Made a promise. Got bored. Decided to keep it for something to do. Am snippy and in need of lurve.
Please refer to the last few sentences of Chapter 7 to understand the time frame, and for those just coming in, please refer to Chapter 1 to understand what the heck is going on.
Yep...yep. That's all I got. Enjoy!Roll it, Louie! (Oh, wait; before I forget, someone asked me who Louie was. Louie is a dude in my head that runs the movie-theater-movie-playing thing (forgot the real name of the thing) that plays out what happens next in a story I'm writing. I then write down what Louie played for me. So when I say, "Roll it, Louie," I mean for Louie to play it for the rest of you. See? Psychological-ical-icallity-cal.)
Jack leaned back in his desk chair, fiddling with a fountain pen and staring forlornly at the small stack of contracts next to him. Zero snoozed beside him in the late afternoon sun, almost completely invisible. His nose blinked on and off in rapid succession.
Zero's, not Jack's.
For once the contracts were about Halloween, not about the movie. This was a refreshing change, seeing as there had been nothing but contracts for merchandise and royalties and such nonsense that was wonderful in moderation, but rather depressing and annoying otherwise.
That somehow did not make the contracts for Halloween any less appealing. Regardless, the Pumpkin King toiled on.
A half an hour later, Jack stood up and stretched. He gazed at the clock next to his bed, and saw that it was 6:53. PM. On Wednesday.
After uttering a most ungentlemanly phrase, Jack swept through the house, straightening his rumpled suit, snatching a bat from the rafters to replace the tie he had mislaid, and plucking a small withered rose from the bouquet on the kitchen table. With a call of farewell to Zero, Jack shut his front door, locked it, and rushed (elegantly) down the front steps.
Kesy stood back from the oven and took a quick look at the dining room, which was adjacent to the kitchen. The roast beast (so beastly that she wasn't sure that it hadn't been one of her neighbors at some point) stood proudly in the middle of the dark wood table. Two tall black candles stood solemnly, ready to be lit, next to the mashed mandrake roots. The boiled Scream Stalks laid (silently) in a rectangular china dish. All that was missing was the guest of honor…and the mulled wine he had volunteered to bring.
The witch smoothed down the front of her silky black dress and checked on the fruitcake that was baking in the oven again. It was the right combination of hot and hard, so she whipped it out and set it on a rack to cool.
As she moved out into the hallway so that she would be able to greet her guest as soon as he arrived, she glimpsed at the dark circles underneath her eyes in the speaking mirror that was nailed to the wall.
"You look wretched, dearie," the mirror said, its Oxford accent making the sentence sound more insulting.
"Thank you for giving us your unwanted statement of the obvious, Lady Observant. Send my regards to everyone at Castle Duh," Kesy replied, waspish about anyone comment on her appearance in a less than admiring way.
It had not been a good day. When a preening Wilfred had licked her awake at about 5 AM, she found that her bed was full of dead bats. Ordinarily this sort of gift was cause for the pink pom-pom to receive a big kiss, but since she had mislaid her best cauldron, there was nothing to do for the carcasses but toss them in the icebox, where they would stay fresh for a few days, if she was lucky.
Later, she came out to her backyard to find the cauldron three-quarters of the way buried in the dirt. When she managed to unearth it, she found that the interior had been spray-painted a most unflattering shade of pink.
After cleaning out the pot, she and Wilfred had wandered out to town to find that the Crispy Roach (specializing in Halloween delicacies) was completely out of hellebore roots, so she had to purchase mandrake roots, which were good, but not the best quality.
When she found Lock, Shock, and Barrel walking down the street in front of her with telltale pink splotches on their hand, Kesy completely snapped and raced through town after them, brandishing a stick. They eventually slipped into the graveyard and she couldn't follow any further.
So the witch was looking forward to the company of her gentleman friend this evening. But now it was 7:04, and she'd never know him to be late. She wondered what was keeping him.
Jack, meanwhile, was just coming up to Kesy's neighborhood in the Residential Area. He had the nagging feeling that he had left something amiss, but he chalked it up be being too rushed to be properly nervous earlier that evening.
He rang the doorbell and the door flew open a half second afterward. 'Oh, great,' he thought, 'she's been waiting for me.'
Then he noticed the lady in front of him. Her smooth, spotless dress made him feel even more rumpled. However, her tired, if pleased, smile and dark-circled eyes caused him to smile and give the witch an unexpected hug. She hugged back.
"Good to see you, Jack," Kesy said softly, leaning into the bone man's embrace.
"Hi," Jack simply said.
Bringing forth an incredible amount of self-control, Kesy disentangled herself and closed the door. She then ushered Jack into the dining room.
As her date pulled out her chair for her, Kesy asked softly, "Jack, where's the wine?"
She never knew that the Pumpkin King knew such colorful phrases.
Yes, the ending is dinky: I am aware of this.
Yay, whap-wif-a-stick!
Please review. Ah am so lonely!
Happy New Whatever-The-Frick-This-Holiday-Happens-To-Be.