Daria fixed her dining companion with a glare.
"My boyfriend, your boss told you to take me out and do whatever I wanted. Well I wanna dance, I wanna win, I want that trophy. So dance good."
Jane threw her napkin on the table and led the lady onto the floor.
000
The flesh melted back from his form as Daria and Trent watched, and just before he sank beneath the surface of the pool Sher-man-tep spoke in a guttural, preternatural voice.
"Death," Daria translated as she clung to Trent's shoulders. "Is only the beginning."
000
The junkie took Trent's hand.
"Cold hands," he remarked. She smiled.
"You too. Big, like my father's." Her eyes flicked up to his in the moonlight. "Wanna dance?"
Trent blinked. "With you?"
"No, with my father."
"Bummer. I'm Trent."
The junkie dipped long fingers into Trent's pocket and grinned, triumphant.
"They call me, they call me Kiki."
She waved the baggie of heroin as she skipped from the apartment, long red hair bouncing behind her.
000
Jake glared crazily around the golf course, eyes bulging with unknowable rage and screamed "YOU`RE ALL HANDLING MY ASS-PENNIES!"
000
"Help me," the auburn-headed fly droned as the green-eyed spider advanced across the web. "Help me."
Hard eyed, the black-haired girl lifted the rock in both hands and, with a disgusted sneer, crushed them both.
000
The man in black fled across the desert, and the Misery Chick followed.
000
Daria shoved a handful of spoons into a pickle jar, screwed it closed and shook vigerously with a grim frown on her young face. Very slowly she looked around and deadpanned "My friends need to be punished."
000
Quinn grit her teeth in anticipation of the pain she would soon feel when her sister ripped out her eyes. A moment later, her eyes flew open, astonished, as all she felt was a gentle thump on her forehead.
"Forgive me, Quinn," Daria gasped through her sad, bloody smile. "This is the last time."
As Daria fell back, dead, Quinn found herself nonetheless blinded by tears of heartbreak.
000
I'd be visiting her in some vague time in the future, deliberately vague, for people like me, who realign past events to suit themselves. In that future time, you always have a chance to catch the groceries before they fall; your words can always be rewound and erased, rewritten and revised.
Then I'd imagine Daria visiting me. There are no psychiatrists or deans, no boys with nice shoes or flip cashiers. Just me in my single room. She knocks on the door and says, "Open up."
000
Well a Scotsman clad in kilt left the bar one evening fair, and one could tell by how he walked that he'd drunk more than his share. He fumbled round until he could no longer keep his feet and he stumbled into the grass to sleep beside the street.
About that time two young and lovely girls just happened by. One said to the other with a twinkle in her eye, "See yon sleeping Scotsman, so strong and handsome built?" Jane tilted her head toward the sleeping, brown-haired boy with a grin.
"I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath the kilt."
000
"Lydia, oh Lydia, say, have you met Lydia? Lydia the Ta-attooed Lady. She has eyes that folks adore so- and a torso even more so. Rawr!"
Charles stroked his broad mustache and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
000
"Did you just acCUSE me," grinned Tony Frost. "of being SKILLFUL and DELICIOUS?"
000
"You're the fairest maid I've ever met. You were made-"
"To finish your du-EEEEEEET!"
Tom stopped singing, stared at Jane for a long moment, then unceremoniously dumped her off his horse and rode away without a backwards glance.
Jane dusted herself off and grumbled, "Critic."
000
Jane gestured expansively toward the horizon, then turned to her companion.
"Yonder is the castle of my faddah."
000
"Mistuh D."
DeMartino, personal butler to the mad Earl of Lawndale, turned to face his eternal enemy. There she stood, a great pile of waste, leering at him with those damned pig eyes. DeMartino sneered.
"Johanssen."
Johanssen, main cook of Lawndale Castle, raised her cleaver in challenge and DeMartino moved to face off against his foe for the last time.
000
"You can uh, you can uh, you can uh-uh-uh- that's how burlesque was born," Janet Barch sang in her harpy screech as young Gypsy watched, eyes intent but smiling behind her thick glasses.
"Me, I uh, and I uh, and I uh-uh-uh- but I do it with a horn!"
000
"You know what's nice, Jane? Being able to afford things," Daria ranted. "I can afford things, can you afford things?"
Jane shrugged. "Not much."
Light filled the lenses of Daria's glasses and they glowed white, as though reflecting the blinding intensity of her madness.
"I can afford happiness."
000
"Upchuck, you talk a lot of shit for someone who never says anything."
"Oh, face!" Jane laughed as Jodie fished a twenty from her back pocket. Upchuck took it with wounded dignity as the girls hashed out the details of their meet-up, and who would be driving whom to the Zon the following night.
"The Zon's not one of your square country club dances," Tom warned, a challenge in his green eyes. Jodie smirked.
"That's fine, I dance in circles-probably around you."
The challenge was accepted; whether it would be met was anyone's guess.
000
Boobs De'Seuss, a blonde prostitute with ginormous breasts and a love for short, rhyming literature, came galloping out into the brothel's common room. She skidded to a stop on the heels of her cowboy boots, her outraged scream nearly as high in pitch as a dog whistle.
"That crazy sonofabitch branded me!"
Sure enough, there was a steaming circle brand bearing the letters CR3 glaring on her right ass cheek.
Angela "Tiger Lili" tilted back her stetson with narrowed eyes.
"I warned you, Charles!"
"Bring it!" Cattle brand in hand, Charles stepped into the room to retrieve his shoes.
000
"My, my," Jodie snarled as her muzzle extended and a deep rumble grew up behind her syrupy voice; the resulting growl drowned out the whimper of the vampire-costumed man she straddled. Glistening fangs slid down over Jodie's lips, eyes yellow and bright as a harvest moon. "What big eyes you have."
A hungry growl pierced the night, terrified scream degenerating to wet, strangled gurgles as Jodie ripped out O'Neill's throat and began to feed, her sisters' howls rippling around her in the Halloween dark.
000
"You know what, I'm gay now!" Jake yelled back over his shoulder as he was loaded into the ambulance. "And not just a little gay, full-on Liberace gay! I LIKE SHOWTUNES!"
000
Moreno, the cynical Spanish cop and Sherman, the big gay cop, stared at the drenched teenagers standing on the dock a few feet away from them. Supersoakers hung from the detectives' hands.
"Oh ass bear," the little goth girl laughed at Sherman as she wrung out her mane of fiery red hair. "You make me wet."
The kids fell all over each other laughing, Young Thomas holding the girl up as Leary the cadaver dog ran over to join in the celebration.
000
Tom looked down at homeless guy wearing shoulder pads and a tattered football jersey. He sat with an enormous cat in a fuzzy red sweater and held a sign which read I'm the QB and someone shaved my huge cat.
000
Tony DeMartino staggered out onto the sidewalk, hand clamped over an oozing wound, and smiled.
"I'm not so tough."
He keeled over and lay still on the pavement.
000
"I don't wanna sound like a queer or nothin'," Kevin smiled as he checked the lens on his camera. "But I think unicorns are kick-ass!"
000
"Weeeee aaarreeee Inndiaannnnnsss." the diminutive girl in eagle feathers and war paint drawled at the dubious travelers. "Seeee our teeee-peeess?"
The group stared at the tee-pees, which were decorated with a large red dot in the center reminiscent of a sun.
"これらの人は、かなり愚かです。" commented one of the tribe.
000
Sometime before dawn, the cracks in the ceiling of Boston's 23rd precinct ran with rain water. The drops spilled down onto the foreheads of cell number 6's two inhabitants as a strangely familiar voice spoke in their minds. They awoke with deep, ragged gasps and turned toward each other in the semi-light.
"Destroy all that is evil," spoke the elder.
"So that what is good may flourish," replied the younger.
A few additional hours' sleep refreshed them and as Jane rubbed her bruised, cut face Trent pulled the crucifix he wore out of his shirt and kissed it.
"And shepherds we shall be," he whispered just as their friend, Daria, entered the cell with a gift of fresh clothes.
000
Erin backed away in terror as the bloody, skinless horror held out his arms and grinned.
"Come to uncle Jake."
000
I saw the light on the night that I passed by his pinto. I saw the flickering shadows of love on the glass.
He was my boyfriend; as he deceived me I watched and vowed to kick his ass.
000
Daria pushed the pimply kid away from the mic, pulled it to her lips and fixed her manager with an icy stare.
"Fuck you," she pointed to one of her regular customers. "Fuck you."
Another employee. "Fuck you."
A random person who happened to catch her eye. "Fuck you."
"You're cool," she said to Jane, who had come to visit during her lunch break and Jane gave her a thumbs up, then to the counter help she had initially manhandled. "AND fuck you, I'm out."
She tossed down her Cluster Burger hat and bounced.
000
"Oh no WE'RE BEING PICKETED BY AGNOSTICS!"
Nick sighed. Athiesm was a bust, too.
000
"Are you really interested in that Trent creep?"
"Tom," Daria sighed. "What do my eyes tell you?"
Tom gazed into his steady's eyes, flat and disinterested behind her glasses, and smiled, relieved.
"You don't love anyone but me." Tom grinned.
"Uh, yeah," Daria muttered as she moved to rejoin the rest of the Fan Club. "You keep tellin' yourself that."
000
"What's in mah fruit cellar?!" Henrietta Johanssen bellowed as she burst up through the dirt floor. Trent screamed and scrambled away. "Someone who smells like CHOCOLATE!"
000
Didi pulled two pennies out of her pocket and dropped them into Jane's hand.
"This is all the money I have left. I want you to have it."
"Thanks," Jane laughed, then froze as Didi kissed her cheek.
"Thank you for a great day."
Jane watched the girl climb up so that she stood on the lip of the fountain they had been sitting on. Didi raised her arms to the sky, took one last, deep breath, and fell backwards into the water.
In another realm, a woman greeted the newly dead girl with a warm smile. She had Egyptian eye makeup, long black hair and wore a large silver ankh.
"Did you have fun, Didi?"
The spectacled girl smiled. "Yes."
"Good. It's time to come home."
The women clasped hands, and Didi vanished. Death walked back into the void.
000
Danny stood up, fists clenched dramatically, and just barely noticed the silhouette of his head on the drive-thru screen below.
"Oh, Sandi bay-be! Someday when hi-yai school is done," he sang, whinily. "Somehow, some way, our-"
He fell unconscious when a tire iron connected with his head, effectively un-blocking the projector. A collective cheer grew up from below, then everyone went back to their movie.
000
Seven year-old Daria was reading a book and trying to ignore Quinn's conversation wit the T.V. set. Daria looked up when the lights started to flicker. Quinn knelt on the floor, hands pressed to the television screen, and smiled.
"They're here."
There was a flash, and suddenly Quinn was gone.
Daria dropped her book and rushed to the T.V. Quinn's vague voice could just be discerned amidst the garbled whispers and static. Smiling, Daria shut off the set.
000
"Angier!" Jake shouted. "Did you see what he did?"
"No, what did he do?" Angier sighed as he turned away from his son and back to the stage.
"He blew a bubblewith his gum while I was singing! He can't do that while I'm SINGING!"
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