Chapter 23 : Goldi-no-locks
Nov. 16th, 2009 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pascal_curious
When Nervous Subject awoke he was surprised to find himself in bed. It wasn’t his own bed, which is what surprised him the most.
He wondered how long he had been asleep. It was clearly nighttime, and the last thing he remembered was going for a jog at six o-clock in the morning.
“Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed,” Nervous said to himself. Sleeping in a strangers bed made him feel like Goldilocks, without the gold locks of course.
He tried to focus on his surroundings in the darkness. He could make out the outline of the bed and a table just beyond it. There was a table at the bedside with a candle on it. He fumbled around on the table for a lighter or pack of matches. He located a box of matches and carefully lit the pillar of wax. He sat up and put his legs over the side of the bed. Somehow he had managed to lose his clothes. He sat there in his man panties and anxiously scanned the room for his clothing. He wondered who had seen him in his man panties. He quietly cursed Circe for not having kept up with the laundry. He found a few more candles around the place and lit them.
He finally spotted his clothes folded neatly in a pile on a nearby counter. He quickly pulled them on. They were cold and damp. A bit more relaxed, now that he was clothed, Nervous took a closer look at his surroundings. He was in someone’s shack, or something, and he appeared to be alone. He thought it was a little strange for someone to save his life, strip him almost naked and then bugger off.
He wondered if there was somewhere else his savior could be hiding. It didn’t look like it. For all intents and purposes it was a one room shack. It was a well made shack, more of a hut maybe. The walls were constructed of bamboo, as was most of the furniture. In the center was a stone fireplace. It looked like it had been set up as a place to cook as well as a source of warmth. A few orange embers glowed under a makeshift grill.
He suddenly realized how hungry he was. He hadn’t had anything to eat since he had a protein shake that morning. At least he thought it was this morning. He supposed it was possible that he had been out for days. He wondered, where would I keep my food if I was a hermit? Unable to come up with an idea, he decided to forage. He found a pitcher of water on a shelf, and that was a good place to start, but there were no drinking glasses to be seen. He shrugged and picked up the pitcher.
“Bottoms up,” he said to himself.
Nervous had almost drained the vessel when it occurred to him that it would be rude to not leave any for anyone else. Satisfied that he had left enough for someone else to have a few sips, he returned the pitcher to the shelf.
He had been very thirsty, but his belly was still grumbling in a most undignified manner. He went around the hut inspecting shelves and hidey-holes for any sign of food. He found a few interesting things, but food was not one of them. There were shelves and boxes of paints and canvases. An easel stood in the corner with a half finished painting of a red haired water nymph, wearing not much more than her hair. It was a really good painting, Nervous thought. The nymph was very pretty and she looked very happy to be by her waterfall surrounded by her lily pads and flowers. He wondered how it would look once it was finished and all of the anatomical bits were painted in.
The hut was very sparsely furnished. There were not that many shelves, most of them were taken up with painting supplies. There was an ancient battery operated radio on one. As he went around the room he noticed a recurring theme. There seemed to be paintings of redheads on every spare inch of wall. It appeared to be the same redhead in all of the paintings. They all had different settings with her lounging beneath the stars, serving Chinese tea in a kimono surrounded by Chinese dragons, smirking adorably in horn rimmed glasses in a room full of books, cavorting in her panties in her flowery pink bedroom, and even a depiction of her as a zombie tired and shagged out after having gorged on brains.
“Hmm. Obsess much?” Nervous wondered aloud.
She was cute, as redheads go. Just not enough to obsess over, in his opinion.
Disgruntled at finding no food anywhere inside, he wandered outside into the dark. There was a full moon in the sky. It gave him enough light to get around without tripping over anything large. He began to recognize this as the place he had decided to go for a swim that morning. He remembered the stone bridge and the wooden platforms (they were too small to be called docks on a body of water the size of a pond) where he had jumped into the cool refreshing water. That was when things had gone terribly wrong. He couldn’t remember anything after hitting the water, except for having seen Jesus. Funny that, he thought, considering I’m an atheist.
He made his way around the front of the bamboo structure and went around the corner. He took two steps and fell into a hole.
“Damn.”
It wasn’t exactly a hole in the ground. There were steps going into it, he had just failed to see them in the darkness. At the bottom of the steps was a wooden door. Nervous clambered to his feet and opened the door. There was no telling what was inside in the darkness. Nervous spotted a lantern next to the door and lit the little stub of candle inside with the packed of matches he had stuffed into his pocket earlier. The candle flickered to life and shed light on what lay beyond the door.
It was a pantry. Nervous’ stomach gave a celebratory growl. The air in the pantry was cool. Whoever had built it had been very smart to have built it under the sand. It was lined with shelves stocked with lots of fruit and vegetables. There were some canned drinks, a few boxes of cereal and a couple of loaves of bread. Nervous grabbed a box of cereal, cans of milk and juice and a mouthwatering orange. On one of the upper shelves he spotted odds and ends of dishes and silver. He took down a bowl and spoon. Balancing his acquisitions carefully, he closed the door behind him with his foot and took his booty to the table inside the hut. He sat down to a nutritious breakfast of Lucky Charms, grape drink and an orange.
“Someone’s been eating my porridge,” he said to himself.
While he ate, he wondered what time it was, and when whoever lived here would be back. He wondered if they would bring coffee. By the time he had devoured three Jethro bowls of Luck Charms (making sure to leave a small bowlful for someone else) the sky was beginning to lighten. He spotted a newspaper outside the door and decided to have a read while he waited for his red-head obsessed friend to show up.
“Someone’s been sitting in my chair,” he said to himself.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 12:44 am (UTC)I cannot wait to find out who "Jesus" is.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 12:50 am (UTC)I love this lot, it is a little silly, but it's so pretty.
Jesus Rules!
(Never thought I'd hear myself say that ;-0 )
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 04:56 am (UTC)Great chapter, and great looking lot.
More please!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 05:35 am (UTC)That lot looks nice and tropical, good job there.
But you still did not reveal who Jesus is! :(
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 01:23 pm (UTC)I kept waiting for the mystery man to be a bigfoot.
Good stuff.
(and now I need to go find some grocery clutter of my very own--thanks for reminding me)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 02:09 pm (UTC)Hmmm, Bigfoot. I wonder if bigfoots worship Jesus.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-17 02:29 pm (UTC)*hums Bringing in the Sheaves*
no subject
Date: 2009-11-20 01:29 pm (UTC)Happy Birthday, Pascal_Curious!