Michelle came down the stairs, one hand clenching at the collar of her robe while the other rubbed her eyes. It was almost 5am, and she had woken up with an upset stomach, so she went in search of some crackers and water. However, as she neared the landing, she could hear the soft gentle crying of Delores in the kitchen. She approached cautiously and peered inside, only to see Delores sitting at the table, looking at a small photo album. Michelle entered and cleared her throat, giving Delores ample time to wipe her face on her robe sleeves and try to catch her breath.
"Are you okay?" Michelle asked, her voice raspy from sleep. "I'm....having a moment," Delores replied, half laughing, "are you?" "I don't feel great, I needed a snack," Michelle said, sitting down at the table, "but...if you wanna talk about it, we can-" "There's nothing to discuss, no, it's okay," Delores said, "I was just...I was thinking about my daughter was all. Some nights it gets to be too hard to ignore. There's some tea on the stove, if you're thirsty. I'm gonna try to go back to sleep, I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well." With that, Delores stood up and, taking the photo album with her, she kissed Michelle's forehead before yawning and heading back up the stairs, mug in her other hand. Michelle looked around the kitchen and sighed. She knew Delores saw her as a surrogate daughter of sorts, as she was a mother stand in to Michelle, but this incident made Michelle want to give something more to Delores than she could. She wanted to give her her family back. But how could she possibly do that? She knew next to nothing about her daughter, and wasn't sure where to begin to look. Another night of uncertainty. *** Justine didn't remember anything about the crash except for hearing her boyfriends screams. It was strange, she was so eerily calm in the face of possible eternal nothingness, and yet her boyfriend was the one screaming like a little girl. His screams, and the difference between the two of them, was the only thing she could recall. The next thing she knew, she was laying in a hospital bed and could barely move. In fact it even hurt to breath. She looked to her side and saw a glass of water, so she reached over, grasping it best she could, and pulled it to her lips where she took long, steady gulps. Once it was empty, she set it back down and coughed a little, before noticing that also on the bedside table where the glass had been was a card. She once again reached for it, struggling to do so, and after getting it in her bandaged hands, she opened it slowly - too much movement hurt - and read the inscription on the inside. It was from her mother, Delores, and it was a whole two paragraphs long. After scanning it, she felt herself tear up and put the card back on the table, face down, and promised herself she'd never speak to her mother again. And she hadn't since that day. She made a lot of promises that afternoon in that hospital bed: get back to good health, never fly again and cut her mother off, and since then...well... ...she was proud to admit she'd stuck true to all of them thus far. *** "I can find her, don't worry," Liam said, and Michelle looked at him with casual uncertainty. She heard Eliza set down a pair of scissors on the table in The Hole and looked behind her momentarily before resetting her gaze on Liam once again. "You can?" "I can find anybody," Liam said, "Michelle, you of all people should know how easy it is to actually track someone down, given what you and Keagan managed to accomplish. Just give me a few days and I can definitely get the information you need." Liam sipped from his coffee cup as he and Michelle went back to watching, from afar, Eliza create a new prop for the show. The Hole had quickly become the hide out for Eliza's immediate friend circle, and she wasn't at all bothered by this. Liam was a close friend, Bea was like a secondary mother, and Michelle was her girlfriend. Her workspace was their safe space. Michelle sighed and tossed her hair. "What if she doesn't want to be found? What if I'm...what if I'm making a huuuuuuge mistake by doing this? For all I know she and Delores hate eachother. I mean, when Delores first told me about her, she said Justine specifically cut ties, and didn't want her help or company any longer. What if I'm fucking that up by reaching out?" Michelle asked, chewing anxiously on her nails. "Your justifications are sound, regardless of the outcome. Besides, as someone who hates their mother, I think perhaps it's imperative that you two speak," Liam replied, "maybe you could both give one another some much needed insight." Michelle nodded, taking in Liam's opinion to heart. Michelle hadn't even heard so much as a peep from her mother since Beatrice confronted her in the hospital hallway. Not that she minded, the less interaction between the two of them the better, she felt. They both went back to watching Eliza as she turned on her sewing machine and began to stitch. Michelle smiled a little. At least, in the moments of sheer uncertainty, she was confident that she had someone in her life who loved her the way she needed to be loved, and she knew she was lucky in that regard. Not everyone had that. "Let me know when and if you find anything," Michelle said, and Liam nodded. "Yeah, of course, you'll be the first to hear about it, besides me obviously," Liam replied, the both of them chuckling. Michelle walked towards the table to talk to Eliza and, watching them converse, Liam thought back to his own family. He'd met Bea's parents now, he'd seen where she'd come from, but Michelle was still such an enigma to him. His own family hadn't been much better though, to be fair. He wasn't nearly as estranged from them as, say, Michelle was, but he did try to keep contact rather to a minimum. He thought back to Justine, and Michelle's inquiries about her whereabouts, and he realized he was somewhat of a hypocrite. How could he justify finding someone who so clearly didn't want to be found? But that's what he did. That's what he had. Found family. What better reason was there, really? *** Justine laid on her couch and exhaled deeply. It had been a long day. She'd done a ton of watercolors, sketches, charcoal drawings, and more for the current kids book in production, and her hands hurt and the last thing she wanted to do was more work. Right now she wanted to rest, relax, maybe watch some sort of history show where she could shut her brain halfway off. She turned the TV on, put the volume to a low rumble, and pulled a pillow over her face. But the rest didn't last long, because only a few minutes later did her landline ring. She groaned, annoyed, and rolled over, reached across the armrest of the couch and gripped the phone from its base on the table beside her and pulled it to her face. "Hello?" she asked, but nobody spoke. She sighed and spoke again, "helllloooo? Is anyone there?" This had been happening for weeks now, on and off. She waited for a few moments, and then hung up. It rang again a few minutes later, only for the same thing to occur. She was beginning to get very frustrated with this, and had even considered outright canceling her phone service or even changing her number, but she knew that wasn't logical. Justine laid there on the couch and stared at the ceiling, thinking about what she should do that evening. She didn't want to work anymore, so maybe she should go out and get something to eat. Peter had always liked going to... ...and that's when the despair set in. As soon as Peter was invited into her mind, everything else went out the door. She felt like she was being dragged down into a tar pit from which, no matter the amount she struggled to do so, she could not break free. He was gone. He had been here. He had been her best friend, her lover, possibly her future husband (they had discussed marriage on a number of occasions in fact, and neither felt remotely opposed to the idea). They'd lived together for a number of years, and to lose him, especially in the way that she had...she often wished she'd just died as well. What was the point of survival, she questioned, if it meant surviving on your own? She knew people hated the whole 'don't let someone else be half of your whole' belief of romance, but that's what they had been. Two halves of a whole. Now here she was, merely a half, and most days she barely felt like that even. She'd started writing a novel in her spare time when she wasn't working on childrens books, but she'd only gotten maybe 15k words deep, and was struggling to get further, not because it was challenging - she was nothing if incredibly artistically inclined - but because it just hurt so deeply to write about things she no longer could experience. Justine rolled onto her side, tugging the pillow into her chest, her face now touching its nose to the back cushions of the couch and she started to cry. Everything had lost its luster. Even the mundane things, like grocery shopping, were now even somehow more dull than they had been with him. Maybe she just wouldn't eat dinner tonight. She hadn't been eating as much since the accident. She was losing weight fast. But, like with everything else, she just didn't care. The next early afternoon, the phone rang again, jolting her awake on the couch, and again, when she answered, there was nobody. She knew there were a few possibilities: either her mother, Delores, calling and then hanging up out of fear, a wrong number, a faulty connection, a prank. But despite all these being such obvious reasons, the one she clung to was the hope, however bleak and ridiculous as it might've seemed, was that it was Peter trying to call her, tell her he was in fact okay wherever it was he had ended up. But she knew that was stupid. It was raining. She made some cocoa and went back to sleep. *** Casey Kochawski was sitting in the backroom of the pizzeria, alone, smoking a joint. The costumes head was sitting on the couch beside her, as she blew smoke into the air, and then waved it away with her pawed hand, dispersing it. The doorknob twisted, and Casey worried, trying to figure out what to do with the joint, but when the door opened, it was Beatrice coming in. She smiled at seeing Casey smoking, and pulled a chair over towards the couch, seating herself and watching Casey watching her nervously. "Uh...I'm...I'm sorry. I shouldn't...I shouldn't be-" Casey said, clearly anxious. "Nah, you're good," Bea said, "smoke 'em if you got 'em. I just wanted to come by and thank you for the piece of art you gave me the other week." "Oh!" Casey said, now smiling, "Yeah, yes! Of course! You're...you're so welcome! I'm so glad you liked it." "How did you even become a fan?" Bea asked, as Casey held the joint out to her and she hesitantly took it, taking a long puff as Casey adjusted herself on the couch. "This costume is so bulky," she muttered under her breath, making Bea chuckle as she added, "um...actually, I watched it when it was originally on too. I grew up poor, so...so we didn't get a lot of TV channels, cause we couldn't get cable or whatever, so I just watched whatever was available, and the channel I watched the most, our local channel, got your show. But I never...I never looked into it or anything, like that girl did, I never recorded and digitized it. I just...remembered it." Bea nodded, listening, waiting for Casey to go on. After a moment, Casey exhaled and continued. "Uh...and...uh...my house was always filled with yelling. My parents hated one another," Casey said, "I was practically ignored, like...like to the point where child services were often involved cause I didn't...I'd go to school without shoes because my shoes would wear out and nobody would get me new shoes and stuff like that. Whenever I did ask for help, my parents would just yell at me, before yelling at one another again. So having your show, someone so gentle, talk to me reassuringly...I don't know. It really helped." Bea wanted to cry. She handed the joint back to Casey and put a hand over her mouth, trying to keep herself from breaking down. Casey turned the joint around in her hand and looked at it for a long minute before continuing to smoke. "I guess, I don't know, I just wanted you to know how much good you did, even if you thought you didn't do any," Casey said, "cause I know the feeling of feeling like nothing I'm doing matters. I mean, here I am, no high school diploma, dropped out in 8th grade, and I'm working here, pretending to be you. But that's kinda exactly what I always wanted. Was to be you, you know? It's like this weird middle path between ashamed and proud." Bea nodded, as Justine took another long drag. Bea finally reached across and put her hand on Casey's knee, the both of them looking into one anothers eyes. "...do you want a job?" Bea asked. "I have a job," Casey said, laughing. "Come work with me," Bea said. "You mean for you?" "No," Bea said, shaking her head, "I mean with me." Casey smiled, and wanted to cry. Even now, as an adult, here was the dog, always looking out for her. *** "Tada," Liam said, leaning over Michelle's current prop in the making - a new rose bush made from plastic - holding out a piece of paper towards her. Michelle got up from her knees and cautiously took it, looking at him as he stayed leaning there. "Okay first of all, you can only say that if you're a magician," Michelle replied, "secondly that's wet paint." "Ah!" Liam shouted, recoiling, now noticing the wet paint on his coats elbows, "god, you couldn't have told me that sooner?!" Michelle cracked up and unfolded the paper, looking at it, before looking back at Liam. "Seriously? That fast?" she asked. "Now I gotta get this dry cleaned, you know you're paying for this right?" Liam asked. "Yeah yeah, sure, whatever, seriously though? It's been like two days, how did you-" "Because, Michelle, I'm good at what I do," Liam said, "dammit, this was my favorite jacket!" Michelle thanked him again and turned to exit. She entered the hall, headed for Bea's office and the landline within it. As she walked past a vending machine, Eliza rose up from her kneeling position, bag of cookies in her hand and started following her. Once within the room, Michelle told Eliza to shut the door, and she did just that. Michelle grabbed the phone from the base, then dialed the number on the paper as Eliza stood and watched, eating from her bag of cookies. A few rings, and then finally an answer. "Hello?" Michelle asked, the excitement in her voice incapable of being masked, a grin spreading across her face, "Hello , my name is Michelle. I'm calling for Justine Stiltskon? Yes, okay hi! Hello Justine. I'm from..." Michelle glanced around and looked at Michelle, who just held up her cookie bag. "...Famous Amos Publishing," Michelle said, both of them trying to stifle their laughter as she continued, "I want to speak to you about a possible illustration job for an upcoming...yes...Yes! Okay, well when do you think we could meet? I would gladly come to your home." Michelle scrambled for a pen and a piece of paper, tucking the phone under her chin as she jotted it down. "Okay, thank you so much, I'll see you then," Michelle said, hanging up and looking at Eliza. Michelle was about to attempt to do something, and she was just hoping she wouldn't regret it.
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Beatrice Beagle follows a young woman obsessed with a defunct pizzeria and kids show featuring a dog mascot. As she uncovers more about its mysterious past, she becomes sucked into the life of the woman who played the mascot, they both discover just how much they need eachother. Archives
April 2024
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