Authors' notes;
Weapon Frayer; DFTBA!
Laurel Silver; Introducing Romania, and another ancient; the personification of Hun
[Parfüm, Boggie]
Elizabeta heaves the bag over her shoulder, stalking out of the building with as much pride as can muster, Alaric and Elizabeta's old landlord, who just would be Alaric's best fucking buddy wouldn't he, staring her down as she goes. She glares back as she dumps her bag in the back of her car and climbs in.
She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know where to go. A text from her boss this morning told her that he, too, was a buddy of Alaric's, and she was fired. That Germanic bastard's got his fingers in all the pie, hasn't he? No wonder that red-head home economics teacher had hated him so much.
Something smells. Not bad, it's a nice smell, pretentiously dainty and obnoxiously pleasant like a spilt bottle of perfume. Floral, predominantly.
Elizabeta sniffs the air, until she tracks the scent down to the glove box. Opening it, she finds a damp cardboard box of perfume samples; a passive-aggressive dig-in-the-ribs present from her school rival, horror lover Vladimir Popescu. She'd kept the present, occasionally wearing the perfumes when she'd dolled up for something, but had never found anything to retaliate with. Thin little bottles of rose and nerium, myrrh and almond, dreams of flowers, sweet, bitter, mellifluous, bringing back so many memories of that smug smile with it's too-long canines and it's verbal challenges dripping with it's light second-generation Romanian accent.
With a sigh, she clicks the green button on her phone, the select bar enlightening the name "Sucker" on her contact list. "Hey, Vlad... It's Liz... I need a place to crash… Please? I'll pay rent. As soon as I have a job... I'll get a job, quick pace... I've got a shit ton of qualifications, I've trained loads... I'll get any job I can get my hands on, I just need somewhere to stay until I can get back on my feet, I am begging you here."
Vladimir Popescu hasn't done bad for himself. He explained his horror writings took off, and with a laugh he admitted his specialty is vampires. "Don't mind the decorations," he says, "My own work, fan contributions, memoirs from meeting other horror legends."
None of it disturbs Elizabeta too much; she's googled the English translations of Rammstein for fuck's sake! It's all so creepy, any horror fan would cream themselves at the memorabilia and merchandise gathered, and so much of it's signed and the official thing; this flat holds things that Elizabeta wouldn't recognise and would think nothing of, but a horror nerd would pay millions for.
"The spare room's a lot less cluttered," Vladimir says with that trademark fucking smirk of his, "Kind of plain, actually. My parents really hate this stuff, it gives both of them the creeps, so I keep it clear for the both of them."
"That's good of you," Elizabeta answers plainly, "I'm going to take a nap. Long and slightly shitty day."
With only a few vague, purposely frustrating points from Vladimir, Elizabeta finds the room. It looks like a generic hotel room; white and whiskey brown, with long curtains, a double bed, an empty table with sockets waiting to be plugged into. A large misshapen mirror is the only thing interesting about the room, like one of those large three-panel mirrors that usually stand much smaller atop a dresser. It's side panels stand at odd, non matching angles, and Elizabeta can't change that; they seem to be stuck that way.
[Livin' on a Prayer, Jon Bon Jovi] Giving up, Elizabeta flops down onto the bed. Taking up the newspaper bought as she'd arrived in Chicago, she flips straight to the 'Jobs' pages, flicking through them impatiently. A job on the docks catches her eye, until it specifies they're looking for a man, sexist bastards. Elizabeta has all those qualifications except the genitalia, and that's nothing short of damned annoying. The only advertisement she can find not asking for a man is a job at Gina's cafe. It sounds like the best she's going to get. She hates having to be polite to rude people, but the money's more important until she can get something better. It's not like she can run away from her financial responsibilities.
Something knocks. Thinking it's the door, just Vladimir probably with some snide remark, Elizabeta shouts "Come in."
The door doesn't open. Elizabeta thinks she just imagined it, until it comes again. This time, she drags herself from the bed to answer it personally.
Nobody's there. Elizabeta rolls her eyes at the nothing, thinking Vladimir's trying to scare her; it had been one of his favourite hobbies to scare the little children a few years younger them on the playground, especially the easily scared Vargas quadruplets, who would hide themselves behind Elizabeta and that cheery Hispanic boy Antonio.
But the shower's running and steam is rising from behind the closed bathroom door, and Vladimir's singing what sounds like Romanian nursery rhymes, suggesting he's been in the shower a while, so it couldn't have been him knocking.
[Miss Murder, AFI]
It must have just been her imagination. Vladimir's creepy memorabilia has shook her up more than she thought, and now she's imagining creepy cliche things. She'll be hearing voices of the dead next.
"Elizabeta…"
Any sensible person would have fled like the hound of hell were on their heels. But Elizabeta has always been stubborn and courageous and stupidly, insatiably curious, so like a typical white person in horror film, she looks around for the source of the noise, fists raised in a guard.
"Liz, my dear…" the voice speaks to her in Hungarian, and the guard drops as Elizabeta recognises the voices.
"Liz, turn around," and Elizabeta obeys. She's always trusted her father, followed his teaching and trainings carefully, and she firmly believes he is what shaped her into being so 'masculine' and 'unladylike' now. She also firmly believes that he's what has made her so stubborn. His effects have lasted her whole life, even after he passed away.
In the misshapen mirror, her father is visible, as tall and proud as he had been in life. As well as a large chunk of her personality, Elizabeta has inherited her tall frame, long body and the soft brown of her hair from her father's side of the family. His eyes, a leathery brown in colour, are wider than his daughter's and as cracked as the rest of his face with laughter lines. His hair is wiry and flattened, his common style being best described as 'constant helmet hair'. He worked almost all of his life, a cheap manual labourer, his Hungarian roots being the perfect excuse to give him less money for a longer shift and harder work than an American, but he'd taken it, working himself to exhaustion to pull the money to give Elizabeta the best life he could provide for her. A generous man, how the neighbours had all adored him.
"What are you doing here?" Elizabeta asks in the language she hasn't spoken since she moved out of her mother's house. "How are you even here?"
"Told the angels to let me come," her father says with a laugh, "Well, I didn't really tell them to. With just a look, they shook, and the heavens bowed before me. I spiraled down, left them all behind, and here I am."
"But why?" Elizabeta asks.
"I think you could do with some fatherly advice. Things don't seem to be too great for you right now, my dear."
"No," Elizabeta admits with a huff of a laugh, "It really isn't."
"You remember when you were little, and whenever we were really struggling you and me would pray to God, and then we'd work hard to make those prayers to come true?"
"You're telling me a need to pray?"
"Yes," her father nods, "I promise there's always someone listening."
"But it was us who made the prayers come true," Elizabeta argues, "We would work extra to get more money, I would study harder for better grades, it was us who made all that happen, not some deity!"
Her father sighs, "If anything, it can help you organise your priorities. And they're listening, and I promise you that they do help, more than either of us ever knew. They would give us the opportunities to make our prayers come true; they made sure there were extra jobs and shifts available, they made sure you had time and motivation to study, they kept us both healthy to keep working. They helped, at the very least."
"You really think it will help me?"
"I'd bet my life on it."
"But you're dead."
Her father stares at her, then laughs with his deep, infectious belly-laugh. The mirror seems to glow, and the ghost Elizabeta has always loved, a ray of light over her life, fizzles out without hope of him returning.
[Please please please let me get what I want, The Smiths]
Elizabeta sits down on the guest bed, toying with the end of her pyjama shirt. It's worth trying a prayer, even if it only helps her to organise her thoughts at least she'll know what she's doing. Her father's advice has never failed her yet, and she'd be shocked if this would be the first time.
Knelt on the floor, elbows on the bed, hand folded, head bowed. "Lord, I ask for good times for a change. See, the luck I've had could turn any good person bad. I've lost my best friend and love, my home, my job. I wish for a chance to help Gilbert clear his name. I wish for somewhere to stay without feeling like a guest to a host I'm not sure is reliable as a friend. I wish for a job which will bring me a decent wage that I can support myself on. Amen."
She climbs back onto her bed, deciding to apply for a job at that diner tomorrow. After that, she'll find herself a hostel to stay in, or a cheap apartment, or someone looking to split the cost of a habitable apartment.
With a sigh, Elizabeta heaves herself under the heavy duvet, forcing herself to relax.
And in an alternate dimension we'll refer to as heaven, for the sake of giving it a name, a man known as Attila Hedervary bugs a creature we'll refer to as an angel, again for the sake of giving it a name, to let his daughter get what she wants. Lord knows, it'll be the first time.
Weapon Frayer; I start writing my parts in the next chapter. Also, fan service may (probably not) be included in later chapters.
DFTBA! Don't forget to R&R, follow and favorite, be awesome!
Laurel Silver; This is the last chapter I do on my own, after this Weapons Frayer has a bigger influence; after realising we both used Google Drive I shared the document and now we both write on it and the planning documents. It's been a lot easier than the whole DocX process, to be honest.
We own nothing!