Tag: Beatrice

Written by Irritated Penguin

Supper Time

Ray was hungry.

It wasn’t like he ate supper at the same time every day or anything, but usually they ate between five and six o’clock and tonight they were making pizza and they’d decided they’d eat at six and it was six o’clock now but Ray didn’t have any food.

This exact same atrocity had happened at lunch and breakfast. Breakfast! The most important meal of the day!

“Ray, it’s five o’clock,” Wes said patiently. “The dough is almost done rising and then we can make the pizzas.”

Written by Irritated Penguin

Others, 33

Ray kind of wanted to dance.

They’d travelled all day and gotten to the town of Tanned Well and the inn Cal wanted to stop at, which Ray liked because it was called the Black Cat, and they’d all been having supper and chatting with each other, and there were a lot of people here, and it was so exciting. It looked like they had a party here every single night. This was the first time Ray had ever been in an inn and it was so cool.

There was a man playing a flute and people were dancing on the other side of the common room and Ray wanted to dance with them, but he didn’t know the steps to the dance they were doing. He knew the steps to a lot of dances, the ones he’d learned from Jenny and Dory and Nils and everyone else. But he didn’t know what dance these people were doing. Parts of it looked a bit like the Wake Two Step out of northern Yavhore, but the rest of it was a mystery to Ray and he didn’t want to get up and dance and look like an idiot by not knowing what were obviously pretty easy steps.

“Did you want to dance, Ray?” Wes asked him, noticing him looking.

Written by Irritated Penguin

Cat Boy

The building on Pelican Road had only just been condemned last week, though it should have been torn down ten years ago. “I still can’t believe people were living here,” Cal said, picking his way across the lobby floor, avoiding the parts where it sagged and the obvious holes. The whole place was about to collapse.

“They didn’t have a choice,” said Mick. “Literally, seemingly.”

Cal nodded. This old apartment building was one of the ones on Mathilda’s map, but there’d been a bunch of people living here when they’d come to explore the cellar. Apparently there’d been some sort of scam going on here involving passports being taken away. They’d mentioned some weird medical trials to him too, and though Cal had only dug into it for a little while, it hadn’t taken him all of that little while to find dead mob boss Solomon Netzer’s name associated with the trials.

Written by Irritated Penguin

Lost Hour

“Hey, who gave you permission to get up?”

Bob smiles at Cal. “Sorry, Captain. I was just going to go change the clock.”

Cal looks at his phone. “Oh yeah, that’s happening. Don’t worry about it, we’ll do it later.”

Bob nods. The time is changing in a minute—forty seconds, actually—and Cal clearly isn’t going to let it interrupt his session of Arkham Horror, which had been going on for about five hours now. “Please, Captain, is it okay if I go do it real quick? I get nervous when clocks are wrong.”

“Oh, well, sure, if it’s important to you, go ahead. The oven is fancy, so it’ll change over on its own.”

“Thank you.” Bob smiles, dragging his chair over to the kitchen doorway so he can reach the clock hanging above Cal’s kitchen door. He climbs up, reaching for the clock.

“Careful,” Cal tells him, watching Bob.

Bob nods, and the clock strikes two.

Written by Irritated Penguin

Team, 83

“You want to play that on the west side of the board,” Cal said, leaning against Joey.

“Why do I want to do that?”

“Because it protects against traps, which Ray likes to use, and he’s about to start moving there, see?”

Joey nodded, playing a card. “Okay.”

“Probably you’re going to want to use your next turn on fortifications so you don’t get overrun.”

“I was thinking I should attack in the north.”

“You should,” Cal agreed with a smile. “But you need to make sure you’re not leaving your ass open to attack while that’s happening.”

Joey giggled. “Right.”