I'M THE WORST PERSON EVER. I keep leaving my stories hanging for months DX I'm working all I can on Bleu Leather, but I had to finish the chapter for this ridiculous story since I have not updated in OVER 2 MONTHS OMG THAT SHOULD BE CRIMINAL. Sometimes I wonder if I should disable the Internet for a certain amount of time just so I can get my priorities in order... a while ago, for school, I had to do an essay on time management, and I thought, this is so ironic! I'm writing an essay on a skill I clearly do not posess! 8D
Well, now you see why I started this thing in July XD
Anyways, keep reading the crackiness...
"Is your face gonna stay like that?"
"Huh, wha?" I opened my eyes in a daze and rubbed them viciously to face Skritch again, looking into my soul with his deep blue eyes slathered in black makeup.
"YAH!"
"All better! See, now she'll stay awake!" I hate it when he does that. Scares me with his stare. He's so creepy, yet hot, yet a really bad role model… I like it.
Skritch stood up from where he was sitting on his haunches in front of me, when I got a good look at what he was now wearing instead of his lolita getup. Apparently he'd unearthed one of my mom's vintage kimonos… but it was another really shortie one, silky and midnight black that made his creamy blue skin almost seem to glow in comparison. His feet were bare. I couldn't stop staring at those pretty little slender feet…
He snapped to get my attention. "Hey! Eyes up here."
I stood on my feet, and immediately, my head started pounding painfully. I held a still-gloved hand to my cranium in pain. Has that ever happened to you? After a long time of inactivity, you just stand up and start walking up stairs or something at you feel something rushing in your ears and colors flitting before your eyes? I'm no schizophrenic, but that has happened, and it's annoying.
"Ugh… I slept, didn't I?"
"Eh, for about ten minutes. That's a definite sign we need to ramp it up in here. Falling asleep during a party is unheard of!" he made a long sweeping motion with his spindly blue hand and peered at me through lidded eyes.
"Ok, lemme just change into my pajamas and I'll join you guys. No mischief, got it?"
Skritch crossed his arms and blew a rasberry at me, at which I rolled my eyes at his childish behavior. I knew I'd fall asleep. When I 'almost' fall asleep, my consciousness just goes to heck with it and falls over the edge, not caring whatsoever. Gives me a hard time in History class.
I stomped over grudgingly to my room across the hall, half-expecting to see Jinger and Yadira still in there, but there was no one as I walked pat my parents' bathroom. Strange. Usually all the nail polish and stuff is kept in there.
Which means…
Oh no.
There was no way anyone would let me in to the 'party' in MY bathroom without my pajamas on, so I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door, wriggling out from my Grell costume and folding it as neatly as I could to place it on my dresser to be put away later. After, I wooshed my pajama drawer open and tossed a light lavender nightgown on the floor, nerly crushing my finger as I jammed the drawer closed and reached to the ground to put on my sleepwear. Grell had asked to see me in a dress, and this was the closest I got without resorting to one I only wear when I visit Gramma. Now THAT was actually leaning more toward how dresses in his day look like.
As I scraped my hair into a stubby ponytail and kicked on my slippers, I desperately hoped nothing bad was going on outside. Anything could happen with these fictional characters that thought they were welcome in my house any old time. They ramped up the electricity bill, trashed the house with a spontaneous blowout party, and only once, my parents asked what the devil was a pair of hooker boots doing in my closet (Oh, guess what 'genius' was behind that, I bet you can't guess…).
I leaned forward in my bedrrom mirror a little just to pick a pine needle left over from Hempstead out of my hair, and then turned right around, scrambling for the door, and then in continuation, headed for my adjacent bathroom where I stumbled upon what looked like a mini day spa that had just exploded all over it.
Grell was perched on my counter, painting his perfectly manicured nails a screaming red that complemented the thick, dark burgundy robe that encircled his slim body- fitting him better than it fitted on my mom, actually—while his silken hair draped in a loose, still slightly messy ocean over the hazel granite, making him the center of attention in the drab room (it's not really drab, but by comparison to the reaper, it was).
Jinger and Yadira were braiding each other's hair on my throw rug near the west wall, and Skritch was right next to Grell in his skimpy kimono, holding his bare feet up to the light so he could see how he was painting his toenails an equally screeching green. What was he trying to do, make his skin look snow-white? I'd start squinting at him if he didn't stop soon.
"Oh, you're here," Grell said, not even looking up from his nails. "Now perhaps you can do as you promised and tell me how I got into this jam." He paused as I pulled over a chair in the corner of the room and straddled it when I spun it around on its leg. "No, 'jam' is not the right word… in fact, it is quite nice with Skritch around." See, that was the key word. "Skritch." The guy had bragged that he was the life of the party before, but now a grim reaper from the 19th century was fangirling over him…
Skritch adjusted his butt on my counter, and then continued painting his toes while his calves were crossed on Grell's lap. I tried ignoring how friendly they were getting and how my suspicions were slowly proving right, and cleared my mind to make room for words that hopefully wouldn't come out all fluttery and weak.
"Okay. First, I'll just tell you… who we are. I'm Sophie Alibi, and I have blue hair and pink eyes because of something gone wrong when my wonderful teacher transported me to where Skritch lives." Skritch grinned cheekily and raised his hand, then got back to slathering green on his long toes. "And my teacher just so happens to be a part of the community of beings who control worlds. She's Pam MicFraud, and she brings fiction to life."
Grell's head snapped up at my mention of 'fictional.' "Wait, so you're implying that I don't exist? Don't be so thick, child."
"That wasn't what I said," I mumbled. "Plus, I'm an adult in four years. But anyway, it's not that you don't exist-it's just that you don't exist in my world. She showed us three that as soon as we real world humans create a form of entertainment, the characters and the universe are automatically created as a different level of reality. You exist, but you don't exist here."
I could tell Grell was trying to follow, but after the words came from my mouth, he turned around and started to play with the polished nickel-surfaced faucet of my bathroom sink. With this curious gleam in his eyes, he turned the cold water tap on and off, probably amazed at how smoothly the water went down. Once on a school field trip, we visited an old house from the 1880s that still worked, and when I tried the faucet, it was as noisy as a starving lion.
"Um… are you… listening?" I said a little too softly, and ended up sounding a bit meek, which I'm obviously not.
"Huh?" he said calmly. "Oh." He removed his hand from the faucet, twisting it until the water stopped gushing. "So you're saying I was created for your entertainment?"
I almost chuckled when he quoted Adam Lambert unknowingly, but I held it back with some difficulty. "Yeah. You and everyone who live on your Earth. Sebastian, Ciel…"
"You know about the brat! And Bassy!" He cried loudly.
"Yeah, yeah, calm down, though. I can even prove it. I have my iPod Touch right…"
Now Grell's gnat-worthy attention span had flown over to settle on something else that had been stupidly misplaced on my counter. In his hands he now held my random Fushigi ball, and at once I knew I had lost him with that thing.
"Why won't it fall out of my hand…?" He tried shaking it off, and it fell to the carpet, but the redhead retrieved it from the ground and goofed around with it some more, being careful not to smear his beautifully painted nails.
My chin was cradled in my right hand while the left on busied itself by facepalming. I had to think of something that would keep his attention on me. But one thing I knew about him: he didn't particularly favor children. Although, I had noticed he'd tolerated me a tiny bit better than Jinger and Yadira, who remained all helpful and silent in their west wall doing each other's hair, pretending I didn't even exist. Well, I was tall for my age, being already 5'5. Maybe I had a chance.
"Hey, Grell!" I called him back from his little trance with my magical anti-gravity toy ball.
"Yes? Oh! You were telling me about…?"
"Ok, obviously you're gonna keep going all A.D.D. on me, so how about I French braid your hair while I explain?" Yes, I was willing to take on the challenge of braiding his thick mass of satin blood.
The shinigami's tacky fingers gathered his locks up as carefully as they could, holding them away from me. "I don't want you touching my beautiful, long hair! I'd rather spend three hours on it myself!"
I kneeled down to the ground courteously, also imitating Sebastian to see if that helped. "Well, if I wasn't a genius with hair, then what kind of teenager would I be?" I stood back up and flicked at my stubby blue ponytail. "I'm not all that fond of my hair, but it's as soft as baby duck down. And don't I recall you being in need of a little fix with your supernaturally long mane?"
Grell shifted his eyes around the room. "I suppose so… but your hands might be grubby!"
I tried not to give up this whole thing and go to play with sharp things in the kitchen, but in a matter of a couple minutes, I had washed my hands right in front of him, gotten out my blowdryer, InStyler, hairspray, detangler, comb, brush, and an extra-stretchy red scrunchie from my cabinet across the room and laid my supplies all in a row on another separate counter.
"I bet you have never seen any of these things before, but hair care advances in a centurie's time," I said smugly as he inspected all this stuff that was supposed to fix his waterfall of red.
"You mean… I might be able to use all this in my own world someday?" Grell said with an eager grin that showed his rows of pin-sharp teeth.
"Yeah, but you'll have to give me your hair for a second if I'm to explain any more."
Grell pouted, apparently not knowing how cute that action was, and grudgingly handed over his treasured ruby hair which felt heavy,thick, and satiny in my fingers. It made me want to squeak and pass out on the floor again, but I called my willpower over to back me up, and it did the trick. His hair reminded me of when I was younger and my mom didn't want to cut my hair, but she finally decided to donate 15 inches of it when it reached almost to the backs of my knees. Then I felt lightheaded for a few days after the ceremonial cutting of my once chocolate brown 'do.
Even though Grell's hair was soft, it was tangly, so while I sprayed it with heaps of detangler, Skritch got bored. I didn't know how Jinger and Yadira were sitting on the floor staring into space without at least tapping their fingers at top speed.
The pervy alien right to my left was done painting his toenails and was now waiting for them to dry, which ment he'd have to stay here in the bathroom and listen to the rant he'd gotten when I'd first met him. There was an awful lot I had to mention, but the only way to get through to Grell was to bribe him, and what could take longer than braiding his mountain of crimson hair, slightly tangled and up to his knees?
As I spoke the first few words, Skritch carefully hopped down from my counter, curling his toes up as he trudged into my closet. "I'll go get the card deck…"
"Wait, I want to play too!" Grell started to get up, but I tugged him back to me by his hair like the reins on a horse. Hey, if William did that to him much, he wouldn't flinch… much.
"Hey, you were the one who wanted an explanation. Then you'll know how I know that your full name is Grell Sutcliff, and you are a grim reaper who slacks off a lot and you have a crush on Sebastian Michaelis, and William T. Spears."
The redhead's jadey eyes suddenly pinned me down in shock.
"Dude, calm down, I said I'll explain. Now turn around and let me make your hair beautiful." I assured with a quiet voice and a slightly faster blood pressure as I directed him back to the counter mirror by his shoulders. The shinigami pouted, but did as he was told, and I began to comb out his tresses of ruby red to divide it into three sections at the crown of his head. As my fingers diligently wove his strands together, I started to first tell him who I was. It evolved into explaining what he was to some people in the real world, what his anime was about, and whatnot. Of course, he asked infuriating questions the whole way along, and I answered them as best as I could so this didn't take an hour, and I lost his attention span.
As I spoke the last words without revealing too much for him to overreact, I finally tied off his smooth hair and stood back to gaze at my work. Not bad for a mane this thick. I'd done a reverse French braid from Grell's scalp up to his upper thighs, and tied it off with a really stretchy scrunchie, and now I could only hope he didn't knock a vase over when he spun on his heels.
"Ah, okay, so is that all you have to tell me?" He said lightly, gazing at himself lovingly in a hand mirror. He adjusted a piece of his bangs behind his ear.
"Yeah, pretty much. Don't go blabbing."
` "I must say, you did a marvelous job. One hundred years waiting for this lifestyle seems much too long!" The shark-toothed transvestite complained.
I looked forth at Skritch and my friends, sprawled on the ground with piles of candy being eaten as they played Old Maid with each other. Yadira seemed like she'd rather be in the Sahara than play with Skritch. As soon as she saw Grell with his completed hairdo, the cards went flying, and she approached him, trying and failing to hide her lip-bitey smile.
"French braid looks good on you!" She grinned, bordering on creepy. Grell just twirled his giant pigtail around like it was a big, thick rope that could hurt if it smacked you in the mouth. Luckily there were no vases in sight for him to accidentally and quite carelessly knock over.
Skritch looked ticked as he was left with Jinger to pick up the scattered cards while she took glee in staring at his body bending when the alien reached far away to pick up the little papers. I really didn't want to know if he was naked under that kimono or not, but a weird side of my kind of did, and I knew wholehartedly Jinger secretly wanted to know when I saw her throw one card even further away.
"Thank you! It does suit me, doesn't it?" The reaper bent down to the candy pile on the ground my friends had made when I was in the middle of making the French braid, and curiously unwrapped a cherry Tootsie Roll to pop it in his mouth and chew.
He suddenly grimaced as I watched him. "Do all sweets these days taste this sour?" He asked through a mouthful of the chewy candy. "Not to mention quite sticky…" Through his closed mouth, I could see he was trying to get the candy off of his sharp teeth, which I guess had skewered all the little pieces. I'd always wondered if he had problems with eating because of those things, but I knew chewy stuff like that would affect him.
While the crimson beauty in my mom's robe tried to pry off the modern-day candy, I went over new plans in my head for the sleepover now that we had two uninvited guests that had to be supervised at all times. It was kinda weird, having to supervise adults like this. But they weren't real adults. One was a figment of my imagination, and another was from an anime where everyone can have hair long enough to step on, go through thick brambles and fall in mud twenty times, and still come back out sparkling clean with no tangles. Dang animators and their lack of making hair more realistic.
I guess they were more like… perverted spawns of my younger sister who was currently away on a separate sleepover? Whatever.
I took the liberty of popping a Hershey Kiss in my mouth while thinking, this was only supposed to be the first part of the sleepover. After, we'd set up more spa stuff downstairs in the TV room and see if we could properly apply face masks while peeing our pants watching The Grudge. Jinger had promised to bring that movie.
Ah-ha! It was the perfect way to get Grell to sit still. Scary, bloody movies would surely fascinate him while clinging to Skritch's arm in the meantime.
As the alien packed the last of the scattered cards into the little box, he stood up and approached us, followed by Jinger right behind him.
"Ok, let's get this party started, here. Tigurr told me the plans you girls had for the night, so whether you mind or not, Grell and I will join you. First one downstairs gets the foot massager!" And with that, Skritch dashed off at the speed of light.
"Wait a minute, darling!" Grell called after him, and jumped his way down to the ground level of my house in hot pursuit of that raunchy little blue guy.
I was left with my two friends, who stared at me and soon broke out into laughter that either meant, "this is insanely unexpected," or "you are so busted."
I eyed them warily. "Well, whether you two mind or not, you're helping me persuade little miss Pam to get Grell back to his world before my parents come home, or worse, if my sister gets dropped off early."
"But I thought the worst-case scenario was that your homophobic mom discovers him," Jinger said suspiciously, adjusting her green pajama pants.
"Well, yeah, that was because I was caught up in the moment of not having Nadine around to pester me, because I just now remembered that she said she might come home early. That makes you two eligible to work even harder! Isn't that nice?"
My two friends stood expressionless, exchanging blank glances. If anything, they were used to my zany plans more than they were used to cleaning their rooms every day. Heck, a jump from my world to another one while I innocently walked down the street was even exasperating now that it had happened oh so many times.
Jinger sighed and rubbed her temple, much like my mother did when I burst through the front door breathless after a week away in some other dimension, except my purple-haired gal didn't look up and give a reluctant smile at my job well done righting whatever had gone wrong with some poor fictional bloke.
"Do we hafta help you make breakfast for them?"
"Yup."
"Do we have to scout those two all night and possibly slip them a sleeping pill if they don't conk out by the morning hours?"
"Yeah. Hey, we're all supposed to be on the same page, here! Of course you two know the drill!" I said, frustrated.
"Soph, I'm just weirded out by this Grell guy. I don't watch a lot of anime," Jinger reminded me in a flat, bored tone with cold eyes that reminded me of Skritch when he had enough of our shenanigans and was this close to frying us with a touch of his finger.
I thought for a moment how to sum him up in a sentence or less. "He'd obsessed with red, he's a little psycho, likes to kill people because it's his job, flirts with a bunch of guys, and is trapped in a guy's body."
Jinger threw her hands up. "Well that's just dandy! And obviously you left out the part where he hates kids, because he doesn't tolerate us very well."
"It's the sad truth," Yadira and I said in unison.
Jinger slapped her own face in irritation.
"For tonight we have to resort to stalking them both. Can we manage?" She sighed tiredly.
"Yessir, Jinger sir!" Yadira and I saluted quite stupidly.
"Okay, good. Now off to the living room, where we'll make sure the only fun those two have is fun gicing each other pinapple-scented facials."
"Quite," I muttered.
Bravely, the three of us took off downstairs and started the movie.
HOPEFULLY I will finish this BEFORE Halloween. And manage a bunch of digital art, and Bleu Leather and ASDFGHJK WHY DO I HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL, IT WASTES TIME DX