| Sugar and Bones |
[13 Oct 2005|12:20am] |
Sewers, on the whole, were smelly sorts of places. Unless you were in desperate need of shelter, a scavenger, or both, it just wasn't the sort of place to be. They were dark, miserable and, needless to say, a magnet for the nastier things in life.
Things like demons.
Shielded from the hustle and bustle of the Las Vegas streets above, one such figure stood hunched over a burning metal drum. The immediate surroundings of damp concrete giving the flame an almost comfortable glow. Long fingers of bone slowly extending and retracting, as the owner warmed them at its leisure. A long cloak of moth-eaten cloth hanging loosely over the rotted shoulders, with the hood turning to reveal a fleshless skull, peering ominously into the gloom of nearby tunnel.
"SSSSSLAYER..."
A pause and the grim reaper's mirrored self spoke again.
"Hey, Rhi!" Welcomed Ernie, smiling as much as a skeletal corpse realistically could. "Did I scare ya' that time? I been practicin', special!"
"...Ehh..." The approaching brunette only grimaced and made a 'so-so' motion with one of her hands, as her footfalls slowed to a stop beside the burning barrel. On another night, she might've played along with her would-be frightener, or at least cracked a joke at his expense. But it seemed that exhaustion had pared down her desire to do much more than the necessary, fight for answers or keep looking.
Rhiannon shrugged a bag of weapons from her shoulder and brought it around to clutch against chest. "You know what would help, though, Ernie?" She unzipped the compartment and rummaged inside. Fingers closed around the ends of two sharp, metal rods and withdrew them from the pack. The tip of a thumb pressed against the pointed ends as she tested them.
"Lemme' take a random guess and say mindless violence, maybe," the demonic informer pondered, scratching atop bony cranium. Skeletal fingers tapping lightly against chin, before pointing in the air. "I mean," he corrected, "ya' not exactly the type to pull up a beanbag with whoever and talk it over with a mug of cocoa, right?"
Straining vertebrae to get a look at what else might be in the bag, Ernie would have frowned, had he possessed eyebrows, but instead simply voiced a, "Hm... Mind if I ask who them knittin' needles're gonna' be used on?"
Rhiannon shook her head with apparent sympathy and murmured, "Actually, Ernie... they're for your little friends."
( Strange Bribery )
[Ernie as written by E]
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| Under the Table |
[13 Oct 2005|02:44am] |
Days after the attack on McCarran airport and the city's power station, investigations were still underway. Dozens of tourists and city dwellers remained missing, and riot damage was evident along on the infamous strip. Even so, Las Vegas was a city that didn't have much patience for tragedy. Its heart was entertainment, and its lifeblood was money. Once partial air travel had been restored and the worst of the clean-up completed, business and dollar signs were back on every entrepreneur's mind.
Not the least of whom was Star Tomlin, who had suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a very unexpected and generous gift.
At a relatively anonymous diner two blocks off the strip, she sat with her entire business portfolio spread on the table before her, and a dumbfounded look. Bank statements, deeds to property, and tax paperwork intermingled with her mug of coffee, half-eaten sandwich, greasy bag of chips, and a compact mirror. There were crumbs on her stock options, and a brown ring of sloshed coffee adorned the top half of some IRS form called a 2106.
Star didn't understand legalese any better than she understood geometry, which wasn't a lot.
"Holy shit..." she moaned, and slumped her shoulder blades against the booth, with just enough stage presence so everyone within ten yards of her noticed. That pretty much encompassed the entire diner. More of a dinette, really, if there was such a thing. Two purple-painted fingertips pressed against her temples, and she began to rub them in tiny circles, all the while staring blankly ahead.
The first thing Oliver did when he left Virgil's office was buy a newspaper, which he read on the cab ride to his hotel. The stories of looting and fires made his eyebrows go up, especially in light of the tale of the amazing exploding airport.
He read about the blackout and riots with interest, glancing out through the window as the taxi moved down the street. Looting, theft, arson, people behaving at their absolute worst. Chaos.
And he'd missed every second of it. Damn.
In his suite, he showered and changed clothes, then left again to go have lunch. He still felt pried at from the encounter with Elise Shelby, and somewhere anonymous was the only thing he could think of to shake that off. Stuffing a pack of smokes in his jacket pocket, he made his way to a small diner and dumped his weight into a booth, backpack thumping down on the seat beside him.
"Just coffee for now," he said to the waitress, deciding to forego eating. He was still wearing his sunglasses as he lit a cigarette, and he looked at the woman rubbing her temples through a thin stream of smoke.
"Crunching a few numbers?" he asked, gesturing at the papers spread out on the table. "Or just worrying about going bankrupt?"
( It's Never Just Coffee )
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