"I like your hair," Michelle said, making Keagan smile as she ran her hands through her hair.
"Thanks, it's one of my better assets, quite frankly," Keagan said, going back to stirring her coffee with her stirrer as Michelle pushed her fork into her salad and dug around for a bite. Neither one spoke again for a few moments, but finally Keagan took a sip from her cup and then looked at Michelle. "This is weird, isn't it?" she asked, and Michelle nodded, pushing lettuce attempting to escape back into her mouth. "It's very weird," she replied, chewing. "How did you, I mean if you don't mind me asking, get those episodes you showed me?" Keagan asked, and Michelle finished eating, then sighed, pushing her salad bowl away. "I recorded them on VHS back when I had the chance. I wish I had more, but I only managed to get a handful of them," Michelle said, "Sometimes, if I was too sick to see it that day, I'd have a nurse in the hospital record it for me so I could watch it when I woke up." "Hospital?" Keagan asked. "I was in the hospital a lot as a kid," Michelle said, "I have serious bronchitis and lung problems. I have an oxygen tank at home that I use fairly regularly, and I can't do much without getting too winded, or it could make me faint." "Jeez, I'm so sorry." "It's just part of my life, you know how it is, you get used to things," Michelle replied, looking out the window they were sitting by and smiling as she added, "But having the show made everything seem alright. Made everything seem like....like I would be okay, because I always had someone there for me even if my parents weren't. Beatrice was always there, always ready to teach me something new." "People become extremely attached to media in ways that don't make sense," Keagan said, "at least not to others, and I think it's beautiful that we manage to connect to fictional things so deeply. In fact, I seem to be able to connect to fictional characters far better than real people these days, it feels like." "You think it says something about the human brain?" Michelle asked. "I think it says that we're so very desperate to be understood that we cling to even the smallest examples of fake people understanding us, that we can relate to. So many people aren't understood by the people they so deeply wish they were understood by, that when we find a fictional character who seems to 'get us', we feel lucky. We feel as if they were made just for us, you know?" "I know." The girls stopped and Michelle pulled her bowl back to her, continuing to eat her salad as Keagan sipped on her coffee. They'd agreed to meet here at this little bistro downtown, to finally maybe formulate a plan on how to find Beatrice using the knowledge that they had accrued, but most of the conversation thus far had been primarily about their own connections to the show, to Bea, and to media in general. Keagan told Michelle all about her love for lost media, and her quest to unearth as much of it as she could, and Michelle told Keagan all about her adoration for Beatrice and why she was so very determined to track her down. "So," Keagan asked, "How do you propose we go about this?" *** "Thank you for shopping with us, have a nice day," the young checkout woman said as she dropped the change into the older womans hands. The older woman, dressed in a very long raincoat and a scarf, her blonde hair tucked neatly into a dark blue beanie, took her change and grabbed her bags before heading out to the parking lot. She put her things into the trunk of her car, got in and started the engine, then began backing out when she noticed she'd almost hit a woman - completely oblivious to her surroundings due to walking while looking at her cell phone - and her young child. The woman immediately began approaching her window, shouting. "Don't you ever look where you're driving?!" she yelled, rapping her knuckles on the window of the car, "You could've easily killed us! You should be more aware of your surroundings when you're in a vehicle!" She couldn't take it. She started slamming her fists into her steering wheel and screaming, looking the woman right in her face through the window. "Leave me the fuck alone!" she shouted, loud enough for passerbys to hear. This seemed to work well enough, as the woman and her child quickly turned heel and rushed away. She collected herself, backed out of the parking lot, and headed towards her next errand. *** "Liam told me he'd met her at a show she did downtown. Perhaps she still frequents local theatre," Keagan said, "We could just go down there and see." "How would we know? She wore a costume," Michelle said, "We never saw what her face looked like. Unless he's got a photo he's willing to lend you, I don't think that's going to do the trick." "Oh...yeah, you're right. Dammit," Keagan stirred her coffee again and thought, chewing on her lip, "How about...well, no, I don't want to bother him anymore than we already have." "Sounded like the poor guy's been through the ringer lately, so that's probably the right choice," Michelle replied, before adding, "...damn, how do you find someone who doesn't want to be found?" "Wait, you have those episodes recorded right? In the end credits of shows, they always say where they're filmed at, what sound stage, what studio. Maybe we freeze frame it, figure out where they shot it and then go there for more information?" "That's...not a bad idea, actually," Michelle said, "We could go back to my place and I could load it up so we can screenshot it." A plan now coming together, the girls seemed happy, and it felt like things were starting to look up. *** "I'm sorry, we don't know where it is," the drycleaner said, "It's...it's somewhere in here, but we can't find it at the moment. I know this is probably extremely upsetting, but please just be patient and I'll call you immediately when we find it." "How do you lose clothes?! Your entire business is based around clothing!" the woman shouted, clearly agitated as she rubbed her hands against her face, "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. It's a mistake, I know you didn't mean it." "We really don't, you've been coming here for years, you know we rarely have mistakes like this," the drycleaner said, "Tell you what, next cleaning is on the house, okay? Does that sweeten the deal?" "It does ease the pain a little, yes," she replied, smiling for the first time that day, "Alright Gino, just...please find it. It was very important to me." She stumbled back through the door, hearing the little bell ring overhead, and stopped on the sidewalk as a couple walked by with a large dog on a leash. The dog stopped and tried to smell her hands, then licked them gently. She smiled at this, then looked up at the couple. "He seems very sweet," she said, "What's his name?" "Corky," the woman holding the leash said, "He's usually scared of strangers, I'm surprised to see him act like this." "Dogs have always liked me," the woman said, "I used to have a dog myself, so he probably can sense that. They can sense a lot of things people can't. That's why when you see footage of haunted houses with pets in them, they can always see the ghosts, they stare at the walls, because they can see things we can't. They're brilliant, loving animals." She knelt down and stroked Corky's face, scruffing his ears a bit and smiling at him. "You're a good boy, Corky," she said, "Thank you for the kisses." After the couple led Corky away, she got back into her car and, fighting back tears, started up again to head on home. Her day was done, and it was time to relax, destress and have something to eat. *** "Leslie Swann Studios," Keagan read, squinting her eyes as she leaned as close to the television as she could, "Jesus it's in such small print and it's such an old recording, it was kind of hard to make out but that's what it says. Goddamn my eyes hurt now." "Leslie Swann Studios?" Michelle asked, quickly typing away into her browser and hitting 'search'; she scrolled a bit before finding something, "here we go, Leslie Swann Studios, downtown, here's the address right here. Public Access Television, she's the current owner and president, we could easily make an appointment to speak to her." "Really? That's an option?" "Well it says studio tour, but I'm sure if I asked to speak to her specifically I could finagle that," Michelle said, opening her e-mail and copy/pasting Leslie's address into the to field, before looking up at Keagan and asking, "...do we really wanna do this? What if all she wants is to be left alone?" "That coming from you?" "I know, it's weird, but...I want to meet her more than anyone else, but what if we're violating her space? Didn't Liam say she was, like, heartbroken over losing control of her lifes work and how it'd been treated? What if she just doesn't want to see anyone ever?" "Well, she should've thought of that before she became a public icon," Keagan said, "Once you're in that line of work you basically forfeit all rights to privacy." Keagan sat on the couch beside Michelle, and together they cobbled together a little e-mail to Leslie Swann. After they hit send, they got some Chinese food delivered and spent the evening just watching television and eating, waiting for a response. Finally, right as Keagan was getting her jacket on the head to work, a response blipped into Michelle's inbox. "She says to come down tomorrow," Michelle said, "3pm." "Well then let's get this party started," Keagan said, grinning. The hunt was on. *** The door to her apartment opened, and the woman entered, dropping her grocery bags on her counter before heading into the living room to take off her coat and scarf. She hung them up neatly on the rack against the wall and then headed back to the kitchen to put her groceries away when she heard something fall. She turned to see a framed photo on the ground. She sighed and walked over, picking it up, reminding herself internally to get a new frame. This had been happening for months because the standee on the back had been broken for ages, and it wobbled, constantly falling off the table. She held the photo in her hands and she smiled. There she was, younger and vibrant, her dog sitting right there by her side, the two of them licking a Vanilla ice cream cone. Her absolute favorite photo of her now deceased dog. She sat on the couch and continued looking at the photo, and ran her fingertips down the glass in the frame. The dog had been gone for a number of years by this point, she was used to the loneliness, but she still missed her incredibly so. But despite being deceased, the dog had lived on. After all, she'd modeled the costume after her. The phone rang and voicemail picked it up. Liam spoke. "Bea, it's Liam. Um, thank you for your message, it's....been hard lately, for me, and now that he's gone, I...I guess I just wanted to hear a familiar voice. Anyway, you don't have to call me if you don't want to, but I'd sure like to hear from you. I miss you. Everyone does. Bye." Beatrice looked back at the photo and shook her head, pulling the frame to her chest and starting to cry. She'd never really dealt with loss well, and her grief had, over time, eaten up the majority of what was left inside of her emotionally. She just couldn't handle it anymore. Where had all the years gone? Where had her creativity died? Where had her drive diminished to? She no longer wanted to do anything, but doing nothing was also just as equally bad. She felt stuck. Bea stood up and placed the photo on the table again, then went back to the kitchen to start cooking dinner. That night she had a nice dream, though. She dreamt she and her dog were together again, playing in a field, the field near her house where she'd grown up, and she was a little girl once more. God how she longed to feel her fingers running through that dogs fur, feel the warmth of its body pressed against hers as they slept in front of the fireplace during the winter, hear its bark when she came home from school every day. God how she missed that dog. God how she missed Beatrice Beagle.
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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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