Prepare thine stinking asses for A/Ns galore! ...I've been entertaining ideas of a sequel to all this. Now don't panic! This story still a while to go, but when it IS over, I'm thinking of doing another story in a very similar vein only with different characters and setting. Or maybe not. I don't like to write too much of the same kind of stuff, but if I keep some random elements involved, all will be well.
I should mention that with the help of DonnieDarko.com, I figured out a way to link the movie to this storyline. Unfortunately, it contained spoilers galore, and if you haven't seen Donnie Darko, you don't want me to spoil it. So I gave an altered, simplified version of it. Also, if you're curious as to why I assume Donnie and Norman would get along, I implore you to look at these pictures:
Donnie: ruinedeye.com/cd/cap29.jpg
Norman: scarycinema.com/normanbates.jpg
I rest my case.
...WAIT! STOP!!! PREPARE FOR MASSIVE JOY! I've been drawing again, and this
time I have a group shot of the ENTIRE CAST! You love it, yah?: deviantart.com/deviation/2265578 ...I recommend you view it in full size by clicking on the image. You get a lot more detail that way.
Yeah, you'd like me to admit I don't own them, wouldn't you? You'd like that.
---------------------------------------
Seconds ago, the Raunchy Horse was filled with screams, blood and knife fights, but all Donnie heard was the chirruping noise of chipmunks and the rustle of wind in leaves. The otherwise harsh sunlight was filtered through the trees and transformed into a pleasant green glow. Small, harmless examples of life slithered, grew and hopped all around him.
He was making the most of this pastoral scene by chucking rocks into a river again and again. In doing so, he severely traumatized a few brash young minnows that had been swimming dangerously close to him. Oblivious to the fish trauma he was causing, Donnie sat on the riverbank, thinking about time and the nature of the universe, but more frequently about sex.
"...The tangent universe has collapsed..." ...Frank's Yoda-like wisdom echoed in his head. Exactly how he had gotten from Middlesex to the Raunchy Horse remained something of a mystery to him. He remembered all that had happened in Middlesex, much as he'd like to forget. So at least he knew a reason for leaving his hometown.
He tried to reconstruct his recent past: He'd driven until he had to wonder why the police hadn't found him. By that time he'd become quite sleepy and was in an area he'd never even been close to familiar with, so he'd stopped at a gas station for coffee and noticed the Raunchy Horse brochure. He assumed that he'd come looking for a room after that, but to be perfectly honest, his mind was a complete blank.
Though that memory gap was a little disturbing, at this point, he probably shouldn't have been surprised. He'd had the feeling something oogey was going on with the Raunchy Horse from almost day one. But he was feeling constantly disoriented, not even sure if he was alive or dead.
Gradually, Donnie felt his face go slack. At the sound of muffled breathing and a tingling in his mind, he turned to see Frank next to him. Slowly, he turned his head back until it was facing the lake again and spoke.
"Why am I here?" he asked.
"The same reason any of us are here." whispered Frank.
"What happened? Why am I so confused about everything? It's like I have two sets of memories."
"Maybe you do." Donnie turned to Frank. "Blame Schrodinger's cat." Frank said. As the clatter of many footsteps blew through the woods towards, Donnie, Frank disappeared, leaving the poor boy to figure the rest out for himself.
"Hey! Donnie! Doooon-ieeeeeee!" Came Bobby-Jo's high-pitched squeal. "Help us with this thing, would ya?"
Sighing, his thoughts still elsewhere, Donnie stood and walked up to the little group. Bobby-Jo, Nny, Renfield and what looked like Norman in a dress were all carrying a long, nondescript roll of carpeting. It sagged in the middle, suggesting it was wrapped around something heavy. He grabbed one end of it and walked with the others as they moved to a particularly deep spot the ravine. A few moments passed in thoughtful silence.
"Who was Schrodinger's cat?" Donnie asked, not addressing anyone in particular.
"Schrodinger's cat?" Norman repeated. He was speaking in his normal voice, which probably meant he was back to his normal personality. Why he refused to take off the dress and wig, therefore, was anyone's guess. "Some scientist put his cat in a box with some poison. Then he asked a bunch of people whether they thought the cat was alive or dead. He theorized that, until the box was opened, the cat was both dead and alive. Infinite possibilities, see."
"What did that prove?" Donnie asked.
"That scientists have too much time on their hands." Nny muttered. Donnie mused over this new information as they approached the burial spot.
"Say, what's in this carpet, anyway?" he asked.
"Toast." the four others said at once. Sensing their obvious anxiousness, Donnie didn't pry any further, or attempt to call out the obvious lie. They buried the carpet beneath an avalanche of plants, which covered a significant part of the ravine. Afterwards, they headed for the house.
Out of the blue, Donnie spoke again. "I think I'm in some alternate timeline."
"That's nice." Bobby-Jo said, beyond being weirded out.
...Meanwhile, back on the home front, Carrie was trying to shake the eerie feeling that had shadowed her since Phil's murder and Bobby-Jo's subsequent mood shift. She lurked around the hallways for a while, then came across Joe-Bob, sill standing motionless where he was last seen. She nearly walked past him, then paused and waved a hand in front of his face.
"Mr... uh, Mr. Joe-Bob?" She asked, bewildered. She gave him a small shove. This prompted no reaction, but was kind of fun, so she shoved him a few more times, with no results. Eventually she shrugged and wandered into the main entrance, just in time to see the group of five walking up to the front door. Donnie and Norman were laughing and talking to each other.
"...And so she says: 'Maybe you left it *on* the store!'" Donnie finished. The two of them laughed. It was almost eerie, seeing camaraderie between the two of them. It actually made Carrie feel a little concerned and on edge. Later, she tried talking it over with Bobby-Jo, who immediately made her wish she hadn't bothered.
"Ooooh! Sounds like *some*one has a crush!" She twittered.
"*Had* a crush. Now I'm just concerned. Why aren't you? I mean, the guy stabbed your neighbor to death four and a half hours ago!"
"That's so adorable!" Bobby-Jo seemed unable to hear her. "You know, I remember my first boyfriend, I was seventeen and-"
"*Listen!* All I want to know is, do you think I should try and interfere? I mean, a guy could become warped with friends like that."
"Oh, you should never try and change the guy you like. I never try to interfere with Joe-Bob's life, and look how great our relationship is!"
Carrie shot a glance over Bobby-Jo's shoulder to the still-unresponsive Joe-Bob standing in the hallway. "I'll keep that in mind." she replied.
"Great! I'm going to try and get those bloodstains out, you just let me know if you want to talk some more." Bobby-Jo exited.
Carrie sat there, thinking out loud. "Maybe I *could* drop a few hints..." she mused. An idea occurred to her. "Maybe I could even turn them against one another..." She lifted the chair Bobby-Jo had been sitting in a few feet off the ground, and smiled wickedly.
...A few hours later, she succeeded in not only turning them against one another, she'd turned Nny against Donnie, Willard against Norman, and Renfield very passionately against her. Fights broke out, several pizza men were killed, and Donnie and Renfield joined Edgler in the hospital.
"Look..." Bobby-Jo said, after the ambulances left, "You can't blame yourself. You had the best of intentions, things just got out of hand."
"'Out of hand?' That's *one* way of putting it." Carrie said miserably. She and Bobby-Jo had begun the task of burying the bodies in the cellar. It was slow, disturbing work, and it was compounded by the fact that Carrie *was* indirectly responsible for the fates of the innocent pizza men they were burying. "I should never have gotten involved, something always goes wrong."
"There, there," Bobby-Jo said, smearing cement over a pile of arms, "you've got to be optimistic. Look at me, my boyfriend hasn't moved all day, and you don't see me getting all despondent about it."
"I guess that's true, sorta." Carrie replied.
"Maybe instead of feeling bad about past mistakes, you should keep this in mind so you don't make future mistakes."
"Yeah." Carrie's mood was still bleak, but she could already feel it lifting slightly. After a while she hummed to herself as she shoveled, scraped and smoothed.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the three non-catatonic men that remained in the Raunchy Horse idled in the den.
"Do you think we should help them?" Nny asked in an offhanded manner.
Norman shook his head. "Burying bodies is women's work."
Willard, still retaining a level of anger toward Norman, took this opportunity to speak. "Don't you think you s-should be helping them? After all, you work here."
Nny couldn't help but notice Willard's previously paralyzing stutter had been softened. He supposed when a person was put in an environment where battles to the death were relatively common, social awkwardness became very secondary.
Norman glared at Willard, but had to concede he was right. He left for the cellar, leaving Nny and Willard to each other. They glanced at each other, smiled awkwardly, then lapsed into silence. After a while, Nny broke it. "Does this house ever feel... weird to you?" Willard gave him a look that took the place of a response. "I mean for reasons besides the obvious." Nny clarified.
"Weird? I don't think so..."
"Almost as if it's, I guess, haunted?"
"Haunted?"
"Is there an echo in here?"
"But that's just silly."
"Yeah..." Nny looked at his fingers. "Yeah, I guess it is." Before the two of them had a chance to go quiet again, there was a knock on the door. Willard went to answer it, while Nny looked on from the den, now lost in thought. The door opened to reveal a chubby, mustached man wearing sunglasses and a police uniform. He flashed his badge as he spoke.
"Excuse me sir, but I'm Officer Hodder, department of homicide. I'd like to ask you and the rest of the household as few questions."
I should mention that with the help of DonnieDarko.com, I figured out a way to link the movie to this storyline. Unfortunately, it contained spoilers galore, and if you haven't seen Donnie Darko, you don't want me to spoil it. So I gave an altered, simplified version of it. Also, if you're curious as to why I assume Donnie and Norman would get along, I implore you to look at these pictures:
Donnie: ruinedeye.com/cd/cap29.jpg
Norman: scarycinema.com/normanbates.jpg
I rest my case.
...WAIT! STOP!!! PREPARE FOR MASSIVE JOY! I've been drawing again, and this
time I have a group shot of the ENTIRE CAST! You love it, yah?: deviantart.com/deviation/2265578 ...I recommend you view it in full size by clicking on the image. You get a lot more detail that way.
Yeah, you'd like me to admit I don't own them, wouldn't you? You'd like that.
---------------------------------------
Seconds ago, the Raunchy Horse was filled with screams, blood and knife fights, but all Donnie heard was the chirruping noise of chipmunks and the rustle of wind in leaves. The otherwise harsh sunlight was filtered through the trees and transformed into a pleasant green glow. Small, harmless examples of life slithered, grew and hopped all around him.
He was making the most of this pastoral scene by chucking rocks into a river again and again. In doing so, he severely traumatized a few brash young minnows that had been swimming dangerously close to him. Oblivious to the fish trauma he was causing, Donnie sat on the riverbank, thinking about time and the nature of the universe, but more frequently about sex.
"...The tangent universe has collapsed..." ...Frank's Yoda-like wisdom echoed in his head. Exactly how he had gotten from Middlesex to the Raunchy Horse remained something of a mystery to him. He remembered all that had happened in Middlesex, much as he'd like to forget. So at least he knew a reason for leaving his hometown.
He tried to reconstruct his recent past: He'd driven until he had to wonder why the police hadn't found him. By that time he'd become quite sleepy and was in an area he'd never even been close to familiar with, so he'd stopped at a gas station for coffee and noticed the Raunchy Horse brochure. He assumed that he'd come looking for a room after that, but to be perfectly honest, his mind was a complete blank.
Though that memory gap was a little disturbing, at this point, he probably shouldn't have been surprised. He'd had the feeling something oogey was going on with the Raunchy Horse from almost day one. But he was feeling constantly disoriented, not even sure if he was alive or dead.
Gradually, Donnie felt his face go slack. At the sound of muffled breathing and a tingling in his mind, he turned to see Frank next to him. Slowly, he turned his head back until it was facing the lake again and spoke.
"Why am I here?" he asked.
"The same reason any of us are here." whispered Frank.
"What happened? Why am I so confused about everything? It's like I have two sets of memories."
"Maybe you do." Donnie turned to Frank. "Blame Schrodinger's cat." Frank said. As the clatter of many footsteps blew through the woods towards, Donnie, Frank disappeared, leaving the poor boy to figure the rest out for himself.
"Hey! Donnie! Doooon-ieeeeeee!" Came Bobby-Jo's high-pitched squeal. "Help us with this thing, would ya?"
Sighing, his thoughts still elsewhere, Donnie stood and walked up to the little group. Bobby-Jo, Nny, Renfield and what looked like Norman in a dress were all carrying a long, nondescript roll of carpeting. It sagged in the middle, suggesting it was wrapped around something heavy. He grabbed one end of it and walked with the others as they moved to a particularly deep spot the ravine. A few moments passed in thoughtful silence.
"Who was Schrodinger's cat?" Donnie asked, not addressing anyone in particular.
"Schrodinger's cat?" Norman repeated. He was speaking in his normal voice, which probably meant he was back to his normal personality. Why he refused to take off the dress and wig, therefore, was anyone's guess. "Some scientist put his cat in a box with some poison. Then he asked a bunch of people whether they thought the cat was alive or dead. He theorized that, until the box was opened, the cat was both dead and alive. Infinite possibilities, see."
"What did that prove?" Donnie asked.
"That scientists have too much time on their hands." Nny muttered. Donnie mused over this new information as they approached the burial spot.
"Say, what's in this carpet, anyway?" he asked.
"Toast." the four others said at once. Sensing their obvious anxiousness, Donnie didn't pry any further, or attempt to call out the obvious lie. They buried the carpet beneath an avalanche of plants, which covered a significant part of the ravine. Afterwards, they headed for the house.
Out of the blue, Donnie spoke again. "I think I'm in some alternate timeline."
"That's nice." Bobby-Jo said, beyond being weirded out.
...Meanwhile, back on the home front, Carrie was trying to shake the eerie feeling that had shadowed her since Phil's murder and Bobby-Jo's subsequent mood shift. She lurked around the hallways for a while, then came across Joe-Bob, sill standing motionless where he was last seen. She nearly walked past him, then paused and waved a hand in front of his face.
"Mr... uh, Mr. Joe-Bob?" She asked, bewildered. She gave him a small shove. This prompted no reaction, but was kind of fun, so she shoved him a few more times, with no results. Eventually she shrugged and wandered into the main entrance, just in time to see the group of five walking up to the front door. Donnie and Norman were laughing and talking to each other.
"...And so she says: 'Maybe you left it *on* the store!'" Donnie finished. The two of them laughed. It was almost eerie, seeing camaraderie between the two of them. It actually made Carrie feel a little concerned and on edge. Later, she tried talking it over with Bobby-Jo, who immediately made her wish she hadn't bothered.
"Ooooh! Sounds like *some*one has a crush!" She twittered.
"*Had* a crush. Now I'm just concerned. Why aren't you? I mean, the guy stabbed your neighbor to death four and a half hours ago!"
"That's so adorable!" Bobby-Jo seemed unable to hear her. "You know, I remember my first boyfriend, I was seventeen and-"
"*Listen!* All I want to know is, do you think I should try and interfere? I mean, a guy could become warped with friends like that."
"Oh, you should never try and change the guy you like. I never try to interfere with Joe-Bob's life, and look how great our relationship is!"
Carrie shot a glance over Bobby-Jo's shoulder to the still-unresponsive Joe-Bob standing in the hallway. "I'll keep that in mind." she replied.
"Great! I'm going to try and get those bloodstains out, you just let me know if you want to talk some more." Bobby-Jo exited.
Carrie sat there, thinking out loud. "Maybe I *could* drop a few hints..." she mused. An idea occurred to her. "Maybe I could even turn them against one another..." She lifted the chair Bobby-Jo had been sitting in a few feet off the ground, and smiled wickedly.
...A few hours later, she succeeded in not only turning them against one another, she'd turned Nny against Donnie, Willard against Norman, and Renfield very passionately against her. Fights broke out, several pizza men were killed, and Donnie and Renfield joined Edgler in the hospital.
"Look..." Bobby-Jo said, after the ambulances left, "You can't blame yourself. You had the best of intentions, things just got out of hand."
"'Out of hand?' That's *one* way of putting it." Carrie said miserably. She and Bobby-Jo had begun the task of burying the bodies in the cellar. It was slow, disturbing work, and it was compounded by the fact that Carrie *was* indirectly responsible for the fates of the innocent pizza men they were burying. "I should never have gotten involved, something always goes wrong."
"There, there," Bobby-Jo said, smearing cement over a pile of arms, "you've got to be optimistic. Look at me, my boyfriend hasn't moved all day, and you don't see me getting all despondent about it."
"I guess that's true, sorta." Carrie replied.
"Maybe instead of feeling bad about past mistakes, you should keep this in mind so you don't make future mistakes."
"Yeah." Carrie's mood was still bleak, but she could already feel it lifting slightly. After a while she hummed to herself as she shoveled, scraped and smoothed.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the three non-catatonic men that remained in the Raunchy Horse idled in the den.
"Do you think we should help them?" Nny asked in an offhanded manner.
Norman shook his head. "Burying bodies is women's work."
Willard, still retaining a level of anger toward Norman, took this opportunity to speak. "Don't you think you s-should be helping them? After all, you work here."
Nny couldn't help but notice Willard's previously paralyzing stutter had been softened. He supposed when a person was put in an environment where battles to the death were relatively common, social awkwardness became very secondary.
Norman glared at Willard, but had to concede he was right. He left for the cellar, leaving Nny and Willard to each other. They glanced at each other, smiled awkwardly, then lapsed into silence. After a while, Nny broke it. "Does this house ever feel... weird to you?" Willard gave him a look that took the place of a response. "I mean for reasons besides the obvious." Nny clarified.
"Weird? I don't think so..."
"Almost as if it's, I guess, haunted?"
"Haunted?"
"Is there an echo in here?"
"But that's just silly."
"Yeah..." Nny looked at his fingers. "Yeah, I guess it is." Before the two of them had a chance to go quiet again, there was a knock on the door. Willard went to answer it, while Nny looked on from the den, now lost in thought. The door opened to reveal a chubby, mustached man wearing sunglasses and a police uniform. He flashed his badge as he spoke.
"Excuse me sir, but I'm Officer Hodder, department of homicide. I'd like to ask you and the rest of the household as few questions."
