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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 104: Beam 94
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Hastings 218
Returning to the first apartment complex after getting everyone settled, the white haired man almost crawled up the ramp, stumbled through the living room and hall, and fell on the bed. He was dimly aware of Sophia pulling a blanket over him before she crawled in from the other side and snuggled against him. His legs throbbed a bit, but he was too exhausted for that to keep him awake, and it soon faded into oblivion.
As was often the case, he awoke while the rest of the house was asleep. Not enough beer, he thought, and even considered ordering a bottle of Scotch, but then remembered that he was going to have to awaken in the morning and lead this horde up yet another level to number twenty-one. He was not looking forward to it, and his legs were aching.
He went out in the living room. It was brightly lit to accommodate Dawn, who was as ever standing guard. Sitting at the computer desk he decided he wanted some kind of snack. Nothing really appealed to him. He’d had a burger for dinner, and Italian last night which nixed pizza. He thought of having a chili dog, but if he got peppers on it it would keep him awake, and the point was to go back to sleep. In the end he ordered cookies, snickerdoodles. He knew they wouldn’t be anything like what he would make himself, but he wasn’t going to stay up the rest of the night making them. He almost ordered coffee to go with them, but decided that that would be about as good a choice as beer, so he ordered a cup of hot chocolate. Then, thinking of the soreness in his legs and anticipating cramps, he ordered a bunch of bananas. Then he ordered one hundred twenty more bananas to be delivered to the common area in three hours. He thought he should get them delivered to the three common areas separately, but didn’t know the addresses, and while he could do “here” easily enough, he couldn’t do “there” without a lot more information.
Each of his orders came separately, the snickerdoodles from a bakery, the hot chocolate from a coffee shop, and the bananas from a grocery store. He ate the banana first, as he was thinking of it medicinally as prophylactic protection against leg cramps in the morning. Then he nibbled at the cookies while sipping the chocolate until he decided he was tired and headed back to bed.
He was not looking forward to morning, but then, he couldn’t remember the last time he was looking forward to morning.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #392: Characters Resting. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
