Charloft Winter Bingo - "Frustrated"
“Haylee, I don’t know what it is with you lately, but you’re starting to scare me.”
Haylee could barely pay attention to her agent, Amelia Gaines. The woman was all business most of the time, and it was how Haylee liked it, as it was impossible to talk about her personal life with a human now. Plus, she had never liked talking with people about her personal life in the first place. It was no one’s business. It had been why she had told more than one teacher or concerned citizen to go to hell when they asked about bruises on her face growing up.
Why Amelia was breaking that pattern now was utterly beyond Haylee.
Plus it was hard to hear much of anything with Sy right in her ear all the damn time.
“Wait…what?” She had caught what Amelia said a few seconds after she said it.
“You’re starting to scare me. I mean, you’re last book sold well and everything, but it was different than before. Creepy, even.”
“Don’t we want creepy? I write horror novels for a living, for fuck’s sake,” Haylee pointed out, pushing some of the food around on the plate in front of her. She couldn’t eat it. It actually smelled gross to her, but it looked strange if she didn’t touch it at all.
“Well, there’s creepy…and then there’s you lately,” Amelia said. She went on, but then Haylee lost her by getting lost in her own train of thought.
”This woman sure does talk a lot,” Haylee heard Sy say. ”And what’s wrong with the last novel? I thought that it was the best one yet. You actually listened to some of my advice, for once.”
Haylee laughed. She actually had something of a girlish laugh when someone could pull it out of her. “Well, when you talk so damn much, it’s hard for you to NOT have a say or two in a book,” she said back to Sy.
“THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Amelia’s voice broke through her concentration. “You keep holding half a conversation with yourself! It’s weird. I think you should see a shrink.”
That definitely caught Haylee’s attention. “NO! No shrink. No freaky doctor intruding in on my business,” she snarled, standing up from the table in the restaurant. “Look, I should go. I need to go and do some work. I’ll see you later, OK?”
Without another work, or waiting for Amelia to answer, Haylee turned and walked away.
”You should really get a new agent or something,” Sy said in her ear as she walked away. ”That lady is intruding on stuff she has no need to be asking about.”
“I hope I can get her to stop asking questions,” Haylee said as she headed out the door and toward her car. “It’s a pain in the ass to get a new agent in this city, especially a literary one.” She’d rather get Amelia off her back. She didn’t like ghouls and she REALLY didn’t like the idea of killing the woman. She had kind of grown on her, after all. Like a fungus.
Haylee could barely pay attention to her agent, Amelia Gaines. The woman was all business most of the time, and it was how Haylee liked it, as it was impossible to talk about her personal life with a human now. Plus, she had never liked talking with people about her personal life in the first place. It was no one’s business. It had been why she had told more than one teacher or concerned citizen to go to hell when they asked about bruises on her face growing up.
Why Amelia was breaking that pattern now was utterly beyond Haylee.
Plus it was hard to hear much of anything with Sy right in her ear all the damn time.
“Wait…what?” She had caught what Amelia said a few seconds after she said it.
“You’re starting to scare me. I mean, you’re last book sold well and everything, but it was different than before. Creepy, even.”
“Don’t we want creepy? I write horror novels for a living, for fuck’s sake,” Haylee pointed out, pushing some of the food around on the plate in front of her. She couldn’t eat it. It actually smelled gross to her, but it looked strange if she didn’t touch it at all.
“Well, there’s creepy…and then there’s you lately,” Amelia said. She went on, but then Haylee lost her by getting lost in her own train of thought.
”This woman sure does talk a lot,” Haylee heard Sy say. ”And what’s wrong with the last novel? I thought that it was the best one yet. You actually listened to some of my advice, for once.”
Haylee laughed. She actually had something of a girlish laugh when someone could pull it out of her. “Well, when you talk so damn much, it’s hard for you to NOT have a say or two in a book,” she said back to Sy.
“THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Amelia’s voice broke through her concentration. “You keep holding half a conversation with yourself! It’s weird. I think you should see a shrink.”
That definitely caught Haylee’s attention. “NO! No shrink. No freaky doctor intruding in on my business,” she snarled, standing up from the table in the restaurant. “Look, I should go. I need to go and do some work. I’ll see you later, OK?”
Without another work, or waiting for Amelia to answer, Haylee turned and walked away.
”You should really get a new agent or something,” Sy said in her ear as she walked away. ”That lady is intruding on stuff she has no need to be asking about.”
“I hope I can get her to stop asking questions,” Haylee said as she headed out the door and toward her car. “It’s a pain in the ass to get a new agent in this city, especially a literary one.” She’d rather get Amelia off her back. She didn’t like ghouls and she REALLY didn’t like the idea of killing the woman. She had kind of grown on her, after all. Like a fungus.