milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

You're probably wondering where I've been. The answer is pretty simple, though.

Reading.

Yeah, nothing as dramatic as you were probably thinking. I haven't been brooding on my situation or planning some elaborate escape plot or anything. The way I figure it, nothing's happening at home and this place isn't going to let me out 'till it feels like it, so I'm going to enjoy the vacation while it lasts.

Besides, I'm behind on my Shadow pulps. How Grant puts them out so fast is a mystery to me, but if I'm here much longer I might see if there's an available typewriter and give my own writing a go as well. It's not like there isn't enough inspiration for stories here.

If you feel like chatting, feel free to stop by. I'm reading through one of my favorite Doc Savage stories, but I've read it before so a little conversation wouldn't do me wrong.

[ooc: mun is heading home from work. much love to all and I'll be back in an hour or so]

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"Hello jack" Amanda appears peside him (though not through any magical means)

She takes a seat without invitation.

I put down my reading and give her a smile.

"Hello, Amanda. What brings you by?"

"To be perfectly blunt, You. I saw a familiar face so I thought I would bug you." She smiles, "I hope you don't mind?"

I shrug and gesture to the bar.

"Can I get you anything?"

I'm not nursing my usual since I wasn't feeling even the least bit hungry, which is what happens when I don't really have to pull any tricks from my sleeve and just spend a few days reading peacefully.

And when I'd eaten yesterday.

"Coffee would be nice."

"Have you been meeting new and exciting people?"

I nod and ask the bar politely for some for her and it obliges me quickly enough. I nod my thanks and nudge it over to her.

"Not really. Mostly, I've been reading. Haven't had the chance recently."

She accepts the coffee, "Thank you"

"What have you been reading?"

"The Shadow. Doc Savage. It's not Shakespeare, but it passes the time."

"Few are. He certainaly knew how to"*grin*"write"

I smirk and roll my eyes.

"Sure did, ma'am."

I look like I'm 23. If I can't pull of an innocent look, I don't know what else this face is good for.

This gets her thinking, "You're a Vampire right, so even though you like you're 23, how old are you really? Did you know William?"

I laugh and shake my head.

"Nah, I'm not that old. Woke up from a bad swim a few weeks ago, to be honest. Though you're, uh, right about the vampire thing."

I look a bit bashful, and there's a reason. Mostly it has to do with all the bad press from movies like Dracula and all that, but the other part of it was that well...I don't look much like a vampire, if I say so myself.

"Wow, you are young. How did you become a vampire? I mean I know what I've seen in movies but there are so many different versions, it's interesting to learn which ones are real."

I avert my eyes, because it's still pretty painful to think about it. There's the part where I died, where a bunch of mobsters roughed me up before blowing me to kingdom come and tossing me into the icy depths of one of the Great Lakes...and then there's the part where I loved a girl who disappeared five years ago with all the warning of a single note.

"I died."

"You can become a vampire just by dying, interesting. DOes that mean that you were always a vampire and it just took the shock of a violent death to awaken it?"

She is too self absorbed at the moment to notice his pain.

I shake my head.

"No."

It finally hits her that it might be a sensitive subject for hiim. Especially since it happen such a short time ago. "I got excited. It just sounded like...." she trails off.

"It's better than not waking up, that's for sure, but it wasn't a fun time, really."

"I know." she sounds somber but perking up a bit, "Did you get any perks, other than the waking up part?"

...since she knows anyway.

I throw her a grin...and then fade away into nothing.

It feels damn good besides, but the look on her face...

She looks around quickly. SHe wasn't expecting that. But a huge grin crosses her face, she can think of a few uses for such a talent.

"Now that can be very useful."

I decide to float around behind her before materializing just enough to speak.

"You got it, sister."

And then I'm gone again.

She turns behind her when she hears the voice but by the time she looks, he is already gone.

"Alright, are you going to come back now?"

Right in her ear.

"Why would I want to do that?"

And gone again.

This is fun.

Too bad there isn't a way I can learn to do that without becoming a vampire, not that she is even sure she can.

"In all my years I've never seen, or not seen, anyone do this."

His mun, she snickers, thinks that she really needs to bring a certain character back and let him and Amanda meet...and she fears for many many priceless things when they do.

I reappear back in my sea and shrug.

"It's helpful at times."

I'm not going to say that I haven't taken things from stores while they were closed, but I have paid for them. If I'm a thief, then I'm an honest one.

whom might this fun sounding pup be?

Amanda has taken quite a few things from store, usually jewelry when the store was closed and not paid for them.

"I can certainaly think of a couple of things I would use it for."

Ray's been around and about for a good part of the day thus far, but this is the first chance he's had to slow down and snag some lunch. He happens to spot a familiar figure as he approaches the bar, and so he waves. "Hey, Jack."

I give him a grin and wave back.

"Hello, Ray. Stopping for a bite?"

I wince. That was a bad bad pun. I'm going to have to watch for things like that.

The things that change after you die.

It takes Ray a moment to realize that the pun's even been made- in fact, he's halfway through the sentence "Yeah, I could really use a hot lunch right about now" when the neuron fires and he blinks in some confusion at it. He recovers, though.

"Um. Yeah. Lunch- sorry, it's been a busy day. I think half my brain is still upstairs in the crystal growing rig I have in my quarters. HOw're you doing?"

I shrug and tap the top of my current story of choice.

"Catching up on my reading. Grant writes them faster than I can read them most days, so I figured I'd take the opportunity while I was here to relax a bit. You?"

"Just got back from a trip to a New York that wasn't mine," Ray says. "Spent a good month there just to make sure everything was in order before I left. My buddy Pete back in my own New York thinks I should write up the stuff that happens to me on these involuntary jaunts and sell it to Weird Tales, since they'll never be able to find out that it's not actually fiction anyway."

I grin.

"I wish you good luck with it. I've been trying to get into fiction since I left the Army. No luck yet, though. Keep getting stuck."

I liked to call myself a writer, because I'd read somewhere that anyone who put pen to paper could call themselves as such. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to put in the effort; though no one would ever see me struggling in front of the typewriter, I did it often enough that it was almost as draining as work.

"Thanks," Ray says. "I considered the prospect briefly in college, but that only lasted until I got my grades in engineering and advanced calculus back up to snuff. I know it's harder than it looks. At least I don't have to worry about making a living by it if I try it."

"I was a journalist up in New York for a bit. Did whatever they needed me for, sort of freelance, but I got by. It's not so bad, but I always wanted to do this sort of thing."

I tap the magazine again.

"Hasn't worked so far, though."

Ray nods. "Good luck with trying," he says. "And if you ever get a really good literary agent that you think might survive until, oh, 2004 or so, let me know. Even an old agent would be better than nothing."

I laugh and nod.

"He'd probably have to be someone like me, but I'll look into it."

"I've got no problem with that," Ray says. "The New York City I just left currently has a practicing CPA who's a zombie. Got reanimated about three minutes after his neck was broken, so he's still as whiz-bang with math as he was when he was alive. Gray, and his head tends to loll if he's not paying attention, but he's a hell of an accountant. After that?" Ray shrugs. "No problem at all."

I blink.

"Zombie?"

I thought that sort of thing was only the pulps, but I guess if folks like me are running around, I should get used to finding out about some truth that's stranger than fiction.

"Well, yeah. Not in the classical sense of a corpse resurrected by necromantic Voudoun rituals and poisons, but he hasn't got a pulse and he isn't a vampire, and the only reason he's still moving around is because a class nine summoned supernatural entity manifested and unleashed all of New York City's dead on the world of the living. For lack of a better vocabulary term, he's calling himself a zombie. It's not a category that U. S. law is currently equipped to handle so there's probably gonna be a few court cases until his status is cleared up, but he seems happy with it." Ray shrugs. "It's not all that often that I run into Earths that're stranger than my native New York, but this was one of them."

"New York serves up weird pretty well." I agree with him.

"Don't I know it," Ray says fervently. "I kind of feel sorry for people from nice ordinary places like Boston or Paris sometimes. They go through their lives thinking everything is normal and perfectly ordinary, and then something unexplainable pops up right in front of them and they're just not equipped to deal with it..."

Not that Ray is exactly a paragon of judging what's normal and what's not, but hey.

I grin.

"From Cincinnati, if you don't remember. I'm just well traveled."

"True," Ray says. "And the people of Boston have all those college students to contend with. Still, I think you take my point."

I nod, still grinning.

"Yeah. Then again, the only thing a college student is afraid of is a deadline."

True of a lot of journalists too.

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