompanied by Frigid Frida and Hoarse Mary, the banshee, as the clapping continued in the bar. Mary was wailing helpfully at how asymmetrical Frankenstein had become.
Eventually the clapping stopped, and a little while later the werewolf’s moans stopped too, replaced by the sound of whiskey being lapped up greedily. As the ladies were about to leave the bathroom, Miss Frankenstein still dabbing at her neck and weeping softy, there came a knock at the door.
It opened slowly to reveal first a hand bearing the silver bolt in its palm. As it opened wider it revealed a hand holding the severed arm and a very thin and very tanned old man in an apron.
“Perhaps I may be of assistance?” he said softly.
Miss Frankenstein blushed and covered her neck. Mary and Frida escaped into the bar as the mummy walked into the bathroom. “Why, that’s very kind of you,” she whispered.
“I have some experience in these matters,” he said, smiling. “And, of course, others.”
Have most of the story planned out, chapter titles and everything. Of course, as per the nasty laws of the world, have now no time.
Ptthhh.
PS: Thank's to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darthmaligna, and my exhaustion, have found the mp3 Stir-Whip remix here to be a nice listen.
So, here's what I did my last few free days: Hero's Manual.
Things were not going well.
The carpets weighed tons. There were many carpets, some in the room, some in the hall, some rolling down the stairs unchecked.
Quasi was tired of chasing them. He was also tired of nailing them down, prying the nails off again and nailing them down right-side up again.
In an open act of rebellion (number 51 since that morning’s Throwing of the Hammer), Quasi stomped off for a calming cup of tea (which Vicky had finally convinced him to prepare), stepping and crawling over the piles of carpet in his way; he refused to move them, at least for the time being.
He also refused to clean up the mess his master’s pet had made. On about seven carpets. In three different attacks. Some of the creature’s fury had ebbed now, though, ever since Quasi had brandished the candlestick, but he nonetheless sported a few nasty bruises to show for the day’s fiasco.
Quasi had been dreading this day for weeks. His Master had finally received one of his handbook’s extras, World Domination: Tools of the Trade, a month previously and, having read only the first chapter (“Fables and Foibles”), had immediately set to ordering every carpet he could find. Boxes of them had been coming in steadily, bearing carpets, rungs, mats and rags, made from a variety of materials, ranging from what Quasi understood to be highly unclean worm by-products, cotton, linen and matted sheep’s wool.
After the exhausting task of wrenching the boxes open, returning the odd live llama or kangaroo, and cataloguing the whole mess, Quasi had a personal grudge against every single floor covering. Except the mummy’s rags; the poor man was wandering around half naked trying to pull himself together. Quasi’d offered him one of Vicky’s old aprons, but the mummy had shrieked and ambled off down the stairs carrying his right arm over his head like a club.
One late night, after a rigorous polish of the kitchen’s silverware, Quasi had snuck a peak at his Master’s book. Apparently, Vicky had read that there was a carpet somewhere in the world which could fly, carrying upon it a passenger. Apparently this was an essential tool for world dominion, although Quasi wondered what one would do if it ever caught on something. Suppose it unraveled? This, then, was the reason why Quasi now found himself setting one carpet after another onto the floor, setting gingerly onto it and then, after a brief respectful pause for the lack of anything happening, nail it to the floor. No point in wasting a good set of carpeting.
The butler shook out another dusty carpet, dragged it over to an exposed corner of the hall, stepped on something best left unmentioned and then tripped over a rebellious carpet. Vicky found him a few hours later at the foot of the stairs, staring at his grape-detail candlestick, and, thinking better of it, scurried away again.
Chapter 5: Into the Dark Closet
At the Dark Closet, haven for ghouls, vampires, werewolves and all other manner of monster, an almost naked mummy had just walked in. He had a kitchen apron on, saying “Kiss the Cook’s Ass.” This, in his case, might result in his having it handed back to him in a dustbin. He ambled up to the bar, where he completely ignored the following conversation because he was staring at the lovely Miss Frankenstein, a lady who appeared to be having the same physical looseness as he. Unfortunately, she was too occupied with a werewolf to notice.
“Go away, Quasi. We don’t serve normies here.”
“What do you mean?”
“ ‘S there anything wrong with you?” asked the barman, squinting his jaundiced eyes. “Physical-wise, I mean?”
“No!” squeaked Quasi, a tad too quickly. He coughed and repeated the negation.
“There you go then. We’re a Thing of the Night bar only, and so serve only monsters and th’ like. ‘N monsters look like monsters. You,” he said, poking Quasi in the chest, “look like a butler.”
“An evil butler,” offered Quasi.
“Nope.”
“I’ve got a diseased mind,” he insisted. “Terrible soup of a mind, full of nasty dark, er, things.”
“It look diseased?”
“Well, I don’t know how you’d –”
“If Hank there stuck a cleaver into your head, would the insides look off?” asked the barman, quite seriously considering these actions within he realm of both alcohol provider and client. Besides, it often took much more than that to kill his customers.
“No,” said Quasi. “Because he’s not going to.”
The barman, nicknamed Pretty Face, was of impressed by Quasi’s threatening look. “Sorry then, Q., old boy. Only physical deformities make the monster. And this here,” he waved a claw about, “is for monsters, not evil minds. Some of my customers are quite decent folk.”
“I’m sure,” mumbled Quasi, still stunned at the injustice of being refused a beer. Oh, and recognition as an evil Thing of the Night, of course. He looked around the bar, not about to give up yet. “What about him? He looks normal enough.”
“No reflection.”
“And those two?”
“Werewolves. Bit hairy in the toes this time of month.”
Quasi cast about desperately for a normal face. “Well, what about that chummy couple?”
“Look,” fumed Pretty, “Red Eye’s got a red eye, and that there with him is Frigid Frida, succubus by trade. Not very keen on her customer this evening, though.”
Quasi was crestfallen. Seems that he didn’t even have a mole out of place, or a slightly disfiguring scar. They’d been all the rage at Butler School too: the other students had said it’d surely get them a place with some mad, rich scientist. Damn his butler studies! He’d failed to acquire even the slightest stoop! That...that was something he could do.
Quasi slumped down in his stool and looked up hopefully at Pretty Face.
“You can’t keep that up forever, Q. Too much butler blood in you.” The pale man beside Quasi looked up from what might have been a Bloody Mary. Or possibly a Sue. Quasi watched as he reached into a gold case, slipped out a set of teeth and put them on. “Go home and steal your Master’s gin like a good boy.”
Quasi didn’t bother to correct the error in that statement. Neither did he mention, as he walked out of the bar, that Vicky’s gin stock was as low as Quasi could safely take it. He’d stopped diluting it back up in the hopes that his Master would realize the crisis and ask Quasi to buy more. But crises had to crawl into Vicky’s bed and scream into his ear before they registered.
And that Quasi had tried already.
Shortly after Quasi’s exit, the apron-clap mummy was able to put his current experiences with loss of appendages to the good use. The werewolf who’d been slobbering all over the attractive lady suddenly sprang up with a howl and threw himself to the ground in the centre of the bar, where he began to froth at the mouth and rub at his lips.
Instantly, a man rushed up to the writhing form and began patting and jostling the werewolf who’d been unfortunately trying to neck with Frankenstein’s sister (who mysteriously appeared just days after the village was town apart by a monster, and weeks after Dr Frankenstein was questioned regarding suddenly empty caskets).
“My bolt! He swallowed my bolt!” screamed the woman over the werewolf’s howls.
“By the Blackberry!” gasped the man as he crouched by the werewolf. He jumped onto a chair and shouted out to the bar crowd. “Clap! Damn it, ghouls, clap those claws! And you, bogeyman in the corner,” roared the man, “clap for the werewolf!”
The clap-leader was one of those men who always had a boyish look about them, as if they never had truly grown up. He also seemed to believe that any wound, dismemberments and beheadings included, or poison of any type (e.g. silver or garlic) could be cured by clapping loudly and shouting, “I do believe!”
Miss Frankenstein ran into the bathroom, accompanied by Frigid Frida and Hoarse Mary, the banshee, as the clapping continued in the bar. Mary was wailing helpfully at how asymmetrical Frankenstein had become.
Eventually the clapping stopped, and a little while later the werewolf’s moans stopped too, replaced by the sound of whiskey being lapped up greedily. As the ladies were about to leave the bathroom, Miss Frankenstein still dabbing at her neck and weeping softy, there came a knock at the door.
It opened slowly to reveal first a hand bearing the silver bolt in its palm. As it opened wider it revealed a hand holding the severed arm and a very thin and very tanned old man in an apron.
“Perhaps I may be of assistance?” he said softly.
Miss Frankenstein blushed and covered her neck. Mary and Frida escaped into the bar as the mummy walked into the bathroom. “Why, that’s very kind of you,” she whispered.
“I have some experience in these matters,” he said, smiling. “And, of course, others.”
Have most of the story planned out, chapter titles and everything. Of course, as per the nasty laws of the world, have now no time.
Ptthhh.
PS: Thank's to
darthmaligna, and my exhaustion, have found the mp3 Stir-Whip remix here to be a nice listen.
*snuggles*
Date: 2005-06-21 05:11 am (UTC)and i'm sorry to hear that you have two hours of homework every night! ugh.
i want to chat with you. expect a call soon- unless you're too busy with school...? i have long distance ALL DAY, you know. :P
love
kit-kat