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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tolen Mar" data-source="post: 2599240" data-attributes="member: 1295">TuesdayWell, I hope this does well.I'm not entirely sure that its the kind of thing that gets entered into these things, but here we go.  (Also, the pics will be indicated in bold, as Ive never been able to get links to work properly.)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Round One - Set FiveHerobizkit vs. Tolen Mar vs. maxfieldjadenfox---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tuesday    Becca had long suspected.  The late nights, the smell of tequila.  The fact that Pablo never seemed to be interested in her anymore.  She knew he was having an affair, but needed to see the other woman herself.  The constant worry was turning her into a wreck.  She knew she had to do something, confront him about it, but until she had the evidence she needed, he would just wave her off as if she had said nothing at all.  She needed to catch them in the act.    Morning came, and Pablo finally dragged himself out of bed.  He grabbed a quick snack, muttered a goodbye and left for work at the sawmill.  This was her chance, she knew.  She gathered up her things, got in her car, and headed downtown.  She didn’t know if they still made what she was looking for.  After the privacy riots of the last decade, anything that could poke into someone’s private times was banned.  Of course, everyone knew it was only because the president had been caught with his pants down (literally!) in the oval office with that girl, and if not for that, the problem might have been ignored.  But when she passed the curio shop and saw it, she knew it was what she needed.    The bell over the door rang softly as she quietly made her way into the dark gloom of the store.  There didn’t seem to be a single electric light on in the place, it was lit only by what light could drift through the crowded front window.  As she walked through the piles of random odds and ends, she noticed that everything was labeled, a simple hand-made tag hanging from each object.  A vase had a tag that had a flower on it, and the word ‘vase’.  A box of crayons had a rainbow on it; even the shelves had tags hanging from them as if someone kept forgetting what everything was and needed some way to remind himself what they were.    She stepped on something, and looking down it was another of the tags, this one was apparently for a dog.  She hadn’t yet seen a dog here, but she picked up the tag to give to the shop owner.    As soon as she did, a strange little man came from behind one of the stacks.  He was short, barely over five feet tall, very round in the middle and bald.  He wore a yellow sweater over black slacks and glasses whose lenses were so thick, she wondered how many soda bottles had died to make them.  His nose was extraordinarily long, and looked more like a birds beak than anything that should be on a humans face.  Taken all together, he resembled some sort of oversized goldfinch.    “Good morning!” He said with a big smile.  His voice was high and had a slight warble to it.  “And what can I help you with on this beautiful day?”    “Um…” she said, momentarily surprised by the bird mans sudden appearance.    “Oh! I see you found Dog’s collar!” before she could respond, he snatched it out of her hand and began to whistle.  The sound seemed more appropriate in the woods than the cramped confines of the shop.  “Come here Dog!” he called.    After a few moments of his whistling and calling, Becca heard something in the back move.  Then the shelves began to shimmer and rattle, and the floor shook.  She began to panic, when bird man saw her.    “Oh, relax,” he said, “It’s just Dog.”    The shaking and rumbling grew louder until, just when she thought the building would collapse, something appeared at the end of the aisle.  It was huge, standing a good three feet tall, and it was furry.  It was a cat.  It walked up to the man, and nuzzled his leg, nearly knocking him over.  The purr resonated through her skull as the shopkeeper petted its head, then reattached the cord around its neck.  Satisfied, the cat turned and rumbled back to the back of the shop again, the shelves settling back into their normal stance, not shaking again as the dust settled.    “That’s your cat?” She asked.    “Heavens no, that’s my Dog.”  He replied, fixing her with a one eyed stare.  “Haven’t you ever seen a dog before?”    “Well, yes, but…”    “I won’t have a cat.”  He went on.  “Beastly creatures.  Always chasing down and eating defenseless birds.  Now then, what can I get for you?”  He blinked once, in the same fashion a bird might blink at something that caught its attention.  He held his head at an angle, looking at her out of one eye more than another.  The image of a goldfinch was becoming clearer now.      “I, uh…” Becca began.  She stopped, cleared her throat, and tried again.  “Is that a dimensional perspective viewer there in the window?”    “Why yes!” The bird man nearly shouted.  “Not many people recognize them for what they are these days.  Impressive, young lady, impressive.  And why would you be needing one?”    “I think my husband is cheating on me, and I…well…I...”    “Say no more, say no more.” He put a feather light hand on her shoulder, though he had to reach upward to do so.  “Yes this viewer will help you.  It’s a tad banged up, I used to keep it in the back, but Dog kept knocking it down.  But it can be cleaned up nicely and reassembled.”    “How much do you want for it?”    “Oh, I couldn’t think of selling it.  You do know they were outlawed, don’t you?  I could be imprisoned.  I couldn’t stand living in a cage like that.”    Becca couldn’t hide her disappointment, and the bird man became even more fidgety than he was before, he kept flipping his elbows up and down.  If he kept it, she was sure, he would fly away.    “Well,” he said.  “The law only forbids me selling it.  It doesn’t say I can’t give it away.  Let me see if I can find the tracking bug you need.”    He disappeared into the back room, and began shuffling through whatever he kept back there.  There was a scream of pain that sounded vaguely cat-like, and entirely too loud, and another shelf bouncing rumble before he returned.    “Here we are!” he said as he held up a button.  “Just sew this onto one of his shirts, and the viewer will let you look in on him wherever he is.”    “A button?” she said skeptically.    “Well of course it only looks like a button.”  He slid a fingernail along the edge, and it swung open like a pocket watch, revealing a complex set of flashing tiny lights and moving gears.  “This way, he won’t be able to tell it’s a bug. Ingenious!”    Half an hour later, she was home, and trying to follow the instruction packed in the box.  After several false starts, she got the device assembled.  It being Tuesday, she knew Pablo would go out ‘with the boys’, and would want his best shirt.  She took it, ripped off one of the buttons and sewed the new button on.  At first it didn’t match, it being blue and the shirt red, but as she watched it changed color and shape to match the rest of the buttons.  Then she hid everything for later.  When evening came, and he headed out again, he grabbed the shirt with the new button.  As soon as he was out of the room, she rushed to where she had hidden the machine, and turned it on.      As she sat behind it and looked through the reticle, she saw the dimensional rods extend from the back of the machine.  After about two feet, the ends of the rods disappeared into a strange foggy mist.  She began to pull on the cords that warped reality between the rods, and started trying to tune in the tracking beacon.     She saw Pablo, clearly as if he were standing in front of her.  He was stealing her gold coin, the coin her mother gave to her before that fateful day when she fell into the ice, never to be seen again.  The little puppet was taking it right out of her purse.  Then he left, carrying the coin that was as big as himself, and went out into the night.       The viewer allowed her to see everything he did that night as if she were following him with a real camera.  She saw him walk over to the liquor store and trade the coin for two bottles of Tequila (the coin was worth at least twice as much by itself!).  He went to the drugstore and picked up a pack of condoms.  This baffled her as Pablo didn’t actually have all of the ‘equipment’ needed to use them.  Then she saw the house.  It was an expensive house in the snooty part of town.  Pablo looked to see if he were being watched, then let himself in through the doggie door.  Then he went upstairs and into the next house.  It was an ornate doll house, yellow, and a white picket fence around a fake lawn.  Barbie was there, standing in the door in almost nothing.     She flipped the machine off in disgust.  She had the address she needed.     Pablo was drunk.  Next to him, on the small bed was Barbie.  She was having an affair too, they both knew it, and perhaps that’s why they wound up together.  The tequila boiled its way through his wooden stomache, keeping his thoughts from staying together long enough to marshal themselves into rationality.  All he could do was look at the sleeping doll next to him and wish they had been carved (for himself) and molded (for her) so that the two of them could do something besides lie together and pretend.     He began to giggle.  Becca didn’t have a clue.  She thought they were still strong.  Pablo had been careful.  He had made sure not to bring home any lipstained collars, no doll hair to explain away.  She thought he spent his nights with his friends.  Women were so easy to fool.  He lifted the tequila bottle to his lips, found it was empty, and began to stumble around the dollhouse looking for the next one.       As he passed the kitchen sink, he looked out the window and saw a giant on the lawn.  Then his sense of scale kicked in, and he realized it was Becca standing outside the dollhouse.  He panicked.  He turned to run away from the window and fell out the open side of the house.  Ordinarily, it was only a two story fall, and at doll sizes, that wasn’t much.  But today the dollhouse had been set up on a table, and he tumbled slowly through the air that was a lot deeper than it should have been.  When he landed, his leg broke, and he could see his wife in detail.  The sudden shock of pain cleared his head, and he realized she was carrying a bottle of tequila, and a lighter.  He started to crawl, his broken leg useless.Barbie came to the edge of the floor at this point, to see what was going on.  Becca saw her, and grabbed at her.     “You naked, plastic slut!” She screamed, and then picked up Pablo as well.     The two tried to get free, but her grip was like iron.  Becca took them outside, and down the street to her car.  She tied them up, tossed them into the back seat and drove off into the night.  Pablo passed out from the pain.     When he awoke again, dawn was beginning to clear the horizon, it was foggy, and damp.  He was tied to Barbie in an obscene pose, a pose he might have enjoyed under other circumstances.    Becca stood over the two of them, and poured the entire bottle of tequila over them.  She leaned down to look Pablo in the eyes.     “Guess you wish you’d stayed home, huh?”     “How…How did you know?” he mumbled.     “Oh, you don’t think I know how to find out what you’ve been up to?  How long did you think you could hide it?  Did you really think you could keep it from me?”    “Baby, come on now, untie me.  We can talk this over.” He begged.  “She meant nothing to me.”     “That’s rich!  So you mean to say you threw our marriage away for nothing?”       “I didn’t say that!”  He struggled against the ropes.  “Come on baby, you know you are the only one who means anything to me.”     “You have a hell of a way of showing it.”     Barbie moaned a bit and opened her eyes.  She smelled the alcohol, saw the ropes tying her to Pablo, began to struggle and wimper.     “Awww, look.  The poor thing thinks she can get away.”     “Baby, don’t do this, I’ll make it up to you.”     “Pabby, what’s going on?”  Barbie asked, voice almost completely taken over in panic.     “Nothing, just calm down.  We’ll be ok.”     “You’ll be okay?  You’ll be okay?” Becca shook her head.  “You don’t get it do you?  I’m not stupid like she is.  You can’t offer me dinner and a movie and expect me to forget.  We are through.”     Then she flipped open the lighter and ignited the alcohol.  The two screamed in agony, Pablo burned for a good long time, but Barbie melted almost immediately.       When the fire died down, Becca picked up the two bodies, and tossed them into the river.  At this point, the river was overgrown, and the stream that fed it was choked with deadwood.  The remains of the two dolls looked like just another dead branch in the water.  Pablo had not fully burned away, he still had one eye left.  As the current took him downstream, he saw the burned remains of another doll’s arm.  And there a leg.  He was surrounded by dead dolls.  If his mouth had remained, he’d have screamed again.</blockquote>

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