| Sirens On an Old Blue Car |
[05 Apr 2009|02:00am] |
As much as Thea enjoyed partaking in bloodshed and doing what she felt was her vampiric duty, there was something to be said for kicking it old-school and breaking into a place of business after-hours and raiding the cash register.
There were certain advantages of thieving when one was undead. She supposed she didn't have to be particularly sneaky, because on the off-chance the authorities caught up with her, she could more than likely use her strength to overpower them. No way the cops were properly equipped to deal with vampires, right? Then again, there was something to be said for the old stand-bys. Black gloves. Ski cap. Dark, nondescript clothing. Though she no longer needed such human precautions, Thea felt as if she needed them in order to commence with the stealing. Maybe it was just a comfort thing.
Whatever it was, it worked. Hitting one of the local bookstores netted the vampire a cool $674 and a copy of the latest Fantasy Baseball magazine. Thea might've been undead, but she still wanted to know which of her beloved Cubbies were going to produce in the coming season. She counted the bills in her hand as she walked along one of Chicago's copious sidewalks, stopping only when a sight caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, smiling at the familiar figure sitting atop a car parked along the sidewalk. "Hey, you."
The car was a 1964 Rambler Classic 770. Turquoise body, white trim and soft top, chrome polished until it almost hurt to look. It was a real beauty. Rose liked cars. She had never owned an automobile of her own, but she loved her daddy's and her old husband's, and now she loved this one. The engine hadn't been dead long, so wherever the owner was, they were close. Rose let the heat from the hood raise the temperature of her thighs.
( Hey There )
( Hallmark Girl )
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| #341 |
[05 Apr 2009|03:07am] |
Elizabeth was a fortune teller.
She pretended that the answers came from Tarot, but she didn't need a deck of cards to tell a person's past or future. It came to her in mental pictures, blurry at first and then slowly coming into focus, like Polaroids. When people said they were assaulted with memories of terrible things, those were usually functions of the regular mind, just recorded images of what they wanted to forget. But Elizabeth saw things she hadn't witnessed first-hand.
Because of that, she was a withdrawn woman with no designs on friendships or romantic partnerships. After twenty-three years of seeing beyond the limits of place or time imposed on normal people, she was tired of bothering with trust and hiding what she knew, of having the intimate details of their lives to come, or even their ugly pasts. When her mother got a cancer, Elizabeth knew it long before a doctor detected a lump in her breast. She saw it over coffee and eggs. When her cousin was killed overseas in a boating accident, she was struck by the knowledge while she bleached her whites at the laundry mat. In the water sloshing around her clothes, she saw his bloated face floating in the ocean before the family knew he was missing. The final straw was more ordinary. A boyfriend cheated with the blonde who served pizza and beer at his favorite pub. Elizabeth saw his hips working between the girl's legs before he came home smelling of unfamiliar perfume.
It never seemed like her gift let her predict mundane things.
( What He Always Wanted )
[The Collector was written by Kate]
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| The Collector |
[05 Apr 2009|09:03pm] |
Horace Berg was a collector of the strange.
His parents were German immigrant farmers that settled in Oklahoma in 1928, just in time for the Dirty Thirties, when the American prairie lands became the dust bowl. Years later, after the weather relented, the back-breaking labor didn't. Horace remembered the square patch of land his family called home, how it yielded more dirt than food. He remembered meager crops, the grime in every nook and cranny of the tiny wooden house. Dirt that got into one's pores and turned the washbasin muddy brown.
One of his strongest memories of childhood was of a traveling carnival that came to town. Their poverty was staggering, but his father produced enough loose change to take his son and wife to see the ferris wheel, the games of chance, and the freak show tents, where the curious could catch glimpses of bearded ladies, conjoined twins, the world's skinniest man, and any other oddity that could be sold to a fanciful public. Perhaps a childhood deprived of anything aside from plows, hoes, and Bible passages was to blame. Perhaps it was the peculiar quality of his personality. One way or another, little Horace's normal detachment gave way to his imagination, which hitched onto the carnival and never let go, even when the trucks rolled out of town.
( Oddities )
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| A Day In The Park |
[05 Apr 2009|09:05pm] |
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mood |
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 peaceful |
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"This is something I fail to understand," Hannah announced to the world at large.
Millennium Park was abuzz with afternoon activity. The pleasant weather had coaxed people outside; they hovered near the fountains, milled about on the plaza, and sat on the grass under the shading trees. Hannah was just as excited to see the sun as anybody else, and felt like a freed jailbird when she fibbed her way out of a diner shift. She dressed for mild weather: a t-shirt, jeans, a thin cardigan, and tennis shoes. All was well until the chewed gum incident.
Walking alongside the enormous, silver Bean sculpture, she had been admiring the distorted city reflections when she stepped right in it. It was no ordinary gum. It was purple and warm and massive, like a kid had gnawed three or four pieces for the express purpose of spitting it on the concrete. She didn't notice it until a few steps later, when a page out of the Sun-Times blew under her foot. Now it was stuck there.
Hannah balanced like an ostrich and inspected the damage.
( Hard Time For Romance )
( Interest In Books )
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| Lessons To Be Taught |
[05 Apr 2009|10:24pm] |
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mood |
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 pissed off |
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There were some things that Bethany Richards considered unacceptable above all others: one of these was stealing from her and then lying about it to her face.
A dancer who went by the stage-name of 'Gold Dust' had been doing exactly that, helping herself to money out of the tills courtesy of a stupid boy behind the bar. The boy had already been taken care of, he wouldn't be seen in the club again. There was just 'Gold Dust' to attend to.
Bethany would do it herself.
She waited until the girl's shift was over and then caught her shoulder, sliding her fingers to curl persuasively in the young woman's collar. "Hilary, could I have a word with you? In private?"
( Game Of Chance )
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