Disclaimer: I own nothing, except the harem. I don't own most of the guys in it. In fact, my closet door doesn't magically open into a harem...darn it.
Adventures in a Harem...
Chapter One: You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression
It started out like any other day. Just a normal day...well, as normal as any day could be in a harem. I know what you're thinking, but give me a chance to explain. This was no ordinary harem. It was the harem of Dobre Ytka, fanfiction writer and psychopath extraordinaire. It was a small harem, but it continued to grow...and became stranger every day. Our story begins on a typical Thursday evening...
(Scene: A small room, the entryway to the rest of the harem. It has no windows, and only two doors, which are on opposite sides of the room. One door, as stated previously, leads to the harem. The other is a magic door, which leads out of Dobre Ytka's closet. On the walls without doors are two torches, burning with a hiss.)
The door to Dobre Ytka's closet opened suddenly. Two people stepped through it. One was a girl. She was eighteen years old, had brown hair that was a little more than shoulder length, and brown eyes. She was dressed in a pair of jean shorts, and an overly large Husker's sweatshirt. The other person was a man. He was tall, and rather good looking, with brown hair that was also around shoulder length. His clothes were a bit more archaic than the girls.
"Well Aragorn," said the girl, "what do you think?" She tilted her head slightly to one side as she asked this question.
"It is not quite what I had expected" Aragorn replied. "I thought it would be more...bright." There was a slight hesitation before the last word, as though Aragorn felt the need to choose his words carefully.
The girl pouted. "Fine," she snapped. "I'll make sure your room is all lace and neon. Happy?" Obviously Aragorn (despite his care) had not chosen wisely.
"I'm sorry Dobre Ytka" Aragorn pacified, "I did not mean to offend you. It's just the word harem brings a...different image to mind. This is almost like home."
Dobre Ytka smiled. "That's ok, I understand what you mean. Most of the guys who live here prefer this look, so this is how I've decorated it. I want everyone to feel at home. Speaking of which...where is everyone? I told them to be here to meet you." She peered around the room, but no one popped out from behind a torch to say hi. She shook her head. "Oh well, they'll learn." On that ominous note she turned to Aragorn. "Come on, let's go find them and get you settled in before I have to get back to my dorm room." She walked purposefully through the harem door with Aragorn following meekly behind her.
(Scene: A brightly lit living room. Along one wall is a huge bay window, complete with window seat. On the wall adjacent to it (to the right if you're facing the window...) is an ornate double door. An old fashioned fireplace dominates the wall to the left (across from door). In front of and facing the fireplace are two very cushy chairs, with a coffee table in between. Along the fourth and final wall there is a small bar by the door (Get your minds out of the gutter! Dobre Ytka's only 18...it's stocked with soda.) In the center of the room there are two huge couches. They face each other, and there is also a large coffee table in between for resting your feet. Oh! And I almost forgot to mention. All the walls (except of course for the window, and fireplace) doubled for bookcases. Even the door was a bookcase, as was the area above the built-in bar.)
As Aragorn and Dobre Ytka entered the living room, he noticed several things. The first thing was the books. They were hard to miss. The walls were covered with them, and there were some on each of the coffee tables, as though someone had been reading them and had put them down momentarily when they were interrupted. The second thing is that the room was designed for comfort. Each of the couches was long enough to sleep on, and all the furniture looked incredibly soft and comfortable. The third thing was that although it had been day out when he had entered the harem, the garden outside the window was covered in shadows. It was as though someone had blocked the sun. Only after Aragorn had noted all of this did he let his gaze, and his attention, rest on the two arguing men in front of said window.
"Ooohhh," Dobre Ytka whispered in his ear, "this is gonna be good. Go ahead and sit on the couch while I get something to drink." Aragorn followed her instructions, and noticed absently that he had been right about the comfortableness of the couch. He heard a pop, and a fizzing sound, then felt the couch sink slightly as Dobre Ytka settled in beside him. Normally, he would have paid more attention to what Dobre Ytka was doing (just because she was really rather scary at times...) but he was riveted in place by the scene unfolding before him.
The two men were utterly fascinating. One was tall and slender. He had pasty white skin, black hair (slicked back), and oddly enough...red eyes. He was rather creepy, as he was immaculately dressed in a black suite and a long black cape. The other man was also very strange. His hair was a dirty brown color (Aragorn had a sneaky suspicion it might be a few shades lighter if he ever washed it), but it was slightly longer that the first man's, and was tangled about his head like a lion's mane. His eye's were black, and snapping with anger. He was dressed in dirt-smudged t-shirt and jeans with a rip in the knee.
"You are a fictional character!" The second man screamed at the first. "You were based off of me! You would not exist if it weren't for me!"
The first man was just as incensed as the second. "I am Dracula! Lord of the night! Master of all creatures of the dark! You cannot intimidate me!"
"Well I am Vlad the Impaler!" the first man screamed back. "I tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people!"
"I have a bigger fan base!" Dracula screeched.
"I have a pointy wooden stake!" Vlad snarled.
"I'll suck you're blood!" Dracula threatened.
"I'll stake you!" Vlad hissed.
"Guys!" Dobre Ytka interrupted at a yell. Both men turned to look at her as she jumped up and stalked towards them. "That's enough! You want to argue fine, but leave the death threats out of it. What the heck started this anyway?" Dobre Ytka raised her right eyebrow as she stared pointedly at the men.
"Well..." both men said at once. They threw startled glances at each other.
"I simply came into the living room to read a book," Dracula stated calmly. "I had darkened the sun so I could enter, and had picked up a very nice book," with this he gestured over to the window seat, where a book entitled "An Idiot's Guide to Crocheting" lay, "and the next thing I new this creaton" he gave Vlad a disdainful sniff, "was storming in, and insulting me." He threw a pitiful, innocent look at Dobre Ytka. One that seemed to say 'You don't think I would ever do anything to start a fight...not poor, pitiful me.'
"Ha!" Vlad barked. "That's not what happened at all! I was outside in the garden, tending to my roses, when all of the sudden the sun darkens. I knew it had to be this pussy" he gestured to Dracula, "so I came in to talk to him about it. Everyone knows that Thursdays are my gardening days..."
"I give up" Dobre Ytka said. "It's just not worth the effort to find out what really happened. I hope you're both ashamed of yourselves...because you just fought in front of your new roommate." Both Vlad and Dracula turned to look at Aragorn, who was still seated on the couch. He waved. Vlad stepped forward.
"I am Vlad the Impaler. Fear me for I am evil." He gave a sharp nod of his head and stepped back. Aragorn looked a little startled, but gamely turned to look at Dracula as he also stepped forward.
"I am Count Dracula" He gave an apologetic sweep of his arm. "Children of the night...what music they make." Just as he said this (his classic opening line from his movies) a very strange duck with a blue mohawk came flapping and squawking through the open double doors.
Now, as most of you know, when Dracula says that line in the movies, there is usually some eerie sound, such as a wolf howling. Not a duck. In fact, the appearance of the duck depressed him so much, he slunk over into the darkest corner of the room he could find to sulk.
When everyone (except Aragorn that is, as he had no idea what was so funny) stopped laughing, there was a short silence. That blessed silence was broken however, by a rather high pitched male voice, with a thick French accent.
"I am not short" the haughty voice informed the room. Aragorn looked around, certain that some sort of spook or ghost was talking. For this harem, that would almost be normal. He saw nothing. "My name is Napoleon Bonaparte, and I rule all of the known world." The voice insisted.
"No, Nappy." Dobre Ytka said gently. "You used to rule almost all of what was the known world."
"You lie!" the voice spoke in outraged shock. As Aragorn watched, a short man jumped out of one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, where he had apparently been sitting/hiding this entire time. "I was the Emperor!"
"You might as well give it up" Vlad suggested. "You'll never convince him." Dobre Ytka shot him a look, then turned back to Napoleon.
"All right, Nappy" she soothed, "all right. Why don't you say hello to your new roommate?"
"Hello," Napoleon saluted Aragorn. "You are welcome here as long as you swear allegiance to no one but me."
"Now Nappy," Dobre Ytka warned, "I told you to stop recruiting an army. You are not going to overthrow me, become Emperor of the Harem, and turn your roommates into garden gnomes."
"Fine," Napoleon snarled, "then I shall go and cook dinner." He stomped his way past the duck and out of the doors.
Dobre Ytka turned to Aragorn. "That's Orlando," she stated as she pointed at the duck. "He's a were-duck, but he's mad at me right now, so he won't turn into a human to greet you." Orlando stuck his duck tongue out at Dobre Ytka (as much as he could, anyway) and waddled off. Dobre Ytka turned to Vlad. "Where's everyone else?" she asked him.
"Here and there" he replied. As he spoke, there came a resonating sound from somewhere else in the house.
"8 o'clock and aaaaalllllllssssssss we-ell!"
Dobre Ytka gasped. "8 o'clock! I've got to go! CSI is on, and I have to clean my room! Vlad," she turned to Vlad, "Introduce Aragorn to the others. Don't forget the harem rules!" The last command was thrown over her shoulder as she dashed from the room. They heard a faint slam as the front door (a.k.a. Dobre Ytka's closet door) slammed closed. Vlad grimaced.
"Feared throughout history, and I'm the one who gets picked to be nanny," he muttered. He motioned to Aragorn and walked through the double doors. He continued to mutter, but nothing he said was intelligible. Aragorn shrugged and followed.
Yup, just another normal day...
Author's Note: Sorry I haven't updated anything in a while. This is (obviously) my newest...something. It's not exactly a story. It's just going to be bits and pieces of life in my harem. Yup...you'll eventually get to meet the whole gang.
The magic closet door...I think I need to explain that. See, it's one-way magic. When you're in the harem, it always leads to the dorm room, and you end up in the dorm room like you just stepped out of the closet. But the door in the dorm room can lead either to the closet, or to the harem, as it's convenient to the story. If that confuses you I'm sorry. The only other way I can think to explain it is to say that the harem is kind of an alternate reality for the closet. And since that explanation probably just made things worse, I'm gonna stop there...while I'm still behind.
As for the scene descriptions...Sorry if that confuses you. Personally, I just hate having to work the room description into paragraphs. This is my compromise. Every time there is a new room I will just describe it to you like I did above. Then, as you read the story, you will hopefully already have a picture of the room in your head.
More crazy characters to come, including a thief/drunk/liar (although how he gets drunk when there's only soda in the house I don't know...), another vampire, two people with the same name, a couple wring wraiths (or all nine...whatever), some royalty, and more random characters that I love. Also look for the pets, which are sure to make an appearance...or two.
Quote: (totally random 'cause I don't have a good one)
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it—
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Ay, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
Stephen Crane
(Yay for owning a book of poetry that you can open to a random page!)