Francine Peters (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatsamilkshake) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomtownies2010-08-05 11:19 am
thatsamilkshake) wrote in fandomtownies2010-08-05 11:19 am
Entry tags:
Luke's Diner: Thursday Morning, 8/5
Francine was not the type of waitress who sneaked samples on the job.
More often than, say, once a week. Shut up. Look, the baked goods case had Nanaimo Bars in it. Who on earth could blame her for reaching for one, after she'd finished writing it down on the specials menu?
The multiverse, apparently, because the moment she lifted off the glass top and snagged one, Francine felt something very, very wrong, and it wasn't guilt. (She'd been planning to pay for it, after all. And have the carrots with her lunch instead of the double-baked cheesy potatoes.)
Guilt didn't feel like cold, cold air rushing past her, or look like a jagged, impossible rip through the air, like someoneblonde and angry had taken a knife to a canvas, except it wasn't, it was just air and on the other side was... something else. A pulsing, sucking darkness that pulled her in without a chance to even finish her scream before everything went black.
A pulsing, sucking, hungry darkness, since it also grabbed a counter stool, the rest of the Nanaimo Bars, and half the specials board before it closed in on itself and disappeared.
Spec
Beef bri
Double-baked chee
Buttered car
Nanaim
Luke's was open, but there wasn't a waitress to be seen, and the counter was a bit of a mess.
More often than, say, once a week. Shut up. Look, the baked goods case had Nanaimo Bars in it. Who on earth could blame her for reaching for one, after she'd finished writing it down on the specials menu?
The multiverse, apparently, because the moment she lifted off the glass top and snagged one, Francine felt something very, very wrong, and it wasn't guilt. (She'd been planning to pay for it, after all. And have the carrots with her lunch instead of the double-baked cheesy potatoes.)
Guilt didn't feel like cold, cold air rushing past her, or look like a jagged, impossible rip through the air, like someone
A pulsing, sucking, hungry darkness, since it also grabbed a counter stool, the rest of the Nanaimo Bars, and half the specials board before it closed in on itself and disappeared.
Beef bri
Double-baked chee
Buttered car
Nanaim
Luke's was open, but there wasn't a waitress to be seen, and the counter was a bit of a mess.
no subject
"Honey, I'm home," she called out, posing dramatically in the doorway for a moment before making her way in. "Francine? Geez, you'd better not be stuck in the storage closet, that's Lacey's job, not yours . . ."
No answer, and none of the people she spotted moving about in the kitchen sported a telltale white streak or, it had to be said, the appropriate amount of hair.
". . . Francie?"
And then she got a glimpse of the missing stool, and the specials board -- or what was left of it -- and something cold and unpleasant and far too familiar by now clenched in Katchoo's gut. Snarling under her breath, she turned and stormed into the kitchen, grabbing the busboy by the front of his shirt and slamming him up against the side of the refrigerator. (Now that she realized it, the cook and dishwasher had scurried out the back door as soon as they'd heard her coming . . .)
"WHERE THE $(@#(*!)$^* IS SHE?" she roared at the poor guy, for the moment every inch the girl who'd been trained by Darcy Parker on how exactly to make entire boardrooms of stuffed-suit types want to wet their very expensive pants. "DON'T YOU FRIKKIN' HOLD BACK ON ME, GODDAMN YOU!"
His stammered explanation . . . didn't make anything better, but at least she let go of him and hurried back out to the front of the diner, staring at the empty dessert case and the spot where the stool should have been, both hands twisted up in her hair as her face went very, very pale.
"Oh christ, oh jumpin' Jesus frikkin' Christ on a telephone pole, ohgodohgodohgod --"
She'd be there for a while, too, curled up into a ball in the nearest booth. Not crying -- but maybe the stricken look on her face was worse than that.
no subject