After months of searching and three dead Laura Croft look-a-likes, there it was: a golden chalice that was painted brown and encrusted with jade eyeballs.
All he really had to do now was snag it, beat-down a handful of Rat-Ogres, escape the Temple of Doom, use it to rescue King Mickey and then he’d be home free.
ring
eh?
ring
Damn!
Dane rolled over and grabbed for the phone. His cat-like reflexes managed to tangle his hand in the phone cord and knock it off his nightstand/bookshelf/milk crate. He scrambled for the phone and eventually came up with the receiver near his ear.
“Hello?” Dane rasped, his voice still recovering from sleep. Who the hell calls anyone this early in the morning?
“Hi, can I speak with Dane Bishop?”
Dane cleared his throat, “Speaking.”
“This is Serra, calling regarding the internship. We liked your application and would like you to come in for another interview, would Friday, by 10:30 be okay with you?”
“Sure, AM right?” There was a sigh and a click as the line went dead. Yup, AM.
Dane hung up the phone and looked at the red glowing numbers on his ceiling. His alarm clock had been a present from his father and he had to admit that it was pretty cool. He snorted at the glowing 11:30 am and rolled back over to sleep.
It really was too early.
It wasn’t that Hunter was a bad person. He was just… boisterous.
Dane had regretted calling him and asking for a ride from the second he hung up the phone. Sometimes there were moments where everything is not right in the universe and things feel incredibly out of sync. This was one of those moments.
Another of those moments was when Dane got into Hunter’s banged up excuse for a jeep at 6:30AM and nearly sat on a rabbit.
“Hunter, I hate to ask this: why is a lop riding shotgun?”
“His name is Mr. Waffles.”
After sighing Dane tossed Mr. Waffles into the back seat. He wasn’t aiming for the empty guitar case, but the rabbit didn’t seem too perturbed by it’s new surroundings. Then again, the ball of fluff and eyes didn’t seem perturbed by being thrown either. Dane rested his eyes and settled in for the trip.
Hunter and Dane had been friends since shortly after Dane arrived in town. Dane had attended a party while hoping to meet new friends and found quite a few people.
Behind the house.
In the alleyway.
People didn’t seem to be as friendly in the arid parts surrounding Santa Barbara. After trying and failing to strike up conversations at the party Dane had decided to head back to his dorm. It wasn’t a long walk, but cutting behind the house would’ve saved Dane a few minutes.
The alleyway was comparatively well-lit with lights streaming in from houses on either side. Bad things only happen in poorly lit alleys, right?
He had been lucky that there were only three of them. He was also lucky that they decided to mess around with him before doing any permanent damage. After being shoved to the gravel road and kicked once they allowed him to get back up. He was then slammed into the wall of a small one-bedroom apartment. His shoulders hit first, followed by the back of his head in a double tap.
Luckily enough the impromptu knocking on the wall awoke the person living inside. That person just so happened to be a five foot six body builder and prospective UFC candidate who happened to be trained in Muay Thai.
After knocking out the three thugs he decided to knock back a six pack. Then he strong armed Dane into purchasing some harder alcohol as a reward for the rescue.
Despite being friends since that night Dane always felt uncomfortable around Hunter. The man was as random as daytime television and twice as crude.
“Hey, wha’did one lesbian vampire say to the other?”
“Heard that one already Hunter.”
“What’s the difference between 1,000 dead babies and a GTO?”
“Heard that one too Hunter.”
“What’s black-white, black-white and red all over?”
“Two nuns in a chainsaw fight.”
“Dang… Uhh… Wha’did one lesbian vampire say to the other?”
And after another couple hundred repeated conversations they arrived.
“Hey pretty lady, do ya wanna see Mr. Waffles?”
Dane’s smile faded as a feeling of nervousness replaced the cruel satisfaction of siccing Hunter on the receptionist. He wasn’t Dane’s trained attack dog, but he was close. The ride up in the elevator didn’t do much to settle his nerves.
Neither did the walk down the hallway.
Well… this is it. Dane knocked on the door.
Serra had been up all night. She was tired, irritable and slightly jittery from her last cup of coffee.
She had narrowed down the number of applicants to two and from there she couldn’t decide. Both of them where organized, presented themselves well and didn’t piss her off in the slightest. She invited them to her office on Friday and had given herself about two days with which to think of a way to decide who got the job.
If she interviewed them again she knew that she’d identify more with the person who was interviewed last. No matter what she thought of she couldn’t think of an alternative that was fair or at least partially without bias.
The solution had been handed to her, literally, with her morning coffee.
“Thanks for coming you two,” Serra said. Without giving them a chance to speak up she continued with her speech– she elaborated on the responsibilities the winner would have, how little the pay was and every terrible thing about the job that she could think of.
“Are you both sure that you still want the job?” she finished.
“Yes,” said Steven Jones, a brown haired overachiever.
“Same here,” said Dane, the nervous feeling growing in his gut.
“Okay then,” Serra said as she fished her answer out of her pocket, “Call it in the air!”
“Heads!” “Tails!” they called at the same time.
Easily the best part about being department head was the fact that he was the one who called the meetings. Robby tried not to abuse his power, but some days he simply couldn’t stand stuffy collegiate affairs.
Today, for instance. This feeling wasn’t really anything new to him as he had been avoiding every meeting for the past eight days. In fact, he’d been avoiding everything for the past eight days.
On the first day he got himself kicked out of three bars, and it was good. On the second he nearly cleared out the stock of a liquor store, and it was good. On the third and forth days he polished off his purchases and his private stash of hard liquor and chocolates, and it was good.
On the fifth day he tried and failed to impress the neighborhood– “Ya wanna sheee sometin? I hic can fly! Wheee!– and it was good. One the sixth day he took up Sudoku I had my emotions surgically removed at the age of 12. It makes it easier to play Sudoku and eat puppies, and it was good.
On the seventh day he rested and then went to the bathroom, and it was good.
On the eighth day he sat at home in his boxers and watched “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” and it was sub-par.
It’s been two weeks already… Dane thought as he stared at the red glowing letters on his ceiling.
He hadn’t liked the military bunker vibe that the dorms had given off. The dull gray roof hadn’t been very interesting either. His new apartment’s roof was made of white fiberboard and Dane was busy counting the holes.
276…
Last week he had been in dire straights about getting kicked out of his dorm. He had gone to Serra to apologize and tell her that he couldn’t continue to work for her because he didn’t have a place to live down there when she told him about JESU Co.’s company housing.
277…
Apparently they owned a rather large apartment complex with larger apartments as one ascended floors. It was rumored that the top floor was a single huge flat complete with jacuzzi and Dane promised himself that one of these days he’d find out.
278…
To get the deal on the apartment Dane had had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Essentially he couldn’t mention anything odd about people in JESU Corp to anyone outside the company or he’d risk getting a fine of some-such. He hadn’t bothered to read the whole thing over as it was all pretty standard.
279…
In addition to the discounted rent on a half-decent one bedroom apartment, there were other perks to working at JESU. One of them happened to be a free gizmo. Dane wasn’t really sure about all of what it could do but he’d been told that it was a combination cellphone, camera, Internet browser, laser pointer, voice recorder, and fondue maker.
280…
Given the sheer number of buttons on the thing Dane wasn’t sure if that last one was a joke or not.
green…
Dane was a bit antsy as this weekend Serra had arranged for the two of them to do some fieldwork with one of their case studies. It shouldn’t be too difficult as typically all a case worker would do in this situation is help around the house or lend a hand with whatever the person needed help with. The over-all goal would be to help them resolve whatever problems they had when they hired on to JESU.
282…
What the company does is take cases and help people for a nominal fee. JESU does everything from providing day-care services to armored transport for dignitaries. The insanely large number of varied cases required constant attention and since Serra was the head case worker she (and consequently Dane) had their hands full almost constantly. Every now and then a particularly stubborn case would pop up and Serra would take care of it personally and leave the crush of paperwork to one of her subordinates.
287…
Or she’d declare a case a problem case and go on vacation, which is essentially what she had done this time. Dane had talked to her over lunch earlier in the week was it Monday? Tuesday? about his invitation to the preview and told her a few of the possible locations. Partially as a reward to her seventh longest lasting assistant and partially as a plan to avoid the crush of paperwork Serra set the gears in motion to go and deal with the next problem case personally.
288…
Serra was to fly down on the company’s budget, and Dane would be riding a Grey Hound. The thought of it made him shiver a little. The last time he had ridden one of those buses he had walked in on a man shaving his… “self” in the only sink.
289…
Well, it was times like these where being an infantilist came in handy. Dane planned on wearing a diaper on the 8 hour ride and changing out of it before he walked to met Serra at the motel they were going to be staying at.
Well, better get packing.