Obnoxious Novelist How-to

Hush, for I have a grand speech to make!" An overdressed ghost drifted down from the collected non-bodies, which were now line-dancing and singing waterloo. "I am Edgar Galt Stumblebutt IV, the true owner of this estate!" The ghost had no indoor voice, so floated out of the window.
"What's he saying?" Blake had to ejaculate again. "I can't hear him now."
"ME. PAY. ATTENTION. TO. ME!" Voluptua pulled handfuls of hair out, specially prepared that morning in case of chronic overacting. Her burning was in overdrive for Blake, but she had everyone's attention at last. "I DON'T CARE ABOUT DEAD GUYS. I dont car about my stupid bratty sister... brother... whatever. I dont even car that Bertha just went down to the woods and returned within a minute. I'm the MAIN character here!"
"Speak your mind, senorita," a man whith a twirly moustache and a sombrero had appeared behind the chihuahua's bar. His face fungus made Voluptua's loins burn, but she wasn't about to give up the spotlight.
"Who's he?" Solemn had taken to slitting his wrists with a straw.
"My name is Senor Bob. Haggis employs me to listen to his clients spill their drunken worries." he Said hottingly.
"ME!" Voluptua shrieked. She tore out another handful of hair, for good measure. "I have a dark secret, for you see..."

"...I am a lawyer." I took over narrating, which was only proper since I am, after all, the main character. My bosom heaved as I tossed my titian hair over my shapely white shoulders and continued. "And as a lawyer, I can tell you that being dead, you are no longer the owner of the estate, and haven't been since 1769 when you forfeited your rights by plunging from this very tower to your untimely death. So please. Let's get back to ME and the child I will soon bear."

But just then, a green glow filled the broken window at the top of the tower.

"Bear," shouted Randy. He didn't bother to get up, and as soon as he heard Blake's frustrated, "Too early!!" he nodded and went back to his mournful harmonica tune.

##

The demon (or daemon, as he preferred to be called) hovered at the window, staring at the collection of fools scattered around the stage. Where was she...where was she...ah. There. She tossed her titian hair, and he nearly tossed his cookies. That kid inside her...that thing made even him shudder in cold, dark terror.

"Got you now, though," he muttered. "Stop this before it even starts."

He blasted through the window with a deafening roar.

He'd always loved making a grand entrance...

I raised my silvery, sensual voice a notch higher so that everyone would be able to hear my lecture on the Rule against Perpetuities over the deafening roar proceeding from somewhere above me.

"....so it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after the death of some life in being at the creation of the interest. Which, as I've plainly demonstrated, means that I am the heir, and my unborn child will succeed me."

"What about me?" whined my stepmother. "I was married to your father. I should inherit."

"Pffft," I said. "You're not even a blood relative. And papa's will clearly left the estate to his eldest child."

"But what about ME!" screeched Solemn. "I should be first! I'm the son!"

"Pfffffffft," I said scornfully, a delicate spray of spittle proceeding from my full, rosy lips. "The estate is not entailed upon male heirs. I'm the eldest. And after my death, the estate would naturally pass to my children, not to you."

Bertha snarled. "Not if I can help it, wench." She brandished her claws and crouched to spring.

"Not if I can help it!" roared the daemon, soaring down from the ceiling.

"Not if I can help it!" rasped the stake-skewered vampire who'd just appeared on stage and now loped toward me.

"Not if I can help it!" moaned Edgar Galt Stumblebutt IV, gliding down with a translucent sword.

"Not if I can help it!" screeched Solemn, waving a nail file.

"Not if I can help it!" shouted my stepmother/Lyle, brandishing a cast iron pan she'd picked up at a yard sale.

And all at once they leapt at me. Main character or not, I was doomed. Unless --

Crash!!!1!1! And smash, and other noises! The demon-
"Daemon, thank you."
-daemon entered the dusty old tower, with such aplomb that even the ghosts ceased their Abba performance.
"-and another thing..." Edgar Stumblebutt was still raving outside.
"Not if I can help it!"the daemon yelled. He had to stop her, stop the child. Failure was not an option.
"STOP!" Senor Bob brandished a bottle of champagne at all of them and slowly did the unthinkable. He began to unwrap the wire. "How about we all calm down and nobody gets their clothes or fur wet?"
"You," the daemon pointed a crooked finger with fourteen joints at Voluptua. Quite apart from terrifying her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. That wasn't in the script, he thought. She could have at least stopped her tirade. The man in the sombrero stopped turning the wire, for the moment. Nobody moved, until...
"Yes, me! That's what I've been saying!" She threw her hands in the air and tossed her hair again. "I'm a lawyer and Blake's child is mine! Pay attention to me! And stop interrupting with your asides!"
"You are wrong," the daemon said, coming to a halt as close to her as he could stomach.
"About the estate? I think not."
"No, you insipid mortal. I could not care less about your damned estate. Blake is not the father. Tell her, Blake. Tell her the truth."
"It can't be me," Blake hunged his head. He glanced at his watch and his face lit up with ill-deserved hope. "It's finally time" I can't BEAR this!"

"No more delays!" roared the daemon. "You must BARE ALL!"

"OMG, this is like sooooo emBARrassing!" whined Solemn.

"Whatever the seeming BARricade might be, I know our love can demolish it!" I cried with a heave of my bosom and a toss of my titian curls.

*****

Randy set down the harmonica and tried to focus his bleary eyes. Something. Something he was supposed to do. Six shots of scotch and a dozen beers warred with the rum he'd just downed as he tried to stand.

His cue. That was it. He'd heard his cue. Maybe it was time at last. He struggled to his feet and immediately toppled backwards onto his furry, matted behind.

Meh. It was probably too early. He closed his eyes and dozed.

"Screw 'em all," Randy muttered. The inside of the bear costume smelled utterly vile now, and Randy was feeling sorry for himself. "Wouldn't know good acting if it hit 'em in the bingos."

He heard a crash from somewhere near the roof, and a chunk of rubble landed almost on his bingos. Some sort of commotion commenced above, and he thought he heard Blake yammering about something, but he was unable to pry his gaze away from the largeish chunk of stone that had nearly unmanned him.

"I need a drink," he slurred.

"I SAID, I can't BEAR this," Blake screeched.

Randy shook himself out of his near-bingo-death experience. That was his cue. He was sure this time. But...what if he was wrong? He'd been wrong before, he thought. But maybe that was just a dream? He was awfully drunk, after all. Why, he hadn't been this drunk since --

Something whacked him in the side of his bear head. He peered drunkenly up at Blake, who was whacking him with a prop stake and screeching at him.

"I -" whack! "SAID" whack! "I" whack! "CAN'T" whack! "BEAR" whack! "THIS!!!"

Randy caught the stake in one clawed, costumed paw, and yanked on it. Blake, still holding tight to the other end, overbalanced and landed on top of him. Voluptua fanned herself at the edge of the stage. Some green demon-thing smirked down at him.

Randy did the only thing a drunken man who'd spent too many drunken hours in a hot, muggy, vomit-encrusted bear costume could do: He fainted dead away.

"Great. Just great. What the heck are we supposed to do now?" ejaculated Blake in his manly voice. "The whole climax depends on that damn bear."

My loins burned and my bosom heaved as Blake ejaculated and then casually discussed his climax and his nakedness, which needless to say was extremely manly in the manliest possible way, in his sardonically masculine and manly fashion.

"Blake, oh my darling Blake," I cried, my full, red lips trembling. "We don't need the bear. We don't need anything but each other. I love you, darling. I have always loved you. Deeply, passionately, wildly. I love with a love that is more than a love, with the heat of a thousand searing suns, like the lava of eleventy million volcanos. I want to twine my voluptuous form around you and heave my bosom against you and something about my loins and if all goes well and we're both in the mood I'd like to feel your manliness and have you get all manly with your manhood and something will throb and pierce me deeply and I'll shudder in ecstasy and various other euphemisms I'm far too sexually excited to articulate."

I flung my arms around him.

"I can't. I just can't," Blake scrunched his eyes up. "I can't, because... because I'm not Blake after all?"
"What?" Voluptua was aroused and confused. Arused?
"That's not a question, contrary to the punctuation there," Blake wiped a non-existent tear from his eye. Well, if Randy wasn't going to play his part, Blake would just have to make up for it. "My name isn't Blake."
"Then who are you? More importantly, will you keep talking in your manly manly voice of manly?"
"I... I am Frank."
"Frank?"
"Yes. And frankly, my dear... I think this demon-"
"Daemon"
-Whatever," Frank gritted his teeth, "Frankly, my dear, I think this daemon is waiting for his part in this play."

I swiveled my pure ivory neck, looking for the daemon.

He was at the bar, one smoky green hand holding a smoky green cocktail, and the other smoky green hand around Bertha's waist, just where her tramp stamp used to be before her transformation into a manticore.

She was showing all three rows of her fangs and clawing his smoky green bicep coquettishly as she snorted at his jokes.

It was pretty clear they'd lost all interest in me and Blake. I mean Frank. IF that was his real name.

"Bla -- Frank," I pleaded. "I don't understand. What difference does your real name make to our love? Whoever you are, I hunger for you with my loins and bosom and so forth. And I'm going to bear your child."

RROOOOAAAAAARR! Randy finally stumbled onto the stage. His moment was finally here, his glory at hand. "RRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"
Bertha bounded over to the bear suit and swallowed it in one. Randy was finally revealed. He looked exactly like a vomit-encrusted man who had spent months in a moldy, moth-eaten bear suit, drinking himself to death. He was as confused as I am as to how he didn't get eaten as well.
"Err..." Frank watched the affair. "I lied. my name isn't Frank either."
"But why? This makes me confused," Voluptua said.
"Because I was setting myself up for both a shout-out and a pun. I have a terrible condition, caused by a mysterious, deep-voiced man. I have... punmania!"

Solemn threw his arms over his eyes, blocking the sunlight. (a gesture that is pretty obviously metaphorical as well as physical, just in case you missed it. FYI, pretty much everything Solemn has done in this story and in his entire life is fraught with significance.)

He must go back inside. (Unfortunately, since he was a small girl, he's been trapped in his banal life with his wealthy family and has had no chance to show the world the depth of his despair, the nobility of his struggle against it, and the courage that would enable him to triumph over it. This is all totally implied in the outfit he's wearing. Read the description of his outfit again if you missed it. It's like 20 or 30 posts back.)

It took all his will to haul himself to his feet. No one from his family was there to assist. (As you can see, that's a metaphor too. He's physically standing up, and it's not easy for him, and his uncaring family didn't help -- and that's just what his entire life has been like, as has been repeatedly implied throughout the story.)

He tugged his skirt and smoothed his hair. (Note that despite his existential despair, he's so accustomed to presenting an unruffled.conventional appearance that even as he's about to throw convention to the winds he primps automatically. That applies spiritually as well, in case you missed it.)

With gritted teeth, he stalked into the tower, which he couldn't remember leaving. (Isn't that a powerful chapter ending? See, it's totally a metaphor for his deliberate decision to confront his family and his troubles. But we've also got a hint that he's run away from them in the past, even though he himself can't remember (or won't admit) doing so.)

Then! He or she went into the unisex castle bathroom, intent on checking gender identity to determine it once and for all. "My myopia!" he or she exclaimed, "I just can't see far enough to tell!" Then, he or she sobbed dolefully while munching dark chocolate and questioning his or her feelings about college basketball.

That's when a bear rushed through the adjacent stall, and Solemn had to leave because of the fumes.


Meanwhile, the chihuahua was at a local high school mooning over mopey girls and determining which one he should save next! dot dot dot

Celestia stomped into the castle without knocking, with the rest of the Broken Coven following meekly behind her. She had been Really Angry when the daemon had disappeared, and had given the rest of the coven one of her patented Talking To's.

She was not going to have any daemon she had conjured going off on its own, wreaking havoc and chaos.

If there was havoc and chaos to be had, Celestia Constellation McMurphy (ugh, she was going to have to change that horrible last name) was going to be the cause of it.

She burst into the auditorium in time to almost get knocked over by some cross-dressing guy with tears pouring down his face.

"This is the place," she announced to the Coven. "Everyone just do what I told you and this won't take long."

She led them down the aisle toward the stage, where some horrible redhead was whining about a bear.

Matt Daemon was getting fed up with all of the drama, and stopped to pose for a photo shoot before returning to the story. He stopped first to have cheese-fries with the bear at a local diner, and then unleashed his fury at those who used his name without paying his managing company for rights...

My passionate bosom heaved as I waited for Blake (aka Frank) to answer my passionate plea.

"I love you, darling, passionately, now and forever, with every passionate beat of the passionate heart in my passionate heaving bosom," I cried passionately. "And then there's the baby to consider. And then there's my passion."

He sighed heavily. "Voluptua. I am not the father of your child. I cannot be the father of your child."

His manly eyes bore into me, and I felt my loins flame. I really do need to see a doctor about that.

"But, why? Why?" I cried. "I'm totally positive that I seduced you secretly disguised as your winsome though adenoidal secretary with whom you were having an affair out of desperation and despair because you thought I was unavailable even thought it's fairly obvious to everyone I'm not. I know it's your baby. And I love you!"

He sighed heavily, his manly eyes gazing at me in despairing despair.

"Because, my dear Voluptua, there's something you don't know, something I fear will drive you away from me forever. Although my love for you is as eternal as the skies above us and the ground beneath --"

"They're actually not eternal," interrupted the daemon. "I mean, I'm eternal, and I totally remember --"

"SHUT UP!" I screamed. "Blake, Blake! You love me! I knew it!" I threw my heaving bosom against his hard, manly chest and twined my slender arms around his manly, masculine neck. "What else could matter? We're a woman and a man in love --"

"That's just it, Voluptua. We're not a woman and man in love. You see --" Blake ripped open his shirt to reveal cleavage that rivaled mine. "I'm actually a woman. Call me Frances. Frankie, if you prefer"

"Oh, come on. Another cross-dresser? And they expect us to believe this crap?" Steph rolled her eyes.

"Shh! I want to hear this," Chet said, eyes glued to the stage, instead of in his head where they belonged.

Celestia glared at the daemon. "You there! I wasn't finished --"

The daemon waved a hand at her, and her voice went silent. She tried again to speak, but no sound came out.

Well, that tears it, she thought, stepping over a vomit-encrusted stinky dude to get to the stage. That is just about enough. Time to show these cretins what Celestia Constellation Mc-Changing-My-Name is really capable of.

She pulled herself up onto the stage and pointed her finger dramatically at Blake/Frank/Frankie's back. Her eyes started to glow green as power surged in a surgy kind of way down her arm and collected in her finger.

That was when...

...Solemn found the family computer, hidden stealthily in a hidden room behind one of the stalls of the bathroom she had just now fled. The secret door was cleverly concealed behind a tapestry depicting an ancient and powerful battle of Pong, and Solemn found it when she tore a piece of it down to use as a barricade against anything that might try to follow here. Tripping the cleverly-hidden switch, she dashed down the stairs and found the computer sitting unattended.

"Look," She said to herself, "I found the computer sitting unattended!"

Immediately, Solemn sat down and began to hack, and by that I mean type stuff really rapidly, because everyone knows that's how you hack.

She gasped as she found documents hidden in the mainframe behind a firewall guarded by a doohickey and password protection that would change everything.

"This changes everything!" She said. "The family fortune; my wicked stepmother's wicked plot; it all makse sense now! But how can I tell Voluptua?" She crossed her arms and pouted. "I mean... should I tell Voluptua, when she's already getting all the stupid attention anyway? I bet if I went up there with this stuff, nobody would listen to me anyway! Nobody ever listens to me!"

The ghost appeared beside Solemn. "I know who you can tell."

Dr. Dethmarch appeared on the other side. "Yeah, he knows who you can tell." He blinked. "You do?"

Solemn hacked some more, which this time meant she did something with a mouse and voice activation and apps and a virus. "There! Now the documents have been safetly mailed to some trusted contacts! But do you really know someone I can tell about this?"

It would be a pretty poor decision to trust these guys, but those were the kind s she was supposed to be making now, right?

"Here, take my smartphone," She said to Dr. Dethmarch. "I hacked it. Lead the way, ghost!"

Celestia Constellation McWhatever stalked out of the tower, finger extended, eyes glowing green. The daemon had defied her and refused to acknowledge her powers. Well, that red-headed loser would acknowledge them, all right, if it was the last thing she did. Voluptua would regret the day she'd pranced out of the tower with her manly girlfriend as though she, Celestia, were not pointing a surging finger at her.

"Celestia?" whined Steph. "This is so totally lame. Can we...."

Celestia still hadn't recovered her powers of speech, but she gave Steph a fierce elbow to the chest that sent her thumping back into Chet.

"Are you on the rag or something?" yelled Chet.

But Celestia did not hear them. She pointed her finger, now surging like mad and emitting green smoke, at that red-headed whore who was, as usual, creating massive amounts of drama. Celestia couldn't hear what the bitch was going on about now, but she was just as glad about that. She, Celestia, would give her something new to complain about.

*****

"I suppose I can get a wedding gown that will cover the rash," I sighed, heaving my bosom and tossing my flowing red-gold mane. "And luckily my hair is always perfect. But, mercy, I have to arrange for flowers, send out invitations, oh, and find someone to marry." I cast longing emerald-green eyes at Blake/Frankie's beautiful cleavage. "Unless..."

The ghost shook his head. "Castle Ladeeda is technically in Scotland, which won't allow same-sex marriages until December 31, 2014. And per the terms of the curse, you must marry here, at Castle Ladeeda" -- he checked his watch -- "today."

"Today!" I screeched. "But where will I find a new man to marry today? Even Lyle is no longer a man! I don't think there's a living man in this plot anymore who isn't a blood relative!"

******

"I'll show that wench," thought Celestia. "She thinks she's so hot and sexy and bosom-heavy and hair tossy? Let's see how she likes this."

Green smoke shot out of Celestia's trembling finger and hit Voluptua smack in her voluptuous bosom. For a moment, Voluptua was engulfed in the green mist. When it cleared...

Her hair had green highlights and was an inch longer. Voluptua didn't even notice, but the daemon did.

"Ah! I did not know you were the Old Man of the Forest. Since you are not human, the natural laws do not apply & we must abide by old Celtic customs."

"What are you talking about" Voluptua screamed, stamping her foot with a quivering lip. She ripped off her wig and threw it on the ground for extra measure, revealing...

Another wig!

Randy was leafing through the script. There were so many crossings out and scribblings over the text that it made no sense at all. Some characters turned out to be others, all of them appeared to be crossdressing and the melodrama seemed to suffer a fatal car crash with suoernatural horror. A crash, he noted, involving Voluptua's car and a spanish-speaking barman.
"Hang on," he said, having an epiphany of sudden realisation. "There's nothing about bears in here..."

"You wear wigs? Not one, but plural?" Frankie or Blake said breathily, his or her chesticles heaving with every syllable. Voluptua felt a sudden impulse to tear the hair out of this wig. Heaving bosoms are my trademark, she thought with great anger. At least she still had the burning loins, which acted up and confused her further every time Frankie spoke in her deep, manly voice.
"So whose child am I carrying?" Voluptua shrieked, realising she should probably have asked this a while ago.

The daemon cleared his enormous cloudy green throat with a deafening rumble.

"Actually, the baby's mine," he said, buffing his glowy green fingernails. "That torrid night you thought you had with Blake? Yeah, that was me. I've got that magic thing going on."

"It was you?" cried Voluptua, her loins burning and her chest heaving.

"You slept with Voluptua?" gasped Blake.

The daemon shrugged his immense misty green shoulders. "What can I say, I was drunk. We immortals do that kind of thing all the time, disguised as swans or whatever. Since she was so hot for you, I chose to disguise myself as you. But here's the thing --I'm paying child support for about 4,500 immortal demi-daemon children as it is, and enough is enough. Voluptua, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take care of this baby issue my own way. No hard feelings, though., OK?"

He pointed a casual glowy green finger at Voluptua.

Before the eyes of her astonished family, one-night-stands, and enemies, not to mention the ghosts, the remaining engagement party guests, and so forth, Voluptua's final wig fell off to reveal one of the worst cases of male pattern baldness ever seen in a twenty-something woman. Three day old stubble sprouted on her cheeks and a hefty sprinking of black hair sprung from her arms, legs and chest. Her voluptuous bosom heaved, then shrank into manly pectorals. She shot up six inches, and her shoulders spread. A distinct bulging appeared at the juncture of her -- now his -- burning loins.

"That should take care of the pregnancy thing," yawned the daemon.