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Unreal Estate: Chapter One, Draft #1 part A.
Unreal Estate: Chapter One, Draft 1..part B
Unreal Estate: Chapter 2 Preview
It was 7 o’clock on an a-typical day when his alarm clock went off. It went off because he programmed it to go off at 7 o’clock, and thus was typical in its own right on this atypical day. Time to wake up.
Most farmers could pop right to their feet and hit the fields within minutes of waking, but Mallory was the sort to take a minimum of ten minutes to groan, roll around a bit, and ponder the idea of going back to sleep. This would have worked fine except that he was used to his bed, which was considerably wider than the couch, and on his first roll he rolled right off the cushions. Thankfully he missed the coffee table, but the floor was more than happy to rush up to greet him in a painful manner.
Dragging himself back onto the couch (which he sat on for a change, as opposed to the less traditional use of overnight sleep) he rubbed his head a few times, which only made the pain worse. It was probably for the best that he had a rude awakening, though; it meant no chance of dropping back to sleep. He had to make a good impression on his first day, after all, and Meiko wouldn’t appreciate it if he slept in!
Mallory Heisenberg had a saying : “The early bird never gets a second chance to have first dibs on the worm.” This saying mutated every time he thought of it, of course, but the basic idea remained the same.
Shaking his head a bit to clear out the sleepy cobwebs and multiply his mounting headache by 1.3, he walked over to the back closet. Not the large one where they stored winter coats and unused furniture, but the tiny closet that Meiko had emptied out so Mallory would have some privacy for changing clothes and somewhere to store his material possessions. It was a bit cramped and he kept bumping his head on the light bulb as he hopped up and down to get his pants on, but he didn’t mind. After all, they only had enough bedrooms for the girls, and he didn’t want to raise a fuss about his Living Room Couch + Broom Closet combined living space. It wouldn’t make the right impression if he complained.
Properly dressed, the next step was to take care of personal hygiene. Mallory came out of the closet (in a literal sense) and turned the corner into the downstairs hallway, making a left into the only bathroom in the house. He brought a small cup with him that had a tiny bottle of mouthwash, a single serving tube of toothpaste, and his special RealWare Dental Products issue toothbrush that had the extra bristles for cleaning those hard to reach places. Five minutes later he was fresh and ready to face the day!
Next step was to begin his official House duties. This was the part he was actually quite looking forward to. Although the House didn’t have a whole lot to work with ingredient-wise, he had thought up an excellent variation on pancake batter that would truly impress his new employers.
And so, with batter in his heart (but not his arteries) and good intentions in mind, he stepped into his new domain — The Kitchen. Feeling the innate country home need to enjoy the fresh air and sunlight of a new day, he unlocked the kitchen window, swung it open, and was knocked unconscious by the coconut that slammed into his forehead.
The sound the coconut made when it bounced once or twice on the floor was not entirely unlike the sound his head made when he hit the linoleum floor.
Unreal Estate: Chapter Two
While unconscious, Mallory had a highly prophetic dream of foreshadowing images and metaphors which, once properly decoded, would have revealed the mystery of the multiverse if not for the fact that Lorelei was shaking him awake.
“Oi, oi!” she shouted in his ear at a volume suitable for stunning an elephant. (Fortunately her bathrobe was tightly closed, or Mallory might have been stunned for other reasons.) “Mal! You alive in there? If you’re dead, who am I gonna get to clean my room?!”
“I think I’m alive,” Mallory replied with much uncertainty as one eye slid open. “Where am I– ah! Window! Big tree! Urbana’s overgrown with big, funny looking trees–”
“Relax, kiddo, we’re not in Urbana anymore,” Lorelei said, stepping back to let Mallory pick his own self off the floor without any help whatsoever from her. “We’re in I’s Land now. Meiko moved us last night while you were asleep, we’ve got a job to do here. Good thing too, the house fund was running low…”
Mallory pulled himself up by the window sill… careful not to bump his head against the huge green palm leaf that had swung into the open window when he had opened it earlier. His eyes adjusted to the light — it was brighter than the dull sunlight that trickled down through the towers of Urbana. The sky was actually a bright cyan (a generic relative to blue in the ‘groovy’ phylum) with a golden yellow sun that didn’t hurt to look at, despite being so bright. There wasn’t a cloud in sight… and rather than pavement and buildings, all Mallory saw as far as his eyes could reach through his glasses was sand, surf, and wooden buildings.
“A.. a beach!” he recognized from the grainy streaming videos he’d see on RealNet’s Travel Video Network. “We’re parked on a beach!”
“Yeah, I’s Land doesn’t have much in the way of docks,” Lorelei complained, as she took a seat at the kitchen table (which had been converted back to an eating surface after yesterday’s fateful Ping Pong match). “You just pick a spot of sand, negotiate with ‘em to clear away from it, and WHAM. No power or water hookups. I hate it, the toilets revert to using the internal tanks and end up smelling awful… Mal?”
“What? Yes?” Mallory asked, wrenching his eyes away from the sights of paradise.
“Food?” Lorelei suggested. “C’mon, houseboy. I know it’s early but let’s get up to speed, mmm?”
“Foo– aah! Breakfast! I forgot!”
“No, you were unconscious. There’s a difference.”
“Pancakes, pancakes…” Mallory chanted to himself, scrounging through the meager food stocks of the House. “I think I have enough here to make pancakes for five–”
“Three.”
“Three?”
“Meiko already left, and Kisei doesn’t eat with the rest of us except at dinner time,” Lorelei explained, drumming her fingers on the table. “So that means you’re feeding yourself, myself, and–”
“Eiiiko-chaaan!” a musical voice piped in with, as the young girl popped in from the hallway filled with pep. She skipped over to a seat and hopped up, while simultaneously pulling a pink plastic pocket wireless workstation from her overalls, keying up the morning stock quotes, and ordering her meal. “I want Chocolate Frosted Chocolate Choco-Chunks Cereal! And a bagel and orange juice.”
“And I’ll just take toast, I’m in a hurry,” Lorelei spoke, her fingers drumming a bit faster. “Light, not dark, with just a bit of butter.”
Mallory reoriented his Gears of Customer Service, sliding the drawer with the batter spoon shut. Bread was plucked from another cabinet and plopped into the toaster with precision and skill while his other hand hunted through the cabinets for a bowl. “Chocolate.. err… one bowl of cereal comin’ up! And a bagel and orange juice and toast. Have it for you in a minute!” he announced… before pausing. “Err… Meiko and Kisei are gone, then?”
“Kisei doesn’t eat with us except at dinner, like I said. She’s not really the type for light social banter over eggs and bacon. She’s not really the type for any banter whatsoever with any of us. Or any contact of any kind whatsoever unless it’s needed for a job…”
Eiko shrugged, while performing six stock transactions at the tap of a fingernail. “Kisei doesn’t mind me,” she commented. “She just doesn’t like you because you’re mean to her. And she respects oneesama even if they aren’t bestest friends…”
Mallory sighed, as he set the completed Cereal + Bowl + Milk + Spoon in front of Eiko. “I don’t think she likes me very much, though,” he noted. “She really gave me the cold shoulder nose in the air with the silent treatment yesterday…”
“The wha?” Lorelei spoke, raising an eyebrow ‘o confusion. “Anyway… I’m not surprised. You’re goofy. She hates goofy. I don’t mind goofy guys as long as they’ve got a good… …err…”
“Hey! Are you making another sex joke like Meiko-oneesama told you not to make in front of me?” Eiko asked, perking up adorably at the possibility of getting Lorelei in trouble.
“I like guys with good… hair,” Lorelei lamely finished. “Hey, hair boy, toast?”
“Toast!” Mallory announced, placing a plate of fine china topped by four precisely sliced triangular pieces of golden brown toast with rich, creamy butter which had been spread evenly with a skilled sweeping wrist motion.
Lorelei sat in speechless silence as what could be described as the Purest Ideal of Toast glistened in the sunlight of I’s Land before her. She prodded it lightly with one finger… a perfect number of crumbs falling off, just enough to give it a tasty texture, without being messy. “…you cook other stuff as good as you make toast?” she asked, curiously.
“No, I’m actually ahead of my class a little in soups and stews and behind the others in breakfasts,” Mallory admitted. “I got a C minus when I made triple layer syrup in the middle waffle surprise for my final exam last year. It was stickier than it was supposed to be–”
“WHOA!” Lorelei exclaimed after swallowing the last bite of her toast. “I say DAMN that was good!! Thanks for the grub, Mal, gotta go now.”
“–smoother than that,” Mallory finished, staring in horror at the living food vacuum. “Err. Teacher also said we should enjoy our food with even, slow bites–”
“Teacher didn’t have surfing and sunbathing to do, did he?” Lorelei asked, pushing in her chair. “I do. By the way, I was supposed to look after Eiko today but I’m going to be far too busy so I leave her in your capable hands. If she’s missing an eye or caught on fire when Meiko gets back she’ll be pretty angry.”
“Really?” Eiko asked, looking up. “I’m going to play with Mallory-oniichan today? Great! We can go to the beach and make sand castles and stuff!”
“–huh?” Mallory intelligently inquired. “But… but I have to clean the house today! And couldn’t she go to the beach with you if she wants to make sand castles?”
“I’m going to a nude beach on the other side of this island,” Lorelei explained. “I actually haven’t a thing on under this bathrobe, and– Mallory? You okay? You look a little pale.”
“Let’s go make sand castles, Eiko!!” Mallory happily and enthusiastically demanded. “I’ve never been to a beach before, it’ll be fun! Ha ha!”
“Wai! I’ll go get my bathing suit on, and I’ll meet you in four minutes!” Eiko chirped.
“Right! You do that! And I’ll go…. um… bathing suit..?”
Lorelei grinned at the hapless boy. “You don’t have one, do you? Not a lot of beachfront property in Grünwald? You could always come with me to my beach, then, nobody would mind there…”
“I… errr… um… I have to look after Eiko!” he reminded her in a not so clever twist of logic. “Sorry, can’t go. Um. But… can you tell me where can I buy a bathing suit in I’s Land?”
“Mmmm… you could borrow mine, houseboy. I’m not needing it today. You might look cute in it…”
“Oh, okay! That would be very helpful!” Mallory said, with genuine relief. “I don’t think we’re exactly the same size, but… err… what? Is there something on my nose?”
“You really know NOTHING about the worlds beyond your crops, do you?” Lorelei asked, while giving him That Look.
“…no, I don’t,” Mallory admitted, hanging his head. “I’m trying, really… I’m sorry to disappoint–”
And to his surprise, she laughed out loud.
“Skip it, skip it,” Lorelei suggested, turning off the vamp act. “And you can buy a pair of MEN’S trunks at the tailor’s shop around the corner. Take heart, okay? You’ll pick up on this stuff eventually. Doe-eyed innocent determination like this doesn’t grow on trees… take it from an expert.”
Poetry is mine
Back in April, I wrote about my grandmother. She suffered a massive heart attack at that time and we didn’t think she was going to survive. One machine was helping her breathe, another was helping her heart to pump, and there were seven other machines pumping medication into her system to keep her alive. She was scared. So was I. Everything said, “No. Her time is up,” but God. My grandmother fought. When we wanted to pray for her recovery, she made us gather around the hospital bed, join hands and through the oxygen mask SHE prayed for US.
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