~A Mangy Pair~

The pound to her head left a nice pink circle in the middle of her forehead, the color matched to rosiness of her cheeks perfectly.

It wasn't a wise choice to slump on the table and let her head drop like that. She was just so tired, the day was smack-dab in the middle of New Orleans's most torrid summer. The ceiling fans in Tiana's Place Restaurant acted more for aesthetic purposes than circulating air. More than once during the first day on the job, Lotte could feel her brain boiling under her matted down, flaxen curls. The self-inflicted welt on her forehead was further evidence that her second day on the job lacked improvement.

Out of nowhere a shock of cold splashed down her entire backside. She smashed both knees on the lip of the table as she shot up in reaction. From Behind, her employer and best friend Tiana, was laughing hysterically while clutching an empty bucket. The bucket served as an anchor for her to cling to as she curled with her guffaws.

"Tii-ah!!!" Lotte wailed, clearly not amused by the sudden sensation of cold.

"What? I thought you could use a little cooling down, it looked like you were ready to melt through the floor boards..." Tiana had her hands on her hips, her tone was sarcastic and matronly.

Lotte's face drooped into her best disgruntled pout. "I figure you could find a better use of your time rather than dousin' me--"

"So could you!-It's damn nearly closing time and you're still sittin' here hummin' and hawin' about how hot it is-or how stressful things are during the rush hours! Now I don't know about you but I don't wanna be stuck here for another hour tryin' to close up shop-PUT IT IN GEAR AND DO YOUR JOB!!!" With that final verbal blow Tiana turned abruptly and stomped toward the door to the main hall. Naveen, who had pretended to act busy with kitchen task, abandoned the charade and pulled in tow with his wife. Before exiting he cast a look of empathy at Lotte, he understood her predicament. Not too long ago, he was cursed with the same spoiled ignorance she possessed.

Shaken from such a haranguing tirade she let her knees buckle under her. She dropped into the chair, forgetting the dampness caused by the previous incursion. Her posterior made a wet smack against the residual water that pooled in the seat. Further deflated by another onslaught of cold water, she sighed deeply before forcing herself to stand. Fussy ad riled with agitation, she followed suit. Stomping toward the double doors her demeanor was akin to an unruly child being sent to her room.

Two hours later...

The evening cold stung against her damp derriere, the night was already late and she was beyond tired. Against all these odds she was dammed and determined to go somewhere where she could vent her thoughts without harsh criticism in tow.

Why was everyone on her case? It wasn't her fault the dish soap was so harsh on her hands and the dishes kept piling up while she continuously moisturized them. She wasn't guilty of food sliding around and spilling over the plates while she ran trays out to the customers...

The girl was head deep in a delirium of delusional grandeur, she clearly saw herself as perfect and without the need of amelioration. Instead of observing how she needed to speed up and improve, she stuck to her rooted tendency of blaming everyone else for her faults. Not once in her upbringing did she receive a lesson in humility or responsibility. When her father passed away 3 months ago she received quite a shock to her rhythm of life. She had been duped out of the inheritance of her father's will by a silver tongued lawyer who stole all the money and jumped ship to Paris. Fatherless and husbandless, she refused to move from New Orleans to any of the states her relatives resided in. Without a cent to her name, none of her family wanted anything to do with her. This adversity could have been a changing point in her life but instead of empowering herself she became a leech.

Tiana's good spirited nature allowed for Lotte to have a room and job as a runner and dishwasher at her restaurant. The first 3 weeks of Lotte's stay were spent free-loading off of the charity of her childhood friend. On the Wednesday of the third week, yesterday, Tiana threatened her in the entrance with a large metal ladel. It took severe threatening to finally get Lotte to even lift a finger around the restaurant.

Here she was, the second day of the job, still crying over spilt milk expecting someone to care. Her nose was red and runny, her undereyes were covered by thick black streams of mascara. She was downright a pathetic spectacle to anyone near, nighttime pedestrians avoided her like the plague. She wandered quite far, her emotional state of hysteria dragged her to the city cemetery. She wanted to find her father's grave, an odd area for comfort but she chose to ignore the morbid undertones. It was doubtful that a dead man would be able to hear her tantrum but Lotte needed a listener, one that didn't have an opinion to override her own.

The graveyard was not completely silent, the morbid grounds possessed plenty of sounds to provide a score for the spooky, full-mooned night. The occasional skittering of leaves or paper litter from the random flittering summer night breezes broke the dead silence. The impromptu appearance and disappearance of these sounds coupled with the warped shadows of graves from the full moon spooked Lotte again and again. The surprisingly cold air heightened her senses further, leaving her more anxious. These unpleasant themes combined with her exhaustion from a full day's work swayed her in the wrong direction.

Finally coming out of her paranoid tunnel vision, she viewed her surroundings. Noticing immediately that she was without knowledge of where she was, she hugged her arms around her body and continued to wander. The thin, waist long coat she wore provided no security and she couldn't feel her toes in her high heeled shoes.

This was a stupid idea, she thought. All the grave stones looked foreign or identical to the one's she already passed.

She stomped her foot in frustration, shocked when the numb toes barely registered the action.

"Damn, I'm more lost than a roughneck at a lady's tea party!"

She did not notice the night grounds keeper several yards and grave rows behind her. A sudden shuffle from his foot caught her attention and sent her sprinting down a random left turn. Her heels clicked obnoxiously against the cobblestone pathway and the noise of her own shoes sent sprinting even faster. She didn't stop until her burning sides overcame her need to run.

Huffing and puffing she stopped to bend over in exhaustion in the median of a large dead end. Finally pulling herself upright her eyes were drawn to the very tall, single grave stone in the middle of the end. The tall stone was peculiar and did not seem to fit with the pattern of the other graves that lined the ending. She walked over to it gently, careful to prevent loud clicking from her heels. It towered over her in a height of 7-9 feet, At a closer range the full-moon light allowed her to view the face of the grave. There were no flowers, only cobwebs at the base, only a single name in large capital letters was inscribed in the stone.

These minor details were ignored as Lotte grimaced at the focal point of the morbid monolith. A ghastly face jutted from the stone as a decoration. The eyes were wide and the mouth gaping, the image of the face portrayed a perfect reaction to what was assumed as a horrific death.

"Ugh! I'm not one to judge but that has got to be a face that only a mother could lov--" Lotte suddenly paused, she felt a powerful sneeze arriving. Undoubtedly it was brought on from the cold and her previous crying.

"ACH-OO!!" The sound of the violent sneeze echoed through the alleys of graves.

"Ewwww!!" She squealed in disgust as a huge string of snot dangled from her nose, stretching beyond her chin.

Years of practicing how to look like a refined, young lady prompted her to quickly snatch a handkerchief from her jacket's breast pocket. When she finished cleaning up, a particularly strong stole the cloth from her hand. It flew a good 3 yards away landing to the left on top of a small cluster of brown shards.

Spastically she ran after it, desperate to have it in order to remove the streams of black mascara from her face. She quickly fell to her knees, left hand stretched out to reach for the cloth. The pinching of her index finger and thumb was enough to force one of the shards through the fabric and into her skin.

"Ow!!"

She stared at the long, thin shard that pinned the hanky to her index finger. A small blot of ruby blood appeared through the fabric began to grow around the area of the puncture. Gingerly she pulled it out, surprised at how far the point had buried into her finger. The removal opened the flood gates as several large rivulets of blood fell from her left index finger, the drops splattered on the rest of the shards.

Automatically she plunged her finger into the ruffled bundle of her skirt. Fussing about the pain and eventual stain the blood would leave on her skirt, she was oblivious to what was happening on the ground. She didn't notice the light show spectacle of red sparkles and mist that surrounded the shards. The mist and sparkles lifted the shards into the air and then in a flash pieced them together to form a brown talisman with glowing red eyes and decorative lines.

A loud rumbling sound followed by several piercing cracks sounded behind her. She flinched and slowly turned around. Her mouth hung open in awe at the bedazzling, sublime spectacle before her.

The tall Grave titled FACILIER trembled as the stone began to split in in pieces with jagged cracks. Green light and purple mist poured through the openings.

She was about to panic and flee when out of nowhere a strand of some sort wrapped itself around her neck. She let out a gagged choking sound as the rough, thin cord held enough force to pull her onto her back. She writhed on the ground as the cord tied itself around her neck. Finished with the knot, the cord slackened immensely and the glowing talisman fell onto her chest. Lotte shot up from the ground glasping and clutching the area where the cord had rubbed against her neck.

She spun around to look at the bewitched grave when she heard a strange voice echoing from its cracks. She shrieked as the grave violently exploded into the form of a large, horned and toothy head. Within its gaping maw a swirling vortex appeared. The swirling colors of Mardi Gras lime green and fuchsia churned and contorted violently within the head's mouth. Suddenly a figure appeared with in the swirl, the male body thrashed violently in the whirlpool. With each revolution the person can closer to the entrance of the mouth. A scream became audible as the man shot out from the maw, a line of colored dust created a jet-stream behind him.

He connected with the ground gracelessly, the right side of his face touched down first being dragged across the cobblestone ground. His legs flung over him in a near neck breaking flip and then tucked in as he rolled in a crumpled summersault. For several seconds the gangly figure lay in a crumpled mass of spindly appendages. A few fingers began to wriggle, a leg twitched and slowly the man pulled himself up to stand. Snatching his tall top hat from the ground, he stared over his body and surroundings in disbelief. A half crazed chuckle poured from the face splitting grin that stretched across his mouth. He placed the hat quickly on top of his head.

"YES!" He boomed, arms raised high as his long gnarled fingers curled like claws. "Dr. Facilier is back!!"

He swiftly turned to face the head that was previously his grave, it glared in absolute loathing as it bared sharp fangs at him.

"Looks like a get the chance to settle my debt afterall..." His smugness prompted a deep guttural growl from the giant head. In response he tipped his upper half and took off his hat faking a bow.

The face recoiled back into rock and the monolith warped back into a gravestone, this time it was unmarked.

Facilier turned toward his sentient shadow with a grin, the shadow reciprocated the camaraderie and smacked his hand with a high five. His shadow then danced around in joy, Facilier joined in, swaying his legs in a rubbery victory dance. In mid twirl he noticed Lotte, at least her backside, as she attempted to sneak away.

"Mmm..." He purred with a big smile, intrigued to find that the tasty, womanly figure sauntering off. She had to be the person responsible for his resurrection.

Reading his mind, his shadow slithered over to Lotte's shadow and forcefully grabbed a hold of the shoulders. A big, curled smile split across it face as Lotte struggled in thin air.

"Ah... So you must be the person responsible for my revivification." He added a velvet tone to his bass voice to sound mysterious and alluring.

He smiled as she let out a few squeaks of protest when his shadow began to massage her shadow's shoulders. Invisible hand prints indented on her back side, lifting her skirt a little when the hands slid up her shoulders. She was quite a bit shorter than him, probably only 5' 5" to his 6' 9". Not like that was much to complain about as he admired the perfect apple shape of her bum and the hour glass of her narrowed waist.

He leaned forward until his mouth hovered next to her ear he breathed in the scent of her hair and natural musk. He heard her breathing skyrocket and he licked his lips before smiling with lustful malice. Suggestively, his right hand which was resting on her shoulder slowly slid forward. When it came over her shoulder and began to slide down her chest he heard her breath hitch in her throat. His fingers stopped at the beginning of her perky bosom. With his index and middle finger, his hand strolled over to the talisman. He lifted it up so both of them could look into its glowing red eyes.

"You see this talisman hanging around your pretty little neck?" He drank in the pleasure of feeling her shiver as he whispered into her ear. "The red glow shows that it has some of your blood, your blood was exactly what was needed to bring me back from the dead. This kind of resurrection is called a Blood Debt and for such I am in your favor..."

He grabbed her arms to turn her around and seduce her further with a booming Introduction of his name and profession. The words and libido were sucked from his mouth as he saw the face of the fine body.

A red nose with a little snot coming out of one nostril, puffy red eyes and streams of black mascara greeted him.

The body still looked good, especially from the front but the face was disheveled and unattractive.

"Uggh!" He grimaced, holding her shoulders at arm's length to express his revulsion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~TBC...