Thanks for the reviews! Haven't been this pumped about a story in a while! ... Haven't been this pumped in a while, period... It's exam week soon, though, so updates might get a little slow in a bit. Just bear with me there. Anyway, here's part two. I tried my best to stay absolutely in character, but with this kind of writing, one's bound to get a few things wrong. DO let me know if you spot any glaring mistakes so I can correct them.
Enjoy!
Chapter 2:
"Stab her... Break her pretty little neck... Poison her... Shoot her... Boil her... Skin her alive..." Marie Kanker grumbled under her breath as she stared at Nazz. She was currently in the middle of imagining various ways of killing the girl, each more painful than the last.
"Thinks she's so pretty, she does…" she hissed. Inside her jacket's pockets, her hands clenched until their knuckles turned white. "Little tramp thinks she can get away with making goo-goo eyes at MY Oven-mitt… I'll show her what's what one of these days…"
"Um… E-Excuse me, Marie?"
"Can't you see I'm BUSY, you stinking piece of-! Oh, hiiiiii, Dreamboat!" her voice changed from a snarl that would make one of Ed's mutants wet itself into a sweet, almost seductive tone in a matter of milliseconds once she saw who was talking to her. Her frown turned into the half-lidded "smolder" that she saw all those porn stars use in their pictures. Lee said men went wild for that shit.
Edd fidgeted from foot to foot, glancing around nervously. A few of the other actors glanced his way curiously, but went back to barking out their lines quickly. Edd gulped, far more nervous than he remembered being in a long while, and with no small amount of courage, took a few more tentative steps towards Marie, until he was standing directly in front of her.
"I, uh… kind of w-wanted to ask you-"
"On a date? Sure thing, Pumpkin. You can pick me up at 8 tonight," she interrupted him, a cattish grin on her face.
"N-No, well, not exactly. I-It's more of a… C-Could you please stop rubbing my knee like that?"
"Why? You know you like it." Marie couldn't help but snicker once he began to splutter. It was adorable, the way he lost control of his tongue around her. As much as she wanted to keep on tormenting him, however, it was pretty strange that he came to her like that. Maybe what he had to say was actually important, she thought, and let go of his knee, much to Edd's relief.
"Y-Yes, well… ahem! A-As you may well know, there is a brief k-k-k-kiss scene in the play currently being practiced, and-"
"You want me to help you practice, Pumpkin?"
"N-No, that's not it!" Edd's eyes went wide, and he began taking tentative steps backwards. Marie grinned hungrily. If he ran, she'd chase him down. It was her favorite sport, after all.
"So what IS it, Oven-mitt?" she smiled at him and batted her eyelashes. On any other girl, he would've found it coquettish, even cute. On Marie Kanker, it struck fear into Edd's heart. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it all out.
"Kevin wants to make some rather drastic rearrangements to my facial bone structure with the aid of metallic implements, I need someone to keep him from performing said rearrangements, and you are one of four people capable of instilling wariness and precaution into his behavioral patterns!" A brief moment of silence followed his outburst.
"… God, you're just so hot when you start talking in gibberish like that."
Edd sighed dejectedly.
"Kevin wants to break my face, and you scare him, Marie."
Marie thought quietly for a few seconds, and her eyes went back to observing Nazz. It didn't take a Double D to figure out why Kevin wanted to smash him into a pulp.
"Big bad jock scared he's losing his girl?" she sneered, and mentally kicked herself for even CONSIDERING the idea. She'd rather smell Ed's feet than let that blonde tramp even think about sucking face with her man.
"W-Well, he apparently believes that the play's scene will be of bigger impact with her than it actually-"
"Spare me the details, babe. I don't understand any of that psych mumbo-jumbo. Aside from the reverse kind, that is," she added, grinning at the memory. The three Kankers and the three Eds, locked in a single room… those were the good times.
"S-S-So, will you help me?" Edd actually tried to smile at her, a puny, grimacing attempt at one. Marie had to suppress the urge to squee at the sight of it.
"I don't know. What's in it for me, I wonder?" she asked, grinning. Edd paused. He had not thought this far ahead, and the thought of her exacting payment was... not entirely pleasant.
"I, uh… I have some money left over from the summer. Maybe I could-"
"Hon, if I wanted your money, I would have it already," Marie pointed out. Fair point. She wasn't exactly well-known for asking to borrow things politely.
"… Jawbreakers?"
"I don't go for that sweet crap."
"Maybe I can give you-"
"Honey muffin, I'm gonna be honest with ya. Nothing you have interests me. Books and bugs are more your style. Besides, when you think about it, that wouldn't be exactly good for me. Scaring some guy so that his girlfriend can put the moves on my man? I'd have to be insane or REALLY well paid to do that," she said offhandedly, almost like she didn't want to admit it. But inwardly, she danced for joy when she saw the panicked expression return to Edd's face. He was right where she wanted him; trapped and with no way out. They didn't call her the crafty Kanker for nothing.
"Please, Marie! I'm begging here!"
"Oh, I don't know… " Marie pretended to hesitate and think, tapping her lips with her finger. She WAS thinking, but not about what Edd believed. She was plotting. "Alright, alright! I'll think about it, Cupcake… Now come here and give me some sugar!" she said, leaping to her feet and grasping his wrists. His eyes widened in terror. The few classmates who'd been looking at the two turned away, shaking their heads in sorrow.
"No! You wouldn't dare! Not here!"
She dared.
Edd walked out of the gym almost twenty minutes later, exhausted and with lipstick on his face and neck. He was, to say the least, irritated. Not only had his peers abandoned him in his time of need, but he hadn't even gotten an answer out of Marie. She'd simply grinned ferociously at him after she was done kissing him into submission and suggested that maybe a good beating would teach him NOT to cheat on her.
She'd mentioned she'd let him know next day at school, but Edd was nervous. What if she said no? He didn't want his brains splattered all over the football field!
"S'not like I'm gonna MAKE OUT with Nazz or anything," he muttered, as if he was trying to convince himself. "It's just a quick, chaste kiss." Still, the idea of making out with her was… rather pleasant, to say the least.
His teenage mind immediately went to work basing itself off of that, imagining him and her after the play was done, after the audience had showered them with applause. She'd take his hand and lead him backstage. She'd put his hands on his shoulders and stand on her toes to reach up to him. He'd put his hands on her waist and pull her closer. She'd giggle and lean in, their lips barely an inch away, and then, with barely a move and a slight grind of her hips against his, they would-
"Yo, sockhead!" Edd looked up, his mind snapping out of that perfect fantasy, his brow furrowed slightly in annoyance at his friend's interruption of it. Eddy walked up to him, his schoolbag slung over his shoulder. "How'd practice go?" He suddenly stopped and looked Edd up and down, taking notice of the lipstick on his mouth and neck.
"Kanker?"
"Kanker."
"Sucks. She followed you, huh?" Eddy asked, and Edd nodded. "Well, the crazy woman aside, how'd it go?"
Edd thought for a moment. He briefly considered telling Eddy all about his current situation, but eventually decided against it. Eddy would only try to get in a fight with Kevin, and nobody would come out of THAT happy.
"Well," he said hesitantly, "at least I understand my character's reasoning!" Eddy rolled his eyes.
"Not THAT, Shakespeare. You know what I mean!" He grinned widely. "You get close to Nazz today?"
"Oh, dear me, no. It seems a bit early for that at this point, don't you agree?"
"Whatever, man. You gotta practice that kiss with her sometime, right?"
"I suppose so, yes… Perhaps once my classmates and I manage to get our acts down would be best," Edd suggested, making Eddy sigh with frustration.
"Double D, you've GOTTA stop being such a gaywad about this," he said, clapping his friend on the arm. "Now c'mon. Ed got his hands on some old horror movies, and you're not bailing out on me again with that lame-ass "project" excuse again."
"That was due today, Eddy."
"… Well, shit."
Marie Kanker walked away coolly from the gym, her hands in her warm jacket pockets, her messenger bag dangling below her hip, her blue eyes looking upward as if in deep thought. But the second she got on the road to the trailer park, that thoughtful expression vanished, replaced by a wild, happy grin, and she broke into a sprint, heading straight for home.
The most common assumption would be that she was simply so ecstatic because she was currently of supreme importance to her sockhead. The reality is her thoughts were of a darker, nastier caliber. The main concern, of course, was figuring out how to turn this to her advantage even more. At that moment, she held Double D in the palm of her hand. He'd begged her to help him. Begged!
"I should have made him get on his knees," Marie thought, filing the idea away for later. Truth was, she already had a very rough idea of how to proceed with this. She'd gotten it from Literature class, actually, when she'd flipped through her badly mangled book in an attempt to find out whether Double D got a kissing scene in the play. If Marie had paid attention to the class lesson on irony, she would have appreciated the situation all that much more.
After what seemed like an eternity to her, but couldn't have been more than ten minutes, she reached the trailer. She flung open the door, tossed her bag at the couch without a care, and rushed up the stairs to the shared room of the Kanker sisters. Both of her sisters were there, Lee filing her nails with a hacksaw they'd stolen from Rolf's toolshed, and May trying to get her homework done for once, with little success.
"Hey, Marie! Nice of you to get your fat ass over here!" was Lee's greeting. "We was starting to think you'd gotten lost in them woods!"
"Yeah! Guess we got too hopeful, huh, Lee?" May snorted. Her lisp wasn't quite as pronounced as it had been in earlier years, but her "S" was still on the heavy side.
"Shut it, May!" was Marie's answer.
"Nuh uh! YOU shut it!"
"Both of you shut yer traps!" Lee roared. After a brief silence she went on. "Now, whose turn is it to make dinner?"
"May, duh! I made the noodles yesterday!" Marie jumped in. It wasn't ENTIRELY true (alright, it was a complete lie), but she couldn't risk losing her train of thought. May opened her mouth to protest, but Lee beat her to it.
"Get movin', Blondie!" she ordered. With a last sullen glare at Marie, May stomped out of the room and down the stairs to get working. There was a brief silence in the room.
"So didja get her?" Lee asked after a bit. Marie grinned shrewdly.
"Nah, the little hussy got away while I was distracted. But I got to have some nice intimate time with my hunk," she said.
"Ah, you'll get 'er next time!" Lee said, standing up. "I'mma see what's on the TV. You come down to clean up after dinner, y'hear?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." Marie waited a grand total of five seconds after Lee left the room to get working on her little "pet project". She ran to the desk, blew a thick layer of dust off of it, and got a few pieces of yellowing, slightly torn paper from it. She unzipped her jacket, tossed it to the bed, and sat down to write.
A half hour later, the floor around her was littered with balled up pieces of paper, a used up pen, and quite a few pencil shavings. She'd already gone through several rough drafts of what she wanted to do. Something that would, without a doubt, get her what she wanted. But she had to be very careful. She might be the craftiest Kanker, but Double D was the smartest Ed. If anyone around could find a way to wiggle loose of her plan, it was him.
"Yo, Marie! Dinner's ready!" Lee's voice came up from the den, surprising her and making her draw a large, slashing line of ink across her text. She fumed for a moment before standing up and heading to the door.
"Not hungry!" she called down, opening it just wide enough to poke her head through.
"What? Get down here and eat, sis!"
"I'm busy!"
"I said come down!"
"Stick a sock in it, Lee!" Marie yelled, slamming the door. She looked at it for a moment, then locked it as an afterthought. She stretched for a moment, then went back to the desk. Now, where was she? Oh, right!
Marie mumbled as she wrote, her tongue's tip sticking out between her teeth and her hand a blur as she did. This was a piece of art, she knew... There was no way she could fail!
After a few minutes, she was nearly done. She picked up the paper and read through it, looking to find any inconsistencies or mistakes that could send her plans tumbling down. She found none, and grinned widely. Right as she started to copy it on a second page, she heard the doorknob turn and click. She didn't even look around even when the sound of banging and Lee's gravelly voice reached her ears.
"Marie! Open the door now!"
"I'm BUSY!" she yelled back, still writing.
"What're you so busy with?! Open the door!" Lee snarled. Marie snarled right back, adding the finishing touches to her tools. Slamming the pen down onto the desk, she stormed over to the door and unlocked it.
"There! Geez, Lee! You on your period or something?" she asked huffily as she went back to the desk and lightly touched the yellowing paper. Good. It was dry now. Lee stormed in, a scowl on her face. She opened her mouth to yell at Marie some more, maybe bait her into having a good old-fashioned sisterly fight, but stopped when she saw the odd, almost sinister expression on her sister's face as she stroked the two sheets of paper.
"What's that you got there?"
"Oh, Lee," Marie snickered in response, fixing her sister with a happy, half-lidded blue eye. "It's just my new plan for Ed-catching…"
A/N: Woo-hoo! So what'd you guys think? Is it getting better? Getting worse? Did I stay in character? Please review! Reviews make me happy in my tummy.
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