"You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?"
Roselyn's eyes fluttered open. Over her loomed a lean, pale girl with something sharp in her hands.
"To make omelets," her roommate Shane answered to the question Roselyn had yet to ask. "You told me last night that making omelets was hard. But look at the awesome omelet I just made. Gaze, if you will, at the artistry of egg and cheese. Gaze!"
Roselyn turned her back to Shane and muttered, "It's Saturday morning. Why are you waking me up on Saturday morning? And," the memory returned to her, "I was drunk when I told you that. I thought we agreed nothing I said when I was drunk counted."
"In twenty three minutes, it will be Saturday afternoon, lush. Now look at my omelet, damn you! Look and feel the terrible awe!" Shane walked to the other side of Roselyn's bed and pushed the cast iron skillet toward Roselyn's face. Inside lay a huge yellow mass speckled with reds and greens, as well as what looked and smelled to be half the spices in the kitchen.
"Why do you hate the poor, hung-over girl?" Roselyn asked.
"Because the poor, hung-over girl called me a foul monkey-toed demon," Shane answered with a smile. "Then she insulted my cooking skills just because I made Cajun style blackened pancakes. So I spent all night practicing recipes. Now get up!" Shane noticed Roselyn's bare shoulders for the first time and took an apprehensive step back. "Are you wearing yammers or are you going commando under there?"
Roselyn adjusted the straps of her silk top in reply. "I know you don't technically need to sleep, but you certainly could use it. You look ghostly."
Shane shook her head and some ghostliness drifted on the air. "That is the flour. It may have slightly exploded all over the kitchen, but I made you biscuits."
Roselyn stretched her long limbs in a gesture borrowed equal parts from yoga and stripping. She had an easy six inches on her roommate, but her arms and legs implied it could be a few additional inches in the right light. "Did you really stay up all night?"
"Hell no, I woke up at nine. I may be strange, but I'm not stupid. Now get up, sleepy head! Brunch awaits."
Roselyn loved certain things about living with Shane. Surprises like this were perks - though Roselyn would have preferred even more had if been delivered to her in bed rather than being made to actually eat on their pass-through island. Shane also never developed an intrusive style as so many college sophomores did when uncovering their independent identities, leaving Roselyn to overcompensate and make each wall her canvas. She had the requisite framed Klimt print that seemed standard issues among the art majors, but branched out and displayed much of her own art as well. It was skillful, even if her sense in interior design owed more to a Jackson Pollack packrat than anything minimalist.
Roselyn sniffed the air redolent with baking. "Did you fry bacon too? I love me some bacon in the early afternoon."
Shane slid half the omelet conglomerate onto a plate with a spatula and handed it to her. "No, see, the biscuits were done and I was taking them out but then I realized that the flying pan was sizzling because I put it on the wrong burner and I panicked because I didn't want to set the fire alarm off and wake you. Again. So, ouch."
Roselyn drew the conclusion and briefly lost her taste for bacon. Instead, she shoved a forkful of omelet into her mouth and said, chewing, "You grabbed a frying pan with your bare hands."
"Yes, I definitely did that. I would say it was easily a second-degree burn. Just girl to girl? I can't recommend it." Shane wiggled her unblemished finger, picked up a biscuit and tossed it to Roselyn. "Third degree is the way to go. It kills all the nerves so it is almost painless until it heals. Of course then..."
In addition to little need for sleep and the occasional surprise meal that saved them from eating in the dining hall on campus or spending their money in the restaurants in Red Hook, Shane seemed largely impervious to the consequences of physical damage. They hadn't done much to test the limits, though Roselyn once accidentally lodged a dart in Shane's back, but it seemed thorough enough. As long as Shane was conscious enough to think about it, her skin and bones would be as good as new in a handful of seconds.
Roselyn tried not to be jealous. Freshman year had been hell for Shane, involving not only thinking she had been brutally murdered and resurrected by a supernatural being, but losing everything. Shane no longer had a family, had lost and rebuilt most everything that belonged to her. It was a trial by fire and not one Roselyn envied. Even for apparently invulnerability, the trade-off hardly seemed worth it.
"I'm going to be late!" Roselyn exclaimed, nearly gagging up her eggs.
"For what? It's the weekend, no classes. Your next class is Monday at ten twenty, Art History 203: The Renaissance." Shane also had a way with knowing things now. While previously a bit of a geek as far as Roselyn was concerned, it now bordered on creepy.
"Not to class, to Dryden. We're supposed to have lunch at the diner. His treat."
"It had better be, he's the one with the job. How is the walking undead?" Shane asked, taking the remainder of Roselyn's late breakfast that would now go untouched and eating it herself. Along with no injuries came no weight gain.
Roselyn adjusted her bed head in the mirror over the kitchen sink. Shed put the mirror there because it frankly had the best light in the whole apartment, though it also served to act as a dietary aid. It was hard to indulge eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's because your self-described vampire lover was again being a jerk when you had to see yourself do it. Roselyn stood up straight and considered her ass in the mirror. She would definitely have to switch to a less caloric comfort food or a less truthful looking glass.
"He's… okay, I guess. Bitching about his button pusher job and his parents, like most twenty-five year olds. We aren't on the rocks right now, so I am good. I suppose that means he will be great then."
Shane groaned. "You're going to bring him back here, aren't you?" Roselyn shrugged her bare, ebony shoulders. She groaned again. "I'll go buy earplugs."
"Oh come on, we aren't that loud!"
Shane rolled her pale violet eyes back in her head as though climaxing. "'Oh Dry, you are so good! Oh my gods! Oh Venus! Touch-a, touch-a, touch me, I wanna feel dirty!'"
"Bitch," Roselyn chimed as she walked back into her bedroom to change. "Maybe if you start putting out for your boy, you wouldn't have such a fixation with what goes on in my bedroom. Oh, and that 'touch-a' thing? From Rocky Horror and it's 'I wanna be dirty.'"
"You are dirty so that works out well," Shane called to Roselyn. "And Eliot and I are just taking things slow. There is out-putting. I put things in directions!"
"Any slower and you'd both be dead." Roselyn heard Shane's sharp intake of breath but didn't register it until she was tying her corset tight to exaggerate her cleavage. She had just assumed that Shane touched the hot stove. Coming back into the living room wearing an elegant shirt and her pajama bottoms, she said, "Honey, I didn't mean anything by that. You know that. Just an expression." Because Shane was still a bit touchy about the whole topic of death, since she thought Eliot has been worm food, thought she herself had been a ritual sacrificed, and was personally privy to one of her associates dying of a gunshot wound. It was definitely not the best way to start one's adult life, there was no question, but it was still better than not having an adult life at all. One had to cope.
"Wha?" Shane asked, with a newly burnt finger rapidly healing in her mouth.
Red Hook is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is published by Cave Drawing Ink and syndicated throughout the internet.
