Rendezvous

[Anja]

When Morry just mumbled vaguely, Thad pocketed the chewing tobacco in mild disgust. Just then, Dianelopa made her grand entrance, and he was about to throw his hands up and sit down for a good, long while, but then the arrival of a third, unknown element stayed his exasperation's progress. He stiffened and ignored Dianelopa's words, instead holding up a gentle finger to his lips.

_________________________________

Paul Gromleslie was an uncharacteristically effeminate ogre, and accordingly, was normally very light on his feet. Not just figuratively either. In fact, the gayer and lighter he felt in his heart, the gayer and lighter he became in physiology. On a truly divine day, he was as light as a feather, and the urge to dance with butterflies and commit sweaty sodomy was nigh on overwhelming.

Since he had moved into the manor a scarce month previous, his days had been just so, almost without exception. His recent move to Marn had awakened a new and fluffy chapter in his life, and the past month had been nothing but rainbows and bunny-cuddles. He would go out in the evenings, thrice a week, Shortening Cake in hand, and dressed in some dreadfully conservative piece of clothing from the dusty wardrobes of the Venreace Manor's dearly departed owners. It would never take him long, perhaps a two minute walk, before he would find someone's neck to break. The rest of the cake would go into the victim's mouth, making them small enough to stuff into his dreadful clothing, and he would skip and whistle his way back to the manor.

He had killed nineteen Marnians in this manner, and this night was supposed to be the twentieth. Twenty was the number he was going for! It was just so trendy and clean-cut. (Besides that, he secretly wished he was still twenty.) But then the blasted guards had been crawling all over the place. Apparently, they had caught wind of an unusual number of disappearances amongst Marn's less fortunate over the last little while.

The whole situation made his blood boil, and brought his weight crashing up and his fabulous fancifulness crashing down, like twin elevators attached to the same pulley line. Now, the steps buckled beneath his thundering feet, and the wrathful scowl on his face peeled the paint as he ascended into his lair.

Really, it was amazing that the stairs had held up against the beating. The house had never been subjected to his full weight before, and asking the outdated workmanship to bear it another second was really asking too much. As he reached the top, the floor beneath him gave out completely, without warning or ceremony.

"Oh, for pete's sake!" he whined out with a slight lisp as he crashed into the downstairs living room beside the hollow concrete wall that was now a prison to Morry, Thad, and Dianelopa.

The depressing mauve carpet was now riddled with dust and flooring, and this insulting addition to injury nearly put Paul over the edge. It wouldn't take him much more to-

"My baubles," Paul gasped, holding his palms against his voluminous cheeks. The display case against the wall before him had been rifled through, and the Venreace family valuables removed. Amongst them had been the only vestige of taste and class that the fashion-conscious ogre had managed to find in his new home, and their disappearance would prove to be a terrible catalyst.

Woestruck is the soul that finds itself in proximity when Paul Gromleslie the big, gay ogre, has a hissy fit...

[Morry]

This was one of those times when superhuman, or rather, werewolf strength would come in handy. It was therefor most unfortunate that Morry could neither control his transformations, nor become wolf at all during that particular moon phase. He would be stuck as a human with a bump on his head all night, though if he remained this loopy, it probably wouldn't be so bad after all. He was barely aware that Lopa had also fallen through the floor, though he did lift his head a bit and attempt to get her in focus. But he was drooling and she was still a pale grey blur of nonsense.

All went quiet, though Morry could not see Thad motioning to stop speaking. There was rumbling and noise beyond the walls in which they were enclosed. Morry, in a futile attempt to escape, tried to crawl up the walls and instead flopped back on top of Thad and mumbled inaudibly.

There had to be a way out of this mess. They hadn't tried going down yet; Morry rolled off of Thad and tried to dig at the mass of dead bodies, trying to see if there was somehow a light at the bottom that signaled an escape route. He had quite obviously used up all of his heroic attempts tonight, what with fighting a giant frog and all that.

[Dianelopa]

The gas that had burst from the corpses as Dianelopa had landed on them had dissipated and the spell of dizziness it had caused was gone. Dianelopa perceived the array of sounds coming from above and beyond but wasn't able to make much sense of them except that it was obvious that someone or something had entered the house, had been climbing up the stairs toward the room above them, but had crashed down, creating the creaking of ripping wood, though Dianelopa did not know what it was that had broken. In any case it wasn't the floor above them - the creature hadn't landed in their crevice.

Then the creature talked. It isn't an animal, she thought. But its odd high pitched gravely voice didn't sound completely human either. Nonetheless, since Dianelopa had never knowingly run into a living non-human type with some human characteristics she didn't know about creatures like that except for wolfy humans like herself, definitely human, thus she figured it had to be human. If it had fallen down the stairs, it could be injured, was another thought, a pinpoint of compassion which sometimes pricked her. However, the creature was neither groaning, nor projecting any sounds of pain. On the contrary, it had begun snorting somewhat like an angry bull. Dianelopa knew about angry bulls. They could be very dangerous.

"I think," Dianelopa whispered to Thad, "that that person is dangerous. If he can get to us here, he will kill us. We have to get out. We better pile up the corpses like you said and make stairs." She began dragging a corpse at once and then another, not noticing that Morry had crawled underneath them. But disturbing the corpses was causing more gas to escape, gas that she was obviously allergic to. Dizziness overwhelmed her again and she staggered toward the wall, banged into it and fell.

[Anja]

Dianelopa's bump had not gone unnoticed by Gromleslie, and just as Thad was agreeing with her, his hands moving to heave a body up the side, a fist the size of his head came through the concrete wall and stopped just short of his abdomen. Had his usually calculating and detail-obsessed mind not been otherwise engaged by things like "holy hells, I just peed a little", he might have noticed that the fist was remarkably well-groomed, and even smelled faintly of apricots. As it was, he could only surmise that it was, indeed, a fist, and a terrible one.

Cracks arched out from the hole it had made, testament to its fury, lit from behind by the first floor living room's lachrymose hanging lamps. Then, the light was eclipsed by a looming, furious orange eye with long lashes and lilac eyeliner, and there came a voice. It was a superior, irritated voice, at once incredibly deep and primal, yet with a distinctly feminine cadence, and a lisp right out of the theatre cafe's ballerina gossip corner.

"Those earrings are deLucci! Do you hear me, you slut? deLucci!"

Thad needed no further prompting, and he began heaving bodies recklessly against the wall closest to the stairs, at a pace that defied any realistic evaluation of his size and frame.

[Morry]

As foggy as his mind had become, Morry had become painfully aware of the tossing of corpses going on all around him, as the smell that was released as this was happening was completely intoxicating, and not in the good way like booze. This was more like the 'drain-your-life-away' sort of stench that he was beginning to become not very fond of at all. It was a good thing he didn't have the mental capacity to realize the real danger in the situation or he probably would have been screaming like a little girl at that point. Still, true consciousness was slowly being realized minute by minute as Thad and Dainelopa heaves corpses one on top of the other.

Not long into it, they revealed Morry, half-buried in half of a corpse that was missing an arm and a leg. At the change of light he grunted, then realized what they were doing, saw a scary-looking and very abnormally large hand smashing its way through the wall.

If he'd had any sense he wouldn't have done what he did next, but thankfully, he didn't have any sense.

Morry heaved himself up on his legs and clambored forward, also trying to toss corpses to form a stair case. The hand through the wall was severely debilitating his progress, however, and for that reason he roared a, "Now really?!" in a sort of drunken stupor, grabbed the fist and bit it.

Being human, he can't have done much damage but nonetheless he was extremely lucky to escape the whole situation with only a good chunk of his tangled hair missing and a bleeding scalp. He continued with the tossing of dead people, praying it would work.

[Dianelopa]

Dianelopa, struggling with dizziness, pulled herself up, swayed, tried to drag a corpse to the growing pile, fell again and then saw the fist again. Everything seemed to be swirling around, including the fist. She saw Morry who was also swirling bite the fist which made a slight jerk, and then it started swirling to, but in a different direction. With each swirl it knocked a bigger hole in the wall, letting more light into their crevice, but also puffs of cement dust which mixed with the corpse gas. Blurp went Dianelopa's stomach and she threw up. Now the sour smell of her stomach contents added to the aroma, or whatever you want to call it, wafting through the air. She kept gagging, after the first massive explosion, bits of lumpy greenish fluid kept pouring out of her mouth. She couldn't stop.

Between gags she said, "Get me out of here. Before I die. Thad. Morry. please."
Blurp went another blob of crap out of her mouth.

There were two ways out. That much she was aware of. Either up over the corpses or through the hole which was now filled with a waving fist, trying to punch whatever came near it.

"Out", howled Dianelopa again. "Out, out." Blurp. Cough, and a groan as her muscles began painfully aching from the repeated expulsions.

The fist had reacted to Morry's bite. Not much, but it had. Dianelopa staggered up. Blurp she went, but she was standing. She opened her mouth with blobs of throw up dripping down her chin. She followed Morry's example. She bit the fist. But her bite unlike Morry's was strong, her teeth big, quite sharp and covered with lumpy, sour, green slime.
The fist reacted more than it had last time. It withdrew. The hole was free and Dianelopa in complete desperation and with no idea how she did it, slid through the hole landing in the dining room with the monster looming directly over her. Her stomach emitted one last blurp and the smelly green slime splattered onto the ogre's fine jacket.

[Anja]

Paul Gromleslie, who had been gearing his fist up to plow directly through Dianelopa's head, drew back, scandalized and haughty, a veritable antithesis to the savagery of the last few seconds. He held his nose with one hand, and fretted and flapped with the other one, drawn close to his chest. "Oh, gods, it reeks! Girlfriend, you're nasty!"

Paradoxically, emptying the contents of her stomach onto his finely tailored threads was probably the best thing Dianelopa could have done for her continued health and wellness. He pitter-pattered on the tips of his toes, as though the act of jogging delicately in place could whisk him away to a less vomitous place. Floorboards cracked beneath him, and the destroyed wall shook loose a rainstick's worth of bent nails.

Thad had abandoned his corpse-piling project the moment Dianelopa had been tugged through the wall, and he lunged at her feet, in vain. A frenzied series of scramblings and contortions confirmed his fears. There was no way he was getting through there. He pounded against the wall in frustration, yelling "take the fucking earrings then, ye filthy poof!"

It wasn't the canniest option on the list of things to shout at a rampaging ogre whose nail polish matched his eyes, but Thad was well beyond rational procedure at this point. He was a thief, for crying out loud! Talk about being a fish out of water.

Had he a second to spare a glance at Morry, he would have retracted that thought, in humble deference to the pitiful man's struggles with the cadaverous staircase.

[Morry]

Morry was still struggling with the staircase of dead people (which was a terrible idea to begin with and the only reason he was still working on it was because...wait, why was he still working on it?) when he smelled something just downright foul. Fouler even than the stench of dead bodies (living on the streets most of his life, death was a smell he was used to), a strange color of vomit was suddenly everywhere it shouldn't have been. Dianelopa somehow managed to projectile vomit her way out of the hole in the wall and made her escape after a lot of pitiful moans of agony. Well at least he was trying to get everyone out like a damn hero but NO. Ah well. He was tired of being the hero today anyway. It had been an unwelcome change of pace today, and there was no way Lopa was even worth any of the things he had done. Things that were likely the most heroic things he would ever do in his life, ever.

By the time the ogre with a fashion sense began rampaging and flabbering his arms around, and by the time Thad had decided it was a good idea to say something about ear jewelery (Morry of course had missed whatever part the earrings had to do with any of this, and even if he had known, he would've forgotten), Morry was so far along his staircase that he was jumping up, trying to read the broken floorboards.

Once, he did grab one finally, but there was most unfortunately a three inch nail sticking out of it and it had even more unfortuantely pierced the skin on Morry's hand. He howled in pain and tumbled back down the staircase, which of course collapsed in on itself and sent bodies and body parts all flying at Morry and Thad.

There was one very good thing about collapsing bodies. It was hard to see where you were going when you tried to rampage through them. And that was exactly what Paul the ogre tried to do. The monster broke through the wall and grabbed for Thad at a ridiculously lucky time when a fully dislocated arm hit the ogre's lovely (...egh) face.

The moment was so fast that Morry didn't know if he had grabbed Thad and pulled him through the hole in the wall just as a dead fat guy was about to smash them or if it had been the other way around, where Thad had pulled him, or even if the dead fat guy had saved him from Thad's body. Well, something along those lines had happened and somehow they both found themselves running like hell in slightly less rotted air. Paul was immobilized, but only for a short moment. Roaring with anger he burst through the hole himself and flung body parts in at least ten different directions.

Oi, the powers of a soiled jacket.

[Dianelopa]

Dianelopa watched the flappering ogre for a few seconds, heard the tumbling bodies behind the wall which had had apparently caused the ogre to go crashing through the hole. She hardly had time to worry about what he was going to do to Thad and Morry when the two of them burst through the now quite large hole and fled at full speed. It took Dianelopa another second to get her inner motor revved up, by which time the ogre's breathe, a mixture of some perfumery herbs and an overpowering case of halitosis made it obvious how close he'd approached and she fled on the tail of Thad and Morry with the ogre right behind.

There was no option to strategize an escape. It was full speed ahead out the back door, through the garden and to the front gate which was locked. Thad shinnied up the fence in a split second, he grabbed Dianelopa's hand who was right behind him and pulled her up. But by then the ogre had almost caught up with Morry who was still struggling to climb the fence. He flung his fist backwards in order to plant a powerful blow on Morry's head.

Angst and adrenalin had prevented all of them from noticing that the sky was gray, not black, and that the street on the other side of the gate was populated with a slow, still sparse, but regular stream of sleepy-eyed workers heading for their early morning jobs.

Thus it was that a young man named Lufthriner trudging drearily along, thinking of how he didn't want to be going to his nasty little job digging ditches so someone else could fix broken underground pipes, heard the panting of the fleeing beings behind the gate. He turned his head to see what it was and couldn't believe his eyes. He rubbed them, then looked again. By then a man and a woman were balancing at the top of the gate, another man was trying to climb the gate while behind him a terrifying yet bizarrely silly looking creature was about to pound his huge fist on the man's head. Lufthriner who had passed this house every day without ever taking notice of it did the first thing that came to mind, he screamed.

[Anja]

The man's scream threw off Thad's balance, and he toppled over and into the Marnian street, face first in (what else?) a mud puddle. Behind him, he heard the wrought-iron fence shudder as Paul Gromleslie threw his whole, flamboyant weight at it. Gasping and sputtering, Thad drew himself up and whirled around. Luckily, his face was covered in mud, which effectively ruled him out of any City Guard lineup.

There was a time for chivalry, and this wasn't it. Dianelopa was a big girl, and Morry... well, Morry was Morry. But Thad at least had the courtesy to run up to the shock-ridden Lufthriner and knock him flat onto the cobblestones before racing off. After all, he didn't want Dianelopa to be identified, and himself by association.

He didn't look back at all until he was a good two blocks down, at which point he slowed his pace to a less suspicious jog, and risked a glance over his soil-tarnished shoulder.

[Morry]

Objects of value and plants that a botanist might've been tempted to steal fled past him as Morry half-flailed, half-ran to push himself onward. With his awkward body shape and poor physical fitness, he fell behind fairly quickly but the threat of death grabbing and roaring behind him made him keep moving. For one used to a slow, pitiful pace and begging on the streets for a living, it was incredible that the werewolf had not already passed out. Unfortunately, being half-wolf did not help him right now. Those strengths faded with the body that the moon had cursed him with. It was the reason he had always been at the bottom of society, for the inability to control his shifting made him no more than a sickly human seventy-five percent of the time.

Anyway, when they reached the fence it was inevitable for Morry to have serious trouble. He screamed (and not in a very 'testosterone-heavy' way) loudly as a fist came forth, flailing on the bars of the fence dramatically. Jesus must've seriously loved this lost cause, or something, as it was sheer luck that the fist hit the fence and not the werewolf. He desperately clambered over it, landing unceremoniously on his ass, which he groaned at. If there hadn't been an ogre chasing them, he would've just laid right there and acted dead, as that was about how his body was feeling about now.

Had he been hit by a large blue contraption driven exclusively by gnomes? No, but, it sure felt like it. His body was covered in mud from the oh-so convenient mud puddle (and probably horse shit too), and from the waist down he was still quite damp from stagnant basement water. The smell of putrid flesh was just the cherry on top, but Morry had never really cared how he smelled and plucked himself off the stone ground anyway, running awkwardly after the two thieves simply because he had no one else to follow.

That, and they seriously owed him for taking out that damn toad.

[Dianelopa]

Although Morry thought he saw two thieves running down the street, he was likely hallucinating or just imagining things. In any case, Dianelopa had about a split second to view the whole chaotic and noisy scene from her perch high up on the gate. Then the ogre's fist smashed into the gate shaking it worse than an earth quake. This inevitably knocked Dianelopa off. But she fell not into the convenient mud puddle, but rather the other way, next to the rampaging ogre.

Luckily for her, however, the torn iron bars had ripped several deep scratches into the ogre's fist and arm and blood was spurting out, splattering both the ogre and Dianelopa. Under normal circumstances, the ogre would have simply done away with Dianelopa while she sat rather helplessly on the ground. But Paul Gromleslie's first concern was with his own appearance, and then with the pain in his hand and arm. His blood stained clothes sent him into another of his flapping jigs accompanied by squeals of pain and annoyance.

Dianelopa got to her feet. An immediate exit through the gate wasn't possible because of the twisted and sharply pointed broken bars which would have gauged Dianelopa as much as they had the Ogre. Climbing back up to the top would have been possible but with a great deal of attention paid to avoiding the sharp edges. So Dianelopa did what may have been one of her natural tendencies. She said, "Hey sir, you must be in pain. You are bleeding quite profusely. Would you like me to bind your wounds?" Having said that she realized there was nothing at hand to bind them with.

But the ogre was so surprised at her apparently caring words, at being called sir, and at the offer of help, that he stopped flapping and said, "Can you do that?"

"Mmmm," said Dianelopa trying to think quickly. "Well, if you gave me your jacket, I could tear it into bandages."

In the meantime, a number of people on the street had walked toward the disturbance to see what was happening. But the scene was so scary that they quickly moved away again. Lufthriner, however, after his initial scream, had regained enough composure to get moving and he did what he thought was his duty; he ran to inform the city guards.

The ogre took off his now smelly and bloody jacket which he didn't want any more anyway and gave it to Dianelopa. She began wasting precious get-away time, tearing it into long strips which she then used to bind the wounds on the ogre's hand and arm.

Paul Gromleslie was thankful for the slight alleviation of pain and even went so far as to turn around to head back to his den. But then with the high point of discombobulation overcome, his ogre nature reasserted itself and he realized that a young girl was standing almost within arms reach, a young human so he thought, that would supply him with his twentieth victim.

[Anja]

Thad's laugh was part adrenalin-induced hilarity, and part contempt. There was Morry, flailing after him like a limp dick struggling in the patient but subtly contemptuous company of an alley hooker. Then Thad realized that he had not only just compared himself to an alley hooker, but that he had effectively branded on his mind a series of imagined scenes with Morry that he would probably never get rid of. It must be that ogre, getting under my skin. What a pervert.

Shaking his head, he ducked into a side street, not really caring whether or not Morry followed. He longed to know how Dianelopa was faring, but his longing wasn't enough that he would risk overthrowing years of perfect crime by diving into a fracas of city watch for a piece of tail (however he might feel about said piece of tail).

He stepped into a narrow, shadowed archway that led into an open residential courtyard, shielded from the street. From the vantage of a convenient bench, he dashed some water against his face from a skin at his hip, and then lit a cigarette as he waited to see who might run by.

____________________

Paul Gromleslie's one-eighty was more of an interrupted pirouette. His baleful orange eyes flashed in the dawn light, and his lip curled up in a sneer. Words weren't particularly necessary. What would he say, after all? Thanks for playing nurse, now I'm going to kill you. It seemed distasteful.

A war cry, perhaps? he mused. Yes, that will do nicely. But it was cut short by a sharp whistle: The cavalry had arrived. Paul's eyes flitted between Dianelopa and the manor gate, weighing his time. Oh, dash it all. I'm going to go get a manicure. He ran into the manor, slamming the front door behind him, and stuffed himself full of shortening cake. He felt his form shrinking to that of a human's, and he scrambled into one of the suits in the entrance hall, just as the sharp, military knock came. Whew...

[Morry]

While Lopa stayed behind, Morry ran after Thad and didn't stop until he had. They flew into a lonely side street that stank of damp stone, then into a small courtyard. The werewolf immediately fell over, clutching his chest as his heart beat hard and rapidly within him. He had not done so much running or physical work in ages, and still had no idea what the hell was going on.

He coughed and sputtered, drooling on the cold ground while he tried to catch his breath. Lopa had not joined them, and Mystery Man was lighting himself a smoke. Morry hadn't had a smoke in years.

"Would... would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" he asked. He wiped a dirty, gnarled hand over his face to wipe off sweat and spit, then began combing his dirty hair with his fingers, tugging at the mats angrily. He didn't know why he had followed the man. Hell, he didn't even know why he was here.

And he was supposed to be brushing his teeth right now, damn it.

[Dianelopa]

When the ogre turned toward the house Dianelopa got a moment of relief. She thought she could get out of that place of horror and even take enough time to escape without tearing herself apart on the gate. Unfortunately she had only just reached the fence when she glanced back and saw the ogre returning. "Ugh," she muttered and grabbed the fence, thinking she would have to spring over it in spite of the risk before the ogre could smash her. Those strange orange eyes seemed to her to be steaming. He was coming back with no friendly purpose in mind.

But then the whistle heralding the approach of the cavalry pierced the air. Dianelopa had been in Marn long enough to know that the city guard was on the lookout for anyone who used magic, but also for non-human, semi-human, and changer creatures. Her first thought was, they're after the ogre, they'll protect me. Her second thought was, could they be after me? No, I don't do magic. But the wolf thing. It had never really sunk into her mind existentially, that she was not a normal human, so it was still hard for her to imagine that she could be listed under the types prohibited from living or even being temporarily within the city walls.

She saw the guards dismount and head toward the gate. She would not greet them nor express relief that they were there, no, however much she would have wished she could have done that, she had to get away before they noticed her. So she slunk off sideways into the unkempt garden, crouched low and tried to keep hidden behind vines, leaves, bushes, and weedy flower beds making her way as quickly and as quietly as possible away from the house, hoping against hope that the guard would follow the ogre and not her.

She heard the guards' hammers smashing the gate down. She heard their noisy cleat boots clacking on the stone path heading toward the house. She stopped running. There was a chance to get away now. Maybe. She edged slowly back toward the gate which no longer was there. Yes, it was wide open. The only problem was that at least two guards still sat there on their horses in the street in front of the gate blocking her exit. She also caught a glance of her tattered dress, the vomit stains, still fresh blood spatters from the ogre's wounds, the smell. What would those guards think if she just tried to walk past them?

Yeah, what. Lopa didn't have a better idea. It was all the fault of that horrible Ogre wasn't it. She slowly moved out of her hiding place, into the tall grass of the yard and then walked toward the gate.

As soon as she was in view of the guards, one of them shouted. "Hey you. Stop."

Dianelopa stopped.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" he growled menacingly eyeballing her from head to foot up and down and up again.

"I was visiting my aunt," said Dianelopa, "and we were in the dining room when that, that..." she pointed toward the house. "He got in the house and attacked us." Dianelopa began to cry. "I tried to fight him. He tried to kill me." Her tears turned more hysterical.

The guard must have thought her story was plausible. "Are you OK?" he asked. Dianelopa nodded. "I'll bring you home," he said in a much friendlier tone. "Just wait here for a few minutes."

"You don't have to," said Dianelopa. "I can get home by myself. That is kind of you," she added. She began walking slowly through the gate, turning in the direction of the distant water tower, looking down at the street and hoping he'd let her go.

"I don't think it's a good idea," said the guard.

"I'm OK," said Dianelopa and kept walking slowly. The guard didn't follow her. At the next street she turned, so the guard couldn't see her any more and maybe would forget about her. This street was much quieter - no people walking along, no sign of Thad or Morry. She had no idea where they'd gone. Suddenly she felt terribly alone and abandoned. I could go back to Puck, she thought, but I don't even have the document seal he wanted. Does Thad have it? I don't know. And if he does, who knows where he's gone with it. I've failed, she thought. How can I go back and tell him I messed it all up. And the tears which before had been half an act, now flowed out of desperation.