Primary -5minutefreewrite, a nanowrimo chibera chapter

Content warning: foul language and harassment

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-394-5-minute-freewrite-sunday-prompt-primary

Philip.

Who wanted her to do rice bowl preparation homework like Rice-ist were some master sushi shop and not the soon-to-fail fast, sorry quick-food join of nightmares.

The brown grey tiles were larger than she remembered. Remembered. She felt like she was reaching into the mists of the distant past to remember what had probably been a seven-day- old memory. Tiles, mottled and clean. Grout, rough and never-truly-clean. Mottled plastic tabletops. Hard plastic meant to look like stone. But why would a table be made out of stone? That would be impractical.

Jani hungered for wood.

The lights were whiter than sunlight. And Philip had his, “greet the customer with a smile” smile on. He saw her and it became

It became

Something else else. His teeth disappeared, but the corners tugged up more tightly. The tips of his sprayed and greased and gelled hair seemed frozen out of place. Why did his hair seem weird? It was always that way.

His face. His face was human, soft, afraid, interested, listening, empathetic, thinking, eyes darting from her eye to her cheek to-

His plastic hair on his human face was different, something else entirely. Something unexpected.

Again. She was very tired of the unexpected. She turned immediately to leave, but she heard Philip.

“I have too much chopped lettuce.”

Janice turned back around. She spent an odd thirteen seconds letting the familiarity roll over her in waves. “Who was an overambitious lettuce chopper today?”

“It’s rather embarrassing. I was.”

“You hate waste.”

“I do.”

“Did you have reason to believe a rabbit was going to order a rice bowl, hold the rice today?”

“That’s my line.”

“It was.” Janice waited for another thirteen seconds to see if Philip could go off script. He couldn’t. So she asked the question that had been piercing her soul since day one. “Why do we even have chopped lettuce?”

“Huh?”

“Lettuce doesn’t really go with rice.”

“Chipotle has lettuce and rice.”

“If Chipotle jumped off a bridge, would you?”

Philip did know how to laugh, it seemed. She didn’t really expect him to laugh quite so heartily, but she was heartened by his laughter.

Philip pulled a seat out, and he sat in it. He was still laughing, though he’d gone silent. The tears rose to his eyes, as it looked like the strain of laughing was beginning to pain him.

"My mom had a stroke, and then, while the trauma of that sent my conscious mind into the body of an elf in a world where there are elves, I killed a man."
Jani tried the sentence out loud. It rang in her ears. It hung in the air like a helium-filled plutonium balloon. Waiting to be written down by psychologists and orderlies. Waiting for straitjackets to carry it out.

Philip, still laughing silently, looked at those words helplessly. Watched them bound off the speckled ceiling tiles, then pop on a sharp gust of silent laughter. They popped more like bubbles than balloons.

Philip took the deep breaths he needed. "I didn't know you killed a man. Anyone I know?"

Jani smiled at him. Philip had a tendency to make his jokes sound like sincere questions. She knew logically he was joking. Her brain kept telling her that he wasn't because he wasn't using the tones reserved for jokes, but clearly he was. That was the kind of thing that could only be said casually by hit men and other mob types, and really only goon or leadership mob types. She was sure accountant mob types couldn't even pull that off. If Philip was a secret mobster - if Rice-ist were a secret mob front - surely he was like a mob lawyer or, heh, a mob computer programmer. That was probably a real thing nowadays. Or a mob art historian.

That actually made a kind of sense.

Regardless, he wasn't, and he was joking.

She wasn't joking. Her brain toyed with the idea of convincing him of that. It gave up. "Yeah, probably. Jimmy Mac, the security guard who stops by 7-11 on his way home from his night shift at that private school up in Quidlinburg. You know him, right?"

"I don't think I do. Wait. You don't mean the white guy with the dreadlocks who always has a big gulp in his hand, like ALWAYS?"

"Different guy."

"Then nope."

"Well, yeah. I killed him dead. Stuffed him full of dirty leaves. Now he's a scarecrow."

"Oof. That's pretty gruesome. Bet it'll scare the crows, though."

"Yeah. That's why I did it. Big crow problem."

"Yeah."

"Yeah." Jani had run out of imagination. "My mom really did have a stroke, you know."

"Yeah." Philip kept looking at her. "We know. You haven't been to work all week, and we care about you. So."

"Um." Jani wasn't sure if she was expected to fixate on we care about you or whatever was supposed to follow so. But she intended to fixate on something to keep her mind busy and not thinking about a dead man or a mom who had a stroke.

"I wouldn't call it stalking, because it's not like I ever, like, tried to find out exactly where you were or any information except the one, very specific piece of information, which was, 'where are you?'" Philip didn't hear himself. Then he did. "Oh, god, I mean, just in, like a general, 'It's not like her to just disappear. She's a good worker, she wouldn't do that' kind of way."

Jani let him talk. "It wasn't super hard. I just got ahold of your dad. Who, by the way, isn't on your emergency contact list. I had to Facebook stalk you." Jani's eyes were as still as she could keep them. "He didn't know either, but since he's your dad, it was easy enough for him to find you. Parents have so many rights. He just called hospitals. They have records that are really thorough. Thanks, technology!"

Jani's dad... had...

"Hey, Hey. Shit, I'm sorry, I've been rambling, and not in a good way. In a weird, 'I stalked you' way, which is totally inappropriate, I guess. I don't know if it is or isn't, actually. I'm supposed to know if someone isn't coming in to work if there's something that should keep me from firing them, right? There is. Ugh. There's just no -"

That part of Jani that was not used to this world, but that felt all the things that she felt had had enough. The chair Philip offered her flew through the sneeze guard protecting the rice toppings. Jani snarled, "NO. You little prying shit. NO. It is not a little ok to be a fucking manager and stalk me. It is not ok."

This was the moment in the movies that Philip watched where her explosion of temper turned immediately and suddenly into either sobs which he would be on hand to comfort or be subsumed by some other strong emotion to keep her from having to face the scary truths of life for just a few more hours... It always felt like hours in the movie. He guessed they slept and that was why there were hours. Not that he'd let something like that happen, but the door would be open for someday.

But Jani was no movie heroine, and this was not Philip's movie. "I will press so many charges if you so much as come near me ever again. You should leave town, you creepy little shit."

Jani turned and left. Rice-ist was behind her. FUCK.

The parking lot was empty. The part of Jani that was okay with violence reassured the part of Jani that was afraid of getting in trouble that a little vandalism was nothing compared to your boss stalking you and contacting your estranged father. Maybe he would lie to keep himself out of trouble and get her into it, but it would surely be easier for him to lie to keep them both out of trouble. And the truth would set her free, so she didn't expect that to happen.

The parking lot gave way to sidewalk, gave way to lawn, gave way to church, gave way to cemetery.

Morbid. But here she was. Standing in a cemetery at night and...rain. Perfect. Perfect. She couldn't remember seeing clouds in the sky, but that didn't mean they hadn't been there, except...

It wasn't rain.

Soaked in instants. Jani looked up into the baffled face of Chanbun and Swellven. Chanbun held a washing tub over her head, now empty of washing and water and soap. Just drip-dripping the last of it onto Jani's upturned face.

"You've been quiet for a day, lady. Lavender unburied you and hauled you up her on her own, poor broken girl. You were trying to kill yourself under that tree? I don't know about your magic, but anyone burying themselves whole hog, oughta explain why if they don't want to get unburied around here." Chanbun scowled wetly at them. Her hands trembled.

Jani sat outside in a dark pen. She could hear the sound of a soft maaa-ing coming from a ways away.

"She just came ostensibly to take the sheep back. Good old reliable sheep. I think they just waited for her all day. Not that I was there all day of course, mind you. I was with you. Of course, why-" Something about rambling seemed contagious, but Chanbun knew how to stop herself in a way that Philip didn't.

Swellven didn't know how to stop himself, but at the moment, he didn't know how to start himself either.

"Where's Lavender?" sputtered Jani.

"She says she's done. She saved your life, penned her sheep in here with you, and went home to bed. We've been trying everything to get you to talk to us. It was Swellven's bright idea to dump the trough on you." Ah, not a wash tub, a trough. What were the sheep going to drink now?

"I've got an inn full of men and women in their cups by now. I left Chitterden to keep them from breaking into my winter mead, but that's like asking a cat to guard the mice." Chanbun, now comfortable enough to use folksy sayings, let some of the worry leave the wrinkles around her eyes. Relief would be going too far. "I think he's good folk, but his primary interest is drinking. Since being well-liked is not his priority, though, perhaps he'll hoard it to himself. I think I could stand the loss of stock of one man's excessive drinking in one night." Chanbun pressed her thumbs as she looked up at the stars, casting her desire for an unburnt inn upon her return to the night.