GRYDER'S COVE TALES: HOWLERS

the beginning of the end...

A rude, blaring sound could be heard coming from some indeterminable location, and Gail was on the hunt for it. She had been sitting in her bedroom at home, playing her guitar when it started. It was a horrid screeching sound, and no matter where she looked, she couldn't find it. All she knew was that it was immensely annoying and she had to find it and shut it off. It wasn't coming from the kitchen or the back porch, and it was getting louder and more persistent the more she searched. Suddenly, she could feel the sound as well as hear it, making her skin vibrate and her bones ache. Even her teeth began to buzz until her head swam and she slipped into an unseen hole, free-falling faster and faster until she slammed face-first into her motel bed with a long, deep gasp, grabbing onto the edges of the bed with both hands, her phone wedged between her face and the mattress as the alarm continued to squawk its derisive admonition. She pulled it free, wiped the saliva from the screen and finally subdued the clamor that had tormented her slumber. Surely Olivia didn't sleep through this. Even a sound sleeper like her couldn't possibly.....

SSNRRRKKKKKK!!! wwwhhhheewwww...........

Olivia was sprawled out on her sheets, the blankets rolled around her legs and her head halfway off her pillow, snoring happily away as if there were no legendary witches to consecrate and kill or ghost-wolves to send screaming into Hell. Gail loved her friend beyond even her own comprehension, and tried her best to keep that in mind as she turned the unholy shriek of that alarm back on, then tossed her phone like a flat rock across the room and right into Olivia's ribcage. She emitted a guttural utterance of some kind and blinked once or twice, but fell right back to sleep. Undaunted, Gail hauled herself up, shuffled over to Olivia's bed and propped the phone against her head so as to direct the evil banshee cry of the alarm right into Olivia's ear. Slowly she began to show some signs of consciousness, the first being a kind of sputtering noise followed by an attempt to swat the phone away, but to no avail. Finally, an eye opened, an opportunity Gail capitalized on immediately by shoving the edge of the mattress with her foot.

"Liv, c'mon," she groaned, "Stop dickin' around. C'mon, we gotta call the sheriff. Up, lady!"

Finally Olivia shifted slightly to the left, lifted her shirt to scratch her stomach and grumbled something unintelligible before raising her head slowly, looking as though it took a great and painful effort to do so.

"Looks like we found the hole in your 'sleeping late' plan, huh? I twisted myself up sleeping in the car then slept way too hard once we got here, and you apparently died in your sleep." said Gail, her voice still thick with fatigue as she made her way into the kitchen, "I feel like total ass right now."

"Yeah. Me too. When's breakfast?" grunted Olivia.

"Right now," Gail grunted back, dropping a frozen breakfast burrito on Olivia's belly as she trudged by on her way to the bathroom.

"What, no beer? Beer? Biiitch!"

She was answered by the slamming of the bathroom door and a trenchant 'Get your own damn beer'.

Delirious in her waking stupor, Gail was oblivious to the fact that she had brought neither towel, robe, nor clothes into the bathroom with her until she was thickly covered head to toe with lather. No, Gail Stevens does not use motel towels, in case you were curious. She's of a mind that no amount of laundering can wash out the suspicion of what they may have been used to mop up. After a heavy sigh of realization and a few muttered curses, she called to Olivia for assistance, to no avail. She rinsed off the thick coat of foam and leaned out far enough to swing the door open, only to find her friend was slipping off to sleep again, clutching her burrito in one hand, and the beer she had gotten for herself in the other, sitting straight up on her belly just as she had been holding it when she drifted off. The pieces of egg and sausage on her face would've been pretty damned amusing if Gail were not so thoroughly pissed at the moment.