After a long night of roaming the city, lurking in dark corners, slinking through the shadows the high rise buildings provided in search of a tasty blood, repugnant soul human to feast upon, The Vampire returned the hotel she and her niece bunked in for the past three nights in lieu of the trunk and the backseat of the car.
She shifted into a bat and slipped through the partially opened hotel window, a small biddy eyed creature forming in one solid form on the other side. She shook her long hair out, flicking it over one shoulder, then proceeded to kick off one boot followed by its twin.
BANG!
A gun shot fired, shattering a small whole into the wall plaster just left of her head.
"What the hell are you doing?" The Vampire snapped at her baby witch niece who stood in the middle of the room with a gun pointed before her.
"Bored," The Little Witch replied.
"What?"
"BORED!" She shot again hitting the wall two inches from her previous mark.
The Vampire shrugged, tossing the lovely soft peach cashmere sweater to the side. She wore it because it was pretty, not to protect her from the chilly late Spring weather, the tank top she wore was sufficient enough. "Don't think playing Sherlock is the best way to cure boredom, you know, with all the noise and such."
"I spelled the room. Duh."
"Still." The Vampire sat in the center of the bed, legs crossed. "I'm sure there's something else you could do."
Little Witch sighed dramatically, tossing the gun up in the air where it vanished. "Fine." The next hour passed with The Vampire catching up on all the books she let pile up over the last three months on the E-reader she borrowed without asking with no intention to return. Little Witch stood at the window, a spell written on the glass by smudging her finger, using it as a portal of sorts to her private solarium where she kept all her ingredients and potions ready stocked for easy access. As long as the item was in stock and where she left it, she could summon the item for spells and charms without ever having to physically retrieve it. It made working magic instantly and remotely all the more easy.
But not even the ever growing pile of commissions was enough to occupy the young witch, and she stood at the window gazing at the residential houses, office building, and other stores and business 5 stories below her Brooklyn hotel room.
She flicked a hand, ever the good witch, and turned on the lights of a darkened building for a lady with two small children. But being bad was also fun, so she tampered with the traffic lights causing them to from green to red every ten seconds, but her magic was too much for the old wires and electricity.
POP! BOW!
A transformer blew, and all the lights on her side of the street went out, spreading two blocks to her left and three behind her.
The Vampire rolled her eyes and glanced over the book. “Nice.”
“Oops.”
“Think you can manage to produce some sort of light so I can continue my book? Without sitting anything on fire.”
Little Witch turned to face her aunt. “If you were reading something…good, I’d consider it.”
“Hey!” The Vampire said defensively, “this book isn’t that bad.”
“That book sucked ass.” She snorted.
“No it doesn’t.”
“It’s the same for all those regency romances. Some female from the present somehow ends up in the past because she’s destined to be the great love of the super hot and muscled Highlander with long dark hair and a kilt, or the overly attractive, stuffed shirt Darcy-type Earl or Duke.”
“Or Rake. Can’t forget the Rake’s,” The Vampire said. She sat the E-reader to the side.
“And it’s always the same,” Little Witch droned on. “They take some liberated, educated, intelligent, pretty woman who, more often than not, has no friends or close-living family and you thrust her back into the past by way of a magic book, or mirror, fall, a nap in the park where she wake up and finds herself 200-1000 years in the past where the first person who stumbled across her is usually some prick who attempts to rape her after noticing her state of undress—“
“You mean shorts, or tee shirt. Hair uncovered, hands exposed, ankles all the way.” The Vampire stuck out a perfectly exposed ankle that in the past was completely unacceptable for a woman to show.
“You Strumpet,” Little Witch teased. “Then the big man shows up with his misconstrued impressions based on the five minutes he’s known you and has determined you’re the most obstinate woman ever.”
The Vampire held up her hand. “You forgot something?”
“What?”
“The Swoon-Snarl at first sight. They see each other, both thinks the other is the most gorgeous and handsome person they’ve ever laid eyes upon. Then they speak and piss each other off.” She batted her lashes.
“I said that.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Uh...Super hot Highlander in a kilt? Obstinate woman? Remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Anyway, the part that bothers me—“
“You’re just going to skip ahead? No. Keep going in order. This is entertaining.”
“—Is that they take this woman who has every right to be upset, and distraught, who wants to go home and they make her okay with the situation. A week— Sorry, a sennigh later and though she still desperately wants to return home, she’s no longer trying, she’s so involved trying to revolutionize their this backwards century she’s stumbled upon that has no indoor plumbing, or cable TV, internet, not even a damn Starbucks, and let me tell you, Starbucks would definitely be needed in this situation.”
“Coffee didn’t become mainstream until a few centuries ago. Back then they drank tea.”
Little Witch rolled her eyes. “Now she either as played along, pretended to be from the time, maybe a runaway daughter of sorts who is taking in and giving protection, so she alters her speech to keep from sounding like the alien she really is, or she tries to prove her story, that she’s from the future where blah, blah, equal rights, blah blah, women make their own decisions, blah blah, here! Let me prove it by showing you my cell phone. Which. Should. Not. Work! The technology did not exist by then. The moment you travel into the past that cell phones should die. Immediately. There’s no electricity. And she should probably be swinging from a gallows by her neck if she manages to get that contraption to work. Or because she will almost always be stubborn and smart mouth.”
The vampire glanced around the room, refraining from informing her niece that they currently had no electricity either, and it had nothing to do with time travel.
“And the worst part is, they take this otherwise intelligent, strong, beautiful lady and turn her into a mediocre, DUMB, watered down, sad excuse of a person, who despite being beaten, kidnapped, poisoned, tortured, in some cases raped, is oh-so happy because she’s with the man she loves. Who is just as bad and bland as she. And you know what else? Her real family or friends, if she has them are oh-so accepting of this, because she always manages to make it back to the present at least once more before she resides in the past forever. And if she has no family or friends, her coworkers or landlord never noticed she disappeared.”
“It doesn’t always end that way,” The Vampire countered. “Sometimes they end up in the present, where the guy returns to her time.”
“And is totally useless!” Little Witch said. “He has no birth certificate, no social security number, no passport, no ID, no real life job skills, he can’t do shit. All he can do is look good in a skirt or stuffy in a shirt. He is of no value. It’s total bull. It’s all fake and dumb, and as much as I love historical novels, I can’t get with the shitty travel to the past stories.”
“You make some valid points, although your view is obviously slanted towards the negative, but that’s not the say it would never happen that way.”
“Almost never.”
“I’m pretty sure it would.”
“Nope.”
“If you threw 5 people in the past, I’m sure you would see all those traits happened, if not in one person, bits and pieces in them all.”
Little Witch slanted her head, surveying her aunt. “Bet you wouldn’t.”
The Vampire’s eyes began to glow. “Bet?” She could never turn down a good bet. “Bet what?”
“You’re Psy-Changeling ARC? If I win, and by win that means if five people go into the past and one of them behaves in a ‘not dumb’ way, I win and you hand it over. If they all are idiots in the slightest, you win and you can have…?”
The Vampire smiled. “Oh. I’ll state my claim later. If I win. But there’s a problem.”
“Huh?”
“We need five people.”
Little Witch skunked against the wall. “True.”
The Vampire walked over to her niece and looked out the window, lamenting at a missed opportunity that would be so much fun. She pressed her forehead to the window, looking down across the street that wasn’t drenched in darkness, watching people bustling down the street, in and out of buildings and the big laundromat with all the huge glass window where she could see people loading washers and folding clothes, a group of people sitting at a table talking. Four boys. Four girls, all different in appearance, and possibility personality and temperament.
A slow, wicked grin spread her face. “We could use them.”
“Them who?”
Little Witch looked to where her aunt pointed.
“Them in the laundromat at the table. That’s a pretty diverse set of people. I’m sure one of them is bound to be smart.”
“We’re not throwing random people into the past Tia.”
“Why not?” The Vampire asked, genuinely curious. “It’s not like you can’t protect them.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Asks the girl who was shooting at the wall.”
The Witch flicked her hand, the bullet holes vanished, the wall as good a new.
“Why can’t you do that with them? Make it like a video game. Send them on a quest, make them solve missions or something, like they have to stop the evil Queen from taking over--“
“Why is it always an evil queen?”
“—And if they die, they return home, safe and unharmed, and maybe think it’s just a dream.”
“You’re insane,” Little Witch countered weakly, as she began to like the idea of the game. She loved games as much as her aunt loved bets.
“They could have like, this five lives…five stupidities, and when they run out of all the stupidities they could use, they lose the game, instant death, and return home. If one remains in the game when all is solved, you win. If they all die and return home. I win.” She tugged on her niece’s arm. “Come on Sobrina. For just this once do something really fun.”
Little Witch sighed. “Fine. Fine. But they only get three Stupidities. And there's no evil queen. We'll stick with the topic of romance and intelligence.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “And to make it more interesting, we both will also play. Good Angel, Bad Angel. Your job is to get them to make a stupid decision, mine is to get them to make a smart one. But we can only interfere twice. Each.”
The Vampire’s eyes glowed even brighter, her smile growing larger. She rubbed her hands together eagerly. “And the rules?”
“So this is how it’s going to go.” As Little Witch talked, telling her the mission, The Vampire squealed in joy.
ddddd
Down at the Laundromat, Trice stood up from the table. “I think my dryer just went out.” She walked down the row of dryer’s and opened what should have been her dryer. She glanced at the number in the upper left hand corner. #69. Yep. Was her dryer, but that wasn’t her stuff. With her index finger and thumb, she lifted a garment out of the dryer. Knickers. There was no other way to describe the linen underwear that would start at her waist and come down to her knees. “The hell is this?”
“Ugh. Trice, I knew you were a hard cotton, period panties sort of girl, but even that’s going too far,” Suri said from her seat beside Rian who blushed profusely.
These were certainly period clothing’s, but not how Suri meant it. “They’re not mine.”
“ Wife?” Jime stood behind Trice, peeking over her shoulder into the dryer. “You’d go to a Renaissance fest lately and didn’t tell me? I wanted one of those big turkey legs.”
“As if I have time to go anywhere.”
“You just went to Chicago,” Jolene reminded her without looking up from the drama she watched on her tablet.
“After three years,” Kri added.
Trice shifted the laundry in the dryer, more confused than ever. Eliot saddled up beside her and Jime. “What’s that?” he reached into the dryer for what looked like a gold coin.
“A silver dollar?” Hiroki suggested. “Maybe you left change in your clothes.”
“Not my clothes,” Trice replied.
Eliot held up the coin turning it back and forth. One side was gold, a mysterious woman with long hair lounged along the right side of the coin, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d swear she winked. The other side was silver, a different woman leaning against the left side of the coin, three halo’s above her head.
The others got up from the table, crowding around to see the coin and the contents of the dryer.
“Let me see,” Jime held her hand out. Her fingers brushed against Eliot’s as he handed over the coin. It slipped from their hands, falling to the ground with a cling where it spun and spun and spun picking up more speed and stability instead of losing momentum and toppling over. A gust rose, swirling around their legs, their upper bodies, a thick wall of wind that blocked their view from everything. The laundromat, the washers and dryer’s behind them, even each other.
What’s going on?”
“What the hell is this?”
“Is this Jumunji?”
“Uh! Don’t say that. I hate that movie.”
“Somebody call my mommy.”
“Am I high? Did one of you spike my juice?”
And that was the last thing any of them heard before the ground opened up in a rush and swallowed them whole.
ddddd
Eliot sucked in a deep breath, his lungs taxed, his backside hurting from where he crash landed onto the floor. Eyes shut tight, they slowly fluttered open, when he was sure he wouldn’t vomit from the sudden onslaught of dizziness. White clouds floated by slowly. Blinking rapidly, he sat up, and looked around for everyone else.
No one. He was alone.
He twisted and looked behind him. His jaw slackened. To no one in particular, he said, “I don’t think we’re in Kanas anymore, Toto.”
A BET LIKE NO OTHER
A Launderette Extra
Where a bored witch and vampire from Sunset Coven decided to entertain themselves and test human intelligences at the same time by throwing cast of Laundro into the past for shits and giggles.
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