Oh em gee NEWSFLASH! I have no other place to put this.

Okay, within the last 6 months my subscription to Showtime has been cut, and so my knowledge of what's been going on with the series stops at the Bicycle Theif episode. I plan to pick up the DVD sets once I have the money and the time to find it, but until then my knowledge is very limited.

The response to Molly has been mixed, so I don't really know what to do with her. I'd like to take this opportunity to point out for the ump-teenth time that I imagined Molly to be a freshman in high school. 15. That's illegal in most countries, I think, seeing as how Mason's --what?-- 64? Plus, for all I know the whole explanation behind the "pet reaper" thing might already be squared away, which would suck really bad because that's the only reason I started up Molly in the first place, so I could explore that myself.

So sorry for my slowness, and thank you for all the comments. I'll try to pick up the slack once I have a better idea of where these crazy undead kids are going with themselves.

Love SA23

10:30. Sunday morning. The sun rose over a vacated old house, gilding its mildewed panes and chipped paint. The old woman who had once lived there died about a month ago, and she had no family to come and claim her house after her death. So it was empty. Well, it was supposed to be empty...

Upstairs, a young English man rolled out of bed, hitting the floor with a hollow thud. He was the last person the old woman saw before she died; that's because he was the one that came to take her soul. (It was nothing personal--it was just his job.) He was what was called a Grim Reaper, but he didn't fit the normal reaper stereotype of a faceless creature, with skeletal hands, a scythe, and a black hooded cloak. In fact, he even had a name. It was Mason.

He rubbed the shoulder that he fell on, grunting and rising from the floor. Looking to his bureau, he glanced at the bottle of whiskey that sat on next to his alarm clock. "Morning, Mr. Daniels," he mumbled to it as he looked to his alarm clock: it flashed 5:47 repetitively. Bloody hell? he thought. That can't be right. He walked over to it and hit it squarely with the side of his fist. The display reeled briefly before weakly sputtering 10:32 in dim green numerals. He was too groggy to feel satisfied with himself, so he just lumbered to the bathroom in his half-awake fog.

He shook the can of shaving cream. Dammit. Empty, he thought. He grumbled some choice words under his breath as he wet his razor under the tap. As he shaved, it seemed that he cut himself every other inch of his face. Good thing reapers heal fast, he thought to himself as he muttered aloud in a sort of pseudo rhythm, "OW! Fuck... OW! Fuck..." He hastily buried his face in a towel and wiped off as much water as he could. He looked down at the towel, half of him expecting to see blood, the other half knowing that there wouldn't be any. He had been undead since for 38 years, and in all that time he never humanly bled. Of all possible things, one of the things he missed most about being alive was bleeding. He quietly looked back up to the mirror, watching as a few wet soap suds slid down the sides of his face. I look pretty good for 63, he thought halfheartedly. He sighed, and headed to the kitchen.

He kicked the refrigerator door open as he started the coffee maker and flipped on the light above the sink, which cast a flickering blue glow over the stained vinyl tiles that made up the floor. He put his hands on his knees as he surveyed the contents of his refrigerator: some ketchup, a near-empty carton of milk, a couple cans of beer, some now furry-looking old eggs left over from Der Waffelhous, and some stray AAA batteries. I'll just purloin food from the 7-11 next chance I can, he thought. He stood up straight and pulled the freezer door open; nothing but ice cubes and a frozen Pop-Tart. He shrugged to himself and pulled out a pastry from its foil pouch, inspecting it. It's a serving of fruit, I guess, he thought to himself as he sunk his teeth into a corner and shut the fridge doors. He tried to clamp his jaws together, but found that his meal wouldn't give. He tugged at the Pop Tart with his teeth, accompanying this action with a pulling motion from his arm, but to no avail. He finally yanked his teeth out of the Pop Tart and looked to it with disdain. The corner simply had a dry, shallow imprint of his incisors where he had tried to tear a bit off; it was like chewing on a strip of tire--a delicious, fruit-filled, sugar-frosted strip of tire, but a strip of tire nonetheless.

"I need to get some Hot Pockets... or something," he said to himself as he tried to snap the piece off with his fingers. Looking around his kitchen at his bare counters, he muttered as an afterthought, "I need to fix these appliances." Deciding to forgo the Pop Tart for a while, he tossed it onto his counter and walked to his window, gazing out at the empty lot next door. He thought aloud, "I need to buy some hot plates, I need to get a job, I need to buy some more beer--"

He was pulled out of his catatonia by an unexpected voice coming from his living room. "Mason? Who are you talking to?" Mason spun around to find a familiar face in his kitchen doorway.

"Toilet Seat! How'd you get in?"

She rolled her eyes at the nickname and jerked her thumb towards the front door and said, "The front was unlocked."

"FUCK!" Mason groaned as he rushed past her.

George seemed a little startled. "You mean you didn't know?"

He ignored her as he stuck his head out his door and glanced around his porch, not sure of what he was looking for. "Did anything get stolen?"

George walked into the living room, extending her arm and supporting herself against the couch. "What does it matter? It's not your stuff anyway."

Mason pulled his head in and let this new thought sink in. He shrugged. "True." George smirked faintly, knowing she was right. Mason wasn't really sure what to say to her about her barging in the way she had, so he ineffectually stumbled over his words. "Well--I mean, you--what--I didn't--I mean--"

George looked at him quizzically. "Are you having a stroke?"

"No, no, I mean--what are you doing here at this ungodly hour anyway?"

"'Ungodly hour'? Mason, it's quarter 'til eleven." Mason flashed back briefly to when he'd whacked his alarm clock. 10:32, it had read, once it was fixed. Dammit, he thought. He'd forgotten how late it was already. He was sixty-three years old technically, so he figured it was pre-Alzheimer's or something. George continued. "Anyway, Roxy said you had a house, and since I don't even have a measly apartment yet, she suggested I come here. You know, crash on your couch or something."

"You don't have your own place yet?"

"Nope."

"Don't you have a job?"

"Not anymore."

"But you did have a job when you were creamed by the flaming latrine, right?"

She scoffed. "I was in filing at Happy Time. Herbig hated me on sight, so she banished me to the dark corners of the Happy Time basement."

Mason chuckled. "Set a good first impression, did you?"

She said with a shrug, "It's one of my many talents. No one can resist my girlish charms." She pursed her lips and made a childish face.

"And since we're on the topic of 'girlish charms', Roxy suggested you come here? Why didn't you just crash at her place?"

"Because she scares me shitless," she said very matter-of-factly.

Mason shrugged, "Well, yeah," as he started for the kitchen again. "Anyway, this old bird had a guest bedroom upstairs, albeit the fact that she had no family, so I guess you could put your stuff up there." George nodded, and hesitantly turned for the stairs. As she disappeared through the kitchen doorway, Mason sighed, shoving his fingers into his hairline and turning back to the counter. He had no idea how he was supposed to feed the both of them for as long as she was going to be there, since he had trouble feeding just himself. He could split any food he found evenly between the two of them, to be a gentleman, or he could eat whatever he could find, as it was his house, and leave her to fend for herself. Every man for himself, right? Yes, that's what I'll do. I won't waver for her 'girlish charms' either.

The thought of food suddenly drew his mind away from her, at least for a short while, because he remembered his uneaten breakfast. My rock-hard toaster pastry. Right, he thought. As he picked up his now semi--thawed breakfast from the counter, he heard the floor squeak under George's feet as she came downstairs. She smiled fleetingly, almost awkwardly, at him. Cute smile, he thought for a moment, before shaking himself mentally. He couldn't think about her like that. It'd be too... weird.

She timidly looked around his unkempt house for a moment before turning back towards the staircase. "Maybe I should--um--you know--unpack some of my stuff--"

"Wait," he called after her. She shot a glance at him over her shoulder, stopping in mid-stride. He cleared his throat, snapping off an even half of his breakfast and extending it to her. He smiled weakly; "Toaster pastry?"