Serial Saturday Update and A Short Break
Relax, it’s nothing serious. I’m going to be on the road next week to see the gang from RiffTrax give one of my legit favorite childhood movies, Krull, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. Whilst traveling, I shall be away from the laptop and therefore unable to upload my FNAF fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, on schedule. Feel free to read other books while you wait, get caught up on the housework, or take up another hobby, like painting.
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I keep thinking I’m done with the koi mermaid thing and then this happens.
However, I did upload a chapter THIS week, so if you’re reading it, now is the time to head on over and check out the new doings. This was originally the second half of last week’s chapter, but as is so often the case, I wrote it without paying any attention whatsoever to the page count, only to start formatting the chapter for uploading last week and realize it was over 15k words long. So this week’s chapter may SEEM short, but I assure it, it’s only in comparison to the epic length of the previous chapters, which have averaged out to 8k words apiece so far. I got to do something about that.
Anyhoo, new chapter, so check it out over at archiveofourown.org and fanfiction.net, and yes, I also have a teaser!
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One harrowing hour later, after seeing every winding back road in Mammon and much of the desert surrounding it, Ana found herself safely planted in the back booth at Gallifrey’s with the old man across from her, enjoying the ground under her feet and the cold coke in her hand and everything life had to offer. It still wasn’t quite late enough in the day for the diner to serve lunch, but Lucy had refused to serve them and Tiny Tim made no objection when Ana had asked for a Betty Burger.
“I used to be quite fond of those,” Mr. Faust had remarked. “Even if they were not the only ones in town, I’m sure I would have considered them the finest in the world. Of course, it was your father who made them in those days.”
“I make ‘em just the same, sir,” Tiny Tim replied, which was all the convincing the old man needed.
Now here he sat, Betty Burger neatly vivisected and half-consumed, carving an onion ring with a knife and fork. He led the little conversation that passed between them, so that she ended up talking about herself more than she was usually comfortable doing, although his questions never seemed invasive and she answered him freely, describing places she’d lived and work she’d done. He did not ask about her family this time and inquired after the house only once, in the most roundabout way possible, by asking if she’d made it hers yet.
“I’m working on it,” she told him. “I don’t know why it’s taking me this long.”
“Don’t you?”
Ana picked through her fries, found the smallest and tossed it back on the plate. “I think it’s haunted,” she said, smiling so he’d think she was joking.
He nodded pensively, his eyes on his onion rings.
“I don’t really mean that,” she said quickly.
“I know what you meant.”
“I don’t even believe in ghosts.”
“Neither did I, until my father died and I came home to his empty house.” Spearing a wedge of onion ring, he dipped it in a small tub of the Gallifrey family’s secret recipe ring sauce—yellow mustard, mayo and a liberal dash of cayenne pepper—and studied it, frowning. “We had lived apart together for so long, I didn’t think it would feel any different. That if anything, the atmosphere might lighten. But in his absence, I felt…what he truly felt for me…”
Ana thought of the house—her childhood castle—and the way it creaked even when the wind wasn’t blowing. David’s room, a child’s room, still waiting for him to come back. Christmas decorations in the basement, home videos in the attic, and Plushtrap wandering wherever he wanted through all the empty rooms in-between.
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I haven’t painted Plushtrap yet. Please enjoy this picture of Golden Freddy instead. We’ll be seeing more of him in Part V: Five Nights at Springtrap’s….
