[stmercy2020]

And the soap opera continues! 😉

I was gonna put in a big superstrength thing this chapter, but the scene with Vinnie kind of ended up taking precedence.

Poor Dicey!  She has no idea just how bad things are about to get… :evil

And, without further ado:

Second Chance

Chapter Nine

stmercy2020

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Nicole, Drifter, and their new friend, Berry, settled into Pub 13.  Nicole kept expecting the smaller man to slip under the table and dissolve into an inebriated puddle given the quantity that he was imbibing- as much as Drifter and her combined, it seemed- but it never happened.  He got what she would describe as ‘happy,’ just slightly buzzed, but never seemed to go beyond that.  She, on the other hand, was gloriously, unabashedly drunk.  While Drifter and Berry drank Newcastle drafts and talked about drums, Nicole had been steadily downing Woodchuck Amber and, being rather smaller than either man, had started feeling slightly dizzy after only the second round.

They were now on their- was it their fifth? sixth?- round, and Nicole was fairly certain she couldn’t walk from their table to the bathroom without assistance.  That, she decided, was going to be a problem.  “Drifter,” she said, somewhat louder than she had intended, “I need to pee.”

Drifter glanced at Berry and shrugged his large shoulders.  “Excuse me for a minute,” he said, standing up and holding out his arm.  Nicole grabbed it and hoisted herself to her feet, barely able to remain upright even with Drifter’s assistance.  The fact that he was staggering, too, wasn’t really helping her as much as she’d hoped.  Berry raised his glass and saluted them.

Nicole giggled.

They reeled and wobbled across the crowded floor to the unobtrusively marked wooden doors marked ‘his’ and ‘hers,’ and were almost there when a very tall woman stepped in front of them.  Drifter pulled up short, and Nicole was forced to lurch to a halt, nearly falling to her knees.  “Shit,” she grunted.

The woman in front of them had to be even taller than Dicey, Nicole thought inanely, but they could have been cut from nearly the same cloth.  Very pale, nearly white skin, cornsilk-yellow hair.  This woman had green eyes as opposed to Dicey’s clear blue, but other than that, they could be sisters.

The woman reached out a hand and gently steadied Nicole.  “Milady,” she said, her voice a rich, mellow alto, “forgive me.  We needs must speak with one another.”

Nicole tried to puzzle that out for a moment, but the words just seemed too out of place.  Her head was starting to feel painfully small, now, and she was noticing that the pressure on her bladder seemed to be increasing exponentially.  The music from the dueling pianos seemed very, very far away.

“Huh?” she managed, then had to laugh because she’d wanted to say something much wittier, but couldn’t seem to make her lips work the way they ought to.

“You may have to wait a minute,” Drifter cut in, his voice seeming reassuringly close.

“We haven’t the time,” the woman stated anxiously, glancing quickly over her shoulder.

Nicole thought she saw something very large and dark just for an instant, but then it was gone again, a trick of the flickering light.

“How dare you?!”  Berry’s voice grated like steel.  He seemed to virtually materialize beside them, straight and, somehow, impossibly tall.  He carried a spiritual weight that Nicole hadn’t been aware of until just now.  And he looked very, very angry.  “These two,” he continued, “are under my protection.  Would you challenge me here, little sidhe?”

Berry’s eyes were smoldering, black coals.  The woman stepped back as if stung, her hand went to her mouth.  “My apologies, learned one.  I did not mean…”

“Go back to your queen.  We do not want your kind, here.”  She turned and virtually fled back into the crowd.

As quickly as it had come, the feeling of unreality departed.  Nicole was suddenly, uncontrollably nauseous, and she pulled away from Drifter to dive through the door and fling herself into a stall.  When she had made proper use of the facilities, feeling thoroughly drained, Nicole pushed herself weakly back into the commons area.  Drifter was still there, but Berry seemed to have returned to the table.

Feeling oddly disjointed, she collected Drifter and headed back to the table.

“Okay,” she said, feeling slightly more sober, “what the Hell just happened there?”

“Not here,” Berry replied seriously.  “I think we should leave this place.  It’s getting a touch to eldritch for my tastes.”

Drifter nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  I’ll bring the car around.”

“No!” Berry nearly shouted.  Then, more calmly, “We’ll all go together.  It’s late and I think that might be safer for all concerned, don’t you?”

“And then,” he growled, “you can tell us what this is all about.  This is a story I want to hear.”

*****

Dasia’s disappearance sent a quiet tremor through the Toledo Boudreauxs’ life.  Dasia occasionally slept over with a group of friends that her folks had taken to calling The Bardic.  As Saturday continued and there was no contact, however, her father began calling around to her various friends to find out if anyone had heard from her.  No one had seen her since she’d left school the previous day.  Ron said that they’d plans to meet that night, after she got some homework done, but figured she must’ve been overloaded.

Now seriously worried, he called first his wife, who was away on a three-day trip, then the police.  It had been over twenty-four hours since anyone had seen his little girl, and the police immediately started an investigation.  He decided not to call Dicey or Philémon, yet, because they were both far enough away that he wanted to be absolutely sure that it was an emergency before he spoke with them.  The police were taking the investigation seriously, but they had also told him that it was still quite early.  It was possible that Dasia had, for some reason, went off on her own and might yet return on her own- this sort of thing happened fairly frequently in their experience.

Mathieu was skeptical.  Of all of his children, Dasia had always shown the most native responsibility.  Phil had been a typical boy, interested in sports and girls, well-meaning but lacking in discipline in his everyday life.  Dicey had been a kind of wild child.  Dasia, on the other hand, was sober and responsible, usually displaying a maturity far beyond what anyone would expect from a fifteen-year-old girl.  Even so, heeding the advice of the police, he agreed to avoid starting a panic at this early stage.

He just prayed they would find her soon and that she was alright.

*****

Dicey was into her third mile and feeling it.  Her lungs burned, every breath was labored at this point.  She’d heard, once, that the ideal workout should leave you able to talk, but not sing.  She doubted that she’d be able to have a long conversation at this point.  Apparently getting stronger hadn’t really done much for her endurance, she reflected ruefully.

Nearing her apartment, Dicey slowed down to a fast walk, letting her muscles start to cool down.  She wished she’d worn something lighter- her sweats were soaked clear through and the cold wind was quickly changing her from very warm to very, very cold.  Shivering, she got inside and immediately went to the kitchen to fix herself a cup of coffee.  The heat was set to a temperate seventy-two degrees, but after jogging in the forty degree weather outside, it felt positively balmy.

As the coffeemaker perked, Dicey skinned out of her sodden top and bottoms, dropping them on the floor as she made her way to her bedroom.  She opened the door and suddenly realized she wasn’t alone.  He must’ve parked his Harley out back, she thought idiotically.

Vinnie was staring thoughtfully out her back window.  He was still wearing his Biker jacket and his helmet was still in his hand.  He looked, Dicey thought, defeated.  He didn’t even look up as she entered the room.

“Um, Vinnie?” she began.  He seemed to catch himself with a start, squared his shoulders and turned around.  And lost it.  It was as if a dam burst, and all of a sudden, all Vinnie could do was guffaw.  Gales of laughter racked his skinny frame, tears ran freely down his face.

“Oh, God,” he finally choked out, getting ahold of himself with difficulty, “I’m sorry Chance.  I didn’t mean…”

Dicey, still standing in her underwear, tilted her head and looked at him.  “Are you okay, Vinnie?  You look kind of rough.”

“Yeah.  No.  God, I don’t know.  I just came by ‘cause I needed to talk to somebody…”  Vinnie seemed to be having trouble getting his thoughts together.

“Okay.  You can tell me about it while I get dressed, how ‘bout?”  Dicey said, walking over to her dresser.  One advantage of spending a lot of time in back stage dressing rooms was that you quickly got over any lingering body modesty that might otherwise make this situation even more awkward.

Vinnie sat down on her bed, looking at her.  “You know I was adopted by my grandparents, right?”

Slipping out of her sport bra, her back to him, Dicey nodded.  Vinnie’s parents had both died in a plane crash when he was very young.  His grandparents had been his closest living relatives and had raised him as their son.  In recent years, Vinnie’s grandmother had started to become increasingly vague and childish as dementia took a grip on her aging brain.  It was something they had spoken about before.

Vinnie swallowed before continuing.  “My grandfather died yesterday morning.”  It was a bald statement, made without inflection.

Dicey turned back to him, shocked.  “What?  Oh my God!”

He looked down at his knees, clenching and unclenching his hands.  When he looked up again, tears were standing in his eyes, unspent.  He looked not just defeated, Dicey realized, but lost.

She walked over, waited until he stood up, than enfolded him in a hug.  She held him there, rocking slightly while he cried.

[KeithXZ]

Hi StM –

I read your reply after Chapter 8. 

Chapter 9 is very good.  I would say, don't rush things, let the story come.  And if it takes more time and more pages it takes more time and more pages.

Just so long as the plot continues to develop, and the characters continue to  be revealed and then evolve, and things don't become repetitive, that is the key — at least in my opinion.

I'm a mainframe computer programmer, and the last time I was unemployed, 3 years ago now, I wrote about a dozen PC computer security FAQs at another site.  On the average each took about 18 hours of effort on my part to create, read feedback from security specialists and amateur computer enthusiasts, make corrections and clarifications, and repeat that cycle feedback/correction cycle over an elapsed time of 4 to 6 days, until each FAQ was reasonably clear and concise for the target audience. 

A lot of effort, but it was a great feeling to see the hit counts after each was completed.

Without the few "thank-you's" and the gratification on seeing the hit-count for the first couple of FAQs, I wouldn't have carried on.

It is not exactly the same thing as writing fiction, but similar enough I think that I can sympathize.

– Keith

[stmercy2020]

Thanks for the kind words, again KeithXZ.  I've done some nonfiction writing, and I would have to agree it isn't the same as fiction writing- in many ways, it's harder.  I was getting a little bummed out about this project, for awhile, but I feel like I'm pretty much back on track.

I have some plans for Dicey & crew- part of what makes this story so much fun for me is trying to figure out how the assorted highly ambiguous characters are going to affect things.  I mean, if I pared things down to just heroes and villains, this story would be really easy.  Also, really, really short.  It's all those characters who are just trying to get by as the world slips sideways into unreality that make the story go…

Avoiding repetition has been one of my ongoing challenges.  I think part of the trouble I'm having is that I hate using the 'time passes' mechanism- it always seems like a cop-out.  Mind you, I've already done it, getting the story past the trial which struck me as a sort of foregone conclusion, but I was uncomfrotable with it.

Now my challenge is keeping the disparate events going at roughly the same speed.  For example, Dasia's disappearance actually occured after Berry, Drifter, and Nicole had their run-in with the sidhe, but the story structure dictated that I wrote about it first.  Someday, when I go back and attempt to redraft this story, I know a number of changes I will make.  Most of them have to do with timing of events…

Anyways, there's still quite a bit left to go…

Wow, I ramble.  I'll shut up now and sneak back under my rock to go back to writing…

[yaracyrrah80]

Sorry I'm late, but here's some more feedback: this is really, really good stuff.  Please keep writing.

–Y

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