I Blame you
I asked you to stop me, and you didn't, and this is what happens.
I'll continue it too, I swear.
The issue at hand, Susan decided, was not so much that the horse was green, though in different circumstances this might have been significant, as that it was the wrong horse.
"THIS ISN'T BINKY." There was a hint of lonely bewilderment in Grandfathers tone, as of a man suddenly understanding that the events of his life have now passed him by when faced, for example, with a need to program a DVD player. Well, sort of, anyhow.
"BINKY ISN'T GREEN." Death added. The green horse looked endearing, and slightly apologetic.
Susan shook her head. "Yes, Grandfather. I think we can all see that this isn't Binky." She frowned. "You couldn't have just...misplaced him?"
Death shook his head. Ponderously.
Susan sighed. That was family for you, she thought. "I'll find him, Grandfather. Don't worry." It was not as though she herself didn't have a particular fondness for the horse.
"THANK YOU, SUSAN." Death patted her gently on the shoulder, cast a last, suspicious look at the green horse and after a sigh that conveyed all the tiredness in the universe, left the stables, not saying another word. Some of the life was gone from his step, Susan observed.
It was just Susan and the horse now, dwarved by Binky's stall in the stable at the monochrome house of Death. The horse blinked. It was, Susan had to admit, cute, in a cloying, maudlin, trite, and yet chamringly unpretentious manner. It had pink eyes. And a long flowing mane and tail, in more pink. It had bows and ribbons and a milkshake tatooed on it's hindquarters. None of Susan's prepubescent pupils would ever have dared pencil such an artifact of adorable tweeness, lest she catch them. The horse blinked some more, looking ingratiating.
Susan glared at it. It stopped.
Susan-the-school-marm at her best, she pointed strictly. The horse obediently took a few tentative steps forward, confirming Susan's theory as he winked slightly in and out of that particular plain of existence. She sighed. It was dimensional displacement again.
At least, she thought, a horse, generally speaking, had been replaced by a horse, generally speaking, rather than a string quartet. Which really just meant that it was only getting started. It would get worse, dragging everything inwards, a sort of black hole of juxtaposition. Only friendlier.
Sometimes, under the right circumstances, great concentrations of power could, if not channeled properly, disrupt quite badly the fabric of quite a few realities, bending and folding, tearing holes and dragging things through. In short, something, somewhere, was generating rather vast amounts of spectacularly useless energy.
And she had to go find them.
"....................LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE............................." Alynika Ortez's high voice was an excruciating enternity in fading away. She finally lowered the microphone from her lips with a jerk of her entire body, which tossed her head back, her long, garish hair foward and her breasts to perilously close to of out of the blindingly shiny twist of cloth she wore for a shirt.
Her dramatically heaving cleavage continued to command most of the attention, of the camera at least, as the theater exploded into an orgy of applause and adulations nearly as loud as their would-be idol at her finest. Among other things this dragged Ryan Seacrest out of a near comatose state huddled between several crates, unfortunately not posessed of any soundproof qualities, just off the stage.
He jumped up, still not entirely concious, and in what was essentialy an automated sequence, stricly uncontrolled by his brain, checked his hair, his microphone and his breath, pranced out onto the stage, reminded the audience of the singer’s name, said somthing with a vauge sound of approval and handed the stage over to the judges. He was more or less aware of his surroundings by the time Randy was done talking.
"Well, there you go!" He said brightly, placing an arm around Alynika, whos huge blue eyes had filled with tears. He couldn't quite decide if the were of joy or distress. He wondered what Randy had said, and how long before the parents of one of these underaged prodigies attempted to sue him for molestation. Alynika was what, 17? (No, that was Lienette. Alynika was the one with too many siblings. Or was that Nicholas? Whatever, Paula talking.)
"I agree with Randy. Completely." Paula was saying. Tears of Joy afterall, Ryan decided, taking a tiny step away from her. Her perfume was thick enough to interfere with breathing. Paula was continuing. "That was one of the best performances we've seen from you yet. You...you came into your own...and...you made that song....you own. And that is a beautiful dress." That was a dress? Ryan , through a superhuman effort of will succeeded in not looking.
Simon’s turn. “Now I don’t think you’re that strong a singer.” Boo’s and hisses from the audience, protesting noises from Randy and head shake of dissapointment from Paula. At the back and to the left of the theater, several of the audience members had turned into penguins. “But…But, hear me out, you have That Certain Something.” Something, certainly, had hovered above Simon’s head for a moment. He thought it might have been a small dragon. The penguins, Ryan noted, were gone, though it seemed strange that that whole part of the audience was now wearing long black robes. And pointy hats. And ties.
“That was Alynika Ortez!” He announced, snapping back to reality - the black robes were still there, no helping it - “and if you want to vote to bring her into our top 5, dial...” He recited the numbers and the product placements automatically, more interested in why one of the cameras apeared to have been replaced with a huge, rather artistically colored mushroom. The cameraman was taking it well in stride, amiably conversing with whatever it was that sat atop it.
It turned out that Alynika’s had been the last performane of night. He had not been so glad to see a show end since the Jewish folk songs interpretation episode towards the end of season 5 last year. The Mushroom had been replaced with appeared to be a telephone booth. No sign of the camera. However, and he took this as an encouragement, no sign of the penguins either.
Susan had not attempted to sumbit either of them to the indignity of her riding the little green horse. She walked beside it instead, one hand on it’s back, gently prodding it along with a malevolent gaze as it led her through realities fair and foul to the source of the disturbance.
She felt another change coming now, that flickering of the walls between the worlds that had grown familiar now, and ever so smoothly, reality changed. She was somewhere dark and bright at the same time. Deathly quiet, but with an aura of cacophony. This was also, she could tell somehow, the end of her journey. Binky would be here, now or eventually. Then, before she had a chance to look around much more, the little horse collapsed with a small whimper.
Ryan was forced to conclude that the telephone booth was really there, and not about to go anywhere. He had been examining it for the better part of an hour, long after the theater had emptied. He attempted to entertain the idea that it was joke of some sort, but he knew well enough that no one invoved in American Idol had a snese of humor of any kind. A small gasp that managed to convey worry and irritation at once drew him back to the main stage. There was a woman crouched there, over something green.
He dismissed immediately the thought that it was one of contestants - they would come down sometimes, wandering about with expressions of anguish - and went to investigate. The green thing, he saw as he came closer, was actually a small horse. It was all adorable and fainted, rather reminding him of Lienette at the end of a song.
The woman appeared to try to check for a pulse, or possibly slap it awake. Either way, she soon gave up, standing up briskly and shaking her head.
Not really sure how to continue it right now, as I suck at dialogue. And now it needs a plot, which will need some thought. But I will do it. (you have been warned.)