I wish I'd paid attention to that crazy drunken man...
Friday, March 23nd, 2007
Route 1-A
Ipswich, MA
Well, his time with Romana had been a nicely reassuring experience, and the Bar had (as usual) provided decent coffee, but the fact was that Ray and Winston had to wrap up their business in Massachusetts. Gilman Brands was wildly useless as any sort of corroboration for the jewelry. It wasn't as if Gilman was a particularly uncommon name, after all. There were whole pages of it in the local phone book. Lovecraft lifted names from real life left and right for his fiction. It could've just been a coincidence.
The instant Ray saw that word cross his mental movie screen, though, he stopped in his tracks. Coincidence? Ha. No such thing. He'd demonstrated THAT time and again. Something had to be up.
With that thought firmly in mind, he took a deep breath and strode deliberately into the Seven-Eleven.
It was a store like all of its kind: packed with overflowing aisle displays, staffed by a bored-looking young woman, and overall just a little too brightly lit to be healthy. Ray found a security camera over the snack food section and stood directly underneath it, the better to avoid it noticing him switching the PKE meter on. Alas, there was nothing eldritch about the Pringles, but the meter's arms did twitch as he approached the frozen-food cases. He was grinning and on the verge of shouting "a-HA!" as he threw open the doors to the ice cream-
-but there was nothing. Not even a wiggle. Not even when he thrust the meter into the very heart of the frozen Gilman novelties on display. Ray frowned, glancing over his shoulder; the clerk was busy with two customers in blue hoodies. Okay, he could keep looking a little- A twitch, a very palpable twitch! Granted, he had the meter pointed at the microwavable lunch foods instead, but the arms were very definitely rising! He hastily shut the meter down before it could start beeping and hung it back on his belt.
All right, what did they have for sale that might conceivably be tainted with the influence of the thousand-dimensional? Probably not the Hot Pockets, although he had his suspicions about 'lean' Philly steak-and-cheese anything. Most likely not the black-bean-and-cheese things from Amy's Organic, either. The red wrappers cheerfully branded as BIG DAMN BURRITOS, in three levels of spiciness for seventy-five cents each, were a little suspicious; his hand hovered over the chicken ones for a moment. He started to look up again and on the next shelf up he saw-
"Fish burritos?" Ray said aloud. "Who the heck would want a burrito stuffed with fish?"
"That," said a slick, faintly gurgly voice form just behind him, "would be us."
Route 1-A
Ipswich, MA
Well, his time with Romana had been a nicely reassuring experience, and the Bar had (as usual) provided decent coffee, but the fact was that Ray and Winston had to wrap up their business in Massachusetts. Gilman Brands was wildly useless as any sort of corroboration for the jewelry. It wasn't as if Gilman was a particularly uncommon name, after all. There were whole pages of it in the local phone book. Lovecraft lifted names from real life left and right for his fiction. It could've just been a coincidence.
The instant Ray saw that word cross his mental movie screen, though, he stopped in his tracks. Coincidence? Ha. No such thing. He'd demonstrated THAT time and again. Something had to be up.
With that thought firmly in mind, he took a deep breath and strode deliberately into the Seven-Eleven.
It was a store like all of its kind: packed with overflowing aisle displays, staffed by a bored-looking young woman, and overall just a little too brightly lit to be healthy. Ray found a security camera over the snack food section and stood directly underneath it, the better to avoid it noticing him switching the PKE meter on. Alas, there was nothing eldritch about the Pringles, but the meter's arms did twitch as he approached the frozen-food cases. He was grinning and on the verge of shouting "a-HA!" as he threw open the doors to the ice cream-
-but there was nothing. Not even a wiggle. Not even when he thrust the meter into the very heart of the frozen Gilman novelties on display. Ray frowned, glancing over his shoulder; the clerk was busy with two customers in blue hoodies. Okay, he could keep looking a little- A twitch, a very palpable twitch! Granted, he had the meter pointed at the microwavable lunch foods instead, but the arms were very definitely rising! He hastily shut the meter down before it could start beeping and hung it back on his belt.
All right, what did they have for sale that might conceivably be tainted with the influence of the thousand-dimensional? Probably not the Hot Pockets, although he had his suspicions about 'lean' Philly steak-and-cheese anything. Most likely not the black-bean-and-cheese things from Amy's Organic, either. The red wrappers cheerfully branded as BIG DAMN BURRITOS, in three levels of spiciness for seventy-five cents each, were a little suspicious; his hand hovered over the chicken ones for a moment. He started to look up again and on the next shelf up he saw-
"Fish burritos?" Ray said aloud. "Who the heck would want a burrito stuffed with fish?"
"That," said a slick, faintly gurgly voice form just behind him, "would be us."