Disclaimer: I own it all! Mwahahaha… not. See it, see the not? Haha, you can't sue me, nyanya…
4. Of Aunts, Hats, and Tea Time
"Liz, darling, please calm down. There is no need to hyperventilate." My words were having no effect. My darling dear was going to go into shock, just because a giant alien was in her kitchen. Well, that was something to be a little disturbed about, but there's no need to be so… overwrought about it. I mean, sure, I wouldn't just calmly keep sipping my evening cocoa if Lord Sauron walked in, but I certainly wouldn't bloody well hyperventilate over it.
"I do not think she likes me," K'ata said glumly.
"Congratulations, you've just won the award for Most Obvious Comment of the Year." (This is irony. I've been sarcastic enough. Pink and blue thoughts…) Liz was suffocating herself. As it seemed to be working, I didn't try to stop her. After a few moments, though she was a bit blue-looking, her breath returned to normal.
"Morrick."
"Yes, Liz?"
"Why is a video game character in my kitchen?"
"Well, um, that's a funny story, one which I'll be glad to tell you later, but, er, suffice it to say that, in not so many words--"
"If you don't tell me, now, I will be forced to maul you."
"Yes, well, ah… She isn't a video game character. She's… The head of the Crematorium-- No, that isn't right. What is it," I asked K'ata.
"The Cre'merean Order." Oh my, did I hear scorn at that? Why yes, dear Morrick, I think you did.
"Yeah, that. They're telepaths, and she's the strongest of them. You don't believe a word I'm saying, do you?" I asked when she turned away from me.
"Oh, no, I believe you. I'm just off to get some medication." Liz seemed to be edging closer to hysteria every moment. I, however, don't trust anyone who goes to therapy more than twice a month, and Liz goes twice a week.
"And just what medication are you talking about?" I demanded of her, and I received a look for my crassness.
"If you must know, Xanax, children's formula." She glanced at K'ata. "On second thought, I think it'll be the adult version." She hopped off the counter where she'd been sitting and stumbled off to her bathroom, with me in tow. K'ata, I presumed, was following me.
Once again, I was shocked by the number of bottles in Liz's medicine cabinet. I swear, the shrinks must've put her on every pill in the book, and they have to develop a new pill every month just so they can change her prescription and mess her up. Heaven help us if she gets suicidal, because one bottle of any of these, and poof… I've often told her that she should become a drug dealer, but she says she'd rather be my pimp. Hey, wait a minute! Now I get it. Cheeky strumpet…
"Here, see, one pill, Xanax, like I said." She swallowed the pill and grimaced. "It's a pity that sugar ruins it…"
"You are not a werewolf, now, c'mon. We must make peace with our dear Yautja." I tried to say it like K'ata had said it, but I think I messed it up.
"So they do call themselves that. Hmm…" Liz had lost her tense look, and now sported an eyes-half-lidded, oh, lovely look. It was the same look I got when I listened to the Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "Sweetling, I'm sorry, I need to get dressed." Off my darling went to her room, to berobe herself splendidly-- What the hell are you wearing?
Oh, yes, wonderful sense of humor you have, to wear the AVP t-shirt.
"Now that I am medicated and clothed, go away." At my gasp of shock at her crassness, she said, "She can speak for herself, and you're a terrible storyteller with all your fumbling airs." Hmph. Yes, dear, and you're a regular Tolkien, with your fumbling airs, as you call them. "Fumbling airs" indeed.
Fine. "Where shall I dispose of my worthless carcass, Your Majesty?" I asked with a bow. "Shall I stuff myself into a broom cupboard? Or perhaps an under-sink cabinet would be more appropriate."
"Go stuff your head in the garbage disposal." Thinking twice, she said, "Then again, knowing you and your limited intelligence, you'd actually do it. Go to the library, amuse yourself there. Go on, shoo." And so I was banished from the ladies' talk. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah.
Following my lady's orders, I went to the library. Searching diligently, I at last found my prize: The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It was a bit tattered (I'd read it many times, with and without Liz, in my search to "understand" females) and very dog-eared, but it was still one of my favorite things to read. The bookmark was at the bit about Princess Naked-as-a-Jaybird, and I read. And read. And read. I had begun to wonder if anyone had killed anyone when Liz burst through the door practically screaming my name.
"Eh, darling?" I asked her warily. She grabbed The Sisterhood away from me and started hitting me with it. And let me tell you now, she does not hit like a girl. She took the same weightlifting class as I did, and it worked better for her than it did for me.
"You-- blasted-- idiot! I-- should-- kill-- you-- for-- getting-- me-- into-- this!" she screamed at me.
"Just once - ow - I'd like to know - hey - why I'm being - stop it - beaten. Just once! Now, preferably." She herded me over to a chair - I'd been on the floor - and sat me down in it.
"You want to know why I'm hitting you? Because, darling dear, you deserve it!" she screamed in my face. "You've gotten us into this mess, and now, we've no way to get out of it. Don't you read fan fiction?"
"No," I said shakily.
"Well, I do. And I know that most fan fiction is true. She," Liz said, gesturing to the door, where K'ata now stood, "is going to kill us when she leaves."
"I have told you, human, I will not kill you," K'ata said, irritated by Liz's screaming. "There is no need to kill you. If you tell anyone, without me as proof, who will believe you?"
"Y'know, Liz, she has a pretty good point," I said, risking her wrath and fury.
"Shut up. You've sentenced us both to death, so you have no right to an opinion! Silence!" she said as I tried to speak again. "You," she said to K'ata, "I will never trust."
"Then you are foolish, human. Young, and foolish." K'ata's voice had taken on a haughtiness that I'd never heard from her before.
"I may be foolish, but at least I am not a dishonorable liar!" Liz shrieked at K'ata. K'ata, not taking this well at all, picked Liz up by the throat and shook her a bit.
My girlfriend is going to die, I thought sadly. However, K'ata dropped Liz, apparently taking my feelings into consideration. (Hallelujah! The love of my life will live!)
Liz was unconscious, though. "Maybe you can convince her through fear," I said numbly.
"Maybe," she said doubtfully. "I think your roles have been reversed."
"Eh?"
"You are more, um…"
I sighed. Here we go again. "Feminine?" I asked solemnly.
She laughed and said, "Well, yes. And she is more of a…"
I winced and said, "Masculine."
"Yes, that type. Is it thus with all humans?" I wonder what you think is so bloody amusing.
"No," I said shortly. "We're just weird."
"Ah."
"Ok. I'm going to go hide now. Please don't kill her." I retrieved my book and went off to the Secret Place. It's really just a closet, but Liz and I, well, we "tricked it out" so it would look like a hippie paradise. I took my fez off of one of the shelves and put it on. The tassels were very sparkly. Reclining in one of the beanbag chairs, I returned to my story.
Not long after I resumed my reading, there was a knock at the door. One of the elderly little Aunts peeked in at me. "Tea-time, Morrick," she said brightly.
"How do you find me! I'm very well hidden indeed!" I exclaimed, shocked to the point that my fez fell off.
"There's a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door. It's a dead giveaway. Oh, I shouldn't've said the 'd' word," she said worriedly.
"What, death?" I asked.
"Eek, don't say that word! Just come to tea-time." I had begun to recognize this Aunt as Makes-Good-Cookies. (When I was nine, Liz and I gave them all Old-Lady-Indian-Names. Ah, to be nine again…)
Off to tea time, bantering with Auntie all the way. Most of the retired Aunts were in attendance. It looked like a Red Hat Society meeting minus the hats. They cajoled me into nearly forgetting about Liz and K'ata, and once again told me they were all waiting for us to announce the engagement. No pressure, eh?
I was only saved by Uncle Byron, the prettiest man I've ever seen. Very effeminate, shall we say, and deserving of the Nobel Peace prize for all he puts up with. (He owns the local Medieval Fair thing. The odd thing is, he doesn't limit himself to just that age. There are like six parks, and two are open at a time, with the other four being changed to different ages. It's a big family thing. I go whenever it's open, with Liz, so that takes care of at lease one date every two weeks on Saturday.) Byron had a new sword to show me. Silvery metal, with gold gems - glass, because they seemed to hold up better in an actual fight - it fitted me perfectly. I said that that was odd, because most of the knights are big fellows; this would be a toothpick to them. Then he told me that it was for me. I stared at him, and then thanked him profusely. I was to wear it to the next fair, and in the left park.
I was agreeing to when Liz tromped into the room. Before she could speak, Byron put a matching lady's sword in her hand. Matching swords. Oh, dear gods… Very subtle, he is. (Okay, fine, more sarcasm.) Byron chuckled evilly, and left us.
"Before you say anything, or draw any unfounded conclusions, let me say that K'ata and I have worked things out." Liz stopped to breathe.
"Great!" I was understandably cheered. "So, it's all good?"
"Not quite. We've decided to vote you off the island."
My turn to scream. It was rather like Stephen King's The Boogeyman, this was. Right at the end, where the guy realizes that it's all just a ruse.
"Hey, hey, hey, chill, mon," Liz said with her Jamaican accent. It wasn't all that calming. She's like the girlfriend in the beginning of Jeepers Creepers when the guy's in the tunnel, nagging nagging nagging. Was that helpful to him, no. "Hey, I was joking."
"If I have a heart attack, I hope they cut you out of my will," I said feeling harassed.
"Y'know, I'm not sure that they'd even read your will." She was looking thoughtful.
"Eh, why not?" What was wrong with my will?
"Well, it's written on green frog stationary in pink gel pen. Very, um, professional. Yeah, that's sarcasm." She was trying to hide her laughter.
"'Mock me if ye will, and yet I surely triumph,'" I quoted.
"Rule number four of The Guide to Surviving the Movies, don't read from the human skin-covered book," Liz said severely.
"I was reading from memory," I said sourly. "Say, where's Schnucky?"
"Eh?"
"Our new friend."
"K'ata? In my room, watching the tele. Why?" she asked suspiciously.
Crap. "What's she watching?" I asked, feeling sick.
"Um… Predator. Why?"
"She's gonna kill me."
"Look, this is the third time I've asked you. Why? And if you don't answer me, I swear, I'll body slam you."
I paled visibly. "Is it really wise to expose her to that? I mean, it might bias her view of human beings. And one of the other things, I think your aunts can see through her cloaking device."
"Crap." My lady love is eloquent, no? Yeah, right. "Well, we have to guard her, don't we?"
Um… "Well, we are outfitted for it," I said. "Let's just go and hang for a while." She nodded her agreement.
When we reached Liz's suite, we found a great and terrible sight. K'ata, upside down on the couch, was laughing at the follies of the two males in the movie. Seeing us, she said, "They're idiots, aren't they?"
We agreed. I don't think I've ever been fond of the Govenator, and surely, Whatsit was of the same ilk. We joined her on the couch, upside down with our legs over the back.
"This is pleasant," Liz said.
"Hey, why don't we ever do this?" I asked suddenly. "We've never done this."
"That is because humans are limited in their intelligence," K'ata said cheerfully. "It really takes a rocket scientist to sit backwards on a couch. And this male looks better upside down."
"Oh, god, she's discovered sarcasm. What shall we do, lovely?" I asked woefully. "Most certainly, she will rule us all!"
"It'd be a change for the better, don't you think?" K'ata had apparently discovered egotism along with sarcasm. Liz was giggling, though, and if she found it funny, it couldn't be too serious. (Either that, or she'd taken more pills…)
K'ata and I left Liz's house a little before six. We walked back, enjoying the warm evening and the chirping of the crickets, the smells of hay, forest, and sweet grass. At least, I enjoyed them. Quite frankly, I haven't the faintest idea of what she likes. I'll ask her later; pillow talk and all that. The heat of the day was balmy on my face now, letting me believe that now was a frozen moment of absolute utopia, a perfect time that would never slip away, never change, never be defiled or ravished by time. But it was changing, and the sun was sliding below the horizon when we reached my house. Neither my mother nor Cloudy were home, and my father certainly wasn't going to travel two thousand miles to be home for dinner when he could stay and look at Plutonian microbes by the light of the moon in a mountain. (He, like my mother, is a doctor, but instead of looking at people, he looks at stuff the space probes bring back and does all sorts of stuff with it. Everything's classified, of course, but that doesn't stop him from telling us stories in the privacy of his own home. When he's home, that is. It's been nearly a year since I've seen him in real life.) The futility of my father's work struck me like a falling piano. That he searched such miniscule things for life, and here I was, walking beside the living proof of his work, seemed blasphemous to me. I felt my eyes misting; I almost always cry when I think of him. Home, home to bury my face in the mother-lady's sweater, or something close, and cry until I felt better. Most people think that boys shouldn't cry, and they're callous idiots.
I turned on the television and showed K'ata the particulars of our remote, and said I'd be with her in an hour or two. Then I went to my mother's room and found an old scarf with her smell on it and another cologne-type scent as well. Shame, shame that I didn't remember what my father smelled like. This would do, though.
I settled into an empty nook in my closet, and held the scarf close as I cried. Finished, I almost felt happy, in a miserable sort of way.
When I emerged from the closet, I found K'ata watching me, her head cocked to the side, a soft rumble coming from deep in her chest.
"I dare you to say anything," I said as I considered what a sight I must look, with my eyes puffy and my face tearstained and flushed. How anyone can cry and stay beautiful, I'll never know.
"I wasn't going to say anything," she said neutrally. "I wanted to ask you if you'd come and fix the television."
"What did you do to the television?" I asked incredulously. She couldn't've broken the thing yet. I'd only been gone for about an hour. We went to check it, and it was just locked. I am a very bad child, in that I know the password and I haven't told either Cloudy of Mother. I considered what K'ata had it on - Southpark - and asked her, "I don't think that's a good thing for you to be watching. It's rude and vulgar and disgusting."
She prodded me insistently with the remote, and I complied with a sigh. Leave her to her juvenile programming, and get dinner, I thought. Halfway to the kitchen, I heard the channel change to Mad TV. Happy with my charge's choice of brain rotting tele, I killed a few leftovers.
A/N: This happens to be the result of a very busy day, composed first on notebook paper whilst being driven on a mad shopping spree - ugh, shopping, blah - and then typed and edited while listening to Tony Bennett, with a lawn gnome looking on. And my computer chair is missing, so I have to use this identical other chair from across the way here. With t-shirts being thrown at me, for gods' sakes.
olafur: I'm a she. And I'm not motivated by reviews; I'm motivated by being able to live vicariously through my writing, and by extra-sweet tea and cookies. But, er, reviewing is rather nice. (So long as I'm not getting flamed, a'course. Heh…) .
zappy: His name is Lawrence, named so because Morrick feels like sharing his middle name with others. Thanks for the reviews. : )