After School Special Ch8 + more Pg5 - Page 3

Nice update!! 😃 Starting a new restaurant is so exciting. Looking forward to seeing how it shapes up. The last part was so unfortunate.. Hope Ein and Princess patch up soon.. Oh and the grandmother, omg!! When is she going? lol.

lol she'll go soon di!..it goes well, and because of Ein!..

Chapter 6: The Coldness Within

Ein had already apologized. That was enough, right?

Anyway, Princess should've respected his decision not to get involved with the restaurant. He had his own dreams to go after. But still, he couldn't help but feel somewhat--

"Any volunteers?" asked Mrs. Kyoto.

Ein snapped out of his thought-filled trance, and raised his hand. "I'll volunteer!"

"Very good, Einstein. Come on up."

Yes, he had made a fool of himself the last time in class. But this would be his chance to prove himself. He walked to the front of the room, and found that there was a maze set up.

Mrs. Kyoto smiled. "First, Einstein, please hold onto Billy for me."

"Billy?"

She placed something in his hand.

He looked down at it. Billy was a--

"Ahhh!" Ein dropped the rat, but it grabbed onto his leg and climbed up toward his face. "Mommy!" He ran around the classroom. "I want mommy! Mommy!" He felt the rat climbing around to his back. Then it crawled down, into his pants. "Ah, it's trying to eat my butt!" He pulled down his pants, and tried to keep running, but of course he tripped.

The class's laughter burned his ears, almost as much as when the side of his head slammed onto the floor. Finally, the rat crawled off of him. With the horrible fear out of his brain, all he had left to dwell on was the horrible embarrassment.

He heard Chucky say, amidst his ramblings, "Man, what a weirdo…"

Just great.

He knew he should have felt more humiliated than he did, lying there with his bottom in the air, tears on his cheeks, but he couldn't help but think about Princess and what he said to her. She forgave him, didn't she?

***

With all the fold-up tables, and chairs, and new lighting set up, the main chamber of the haunted house didn't seem so scary anymore. Princess could already see herself standing on a little platform in front of all the restaurant-goers, eating bucketloads of shrimp and potatoes and hamburgers and--

"Old Hobo Joe just rolled in the fridge," Sunflower said, poking her head out the kitchen door. "We're going to plug him in."

"Coming." Princess joined the rest of the group in the mirror room. They decided this would be the best place for their kitchen. It was large, and right next to the main chamber. They'd removed all of the mirrors in the center, but left the ones lining the room.

Every time she walked in, she watched herself shrink and stretch and bend.

Sunflower held the cord next to the outlet on the wall. "Should I?"

Princess nodded.

Sunflower plugged it in.

And--

Nothing happened.

"Hey." Princess crossed her arms, kind of disappointed. "That old guy was lying to us. There's nothing weird about this fridge, is there?"

"I suppose not." Sunflower stood. "So, what's next?"

Vincent took a sip of his lemonade, sitting on a lawn chair they'd purchased. "My minion is ready to bring in the stove now. Isn't that right?"

Old Hobo Joe nodded, covered in sweat.

"Okay." Sunflower left with the caped hobo.

Princess sat down next to Vincent, and snacked on some grapes. "Vincent, do you think this is a stupid idea?"

"What?" He stroked Ratty, who was cuddled up next to him.

"This place. The restaurant. Is it a stupid idea? I mean, I know it's a long shot. We might not make any money. Maybe nobody'll show up. But still, is it stupid to try?"

Vincent shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. Nobody in my family ever did anything like this. We never really worked at all. So this is all very new to me."

Princess nodded. "I understand."

He looked at her for a while, then--"But what I do know is that it is important to go after your dreams. I too have a dream. Maybe it will never happen, but I'm not going to rest until I break past my father's barriers and finally get him to understand what he's done to me."

Poor guy. He was talking about breaking past the barrier's of his father's heart. "I'm sure you will one day, Vincent."

He smiled and closed his eyes, sipping his drink, almost asleep.

Princess couldn't help but think about Ein. If only Ein could see Vincent and Ratty now. They weren't monsters, like he thought. They were so peaceful sleeping there, next to each other, keeping each other warm.

She wanted to talk to Ein, but she was afraid. She was afraid that at that moment when he'd yelled at her, Ein was finally letting out his true feelings. Maybe all those other times when he'd acted nice, he was really just putting up with her. Maybe Ein didn't really want to be friends with her. Maybe he was only doing it because of habit, or because he didn't like the idea of not having a friend, because that wasn't normal.

In any case, Princess decided to leave Ein alone. That was what he wanted, right?

***

Class was over and Ein headed for the door.

"Einstein, can I speak to you for a moment?" said Mrs. Kyoto.

This was it. This was the moment when Mrs. Kyoto would finally reveal that she knew what he'd done to her daughter. It was his fault she didn't go to college. It was his fault she was ruining her future.

"Yes, Mrs. Kyoto?"

"Sit down, Einstein."

He sat.

She sat in a chair in front of him and stared into his eyes. "First of all, I'd like to ask you to give a message to my daughter if you see her. Tell her that although I don't agree with the choices she's made, I do respect her right to make those choices."

"Really? I mean, I'll tell her. If I see her."

"That's all I ask, Einstein. Thank you."

He nodded.

"Now, for the real reason I wanted you after class." She reached behind her, and brought forth a stack of giant cards. "I'm conducting an experiment, and I need people from various age brackets to tell me what they see in these ink blots. Willing to give it a go?"

Ink blots. That actually sounded like fun. "Sure."

"Thank you." She held out the first card. "What do you see here?"

Ein's eyes widened, then he forced his eyelids back down with his fingers to normal size. "Uh…" He couldn't believe he was seeing what he was seeing. He saw a picture of Mrs. Kyoto hitting him with a giant hammer. "I see…uh…I see a tree."

"Very interesting." She scribbled into her notepad. "And what do you see in this one?"

Ah! That was Mrs. Kyoto throwing him off an airplane without a parachute. "A hamburger."

"Hmm…and this one."

That was a giant godzilla-looking Mrs. Kyoto destroying a city filled with many tiny Eins! "A bunny."

***

Sunflower helped Old Hobo Joe push the stove into place. She looked over and saw Vincent lying next to Ratty, asleep. He'd spelt lemonade all over his already dirty robe. Poor guy. He was always sitting around, hardly doing any work. He probably felt horrible about it. She knew his muscles hadn't fully developed much as a child, due to not being able to eat a lot. So now he couldn't move much without overexerting himself. Still, in his own way, he was helping. He gave Sunflower strength by being such an inspiration. After all he'd gone through growing up, he still had such a positive attitude.

"Rrrrrr!"

Sunflower looked around. "Was that your stomach growling?"

Princess shook her head. "I don't think so. You don't think it was a monster, do you?"

"I don't know." It sounded like it was coming from--

"RRRRRR!" The fridge was growling. It vibrated all over, with more and more intensity. Suddenly it jolted into a fury of motion. It vibrated so hard, it started to move across the room.

"It's trying to run away!" Princess said.

Old Hobo Joe pounced, and grabbed the fridge on both sides. They wrested. The fridge slammed its door at Old Hobo Joe over and over, but Old Hobo Joe deflected the blows with quick blocks of his forearms. Old Hobo Joe spread his legs wide and pushed on the fridge door until his face turned red. The fridge howled, and shook with rage, but slowly it was forced back to its original position.

The fridge stopped its tantrum, and Old Hobo Joe leaned against it, catching his breath.

"Thanks, Old Hobo Joe," Princess said.

Vincent walked over and placed a hand on the old man's shoulder. "I'd expect nothing less from the minion of such a wonderful leader."

Everyone went back to work, and Sunflower realized that she wasn't moving a muscle. She was just standing there, in the middle of the room, watching all these people. She felt lucky to have such great…business partners. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she'd had such a wonderful and exciting day with other…business partners. Or maybe she didn't want to remember.

***

Ein walked out of the building, and he jumped, realizing that Chucky was now walking beside him. "Hi, Chucky. How's it going?"

Chucky took a deep breath. "I'm doing rather well, thank you very much, I thought I'd catch you after class to ask you a question, which is, would you like to join my Tron club, or maybe just hang out sometime?--You seem to be having sort of a hard time fitting in here, so I thought I'd extend a hand, and--"

Great. So now even Chucky was feeling sorry for him. "You know, Chucky…" Wait, why should he say no? What else was he going to do? Go home and get yelled at by his Grandma while cleaning between her toes? Go to some haunted house and get tortured by two rats while his best friend made him feel like a jerk for not wanting to be tortured by two rats? "I'd like that. So what do you want to do?"

Chucky scrunched his face up, thinking. "Well, we could go to my house, I have a photograph collection of UFOs, if you're interested in that kind of thing, most people would say, nah, those are just pictures of lightbulbs, but if you have an open mind--"

"Sure, sounds like fun."

A couple minutes later, after a short walk, Ein sat in the middle of a picture-perfect living room, staring at two gorgeous soap opera stars. He'd never actually watched the show before, but their faces were still familiar.

"Would you like some more milk, Ein?" asked Mrs. Flabbing, batting her beautiful blue eyes.

"I'm fine, thanks."

Mr. Flabbing stood and dusted the cookie crumbs off his shirt. "I'd like to stay and chat, but my evil twin is getting married to my ex-girlfriend's psychic. I just hope Veronica isn't there to ruin everything like she did last time."

"Have fun," said Mrs. Flabbing, kissing him goodbye.

Chucky finished his last cookie and stood. "Mom, me and Ein are gonna go upstairs now, and--"

"Okay. It was nice meeting you, Ein."

Ein nodded and followed Chucky upstairs.

Chucky's room was a mosaic of supernatural phenomena. Aliens, the Lockness Monster, Bigfoot, and every other strange creature that most people probably wouldn't admit to believing in.

"Your room is…interesting, Chucky."

He took a deep breath. "Thanks, it's taken me years to collect all this stuff, here's my photographs of UFOs, see that one right there?--I know it looks like a frisbee, but it's really a circular hyper-craft that uses gyro technology to maintain the hull integrity and--"

"Interesting."

"And this one right there…"

***

Vincent felt exhausted after having watched everyone work all day. Therefore, he was relieved when Princess invited everyone to her treehouse for dinner. He needed a good rest.

He gave Old Hobo Joe permission to join them, then walked into Sunflower's new old office, where she sat at her new old desk.

A red-eyed skeleton fell from the ceiling when he accidentally stepped on one of the trap tiles. The moment he moved from the tile, the skeleton was whisked back into the darkness from whence it came. "You have quite a few skeletons in here, Sunflower. Are you sure you wouldn't like my minion to get rid of them?"

"No. They're fine." She kept her eyes down, on her papers.

"Will you be joining us for dinner? Princess says she has a wide assortment of junk food. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but as long as it's not food from the trash, it has to be better than what we've been eating lately, am I right?" He laughed at his own joke, but Sunflower didn't join in.

Instead, she scribbled on her papers.

"Sunflower?"

She looked up. "Oh, sorry. Vincent, I'd like to join the three of you, but I have a lot of work to do right now."

"Surly, work must not necessarily occupy all your time."

"Today, I realized something." She lined up her pen perfectly parallel to the other pens on her desk. "Lately, I haven't been working nearly enough. I can't allow other things to get in the way of the greater picture. The truth is, the destiny of this restaurant is in my hands. If I fail, then I make everyone fail."

She was sure different from Vincent's father, that was for sure. His father didn't care about the people who worked under him. On the contrary, he schemed and plotted for days, months on end, trying to figure out the best way to cheat his employees out of their money. "I suppose you must do what you have to do. I'll speak to you later tonight then."

"Actually, Vincent, I don't think I'll be going back to the alley tonight. I have so much to do…I think I'm going to sleep in my office."

Something inside Vincent's chest was aching a little. "Very well." He turned and walked out.

Again, he stepped on a trick tile, and another skeleton popped down right in front of his face. But somehow, he wasn't scared at all.

***

"…and that's my last photograph--" Finally. "--of this album, do you want to look at the next one?--I could--"

"No! I mean…" Ein coughed. "We have to save some for next time, right?"

"Yeah."--Chucky smiled, then frowned.--"You're really not having a good time at all, are you?--You want to leave, you want to go away and never--"

"It's…it's not that, Chucky. Your UFO pictures are really…neat, but I have a lot on my mind right now."

"Like what?--Maybe I can help, I'm pretty good at helping, one time I--"

"Well, it's this friend of mine. She uh…"

"She, eh?--Say no more."--Chucky winked.--"It's that kind of problem, is it, a girl problem, the kind of problem--"

"Just because she's my friend and she's a girl, doesn't mean she's my girlfriend. She's just my friend, okay?"

"Fine, fine, you don't have to be so snippy about it, don't you like that word?--snippy, snippy, snippy, snippy--"

"Anyway, I think I really hurt her feelings. I already tried apologizing to her, but that isn't good enough. I don't know what to do."

He took some stuffed aliens from the pile on his bed, and juggled them. "What exactly did you tell her to make her feel bad?--You didn't call her fat, did you?--Because my mom says you should never--"

"I didn't call her fat. I told her that her dream is stupid."

"What kind of dream?--Was it a flying dream?--I love flying dreams, especially when there's lots of birds around me and I--"

"Not that kind of dream. I mean, her dream. Her dream in life."

He stacked his stuffed aliens back onto his bed. "The question you have to ask yourself is, do you really think it's stupid?--Because if you do, lying to her isn't going to make any difference, friends know when other friends are lying, I had this friend once, called Pop, and he always--"

"Do I think it's stupid?" He actually had to think about that. Princess wanted to be the best eater in the world, so she was starting off by making a restaurant out of a haunted house. Was that stupid? It wasn't normal, that was for sure. But was that really enough?

Yep, absolutely BRILLIANT!! :) :) :)

Originally posted by: aish_punk

aru - thanks, but again it wasn't written by me!..will def give him ur comments..

hema di - thanks from his side!..np..btw whose that in ur dp huh?