Pikachu's Rage and Night 1
You've made your intentions clear. Rogueben is the one you want to see dead.
The thunder around you glows louder, louder. Multiple lightning strikes form concentric circles around Rogueben... And Pikachu's eyes are like fire, as it charges towards Rogueben, in a fit of rage.
You are its masters. It knows what you want it to do. Nothing can stop it from its orders....
The lightning converges around Rogueben, and he can't move. His face is twisted in terror, as pikachu's teeth show, as the little yellow monster charges towards him. Pikachu leaps towards Rogueben, through the lightning -- but the lightning is like a shield, and batters Pikachu away! Another bolts strikes down, hitting the creature. And another, and another. Pikachu at first absorbs the energy, but then, as too much collects, it ravages through his body, and chars him, leaving him black and burnt.
Pikachu is dead. The lightning shield around Rogueben dissipates, and he is spared. You don't ever get to find out his true motives; he leaves the charred circle in the rock, and rejoins your numbers.
Terrified from the event, you see the sun setting far off the coast below the water in the west. You decide that after that tumultuous occurrence, you don't want to try lynching again. It is dark anyways. You can hardly see.
You can't see at all, it is pitch black. You can't see each other anymore; night has fallen. You stand there in the darkness, waiting for day to break.
Night 1 has fallen. Night choices are due 72 hours from now. Day 2 will start between 48 and 72 hours from now.
~~~
“Vetri! Is that Rehamma wandering out in the bushes, or has the zoo left the cages open too long?” Vetrimielle peered out, and threw her hands out as she saw the neighbor, clad in unfashionable peacock feather and leopard prints, pulling seed heads from her spent flowers with her chubby hands, and stuffing them in little plastic bags. “I know she never plants any of these seeds.” She kept watching her, motionless. “You’re not going to go out to greet her?” he wondered. “I guess I have to.” As slowly as she could, she walked to the front door to the garden.
Not wanting to startle Rehamma, who was wholly engrossed, Vetrimielle waved at her unenthusiastically. “There you are,” she rose up from the bed of peonies. “Can you tell me why these peonies have no seeds?”
“First, the seed heads are still green, and they aren’t ripe. Second, that particular peony you are looking at is an intergeneric hybrid. It is sterile. Like a mule.” “Why? Why can’t they have seeds? The nicest one, and it can’t have seeds. I am so vexed! I remember the yellow and brown daylily that had nice flowers last year. Where is it?” Vetrimielle tried to remember, and pointed in the general direction of the Maidenhair tree.
“Can I have a clump from that daylily? It’s big enough, you can divide it. The bright red one, too. What about that tall one with the orange ring? They’re all well grown. Oh, I have to tell you what happened. You know Adel? Adel had a bush she wanted to get rid of, so I told her, I’ll take it, and I planted it. This spring, she sees it, and she says she wants it back. Vetrimielle! I was so vexed! You have no idea how vexed I am. Who gives something, and takes it back? She is so stupid. That’s not what my mother taught me, she taught me, if you give something, and you want back, go buy yourself a new one. I grabbed the bush from the stem, and pulled it out of the ground, and I said, ‘Here! Here you go, you can have it back.’”
Vetrimielle shrugged and raised her eyebrows, it didn’t seem like much to be upset about, but she made an effort to look mildly sympathetic. She realized that she’d failed when Rehamma recounted the event again, like she’d hadn’t just heard it, adding more salacious detail, like the elderly Adel would visit often only to soak her feeble mind in Rehamma’s wines and expensive liquor. “I’m going to the bazaar, why don’t you come? They have big discounts on perennials. Come! Come with me.”
Vetrimielle, who was outgoing, but correctly perceived as detached, or worse as an eccentric, never received these invitations, never might again, and decided to go along.
The bazaar was a windowless, grey cement enclosure with a very high, wavy steel roof and bare supporting beams – on the scale of the greatest cathedrals. Within, sound waves echoed and bounced listlessly against metal, linoleum tiles, and boxes, like a one note organ. Rehamma herded a disoriented Vetrimielle across her familiar grounds. Seeing this vast expanse loaded with an overabundance of goods, Vetrimielle remembered the time when a good needle was worth its weight in gold, weaving ennobled women, and goatherd was a reputable profession. She remembered when humans walked for miles for water. When the nights were dark, and you could see the Milky Way.
Rehamma pointed to row after row of rectangular screens that emitted bad dreams. Some were extraordinarily large, forming unending walls of flashing nightmares in painful primary colors. “Hey, you need a new TV. You need a big one!” She declined, “aw, no, the smaller these things are, the better.” “You don’t need to pay it right away, a little bit every month, I know, I have the biggest kind!” Rehamma insisted, missing the point entirely, until something else caught her attention; enough racks of women’s clothing to get lost in. She grabbed a knit shirt with eggplant, peach and yellow geometric designs and wide butterfly sleeves, laying it across her chest. “You think this looks good?” asked Rehamma. “Do you have pants or a skirt that match?” Gicen what she'd seen of Rehamma's wardrobe, Vetrimielle thought this might be a distinct possibility, and repressed a smile.
“You know I bought some high heel sandals here last week, and I tried to wear them and after a few hours, they were so painful, I could not wear them anymore. So I try to return them and they said, no return on shoes. I was so vexed, I am telling you, Vetri, I was so vexed. They would not take them back. I told them, I am going to stay here until you take them back, and I spoke to the manager, and then the manager’s manager, and then they took them back. Even if they took them back I am vexed.” She turned to a display of sterile bouquets of fresh, cut flowers, containing some white chrysanthemums that looked like they had been dyed unnatural shades of blue. “You see these flowers? Don’t buy them. They die the next day.”
When Rehamma spied Adel in pushing a cart in a aisle filled with soap boxes all the way to the ceiling, she started to wave and jump, but her voice did not carry, so she quickened her goose step to meet up with her, Vetrimielle tagging along on her way to the stranger who took back given bushes. Approaching, there was a smell of oregano, basil, and fennel seed seasoning the unmistakable aroma of lamb gristle. A bazaar employee, hair-netted, white clad, and sterile-gloved, was distributing pieces of sausage on toothpicks, with Rehamma and Adel, giggling accomplices, gorging themselves repeatedly on free samples. Both put several packages in their shopping baskets, to alleviate their guilt from the sin of gluttony.
Vetrimielle was becoming so bored she began considering crawling out of her own skin, and oozing away. When they parted ways with Adel after paying for their purchases, Rehamma was cornered into filling one of the many voids in Vetrimielle’s conversation. “You know, she’s divorced? Last year, she came to my house, every day, she comes, even in the morning, and she cries, and she laments, and I listen, like a good girl friend. She comes in the morning, I give her glasses of cognac, that costs like liquid gold, and when it’s my turn, I have problem, she doesn’t listen to me. All she thinks of is herself. She vexes me so much. You have no idea how much she vexes me.”
It took Rehamma an eternity to buy a few coins worth of sickly perennials, many of them unadvisable for Sweet Maple Island’s climate, before Vetrimielle was released back home. When Rehamma could be seen driving away in her covered steel chariot, Logophoron commented on how ostentatiously upscale it was, with sincere indifference. “Her husband gave it to her for the birthday,” Vetrimielle told Logophoron.
“When it comes to these chariots, it matters little whether they are fancy or plain. If you drive them into a brick wall, they all look like accordions.” Logophoron smiled at his own wit, and Vetrimielle laughed until her sides became sore.
Do not lynch me.
[wiki]Great Nibbler Takeover of 2008[/wiki]