Samuel,
Clair and
John are all gladdened by the appearance of a reasonable, calm and well-mannered girl to welcome them into the den of iniquity these dropouts call their home.
"Why yes, we would just love to come in~," Samuel says, somehow managing to pronounce a tilde, and doing so with deranged and cannibalistic glee, to boot.
"...petty much, with less creepiness then that," Clair adds, hoping to mitigate the surges of creepiness Samuel produces when he flaps his dip-stained gums.
"Indeed, we would love to enter and have a chat. Have no fear, we'll keep the more creepy member of our group firmly under control," John then swoops in with a timely finisher, establishing both that the three of them are, in fact, a cohesive group with a unified group and that he is somebody who would freely admit to being in charge of Samuel or his actions - one of these facts is obviously more unfortunate than the other, but the girl doesn't seem to mind.
"Sure. I'll unlock the door," the girl says, disappearing back inside. Moments later, the front door slowly swings open and she steps outside, turning to her visitors and smiling softly.
"There we go, come right in," she says, ushering the three mysterious individuals in (Samuel in particular needs a bit of aggressive ushering, mostly because he keeps missing the door), then closing the door behind her. She leads the three inside one of the first floor apartments, where the first sight they get to behold is what once may have been a living room - now, though, it is entirely empty of furniture, instead having a crude circle of old mattresses surrounding the faded remains of an improvised campfire. The girl sits down on one such mattress.
"Feel free to sit down. What was it you wanted to ch-oh, sorry. Where have my manners gone? I'm Shauna. Who might you all be?" she asks in a relaxed, friendly manner. John is vaguely aware of the other girl peering nervously from one of the nearby doorframes.
* * * * *
Much later, on a rather sunny Sunday morning only slightly marred by the few straggler dinosaurs still stalking the darker corners of the city,
Halesey and
Larry confidently march out of their homes, knowing that this may be the day they make it big. Strolling down the streets, past the newsstands hawking low-quality journalism about happenings beyond human ken, past the nervous people heading off to work while trying to shake off the feeling that something terrible and inexplicable may await them on every corner and, most of all, past the several police crews investigating, among other things, mountains of cocaine appearing in the streets and strange creatures made of mops organizing what seem to be fight clubs in darkened alleys, past all that other crap a city has that most citizens either carefully avoid or don't care about, the two men arriving dramatically and nearly simultaneously outside Klein's Pawn Shop on Burton Street. Their eyes meet, and a period of subliminal mental communication begins as they brain intensely at each other.
Larry wonders what might be the best time to visit a strip club, and whether strip clubs do or do not have a happy hour, and also about when he might be getting paid already. Halesey manages to convey the first and second levels of meaning that the concept that mortals simplify as 'potato' holds using nothing but the most subtle means of body language. Larry is slightly frightened by this.
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Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 271102 times)