Liz Taylor πΆ ππΆ π·ππππππ»πΎπππΉ πͺ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sixwordstories2016-07-31 10:05 am
bleeddior) wrote in sixwordstories2016-07-31 10:05 am
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Last call, darling; what're you having?
my entire life has been preparing me for this moment and i still ain't ready
Livers removed, spleens mutilated, hearts taken out and then - the kicker - put back in. But switched. Three victims, their hearts patched over to their neighbor until three amateur heart transplants had been finished in Miss Arlene Johnson's living room. Everyone had already been dead of internal bleeding - the spleen injury - by the time it began. The amount of blood soaked into the carpet and dripping in flower vases had still been staggering.
"Almost hard to believe everyone just had the usual six pints," Price had commented, photographing the wilted roses sitting in their one:two ratio vase of blood and water.
"Just have to know how to work with what you've got." Zeller had side-eyed Will the rest of the sweep after that remark. But what else was new? Still full of the scene he'd just constructed moments before, Will passed a shaky gloved hand over his forehead and doubled down on his comment. "After all, you've only got the one body." The dead eyes of Miss Johnson's long-time friend, Anita Michaels, stare through him. Her abdomen is split open through the ribcage and down to her pubic bone, and her remaining organs glimmer wetly. "Might as well use it as well as you can. Make it into whatever you need it to be."
*
Their perp hangs out in hotels. Not to scout for victims, but because he's a drifter himself. Will had gone into the Cortez after a long line of others, all of them with wrong vibes. His headache had started at the third. He'd run out of aspirin by the eleventh.
By lucky thirteen, he'd decided he'd stop at the bar to get just the one shot, because he might be carrying his fed-issued pistol as a concealed, up under his jacket in a shoulder holster, but he wasn't technically on the clock.
Actually, speaking of, what time is it?
Will passes a hand over his face - no gloves this time - and his skin is cold to the touch. Cold and clammy. How many hours had he been out? He's only been to twelve other hotels, it shouldn't have taken long enough for last call.
Well, shit. Will winces and leans back, sitting up just enough to wrench his wallet out of a back pocket. His fringe - or just his hair, really, it's all the same length of curly mess - is mostly stuck to his forehead with sweat. He's dressed in a jacket despite the heat outside. His fingers, when he taps a ten onto the counter, are shaking. "Whatever type of whiskey that buys me. While still leaving you a tip you're not going to hold a grudge over. On ice."
And then back he goes to resting his forehead on his hand, elbow on the bar. Will hasn't even gotten a good look at the face that the voice belongs to, not yet.
omg my fave! /fangirls
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But...Liz slips that ten into the top of her dress (we'll just call this drink on the house and never speak of it again) and grabs a bottle of Tullamore 12 year special reserve from the top shelf. The crunching of ice under a scoop is followed by a crystaline commotion as it's slipped into a rocks glass. This guy here just showed up and it's half past one in the morning, looking like the textbook diagram for the phrase 'hot mess.' She's making an effort not to lose her footing and slide down the slope of irritation -- it's thirty minutes to close and it's been a looong day -- but this man looks like he's probably had it a lot worse...
Once the glass is filled, Liz turns back to the man dressed like Stephen King's younger (and sadder) brother and scoots the glass over to him on a cardboard coaster. "Pardon my observation, but you look like you've seen a ghost." She can only assume that it's possible this poor fool has run across one (or both) of those Scandinavian twins, or worse, Sally. But if not, then Liz might be just curious enough to know what has this man looking so devastated. (And please don't say 'is thirty seconds away from being sick all over her clean bar.')
β₯
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But then he hears nothing except ice and glassware clinking for a few wavering heartbeats. Or is it closer to a full minute? His temples feel as though ice tongs are squeezing onto them, creating a band of pressure around the circumference of his skull from those points. There's a staticky quality to his hearing and his vision that only clears up when something is placed down just inside his periphery.
Will still doesn't look up at the commentary, just frowns into his first sip of the whiskey.
And then pauses and sips again, this time with purpose instead of frustrated desperation. "This is really nice." Will finally looks towards his server, and only years of staring up at people and being surprised by what he sees of them keeps him from reacting. The voice had been male to his ears, if effeminate, but there's no mistaking what he sees. Will takes it in - coppery eyeshadow, slinky dress, earrings shaped not entirely unlike gongs. It's like looking at an old movie star. It would be eye-catching even if she weren't bald.
But the dress is high-necked and long-sleeved, and the blush is conservatively applied without much - if any? - foundation. She's not looking for sexual attention, not in the way a twenty-year old wearing those acrylics would be.
She's been here quite a while, too. There's a real sense of ownership in the way her hand rests on that counter top. Will blinks away from her eyes, absolutely no doubt in his mind about pronouns but a few scattered suspicions all clinking against each other like pool balls at the ghost comment. He watches her cheekbones and her shoulders instead of her eyes. He doesn't need to know any more than what he's already being told about her.
"I appreciate you going the extra mile on the whiskey," he says, a grimacing smile on his face, eyebrows raised as if that makes him look more harmless, even while be brandishes the whiskey glass and manages to look supremely uncomfortable in his own skin. "But I don't think I'm the kind of customer you want to butter up into telling you about their day."
Hotel is the only season I have yet to watch. But spoil me if you want <3
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"I'm no whiskey connoisseur, but this little ditty beats Jack every time." And Liz doesn't have to be a connoisseur to know her bar, anyway, but she says it with an almost smug confidence -- with just enough lightness to not appear pompous. The man takes his top shelf whiskey with a subdued obedience, looks unfocused when he takes the first sip -- and Liz, hand planted on the bar, arm firmly straight as it holds her form upright like a support beam, smiles when he stops to take a second, more considerate sip.
When he looks at her, finally, she knows it's the first real time that he's seeing her. There is a real good reason behind her ghosts remark: he's visibly shaken, with a hint of something that reminds Liz of John Lowe. Something deeper, fractured, and a little hostile. She supposes whatever's going on in his head must be quite distracting.
But he isn't gawking. He's looking, eyes flicking over details, and it's certainly one of the calmer reactions she's ever been given. He isn't admiring, merely taking in what he's seeing. Accepting.
Good, because she really doesn't have the patience to do that whole song and dance number this close to closing time. He deflects her question and she is unconcerned -- and communicates that with a shrug. "I'm just trying to make sure we're not going to preemptively see that whiskey again all over my bar with whatever you last ate. You look a wreck, honey."
Liz detaches herself from the bar to turn around. She's leaving the Tullamore out just in case, but she tends to just about everything else left idly on the prep surface. "Have you checked into a room here? You look like you could use some rest."
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It's a quiet atmosphere in the Cortez, but it never feels uncomfortable. Rather, it feels more like a creature sleeping in its den: archaic and peaceful. While Liz cuts a lemon down on the inner counter of the bar, she eyes the man's hands. } Lovely gloves, very biker chic. I always like getting a jump on the autumn accessories myself... Are they Prada?
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So, staring down the Tullamore it is. And it is very nice whiskey. Even his addled awareness can tell that. She's unwittingly given him a reason not to just throw it back, as had been his original intentions. He drinks it slow enough to savor, and it's well on its way to keeping him and his empty stomach from feeling the effects of the alcohol too quickly. "I'm fine." Lies. He's probably not going to throw up on her bar, though, so it should be enough to keep the harassment at bay.
Her question, though. Will hears the up-sell of offering a room at the hotel, the same one he's heard different versions of in plenty of different places, but it's overlaid with static. With the creak of floorboards and intentions and threat, all wrapped into one. The tone rings true with what, for instance, Anita Michaels's killer might have said the night before she'd ripped out her heart and had it swapped for her--
Will jolts to life, and his phone clatters against the lip of the bar top on its way up and out of his pocket. Jack is on speed dial, and Jack is being called. Will looks as startled as if the ghost he'd been asked about earlier has suddenly made an appearance, and his wild eyes land on the bartender for the second time. In the dead air of waiting for the ringing to be answered, Will's face crumples into confused suspicion at her. "Why would you ask me that?" He starts, eyes darting between each hers, her nose, every aspect of her face so that he sees just enough to confirm his instinct, not enough to get swept away.
"When you know something's wrong with this hotel?" And then Will pivots away on his stool, as he waits for the phone to reach Jack.
fear not, it would take a LOT of expositing backstory to spoil anything too good!
Whatever a paying customer wants, a paying customer gets! { Within reason, of course, but it looks as though this woman is all about reason. Her face brightens with a smile that is very much reserved for dealing with strangers on the job, but lacks malice for sure. It's quick work to pour some OJ into a glass before Liz is sliding it on a cardboard coaster to the lady across the bar top. } We can call it your special -- miss...?
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Parvina might fit in good at the hotel haha
"You can call me Parvina. Uh...what's there to do around here? We're on vacation for a couple weeks."
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You don't mind if I smoke, do you?
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