Dream Date

"You can't ruin someone's day just by being in it," he murmured to himself.

"Normal people don't feel bad when they come out on the other side of the subway than they're used to. They don't feel like they're betraying the normal smoke shop that they go to when they buy a $10 indica pre-roll and a $1 plastic red lighter from the smoke shop closer to this side of the subway. In fact, they think that's cool!" he was pacing in front of the brownstone at this point. People were walking past, slowing their pace to eavesdrop on him for an extra two seconds at a time.

"Normal people don't feel bad when they get to somebody's house 10 minutes early for movie night, they just walk around the block until they're 15 minutes late." He immediately started walking around the block but just as quickly ran into Carter, three paces ahead, with a backpack full of groceries.

"Drew!" his date said, "You're early."

"Sor-"

"Don't be sorry!"

"Okay, sorry, yeah, no I'm not, uh, fuck you," Drew murmured.

"What?"

"Nothing. Fuck you."

"Okay," Carter laughed.

"I brought weed."

The two moved inside and Carter kicked his roommates out, played The Roches' self-titled album, and made a bag of frozen pasta. "Should we watch a horror movie? I love when they kill each other."

Absolutely not. Normal people don't watch horror movies and they feel completely normal about that and all of their friends support that decision. They're called horror movies, they are trying to scare you, yet god forbid you be scared by them? How dare you set a boundary?! No. It's alright to set boundaries. Why not watch something funny? Everybody likes something funny. Or cool. Action. "Um... which one?" Drew said.

"Maybe Halloween?"

"It's March."

"You're so funny."

Absolutely not. "Uh... sure, I gue- yeah." Drew pulled up the Wikipedia synopsis of the movie to avoid any surprises. They were on the couch, and it wasn't the most comfortable couch, but it was small, so they had to sit close.

Kyle Richards run for your life.

"Wait, is your nose bleeding?" Carter asked, pausing the movie.

Finally. Ever since he was a kid, Drew was able to work himself up to the point of a nosebleed. It used to require much more thrashing of his arms, but he's since perfected the technique. It takes a lot of focus, admittedly 35 minutes' worth this time. Poor Jamie Lee Curtis. Frozen on the screen, nineteen years old, a child actor by all accounts. 

"Do you have any tissues? I like the soft ones, like the ones with lotion in them somehow," Drew became cocky in spite of his current condition.

"Uh, sure," Carter said, "I have paper towels?"

Maybe this is ruining his day. I hope he still wants to make out with me. If we make out should I tell him that I faked the nosebleed or will he be mad at me? It's not like I manipulated him or anything. And I'm not ruining his day, I can't be. You can't do that. "You can't ruin someone's day just by being in it," he murmured to himself.

"Huh?" Carter sat back down next to his date with a fistful of (crumpled, not folded) paper towel, "Tilt your head back."

Diamond

this was a self challenge: write something that takes place before electricity was invented (without looking up any details of that time)

_____________

"Count Mariner, what are you doing here?" the lady of the house asked, clearly on one.

"Diamond, shush," the Count quieted his yapping Shiba Inu, "Mary Beth, I've tried being patient, but I know you. You've taken bigger risks before and you'll take bigger ones again, so it's time you gave me an answer."

"No."

"'No', as in that's your answer, or 'No' as in you won't give me an answer?" the Count countered.

"Enough, I've had it with your silly games of wit. My answer is no, as in I would never go all in on a business with you. Not after what you've put my father through. The anguish, the torment. You know you drove him to... you drove him..." Mary Beth trailed off.

"I what? Where did I drive him? The shop? The mall?"

Mary Beth's father was a financier, and a good one. Until the Count came into his life. The two built these great dreams (driven by the Count's propensity to the imagined) of what the world could be, and Mary Beth's father fell victim to their attempt at actualization. How could he have known that after throwing all of his money into the Count's plan to build a tunnel system between his home and the Mayor's house as a means of influencing local policy, the Count would sue him for intellectual property, causing Mary Beth's father to go bankrupt? He should have known, but how could he have? Now Mary Beth was forced to rely on her own husband's dwindling income to support her lifestyle (addiction to gambling).

"You drove him to drink," Mary Beth bit back, "and die. You drove him to drink and die."

Suddenly, the lord of the house appeared. It seems the two's tones weren't as hushed as they'd hoped. He was completely nude and all out of sorts.

"Wife? What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?" he asked Mary Beth.

"Charles, dear, you've lost yourself in the night. Retire to bed if you'd please," the lady of the house responded.

"Why? So you can proceed in your affair with this scoundrel?"

"Nothing of the sort is happening here," Mary Beth assured him.

"Enough. In these twelve years of matrimony, I've come to learn you raise your rightmost eyebrow up in the air when you lie, as I see you're doing now," Charles said, reflexively performing the gesture as he spoke. He was right that his wife had this tell, and that she had done it this very morning when she told him she would be delighted to have his parents visit for the winter months, however, she was not doing it now. He was looking at his own face in a mirror, unaware that his wife was off to his left, "Now, I want the truth and I want it from this man. Count Mariner: is my wife attempting to seduce you for reasons personal or professional?"

"About as much as you are, old man," the Count said with a chuckle, he always laughed at his own jokes.

Was this answer enough for the lord of the house? Likely not, as Charles was on a pill. It was a special regimen, straight from his doctor, to help cure his liver, which at this very moment was looking for the emergency exit. The side effects were simple in concept, though complex in their magnitude. Basically, they just made him act "nuts", for lack of a better term. The sciences were a very young field, and only those with Charles's status (high, though less so than the Count) could afford the risk of experimenting with them. Charles was convinced his wife was preparing to take off in the night with her own arch-rival to begin anew atop a top tropic (topical, he thought, given the discussions he and his wife had about someday visiting the Maldives once his condition was better managed).

And so the lord of the house pulled out his hunting whistle, blew it, and before anybody knew what was happening, the Count's dog Diamond prepared to maul all three humans in the room to death.

The dog was entranced as if acting on some primal instinct to kill. She went for the Count first, the saddest detail of all. Any shred of loyalty to her owner evaporated the instant she heard the whistle's tone. Mary Beth and Charles screamed, but that only encouraged the dog's work. Diamond was smart, she knew where the heart was, and she knew how hard she would have to bite.

Mary Beth tried to kick the dog, but Diamond was too fast, grabbing the lady of the house's foot in her mouth, and using the Count's corpse as leverage to throw Mary Beth face-first into the mirror hanging on the wall. Glass (mirrors are made of glass) shattered about, illuminating the room with an almost gay spirit. It was in these shards that one could see Charles's naked body, very poorly hidden behind a rail-thin lamp. He thought he was better concealed, but alas, his pill. Regardless of his prowess in the art of hiding from a dog who had just gotten the insatiable taste for human blood, Diamond could smell him, and made quick work of disassembling each appendage of his body.