((This will be Tara's journal, written in an app on a tablet she stole called "Forever Note" which is like our app Evernote. Because she is literal, she thinks there's a person inside the tablet named Forever. Please keep that in mind. Also, because Tara fancies herself in a variety of different positions/roles that have no basis in reality (just in her head) there may be some entries, like the first one, where she's not so much talking to Forever but talking about something else unrelated to daily life. If any of this makes sense, I'm doing this character I've been playing for 20 years wrong. ::Grin:: Enjoy.))
Supreme Park Ranger Dark Queen Observation Entry # 412
I am in the tree dwelling I had my demons construct across from Blockhead's and I am using the binoculars the former Park Overlord, who died in some rose bushes at my feet, had prior to his expiration, to watch the bastard across the way. He's sitting in a chair, eating milk and cookies. And laughing.
What the hell is he laughing at I wonder? There's absolutely NOTHING in front of him! I know! I've been in his tree fort. I have scoured EVERY inch of the place looking for secret tunnels and false walls! From where he is seated there is nothing but a blank wall before him and he's laughing at it. And they say I'm nuts? Good God Simon.
There is nothing of import to note except that an hour ago I detected some movement with my infrared goggles I got from the military surplus store downtown (their kevlar vests are AMAZEBALLS!) and not wishing any harm to come to my unsuspecting Blockhead, I set the turret guns on extra high and blew whatever it was to smithereens.
In the morning after I've done my tantric yoga and prayed to God Simon for strength, I'll go downstairs and see what the hell I blew up.
Gee, I hope it wasn't Izira. Blockhead will NEVER forgive me for that. I can just hear him now.
"You KILLED AGAIN! AGAIN! After the last time when we talked about you NOT doing that! And THIS time it was MY VERY REAL GIRLFRIEND! What's the matter with you?!"
I have no idea how I'll respond to that. I've got a lot on my mind.
The Forest Rangers are patrolling the eastern part of the woods looking for rogue garden gnomes to expunge and I've got a date with Sandy for tomorrow so really Blockhead's exploded girlfriend is not high on my list of priorities.
I figure if I did explode her, the least I can do is try to patch her back together with some glue. I can do that for him. It won't kill me to be nice.
I told Jewelsie about this stuff. It's called Gorilla Glue because it draws upon the majestic and enormous power of the gorillas or some crazy nonsense, I don't know. I never even saw a gorilla before so if they're majestic or enormous is totally conjecture at this point. I heard rumors, though.
All I DO know is that stuff works wonders!
A year or so ago I had attacked some random bystander with my chainsaw I affectionately refer to as "The Widowmaker" and it cracked in the scuffle but I applied some of the gorilla glue to it and that thing works like new! It's miraculous really.
So gluing Izira back together should be a breeze.
I know what I will say. I just thought of it. When he accuses me of killing again, I shall say:
"Well who told that girliefriend of yours to LEAVE her pocket dimension huh?! Did you give her permission to do that because I sure as hell didn't!"
That'll fix him. He won't be able to counter that one.
I'm so smart.
Crap.
There's a knock on the door.
I better go see who it is and then ask what's flowing in their veins since they were able to avoid detection by my intruder-alert system (the turret guns are military grade after all) and then rip their nose off their face for disturbing me.
I swear, this being the Supreme Park Ranger Dark Queen business is very intrusive into my personal life and affairs.
I never get ANY rest with these idiots constantly bothering me to fix some newest disaster the forest has wrought.
"Dark Queen Tara, some poor skunks have been caught in all these traps that have been put down, seemingly overnight! What are you going to do about the trappers?!"
"Dark Queen Tara, the rivers are polluted with toxic waste dumped by some evil corporation up the road! You MUST do something!"
It's like all the damn time now they're coming to me. Do they think I have nothing better to do with my time?
Gods.
This isn't even a paid position!
I have half a mind to go reanimate that old Park Overlord guy and give him back his job. Let's see them deal with that!
Park Ranger Queen of the Supreme - Out
Forever Notes
Moderators: Bailey Raptis, JewellRavenlock
Supreme Park Ranger Dark Queen Observation Entry # 413
Knock on the door was the result of two of Hera's Witnesses who were looking for me to join their temple. Didn't Hera go out of style like three thousand years ago? I could swear I was around for that. Anyway, I told them I was already the high priestess of The Glorious and Impervious Temple of God Simon on High and that because Greeks were historically lousy gifters, I would not be joining. I also mentioned something about not getting their brain matter splattered on my landscaping out front should they come into the crosshairs of the turret guns on the way out. They looked at me strangely.
Yeah, so I just finished the Parks Department budget for the upcoming year and it looks like I have WAY more money than I thought I would to spend on discretionary items like the preserved garden gnomes I had the landscapers put out front. See my Forest Angels got a little too gungho when they were scouting for them and wound up killing off an entire tribe and as we didn't have enough lighter fluid to set them all on fire, I thought why not recycle and show the community that we care about the environment?
Blockhead's always going on about that and he says that one of the reasons why I cannot be the Supreme Park Ranger Dark Queen is my stance on issues like the environment. Well suck on that TWERP! Because I care now! Ha!
So to show my commitment to important issues, I've got the leader of the garden gnome tribe (Zitch), his daughter (Zoldra) and his son (Zitch Jr.) all in various poses underneath my tree dwelling. I especially like Zoldra's frozen face of terror as she reaches off into thin air, presumably for her father or brother's hand, in a silent gesture begging for help. I had thought the landscaper did a great job of capturing her final moments of distress but he just said that's the way her face was when she died and rigor mortis set in so it didn't cost me any extra for that!
I'm such a thrifty Park Ranger Queen!
Oh drats.
The alarm just went off on my tablet alerting me to the fact that it's time to up the voltage in the fencing around the park.
Can't take the chance that any ole stranger would just wander into the place without paying.
Oh, right, I almost forgot.
In order to ensure that I will have more money in my discretionary fund, I installed toll booths at all the entrances.
The charge to get in is 100 nobles but I might modify that once I speak with the accountants.
Hey, if the meat puppets complain about this I'm going to remind them that since NO ONE asked me or Jewelsie if it was OK to turn our clubhouse into a tollbooth, I didn't see the need to do the same here.
And you know what?
They're not in charge. I am.
It's damn good to be the Queen.
Park Ranger Queen of the Supreme - Out
Knock on the door was the result of two of Hera's Witnesses who were looking for me to join their temple. Didn't Hera go out of style like three thousand years ago? I could swear I was around for that. Anyway, I told them I was already the high priestess of The Glorious and Impervious Temple of God Simon on High and that because Greeks were historically lousy gifters, I would not be joining. I also mentioned something about not getting their brain matter splattered on my landscaping out front should they come into the crosshairs of the turret guns on the way out. They looked at me strangely.
Yeah, so I just finished the Parks Department budget for the upcoming year and it looks like I have WAY more money than I thought I would to spend on discretionary items like the preserved garden gnomes I had the landscapers put out front. See my Forest Angels got a little too gungho when they were scouting for them and wound up killing off an entire tribe and as we didn't have enough lighter fluid to set them all on fire, I thought why not recycle and show the community that we care about the environment?
Blockhead's always going on about that and he says that one of the reasons why I cannot be the Supreme Park Ranger Dark Queen is my stance on issues like the environment. Well suck on that TWERP! Because I care now! Ha!
So to show my commitment to important issues, I've got the leader of the garden gnome tribe (Zitch), his daughter (Zoldra) and his son (Zitch Jr.) all in various poses underneath my tree dwelling. I especially like Zoldra's frozen face of terror as she reaches off into thin air, presumably for her father or brother's hand, in a silent gesture begging for help. I had thought the landscaper did a great job of capturing her final moments of distress but he just said that's the way her face was when she died and rigor mortis set in so it didn't cost me any extra for that!
I'm such a thrifty Park Ranger Queen!
Oh drats.
The alarm just went off on my tablet alerting me to the fact that it's time to up the voltage in the fencing around the park.
Can't take the chance that any ole stranger would just wander into the place without paying.
Oh, right, I almost forgot.
In order to ensure that I will have more money in my discretionary fund, I installed toll booths at all the entrances.
The charge to get in is 100 nobles but I might modify that once I speak with the accountants.
Hey, if the meat puppets complain about this I'm going to remind them that since NO ONE asked me or Jewelsie if it was OK to turn our clubhouse into a tollbooth, I didn't see the need to do the same here.
And you know what?
They're not in charge. I am.
It's damn good to be the Queen.
Park Ranger Queen of the Supreme - Out
Dear Forever,
I went to the zoo today to see if gorillas were really majestic as the glue I use with their name in it suggests. These are the picture things I took of them with my new tablet I got from this nice boy named Chris.
This is Titus. He is the oldest living gorilla in the Rhy'Din Zoo. I introduced myself and this was his expression. He's so cute. I want to cuddle with him all the time now.
This is Titus after I told him that Blockhead's girlfriend Izira lives in a pocket dimension and might have been zapped by my turret guns because she quite possibly was here without permission.
And this is Titus after I told him how stupid Rena wouldn't move even though I offered to pay for a new house for her, ALL new furniture AND her moving costs. Yeah. That's how I feel too buddy.
This is Titus' girliefriends after I taught them how to do some tantric yoga. They were practicing.
And this is my wonder llama Fred after I donated him to the zoo to stop Panther from putting a lien on him to pay off what he terms my "legendary" tab at the Dragon. I think Fred will be happy there. They said I could visit him any time I wanted. Oh and bonus! With each third visit, I get a free funnel cake so you just know I'll be at the zoo all the time now. Yay!
I have to go now. Jared my IT guy says that I should not wear the battery down on this tablet of metal (why don't they come in stone varieties anymore?) like I do the electric toothbrush I found in Clamtrude's evil underground laboratory. I do not know why this is. Jared says funny stuff all the time. He's a geek. I'll tell you more about him next time!
- Tara
I went to the zoo today to see if gorillas were really majestic as the glue I use with their name in it suggests. These are the picture things I took of them with my new tablet I got from this nice boy named Chris.
This is Titus. He is the oldest living gorilla in the Rhy'Din Zoo. I introduced myself and this was his expression. He's so cute. I want to cuddle with him all the time now.
This is Titus after I told him that Blockhead's girlfriend Izira lives in a pocket dimension and might have been zapped by my turret guns because she quite possibly was here without permission.
And this is Titus after I told him how stupid Rena wouldn't move even though I offered to pay for a new house for her, ALL new furniture AND her moving costs. Yeah. That's how I feel too buddy.
This is Titus' girliefriends after I taught them how to do some tantric yoga. They were practicing.
And this is my wonder llama Fred after I donated him to the zoo to stop Panther from putting a lien on him to pay off what he terms my "legendary" tab at the Dragon. I think Fred will be happy there. They said I could visit him any time I wanted. Oh and bonus! With each third visit, I get a free funnel cake so you just know I'll be at the zoo all the time now. Yay!
I have to go now. Jared my IT guy says that I should not wear the battery down on this tablet of metal (why don't they come in stone varieties anymore?) like I do the electric toothbrush I found in Clamtrude's evil underground laboratory. I do not know why this is. Jared says funny stuff all the time. He's a geek. I'll tell you more about him next time!
- Tara
Dear Forever,
I am very upset!
Jewelsie and I got into a fight because I said that MAYBE my black wizard Kalamere felt MORE for her than he was letting on DESPITE the fact that she's in the dreaded "friend zone" with him and she yelled at me and said I was WRONG!
So to punish her for upsetting me I have not had a sleepover with her in over a week which if you knew us and our incredibly tight sister-like bond, you'd understand just how catastrophic that really is to the friendship.
She is my BEST FRIEND and she basically called me a liar!
I even mentioned that Anpu and I were friends for many years before we hooked up but that didn't change her mind at all! She said we were FATED to be together (which is odd because that's what Anpu says) and that nothing him or I did in our lives would have changed that but that she and Kal are NOT! And she said that even if she were to miraculously marry Kal that I was NOT invited to the wedding!
Which is just a ridiculous thing to say especially in light of ALL that happened during The Conciliation of the Martyrs tourney because if it wasn't for me Kal would be dead! He OWES me his life! Forget his allegiance and an invitation to his wedding but would he deny me?!
OF COURSE NOT! Jewelsie doesn't know what the hell she's talking about!
It was so cool, too. Cedrick the Vile was fighting this priest named Asterius and Asterius wins, thus moving him into the final bout with Kalamere who had won EVERY SINGLE FIGHT (not some, ALL) up until that point.
Which is why we've now all taken to calling him by the sobriquet The Desecrator of Dreams Machine which is an obvious reference to his PHENOMENAL victory in the Desecration of Dreams challenge but seriously the guy's amazing.
So Kal was dancing around Asterius, calling him names like the "Whiny Martyr" because with each new insult Asterius was moved to tears and was begging Kal to stop but he didn't so Asterius was getting pissed, right? Asterius lunges in with a right hook clipping Kal in the jaw and that's when Kal just went MEDIEVAL on him!
He's hitting him every which way to Sunday, the crowd is out of their seats going wild, Asterius can't recover in time so his head is just bouncing all over the place on his shoulders effectively convincing ALL of us that he would have made a better children's bobble-head toy rather than a priest and then Kal picks up Cedrick the Vile's disembodied arm and starts slapping Asterius in the face with it. Now everyone's laughing at this because it was HILARIOUS but the judges got upset and said that was against the rules.
Apparently you're allowed to slaughter as many participants as you want, in any fashion, with any number of weapons, but once they're dead you cannot use their body parts to help you secure a victory.
I know. Dumb. But it happened.
Now everyone's LOSING it because the trumpets sounded and that means the action stops. When that happens the Fallen come to pass judgment on the rule-breaker and I couldn't just let that happen. Maybe to anyone else but NOT to Kal! He's my FAVORITE black wizard!
So my brothers are drawing their spectral swords ready to run Kal through with them and I don't know what came over me, maybe it's because I'm not really diplomatic but I jumped into the arena and drew my own sword as well.
Kal's looking at me like I am insane, my friends in the bleachers are ROARING, the entire stadium is in upheaval, the Judges are striking their gavels declaring order and I'm fending off siblings left and right with what basically amounts to cosmic particles tightly woven together to LOOK like a weapon. But it's star dust, if you want to get technical.
Because that's where all of us demons and angels originate from.
The universe.
The meat puppets look up at night and marvel at planets and things and meanwhile I look up and see cousin Brian.
OK I don't actually have a cousin Brian but you get my point. I hope.
So I've got a sword made out of a relative who is not in a functional or sentient form of any kind (YET) and I'm wacking it (them?) against my brother's sword made out of some other relative and Kal is trying to appeal to everyone's sense of fairness.
Because he's a rational dude.
You have to appreciate the man's dedication. He is COVERED in blood, viscera, you name it and he's calmly stating his beliefs.
I hear him as I'm lobbing off a Fallen's ear...he's saying that it was NOT his fault that Cedrick's arm was on the ground and that had the Cleaners (the names for the demons who sweep away all the fallen combatants and their discarded limbs after each fight) done their job properly NONE of this would've happened!
He kinda had a point, yanno?
So now Kal is temporarily thrown in the Cage of All Fears (It's just what you're thinking it is) while the mess gets sorted out. The Judges convene and because I am one of the eldest and highest ranking demonic entities in the place, I have to STOP fighting my kid brother to go to a special chamber where we all decide Kal's fate.
One hour in, my stomach's grumbling and I'm losing my will to live.
There's no snacks in there and who thought to take my caramel apple into the arena with me when I jumped down there to save Kal's life? You make a split decision like that, you're not thinking of culinary concerns!
So I'm banging my horns against the back of my chair (I have cute horns but they're a little dented now) as I'm being asked OVER and OVER again to explain why I interrupted a championship fight and all I can think about is how it would have been SO MUCH BETTER if Kal was just born with an extra set of arms so he didn't have to use dead Cedrick's.
Because we're arguing over AN ARM and in whose rightful possession the arm was in the moment it became separated from stupid Cedrick's body.
I mean, I never!
I convinced them that my interference was warranted and that the Cleaners should all be strapped to Sisyphus' boulders for the rest of eternity, everyone seemed happy with that and Kal was finally set free to continue fighting Asterius who lost so BADLY that I think by the time Kal was done with him and before the Cleaners were strapped to the boulders, the only thing they had left to clean up was an eyeball and maybe one of Asterius' sandals.
It was as if Kal ABSORBED the man into his own flesh! None of us could figure out where most of him went! I mean, did he drink him? It was amazing, that's all I can say!
SO...
WITH THAT SAID!
...
How an otherwise HUMAN male who has enjoyed nothing short of a meteoric rise to FAME and FORTUNE as an Infernal Games participant WITHOUT BEING INFERNAL himself could SUCK so BAD in these fake circular contraption games they have here in Rhy'Din, by comparison?
Is beyond me!
But would he let me, his savior, NOT be seated at his wedding feast even if my best friend is being a jerk to me?!
OF COURSE HE WOULDN'T! DON'T BE ABSURD!
I mean, I've been sitting here for the last hour as Anpu has been doing his thousand one-handed push-ups over on the balcony wondering to myself about Kal.
And let me tell you when Anpu's working out naked as he does? It's REALLY damn difficult to focus on anything BUT him!
But I am!
Because I'm upset!
Let us assume for a moment that I AM right about Kal and he is PRETENDING to NOT care about Jewelsie because he's a guy and he doesn't want to get hurt.
I know that sounds silly but just bear with me here because I have experience with a guy NOT wanting to get hurt with me. His name would be Anubis.
I have SEEN what Kal can do. He is now ranked THIRD in the Infernal Games. That is THIRD throughout HISTORY. Not third CURRENTLY. Do you have ANY idea what that means?! The only ones ranked higher than him are Judas and Henry the Eighth!
If as I suspect that Kal is somehow dumbing down his skill because he's afraid that if he demonstrates his true power that he'll kill one of the meat puppets and his reputation will be forever ruined than it is NOT too far a leap of lopic that he is ALSO faking his "non-existent" feelings for Jewelsie JUST LIKE Anubis did with me!
Anubis Karos growled at me for the ENTIRE first year we knew each other. Everyone told me INCLUDING my Uncle Dave (who we used to call "One Tough S.O.B." by the way but nowadays the meat puppets just call him Dave--he's still MY UNCLE and I know him best!) that I had best leave Anubis alone because he was, in a word, scary.
And when a man LIKE Dave tells you that ANOTHER man is, in a word, scary?
You're SUPPOSED to listen!
Do you know what my Uncle does for a living?! And has his ENTIRE life?! He chains women up! He's, in a word, scary too! But the difference between him and Anpu is most women run AWAY from Anpu (screaming, mostly) but they run TOWARDS Dave (also screaming, oddly enough!) If I didn't see it all these long years, time and again, with my own eyes I'd think it was a lie but it's true. He's got that animal magnetism. Women love him. They practically put the chains on themselves they're so happy to be owned by him!
But NOT Anubis.
That I've seen too. I lost count of how many begged ME to kill them just so they wouldn't have to be alone with HIM.
I may have been his mistress...I may be his primary lover now.....and we just might be married one day but one thing I ALWAYS am, and always HAVE been throughout our history is his friend.
I wouldn't betray him. He has my loyalty, for life. So I threw them to the wolf, so to speak because he matters to me.
There's always MORE of them. There will NEVER be another him.
My point is I didn't listen to what Dave said but if Jewelsie's right and we weren't FATED to be together, I would not be writing this right now. Let's get real here.
I don't know what it was about me that clicked in that unbelievably stubborn Egyptian's head. I've never asked him much like I suppose he's never asked me what it was about HIM that clicked in mine, I just know what our history is and was.
He was not nice to me at first. He thought I was a slave! His first words to me, "Why are you not in a cage, girl?"
It took time to get him to let me in past what I call his titanium barrier guarding his heart and emotions. It wasn't easy. Most of it was sheer accident. Every time I got kidnapped or hurt, I don't know, it struck a chord in him and he played the hero. Honest, he did. He always rushed to my defense, always was there to save me.
But never with anyone other female except maybe Dawn. I won't disparage her here. She earned his love. I was the fool that let him go once. That's not on her, it's on me.
My point is he was around plenty of other women besides Dawn and I. He didn't show them the same courtesies that he did us just like I suppose Kal doesn't show with other women.
OK and so maybe I am a hopeless romantic and I want my best friend to be happy for ONCE in her life!
I would give anything to see Jewelsie happy again.
I've been married fifty times which is a HUGE (if not THE) singular bone of contention with Anubis and I. We argue over it all the time. He feels that when I left, he married ONE woman and stayed with her and I went around marrying anything I could.
He will never forgive me that.
I could have slept with the entire world and he would have turned a blind eye to it but I married them. Egyptians are funny about marriage. Of all the things they practiced that was one thing as sacred as their religion. Divorce was unheard of and adultery a nigh capital offense.
So it bothers him.
Not that I let myself be used. Don't misunderstand. He's not dumb and he KNOWS what I truly am just like I know what he truly is. We have a function to perform, him and I, each in our own separate spheres of influence as I like to call it. We do what we were born to do but this wasn't a job, it was a personal choice and affairs of the heart matter, even to us gods and demons.
It bothers him that I got married ONCE (forget fifty times) to another man, in the first place and that the REASON why I did was to spite him for marrying Dawn.
That's the ultimate problem and why he'll make me wait to get married until I turn ten thousand because while I KNOW he loves me (I'd never doubt that and never have) he just can't get past the fact that I chose others over him.
Guys are weird like that. They can have a million affairs and it's OK but if their woman shows the slightest affection toward another, it's a deal breaker.
But I must be some kind of special because he's with me now and won't let me go. He's told me that if I try to kill myself again he'll make me regret it this time.
Like Dave said...scary.
I believe him.
But I also believe that Kal cares more for Jewelsie than Jewelsie is willing to admit.
I got my happy ending and it IS happy.
There is not a man alive including the fifty dead ones I married that can do to me, spiritually, what Anubis has.
Is it such a crime to want my best friend, my SISTER to have that too?
I am very upset!
Jewelsie and I got into a fight because I said that MAYBE my black wizard Kalamere felt MORE for her than he was letting on DESPITE the fact that she's in the dreaded "friend zone" with him and she yelled at me and said I was WRONG!
So to punish her for upsetting me I have not had a sleepover with her in over a week which if you knew us and our incredibly tight sister-like bond, you'd understand just how catastrophic that really is to the friendship.
She is my BEST FRIEND and she basically called me a liar!
I even mentioned that Anpu and I were friends for many years before we hooked up but that didn't change her mind at all! She said we were FATED to be together (which is odd because that's what Anpu says) and that nothing him or I did in our lives would have changed that but that she and Kal are NOT! And she said that even if she were to miraculously marry Kal that I was NOT invited to the wedding!
Which is just a ridiculous thing to say especially in light of ALL that happened during The Conciliation of the Martyrs tourney because if it wasn't for me Kal would be dead! He OWES me his life! Forget his allegiance and an invitation to his wedding but would he deny me?!
OF COURSE NOT! Jewelsie doesn't know what the hell she's talking about!
It was so cool, too. Cedrick the Vile was fighting this priest named Asterius and Asterius wins, thus moving him into the final bout with Kalamere who had won EVERY SINGLE FIGHT (not some, ALL) up until that point.
Which is why we've now all taken to calling him by the sobriquet The Desecrator of Dreams Machine which is an obvious reference to his PHENOMENAL victory in the Desecration of Dreams challenge but seriously the guy's amazing.
So Kal was dancing around Asterius, calling him names like the "Whiny Martyr" because with each new insult Asterius was moved to tears and was begging Kal to stop but he didn't so Asterius was getting pissed, right? Asterius lunges in with a right hook clipping Kal in the jaw and that's when Kal just went MEDIEVAL on him!
He's hitting him every which way to Sunday, the crowd is out of their seats going wild, Asterius can't recover in time so his head is just bouncing all over the place on his shoulders effectively convincing ALL of us that he would have made a better children's bobble-head toy rather than a priest and then Kal picks up Cedrick the Vile's disembodied arm and starts slapping Asterius in the face with it. Now everyone's laughing at this because it was HILARIOUS but the judges got upset and said that was against the rules.
Apparently you're allowed to slaughter as many participants as you want, in any fashion, with any number of weapons, but once they're dead you cannot use their body parts to help you secure a victory.
I know. Dumb. But it happened.
Now everyone's LOSING it because the trumpets sounded and that means the action stops. When that happens the Fallen come to pass judgment on the rule-breaker and I couldn't just let that happen. Maybe to anyone else but NOT to Kal! He's my FAVORITE black wizard!
So my brothers are drawing their spectral swords ready to run Kal through with them and I don't know what came over me, maybe it's because I'm not really diplomatic but I jumped into the arena and drew my own sword as well.
Kal's looking at me like I am insane, my friends in the bleachers are ROARING, the entire stadium is in upheaval, the Judges are striking their gavels declaring order and I'm fending off siblings left and right with what basically amounts to cosmic particles tightly woven together to LOOK like a weapon. But it's star dust, if you want to get technical.
Because that's where all of us demons and angels originate from.
The universe.
The meat puppets look up at night and marvel at planets and things and meanwhile I look up and see cousin Brian.
OK I don't actually have a cousin Brian but you get my point. I hope.
So I've got a sword made out of a relative who is not in a functional or sentient form of any kind (YET) and I'm wacking it (them?) against my brother's sword made out of some other relative and Kal is trying to appeal to everyone's sense of fairness.
Because he's a rational dude.
You have to appreciate the man's dedication. He is COVERED in blood, viscera, you name it and he's calmly stating his beliefs.
I hear him as I'm lobbing off a Fallen's ear...he's saying that it was NOT his fault that Cedrick's arm was on the ground and that had the Cleaners (the names for the demons who sweep away all the fallen combatants and their discarded limbs after each fight) done their job properly NONE of this would've happened!
He kinda had a point, yanno?
So now Kal is temporarily thrown in the Cage of All Fears (It's just what you're thinking it is) while the mess gets sorted out. The Judges convene and because I am one of the eldest and highest ranking demonic entities in the place, I have to STOP fighting my kid brother to go to a special chamber where we all decide Kal's fate.
One hour in, my stomach's grumbling and I'm losing my will to live.
There's no snacks in there and who thought to take my caramel apple into the arena with me when I jumped down there to save Kal's life? You make a split decision like that, you're not thinking of culinary concerns!
So I'm banging my horns against the back of my chair (I have cute horns but they're a little dented now) as I'm being asked OVER and OVER again to explain why I interrupted a championship fight and all I can think about is how it would have been SO MUCH BETTER if Kal was just born with an extra set of arms so he didn't have to use dead Cedrick's.
Because we're arguing over AN ARM and in whose rightful possession the arm was in the moment it became separated from stupid Cedrick's body.
I mean, I never!
I convinced them that my interference was warranted and that the Cleaners should all be strapped to Sisyphus' boulders for the rest of eternity, everyone seemed happy with that and Kal was finally set free to continue fighting Asterius who lost so BADLY that I think by the time Kal was done with him and before the Cleaners were strapped to the boulders, the only thing they had left to clean up was an eyeball and maybe one of Asterius' sandals.
It was as if Kal ABSORBED the man into his own flesh! None of us could figure out where most of him went! I mean, did he drink him? It was amazing, that's all I can say!
SO...
WITH THAT SAID!
...
How an otherwise HUMAN male who has enjoyed nothing short of a meteoric rise to FAME and FORTUNE as an Infernal Games participant WITHOUT BEING INFERNAL himself could SUCK so BAD in these fake circular contraption games they have here in Rhy'Din, by comparison?
Is beyond me!
But would he let me, his savior, NOT be seated at his wedding feast even if my best friend is being a jerk to me?!
OF COURSE HE WOULDN'T! DON'T BE ABSURD!
I mean, I've been sitting here for the last hour as Anpu has been doing his thousand one-handed push-ups over on the balcony wondering to myself about Kal.
And let me tell you when Anpu's working out naked as he does? It's REALLY damn difficult to focus on anything BUT him!
But I am!
Because I'm upset!
Let us assume for a moment that I AM right about Kal and he is PRETENDING to NOT care about Jewelsie because he's a guy and he doesn't want to get hurt.
I know that sounds silly but just bear with me here because I have experience with a guy NOT wanting to get hurt with me. His name would be Anubis.
I have SEEN what Kal can do. He is now ranked THIRD in the Infernal Games. That is THIRD throughout HISTORY. Not third CURRENTLY. Do you have ANY idea what that means?! The only ones ranked higher than him are Judas and Henry the Eighth!
If as I suspect that Kal is somehow dumbing down his skill because he's afraid that if he demonstrates his true power that he'll kill one of the meat puppets and his reputation will be forever ruined than it is NOT too far a leap of lopic that he is ALSO faking his "non-existent" feelings for Jewelsie JUST LIKE Anubis did with me!
Anubis Karos growled at me for the ENTIRE first year we knew each other. Everyone told me INCLUDING my Uncle Dave (who we used to call "One Tough S.O.B." by the way but nowadays the meat puppets just call him Dave--he's still MY UNCLE and I know him best!) that I had best leave Anubis alone because he was, in a word, scary.
And when a man LIKE Dave tells you that ANOTHER man is, in a word, scary?
You're SUPPOSED to listen!
Do you know what my Uncle does for a living?! And has his ENTIRE life?! He chains women up! He's, in a word, scary too! But the difference between him and Anpu is most women run AWAY from Anpu (screaming, mostly) but they run TOWARDS Dave (also screaming, oddly enough!) If I didn't see it all these long years, time and again, with my own eyes I'd think it was a lie but it's true. He's got that animal magnetism. Women love him. They practically put the chains on themselves they're so happy to be owned by him!
But NOT Anubis.
That I've seen too. I lost count of how many begged ME to kill them just so they wouldn't have to be alone with HIM.
I may have been his mistress...I may be his primary lover now.....and we just might be married one day but one thing I ALWAYS am, and always HAVE been throughout our history is his friend.
I wouldn't betray him. He has my loyalty, for life. So I threw them to the wolf, so to speak because he matters to me.
There's always MORE of them. There will NEVER be another him.
My point is I didn't listen to what Dave said but if Jewelsie's right and we weren't FATED to be together, I would not be writing this right now. Let's get real here.
I don't know what it was about me that clicked in that unbelievably stubborn Egyptian's head. I've never asked him much like I suppose he's never asked me what it was about HIM that clicked in mine, I just know what our history is and was.
He was not nice to me at first. He thought I was a slave! His first words to me, "Why are you not in a cage, girl?"
It took time to get him to let me in past what I call his titanium barrier guarding his heart and emotions. It wasn't easy. Most of it was sheer accident. Every time I got kidnapped or hurt, I don't know, it struck a chord in him and he played the hero. Honest, he did. He always rushed to my defense, always was there to save me.
But never with anyone other female except maybe Dawn. I won't disparage her here. She earned his love. I was the fool that let him go once. That's not on her, it's on me.
My point is he was around plenty of other women besides Dawn and I. He didn't show them the same courtesies that he did us just like I suppose Kal doesn't show with other women.
OK and so maybe I am a hopeless romantic and I want my best friend to be happy for ONCE in her life!
I would give anything to see Jewelsie happy again.
I've been married fifty times which is a HUGE (if not THE) singular bone of contention with Anubis and I. We argue over it all the time. He feels that when I left, he married ONE woman and stayed with her and I went around marrying anything I could.
He will never forgive me that.
I could have slept with the entire world and he would have turned a blind eye to it but I married them. Egyptians are funny about marriage. Of all the things they practiced that was one thing as sacred as their religion. Divorce was unheard of and adultery a nigh capital offense.
So it bothers him.
Not that I let myself be used. Don't misunderstand. He's not dumb and he KNOWS what I truly am just like I know what he truly is. We have a function to perform, him and I, each in our own separate spheres of influence as I like to call it. We do what we were born to do but this wasn't a job, it was a personal choice and affairs of the heart matter, even to us gods and demons.
It bothers him that I got married ONCE (forget fifty times) to another man, in the first place and that the REASON why I did was to spite him for marrying Dawn.
That's the ultimate problem and why he'll make me wait to get married until I turn ten thousand because while I KNOW he loves me (I'd never doubt that and never have) he just can't get past the fact that I chose others over him.
Guys are weird like that. They can have a million affairs and it's OK but if their woman shows the slightest affection toward another, it's a deal breaker.
But I must be some kind of special because he's with me now and won't let me go. He's told me that if I try to kill myself again he'll make me regret it this time.
Like Dave said...scary.
I believe him.
But I also believe that Kal cares more for Jewelsie than Jewelsie is willing to admit.
I got my happy ending and it IS happy.
There is not a man alive including the fifty dead ones I married that can do to me, spiritually, what Anubis has.
Is it such a crime to want my best friend, my SISTER to have that too?
Dear Forever,
How I came to be the C.E.O. of Hither, Incorporated is not the story everyone will be talking about come the new year. Nor is what I did with the body of the former C.E.O. of Hither Incorporated, a one Nikolai Markov, who prior to emigrating to Rhy'Din was a Russians arms dealer and a gangster.
No, no, no.
The story that is going to be on everyone's lips (especially the investors) is why I got away with it.
This is a stone head in a bush.
At first glance you probably would not make the connection between it and Nikolai because on the surface the two have nothing at all in common but of course you would be very wrong.
When I want something, I expect to get it, immediately. I do not like to have to jump through many hoops to achieve any goal of mine. I feel it's unnecessary and a little insulting. When you are a creature like me that has the kind of ego I do and has been assured that a certain series of events is going to happen at a much later date and will result in the almost complete annihilation of Mankind, you tend to get a little antsy if not brash and uncompromising.
Because it's not as if anything they do is going to change the outcome. You know this, they don't. They rely on what they know at present and the absurd notion of Hope. The Greeks were famous for this. Even right up to the moment of their extinction, they clung to a belief system that was bound to inevitably fail them and eventually did.
Didn't change the fact that they all died, although I have to say Leonidas? He was fun. NOT a great lover, though, when compared with the delicious likes of Attila and Hannibal, though.
Nikolai was a decent lover. I'll give him that. We shared many a bottle of vodka and some fair degree of wanton passion before we stopped seeing one another.
When I first met him years ago in a restaurant and he thought I was the mistress of some Russian crime lord who was utterly insane, I thought he was cute. He had a scar that ran the length of his forearm which I always used to touch in such a way as to make him think I sympathized with an injury I was neither around to witness nor properly appreciate as a result. That drove him wild. My pretending to be tender. Hard men such as Nikolai crave tenderness but they'll never admit it.
While the two discussed killing off competition and making more money than either of them would know what to do with in their relatively SHORT existences compared to mine, I took the liberty of playing footsie with Nikolai and observing the results.
His eyes ignited the way mine do when I zero in on prey. And that's when he mentally checked out of the conversation he was having and spent the rest of the night imagining me in all sorts of uncompromising positions.
I can read minds. Nikolai was a freak. Trust me.
That night after the crime lord passed out in bed, I met Nikolai in the street downstairs. He picked me up in a Mercedes and we went to a hotel that would become our lover's nest for the better part of six weeks. I let him act out every fantasy he had while I pretended to be the doting, naive mistress.
On the seventh week, after he had learned his crime lord pal had been suffocated in his sleep and I had been the only one in the room with the man at the time, he had me handcuffed naked to his bed and was kissing each bullet prior to loading them into his gun. Then he put it in my mouth and told me to make peace with my Maker.
When the authorities arrived two hours later, one of them found me weeping and shaking in the corner of the room and Nikolai, laying on the bed, now handcuffed himself and completely unrecognizable due to the sheer amount of swelling in his facial region.
One of them remarked that it could not possibly be Nikolai (whose nicknames included such gems as "The Iron Fang" and "The Deliverer" -- he didn't have fangs and what he delivered, I cannot say, but that's what they called him) because his reputation was such that no one had ever been able to best him.
Heh. That's so funny, in retrospect.
In perfect Russian, as if I were a native speaker of it, I recounted the tale of the jealous crime lord who found out about my affair with Nikolai and came to pay him a visit. I described an attack which was not in any way true and that the only reason why I had escaped injury was because Nikolai had made me promise not to leave the closet.
They bought it.
When they put him on the stretcher and were wheeling him towards the ambulance, I played the perfect worried girlfriend. I ran to him, threw myself on his chest and when he strained to open one eye and it widened upon seeing who was embracing him, I smiled and whispered to him, "I'll see you 'gain sometime, Markov. Better hope next time the gun fires, eh?"
They lifted him up into the ambulance as he was screaming all sorts of nonsense and the lead investigator, shaking his head, turned to me and asked me if I needed anything.
I said, "Yeah," as I gave a forlorn look to the ambulance disappearing down the street and frowned, "justice."
He gave me his solemn vow that he would fix it and then gave me his card. I still have it somewhere. Framed.
So when I walked into Hither, Incorporated two months ago and threw open the doors to Nikolai's office, with the stone bust of some nameless man I never met nor would even care about if I had, and set it down neatly between the bottle of Smirnoff and the Glock Nikolai always kept on his desk to deter people from getting too heated with him it's not a surprise that he nearly fell out of his chair.
I sat down gracefully in the chair opposite his and smoothed out my skirt. Rena would have been proud. It was "tasteful", which is a word I suspect she'd use to describe me if she were there to see it. He reached for the gun. I broke his pinky finger and then took the gun as he screamed in pain.
This is what I said to him.
"I know all about hiding secrets in plain sight, Nikolai, I'm walking proof of that. But, having it encased in stone and set in a park for all to see? Now that's a first. I am sure right now you are wondering as to how, I, the girl with the red hair whose brains you nearly blew out twenty years ago is sitting here in front of you looking no older than the day you met her and how I found out about what's in the stone head and I'd like to clear all that confusion up for you, but first, I am thirsty."
I poured myself a glass of vodka, straddled his lap, my tasteful skirt hiked up high and drank it as he stared at me in awe, surprise and terror.
They get this way with me, the meat puppets, when I have them in my thrall. They can’t move, can’t speak and can’t react. It’s all very flattering, I think.
"My name is not Nadia but...," I paused, grinning at a thought I had, "Tara as some like to call me. My real name is a mystery, known only to myself and the Maker you asked me to make peace with not twenty years ago to this very day. You remember what you did, Nicky, right? Kissing those bullets, drawing out the suspense of the moment, trying to heighten my fear? I do. It was very amusing. Almost as amusing as what I'm going to do you right after I get done dealing with your staff."
I stood then and aimed the gun at the doors which burst open and four security guards hired by Nikolai to keep him safe came stumbling in.
I don't know what it was they expected to see but I could tell in that moment from the looks on their faces it was not what was happening. They gave each other confused looks seeing me, this short girl with bright red hair in a tasteful skirt and holding a gun.
And then I shot them all in each of their knees and watched as they fell to the ground. They tried to exchange gunfire, they did. But none of the bullets hit me and if they had, they wouldn't have hurt me.
Yeah, about that.
I know that I recently wrote some Christmas cards to some of the meat puppets in town and made mention of the fact that some evil scientists harmed me with syringes but that was a lie.
A story I told them to reinforce the belief in their heads that I CAN be killed but that's not actually true. Not by them at least. It would take an elevated being like a god to do something like that.
And even then that god would have some difficulty.
Please don't think me arrogant or conceited. I'm actually not. I just believe in stating facts. When you are something like me, you can afford to make statements like that without batting an eyelash because you know the score.
The meat puppets, even if they gathered themselves in an army, outfitted themselves with every weapon known to Man and unleashed it all on me wouldn't even scratch my skin.
I am the Whore of Babylon and they don't have a prayer.
Besides, I've tried to kill myself plenty of times and all I can tell you that was the same throughout each attempt despite the difference in methods I employed, was that I came BACK.
You'd think they'd remember that but they never do.
So Nikolai's security guards were crying out in pain and I disarmed them before turning back to him, now with five guns in my possession. I tossed them out the open window so as to eliminate them as a potential distraction.
I don't need a gun to kill a human but I easily could use one to do so. I’m very opportunistic when I have to be.
Just not that day. I needed to focus. This was a man that not only had done a very BAD thing but had something I wanted. His business.
Years ago all I had to do to corrupt a man's soul was flirt a little and be suggestive in my mannerisms and speech. These days, these puppets of flesh that are male, they have too many things to occupy their attention, most of them technology-based.
You can't go in a bar and talk to a man and expect to go home with him an hour later because in that same hour he's already answered four calls on his cellphone and he's been texted a dozen or so times more. His attention is all over the place now. So if you want to get his attention you have to use the very technology he is straddled with on a daily basis to do so.
Hither Incorporated makes a dating app on cellphones that enable users to meet up relatively quickly by "swiping" their fingers left and right, respectively, and then with the touch of a few more buttons and a complicated geographic positioning system tied to satellites that lay up in the heavens, meet at predestined places to have that date. Swipe left if you dislike them and they disappear off your radar. Swipe right if you think they might be a good lay and meet in person to seal the deal. Easy as pie.
It's all so idiotic.
I've had men wage wars over me, although all anyone ever talks about is that one war over that woman Helen, but it's true. They invested money and time on me. Lives were lost on my account and if that isn't love, I don't know what is. The mortal women these days settle for SO MUCH less if all it takes to get them to sleep with a man is the swipe of his finger rather than spilt blood and the slash of his sword.
I may not like it but that's how "romance" is conducted these days and if I am to be successful in corrupting more souls, I have to be on board with the new way of doing things. So I needed Hither to be under MY control. But I couldn't do that with Nicky at the helm because of our past association and obvious conflict of interest.
Which is why after dispatching his security and breaking another pinky, I smashed the stone bust of that nameless man on Nicky's very expensive mahogany desk and held up the several karat diamond that had been inside of it.
The diamond itself was not at issue even though it was worth a fortune and was very rare. Flawless diamonds tend to be thought of that way. No, rather, it was who the diamond belonged to that would have everyone talking. I didn't know her, never met her and honestly don't know her name.
See several weeks prior to this incident, Nikolai had killed a woman. The woman who had owned the diamond. But when he tried to sell it, he found that he didn't have very many buyers because the story was all over the news and no one wanted to get caught being in bed with a Russian sleazebag like Nicky even though he owned a VERY successful dating company and was largely thought of as an innovator and up and coming star in the technology world. Underneath that carefully constructed facade, however, he was still a former Russians arms dealer and all around bad guy.
Unable to get rid of the diamond, Nicky had it encased in the stone face of that nameless man that lived years ago and was someone important and placed in one of Rhy'Din's largest parks. I suppose when the controversy over the dead woman died down, he was going to find a way to sell it.
I know this because I approved the permit for the town councilman to have the dedication ceremony AT the park where Nikolai and his goons pretended to be honoring the dead stone man and had donated some money to the town. They even had a plaque put on the base on the pedestal where Rhy'Din was recognizing Nikolai's financial donation and commitment to preserving the past.
I didn't show up for the ceremony because I didn't want to spoil the surprise but from what I was told by those I had sent to watch it all go down, the meat puppets ate it up. They love them a good cause and a seemingly awesome human being to rally around even if they don’t understand all the nuances associated WITH that particular cause or person.
If you ever want proof of that, just go to a protest, doesn’t matter which and as you move through the crowd, ask the participants what they are there for. Almost none of them will say for the cause at hand but some other reason. Meat puppets just like to protest. It’s the mob mentality. It affects them and makes them do things they wouldn’t do by themselves.
The dead woman, meanwhile, was in a drawer at the morgue, on ice. The authorities were baffled as to who had killed her and the public was uneasy because she had been killed while at home, in a house full of company for a Halloween party she had been having, and no one that was there had saw a thing.
I don't know why there was cause for confusion there seeing as all the guests were dressed up in costume and all Nicky and his assassins had to do was dress up in costumes themselves to escape detection.
But nothing sets the meat puppets on edge worse than home invasions, regardless of how it was carried out, although in this case you have to admire his sense of humor that he dressed up to do it.
The home is the starting point for each day. It is the focal point of their lives and the place where they feel most safe and comfortable. The knowledge that at any given moment that sense of peace could be shattered and an intruder could be walking through that home, unchecked and unchallenged, freaks them the hell out. It's everyone's worst nightmare supposedly. Just not mine.
Anyone breaks into MY home and it's THEM who are going to be freaked out not the other way around.
I thought the stone head thing was even more bizarre than him owning a dating company because a man like Nikolai Markov never changes and I was intimately familiar with his past. He was obsessed with money and that's all he cared about.
Seeing as I am the walking personification of Lust (and that comes in MANY forms, not just sex), I knew there was more to that stone head than met the eye. So I investigated and in doing so learned about the diamond being stolen and the dead lady in the morgue who had died dressed as a she-devil.
Which was a little weird if you ask me.
That's how I found myself confronting Nicky at his office and explaining all that I had found out and as a result my becoming the C.E.O. of Hither, Incorporated.
That's why when the authorities later found me in a bed besides a very dead Nikolai Markov who appeared as if he had spontaneously combusted in that bed (they later identified him via DNA from his tooth pulp) and saw me clutching that diamond, they were all about seeing that the diamond be returned to the dead lady's family and didn't really bother so much with charging me with any crime.
Because, in all honesty, what could they exactly prove I did? The official story was that I went to his office to personally congratulate him on donating money to the park and when I got there I found that he had the stone bust with him. I confronted him on it, he got crazy thinking that I was going to steal the diamond inside and in the madness that followed, it broke. Then he kidnapped me, brought me back to his house to do God knows what to me, and he spontaneously combusted.
I know it sounds crazy but I played it off as a miracle. No accelerants were found on me or in the house that I could possibly have used to set him on fire. And, when the Fire Marshall got through with examining everything even HE said that I would not have been capable of doing it with just a few matches and some lighter fluid.
That’s the beauty of hellfire. It cannot be explained through scientific means.
It may not have made sense to them but without evidence to prove otherwise and seeing as I had recovered the diamond, they stopped wondering how Nicky went up in flames and started concentrating on my supposed trauma.
One of them asked me if I needed anything just like that old Russian cop had asked me twenty years ago the very same thing.
This time as he helped me down from the bed and ushered me out into the awaiting ambulance with a blanket wrapped around me to keep me warm, supposedly, all I said as I glanced over my shoulder at what had been Nicky, was, "Yeah, closure."
Leaderless and without anyone willing to fill the shoes of Nikolai Markov, the Board of Directors at Hither were ALL too eager to accept me as their new C.E.O. Especially after they saw my bank book, too.
Three days later I gave a press conference outside Rhy'Din General Hospital, dressed in a purple pant-suit, because purple is my favorite color, to a crowd of reporters eager to unravel all the mystery surrounding the diamond, the dead lady and the burnt-to-a-crisp Russian gangster that had been masquerading around as a dating world messiah and humanitarian.
I’ve said a lot of poignant things in my life but I’ll never forget saying this.
"My name is Tara Anne Marie Rynieyn. I am the new C.E.O. of Hither, the easy to use and friendly dating app that I hope will bring together thousands of lonely hearts. Instead of telling you all, here, now, what happened, why not turn a negative into a positive here and avail ourselves of the tools that we have been given to communicate in an often crazy, chaotic world? If you like me and would like to know more, remember to swipe right."
Jared, my IT guy says, that in the hours after that presser, the servers were overloaded.
He says that he’s got his work cut out for him in upgrading all the equipment to serve the needs of so many.
All I said to him, was, “Sweetheart, I’ve got all the equipment needed in this little four foot body, but if it makes you feel better to go buy yourself more toys, you do so. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, I know that all I really have to do to serve the greater good is show up.”
How I came to be the C.E.O. of Hither, Incorporated is not the story everyone will be talking about come the new year. Nor is what I did with the body of the former C.E.O. of Hither Incorporated, a one Nikolai Markov, who prior to emigrating to Rhy'Din was a Russians arms dealer and a gangster.
No, no, no.
The story that is going to be on everyone's lips (especially the investors) is why I got away with it.
This is a stone head in a bush.
At first glance you probably would not make the connection between it and Nikolai because on the surface the two have nothing at all in common but of course you would be very wrong.
When I want something, I expect to get it, immediately. I do not like to have to jump through many hoops to achieve any goal of mine. I feel it's unnecessary and a little insulting. When you are a creature like me that has the kind of ego I do and has been assured that a certain series of events is going to happen at a much later date and will result in the almost complete annihilation of Mankind, you tend to get a little antsy if not brash and uncompromising.
Because it's not as if anything they do is going to change the outcome. You know this, they don't. They rely on what they know at present and the absurd notion of Hope. The Greeks were famous for this. Even right up to the moment of their extinction, they clung to a belief system that was bound to inevitably fail them and eventually did.
Didn't change the fact that they all died, although I have to say Leonidas? He was fun. NOT a great lover, though, when compared with the delicious likes of Attila and Hannibal, though.
Nikolai was a decent lover. I'll give him that. We shared many a bottle of vodka and some fair degree of wanton passion before we stopped seeing one another.
When I first met him years ago in a restaurant and he thought I was the mistress of some Russian crime lord who was utterly insane, I thought he was cute. He had a scar that ran the length of his forearm which I always used to touch in such a way as to make him think I sympathized with an injury I was neither around to witness nor properly appreciate as a result. That drove him wild. My pretending to be tender. Hard men such as Nikolai crave tenderness but they'll never admit it.
While the two discussed killing off competition and making more money than either of them would know what to do with in their relatively SHORT existences compared to mine, I took the liberty of playing footsie with Nikolai and observing the results.
His eyes ignited the way mine do when I zero in on prey. And that's when he mentally checked out of the conversation he was having and spent the rest of the night imagining me in all sorts of uncompromising positions.
I can read minds. Nikolai was a freak. Trust me.
That night after the crime lord passed out in bed, I met Nikolai in the street downstairs. He picked me up in a Mercedes and we went to a hotel that would become our lover's nest for the better part of six weeks. I let him act out every fantasy he had while I pretended to be the doting, naive mistress.
On the seventh week, after he had learned his crime lord pal had been suffocated in his sleep and I had been the only one in the room with the man at the time, he had me handcuffed naked to his bed and was kissing each bullet prior to loading them into his gun. Then he put it in my mouth and told me to make peace with my Maker.
When the authorities arrived two hours later, one of them found me weeping and shaking in the corner of the room and Nikolai, laying on the bed, now handcuffed himself and completely unrecognizable due to the sheer amount of swelling in his facial region.
One of them remarked that it could not possibly be Nikolai (whose nicknames included such gems as "The Iron Fang" and "The Deliverer" -- he didn't have fangs and what he delivered, I cannot say, but that's what they called him) because his reputation was such that no one had ever been able to best him.
Heh. That's so funny, in retrospect.
In perfect Russian, as if I were a native speaker of it, I recounted the tale of the jealous crime lord who found out about my affair with Nikolai and came to pay him a visit. I described an attack which was not in any way true and that the only reason why I had escaped injury was because Nikolai had made me promise not to leave the closet.
They bought it.
When they put him on the stretcher and were wheeling him towards the ambulance, I played the perfect worried girlfriend. I ran to him, threw myself on his chest and when he strained to open one eye and it widened upon seeing who was embracing him, I smiled and whispered to him, "I'll see you 'gain sometime, Markov. Better hope next time the gun fires, eh?"
They lifted him up into the ambulance as he was screaming all sorts of nonsense and the lead investigator, shaking his head, turned to me and asked me if I needed anything.
I said, "Yeah," as I gave a forlorn look to the ambulance disappearing down the street and frowned, "justice."
He gave me his solemn vow that he would fix it and then gave me his card. I still have it somewhere. Framed.
So when I walked into Hither, Incorporated two months ago and threw open the doors to Nikolai's office, with the stone bust of some nameless man I never met nor would even care about if I had, and set it down neatly between the bottle of Smirnoff and the Glock Nikolai always kept on his desk to deter people from getting too heated with him it's not a surprise that he nearly fell out of his chair.
I sat down gracefully in the chair opposite his and smoothed out my skirt. Rena would have been proud. It was "tasteful", which is a word I suspect she'd use to describe me if she were there to see it. He reached for the gun. I broke his pinky finger and then took the gun as he screamed in pain.
This is what I said to him.
"I know all about hiding secrets in plain sight, Nikolai, I'm walking proof of that. But, having it encased in stone and set in a park for all to see? Now that's a first. I am sure right now you are wondering as to how, I, the girl with the red hair whose brains you nearly blew out twenty years ago is sitting here in front of you looking no older than the day you met her and how I found out about what's in the stone head and I'd like to clear all that confusion up for you, but first, I am thirsty."
I poured myself a glass of vodka, straddled his lap, my tasteful skirt hiked up high and drank it as he stared at me in awe, surprise and terror.
They get this way with me, the meat puppets, when I have them in my thrall. They can’t move, can’t speak and can’t react. It’s all very flattering, I think.
"My name is not Nadia but...," I paused, grinning at a thought I had, "Tara as some like to call me. My real name is a mystery, known only to myself and the Maker you asked me to make peace with not twenty years ago to this very day. You remember what you did, Nicky, right? Kissing those bullets, drawing out the suspense of the moment, trying to heighten my fear? I do. It was very amusing. Almost as amusing as what I'm going to do you right after I get done dealing with your staff."
I stood then and aimed the gun at the doors which burst open and four security guards hired by Nikolai to keep him safe came stumbling in.
I don't know what it was they expected to see but I could tell in that moment from the looks on their faces it was not what was happening. They gave each other confused looks seeing me, this short girl with bright red hair in a tasteful skirt and holding a gun.
And then I shot them all in each of their knees and watched as they fell to the ground. They tried to exchange gunfire, they did. But none of the bullets hit me and if they had, they wouldn't have hurt me.
Yeah, about that.
I know that I recently wrote some Christmas cards to some of the meat puppets in town and made mention of the fact that some evil scientists harmed me with syringes but that was a lie.
A story I told them to reinforce the belief in their heads that I CAN be killed but that's not actually true. Not by them at least. It would take an elevated being like a god to do something like that.
And even then that god would have some difficulty.
Please don't think me arrogant or conceited. I'm actually not. I just believe in stating facts. When you are something like me, you can afford to make statements like that without batting an eyelash because you know the score.
The meat puppets, even if they gathered themselves in an army, outfitted themselves with every weapon known to Man and unleashed it all on me wouldn't even scratch my skin.
I am the Whore of Babylon and they don't have a prayer.
Besides, I've tried to kill myself plenty of times and all I can tell you that was the same throughout each attempt despite the difference in methods I employed, was that I came BACK.
You'd think they'd remember that but they never do.
So Nikolai's security guards were crying out in pain and I disarmed them before turning back to him, now with five guns in my possession. I tossed them out the open window so as to eliminate them as a potential distraction.
I don't need a gun to kill a human but I easily could use one to do so. I’m very opportunistic when I have to be.
Just not that day. I needed to focus. This was a man that not only had done a very BAD thing but had something I wanted. His business.
Years ago all I had to do to corrupt a man's soul was flirt a little and be suggestive in my mannerisms and speech. These days, these puppets of flesh that are male, they have too many things to occupy their attention, most of them technology-based.
You can't go in a bar and talk to a man and expect to go home with him an hour later because in that same hour he's already answered four calls on his cellphone and he's been texted a dozen or so times more. His attention is all over the place now. So if you want to get his attention you have to use the very technology he is straddled with on a daily basis to do so.
Hither Incorporated makes a dating app on cellphones that enable users to meet up relatively quickly by "swiping" their fingers left and right, respectively, and then with the touch of a few more buttons and a complicated geographic positioning system tied to satellites that lay up in the heavens, meet at predestined places to have that date. Swipe left if you dislike them and they disappear off your radar. Swipe right if you think they might be a good lay and meet in person to seal the deal. Easy as pie.
It's all so idiotic.
I've had men wage wars over me, although all anyone ever talks about is that one war over that woman Helen, but it's true. They invested money and time on me. Lives were lost on my account and if that isn't love, I don't know what is. The mortal women these days settle for SO MUCH less if all it takes to get them to sleep with a man is the swipe of his finger rather than spilt blood and the slash of his sword.
I may not like it but that's how "romance" is conducted these days and if I am to be successful in corrupting more souls, I have to be on board with the new way of doing things. So I needed Hither to be under MY control. But I couldn't do that with Nicky at the helm because of our past association and obvious conflict of interest.
Which is why after dispatching his security and breaking another pinky, I smashed the stone bust of that nameless man on Nicky's very expensive mahogany desk and held up the several karat diamond that had been inside of it.
The diamond itself was not at issue even though it was worth a fortune and was very rare. Flawless diamonds tend to be thought of that way. No, rather, it was who the diamond belonged to that would have everyone talking. I didn't know her, never met her and honestly don't know her name.
See several weeks prior to this incident, Nikolai had killed a woman. The woman who had owned the diamond. But when he tried to sell it, he found that he didn't have very many buyers because the story was all over the news and no one wanted to get caught being in bed with a Russian sleazebag like Nicky even though he owned a VERY successful dating company and was largely thought of as an innovator and up and coming star in the technology world. Underneath that carefully constructed facade, however, he was still a former Russians arms dealer and all around bad guy.
Unable to get rid of the diamond, Nicky had it encased in the stone face of that nameless man that lived years ago and was someone important and placed in one of Rhy'Din's largest parks. I suppose when the controversy over the dead woman died down, he was going to find a way to sell it.
I know this because I approved the permit for the town councilman to have the dedication ceremony AT the park where Nikolai and his goons pretended to be honoring the dead stone man and had donated some money to the town. They even had a plaque put on the base on the pedestal where Rhy'Din was recognizing Nikolai's financial donation and commitment to preserving the past.
I didn't show up for the ceremony because I didn't want to spoil the surprise but from what I was told by those I had sent to watch it all go down, the meat puppets ate it up. They love them a good cause and a seemingly awesome human being to rally around even if they don’t understand all the nuances associated WITH that particular cause or person.
If you ever want proof of that, just go to a protest, doesn’t matter which and as you move through the crowd, ask the participants what they are there for. Almost none of them will say for the cause at hand but some other reason. Meat puppets just like to protest. It’s the mob mentality. It affects them and makes them do things they wouldn’t do by themselves.
The dead woman, meanwhile, was in a drawer at the morgue, on ice. The authorities were baffled as to who had killed her and the public was uneasy because she had been killed while at home, in a house full of company for a Halloween party she had been having, and no one that was there had saw a thing.
I don't know why there was cause for confusion there seeing as all the guests were dressed up in costume and all Nicky and his assassins had to do was dress up in costumes themselves to escape detection.
But nothing sets the meat puppets on edge worse than home invasions, regardless of how it was carried out, although in this case you have to admire his sense of humor that he dressed up to do it.
The home is the starting point for each day. It is the focal point of their lives and the place where they feel most safe and comfortable. The knowledge that at any given moment that sense of peace could be shattered and an intruder could be walking through that home, unchecked and unchallenged, freaks them the hell out. It's everyone's worst nightmare supposedly. Just not mine.
Anyone breaks into MY home and it's THEM who are going to be freaked out not the other way around.
I thought the stone head thing was even more bizarre than him owning a dating company because a man like Nikolai Markov never changes and I was intimately familiar with his past. He was obsessed with money and that's all he cared about.
Seeing as I am the walking personification of Lust (and that comes in MANY forms, not just sex), I knew there was more to that stone head than met the eye. So I investigated and in doing so learned about the diamond being stolen and the dead lady in the morgue who had died dressed as a she-devil.
Which was a little weird if you ask me.
That's how I found myself confronting Nicky at his office and explaining all that I had found out and as a result my becoming the C.E.O. of Hither, Incorporated.
That's why when the authorities later found me in a bed besides a very dead Nikolai Markov who appeared as if he had spontaneously combusted in that bed (they later identified him via DNA from his tooth pulp) and saw me clutching that diamond, they were all about seeing that the diamond be returned to the dead lady's family and didn't really bother so much with charging me with any crime.
Because, in all honesty, what could they exactly prove I did? The official story was that I went to his office to personally congratulate him on donating money to the park and when I got there I found that he had the stone bust with him. I confronted him on it, he got crazy thinking that I was going to steal the diamond inside and in the madness that followed, it broke. Then he kidnapped me, brought me back to his house to do God knows what to me, and he spontaneously combusted.
I know it sounds crazy but I played it off as a miracle. No accelerants were found on me or in the house that I could possibly have used to set him on fire. And, when the Fire Marshall got through with examining everything even HE said that I would not have been capable of doing it with just a few matches and some lighter fluid.
That’s the beauty of hellfire. It cannot be explained through scientific means.
It may not have made sense to them but without evidence to prove otherwise and seeing as I had recovered the diamond, they stopped wondering how Nicky went up in flames and started concentrating on my supposed trauma.
One of them asked me if I needed anything just like that old Russian cop had asked me twenty years ago the very same thing.
This time as he helped me down from the bed and ushered me out into the awaiting ambulance with a blanket wrapped around me to keep me warm, supposedly, all I said as I glanced over my shoulder at what had been Nicky, was, "Yeah, closure."
Leaderless and without anyone willing to fill the shoes of Nikolai Markov, the Board of Directors at Hither were ALL too eager to accept me as their new C.E.O. Especially after they saw my bank book, too.
Three days later I gave a press conference outside Rhy'Din General Hospital, dressed in a purple pant-suit, because purple is my favorite color, to a crowd of reporters eager to unravel all the mystery surrounding the diamond, the dead lady and the burnt-to-a-crisp Russian gangster that had been masquerading around as a dating world messiah and humanitarian.
I’ve said a lot of poignant things in my life but I’ll never forget saying this.
"My name is Tara Anne Marie Rynieyn. I am the new C.E.O. of Hither, the easy to use and friendly dating app that I hope will bring together thousands of lonely hearts. Instead of telling you all, here, now, what happened, why not turn a negative into a positive here and avail ourselves of the tools that we have been given to communicate in an often crazy, chaotic world? If you like me and would like to know more, remember to swipe right."
Jared, my IT guy says, that in the hours after that presser, the servers were overloaded.
He says that he’s got his work cut out for him in upgrading all the equipment to serve the needs of so many.
All I said to him, was, “Sweetheart, I’ve got all the equipment needed in this little four foot body, but if it makes you feel better to go buy yourself more toys, you do so. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, I know that all I really have to do to serve the greater good is show up.”
Dear Forever,
This is Roy. He's a hitchhiker or was, prior to being picked up by me in the taxi I commandeered once the driver choked to death on that ho-ho he was eating. Roy likes plaid. Obviously. But before I tell you this story, I want to talk about what Anpu got me for Christmas.
Or SHOULD I SAY, what Anpu did NOT get me for Christmas which is the purple punch buggy I wanted and literally BEGGED him for, for twelve nights straight.
I heard about the Twelve Nights of Christmas and thought instead of just singing AT him to get my point across? I'd dress up as each of the things mentioned in the song so as to beef up my presentation.
He was fine (even chuckling a little at some points!) until I got to six gooses laying. Yeah. We don't talk about that. I'm still finding feathers in the music room to remind me of my failed attempt at gift acquisition.
Now this is not word for word but it's a basic gist of what was said between us.
Me: "Anpu, I want the purple punch buggy in this picture here," I paused and thrusted the paper in his face. "They are selling it on The Rhy'Din Bay site. Look, it has a skull on the hood. A skull. Rowr! It's real silver too. I want to have it painted with the words "Princess of Pain" emblazoned on the front but I'm not asking you to pay for any of that because that's a little steep in addition to the price of the car an' I get that, I'll jus' pay for it myself out of my grocery money. I promise. Please! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE."
I should stop here and say that I do not actually BUY groceries for us. He'd have an actual stroke if he ever learned I went to the market, presented a clerk with coin and conducted a transaction. Seriously, his head would explode in a fine bloody mist. He's still pissed off that I bought a silk dress and he thought the proper response to that was to (no LIE) personally tell each silk merchant in town that if he EVER caught them selling me ANYTHING again, he'd murder them in ways that could not be properly articulated at that moment because he was still angry but suffice it to say it wouldn't be pretty.
Since I thought he was exaggerating that just a tad, I went down to where they sell the silk to inquire as to buying one dress and the place cleared out like the Deluge was coming all over again.
Complete ghost town.
Ergo, if he found out I went shopping for something I wanted? Forget about it. Rhy'Din would experience an extinction-level event that rivaled all of the ones in the past elsewhere. He'd totally have fun doing it too.
We have servants that do all that BUT somewhere in the back of Anpu's skull, despite his edict, is the notion that I could, at any moment, be without the money to purchase groceries we MIGHT need or what I MIGHT want and he makes sure that he gives me money separate for just that purpose.
Because he's a man of principle, old habits and a gentleman, truly. I know that might seem absurd given he's a lunatic but he STILL opens doors for me and does other gentlemanly things because that's what men do.
However, as a result of never buying groceries, I have a small fortune I have stored in a canopic jar I found laying around and if you tell him I used it for THAT, I'll kill you right after he gets done killing me.
Because he TOTALLY would.
Anyway, I've got extra money that I'm NEVER supposed to use. I know, nuts, but just...follow the thread here.
So I'm hopping around, all excited thinking about how awesome it's going to be to get my car and that's when he says, "No."
Not "Why would you, who can teleport just like I can, NEED a car, Tara?"
Not "Sure princess. Whatever you want! Let's have hot monkey sex to commemorate this special day!"
No.
That's what I got instead. No sex neither.
But it sounded like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. In slo-mo and really loud even though his voice didn't raise above a comfortable listening level.
So I stare at him and I'm like, "Is that no as in you don't want me printing that lettering on the car because we can discuss that. It's not set in stone here. I would be willing to work with you on this. What do you, my love, think it should say in lieu of that?"
And then he said, "No."
AGAIN.
Like I didn't hear him right the FIRST time he said it. So now I'm pouting and he's scrawling something on his papyrus and I begin to get the feeling that he's ignoring me. Actively dismissing what I'm saying. For really realz like and not playful in ANY way.
So I'm like "Why not? I really want it! You said that I could have whatever I wanted and this is what I want! I even took driving lessons from Jaspir to prepare for this! So now yer telling me the lady who I made fly in the body cast took flight for NOTHING?!"
Then his eyebrow went up. Anubis has maybe ten distinct facial expressions which all have the same meaning associated with them no matter what time of the day it is, who it is directed at and whatever his mood may be. I know this man like a book. He's adorable but predictable.
When his brow goes up like that it's a precursor to something (or someone) being broken beyond repair. If he couples that brow lift with an evil grin? It's pretty much the apocalypse.
Now he's REALLY not paying attention to what I'm saying because he's wondering who in the hell Jaspir is and why this man he's never met could be SO careless with the ONE life he's been given as to give it up so foolishly by (not only teaching me how to drive) being in close proximity to me without Anpu's express consent.
I can see his mind working this out. I can see a rough draft of what Jaspir MIGHT look like forming in the man's mind and him slowly carrying out whatever excruciating torture he can come up with on short notice.
And trust me, he can come up with some scary stuff in thirty seconds.
Five minutes later as he begins to frown I can already tell that Jaspir has died ten thousand deaths in my future husband's head and then it occurs to me that he's going to ask me questions about this and I had best have some answers.
Now I start fearing for Jaspir's life even though I don't really care if the guy lives or dies, I just do NOT want him dying on my account without my having a hand IN his destruction.
You ever want your thunder stolen? Promise yourself to the God of Death for all eternity. See how that works out for ya when you're used to being the center of attention!
He's got detailed scenarios laid out for wiping entire civilizations off maps stored away in braincells he's not even aware he HAS so killing ONE driving instructor is a piece of cake for him!
And then the questions started. Who was he, what did I mean I was taking lessons to drive, where was this coming from, this was why he didn't want me hanging out in what he terms the "cesspit" (or Red Dragon Inn for most folks) because they just fuel my already OVERACTIVE imagination, a proper queen doesn't associate with their lessers, I should know better, we are charged with setting an example for the peasantry and we must not abuse that awesome responsibility, was I going to see Jaspir AGAIN and so on.
I'm trying to answer them all but it got to the point where the questions were coming faster than I could answer them and I just gave up. I did. There's no shame in admitting that. He overwhelms me sometimes. Like I said, God of Death. If you have never been with one, you couldn't possibly understand. It's a lot to take in most days.
And then because I'm a female, I started crying which REALLY made him frown because if there's one thing he hates most it's when I cry. He does not know how to handle it. In his head, along with plans to kill people and whatever else he's got ideas for is an idealized version of Tara Rynieyn.
I became aware of it at an early age after we met and we began a routine. We used to work together in this one place and it had a VERY long hallway in it. So long that a small village full of people could line up on either side of it and there would STILL be room for more. Instead of villagers though there were slavers. So when you walked into the place it was like a gauntlet of flesh peddlars flanking you and trying to hawk their wares.
Anpu felt this was distasteful as far as I was concerned and thought that I should be led down the hallway with a chaperone. Only he didn't trust his own kind to be alone with me long enough so if Uncle Dave wasn't around (one of maybe four slavers Anpu DID like), he became my escort, calmly walking me through the storm and shielding me from the negative energy, so to speak.
If I happened to wear something suggestive, he'd put his cloak around me so as to prevent the other men from seeing my bare flesh. Because in his head, they were always trying to undress me with their eyes and if they ever succeeded in ACTUALLY undressing me, he'd have a field day with chopping off their heads.
It was for MY protection, he would say, but really it was for his peace of mind.
So imagine what the maniac would do if he ever should see a tear fall from my eye. He'd break mentally. I've only ever cried in front of him a few times and each time it fills him with such feelings of dread and confusion that it makes the whole experience very awkward for the both of us.
In his head I am this warrior queen capable of the same level, if not more, of destruction than he is.
Warrior queens don't cry. They make OTHERS cry. This is our way.
So now I'm bawling and he is doing his best to comfort me but failing miserably and I am so distraught over having prepared to GET a car and he's now said I can't, that I just ran out of the house into the pouring rain.
I could hear him thundering behind me, calling my name. Then as I ran I heard his voice in my head and ACTUAL thunder ABOVE my head because he can do that too. I can't affect the weather but he can. And when he's pissed? Monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, all happen in a blink of an eye. But lightning? Is his favorite. That boy loves to light up the sky to visually illustrate his displeasure and he's really good at it too. But when he's FURIOUS? That's when lightning strikes twice in the same place.
All those stories the meat puppets tell about that being very rare is more my boyfriend NOT being able to control his temper rather than some totally random and mathematically improbable occurence.
I don't even know how I ended up IN the taxi but one moment I was crying in the rain and the next I was sitting next to some guy named Rich and telling him how my horrible boyfriend wouldn't get me a car.
This is how that conversation went down.
Me: "...and he didn't even consider how I felt but was more interested in learning about stupid Jaspir whose own car is still in the shop after what happened at the gas station with that lady that I made fly!"
Rich: "Look, I don't know the man but I struggle to make ends meet, Tara. Maybe he just can't swing it right now? Cut him some slack."
I gave him a strange look. "Maybe he can't swing it? Are you for real? He's got money that hasn't even been minted yet. And some of it has to be exchanged because the countries they used to belong to do NOT exist anymore!"
Rich: "All I'm saying is that a car is an expensive gift, even used. Money might be tight and maybe you are embarrassing him by asking for such a big gift. Did you think of that?"
Me: "No! He's had his own CULT in the past! They used to sacrifice animals in his name! Entire necrolopolises were dedicated to him!"
Rich: "Oh you should watch out for those types. Could be another Jim Jones. Everything's honky dory until they ask you to drink down cyanide-laced fruit punch in some jungle. Which how NO ONE saw that coming given it was in a literal corn field makes you wonder. It was Children of the Corn all over again. That Stephen King knows his horror."
Me: "What?!"
Rich: "Let me just pull in to this quickie mart and after a few ho-hos you'll feel better."
Now my eyebrow went up. And my brow lifts, as it were, have different meanings, unlike my future husband, depending on MY mood, time of day and who I'm directing it at.
But anytime food is mentioned I'm all ears. It's the one thing I love more than anything else. To eat. And that's because I was forced to drink blood all those years. It got boring. Food is awesome.
Me: "What's a ho ho?"
Rich: "The best thing they ever invented next to Fun Dip and Hot Pockets."
Rich got out of the taxi to go into the store and left me to wonder about these interesting words he was throwing my way. What was Fun Dip? What was Hot Pockets? Were they sold at Ling's Wings n Things because I could totally add them to my repertoire of food choices if they tasted good. Would I like them? Would they taste like wontons with puppy meat in them?
Five minutes later he's falling back into what he called his "saddle", which I thought was called a seat and handing me this tiny plastic bag filled with two rectangular chocolate things with cream oozing out of the sides.
I was in heaven. Or as close to it as I'll ever get.
Hey, listen, when you've been told that you were created for a singular function (being an architect of doomsday) and it's not going to happen for a LONG time yet, you have to get your kicks in somehow.
Ho Hos, I decided, are my new kick. I love them more than gyros.
Rich was just depositing them whole in his mouth while I took my time with mine, savoring the taste, licking the cream off my nose with my forked tongue and then he started to choke.
Which was mildly alarming because in my zeal to be eating something new, I wasn't much paying attention to any foresight I had that would have told me this was going to happen.
So I'm blinking right and Rich is swerving all over the road and then it occurs to me...I CAN DRIVE.
I am a LICENSED driver (no thanks to that hag at the DMV that Petey my Wolf Spider envenomated) and I can save the day!
"I am taking the wheel Rich! Breathe! Breathe!"I say as I'm trying to navigate the dark road before us without the benefit of head lamps because Rich had shut them off as he was gasping for air. "Give it a little more gas! RAMMING SPEED!"
Now, I don't know if Rich took what I said LITERALLY but the taxi lunged forward like a mechanical beast hellbent on destruction. Had I not been given a Ho HO prior to this all happening I MIGHT have had the presence of mind to climb in Rich's lap and properly steer the taxi but since I was distracted and nearly mewing at my new discovery, that didn't happen and we almost hit this guy who was standing in the middle of the road with his thumb jutted out and a dumb look on his face.
So we hit a tree instead. A really big one that despite its size shook like the Hand of God had descended and gave it a little shake.
Now water vapor is rising up from the taxi in the form of a gas and Rich is slumped over the steering wheel with a gash in his forehead. The windshield has a spiderweb-like crack pattern pretty much covering the entire surface and there's a branch or two in my hair.
The passenger side door opens and that's when I met Roy, the Hitchhiker, who likes plaid and who we almost ran over.
"Hey! Are you okay little lady?!" he asked, concern written in his expression.
I pulled the branches out of my hair and looked over at Rich, the Ho Ho eating taxi man, who was dead from having choked on one.
I will mourn him on that same night each year and rest assured in the knowledge that he died eating the best thing ever invented.
"Yes," I said with a little frown and then met Roy's gaze. "Can you help me push him out?"
Roy blinked. "Excuse me?"
I rolled my eyes. "I want to drive an' he's in the saddle. I'm on a bit of a sugar high here and although I technically COULD push him out myself, I don't want to sprain anything so can you help me please?"
Roy came over to the driver's side and got a good grip on Rich as I used both of my hands and little feet to shove him out of the saddle. He fell on the ground with an audible thud. Then I climbed into the saddle myself and looked at the situation. The windshield was shattered and the car was belching clouds of gas.
This was doable.
"Get in!" I shrieked to Roy as I started up the car. It took a few twists of the key but eventually it started. Roy got in just as I was yanking on the PRNDL stick to put the car in reverse.
Roy put his hand on my arm. "Hey, umm, little lady?"
"Yeah?" I said as I closed my eyes and pressed the gas pedal down.
"Whoa! Whoa! Open your eyes! What are you doing? Hey! Wait a minute. Just don't move the car for a second, okay?"
My eyes opened and I pressed the brake as I looked at him. "What?" I said, a little annoyed.
"Don't you think we should call someone for the uhh, guy?"
"No, why would we do a thing like that?" I asked, rolling my eyes.
"Because he's dead?" Roy said with a smirk.
"I'm going to wager a guess here and say this is probably the first time you've seen a dead body. Am I right, son?"
"Yes but that's not bothering me as much as the fact that you're OK with just leaving his dead body on the side of the road like he's trash."
"He's not trash. He's Rich. He introduced me to Ho Hos prior to choking on one. I will mourn him."
Roy looked grim. "Yeah, sure, but he probably had a family who will be looking for him in addition to the authorities, that when coming across his dead body, are bound to have questions. I am Roy, by the way."
I smiled. "Tara. Put yer seatbelt on an' hold on tight, kid!"
The car lurched backwards, Roy screamed "OPEN YOUR EYES! DEAR GOD DON'T LET HER KILL ME!" and then we tore off down the road, leaving Rich's dead body covered in dust for the moment. Come the morning provided a strong wind didn't blow him down the hill beside the road and the vultures didn't pick him apart he would be just about as much of Rich the taxi man as he was when he expired and before decomposition set in, rendering him unrecognizable.
The family and the authorities would have plenty left of him to come to terms with his passing. Then they'd drop him in a hole, say a few parting words and the worms would take care of the rest.
I will say that my first date with Roy could have gone better. Like he could have shown me a little more courtesy for the things I wanted to do rather than do all the complaining he did.
I have read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and I know what is expected of each gender. Jewelsie's therapist has been quizzing me.
I know, as an example, that when we walked into the Shop Til You Drop and I stole that can of purple spray paint that Roy should have offered to pay for it because that's what boys are SUPPOSED to do.
I also know that when I began spraying the taxi down and asked Roy if he could please write "Princess of Pain" on what used to be the windshield, that he should have stepped up to the plate and did so rather than flagging down that trucker in the big rig he then got into and disappeared off into the night.
Roy dropped the ball.
What he did, unforgivable.
He didn't even offer to walk me to the door. He just left me high and dry.
Unacceptable behavior for a first date and I hope he doesn't think we're going to have a second because I don't think so!
I wanted something like this
But in the end, I got this
Mike the Mechanic says my new hood will be coming next week so for now I have to live with that ugly white one. But it's livable for now. Once I get the Fall of Man depicted on the hood, my ride will be totally hot!
When I got home, I found Anpu in the observatory, brooding over a glass of scotch. I hate when he sulks. It really hurts my heart. I sunk into his lap, wrapped my little arms around him and pressed my lips to his.
He smiled but said nothing. He's a man of few words most days but I could see the relief in his eyes that I was home safe and no longer crying which is what he was most worried about.
He calls me the "whirlwind" and my unpredictable nature sometimes sets him on edge.
"I got the car. It was wrong of me to ask you to buy it for me, expect you to fund what was really a discretionary expense when you have more pressing concerns to contend with. I didn't stop to think about how it would make you feel but I am sorry an' I love you."
His brow lifted a second time that night but before I would allow him time to start peppering me with a new round of questions, I just held up a Ho Ho. His eyes flickered and I could tell it was of interest to him.
"Eat this an' tell me yer not in heaven. A man died seeing that I got to experience this. I want to share this with you. We must honor him this way. It's the only way I know how."
This is Roy. He's a hitchhiker or was, prior to being picked up by me in the taxi I commandeered once the driver choked to death on that ho-ho he was eating. Roy likes plaid. Obviously. But before I tell you this story, I want to talk about what Anpu got me for Christmas.
Or SHOULD I SAY, what Anpu did NOT get me for Christmas which is the purple punch buggy I wanted and literally BEGGED him for, for twelve nights straight.
I heard about the Twelve Nights of Christmas and thought instead of just singing AT him to get my point across? I'd dress up as each of the things mentioned in the song so as to beef up my presentation.
He was fine (even chuckling a little at some points!) until I got to six gooses laying. Yeah. We don't talk about that. I'm still finding feathers in the music room to remind me of my failed attempt at gift acquisition.
Now this is not word for word but it's a basic gist of what was said between us.
Me: "Anpu, I want the purple punch buggy in this picture here," I paused and thrusted the paper in his face. "They are selling it on The Rhy'Din Bay site. Look, it has a skull on the hood. A skull. Rowr! It's real silver too. I want to have it painted with the words "Princess of Pain" emblazoned on the front but I'm not asking you to pay for any of that because that's a little steep in addition to the price of the car an' I get that, I'll jus' pay for it myself out of my grocery money. I promise. Please! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE."
I should stop here and say that I do not actually BUY groceries for us. He'd have an actual stroke if he ever learned I went to the market, presented a clerk with coin and conducted a transaction. Seriously, his head would explode in a fine bloody mist. He's still pissed off that I bought a silk dress and he thought the proper response to that was to (no LIE) personally tell each silk merchant in town that if he EVER caught them selling me ANYTHING again, he'd murder them in ways that could not be properly articulated at that moment because he was still angry but suffice it to say it wouldn't be pretty.
Since I thought he was exaggerating that just a tad, I went down to where they sell the silk to inquire as to buying one dress and the place cleared out like the Deluge was coming all over again.
Complete ghost town.
Ergo, if he found out I went shopping for something I wanted? Forget about it. Rhy'Din would experience an extinction-level event that rivaled all of the ones in the past elsewhere. He'd totally have fun doing it too.
We have servants that do all that BUT somewhere in the back of Anpu's skull, despite his edict, is the notion that I could, at any moment, be without the money to purchase groceries we MIGHT need or what I MIGHT want and he makes sure that he gives me money separate for just that purpose.
Because he's a man of principle, old habits and a gentleman, truly. I know that might seem absurd given he's a lunatic but he STILL opens doors for me and does other gentlemanly things because that's what men do.
However, as a result of never buying groceries, I have a small fortune I have stored in a canopic jar I found laying around and if you tell him I used it for THAT, I'll kill you right after he gets done killing me.
Because he TOTALLY would.
Anyway, I've got extra money that I'm NEVER supposed to use. I know, nuts, but just...follow the thread here.
So I'm hopping around, all excited thinking about how awesome it's going to be to get my car and that's when he says, "No."
Not "Why would you, who can teleport just like I can, NEED a car, Tara?"
Not "Sure princess. Whatever you want! Let's have hot monkey sex to commemorate this special day!"
No.
That's what I got instead. No sex neither.
But it sounded like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. In slo-mo and really loud even though his voice didn't raise above a comfortable listening level.
So I stare at him and I'm like, "Is that no as in you don't want me printing that lettering on the car because we can discuss that. It's not set in stone here. I would be willing to work with you on this. What do you, my love, think it should say in lieu of that?"
And then he said, "No."
AGAIN.
Like I didn't hear him right the FIRST time he said it. So now I'm pouting and he's scrawling something on his papyrus and I begin to get the feeling that he's ignoring me. Actively dismissing what I'm saying. For really realz like and not playful in ANY way.
So I'm like "Why not? I really want it! You said that I could have whatever I wanted and this is what I want! I even took driving lessons from Jaspir to prepare for this! So now yer telling me the lady who I made fly in the body cast took flight for NOTHING?!"
Then his eyebrow went up. Anubis has maybe ten distinct facial expressions which all have the same meaning associated with them no matter what time of the day it is, who it is directed at and whatever his mood may be. I know this man like a book. He's adorable but predictable.
When his brow goes up like that it's a precursor to something (or someone) being broken beyond repair. If he couples that brow lift with an evil grin? It's pretty much the apocalypse.
Now he's REALLY not paying attention to what I'm saying because he's wondering who in the hell Jaspir is and why this man he's never met could be SO careless with the ONE life he's been given as to give it up so foolishly by (not only teaching me how to drive) being in close proximity to me without Anpu's express consent.
I can see his mind working this out. I can see a rough draft of what Jaspir MIGHT look like forming in the man's mind and him slowly carrying out whatever excruciating torture he can come up with on short notice.
And trust me, he can come up with some scary stuff in thirty seconds.
Five minutes later as he begins to frown I can already tell that Jaspir has died ten thousand deaths in my future husband's head and then it occurs to me that he's going to ask me questions about this and I had best have some answers.
Now I start fearing for Jaspir's life even though I don't really care if the guy lives or dies, I just do NOT want him dying on my account without my having a hand IN his destruction.
You ever want your thunder stolen? Promise yourself to the God of Death for all eternity. See how that works out for ya when you're used to being the center of attention!
He's got detailed scenarios laid out for wiping entire civilizations off maps stored away in braincells he's not even aware he HAS so killing ONE driving instructor is a piece of cake for him!
And then the questions started. Who was he, what did I mean I was taking lessons to drive, where was this coming from, this was why he didn't want me hanging out in what he terms the "cesspit" (or Red Dragon Inn for most folks) because they just fuel my already OVERACTIVE imagination, a proper queen doesn't associate with their lessers, I should know better, we are charged with setting an example for the peasantry and we must not abuse that awesome responsibility, was I going to see Jaspir AGAIN and so on.
I'm trying to answer them all but it got to the point where the questions were coming faster than I could answer them and I just gave up. I did. There's no shame in admitting that. He overwhelms me sometimes. Like I said, God of Death. If you have never been with one, you couldn't possibly understand. It's a lot to take in most days.
And then because I'm a female, I started crying which REALLY made him frown because if there's one thing he hates most it's when I cry. He does not know how to handle it. In his head, along with plans to kill people and whatever else he's got ideas for is an idealized version of Tara Rynieyn.
I became aware of it at an early age after we met and we began a routine. We used to work together in this one place and it had a VERY long hallway in it. So long that a small village full of people could line up on either side of it and there would STILL be room for more. Instead of villagers though there were slavers. So when you walked into the place it was like a gauntlet of flesh peddlars flanking you and trying to hawk their wares.
Anpu felt this was distasteful as far as I was concerned and thought that I should be led down the hallway with a chaperone. Only he didn't trust his own kind to be alone with me long enough so if Uncle Dave wasn't around (one of maybe four slavers Anpu DID like), he became my escort, calmly walking me through the storm and shielding me from the negative energy, so to speak.
If I happened to wear something suggestive, he'd put his cloak around me so as to prevent the other men from seeing my bare flesh. Because in his head, they were always trying to undress me with their eyes and if they ever succeeded in ACTUALLY undressing me, he'd have a field day with chopping off their heads.
It was for MY protection, he would say, but really it was for his peace of mind.
So imagine what the maniac would do if he ever should see a tear fall from my eye. He'd break mentally. I've only ever cried in front of him a few times and each time it fills him with such feelings of dread and confusion that it makes the whole experience very awkward for the both of us.
In his head I am this warrior queen capable of the same level, if not more, of destruction than he is.
Warrior queens don't cry. They make OTHERS cry. This is our way.
So now I'm bawling and he is doing his best to comfort me but failing miserably and I am so distraught over having prepared to GET a car and he's now said I can't, that I just ran out of the house into the pouring rain.
I could hear him thundering behind me, calling my name. Then as I ran I heard his voice in my head and ACTUAL thunder ABOVE my head because he can do that too. I can't affect the weather but he can. And when he's pissed? Monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, all happen in a blink of an eye. But lightning? Is his favorite. That boy loves to light up the sky to visually illustrate his displeasure and he's really good at it too. But when he's FURIOUS? That's when lightning strikes twice in the same place.
All those stories the meat puppets tell about that being very rare is more my boyfriend NOT being able to control his temper rather than some totally random and mathematically improbable occurence.
I don't even know how I ended up IN the taxi but one moment I was crying in the rain and the next I was sitting next to some guy named Rich and telling him how my horrible boyfriend wouldn't get me a car.
This is how that conversation went down.
Me: "...and he didn't even consider how I felt but was more interested in learning about stupid Jaspir whose own car is still in the shop after what happened at the gas station with that lady that I made fly!"
Rich: "Look, I don't know the man but I struggle to make ends meet, Tara. Maybe he just can't swing it right now? Cut him some slack."
I gave him a strange look. "Maybe he can't swing it? Are you for real? He's got money that hasn't even been minted yet. And some of it has to be exchanged because the countries they used to belong to do NOT exist anymore!"
Rich: "All I'm saying is that a car is an expensive gift, even used. Money might be tight and maybe you are embarrassing him by asking for such a big gift. Did you think of that?"
Me: "No! He's had his own CULT in the past! They used to sacrifice animals in his name! Entire necrolopolises were dedicated to him!"
Rich: "Oh you should watch out for those types. Could be another Jim Jones. Everything's honky dory until they ask you to drink down cyanide-laced fruit punch in some jungle. Which how NO ONE saw that coming given it was in a literal corn field makes you wonder. It was Children of the Corn all over again. That Stephen King knows his horror."
Me: "What?!"
Rich: "Let me just pull in to this quickie mart and after a few ho-hos you'll feel better."
Now my eyebrow went up. And my brow lifts, as it were, have different meanings, unlike my future husband, depending on MY mood, time of day and who I'm directing it at.
But anytime food is mentioned I'm all ears. It's the one thing I love more than anything else. To eat. And that's because I was forced to drink blood all those years. It got boring. Food is awesome.
Me: "What's a ho ho?"
Rich: "The best thing they ever invented next to Fun Dip and Hot Pockets."
Rich got out of the taxi to go into the store and left me to wonder about these interesting words he was throwing my way. What was Fun Dip? What was Hot Pockets? Were they sold at Ling's Wings n Things because I could totally add them to my repertoire of food choices if they tasted good. Would I like them? Would they taste like wontons with puppy meat in them?
Five minutes later he's falling back into what he called his "saddle", which I thought was called a seat and handing me this tiny plastic bag filled with two rectangular chocolate things with cream oozing out of the sides.
I was in heaven. Or as close to it as I'll ever get.
Hey, listen, when you've been told that you were created for a singular function (being an architect of doomsday) and it's not going to happen for a LONG time yet, you have to get your kicks in somehow.
Ho Hos, I decided, are my new kick. I love them more than gyros.
Rich was just depositing them whole in his mouth while I took my time with mine, savoring the taste, licking the cream off my nose with my forked tongue and then he started to choke.
Which was mildly alarming because in my zeal to be eating something new, I wasn't much paying attention to any foresight I had that would have told me this was going to happen.
So I'm blinking right and Rich is swerving all over the road and then it occurs to me...I CAN DRIVE.
I am a LICENSED driver (no thanks to that hag at the DMV that Petey my Wolf Spider envenomated) and I can save the day!
"I am taking the wheel Rich! Breathe! Breathe!"I say as I'm trying to navigate the dark road before us without the benefit of head lamps because Rich had shut them off as he was gasping for air. "Give it a little more gas! RAMMING SPEED!"
Now, I don't know if Rich took what I said LITERALLY but the taxi lunged forward like a mechanical beast hellbent on destruction. Had I not been given a Ho HO prior to this all happening I MIGHT have had the presence of mind to climb in Rich's lap and properly steer the taxi but since I was distracted and nearly mewing at my new discovery, that didn't happen and we almost hit this guy who was standing in the middle of the road with his thumb jutted out and a dumb look on his face.
So we hit a tree instead. A really big one that despite its size shook like the Hand of God had descended and gave it a little shake.
Now water vapor is rising up from the taxi in the form of a gas and Rich is slumped over the steering wheel with a gash in his forehead. The windshield has a spiderweb-like crack pattern pretty much covering the entire surface and there's a branch or two in my hair.
The passenger side door opens and that's when I met Roy, the Hitchhiker, who likes plaid and who we almost ran over.
"Hey! Are you okay little lady?!" he asked, concern written in his expression.
I pulled the branches out of my hair and looked over at Rich, the Ho Ho eating taxi man, who was dead from having choked on one.
I will mourn him on that same night each year and rest assured in the knowledge that he died eating the best thing ever invented.
"Yes," I said with a little frown and then met Roy's gaze. "Can you help me push him out?"
Roy blinked. "Excuse me?"
I rolled my eyes. "I want to drive an' he's in the saddle. I'm on a bit of a sugar high here and although I technically COULD push him out myself, I don't want to sprain anything so can you help me please?"
Roy came over to the driver's side and got a good grip on Rich as I used both of my hands and little feet to shove him out of the saddle. He fell on the ground with an audible thud. Then I climbed into the saddle myself and looked at the situation. The windshield was shattered and the car was belching clouds of gas.
This was doable.
"Get in!" I shrieked to Roy as I started up the car. It took a few twists of the key but eventually it started. Roy got in just as I was yanking on the PRNDL stick to put the car in reverse.
Roy put his hand on my arm. "Hey, umm, little lady?"
"Yeah?" I said as I closed my eyes and pressed the gas pedal down.
"Whoa! Whoa! Open your eyes! What are you doing? Hey! Wait a minute. Just don't move the car for a second, okay?"
My eyes opened and I pressed the brake as I looked at him. "What?" I said, a little annoyed.
"Don't you think we should call someone for the uhh, guy?"
"No, why would we do a thing like that?" I asked, rolling my eyes.
"Because he's dead?" Roy said with a smirk.
"I'm going to wager a guess here and say this is probably the first time you've seen a dead body. Am I right, son?"
"Yes but that's not bothering me as much as the fact that you're OK with just leaving his dead body on the side of the road like he's trash."
"He's not trash. He's Rich. He introduced me to Ho Hos prior to choking on one. I will mourn him."
Roy looked grim. "Yeah, sure, but he probably had a family who will be looking for him in addition to the authorities, that when coming across his dead body, are bound to have questions. I am Roy, by the way."
I smiled. "Tara. Put yer seatbelt on an' hold on tight, kid!"
The car lurched backwards, Roy screamed "OPEN YOUR EYES! DEAR GOD DON'T LET HER KILL ME!" and then we tore off down the road, leaving Rich's dead body covered in dust for the moment. Come the morning provided a strong wind didn't blow him down the hill beside the road and the vultures didn't pick him apart he would be just about as much of Rich the taxi man as he was when he expired and before decomposition set in, rendering him unrecognizable.
The family and the authorities would have plenty left of him to come to terms with his passing. Then they'd drop him in a hole, say a few parting words and the worms would take care of the rest.
I will say that my first date with Roy could have gone better. Like he could have shown me a little more courtesy for the things I wanted to do rather than do all the complaining he did.
I have read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and I know what is expected of each gender. Jewelsie's therapist has been quizzing me.
I know, as an example, that when we walked into the Shop Til You Drop and I stole that can of purple spray paint that Roy should have offered to pay for it because that's what boys are SUPPOSED to do.
I also know that when I began spraying the taxi down and asked Roy if he could please write "Princess of Pain" on what used to be the windshield, that he should have stepped up to the plate and did so rather than flagging down that trucker in the big rig he then got into and disappeared off into the night.
Roy dropped the ball.
What he did, unforgivable.
He didn't even offer to walk me to the door. He just left me high and dry.
Unacceptable behavior for a first date and I hope he doesn't think we're going to have a second because I don't think so!
I wanted something like this
But in the end, I got this
Mike the Mechanic says my new hood will be coming next week so for now I have to live with that ugly white one. But it's livable for now. Once I get the Fall of Man depicted on the hood, my ride will be totally hot!
When I got home, I found Anpu in the observatory, brooding over a glass of scotch. I hate when he sulks. It really hurts my heart. I sunk into his lap, wrapped my little arms around him and pressed my lips to his.
He smiled but said nothing. He's a man of few words most days but I could see the relief in his eyes that I was home safe and no longer crying which is what he was most worried about.
He calls me the "whirlwind" and my unpredictable nature sometimes sets him on edge.
"I got the car. It was wrong of me to ask you to buy it for me, expect you to fund what was really a discretionary expense when you have more pressing concerns to contend with. I didn't stop to think about how it would make you feel but I am sorry an' I love you."
His brow lifted a second time that night but before I would allow him time to start peppering me with a new round of questions, I just held up a Ho Ho. His eyes flickered and I could tell it was of interest to him.
"Eat this an' tell me yer not in heaven. A man died seeing that I got to experience this. I want to share this with you. We must honor him this way. It's the only way I know how."
If I had a mother, I would want her to look like this. I don't actually know who this incredibly gorgeous creature is because I just ripped her picture out of one of Gren's magazines and took a picture of that picture but I know that I love her.
I love her and I want her to be mine.
Maybe after Blockhead gets done protesting with his little conservation friends about all the illegal logging activity in the forests (Yes, I approved the permits! Why would you even think I didn't?!), I'm going to ask him to take me to meet her. Because I think he knows who she is. I get this impression because there was a HUGE picture of her on his bedroom wall next to the one of the Arachnid Man and in between his little dollies that he calls "action figures."
I want to say to him sometime, "Grenny, they are not actioning anything but sitting on your shelves collecting dust like dumb Rena does when she sits on tables at the Outback. What is the POINT of owning them?"
But then he'd probably say something stupid like, "STOP crushing my hopes and dreams, you evil demon!"
And then I'd be forced to respond, "That is redundant as the word demon implies it is evil so you are stupid. Give me a little money please for more gyros? I am FAMISHED."
And he would because I have got the method to HIS madness down to a science now. If I ask for a crazy amount of money, Gren starts to sputter. It's really gross too because he's spitting all over everything and germing up the place. But if I ask for a LOW amount and suggest I am hungry, it triggers his internal need to assist everyone he encounters even though he's terrified of me and wishes I would go away for a reaaaaaaaaally long time.
Hee hee. That's never going to happen. I don't think he fully appreciates what I mean by "You are MY Blockhead," when I say that. I don't think he understands that there's just NEVER going to be a day that comes where we won't know one another or be near one another. He's stuck with me, like it or not.
And I also don't think he's going to understand why I took the huge picture of the sweet-faced lady with the pretty horns from the wall and put it in MY tree domicile.
I have bonded with her, at least in theory. I find myself staring at her for long periods of time wondering how I can make my horns look like hers. I think it's really cool that she adorns them with ribbons or whatever that is on them. I never thought to do that with mine mostly because mine are usually covered in blood and gore.
But on her they make them look so pretty. It's very elegant for a lady of her stature, I think. I also think she might be of noble birth because of the way she carries herself in all the pictures I have found of her throughout Gren's tree fort. It's almost like he idolizes her and is making a shrine? I thought to look around for a journal or something to maybe help me understand his fixation but after he learned I've been breaking into his house regularly he got himself a safe I've yet to crack.
Actually now that I think about it maybe SHE is Gren's Momma! Gasp! That explains why he can read my thoughts! Clearly she's supernatural! This also explains why Gren and I were able to trade super powers last Summer! Oh my God Simon!
This is how that idiot became OverTwerp!
How did I not see this earlier?!
How could I be so BLIND?!
GREN BLOCKMAN AND I ARE BROTHER AND SISTER?!
Holy gumdrops!
I have to go and call Jewelsie! She's not going to BELIEVE this! No wonder why he doesn't want to sleep wtih me! It's the whole stigma of incest and all that!
It's all fitting together now like a completed puzzle.
Wow.
My Blockhead is my brother.
But how is he hiding HIS horns? And how come he doesn't know HE is a demon TOO?!
I will examine him later! I have so much to do! I'm going to meet my MOM! Wish me luck!
Dear Forever,
As I write this (or swipe this seeing as I'm using this tablet and they don't let you use a hammer and a chisel on it--I know, I tried, the manager at the store got very angry at me for doing so with the one he called the "floor model" so to repay him for yelling at me, I chiseled a great big hole in his stupid forehead) Anubis is using several sharp objects on a number of mannequins in our living room and their heads keep landing at my feet.
Why he is doing this is both simple and complicated to explain.
The simple version is that Hope, the so-called Baroness of the Old Market (which is a funny name given she does not sell groceries I've noticed) was kind enough to name ME as her "Second" in her match with my Anpu the other night where he ALSO named ME as his "Lady of Honor." This has infuriated him.
I want to stop here and say for the record I do not actually have a single shred of honor. I don't. I routinely execute geriatrics and find unique ways to make my kills look like accidents but Anpu, as I've told you before, is a man set in his ways and very old-fashioned.
Now comes the complicated part.
In his head, I am very honorable which is why years ago when he stopped looking at me like I was his buddy (I swear that boy thought I was a boy for the first twenty or so years we knew each other) and started to notice I had breasts and smelled like flowers rather than any ole nasty boy who smells like dirt, sweat and ten tons of testosterone, it began to occur to him he DESPERATELY wanted to know what I looked like underneath all the clothes I did manage to wear and he was faced with an incredible conundrum.
I want to be fair in saying that while everyone ELSE knew I was a girl, you have to keep in mind that when I met Anpu, I was mortal and I was fifteen years old. I was also a bit of a tomboy. Other girls my age were NOT hanging around with male slavers as I was and helping to capture other girls that would eventually be sold on the open market.
I was an enigma to him.
I hadn't really bloomed yet either. I was flat-chested and relatively awkward looking which is what MOST human teenagers look like (face all pimply and out of proportion) until overnight they sprout into desirable creatures which causes a certain number of their peers to want to hump them six ways to Sunday, also overnight. Whereas a week earlier from this magical transformation, this was the last thing on everyone's mind because the same teenager looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Sanctuary!
Ahem.
So in order to see me naked, Anpu would, as he would term it, have to "dishonor" me and I am happy to report while he struggled with this decision for many nights, gazing at me with equal parts longing and disgust, eventually succumbed to that thing most boys succumb to called "lust" and ripped every damn piece of clothing off me and threw them into the fire pit we happened to be situated around in his tent. And then we went at it like hyenas.
The next morning, however, the problem was finding me some clothes to wear because he had set mine on fire. He settled on wrapping me up like a mummy in some bed sheets so that when he exited his tent carrying what everyone else thought was a dead body and just part of his normal duties, no one batted an eyelash. He then unwrapped me, pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead and went to go kill something outside while I stood there wondering what in the hell happened that we were all wrapped up in each other's limbs not six hours earlier and now he was abandoning me to go do boy stuff.
I have observed this about him. Every time we are intimate, he will murder something afterward. I haven't exactly had the nerve to ask him why he does this but I think it has to do with him wanting to get back in touch with his manliness after all that soft pillow talk and cutesy nuzzling.
He still does this to this day.
As I have come to expect it and no longer worry about the why of it, it isn't so traumatic for me when one minute we're all panting at each other and the next he's nowhere to be found and is likely slicing something's jugular open so he can feel like a man again.
Arterial blood spray will do that for you.
There's nothing more powerful than smearing the blood of one's enemies in between one's fingers and on one's face to confirm that you are manly.
Or in my case, just beastly because I don't have any boy parts despite my wanting to all these years. It's because boys get to have all the fun. Girlies are expected to sew and give birth to more boys. That's not as much fun.
So my having "honor" is more an idea at this juncture than a reality at least in MY mind. In his, I am still a lady, I have oodles of honor, and I am to be respected by all, no matter how terrible I am to them. It is a state of being I have achieved despite not actually having EARNED it. If anything, from the time we have met til now, I have done everything in my power to be as DISHONORABLE as ever but Anpu (bless his black heart) hasn't ever seemed to catch up to this fact. He'll forever see me as the Tara he met all those long years ago.
Which is why when I listen to the meat puppets talk about how terrible HE is, I laugh, because between the both of us, I'm the one they should worry more about.
Anpu is disciplined. Everything is a routine with him. And you cannot blame him because if you take away the flesh and blood man that you see on the surface and consider that underneath it all he is, truly, the God of the Dead and what an awesome responsibility that is for him and what it demands OF him, you'd understand him very easily.
He's constantly overseeing rituals, making sure the dead are properly looked after prior to them being brought to be judged BY him. It also takes a certain amount of discipline to constantly be expected to carve the hearts out of a person and then weigh it on a scale. If the heart is heavier than the golden ostrich feather, that soul is then consumed by a monster just as terrible as any of mine in Hell. But if it's lighter, well, hooray! The soul gets saved.
See, in my world no one gets saved. Everyone I encounter is damned beyond salvation which is why I'm the more dangerous of us both. Anpu will work with you if you approach him the right way and don't get cocky. Me? All I know is the language of pain. There is no greener grass on the other side of the fence.
That and I LIKE the whole game of torment. I'm also exceedingly good at it. Anpu is only cruel when the situation warrants it, when he's been pushed too far.
Me? I snap very easily. And, I am not satisfied to kill JUST YOU. I go after your whole family, several generations too, so that by the time I am through with you there's very little of you left.
I consign you to a distant memory.
Anpu, though, for all that is said about him that leans toward the negative, can be impartial when he has to be. I do not EVER have to be.
He doesn't like my talking about this side of him. It's SUPPOSED to be secret. But all anyone that is curious about him has to do is go into any pyramid in Egypt and it's all drawn on the walls, for anyone to see.
But to be cute and because I'm amused that so many just see him as a man and NOT a God, when I am asked what Anpu does for a living, if I don't say "acquisitions" which is a euphemism for him being a slaver, I say he's a mortician.
Because that IS what he is.
A celestial mortician who has the power to boil the very blood in a human's veins with just a thought, but a mortician nonetheless.
I love my guy. I really do. For all his quirks, die-hard habits and faults, he really is a good egg. He's always looked after me too and I think that is why he struggles with my being a permanent fixture in his life now as opposed to a guest like I used to be when we were not living together and were not in love.
This is a different dynamic for us. One he is not accustomed to. And because we are so diametrically opposed at least where it concerns problem-solving, it's hard to reconcile it in his head and make it make sense.
Anpu knows how to be my friend and occasional savior from disasters I've wrought. He does NOT know how to be my friend and future husband.
I am not going away.
Not that he wants me to (well maybe at present he does because he's just cut another head off a mannequin and has smirked at me) but in the past I have gone away. I've flitted in and out of his life when it suited me but now I'm sticking around, I'm something he has to contend with all the time now. This is hard to govern. I'm a handful!
About these mannequin heads he's slicing off left and right.
This is his way of saying that my being both his "Lady of Honor" and Hope's "Second" is bothering him to the point of absolute distraction and he cannot let it go.
He wants to know (but hasn't voiced this yet) how I could accept such a duality and ultimately, deep down beneath all the feelings of rage, hurt and fear, what he has done that would cause me to betray him.
This and not the fact that I was both Lady of Honor and Hope's Second is what is causing him to behead the mannequins.
Now I like Hope, I do. From what I have observed of her she's very friendly and has been toward me. And she shouldn't be. I'm not friend material. Well, maybe to Jewelsie I am but with very few exceptions (like Taneth, to name one, my beloved Dark Queen Jesse to name another), everyone is meaningless to me.
The trick is to never let them KNOW that.
Hope's never been nasty to me and always talks to me. I am constantly trying to get Gren to bed her because while I am sure Izira is a lovely woman who is a perfect compliment to Gren, Hope, and not Izira, is around ALL THE TIME.
She is observable. Touchable. ACCESSIBLE.
And she likes to beat other meat puppets up which is what Gren will tell you HE likes to do but really I think Gren uses his fake battles in the circular contraptions to appear to be more LIKE the meat puppets he's surrounded by that he rarely understands and is so vastly different from, I'd need another month of entries to explain to you why that is.
For brevity's sake, though, I'll try. Like my Anpu, Gren has habits he'd rather die by than abandon.
Anpu guards the Veil, Gren guards the forest.
Gren's got this overinflated sense of worth where he truly believes that he is going to save every living creature from destruction despite that being a Herculean task that even the great Hercules himself couldn't master.
That and for at least two of his labors he cheated.
Yeah I said it.
Might as well get THAT out into the open too while I'm at it. Hercules was a chump. Never slept with him. We drank together a few times. Nice guy but doofy. Oh boy was he doofy.
Gren's doofy too but he's grown on me. I admire his personal goal even though I know it's not feasible, long term. Everything dies. Even gods and demons but I won't tell HIM that. I think Hope would make a great girlfriend for him and have told them both this, on numerous occasions. I mean it too. She's a cute little thing.
But would I fight FOR her against Anpu?
Certainly not.
I do not visit the Outback, the Arena and that ridiculously-named Iron Fists Garden (they haven't presented us yet with one fighter who HAS an iron fist-misnomer much?!) not because I need entertainment but because Anpu is a part of that place. I have seen the man do actual battle so I know he's not going there because he needs to practice. If anything, all of them could serve to learn something FROM him, not the other way around.
This is his...hobby.
He likes it and he's very involved in it, why I don't actually know. Maybe in some small way he's trying to relate to these meat puppets like Gren is from a different standpoint.
Maybe it makes HIM feel more human. I honestly don't know.
I go there to support him and not for any other reason.
You know years ago, when societies made sense and humans acted with civility and could be counted on to behave themselves most of the time, the women of aristocratic men socialized with other women of the same stature not because they liked being around them but because it made their man look good. They forged alliances over tea and gossip and stood by their men.
Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned too. Maybe I'll never understand these meat puppets with their crazy vernacular and odd senses of fashion, their wide range of feelings that should not in any way effect the outcomes of situations but often do but to support MY man, I surround myself with them.
Sometimes they surprise me.
Like that adorable girl Grace. To look at her you'd think she was mousy and terrified but pit her favorite fighter against someone else and she's ALL lung! That girl can break glass she gets so loud.
Then there's men like Matt Simon whom I have chosen to refer to as God Simon. Anpu HATES that I do but only because he is a human and NOT an actual God like him. He feels this is an improper, insulting label but I disagree.
Anpu is a God because he was born that way.
Matt is a God because he can inspire the meat puppets around him to be better versions of themselves. I have seen this happen more than a handful of times and I include myself in that.
I don't listen to reason. I don't like following orders. And I will eat you and your young alive if you EVER think you're going to get one over on me. Your soul will be a blank canvas for me to inflict every unimaginable cruel act and torture onto.
But put me in front of Matthew Simon?
And there is just something about that boy that makes me NOT want to disappoint him. He can get me to do things very few humans could. He can get me to listen to reason. I very much respect and like him because when I have come to him with the most ABSURD request, he's never made me feel less for the experience, never JUDGED me.
I live in a world that is solely based on judgment so to have someone I can go to who won't do that is very refreshing, to say the least.
What of Kalamere, the Desecrator of Dreams, the Champion of the Reckoning, the man who has never been one of those things but IS because I say he is, not because he's done these acts, acquired the subsequent trophies, no, because he is the kind of man who will NEVER leave you bloody on a battlefield, to die alone.
I went into the Weevil Pit one night to try and seduce Kalamere Ar'Din not because I wanted to destroy his friendship with Jake, whom I have a VERY special place in my heart for, but because I wanted to test it.
I wanted to see what kind of man Kal was that the kind of man Jake is would befriend.
It was a test Kalamere passed with flying colors. He told me no. Didn't hesitate. Didn't bend to my will. And I'm not a God but I can be extremely persuasive because that is how I was made.
That is my primary objective in life now that I am the Whore of Babylon and no longer boring ole meat puppety mortal Tara Rynieyn.
To corrupt and sunder as many souls as I can get my hands on. This is what I have to contend with now. My lot in life.
Kalamere didn't give two you-know-what's as Gren would say about what my function is, the only thing he cared about was NOT hurting his friend Jake and despite all my debauchery and evil ways, I would be remiss if I didn't say that truly impressed me. Because of that he will ALWAYS be the Championing of at least MY Reckoning because in a world where I see so many of his brethren as morsels of food on two feet, he caused me to elevate him far beyond that. And, as a result he is the kind of man, all the rest of the human males should strive to be.
I do not know why Hope chose to name me as her Second. She had to know I would never betray Anubis, because I flat out told her I wouldn't, in a discussion we had prior to their match.
But maybe she named me that way because I am on a level necessary TO fight him, at least properly (he'd still wipe the floors with me) or maybe she wanted to include me as one of their own even though I'm not and never will be. Still, to be thought of as part of that place too is kinda cool.
I'll never ask her.
There are some mysteries I believe that should be kept hidden.
Like my true name.
Not even Anpu knows that.
I have to go console him. He's run out of mannequins now and I fear the expensive furniture will be next. It does not matter that we have more than enough money between us to replace all of which he might destroy, some things have sentimental value.
Like he does in my mind.
I could never leave him now, no matter how tough it got. Not even if his father appeared again and demanded it of me a second time would I leave this man I love so very much at times it hurts.
If staying with him for good means tolerating the masses of meat puppets that piss me off more than give me pause, having to sit amongst them as they argue over whose sword is bigger and who is going to hold the next bauble they give the CRAZIEST names to (Pathfinder? Good God Simon is that dumb--ever hear of a COMPASS you idiots?!) and having to smile at them and pretend I like them when I really want to cave their faces in with shovels?
Then so be it.
I'll do it.
I am doing it.
I'll always do it.
If it makes him happy.
I know you will never read these words of mine, Anpu, because you value my privacy despite puzzling over my behavior for as long as we have known each other, then I hope that through my actions I have at least managed to show you that at the end of every day now as opposed to our antiquity, I go home with YOU.
You, my sweetheart, are my Game Changer. I could never betray you if I tried.
And there has never been a time in our history that I have been more in love with you than I am right now.
As I write this (or swipe this seeing as I'm using this tablet and they don't let you use a hammer and a chisel on it--I know, I tried, the manager at the store got very angry at me for doing so with the one he called the "floor model" so to repay him for yelling at me, I chiseled a great big hole in his stupid forehead) Anubis is using several sharp objects on a number of mannequins in our living room and their heads keep landing at my feet.
Why he is doing this is both simple and complicated to explain.
The simple version is that Hope, the so-called Baroness of the Old Market (which is a funny name given she does not sell groceries I've noticed) was kind enough to name ME as her "Second" in her match with my Anpu the other night where he ALSO named ME as his "Lady of Honor." This has infuriated him.
I want to stop here and say for the record I do not actually have a single shred of honor. I don't. I routinely execute geriatrics and find unique ways to make my kills look like accidents but Anpu, as I've told you before, is a man set in his ways and very old-fashioned.
Now comes the complicated part.
In his head, I am very honorable which is why years ago when he stopped looking at me like I was his buddy (I swear that boy thought I was a boy for the first twenty or so years we knew each other) and started to notice I had breasts and smelled like flowers rather than any ole nasty boy who smells like dirt, sweat and ten tons of testosterone, it began to occur to him he DESPERATELY wanted to know what I looked like underneath all the clothes I did manage to wear and he was faced with an incredible conundrum.
I want to be fair in saying that while everyone ELSE knew I was a girl, you have to keep in mind that when I met Anpu, I was mortal and I was fifteen years old. I was also a bit of a tomboy. Other girls my age were NOT hanging around with male slavers as I was and helping to capture other girls that would eventually be sold on the open market.
I was an enigma to him.
I hadn't really bloomed yet either. I was flat-chested and relatively awkward looking which is what MOST human teenagers look like (face all pimply and out of proportion) until overnight they sprout into desirable creatures which causes a certain number of their peers to want to hump them six ways to Sunday, also overnight. Whereas a week earlier from this magical transformation, this was the last thing on everyone's mind because the same teenager looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Sanctuary!
Ahem.
So in order to see me naked, Anpu would, as he would term it, have to "dishonor" me and I am happy to report while he struggled with this decision for many nights, gazing at me with equal parts longing and disgust, eventually succumbed to that thing most boys succumb to called "lust" and ripped every damn piece of clothing off me and threw them into the fire pit we happened to be situated around in his tent. And then we went at it like hyenas.
The next morning, however, the problem was finding me some clothes to wear because he had set mine on fire. He settled on wrapping me up like a mummy in some bed sheets so that when he exited his tent carrying what everyone else thought was a dead body and just part of his normal duties, no one batted an eyelash. He then unwrapped me, pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead and went to go kill something outside while I stood there wondering what in the hell happened that we were all wrapped up in each other's limbs not six hours earlier and now he was abandoning me to go do boy stuff.
I have observed this about him. Every time we are intimate, he will murder something afterward. I haven't exactly had the nerve to ask him why he does this but I think it has to do with him wanting to get back in touch with his manliness after all that soft pillow talk and cutesy nuzzling.
He still does this to this day.
As I have come to expect it and no longer worry about the why of it, it isn't so traumatic for me when one minute we're all panting at each other and the next he's nowhere to be found and is likely slicing something's jugular open so he can feel like a man again.
Arterial blood spray will do that for you.
There's nothing more powerful than smearing the blood of one's enemies in between one's fingers and on one's face to confirm that you are manly.
Or in my case, just beastly because I don't have any boy parts despite my wanting to all these years. It's because boys get to have all the fun. Girlies are expected to sew and give birth to more boys. That's not as much fun.
So my having "honor" is more an idea at this juncture than a reality at least in MY mind. In his, I am still a lady, I have oodles of honor, and I am to be respected by all, no matter how terrible I am to them. It is a state of being I have achieved despite not actually having EARNED it. If anything, from the time we have met til now, I have done everything in my power to be as DISHONORABLE as ever but Anpu (bless his black heart) hasn't ever seemed to catch up to this fact. He'll forever see me as the Tara he met all those long years ago.
Which is why when I listen to the meat puppets talk about how terrible HE is, I laugh, because between the both of us, I'm the one they should worry more about.
Anpu is disciplined. Everything is a routine with him. And you cannot blame him because if you take away the flesh and blood man that you see on the surface and consider that underneath it all he is, truly, the God of the Dead and what an awesome responsibility that is for him and what it demands OF him, you'd understand him very easily.
He's constantly overseeing rituals, making sure the dead are properly looked after prior to them being brought to be judged BY him. It also takes a certain amount of discipline to constantly be expected to carve the hearts out of a person and then weigh it on a scale. If the heart is heavier than the golden ostrich feather, that soul is then consumed by a monster just as terrible as any of mine in Hell. But if it's lighter, well, hooray! The soul gets saved.
See, in my world no one gets saved. Everyone I encounter is damned beyond salvation which is why I'm the more dangerous of us both. Anpu will work with you if you approach him the right way and don't get cocky. Me? All I know is the language of pain. There is no greener grass on the other side of the fence.
That and I LIKE the whole game of torment. I'm also exceedingly good at it. Anpu is only cruel when the situation warrants it, when he's been pushed too far.
Me? I snap very easily. And, I am not satisfied to kill JUST YOU. I go after your whole family, several generations too, so that by the time I am through with you there's very little of you left.
I consign you to a distant memory.
Anpu, though, for all that is said about him that leans toward the negative, can be impartial when he has to be. I do not EVER have to be.
He doesn't like my talking about this side of him. It's SUPPOSED to be secret. But all anyone that is curious about him has to do is go into any pyramid in Egypt and it's all drawn on the walls, for anyone to see.
But to be cute and because I'm amused that so many just see him as a man and NOT a God, when I am asked what Anpu does for a living, if I don't say "acquisitions" which is a euphemism for him being a slaver, I say he's a mortician.
Because that IS what he is.
A celestial mortician who has the power to boil the very blood in a human's veins with just a thought, but a mortician nonetheless.
I love my guy. I really do. For all his quirks, die-hard habits and faults, he really is a good egg. He's always looked after me too and I think that is why he struggles with my being a permanent fixture in his life now as opposed to a guest like I used to be when we were not living together and were not in love.
This is a different dynamic for us. One he is not accustomed to. And because we are so diametrically opposed at least where it concerns problem-solving, it's hard to reconcile it in his head and make it make sense.
Anpu knows how to be my friend and occasional savior from disasters I've wrought. He does NOT know how to be my friend and future husband.
I am not going away.
Not that he wants me to (well maybe at present he does because he's just cut another head off a mannequin and has smirked at me) but in the past I have gone away. I've flitted in and out of his life when it suited me but now I'm sticking around, I'm something he has to contend with all the time now. This is hard to govern. I'm a handful!
About these mannequin heads he's slicing off left and right.
This is his way of saying that my being both his "Lady of Honor" and Hope's "Second" is bothering him to the point of absolute distraction and he cannot let it go.
He wants to know (but hasn't voiced this yet) how I could accept such a duality and ultimately, deep down beneath all the feelings of rage, hurt and fear, what he has done that would cause me to betray him.
This and not the fact that I was both Lady of Honor and Hope's Second is what is causing him to behead the mannequins.
Now I like Hope, I do. From what I have observed of her she's very friendly and has been toward me. And she shouldn't be. I'm not friend material. Well, maybe to Jewelsie I am but with very few exceptions (like Taneth, to name one, my beloved Dark Queen Jesse to name another), everyone is meaningless to me.
The trick is to never let them KNOW that.
Hope's never been nasty to me and always talks to me. I am constantly trying to get Gren to bed her because while I am sure Izira is a lovely woman who is a perfect compliment to Gren, Hope, and not Izira, is around ALL THE TIME.
She is observable. Touchable. ACCESSIBLE.
And she likes to beat other meat puppets up which is what Gren will tell you HE likes to do but really I think Gren uses his fake battles in the circular contraptions to appear to be more LIKE the meat puppets he's surrounded by that he rarely understands and is so vastly different from, I'd need another month of entries to explain to you why that is.
For brevity's sake, though, I'll try. Like my Anpu, Gren has habits he'd rather die by than abandon.
Anpu guards the Veil, Gren guards the forest.
Gren's got this overinflated sense of worth where he truly believes that he is going to save every living creature from destruction despite that being a Herculean task that even the great Hercules himself couldn't master.
That and for at least two of his labors he cheated.
Yeah I said it.
Might as well get THAT out into the open too while I'm at it. Hercules was a chump. Never slept with him. We drank together a few times. Nice guy but doofy. Oh boy was he doofy.
Gren's doofy too but he's grown on me. I admire his personal goal even though I know it's not feasible, long term. Everything dies. Even gods and demons but I won't tell HIM that. I think Hope would make a great girlfriend for him and have told them both this, on numerous occasions. I mean it too. She's a cute little thing.
But would I fight FOR her against Anpu?
Certainly not.
I do not visit the Outback, the Arena and that ridiculously-named Iron Fists Garden (they haven't presented us yet with one fighter who HAS an iron fist-misnomer much?!) not because I need entertainment but because Anpu is a part of that place. I have seen the man do actual battle so I know he's not going there because he needs to practice. If anything, all of them could serve to learn something FROM him, not the other way around.
This is his...hobby.
He likes it and he's very involved in it, why I don't actually know. Maybe in some small way he's trying to relate to these meat puppets like Gren is from a different standpoint.
Maybe it makes HIM feel more human. I honestly don't know.
I go there to support him and not for any other reason.
You know years ago, when societies made sense and humans acted with civility and could be counted on to behave themselves most of the time, the women of aristocratic men socialized with other women of the same stature not because they liked being around them but because it made their man look good. They forged alliances over tea and gossip and stood by their men.
Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned too. Maybe I'll never understand these meat puppets with their crazy vernacular and odd senses of fashion, their wide range of feelings that should not in any way effect the outcomes of situations but often do but to support MY man, I surround myself with them.
Sometimes they surprise me.
Like that adorable girl Grace. To look at her you'd think she was mousy and terrified but pit her favorite fighter against someone else and she's ALL lung! That girl can break glass she gets so loud.
Then there's men like Matt Simon whom I have chosen to refer to as God Simon. Anpu HATES that I do but only because he is a human and NOT an actual God like him. He feels this is an improper, insulting label but I disagree.
Anpu is a God because he was born that way.
Matt is a God because he can inspire the meat puppets around him to be better versions of themselves. I have seen this happen more than a handful of times and I include myself in that.
I don't listen to reason. I don't like following orders. And I will eat you and your young alive if you EVER think you're going to get one over on me. Your soul will be a blank canvas for me to inflict every unimaginable cruel act and torture onto.
But put me in front of Matthew Simon?
And there is just something about that boy that makes me NOT want to disappoint him. He can get me to do things very few humans could. He can get me to listen to reason. I very much respect and like him because when I have come to him with the most ABSURD request, he's never made me feel less for the experience, never JUDGED me.
I live in a world that is solely based on judgment so to have someone I can go to who won't do that is very refreshing, to say the least.
What of Kalamere, the Desecrator of Dreams, the Champion of the Reckoning, the man who has never been one of those things but IS because I say he is, not because he's done these acts, acquired the subsequent trophies, no, because he is the kind of man who will NEVER leave you bloody on a battlefield, to die alone.
I went into the Weevil Pit one night to try and seduce Kalamere Ar'Din not because I wanted to destroy his friendship with Jake, whom I have a VERY special place in my heart for, but because I wanted to test it.
I wanted to see what kind of man Kal was that the kind of man Jake is would befriend.
It was a test Kalamere passed with flying colors. He told me no. Didn't hesitate. Didn't bend to my will. And I'm not a God but I can be extremely persuasive because that is how I was made.
That is my primary objective in life now that I am the Whore of Babylon and no longer boring ole meat puppety mortal Tara Rynieyn.
To corrupt and sunder as many souls as I can get my hands on. This is what I have to contend with now. My lot in life.
Kalamere didn't give two you-know-what's as Gren would say about what my function is, the only thing he cared about was NOT hurting his friend Jake and despite all my debauchery and evil ways, I would be remiss if I didn't say that truly impressed me. Because of that he will ALWAYS be the Championing of at least MY Reckoning because in a world where I see so many of his brethren as morsels of food on two feet, he caused me to elevate him far beyond that. And, as a result he is the kind of man, all the rest of the human males should strive to be.
I do not know why Hope chose to name me as her Second. She had to know I would never betray Anubis, because I flat out told her I wouldn't, in a discussion we had prior to their match.
But maybe she named me that way because I am on a level necessary TO fight him, at least properly (he'd still wipe the floors with me) or maybe she wanted to include me as one of their own even though I'm not and never will be. Still, to be thought of as part of that place too is kinda cool.
I'll never ask her.
There are some mysteries I believe that should be kept hidden.
Like my true name.
Not even Anpu knows that.
I have to go console him. He's run out of mannequins now and I fear the expensive furniture will be next. It does not matter that we have more than enough money between us to replace all of which he might destroy, some things have sentimental value.
Like he does in my mind.
I could never leave him now, no matter how tough it got. Not even if his father appeared again and demanded it of me a second time would I leave this man I love so very much at times it hurts.
If staying with him for good means tolerating the masses of meat puppets that piss me off more than give me pause, having to sit amongst them as they argue over whose sword is bigger and who is going to hold the next bauble they give the CRAZIEST names to (Pathfinder? Good God Simon is that dumb--ever hear of a COMPASS you idiots?!) and having to smile at them and pretend I like them when I really want to cave their faces in with shovels?
Then so be it.
I'll do it.
I am doing it.
I'll always do it.
If it makes him happy.
I know you will never read these words of mine, Anpu, because you value my privacy despite puzzling over my behavior for as long as we have known each other, then I hope that through my actions I have at least managed to show you that at the end of every day now as opposed to our antiquity, I go home with YOU.
You, my sweetheart, are my Game Changer. I could never betray you if I tried.
And there has never been a time in our history that I have been more in love with you than I am right now.
Dear Forever,
For as long as I can remember, Rhy'Din has been a place where anything is possible. It is home to a wide range of cross-dimensional nobodies who hail from places where at least for a time someone or a group of someones thought them...relevant. Then they come here, expect the same level of treatment and everything goes downhill.
I am one such nobody.
Tara Rynieyn, who was named (and styled at birth) Her Royal Highness Anna Marie Rynieyn was the daughter of an elf princess and a vampire. The product of an illicit love-affair between the leaders of two warring kingdoms (Lanrette and Lockheed) who were NOT married, little Anna had it relatively good for the first few years of her life. Then politics got in the way and it made living in Lanrette an impossibility. So Anna came to Rhy'Din at fourteen years of age with a half-brother named Tarathiele Rynieyn.
No one alive now will remember Tarathiele. He used to be in a guild named White Dragon's Vengeance which was an old, oh-so-old guild run back in what Tara refers to as the "First Era of Rhy'Din" by two very nice folks, a married couple named Imari and Rayfe. They took Anna in along with her brother but Anna was not allowed to join their guild like her brother because she was too young. So she spent her days stealing food from the Red Dragon Inn, befriending a bartender there named Hunter and annoying all the guild members of WDV in their guild hall called Ironguard Hall.
When Tarathiele died in a long forgotten war that no one alive now would remember as well, Anna took on the first two syllables of his name: Tara, to honor him. And it's been that way ever since.
The part of me that is still Tara and has been cordoned off, so to speak, from the rest of me that is the Whore of Babylon struggles with the fact that Tara has lost many things and people over the years she has cared deeply for. I struggle with it because I cannot understand how any one nobody could be so loved by so many. I am forced to watch those who do care for her, interact with her, and deal with them on a level I am not equipped mentally to handle.
In Hell while I enjoy a position of power along with other "nobles" so to speak, I'm not the one that calls the shots. None of us are. Not even the big guy down in the frozen lake. God calls the shots here. When one of us dies, we that are left rarely register it. Life, as they say goes on. But here in Rhy'Din, a place so steeped in history (and lots of mystery) people, the collective of nobodies, matter to the rest I've noticed.
Some of them would die for others too. Which REALLY confuses me because I would not do the same for them.
Tara would though.
It's really strange to me that she could be the way she was (that I have had absolutely NO hand in guiding, by the way) prior to my coming on board as half her personality now and people still care for her.
Yet they do NOT care for Anubis, who is just as monstrous as she is.
Last night I had the opportunity to observe Hope and Claire defend a boy named Rone, whom Tara referred to as "Bart", against me, when I spoke up and said I'd like to play football with his head and torso after I dissected his arms and legs. At no point did either of them harshly admonish me.
Meanwhile, Rone? Bart? Whatever the little idiot is called is a KID!
That's right! A CHILD!
Who does that? If anyone made the same threat towards my kid, I wouldn't hesitate to crawl down their throat!
But it just rarely happens with this chick named Tara. Granted, none of the people Tara and I encounter truly understand that they are dealing with TWO of us in one body. At least as far as I have observed. I've even TOLD them this and they still ignore it and let her and I get away with.....well......anything really.
Sometimes I think they think I am joking when I say there are TWO of us inside here.
I've even considered wearing a sign to warn them so they'd catch on. Something like "ACTIVE POSSESSION HERE! APPROACH AT YOUR OWN RISK!" but somehow I think if I did that these insufferable meat puppets that like Tara would think this is funny.
Take Cane, Sal and that ridiculous girl Sabine who is their third wheel and resident hanger-on that I have taken to calling "Femuppet." You know how my "battle" with them played out?
Oh let me tell you this insanity.
Sal finds out Tara slept with Sandy and has a conniption fit. Seriously? THIS is what Sal chooses to get his panties in a bunch over?! He has sex with everything that isn't nailed down and that's OK but one fling with Sandy and he's OFFENDED?!
Tara, not wanting to let go of Sal who she cares about (I DO NOT KNOW WHY, HE IS DUMB), tries to get back into his good graces. Somehow Cane gets involved and Sabine, who did a lot of squeaking the whole time why I do NOT know, and while there are stern words exchanged, I begin to get the feeling that no blood is going to be spilled so I speak up.
I have to put an end to this! Someone does!
Because sometimes with Tara I just can't let her handle certain matters. She's absurd. So I speak up and pretty much tell them I am going to set them all on fire and eradicate them and WHAT DO THEY DO?!
They say it's okay!
Cane makes a deal with me (look, I don't care who you are you do NOT readily make deals with demons, okay? It's just NOT a good idea) that I am allowed to set him on fire every Thursday and Saturday provided I leave the stupid Femuppet who is in his "Friend Zone" and Sal, alone.
I was so shocked that this was what they were willing to accept that I said yes.
I'm embarrassed to admit I said yes, but I did.
So now every damn Thursday and Saturday I have to stop what I am doing to go set that Toad (that's what I call Cane) on FIRE because him and his two buddies (whom I refer to as The Three Amigos) can live a happy life otherwise.
What is WRONG with these people?!
And what's so damn happy about it?! Sabine is drooling over Cane but can't have him because Sal's got his hooks in him and he's NEVER going to let him go! Why is this girl wasting her life and accepting this?!
I have a half a mind to possess her for a day and teach those two idiots she hangs around with a lesson in how to treat a woman properly! And then when I'm finished with them I'd find her a REAL boyfriend she could be with that would appreciate and love her!
Ugh.
I'm getting a headache now.
Even Anubis ignores it. He noticed me ONCE. I'll give him that. Early on after I took over Tara, he confronted me in the Red Dragon Inn and demanded I vacate her soul. Was pretty adamant about it too and was cursing at me in Aramaic as I recall. Anubis does not speak Aramaic but I think he did that night to show me he KNEW I did. And he made threats, none of which I thought were idle but he never followed through!!!!
I can understand that with him, at least, maybe he thinks if he harms me he'll harm Tara too. I didn't end up in here by accident. She CHOSE this. But he didn't! And I don't know why because I can't stand her but she does not feel the same way about me.
She LIKES me.
I hear her thoughts. She feels I am tragic and that I need affection when I would never give her the same if our places were reversed. And sometimes they are!
When we're in Hell she's fascinated by it all and feels very badly for the damned. She goes out of her way to make their suffering a little easier even though I have told her that her efforts are futile. That Hell repeats and it will be the same way the next day and the day after that. She feels that if she made a difference for ONE day, that is better than nothing.
It's getting to the point now where she is just so damn frustrating that I want to give her soul back to her and just be done with this whole infuriating place called Rhy'Din.
I want to go back to Hell, live the life I made for MYSELF there and just forget I even came here.
But I can't.
That's right, I am trapped.
Inside this loon.
Forced to be surrounded by these troglodytes she calls friends and family.
I have studied every text, talked to every demon and apparently this particular possession is, permanent.
Even if Tara were to say she's had enough and wanted to get rid of me, she can't.
There's no backsies.
So we're both screwed.
Tonight the meat puppetry convenes for their weekly "Fight Night" which is just as ludicrous as it sounds because they dance around in circles and no one ever gets maimed or altered PERMANENTLY because of those "ward" things and I've decided I'm going to put an end to this madness.
Tonight is the night the meat puppets finally begin to understand that while Tara is a part of ME, she's only half and I am the one that's in charge at least up here.
Tonight I am going to make them wish they never met me or Tara.
Tonight I change the tide.
I'm bringing out the big guns.
And I'm going to leave none alive.
For as long as I can remember, Rhy'Din has been a place where anything is possible. It is home to a wide range of cross-dimensional nobodies who hail from places where at least for a time someone or a group of someones thought them...relevant. Then they come here, expect the same level of treatment and everything goes downhill.
I am one such nobody.
Tara Rynieyn, who was named (and styled at birth) Her Royal Highness Anna Marie Rynieyn was the daughter of an elf princess and a vampire. The product of an illicit love-affair between the leaders of two warring kingdoms (Lanrette and Lockheed) who were NOT married, little Anna had it relatively good for the first few years of her life. Then politics got in the way and it made living in Lanrette an impossibility. So Anna came to Rhy'Din at fourteen years of age with a half-brother named Tarathiele Rynieyn.
No one alive now will remember Tarathiele. He used to be in a guild named White Dragon's Vengeance which was an old, oh-so-old guild run back in what Tara refers to as the "First Era of Rhy'Din" by two very nice folks, a married couple named Imari and Rayfe. They took Anna in along with her brother but Anna was not allowed to join their guild like her brother because she was too young. So she spent her days stealing food from the Red Dragon Inn, befriending a bartender there named Hunter and annoying all the guild members of WDV in their guild hall called Ironguard Hall.
When Tarathiele died in a long forgotten war that no one alive now would remember as well, Anna took on the first two syllables of his name: Tara, to honor him. And it's been that way ever since.
The part of me that is still Tara and has been cordoned off, so to speak, from the rest of me that is the Whore of Babylon struggles with the fact that Tara has lost many things and people over the years she has cared deeply for. I struggle with it because I cannot understand how any one nobody could be so loved by so many. I am forced to watch those who do care for her, interact with her, and deal with them on a level I am not equipped mentally to handle.
In Hell while I enjoy a position of power along with other "nobles" so to speak, I'm not the one that calls the shots. None of us are. Not even the big guy down in the frozen lake. God calls the shots here. When one of us dies, we that are left rarely register it. Life, as they say goes on. But here in Rhy'Din, a place so steeped in history (and lots of mystery) people, the collective of nobodies, matter to the rest I've noticed.
Some of them would die for others too. Which REALLY confuses me because I would not do the same for them.
Tara would though.
It's really strange to me that she could be the way she was (that I have had absolutely NO hand in guiding, by the way) prior to my coming on board as half her personality now and people still care for her.
Yet they do NOT care for Anubis, who is just as monstrous as she is.
Last night I had the opportunity to observe Hope and Claire defend a boy named Rone, whom Tara referred to as "Bart", against me, when I spoke up and said I'd like to play football with his head and torso after I dissected his arms and legs. At no point did either of them harshly admonish me.
Meanwhile, Rone? Bart? Whatever the little idiot is called is a KID!
That's right! A CHILD!
Who does that? If anyone made the same threat towards my kid, I wouldn't hesitate to crawl down their throat!
But it just rarely happens with this chick named Tara. Granted, none of the people Tara and I encounter truly understand that they are dealing with TWO of us in one body. At least as far as I have observed. I've even TOLD them this and they still ignore it and let her and I get away with.....well......anything really.
Sometimes I think they think I am joking when I say there are TWO of us inside here.
I've even considered wearing a sign to warn them so they'd catch on. Something like "ACTIVE POSSESSION HERE! APPROACH AT YOUR OWN RISK!" but somehow I think if I did that these insufferable meat puppets that like Tara would think this is funny.
Take Cane, Sal and that ridiculous girl Sabine who is their third wheel and resident hanger-on that I have taken to calling "Femuppet." You know how my "battle" with them played out?
Oh let me tell you this insanity.
Sal finds out Tara slept with Sandy and has a conniption fit. Seriously? THIS is what Sal chooses to get his panties in a bunch over?! He has sex with everything that isn't nailed down and that's OK but one fling with Sandy and he's OFFENDED?!
Tara, not wanting to let go of Sal who she cares about (I DO NOT KNOW WHY, HE IS DUMB), tries to get back into his good graces. Somehow Cane gets involved and Sabine, who did a lot of squeaking the whole time why I do NOT know, and while there are stern words exchanged, I begin to get the feeling that no blood is going to be spilled so I speak up.
I have to put an end to this! Someone does!
Because sometimes with Tara I just can't let her handle certain matters. She's absurd. So I speak up and pretty much tell them I am going to set them all on fire and eradicate them and WHAT DO THEY DO?!
They say it's okay!
Cane makes a deal with me (look, I don't care who you are you do NOT readily make deals with demons, okay? It's just NOT a good idea) that I am allowed to set him on fire every Thursday and Saturday provided I leave the stupid Femuppet who is in his "Friend Zone" and Sal, alone.
I was so shocked that this was what they were willing to accept that I said yes.
I'm embarrassed to admit I said yes, but I did.
So now every damn Thursday and Saturday I have to stop what I am doing to go set that Toad (that's what I call Cane) on FIRE because him and his two buddies (whom I refer to as The Three Amigos) can live a happy life otherwise.
What is WRONG with these people?!
And what's so damn happy about it?! Sabine is drooling over Cane but can't have him because Sal's got his hooks in him and he's NEVER going to let him go! Why is this girl wasting her life and accepting this?!
I have a half a mind to possess her for a day and teach those two idiots she hangs around with a lesson in how to treat a woman properly! And then when I'm finished with them I'd find her a REAL boyfriend she could be with that would appreciate and love her!
Ugh.
I'm getting a headache now.
Even Anubis ignores it. He noticed me ONCE. I'll give him that. Early on after I took over Tara, he confronted me in the Red Dragon Inn and demanded I vacate her soul. Was pretty adamant about it too and was cursing at me in Aramaic as I recall. Anubis does not speak Aramaic but I think he did that night to show me he KNEW I did. And he made threats, none of which I thought were idle but he never followed through!!!!
I can understand that with him, at least, maybe he thinks if he harms me he'll harm Tara too. I didn't end up in here by accident. She CHOSE this. But he didn't! And I don't know why because I can't stand her but she does not feel the same way about me.
She LIKES me.
I hear her thoughts. She feels I am tragic and that I need affection when I would never give her the same if our places were reversed. And sometimes they are!
When we're in Hell she's fascinated by it all and feels very badly for the damned. She goes out of her way to make their suffering a little easier even though I have told her that her efforts are futile. That Hell repeats and it will be the same way the next day and the day after that. She feels that if she made a difference for ONE day, that is better than nothing.
It's getting to the point now where she is just so damn frustrating that I want to give her soul back to her and just be done with this whole infuriating place called Rhy'Din.
I want to go back to Hell, live the life I made for MYSELF there and just forget I even came here.
But I can't.
That's right, I am trapped.
Inside this loon.
Forced to be surrounded by these troglodytes she calls friends and family.
I have studied every text, talked to every demon and apparently this particular possession is, permanent.
Even if Tara were to say she's had enough and wanted to get rid of me, she can't.
There's no backsies.
So we're both screwed.
Tonight the meat puppetry convenes for their weekly "Fight Night" which is just as ludicrous as it sounds because they dance around in circles and no one ever gets maimed or altered PERMANENTLY because of those "ward" things and I've decided I'm going to put an end to this madness.
Tonight is the night the meat puppets finally begin to understand that while Tara is a part of ME, she's only half and I am the one that's in charge at least up here.
Tonight I am going to make them wish they never met me or Tara.
Tonight I change the tide.
I'm bringing out the big guns.
And I'm going to leave none alive.
Dear Forever,
OH MY GOD SIMON!
OHMYGODSIMON!
GUESS WHO I MET LAST NIGHT?!
K H E L D A R!
I KNOW RIGHT!
I don't know who is more happy about it! Him or ME! Aaaaaaaaaaaagh! It's mental!
Now, before I tell you more, I need to clarify one little thing here. You know how I'm always talking about meat puppets? Yeah. Kheldar is NOT a meat puppet.
He is what is referred to as a Rutabagan, a highly advanced and friendly race of creatures (that look strangely like humans, weird) from the planet Rutabaga!
AND..........AND!!!
HE IS GOD SIMON'S RIGHT HAND SERVANT! That's even higher up than I am as his High Priestess! I'm so excited!
So let me tell you how we met. Oh wow. It was so magical! I can barely contain my excitement here!
I had gone to the costume store earlier in the day to pick up a Maid Marion costume to amuse Anubis. Because the last time I listened to that stupid Arch Witch Rena and dressed up like a frigid Victorian-era school marm thinking that kind of dress would be more to his liking he was definitely amused and called it a costume. Which he then proceeded to rip off my body later that same evening and made me promise never to wear such an atrocious thing again.
But of course I had no intention on keeping that promise and he knew that I didn't because I'm a brat but he loves me anyway.
So it's like a game now between us.
I dress up.
Then he delights in undressing me.
I always lose but I don't mind so much because it's SO MUCH FUN for him to win!
The problem is I was running out of period clothing to wear which meant we both would be losing if I didn't come up with an alternative and fast. I mean, I've pretty much covered EVERY era so there's little left for him to see me dressed as, yanno?
How many times can you be a Flapper, right? Yeah. I know. Booooooooring.
So that's when I got the idea to dress up as characters from my favorite stories!
Even Anubis couldn't find fault with Robin Hood. He's got a bow and arrow, he steals from people and kills the bad guys. And he gets the hot virgin chick. All things my sweetheart can relate to with the exception being I haven't been a virgin in a long time, if ever (I'll have to check on that and get back to you) I've never seen him with a bow and arrow and I don't think either of us would consider what he does "stealing" but more like ALLEVIATING certain idiots of certain burdens?
I don't know but stealing is a really strong term I am not comfortable with.
The point is, I thought it might spice up our love life a little more and WHILE I was there, I figured I might as well pick Gren up some horns so he doesn't feel so bad that he has none now that we've learned we are brother and sister and he is a demon, albeit a Hornless One, as I've taken to calling him.
So I get to the costume shop and there's this guy behind the counter dressed as a baby. He looked ridiculous but he says that customers seem to spend more money when they see him dressed that way and it's helped him stay in the green. We spent some time going over my books (in particular all the RED I'm in because Rena stole my money, that horrible witch!) and he's given me some pointers I really think are going to help me recover financially this year.
He also had a FABULOUS Maid Marion costume that I explained I would have to purchase outright since given Anubis' track record, it was highly unlikely he would get it back in one piece but maybe a few shreds. He agreed to let me buy it and then we talked about stupid people before I had to go to the Outback to see my kid brother Grenerith The Reluctant.
Yeah. Another nickname. I can't help it. I'd challenge anyone that has never met Gren to NOT want to nickname him, he's so nameable! He's quite a character himself!
But because my youngest sibling has a real issue with the way I dress, talk and behave, I figured it might be best to SLOWLY introduce him to the fact that I would be, once again, spending some quality time with him. And THEN after he got used the idea of me sticking around for a while, give him the fake horns because I knew if I gave it to him right away he'd have a stroke.
The way I accomplished this was rather simple.
While Gren was sitting down to enjoy a tall glass of that Broot stuff he drinks so often I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't just put it in an IV and inject it directly into his bloodstream THAT way..., I would GRADUALLY ascend from behind the bar and greet him. Except when I did that he spit his drink out and I was so taken with the sight of my hornless baby brother that I got stage fright and disappeared!
Hey. It happens, alright?
Just because I'm amazing, beautiful and super-powerful doesn't mean I don't get shy sometimes. I do! I get overwhelmed just like anyone else and this was one of those times.
So Gren's looking every place for me and eventually I decide to just humor the kid and re-appear but this time, through the doors. He says that he would prefer I act normal and it might go a long way toward improving our relationship. And since I want this whole brother-sister thing we got going on to work, I am MORE than willing to pull my weight so I did.
Unfortunately, because I am a demon and NOT human like he expects me to be, I am VERY sensitive to certain types of people. He would be one of those types. So as I'm walking INTO the Outback this feeling comes over me and I ran to him as fast as my legs would carry me! I don't know, maybe I panicked thinking he might disappear so I freaked out. Who knows. It's almost Spring so you KNOW I'm going to be seasonal again and acting crazy, maybe this was a preview to what's to come?
Gren starts screaming and covering his face like he always does and I start drumming on his head with my hands to really vent all those pent-up feelings I carry with me all the time.
That and I like using his head as a drum.
The fact that he is hornless makes this whole process SO MUCH EASIER than it would be if he had horns because my little hands would likely get cut. I try to see the benefits instead of focusing on and complaining about all the negatives.
His head being devoid of sharp objects pointing out of them would count as a benefit for sure.
So we're talking and I'm telling him how my date night with Anpu went when all of a sudden, from across the way, comes a new voice I had NEVER heard before, telling me I should take home some rutabagas to go with the paninis I was going to make.
Long story but Anubis wouldn't let me get a panini maker because he thinks I'll get hurt using it and my hands aren't meant for manual labor.
Well, hearing this I naturally turned to look at the speaker and I STARED at him, because I had never seen anyone like him before! And damn was he HUGE!
So Gren tells me his name is Kheldar and that he is God Simon's right hand man and that did it. It really did. I heard "God Simon" and "Kheldar" and before I know it I'm running over to him to figure out what he is, who he is and why he seemed SO different from everyone else.
Now, of course, knowing what I do, the fact that he offered up his OWN PEOPLE as sacrificial lambs to be cut up and mixed in with whatever else I put in a panini for Gren, really impressed me.
That he would do that for Gren is just unbelievable to me!
So I introduced myself to Kheldar, informed him we are now friends and gave him a hastily-written scroll with instructions on how to reach and summon me in the future should he need me and then I let him get back to work.
While I only really know a few pieces of information about him right now, I plan to get interrogate him fully.
I don't know how or why he is different, just that he is. What I really want to know is where have the meat puppets been hiding him all this time because I can deal with him! He's VERY nice! He said it was funny, watching Gren and I. If all of them were like him I'd have very little to complain about!
So I'll write more about him later once I have the full scoop.
Right now I have to rush to my drunken boxing class. I can't really get drunk (except with great difficulty) but I take it because they allow me to beat the hell out of the meat puppets with my fists and that, I've decided is my new hobby.
I am a little confused about something though. The teacher (his name is Rick) he says that the idea is to imitate the mannerisms and movements of monkeys and according to him I'm not really grasping the whole concept (he says I move more like a snake) so he's asked me to read up on the subject and apply myself or he's going to have to move me to another kind of class.
He better not.
I'll bust that bastard's skull right open if he thinks he's going to move me!
But I hate reading so I'm just going to go back to the zoo and have Titus and his harem of girlie gorillas show me what to do.
Plus I could do with another funnel cake.
It's been like FOUR WHOLE WEEKS since I had one last.
I hope they didn't run out. I'll just die if that's the case! TWICE!
P.S.
I met Kheldar and you didn't! Ha Ha Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
OH MY GOD SIMON!
OHMYGODSIMON!
GUESS WHO I MET LAST NIGHT?!
K H E L D A R!
I KNOW RIGHT!
I don't know who is more happy about it! Him or ME! Aaaaaaaaaaaagh! It's mental!
Now, before I tell you more, I need to clarify one little thing here. You know how I'm always talking about meat puppets? Yeah. Kheldar is NOT a meat puppet.
He is what is referred to as a Rutabagan, a highly advanced and friendly race of creatures (that look strangely like humans, weird) from the planet Rutabaga!
AND..........AND!!!
HE IS GOD SIMON'S RIGHT HAND SERVANT! That's even higher up than I am as his High Priestess! I'm so excited!
So let me tell you how we met. Oh wow. It was so magical! I can barely contain my excitement here!
I had gone to the costume store earlier in the day to pick up a Maid Marion costume to amuse Anubis. Because the last time I listened to that stupid Arch Witch Rena and dressed up like a frigid Victorian-era school marm thinking that kind of dress would be more to his liking he was definitely amused and called it a costume. Which he then proceeded to rip off my body later that same evening and made me promise never to wear such an atrocious thing again.
But of course I had no intention on keeping that promise and he knew that I didn't because I'm a brat but he loves me anyway.
So it's like a game now between us.
I dress up.
Then he delights in undressing me.
I always lose but I don't mind so much because it's SO MUCH FUN for him to win!
The problem is I was running out of period clothing to wear which meant we both would be losing if I didn't come up with an alternative and fast. I mean, I've pretty much covered EVERY era so there's little left for him to see me dressed as, yanno?
How many times can you be a Flapper, right? Yeah. I know. Booooooooring.
So that's when I got the idea to dress up as characters from my favorite stories!
Even Anubis couldn't find fault with Robin Hood. He's got a bow and arrow, he steals from people and kills the bad guys. And he gets the hot virgin chick. All things my sweetheart can relate to with the exception being I haven't been a virgin in a long time, if ever (I'll have to check on that and get back to you) I've never seen him with a bow and arrow and I don't think either of us would consider what he does "stealing" but more like ALLEVIATING certain idiots of certain burdens?
I don't know but stealing is a really strong term I am not comfortable with.
The point is, I thought it might spice up our love life a little more and WHILE I was there, I figured I might as well pick Gren up some horns so he doesn't feel so bad that he has none now that we've learned we are brother and sister and he is a demon, albeit a Hornless One, as I've taken to calling him.
So I get to the costume shop and there's this guy behind the counter dressed as a baby. He looked ridiculous but he says that customers seem to spend more money when they see him dressed that way and it's helped him stay in the green. We spent some time going over my books (in particular all the RED I'm in because Rena stole my money, that horrible witch!) and he's given me some pointers I really think are going to help me recover financially this year.
He also had a FABULOUS Maid Marion costume that I explained I would have to purchase outright since given Anubis' track record, it was highly unlikely he would get it back in one piece but maybe a few shreds. He agreed to let me buy it and then we talked about stupid people before I had to go to the Outback to see my kid brother Grenerith The Reluctant.
Yeah. Another nickname. I can't help it. I'd challenge anyone that has never met Gren to NOT want to nickname him, he's so nameable! He's quite a character himself!
But because my youngest sibling has a real issue with the way I dress, talk and behave, I figured it might be best to SLOWLY introduce him to the fact that I would be, once again, spending some quality time with him. And THEN after he got used the idea of me sticking around for a while, give him the fake horns because I knew if I gave it to him right away he'd have a stroke.
The way I accomplished this was rather simple.
While Gren was sitting down to enjoy a tall glass of that Broot stuff he drinks so often I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't just put it in an IV and inject it directly into his bloodstream THAT way..., I would GRADUALLY ascend from behind the bar and greet him. Except when I did that he spit his drink out and I was so taken with the sight of my hornless baby brother that I got stage fright and disappeared!
Hey. It happens, alright?
Just because I'm amazing, beautiful and super-powerful doesn't mean I don't get shy sometimes. I do! I get overwhelmed just like anyone else and this was one of those times.
So Gren's looking every place for me and eventually I decide to just humor the kid and re-appear but this time, through the doors. He says that he would prefer I act normal and it might go a long way toward improving our relationship. And since I want this whole brother-sister thing we got going on to work, I am MORE than willing to pull my weight so I did.
Unfortunately, because I am a demon and NOT human like he expects me to be, I am VERY sensitive to certain types of people. He would be one of those types. So as I'm walking INTO the Outback this feeling comes over me and I ran to him as fast as my legs would carry me! I don't know, maybe I panicked thinking he might disappear so I freaked out. Who knows. It's almost Spring so you KNOW I'm going to be seasonal again and acting crazy, maybe this was a preview to what's to come?
Gren starts screaming and covering his face like he always does and I start drumming on his head with my hands to really vent all those pent-up feelings I carry with me all the time.
That and I like using his head as a drum.
The fact that he is hornless makes this whole process SO MUCH EASIER than it would be if he had horns because my little hands would likely get cut. I try to see the benefits instead of focusing on and complaining about all the negatives.
His head being devoid of sharp objects pointing out of them would count as a benefit for sure.
So we're talking and I'm telling him how my date night with Anpu went when all of a sudden, from across the way, comes a new voice I had NEVER heard before, telling me I should take home some rutabagas to go with the paninis I was going to make.
Long story but Anubis wouldn't let me get a panini maker because he thinks I'll get hurt using it and my hands aren't meant for manual labor.
Well, hearing this I naturally turned to look at the speaker and I STARED at him, because I had never seen anyone like him before! And damn was he HUGE!
So Gren tells me his name is Kheldar and that he is God Simon's right hand man and that did it. It really did. I heard "God Simon" and "Kheldar" and before I know it I'm running over to him to figure out what he is, who he is and why he seemed SO different from everyone else.
Now, of course, knowing what I do, the fact that he offered up his OWN PEOPLE as sacrificial lambs to be cut up and mixed in with whatever else I put in a panini for Gren, really impressed me.
That he would do that for Gren is just unbelievable to me!
So I introduced myself to Kheldar, informed him we are now friends and gave him a hastily-written scroll with instructions on how to reach and summon me in the future should he need me and then I let him get back to work.
While I only really know a few pieces of information about him right now, I plan to get interrogate him fully.
I don't know how or why he is different, just that he is. What I really want to know is where have the meat puppets been hiding him all this time because I can deal with him! He's VERY nice! He said it was funny, watching Gren and I. If all of them were like him I'd have very little to complain about!
So I'll write more about him later once I have the full scoop.
Right now I have to rush to my drunken boxing class. I can't really get drunk (except with great difficulty) but I take it because they allow me to beat the hell out of the meat puppets with my fists and that, I've decided is my new hobby.
I am a little confused about something though. The teacher (his name is Rick) he says that the idea is to imitate the mannerisms and movements of monkeys and according to him I'm not really grasping the whole concept (he says I move more like a snake) so he's asked me to read up on the subject and apply myself or he's going to have to move me to another kind of class.
He better not.
I'll bust that bastard's skull right open if he thinks he's going to move me!
But I hate reading so I'm just going to go back to the zoo and have Titus and his harem of girlie gorillas show me what to do.
Plus I could do with another funnel cake.
It's been like FOUR WHOLE WEEKS since I had one last.
I hope they didn't run out. I'll just die if that's the case! TWICE!
P.S.
I met Kheldar and you didn't! Ha Ha Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Dear Forever,
This is Dr. Chester Northcott. My new (and former) gynecolomogist and obstructician.
Jewelsie's therapist whom I've been having a little fling with on the side here and there says that he can no longer in good faith, conscience, etcetera give me advice because of obvious conflicts of interest. I didn't know what he meant by that and asked him and he said (a) that Jewelsie is his patient and my best friend and (b) that he can lose his medical license if it's found out he slept with me another (sometimes) patient, even though I do not pay him but the other way around.
I don't know. He says he gets it. I still don't. So he's referred me to Chesty in the interim until he can figure out a way for us to continue seeing one another and also practice shrinking people's heads.
Because he cannot put a timeline on how long it will take him to resolve this dilemma he's said not to call on him, he'll call me.
I didn't argue with him even though Jewelsie's head seems to be the same shape and weight it was since I've met her and as a result I do not think he can claim he's doing a good job here because he's decent in bed, pays well, on time and also buys me significant quantities of gyros that I love.
I did ask him why I needed a gynecolomogist and he said since the majority of my problems seem to stem around the fact that I cannot seem to get pregnant no matter how many times I sneak-attack Anubis when he's least expecting it and tie him to our bed with heavy chains, Chesty's field of study is more in line with what I need from a doctor. That and my head is small and cannot be shrunk any more than it is.
Good to know I suppose.
I've never really thought about the size of my head but apparently it's perfect so that's good.
Now I just have to take care of the parts of me that are broke.
So I went to see Chesty.
His office is situated between a nail salon and a laundromat so that when you walk inside you are immediately treated to a variety of smells that cannot be explained but rather need to be smelled by a person to truly understand just how truly awful they are when they collide such as they are doing in that place.
I will say that by the time Chesty called me into the exam room, my eyes were watering something fierce and my nose was running.
Here's what we discussed.
"Hullo," I said, blinking rapidly as a fresh wave of tears came over me and I started to sneeze all over the white paper covering the table he was asking me to climb on.
Chesty asked me to step aside so he could change it as it wasn't sanitary or something and then said, "Do you have a cold, Miss Rynieyn?"
"No, I cannot get colds but apparently I'm allergic to yer aromas," I said and sneezed again.
"Excuse me?" he said, blinking himself now.
"Good God Simon, open a window!" I cried as I furiously rubbed at my itching eyes.
He did his best to calm me down, got me a few tissues and explained that the room did not have any windows because it needed to be private.
I have no idea why. It's just a doctor's office, for crying out loud, it's not like it was Clamtrude's secret government underground lab!
Then we got down to business so to speak.
I leaped up onto the table and crouched down. He took a step back and tilted his head. "What are you doing?"
"Waiting for you to examine me," I said and started to scratch at the white paper beneath my bare feet. What was this stuff? It didn't feel like any paper I had ever written on.
I should say that as I had gone to the zoo prior to the doctor's to see Titus and his harem and my drunken boxing teacher Rick had asked me to act more like a monkey, I am sure that I was confusing Chesty with my movements. But I had to stay in character here because Rick said it was either I truly learn how to move properly or I was ousted.
I couldn't take the chance of reverting back to my old serpentine movements or whatever that crazy teacher accused me of.
I needed to be a drunken boxer!
"That's not quite the position you need to be in, Miss Rynieyn," Chesty said softly but I could tell from the look on his face he was concerned. "Why don't you sit down and we'll discuss what seems to be ailing you?"
"You mean besides the fact that you have poor air filtration an' as a result are slowly choking the hell out of yer patients with whatever the hell is going on in the air around here?" I asked with a frantic gesture above my head and sat on the paper with a smirk.
Oh.
Right.
I left out a tiny detail here which doesn't really matter so much to me because it's my preferred state (and therefore should be just generally understood this is how I would PREFER to be dressed all the time) but Lorinda, she's my creative writing instructor? She says that when I write a story I need to provide AS MUCH detail as I can so that I can DRAW the reader in to my experience and make it so that they FEEL they were there even though they weren't because they're reading it after the fact!!!
Good God Simon that makes no damn sense. Damn you Lorinda, you weirdo.
So here goes.
Drawing you in now.
Get ready.
I was naked.
Chesty's nurse had, prior to Chesty himself strutting in the room, come in and handed me a gown to wear but I told her that it went against my religion because I read someplace that if you say that, other people have to respect you and not force you to do things you don't want to do.
I don't know why but the nurse's eyes seemed to widen when I said that and she didn't press the issue.
Which was good for her because the table Chesty later asked me to lay down on that I leapt onto?
Has these metal arms that come out of it (I guess so you can hold on?) and if she had tried to force that gown on me, I was going to bash her head against those arms a few times until she became unconscious or just died.
Which I know SOUNDS terrible but keep in mind YOU were not in this place with all the eye-watering stink going on. I was!
I would've been doing her a favor with that!
Trust me!
So I'm naked, Chesty is doing his weird head-tilting thing and I just sigh at him. "Are we gonna get started here because I'm starving!" I said and fell back on the table, bored out of my mind.
"Yes, we can get started but I need to know what the problem is, Miss Rynieyn," Chesty said and slowly approached the table.
I looked down at the floor.
It was tiled.
I didn't see any grooves or imperfections in it that would alter his gait in any way so I concluded that because he was walking strange AND because the table had those metal holder-on thingies attached to them that the office must have been situated near a wormhole that would cause it's structure to change rapidly and perhaps disappear altogether and that Chesty was afraid he'd be sucked in because of that?
Either that or the floor was going to cave in because even it couldn't stand the smell any more. I have no clue.
"I am unable to conceive a child," I started, sitting up again and taking Chesty's hand into my own with a pout. I wanted to draw him in to my experience then too even though he wasn't reading my tale of woe but hearing it directly from me.
Lorinda thinks she knows everything but if there's anything I know best it's how to tell a story. Chesty seemed intrigued.
He smiled kindly at me and patted me on the shoulder. "I can help you with that," he said. "Let's take a look."
I blinked, not because my eyes were watering (the searing pain in my irises had lessened by many degrees at this point--I guess I was adapting to the torture chamber I was in) but because I didn't like the way Chesty was getting closer to me.
I started to think he might want to get romantic and while I'm not really one to turn down a new client (especially since Rena has been doubling up her game and telling all the men that life is so much better in The Other Town-my name for anyplace but here in Rhy'Din), I wasn't there on official business but to find out why Anubis and I couldn't have a kid!
So I slapped him.
"What did you do that for, Miss Rynieyn!" he cried and stepped back, at a distance I was more comfy with.
"I'm not here for you to get me pregnant but to find out why Anubis an' I cannot get pregnant when WE, him an' I, get," I paused, wildly gesturing as I tried to think of a good word to use for our sexual escapades, "enamored with one another!"
"I am a professional!" Chesty said with a glare and was rubbing his cheek.
"Well so am I but I'm not here for that! Yer cute an' all but let's focus on the goal! Do not misunderstand my purpose for being here!" I growled and got back up into a crouch. Now I was on the defensive and pissed to the gills.
Chesty backed up even more as I started to work on the metal holder on the table. I was really giving it a good twist, my eyes on fire.
"Why the hell are you here?!" he screamed as I got the metal arm free and held it like I would a club.
"There's something wrong with my pelvis 'gain!" I screamed back and waved the arm around. "It's because of that bastard Clamtrude an' his hellish syringes!"
"What?!"
"They took Anpu an' did things to him an' when I went to rescue him my pelvis was paralyzed after they shot me up with their go-go juice!" I explained, waving the metal arm and screaming. "They CHANGED us those bastards!"
"Wait, what?!"
"I killed forty eight of em 'fore I even knew what day it was 'gain an' to get up back to the surface, I had to expunge two dozen more! I barely made it out of there alive, okay! Anpu STILL won't talk about his time in captivity! He's traumatized, you insensitive jackanape! So maybe cut us some slack here an' realize our pelvises jus' aren't what they USED to be! We have been MODIFIED, I tell you!"
At this point Chesty's nurse, either curious about all the screaming and wanting to know what was going on or maybe she was just ambulating around in an effort not to pass out from all the fumes, came in and saw me crouched on the table and brandishing the metal arm while Chesty, back up against the corner was holding up a metal tray as a shield.
"What is going on in here?!" she exclaimed and came over to my side of the tiny room. She put her arms around me and I got the feeling she was on my side of this entire convoluted yet deeply painful for me at least emotional-wise, equation.
"He's a monster!" I said and pointed the arm at Chesty.
She gave him SUCH a nasty look even I was taken aback by it.
"Lauren!" he cried and gestured at me with the metal tray, "she's insane! You cannot possibly believe I would do anything...untoward!"
"Doctor...Northcott," she said with a huff, "I will ask you now to leave so I can calm her down and you can be sure I will be speaking to Doctors Singh and Goldberg about this."
Chesty dropped the tray in I guess surprise and shuffled out of the room but not before he tossed me a nasty look himself.
I stuck my tongue out at him and then turned into the warm, compassionate embrace of Nurse Lauren who held me to her breast like I was her own child.
"I jus' want a baby," I cried into her neck.
"I know, dear, I know, you poor thing," she said and rubbed my back gently.
The authorities arrived soon after as I was now examining a cylinder filled with a strange liquid and other metallic objects trapped inside. I began to get the suspicion that Chesty was some sort of miner like my cousin Fio's boyfriend Steve Armstrong is because he seemed to have a lot of equipment that, upon visual inspection, at least according to MY experience and knowledge, looked like they belonged to someone who dug out things for a living.
It definitely didn't look like any doctor's office I had ever been in.
And, yeah, maybe I should have fully vetted him but I only went there upon Jewelsie's therapist's suggestion so you know I'm going to be having a frank conversation with HIM about all this.
I had clothes back on too, which kinda sucked, but the cops insisted.
Chesty was taken away in handcuffs, screaming about my go-go juiced up pelvis or how he didn't touch it once. Who knows if he even knew what he was saying in his maniacal state, you know?
His trial is in a couple of weeks.
I'll have to switch some appointments around (like my field trip to the museum downtown that promises to have an Ancient Egyptian theme--I'm just going to basically shop for some stuff to bring back home to cheer up Anpu--most of it belongs to him anyway, why do other people have it?) but I think I can fit it in my tight schedule.
I'll have to testify about my experience with Dr. Chesty, I am told.
So expect a lot more stories in a couple of weeks because I am SURE I'll have lots more to DRAW YOU IN with.
Okay I gotta go.
Rick's saying that my tablet usage is distracting the other students who are climbing up trees in this forest he's got us training in.
I hope he doesn't want us to go foraging for bananas because they don't grow here.
That little factoid will be lost on him if I know this idiot and I do.
What a weirdo.
This is Dr. Chester Northcott. My new (and former) gynecolomogist and obstructician.
Jewelsie's therapist whom I've been having a little fling with on the side here and there says that he can no longer in good faith, conscience, etcetera give me advice because of obvious conflicts of interest. I didn't know what he meant by that and asked him and he said (a) that Jewelsie is his patient and my best friend and (b) that he can lose his medical license if it's found out he slept with me another (sometimes) patient, even though I do not pay him but the other way around.
I don't know. He says he gets it. I still don't. So he's referred me to Chesty in the interim until he can figure out a way for us to continue seeing one another and also practice shrinking people's heads.
Because he cannot put a timeline on how long it will take him to resolve this dilemma he's said not to call on him, he'll call me.
I didn't argue with him even though Jewelsie's head seems to be the same shape and weight it was since I've met her and as a result I do not think he can claim he's doing a good job here because he's decent in bed, pays well, on time and also buys me significant quantities of gyros that I love.
I did ask him why I needed a gynecolomogist and he said since the majority of my problems seem to stem around the fact that I cannot seem to get pregnant no matter how many times I sneak-attack Anubis when he's least expecting it and tie him to our bed with heavy chains, Chesty's field of study is more in line with what I need from a doctor. That and my head is small and cannot be shrunk any more than it is.
Good to know I suppose.
I've never really thought about the size of my head but apparently it's perfect so that's good.
Now I just have to take care of the parts of me that are broke.
So I went to see Chesty.
His office is situated between a nail salon and a laundromat so that when you walk inside you are immediately treated to a variety of smells that cannot be explained but rather need to be smelled by a person to truly understand just how truly awful they are when they collide such as they are doing in that place.
I will say that by the time Chesty called me into the exam room, my eyes were watering something fierce and my nose was running.
Here's what we discussed.
"Hullo," I said, blinking rapidly as a fresh wave of tears came over me and I started to sneeze all over the white paper covering the table he was asking me to climb on.
Chesty asked me to step aside so he could change it as it wasn't sanitary or something and then said, "Do you have a cold, Miss Rynieyn?"
"No, I cannot get colds but apparently I'm allergic to yer aromas," I said and sneezed again.
"Excuse me?" he said, blinking himself now.
"Good God Simon, open a window!" I cried as I furiously rubbed at my itching eyes.
He did his best to calm me down, got me a few tissues and explained that the room did not have any windows because it needed to be private.
I have no idea why. It's just a doctor's office, for crying out loud, it's not like it was Clamtrude's secret government underground lab!
Then we got down to business so to speak.
I leaped up onto the table and crouched down. He took a step back and tilted his head. "What are you doing?"
"Waiting for you to examine me," I said and started to scratch at the white paper beneath my bare feet. What was this stuff? It didn't feel like any paper I had ever written on.
I should say that as I had gone to the zoo prior to the doctor's to see Titus and his harem and my drunken boxing teacher Rick had asked me to act more like a monkey, I am sure that I was confusing Chesty with my movements. But I had to stay in character here because Rick said it was either I truly learn how to move properly or I was ousted.
I couldn't take the chance of reverting back to my old serpentine movements or whatever that crazy teacher accused me of.
I needed to be a drunken boxer!
"That's not quite the position you need to be in, Miss Rynieyn," Chesty said softly but I could tell from the look on his face he was concerned. "Why don't you sit down and we'll discuss what seems to be ailing you?"
"You mean besides the fact that you have poor air filtration an' as a result are slowly choking the hell out of yer patients with whatever the hell is going on in the air around here?" I asked with a frantic gesture above my head and sat on the paper with a smirk.
Oh.
Right.
I left out a tiny detail here which doesn't really matter so much to me because it's my preferred state (and therefore should be just generally understood this is how I would PREFER to be dressed all the time) but Lorinda, she's my creative writing instructor? She says that when I write a story I need to provide AS MUCH detail as I can so that I can DRAW the reader in to my experience and make it so that they FEEL they were there even though they weren't because they're reading it after the fact!!!
Good God Simon that makes no damn sense. Damn you Lorinda, you weirdo.
So here goes.
Drawing you in now.
Get ready.
I was naked.
Chesty's nurse had, prior to Chesty himself strutting in the room, come in and handed me a gown to wear but I told her that it went against my religion because I read someplace that if you say that, other people have to respect you and not force you to do things you don't want to do.
I don't know why but the nurse's eyes seemed to widen when I said that and she didn't press the issue.
Which was good for her because the table Chesty later asked me to lay down on that I leapt onto?
Has these metal arms that come out of it (I guess so you can hold on?) and if she had tried to force that gown on me, I was going to bash her head against those arms a few times until she became unconscious or just died.
Which I know SOUNDS terrible but keep in mind YOU were not in this place with all the eye-watering stink going on. I was!
I would've been doing her a favor with that!
Trust me!
So I'm naked, Chesty is doing his weird head-tilting thing and I just sigh at him. "Are we gonna get started here because I'm starving!" I said and fell back on the table, bored out of my mind.
"Yes, we can get started but I need to know what the problem is, Miss Rynieyn," Chesty said and slowly approached the table.
I looked down at the floor.
It was tiled.
I didn't see any grooves or imperfections in it that would alter his gait in any way so I concluded that because he was walking strange AND because the table had those metal holder-on thingies attached to them that the office must have been situated near a wormhole that would cause it's structure to change rapidly and perhaps disappear altogether and that Chesty was afraid he'd be sucked in because of that?
Either that or the floor was going to cave in because even it couldn't stand the smell any more. I have no clue.
"I am unable to conceive a child," I started, sitting up again and taking Chesty's hand into my own with a pout. I wanted to draw him in to my experience then too even though he wasn't reading my tale of woe but hearing it directly from me.
Lorinda thinks she knows everything but if there's anything I know best it's how to tell a story. Chesty seemed intrigued.
He smiled kindly at me and patted me on the shoulder. "I can help you with that," he said. "Let's take a look."
I blinked, not because my eyes were watering (the searing pain in my irises had lessened by many degrees at this point--I guess I was adapting to the torture chamber I was in) but because I didn't like the way Chesty was getting closer to me.
I started to think he might want to get romantic and while I'm not really one to turn down a new client (especially since Rena has been doubling up her game and telling all the men that life is so much better in The Other Town-my name for anyplace but here in Rhy'Din), I wasn't there on official business but to find out why Anubis and I couldn't have a kid!
So I slapped him.
"What did you do that for, Miss Rynieyn!" he cried and stepped back, at a distance I was more comfy with.
"I'm not here for you to get me pregnant but to find out why Anubis an' I cannot get pregnant when WE, him an' I, get," I paused, wildly gesturing as I tried to think of a good word to use for our sexual escapades, "enamored with one another!"
"I am a professional!" Chesty said with a glare and was rubbing his cheek.
"Well so am I but I'm not here for that! Yer cute an' all but let's focus on the goal! Do not misunderstand my purpose for being here!" I growled and got back up into a crouch. Now I was on the defensive and pissed to the gills.
Chesty backed up even more as I started to work on the metal holder on the table. I was really giving it a good twist, my eyes on fire.
"Why the hell are you here?!" he screamed as I got the metal arm free and held it like I would a club.
"There's something wrong with my pelvis 'gain!" I screamed back and waved the arm around. "It's because of that bastard Clamtrude an' his hellish syringes!"
"What?!"
"They took Anpu an' did things to him an' when I went to rescue him my pelvis was paralyzed after they shot me up with their go-go juice!" I explained, waving the metal arm and screaming. "They CHANGED us those bastards!"
"Wait, what?!"
"I killed forty eight of em 'fore I even knew what day it was 'gain an' to get up back to the surface, I had to expunge two dozen more! I barely made it out of there alive, okay! Anpu STILL won't talk about his time in captivity! He's traumatized, you insensitive jackanape! So maybe cut us some slack here an' realize our pelvises jus' aren't what they USED to be! We have been MODIFIED, I tell you!"
At this point Chesty's nurse, either curious about all the screaming and wanting to know what was going on or maybe she was just ambulating around in an effort not to pass out from all the fumes, came in and saw me crouched on the table and brandishing the metal arm while Chesty, back up against the corner was holding up a metal tray as a shield.
"What is going on in here?!" she exclaimed and came over to my side of the tiny room. She put her arms around me and I got the feeling she was on my side of this entire convoluted yet deeply painful for me at least emotional-wise, equation.
"He's a monster!" I said and pointed the arm at Chesty.
She gave him SUCH a nasty look even I was taken aback by it.
"Lauren!" he cried and gestured at me with the metal tray, "she's insane! You cannot possibly believe I would do anything...untoward!"
"Doctor...Northcott," she said with a huff, "I will ask you now to leave so I can calm her down and you can be sure I will be speaking to Doctors Singh and Goldberg about this."
Chesty dropped the tray in I guess surprise and shuffled out of the room but not before he tossed me a nasty look himself.
I stuck my tongue out at him and then turned into the warm, compassionate embrace of Nurse Lauren who held me to her breast like I was her own child.
"I jus' want a baby," I cried into her neck.
"I know, dear, I know, you poor thing," she said and rubbed my back gently.
The authorities arrived soon after as I was now examining a cylinder filled with a strange liquid and other metallic objects trapped inside. I began to get the suspicion that Chesty was some sort of miner like my cousin Fio's boyfriend Steve Armstrong is because he seemed to have a lot of equipment that, upon visual inspection, at least according to MY experience and knowledge, looked like they belonged to someone who dug out things for a living.
It definitely didn't look like any doctor's office I had ever been in.
And, yeah, maybe I should have fully vetted him but I only went there upon Jewelsie's therapist's suggestion so you know I'm going to be having a frank conversation with HIM about all this.
I had clothes back on too, which kinda sucked, but the cops insisted.
Chesty was taken away in handcuffs, screaming about my go-go juiced up pelvis or how he didn't touch it once. Who knows if he even knew what he was saying in his maniacal state, you know?
His trial is in a couple of weeks.
I'll have to switch some appointments around (like my field trip to the museum downtown that promises to have an Ancient Egyptian theme--I'm just going to basically shop for some stuff to bring back home to cheer up Anpu--most of it belongs to him anyway, why do other people have it?) but I think I can fit it in my tight schedule.
I'll have to testify about my experience with Dr. Chesty, I am told.
So expect a lot more stories in a couple of weeks because I am SURE I'll have lots more to DRAW YOU IN with.
Okay I gotta go.
Rick's saying that my tablet usage is distracting the other students who are climbing up trees in this forest he's got us training in.
I hope he doesn't want us to go foraging for bananas because they don't grow here.
That little factoid will be lost on him if I know this idiot and I do.
What a weirdo.
Dear Forever,
I am so excited in the synapses! As you know, I had some trouble during Valentine's Day at the museum over not being able to secure a proper present for Anpu because those bastards wouldn't let me take the sarcophagus and to punish them I had to string their stupid curator up like a pinata so I decided that for our anniversary?
I was gonna blow his mind! I was pulling out ALL the stops! I was going to get him a present even if it killed me!
Do you remember the zoo where my gorilla friend Titus lives with his girlie gorilla harem and where I put my wonder llama Fred? Yeah, well, I went back there! And I found the most ADORABLE Mongo-shelled tortoise I ever saw! I actually never saw a Mongo-shelled tortoise in my life but I'm fairly confident that the one I met is the biggest one to ever live.
And I got to thinking..."Why shouldn't Anpu have a tortoise like this? He works hard to provide for me and his children. He never asks for anything. His crazy father never let him have any pets as a child. This would be the PERFECT starter pet for my Jackal!"
So I opened the latch on the gate to his enclosure and after reassuring him for a few minutes that I was not out to eat him, we made a break for the main gate, together.
I don't know why people always say turtles are slow because he outran me! I was so happy to see him running for his freedom that I didn't notice the lunatic zookeeper behind us, giving chase, who was later run over by a cement truck. He chased us all the way to the highway, screaming about how the Rhy'Dinian Mongo-shelled tortoise was practically extinct, did I know what I was doing, breeding efforts have failed and how I was not trained in the proper upkeep up turtles.
I confess when he got to the part about how all the zookeepers, who are obviously single, sit around and try to coax the remaining Mongo-shelled tortoises to mate by dressing up as them (and these meatpuppets wonder why I want to put them in my woodchipper - Good God Simon!) and acting out how turtle romance should be, I was no longer listening to him.
Because any way you slice that?
That's just nutty.
And, don't get me wrong, I LOVE to dress up in different costumes and conduct little plays for the amusement of my friends but I ain't ever did that.
It's pretty sad that these people who are trusted to care for animals have NO social lives that the best part of their day is turtle porn. Live action, turtle porn I should say.
Or the lack thereof if you can believe the zookeeper and I can't really have you speak with him to check the veracity of that statement because when I saw him last his brain was splattered all over the road.
You should've seen the driver of the cement truck when he jumped out to see what the hell he hit. He was LOSING it! Screaming and crying. I tried to tell him that he did the meat puppet populace a huge favor by hitting him but he was really beside himself with grief.
Why, I don't know! The guy pretended to be a sex-starved turtle for a living!
By the time the cops showed up to write up a report, there was a long line of cars behind the cement truck and everyone was milling around asking what happened.
I tried to sum things up by saying that the zookeeper was the aggressor of the whole situation and had he not been chasing me and Horus (that's the name of the Mongo-shelled tortoise I helped escape from the zoo) into a busy highway, maybe his brains wouldn't be part of the pavement right about now but no one was really interested in hearing MY version of the events.
Except the cute cop that interviewed me.
His name is Mike. He is twenty eight and he likes to shoot pool. I can't imagine aiming a firearm at what is essentially a large bathtub that I've been told is the cause of many drownings each year (don't these meat puppets know how to swim?!) is a fun activity because how frickin hard is it to hit the water with the bullet but he seemed to enjoy telling me about it.
Okay so he's a gun nut.
I've had worse.
He asked for my number and says he's going to call me and teach me all about this hobby of his. He then asked what I liked to do in my spare time.
I simplified things for him too when I said I like to collect puppets.
He said, "You mean like those ventriloquist dolls and such?"
I smiled and said, "Yeah, something like that."
He then asked, "Can you throw your voice like a ventriloquist?"
And being demonic that was really easy to do. I thought his head might pop off his shoulders though at one point when I was speaking in fourteen different voices at once and he was looking all around at where they were coming from.
He said, "That is amazing! You should be at the theater! You'd have a sold out show!"
I said, "Honey, I'm pretty much sold out now but I thank you for the compliment."
I haven't decided what I'm going to do with his soul to be quite honest.
I mean, he's really sweet and all and seems genuinely interested in getting to know me. And while we infernal types usually have a strict no getting personal with the clientele policy, I am at a point in my career now where there's just nowhere for me to go. It's not like I'm going to get a promotion and become Lucifer so really now, what could it hurt to break a rule here and there?
I have to think about this.
Anyway, I took some pictures of Horus after I brought him home and gave him to Anpu for our anniversary.
He seemed...surprised but appreciative. I've never given him a live animal as a present before and like I said he doesn't have much experience with them so I can understand his hesitance.
Tomorrow I'm gonna head on down to the pet shop and see if they have turtle clothing because while I'm ALL about baring it all in public and going commando, my boyfriend has some of his own policies and public nudity is a no-no.
He didn't say but I can imagine his mind is working right at this very minute about how Horus should be covered up and reflect the status of his master in the clothes that he wears.
If they don't have any, I'm going to hire Lesser Goddess Koy to make me some.
I want this pet thing to work out.
This is Horus in his enclosure at the zoo before I freed him. Look at how relieved he is to see me!
This is Horus the morning after I brought him home and he was in the garden doing his morning workout with Daddy.
This is Horus when he encountered a regular turtle in our garden and as he's never seen a smaller turtle, especially a baby before since no Mongo-shelled tortoise ever mated successfully according to that crazy zookeeper, you can understand his confusion. As I didn't want him to feel like a failure like I do over that museum debacle, I brought the little guy into the kitchen and asked Chef to make him into a soup. That's what we're eating for dinner tonight. Yum!
This is Horus being assaulted by the neighbor's daughter. Tammy I think her name is. I had left Horus alone in the garden for a few minutes to go get him more greens to eat and when I came back I snapped this picture thinking I might need it for evidence because I thought she was choking the life out of him. Turns out this was just a harmless hug but for the next eight weeks while her arm is in a cast? I think she'll be re-evaluating whether coming onto our property again in the future to molest our pets and without an invitation is a wise course of action. She's lucky Anpu wasn't home. He would've sold her on the block.
Finally, this was a picture I found on the zookeeper's cellphone that had the caption "Look at him go! Our efforts are FINALLY paying off! And just in time for the grant to renew too!" which I find mildly offensive since it is obvious to me, a first-time viewer, that Horus was simply trying to figure out what the hell the moving rock next to him was doing and NOT as even the zookeeper admitted him trying to get romantic with any she-tortoise. Notice it doesn't have a head? Yeah, makes one wonder what those zookeepers were REALLY up to at that zoo!
Sadistic bastards!
I'll write more soon!
Bye!
I am so excited in the synapses! As you know, I had some trouble during Valentine's Day at the museum over not being able to secure a proper present for Anpu because those bastards wouldn't let me take the sarcophagus and to punish them I had to string their stupid curator up like a pinata so I decided that for our anniversary?
I was gonna blow his mind! I was pulling out ALL the stops! I was going to get him a present even if it killed me!
Do you remember the zoo where my gorilla friend Titus lives with his girlie gorilla harem and where I put my wonder llama Fred? Yeah, well, I went back there! And I found the most ADORABLE Mongo-shelled tortoise I ever saw! I actually never saw a Mongo-shelled tortoise in my life but I'm fairly confident that the one I met is the biggest one to ever live.
And I got to thinking..."Why shouldn't Anpu have a tortoise like this? He works hard to provide for me and his children. He never asks for anything. His crazy father never let him have any pets as a child. This would be the PERFECT starter pet for my Jackal!"
So I opened the latch on the gate to his enclosure and after reassuring him for a few minutes that I was not out to eat him, we made a break for the main gate, together.
I don't know why people always say turtles are slow because he outran me! I was so happy to see him running for his freedom that I didn't notice the lunatic zookeeper behind us, giving chase, who was later run over by a cement truck. He chased us all the way to the highway, screaming about how the Rhy'Dinian Mongo-shelled tortoise was practically extinct, did I know what I was doing, breeding efforts have failed and how I was not trained in the proper upkeep up turtles.
I confess when he got to the part about how all the zookeepers, who are obviously single, sit around and try to coax the remaining Mongo-shelled tortoises to mate by dressing up as them (and these meatpuppets wonder why I want to put them in my woodchipper - Good God Simon!) and acting out how turtle romance should be, I was no longer listening to him.
Because any way you slice that?
That's just nutty.
And, don't get me wrong, I LOVE to dress up in different costumes and conduct little plays for the amusement of my friends but I ain't ever did that.
It's pretty sad that these people who are trusted to care for animals have NO social lives that the best part of their day is turtle porn. Live action, turtle porn I should say.
Or the lack thereof if you can believe the zookeeper and I can't really have you speak with him to check the veracity of that statement because when I saw him last his brain was splattered all over the road.
You should've seen the driver of the cement truck when he jumped out to see what the hell he hit. He was LOSING it! Screaming and crying. I tried to tell him that he did the meat puppet populace a huge favor by hitting him but he was really beside himself with grief.
Why, I don't know! The guy pretended to be a sex-starved turtle for a living!
By the time the cops showed up to write up a report, there was a long line of cars behind the cement truck and everyone was milling around asking what happened.
I tried to sum things up by saying that the zookeeper was the aggressor of the whole situation and had he not been chasing me and Horus (that's the name of the Mongo-shelled tortoise I helped escape from the zoo) into a busy highway, maybe his brains wouldn't be part of the pavement right about now but no one was really interested in hearing MY version of the events.
Except the cute cop that interviewed me.
His name is Mike. He is twenty eight and he likes to shoot pool. I can't imagine aiming a firearm at what is essentially a large bathtub that I've been told is the cause of many drownings each year (don't these meat puppets know how to swim?!) is a fun activity because how frickin hard is it to hit the water with the bullet but he seemed to enjoy telling me about it.
Okay so he's a gun nut.
I've had worse.
He asked for my number and says he's going to call me and teach me all about this hobby of his. He then asked what I liked to do in my spare time.
I simplified things for him too when I said I like to collect puppets.
He said, "You mean like those ventriloquist dolls and such?"
I smiled and said, "Yeah, something like that."
He then asked, "Can you throw your voice like a ventriloquist?"
And being demonic that was really easy to do. I thought his head might pop off his shoulders though at one point when I was speaking in fourteen different voices at once and he was looking all around at where they were coming from.
He said, "That is amazing! You should be at the theater! You'd have a sold out show!"
I said, "Honey, I'm pretty much sold out now but I thank you for the compliment."
I haven't decided what I'm going to do with his soul to be quite honest.
I mean, he's really sweet and all and seems genuinely interested in getting to know me. And while we infernal types usually have a strict no getting personal with the clientele policy, I am at a point in my career now where there's just nowhere for me to go. It's not like I'm going to get a promotion and become Lucifer so really now, what could it hurt to break a rule here and there?
I have to think about this.
Anyway, I took some pictures of Horus after I brought him home and gave him to Anpu for our anniversary.
He seemed...surprised but appreciative. I've never given him a live animal as a present before and like I said he doesn't have much experience with them so I can understand his hesitance.
Tomorrow I'm gonna head on down to the pet shop and see if they have turtle clothing because while I'm ALL about baring it all in public and going commando, my boyfriend has some of his own policies and public nudity is a no-no.
He didn't say but I can imagine his mind is working right at this very minute about how Horus should be covered up and reflect the status of his master in the clothes that he wears.
If they don't have any, I'm going to hire Lesser Goddess Koy to make me some.
I want this pet thing to work out.
This is Horus in his enclosure at the zoo before I freed him. Look at how relieved he is to see me!
This is Horus the morning after I brought him home and he was in the garden doing his morning workout with Daddy.
This is Horus when he encountered a regular turtle in our garden and as he's never seen a smaller turtle, especially a baby before since no Mongo-shelled tortoise ever mated successfully according to that crazy zookeeper, you can understand his confusion. As I didn't want him to feel like a failure like I do over that museum debacle, I brought the little guy into the kitchen and asked Chef to make him into a soup. That's what we're eating for dinner tonight. Yum!
This is Horus being assaulted by the neighbor's daughter. Tammy I think her name is. I had left Horus alone in the garden for a few minutes to go get him more greens to eat and when I came back I snapped this picture thinking I might need it for evidence because I thought she was choking the life out of him. Turns out this was just a harmless hug but for the next eight weeks while her arm is in a cast? I think she'll be re-evaluating whether coming onto our property again in the future to molest our pets and without an invitation is a wise course of action. She's lucky Anpu wasn't home. He would've sold her on the block.
Finally, this was a picture I found on the zookeeper's cellphone that had the caption "Look at him go! Our efforts are FINALLY paying off! And just in time for the grant to renew too!" which I find mildly offensive since it is obvious to me, a first-time viewer, that Horus was simply trying to figure out what the hell the moving rock next to him was doing and NOT as even the zookeeper admitted him trying to get romantic with any she-tortoise. Notice it doesn't have a head? Yeah, makes one wonder what those zookeepers were REALLY up to at that zoo!
Sadistic bastards!
I'll write more soon!
Bye!
Dear Forever,
This will be a short entry because Horus has a playdate with a baby Rhino named Martin, who, believe it or not, lives RIGHT down the street from Anubis and I and I am excited for him! Isn't that convenient?! Martin's owner is an old lady by the name of Reggie, which she tells me is not short for Reginald, as I first suspected, but REGINA.
She made me say it like ten times because I kept saying Reginald.
I said, "Reginald, is baby Martin a good boy because Anpu an' I believe that our children should be surrounded by positive forces an' if he's bad, I'm going to have to put an end to this playdate before it even begins."
To which Reggie-REGINA replied, "My name is Regina, for the last time, Tara. Please stop calling me Reginald. And, yes, he is a good boy. He's only gored someone once with his horn and that was an intruder."
I then said, "Someone tried to rob you? In this neighborhood with the high property values?! I cannot believe it!"
She said, "Yes, but not to worry, it was my ex-husband, who is now dead. You have nothing to fear."
We then got into a short back-and-forth where I told her I didn't really fear anything really (except maybe Anpu when he's angry with me) and then tried unsuccessfully to get her to tell me where he was buried so I could dig him up to scold him for intruding into Reggie's home but she said it was a secret and she didn't think I could keep it.
I told her I was very good at keeping secrets which was why I hardly tell ANYONE that Anubis is the Egyptian God of the Dead, and she said "Point proven."
I said, "But if it makes you feel better I am the Whore of Babylon an' that's like the biggest mystery of all! They even carved the word in my forehead!"
She said, "I rest my case."
I really didn't get what she was talking about and didn't have time to ask because then baby Martin came charging at me and I spent like twenty minutes rolling around on Reggie's lawn with him. Horus got a little jealous.
He started to scream again.
Yeah, about that.
My Mongo-shelled Tortoise screams.
I know it sounds crazy but it's true. He did so the first time the other night when he met this boy at the Arena named Jackson. I guess Jackson didn't play with Horus as he would have liked him to so his response was to let out this sound that I observed from the expressions on the onlookers' faces wasn't very pleasant. Some of them were holding their ears.
I swear these meat puppets are so damn sensitive.
Anytime I do anything that is different from what they expect, they freak, but they can all behave in horrible ways and call me and Anpu names and it's OK.
Hmmph. Hypocritical jerks.
Anyway, the other night marks the SECOND time someone has picked me as their Lady-of-Honor in a match against Anubis who ALSO picks me as his chief lady.
This time it was God Simon.
The last time it was Hope. Or was I her Second? I forget which. I tell you all the crazy rules at the Circular Contraption Games really confuse me.
I just can't keep it all straight in my brainpan. Which is why I try to have Grenny teach me but as he's taken to quickly adopting a fetal position whenever I'm about of late, it's really hard to learn from him.
Who the hell can understand his mumbling underneath his arm-covered face? It's so ridiculous.
But yeah isn't that cool?! GOD SIMON chose ME as his Lady-of-Honor along with his wife Lesser Goddess Koy!
I almost died like ten times! I wish Jewelsie was there with me! She'd totally find that hot! I couldn't react to it, naturally, because Anpu would've had a stroke but inside I was squealing!
God Simon also sniffled a little when I informed him prior to the match that I could not cheer him on because of the obvious conflict of interest.
He said and I QUOTE "You can but you elect not to," and was then moved to tears.
If Anpu and Lesser Goddess Koy weren't there, I might have ran to him and cradled him in my arms.
That poor sweet God Simon.
He's so in love with me and can never act on his feelings.
I feel so bad for him.
Which is why, to take his mind off all these lovey dovey feelings, I have erected a giant Wicker Man outside of the Outback. I saw this movie recently where these meat puppets who lived on an island sacrificed this thirty-five-year-old virgin guy (this was the most shocking part of the whole movie for me, I NEVER saw THAT coming!) in this giant wicker basket shaped like a man and set it on fire.
He screamed and screamed.
I replayed that part several times and laughed.
So I'm gonna find someone to sacrifice in my own Wicker Man for God Simon's amusement.
It's just, I am having a hard time picking ONE of the meat puppets as the lamb.
The Japanese lunatic Aya is on the list as is Bob the idiotic alien squid and DEFINITELY Crispin. He's GOT to go.
But how do I settle on just one of them?
I think I'll draw straws right after Horus' playdate with Martin.
I'll let you know later how it goes! I think it's so important for him to be making friends. He's been running around the mansion all morning after I told him that Martin and Reggie were coming over this afternoon.
You know, I hope I find him, come to think of it.
He's been getting into all SORTS of places lately the more he runs.
I'm starting to think that maybe the zookeepers kept him in a cage for the safety of the visitors rather than trying to keep him locked up.
Grenny was even freaking last week when Horus ran under one of the circular contraptions and found him hiding there.
Which is sad, too, because Grenny is his Uncle and should be able to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of his family members.
I'm gonna have a stern talk with that Ranger when I see him next.
Okay gotta go!
Bye!
This will be a short entry because Horus has a playdate with a baby Rhino named Martin, who, believe it or not, lives RIGHT down the street from Anubis and I and I am excited for him! Isn't that convenient?! Martin's owner is an old lady by the name of Reggie, which she tells me is not short for Reginald, as I first suspected, but REGINA.
She made me say it like ten times because I kept saying Reginald.
I said, "Reginald, is baby Martin a good boy because Anpu an' I believe that our children should be surrounded by positive forces an' if he's bad, I'm going to have to put an end to this playdate before it even begins."
To which Reggie-REGINA replied, "My name is Regina, for the last time, Tara. Please stop calling me Reginald. And, yes, he is a good boy. He's only gored someone once with his horn and that was an intruder."
I then said, "Someone tried to rob you? In this neighborhood with the high property values?! I cannot believe it!"
She said, "Yes, but not to worry, it was my ex-husband, who is now dead. You have nothing to fear."
We then got into a short back-and-forth where I told her I didn't really fear anything really (except maybe Anpu when he's angry with me) and then tried unsuccessfully to get her to tell me where he was buried so I could dig him up to scold him for intruding into Reggie's home but she said it was a secret and she didn't think I could keep it.
I told her I was very good at keeping secrets which was why I hardly tell ANYONE that Anubis is the Egyptian God of the Dead, and she said "Point proven."
I said, "But if it makes you feel better I am the Whore of Babylon an' that's like the biggest mystery of all! They even carved the word in my forehead!"
She said, "I rest my case."
I really didn't get what she was talking about and didn't have time to ask because then baby Martin came charging at me and I spent like twenty minutes rolling around on Reggie's lawn with him. Horus got a little jealous.
He started to scream again.
Yeah, about that.
My Mongo-shelled Tortoise screams.
I know it sounds crazy but it's true. He did so the first time the other night when he met this boy at the Arena named Jackson. I guess Jackson didn't play with Horus as he would have liked him to so his response was to let out this sound that I observed from the expressions on the onlookers' faces wasn't very pleasant. Some of them were holding their ears.
I swear these meat puppets are so damn sensitive.
Anytime I do anything that is different from what they expect, they freak, but they can all behave in horrible ways and call me and Anpu names and it's OK.
Hmmph. Hypocritical jerks.
Anyway, the other night marks the SECOND time someone has picked me as their Lady-of-Honor in a match against Anubis who ALSO picks me as his chief lady.
This time it was God Simon.
The last time it was Hope. Or was I her Second? I forget which. I tell you all the crazy rules at the Circular Contraption Games really confuse me.
I just can't keep it all straight in my brainpan. Which is why I try to have Grenny teach me but as he's taken to quickly adopting a fetal position whenever I'm about of late, it's really hard to learn from him.
Who the hell can understand his mumbling underneath his arm-covered face? It's so ridiculous.
But yeah isn't that cool?! GOD SIMON chose ME as his Lady-of-Honor along with his wife Lesser Goddess Koy!
I almost died like ten times! I wish Jewelsie was there with me! She'd totally find that hot! I couldn't react to it, naturally, because Anpu would've had a stroke but inside I was squealing!
God Simon also sniffled a little when I informed him prior to the match that I could not cheer him on because of the obvious conflict of interest.
He said and I QUOTE "You can but you elect not to," and was then moved to tears.
If Anpu and Lesser Goddess Koy weren't there, I might have ran to him and cradled him in my arms.
That poor sweet God Simon.
He's so in love with me and can never act on his feelings.
I feel so bad for him.
Which is why, to take his mind off all these lovey dovey feelings, I have erected a giant Wicker Man outside of the Outback. I saw this movie recently where these meat puppets who lived on an island sacrificed this thirty-five-year-old virgin guy (this was the most shocking part of the whole movie for me, I NEVER saw THAT coming!) in this giant wicker basket shaped like a man and set it on fire.
He screamed and screamed.
I replayed that part several times and laughed.
So I'm gonna find someone to sacrifice in my own Wicker Man for God Simon's amusement.
It's just, I am having a hard time picking ONE of the meat puppets as the lamb.
The Japanese lunatic Aya is on the list as is Bob the idiotic alien squid and DEFINITELY Crispin. He's GOT to go.
But how do I settle on just one of them?
I think I'll draw straws right after Horus' playdate with Martin.
I'll let you know later how it goes! I think it's so important for him to be making friends. He's been running around the mansion all morning after I told him that Martin and Reggie were coming over this afternoon.
You know, I hope I find him, come to think of it.
He's been getting into all SORTS of places lately the more he runs.
I'm starting to think that maybe the zookeepers kept him in a cage for the safety of the visitors rather than trying to keep him locked up.
Grenny was even freaking last week when Horus ran under one of the circular contraptions and found him hiding there.
Which is sad, too, because Grenny is his Uncle and should be able to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of his family members.
I'm gonna have a stern talk with that Ranger when I see him next.
Okay gotta go!
Bye!
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