Four Two sniffed at the straw protuding
from the cardboard box. He saw Ton's eyes slant slightly, there was a warning
in them. He quickly took a long drink from the straw. It tasted like tropical
flavour, though it had a chalky aftertaste. Ton's expression softened to the
normal brick wall it was previously and he guided him out the door as the
attendant handed a fruit box to the girl holding his hand. With the other kids
with fruit box behind them, they were shepherded towards what looked like a
school building. They were led through double-doors and into what looked like
dorm rooms with bunk beds. As they got closer to the beds, Four Two felt his
head go cloudy and his eyelids grow heavy. The aftertaste of the fruit box was
extremely strong now, he couldn't finish his drink. Everything got very hazy
and then a phone started ringing.
*RIIIIIING*
*RIIIING*
The mime awoke with a start and saw the red
nose on his 'sad clown' phone was flashing as it rang it's annoying fire alarm
ring. He wondered who it could possibly be as he reached towards it, surely it
wasn't an acting job? Though maybe that would be a good idea.
*RIIIIIIIIING*
He punched the phone in its flashing red
nose while simultaneously grabbing the receiver with his other hand. The phone
went flying off the table and then bounced back and the mime had to dodge
slightly back to avoid being hit in the chest by the monstrosity.
"Hello? Hello?" There was an
urgent voice on the line, sounded female but slightly disguised so may not have
been.
He engaged his answering system on the
table and saw the gently lit keyboard come into view. He typed in his reply and
heard the robotic voice speak his words.
"Father Teddy Severas utilities. How
can I help?"
"I heard you can act."
The mime smiled. If only they knew.
--
There was not much we could do at the
hospital. After finding out that it was the hospital we first thought it was, a
short taxi ride led us to finding Peter's room. He was semi-conscious and
begged us to go home while he recovered. His parents were already there and
said they could take over looking after him. Tina tried to insist but then the
hospital staff came in and said that they had to respect the wishes of the
parents and that he needed his rest anyway.
Tina was fuming as we walked down the
corridor leading to the exit of the hospital.
"Hey, do you want to go get a coffee
somewhere?" I said.
"Hmm" she said, "are you
going to try and give me one of your special hugs?"
I felt my face go red, "Hey, can't I
get a pass on my birthday? Technically I have the right to be naked."
"What?"
"You know, birthday suit."
She smiled slightly. "If you had been
naked when that happened, I may not still be talking to you..."
Menhaus felt his face redden again. Tina
punched him on the arm, "Don't worry about it, stupid. Let's go find a
cafe." She walked up out of the hospital towards the street and Menhaus
followed. He watched as her dress bounced around her, slightly riding up her
hips and she sped-walked towards the cafe strip. Argh, stop doing this to
yourself, he thought. "You didn't even have any thoughts like this about
her before, is this a reaction to having seen something tragic together? Some
sort of life impulse that makes me want to procreate as quickly as possible? Or
was it just a 'male' thing of her having gotten him hard so now his brain kept
producing those sexual thoughts every time he looked at her? It was probably the
latter." And yet, as he kept watching her, he realised she *was* quite
sexy. He did already know this, being a bit superficial in his choice of
friends, but now it seemed to be abundant, practically overflowing his vision
of her. She turned her head slightly towards him and winked. He felt a stir in
his pants. Oh, crap. "Hey there's a place!" She yelled, pointing to a
vaguely Italian-style place on the corner. Menhaus followed at a spritely limp,
trying to think very cold thoughts.
--
The job the mime had been given was simple.
He had to go to a gathering of people and pretend to be the person that he had
talked to on the phone. It turned out that the people they were 'meeting' with
were actually people that had only talked to his client within an internet chat
room so did not know anything about them aside from what they had told them
themselves. The mime himself did not know a lot about his client, aside from
being reasonably sure that it was a female. Obviously they would be pretending
to be male in the chat room. Obviously.
He loaded up his computer and went to his
email, where he found the transcripts of all the chats his client had ever had
in this chat room. He skimmed through the first couple. It appeared to be a
place where people who were working on books gathered to swap ideas and
encourage each other. Why would 'she' need to hide herself from them? In any
case, it was not his place to question, only to perform the job, which he
charged top dollar for. She called herself "Kusa" in the chat. It
seemed that she was one of the people moderating the group, though on occasion
there were privileges randomly handed out if the other moderators were feeling
generous or silly.
When he was reading through the chats he
noticed that not much of any consequence was actually discussed, it was mostly
a random mix of general pop culture tidbits and passing on of youtube videos of
things that were popular six or seven years before. Sometimes plots were
brought up but not that often. He gathered that the person he would be
'playing' was a reasonably fast writer but not as fast as a couple of others in
the group. He made a note of the particularly fast ones as it was sure to come
up in conversation. Once he had done this, he resumed reading, this time making
notes of any personality traits that came through strongly of the person he was
meant to be 'playing'.
The main one appeared to be a general
passive-aggressiveness. He wondered if his client was actually aware of this
and whether he should downplay it in actual face to face event. Usually when
people had that trait, they were surprised to have it pointed out to them. In
fact, in his experience, they became quite hostile. He decided to have the very
slightest twinge of it be there, but not so much that it would actually get on
anyone's nerves. People were typically a bit different online to ho they were
in real life regardless, and having only the printed word to express yourself
with tended to leave a lot of things open to interpretation where otherwise
body language would have smoothed over misunderstandings or unintended
aggression.
Another thing he picked up was a slight patronising tone to those who were more than two years younger or who had not
been writing for as long. This one he found interesting but not too hard to
decide what to do about at the actual event. He would go completely the other
way and be extra friendly to the young and new people. It was a subconscious
predatory technique but one the client would be completely aware of and be
happy to have replicated, though for totally different reasons in her head. He
saw a fair amount of intelligence being displayed and also a hint of social
awkwardness which likely would be ten-fold in actual company. Now he thought
about it, it would probably be much more than that. Possibly enough anxiety to
hire a professional 'place taker' to do the job? No, there must be a further
motive than that. Nevertheless, not his place. As he continued to read through
the chat transcripts a weird pattern seemed to be emerging that he couldn't
quite put his finger on. He knew he would figure it out eventually so he put it
aside before it drove him crazy and started noting down key phrases that were
repeated a lot by his client. After that, he started making notes of anytime
she... or rather, "Kusa" mentioned buying or wearing particular
pieces or clothing and what level of affection they had for them.
He jumped ahead to recent chats where the
people in the room were talking about the upcoming catch up to see if Kusa had
said they were going to do anything specific. Sure enough they talked about
baking cookies for the event. Cookies? He guessed he could go get a mix from
the supermarket or something. It would be easy enough to just say he decided he
couldn't be bothered or just didn't have enough time in the end but it didn't
seem in the character of Kusa to do that. He would just have to work out what
sort of cookies to arrange once he had his complete character profile. He
opened his drawer and pulled out a lime green highlighter, a black pen, a red
pen and a gold paint pen. He then told his computer to print out all the chat
logs. He knew it would take a while, even on his laser printer so he went over
to his kitchen and got himself an apple. By instinct, he flicked it up and over
his wrist and caught it again in a deft motion. He then flicked it up onto the
back of his hand and lifted him arm slightly so it rolled back. As it
approached his elbow, he bent his arm and twisted it slightly so the apple was
caught on the crook. He then smartly snapped his arm out and caught the apple
on his shoulder, at the side of his head. He let it roll around to the other
side much like a basketballer and then guided it down his other arm, caught it,
threw it into the air and grabbed another apple from his fruit bowl and began
juggling them with one hand. He grabbed a third and fourth apple with his other
hand and threw them in the air to join his current play. He continued in this
manner, occasionally passing an apple under a leg until he got bored and caught
one in his mouth, then let the other three drop onto his right arm and roll
back into the fruit bowl.
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