Beat 90: The Only Viable Response to Rejection
Lloyd sat on what
remained of the den’s couch, scratching absentmindedly at his temple. Thankfully, he’d gotten over his grogginess
-- though he couldn’t deny a hidden desire to go to the hospital, or at least
see a school nurse -- and at the moment had little more than a rumbling
stomach. If he wasn’t half-covered in
bandages, wounds, and a forcibly-made pair of shorts, he might have looked as
if he’d gained inner peace.
The same couldn’t be
said for Sheila. She might not have
taken as much punishment as Lloyd, but as she sat across from Lloyd on the
remnants of a coffee table, she looked about ready to pledge herself as a slave
to the first person that walked past. She
kept her head hung low, and gripped her knees with the force of a vise. Said knees wobbled and knocked together on
occasion, and her uplifted shoulders trembled enough to dance out of their
sockets. The only thing she could get to
come down normally were streams of snot dribbling down her nose -- and as
always, she sucked them back up at perfectly-timed intervals.
Trixie leaned toward
Lloyd’s ear from behind the couch. “I
got a real bad feelin’ ‘bout all this, pal.
Ya sure this is all gonna work out?”
“I still got my doubts
on that one,” said Trixie as her gaze hardened.
“Eh? Why’s that?”
“Ain’t it
obvious?” She drew closer to Lloyd’s
ear. “J-just look at the way she’s
sittin’! The way she’s got her arms,
she’s pushin’ her…her things together! It ain’t right! It’s indecent! Indecent!”
“Um, I can still hear
you,” said Sheila.
Trixie leapt back three
feet -- and after realizing she’d stared at Sheila for more than two seconds,
she spun around to face the kitchen.
“I-I-I didn’t mean nothin’ by it!
I swear! It’s just…uh….” She rubbed the back of her reddening
neck. “I got a real hard time dealin’
with girls that’re…that, uh…ya know…have been drinkin’ their milk.”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t help it,” said Sheila. And then her ear wiggled. “Hey!
Don’t you DARE apologize for being who you are! You should be proud! I sure as hell am!”
Deirdre sat up straight
-- but only for a half-second. Before
anyone could even process the torch-passing, Deirdre shifted into a sultry
pose, making sure to give Trixie a come-hither look (something that might have
worked better if not for several feet of lenses pinned to her face). “You know, doll face, you’re pretty easy to
read. Maybe the reason you get so flustered by a body like mine is because
you’re the one who’s really
‘indecent’.”
Trixie spun
around. “I-I ain’t even close to bein’ indecent, lady! There ain’t nobody purer than me! Ya can just go on down to Rockwood and ask
anybody there!”
“Wh-why are you yelling
at me?” Sheila asked, pulling her arms closer.
“What? No, no, no -- I wasn’t tryin’ to yell at -- I
was talkin’ to that other --”
Deirdre folded her arms
and smirked. “My eyes are up here, doll
face. Or maybe you just want a closer look…?” She tugged on a flap of her robe.
“Lloyd! Stop her!” Trixie yelled.
“Let’s see where this
is going.”
“DAMMIT, LLOYD! DON’T MAKE ME --!” Trixie curled up in a ball behind the
couch. “I ain’t gonna look, I ain’t
gonna look, I ain’t gonna look, I ain’t gonna look…”
“I kinda like being in
the real world,” said Deirdre. She
rubbed her nose. “Could do without this
damn thing trying to drown me, though.”
“I-I’ve got a nasal
spray if you need it,” said Sheila.
“Nasal spray? What do you think I am -- some kind of nerd?!”
Sheila pointed at her
face. “You kind of are.”
There’s absolutely no way any of this can go wrong, Lloyd
thought. His smile started to
quiver. I hope.
And right on cue, Mrs.
Overdose and Jane emerged from the hall, sparing not a word between them. Lloyd leapt off the couch and offered his
seat to Jane, and retreated behind Sheila as fast as he could -- judging by the
look on the mother’s face (and the previous battles she’d had with the
daughter), he didn’t want to get between them.
Mrs. Overdose followed right behind him, one hand in her pocket, another
on her shotgun, and reed swishing through her mouth.
“Milady,” Lloyd
whispered. “How’d it go?”
Mrs. Overdose looked up
at the ceiling for a moment. “Somewhere
along the line, the conversation switched to guns.”
“That could mean any
number of things.”
“Yeah. Too bad most of ‘em end with you blown to
pieces.”
Jane cleared her throat
loudly, drawing attention back to her (and hopefully not her murderous
rage). She crossed her legs and folded
her arms, with her right eyebrow twitching every once in a while -- likely not
a good sign, Lloyd reasoned. “So let me
see if I’ve got this right,” she began.
“I let in a nice -- if stupid -- boy to try and help my daughter, and he
invites a train wreck of a southern belle and a gun-toting grandma to stage a
kidnapping and torture session with my daughter --”
“To be fair, madam, it
was only a matter of tactical application,” said Lloyd -- but since Jane’s
knife-edged stare nearly made his intestines rupture, he decided not to
interrupt again.
“I would have been okay
with it if you had just given her a nice pep talk or something -- I would have loved it. But instead, you go ahead and do some kind of
mind-meld with my daughter that gives her a personality disorder. And now you’re trying to tell me that she’s
better off this way. Do I have that
right?”
“Well, if you want to
put a negative spin on things, then yes.”
Jane’s eyes shifted
back to Sheila. “So how is this supposed
to work? Every time your ear wiggles,
you switch from one personality to the next?
Or are we just overhearing a private conversation between the…the two of you?”
“It’s probably closer
to the first one,” said Sheila.
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
Her ear wiggled. “I’d be happy with ‘probably’ if I were you,
mommy dearest,” said Deirdre.
Jane massaged her
forehead, and then let loose a weighty sigh.
“All right. So you’ve managed to
fix my daughter. So how are you going to
ACTUALLY fix her? Are you just going to
leave well enough alone? Is this what
you consider ‘well enough’ in the first place?
Because if you ask me, your definition isn’t exactly the one I had in
mind.”
Lloyd opened his mouth
and held up a finger -- and a nanosecond later he jerked his head towar Mrs.
Overdose. “Milady. Some counsel?” he whispered.
“What are you askin’ me
for? This was your plan, wasn’t it?”
“This discussion is not
progressing as I would have hoped. I
suspect I need some immediate course correction if I’m to escape with my limbs
intact.” He smiled wistfully. “Ah, what I would give to be in the company
of the same madam who once offered me the finest baked goods in all of
Porbeagle…”
“Counsel, huh? Hmmm.”
She swiveled her reed about. “I
think you should grovel.”
“Will that help?”
“Got any better ideas?”
Lloyd shook his head,
and prepared to throw himself before Jane’s feet. But before he could, Sheila held up a hand to
stop him. “It’s okay, Lloyd. I…I think I can handle this one.” She set her hand back down, but lifted her
head -- and with only the slightest of snorts she looked dead ahead at
Jane. “I know that things don’t look
very bright right now, and it sounds like this is actually the worst thing that
could ever happen to me, but…but I think that this is the best thing I could
have ever wished for.”
Jane raised an
eyebrow. “And why’s that?”
“I don’t really get
what happened, but Lloyd…he forced me to change. He did something that I never would have done
on my own. And now, I have to return the
favor.” She shook her head. “No. I
want to keep changing. On my own. I want to become something more than what
I’ve been, and go as far as he thinks I can.
If it means that I’m different now, then -- th-then I guess that’s
fine. It’s just something I have to
handle so I can follow my dream…and become someone that’ll make you proud.”
Jane’s eyes
widened. And little by little, the
tension she’d nursed dissipated; everyone in the room nearly breathed a sigh of
relief as Jane came closer to the cookie-peddling persona Lloyd had held so
dear. “Someone that’ll make me proud,
huh?”
“Uh-huh. And…y-you know, I’m sorry for being so much
trouble all the time. I was…I was just
really confused, that’s all.”
“Heh. Makes no difference to me. A troublemaker of a daughter sure makes my
life more interesting,” Jane said, now capable of forming a smile. “So you say you’ve got a dream? What is it?”
Lloyd stepped past
Sheila. “Ah. That’s something that might require a bit
more introspection. But in time, she --”
“Lloyd. I can handle this,” said Sheila, waving him
away. She turned back to Jane and nodded
slowly. “I’ve decided. I want to be a stripper.”
Twelve Seconds Later
“GET OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUT!”
The front door blasted
open -- and not long after, Lloyd went flying through it. He sailed halfway through the lawn before his
crown bounced against some concrete; after that, he tumbled drunkenly until he
came to a stop in the middle of the street.
“Okay, I deserved that.”
And by his guess, the
others did too. Sheila rolled towards
him shortly afterward, moaning and rubbing her forehead as she sat up. Trixie outright belly-flopped against the
ground -- and if not for the surge of pain, she would have stayed in place like
dried-out roadkill. Mrs. Overdose…just
walked out of the house, swishing her reed and lugging her shotgun over her
shoulder.
“What the hell? How’d ya not get thrown out?!” Trixie yelled.
Mrs. Overdose
shrugged. “Respect for elders?”
“How old are ya?”
“Not that old.”
Sheila stood up and
turned toward the house. “Mom? We can talk this out, right? I thought we’d be able to bond over this! You know, a mother-daughter thing!”
Jane poked her head out
of the doorway. “I don’t ever want to
see your face here again! EVER! I have no daughter!” And with that, she slammed the door shut --
with enough force to make a few neighborhood darks break into a fit of barking.
“…Well, that could have
gone better,” said Lloyd as he dusted himself off. “I must say, though, your mother has a
phenomenal throwing arm, Miss O’Leary.”
Trixie stood up and
nursed her stomach. “Are ya kiddin’ me,
lady? A stripper? That’s your
big dream? Bein’ a STRIPPER?”
“I-I don’t know! It was the first thing that popped into my
head!” Sheila shoved her fingers
together and stared at the ground (or at least an approximation of where it
would be under her chest). “It was a
spur of the moment thing! I -- I-I-I just
didn’t want my mom to think I was gonna come up empty-handed!”
“So ya jumped straight
past doctor, or cook, or pilot and went straight to stripper?”
“Now, now, Miss
Walters. Let’s not get too overworked
here -- you’re missing the important thing here.” Lloyd stepped in front of Sheila. “You just said something on impulse, yes? The first thing that popped into your mind?”
Sheila nodded rapidly,
although she looked as if she wanted to cry.
“Miss O’Leary! Could it be that you’ve already begun to
change yourself? You acted spontaneously
without any input from Deirdre! Surely
that has to count for something! It’s
proof that you have the potential to do something great -- no matter where or
when you land!”
“Y-you think so?” Sheila looked at her hands. “Maybe I can.
Maybe I really can do…wait, hold on a minute.” She took a dozen steps backward and turned
her back on Lloyd. “So what does that
mean for us?” she asked herself, turning to her left.
Sheila -- or rather
Deirdre -- turned to her right. “Who
knows? It’s not like I’ve had full
control over you beforehand. So maybe it
was just a fluke.”
Sheila turned to her
left. “You think so?”
Deirdre turned to her
right. “Hard to say. But I guess the important thing is that
things are changing for us, whether we like it or not.”
“So what should we do?”
“For once, I’m at a
loss. Normally I’m on top of things, but
it seems like every time I take control of the body I can’t really focus. All I can think about is how much my back
hurts…”
“W-well, that’ll
happen. But once you get in the right
mindset, you kinda just start dealing with it.”
“How? I just want to lie down and sleep it off…and
is there ANYTHING we can do about this damn nose?!”
Sheila peeked over her
shoulder. “Ummmm…I have an idea, if
you’re up for it. Maybe it’ll take your
mind off of things.”
“Does it involve a back
brace? Because if it does, I’m all for
it.”
“Nuh-uh. It’s…”
Sheila peeked over her shoulder once more, and then started whispering
to herself.
“I’m pretty sure I said
this already,” said Trixie, “but I really
don’t think this is gonna work out too well.”
Mrs. Overdose
nodded. “The kid sure knows how to pick
‘em.”
Lloyd would have made
an objection if Sheila hadn’t trotted back toward him. “L-Lloyd?
Um, I’ve been wondering if…if it’s all right with you…s-since we’ve
pretty much got the rest of the day to ourselves, what with being expelled and
all…ummmmm…”
She took a deep breath
-- and practically bellowed her question.
“WOULD YOU GO OUT WITH
ME?”
TO BE HEARTINUED…
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