--donation bonus (day #9, post 1/5)--
Damian returned a quizzical expression. “I like your style, too, Grandma. Your eyebrows are pointier than I remember.”
‘Seriously. Don’t mind him. Please.’
Damian looked at Feromas. “So who do you want me to kill?”
‘No one, right now, Damian. Please just relax.’
“Okay, Boss. You’re the boss, Boss.” And he stood next to the reaper, rigid as a wooden plank.
“You want him to run the family business?” said Geoffrey. “Is he capable of such a thing?”
‘...Please don’t ask me such difficult questions. Do you want our help or not?’
Geoffrey scrunched his mouth together, thinking a moment, and then shrugged. “Sure, okay. Everyone else already ran away, though, so I’m not sure what you plan on doing.”
Feromas stared at him for a long moment, then just gave a massive sigh.
“It’s okay!” said Damian. “I know all sorts of great people!”
“Is he lucid again?”
‘Not sure...’
“Like the Tooth Fairy!”
‘Ah, there it is.’
“We’ll build a tooth-fortress! No one’ll be able to get in! Unless we want them to, of course. We’ll need a tooth-drawbridge. And maybe some tooth-horses.”
Geoffrey cocked an eyebrow. “How often does he get like this, exactly?”
‘Once or twice a day, perhaps. It varies.’
Abruptly, Geoffrey heard the phone ring. He rushed back to his office to pick it up. “Yes, hello? Desmond?”
<“Heya, Geoffrey. Got some info you might like. In a little town out west, we got a report of a man going around with two babies.”>
“Excellent!”
<“Town’s called Battonburg. Info’s a bit old, so he’s probably not there anymore, but you might be able to get a lead on him if you pay the place a visit.”>
“Thank you, Desmond! I will do just that.”
<“Have fun out there. And give me a call if you need anymore help, yeah?”>
“Of course. You are too kind.” He hung up and looked at Feromas and Damian. “Okay. I have to go. Um. Enjoy building your tooth-fortress or whatever.”
“Will do!”
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Moving onto a serious note, the old man's mental condition raises some questions about the reapers' regenerative abilities. Was he like this before he met his reaper, meaning the reapers cannot heal previously existing conditions? Or are the reapers limited to only being able to heal physical conditions?
ReplyDeleteI must be driving you crazy now.
RD
Oh, no, I love the questions. Just don't expect straight answers all the time.
DeleteHealing mental conditions is much more difficult for reapers. Not necessarily impossible, but difficult in a "if I screw up, I'll only make it a lot worse" kind of way. And I'll offer you a tiny spoiler and say that in Feromas' case, the reaper just doesn't really care anymore.
The thing is, indirect answers may sometimes reveal more.
DeleteWe've already learned that Abolish prefers servants with some mental problems, and with your latest reply, we've learned that the reapers actually do have a way "inflict" mental problems in originally normal people. Could be future plot threads here.
And isn't it about time for you to repost that vote link? Those of us who voted once before should be able to vote again any day now.
RD
Haha, I read your comment in a bossy voice and it made me laugh. Like, "REPOST THAT LINK, GODDAMMIT. LET US HELP YOU, YOU FUCKING MORON."
DeleteI was gonna repost it tomorrow, by the way, after all the donation bonuses went up. Haha, thanks for the concern, though.
oh no, not colt
ReplyDeleteYour use of carrots to mark a specific kind of dialogue makes me nostalgic for the Animorphs!
ReplyDeleteHaha, oh man, I'd completely forgotten that Animorphs did that. I think they used to denote telepathy, yeah? My memory of that series is so foggy. It's been ages.
DeleteYep, for telepathy. Good times. Loved those books in middle school. I still have a couple dozen of them in a box somewhere.
DeleteI remember loving them, too. I never did finish them, though. They were pretty depressing. But maybe that sounds weird coming from me, haha.
DeleteWas Damien like this *before* meeting Feromas?
ReplyDeleteWow you can just feel the exasperation coming off of Feromas. But seriously, Damian's mental health intrigues me. Whether Feromas can help or not, it brings new wrinkles into the relationship between reaper and servant
ReplyDeleteSo could a reaper purposefully screw up and give someone a mental condition, or give and heal mental conditions in a 'carrot and dementia-on-a-stick' sorta dealy?
ReplyDeleteHang on, I thought only mutation types could screw themselves up permanently?
ReplyDeleteguess the its hereditary
ReplyDeletetheir craziness that is