Collateral Salvage
May. 8th, 2016 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
were_lemurSupernatural, 1,771 words, Rated R for implied domestic violence and (non-fatal) gun violence. The Trickster hates bullies.
You can keep your Bigggersons, the Trickster thinks. Little places like this one -- Red's 24-Hour Diner, in Muddy Springs, New Mexico -- are his way stations of choice. The food is better than that mass-produced slop, probably because it's been cooked by actual human beings. And they have some uniqueness, some charm, instead of the stifling sameness of chain restaurants.
Red's has the bonus of being perfectly set up for people-watching. The north wall is by the kitchen; it's solid and painted with a mural of the same desert landscape any travelers would have spent the day passing through, with the addition of covered wagons and teepees. The first half off it is a long counter. A long padded bench, covered in red vinyl, runs along the rest of the wall; from there, the Trickster can watch everything. Wrapped in an illusion that he's a little old lady, he might as well be invisible.
The south wall is all glass; the booths are perpendicular to his table. So he gets a good view of the patrons, as well as the front parking and the long stretch of road that stretches to the vanishing point in both directions.
He's had some good times in Muddy Springs. The high school principal -- that's going to live forever in the students' collective memory, graduating seniors telling the tale to incoming freshmen. And while the pastor hadn't, admittedly, been his best work, there's a reason that auto-erotic asphyxiation remains a classic.
But it's getting to be time to move on. The Winchesters, the angels, all think he's dead, and he'd really like to keep it that way, thanks.
Still, he's going to miss this town.
Well, he's going to miss this restaurant.
Honestly, what he's actually going to miss is the Rocky Road pancakes. Whoever had the idea of putting both chocolate chips and marshmallows in pancakes should really have a statue erected in their honor.
Maybe, he thinks, he should leave one as a parting gift to the to the town.
Right now, the diner is quiet. The lunch rush has passed, and the high school won't be out for another couple of hours.
So that leaves him with the pancakes and the pathetic.
The trucker and the housewife are sitting down at the padded seats at the counter, ostensibly both on errands of their own. They're contemplating turning their emotional affair physical, of culminating their stolen, supposedly accidental moments in the diner over the past half year in a few minutes of grasping and thrusting in the sleeping cabinet of his big-rig in the back lot. They're both married, but they're so earnest and desperate that tormenting them would be no fun at all.
The road-tripping hipster newlyweds down at the far end are at least a little self-important, arguing about whether or not the ugly mural is racist or just ironic. They're their own worst punishment. Even without his help, one of them will either be filing for divorce or hiding the other's body within five years.
The family moving cross-country with their three cranky kids are similarly self-punishing, so he leaves the teenager to her sulking, the younger kids to their squabbling, and the parents to the not-argument they've clearly been having since they hit the road.
Messing with the town drunk, of course, would be like kicking an old dog.
Nope, as soon as he's finished with his pancakes, he's out of here.
A battered blue pick-up pulls into the lot, and he watches, idly wondering if someone interesting will get out.
When the driver emerges, she's definitely got his interest. She's easily the most attractive woman he's seen all week. In Hollywood she'd be lost in a crowd, but in Muddy Springs, New Mexico, she's a golden goddess. She reminds him of a Cranach Madonna; waves of blonde hair falling around a long, elegant face. She's wearing sunglasses, and she hasn't bothered to take off her blue Gas-n-Sip vest.
The kid who hops out of the passenger's seat is no serene Christ Child. She's restless, swinging her arms, kicking at rocks in the dirt. Her Brownie uniform (and the irony of naming an organization for little girls after a group of mercenary fairies doesn't escape the Trickster) is on the edge of being outgrown. The Trickster isn't good at guessing ages; maybe she's seven (a prime number, complete in itself) or maybe she's eight (the first cube, perfectly divisible.) Maybe she's younger than that.
He's never been all that interested in children. They might be self-involved, but it takes more than that to be a worthy target.
Mother and daughter enter the restaurant. Hot Mom doesn't take off her sunglasses.
He might as well enjoy the view. As the waitress brings them to the table, he creates, for just a moment, the illusion of unprepared tables, except for the one across from his own seat.
It's only once Hot Mom is safely seated that she takes the sunglasses off. But he can see, reflected in the glass, that her left eye is bruised.
The little girl opens her menu and studies it, her expression gone serious. Choosing what she will have is probably one of the few decisions she gets to make at her age, and she clearly wants to give it due consideration.
"You should try the Rocky Road pancakes," the Trickster says, and she grins, gap-toothed, at him. She's a cute kid, as humans go; wavy hair like her mother's neatly brushed into pigtails, and a spray of freckles across her upturned nose. When she says "thank you," she actually sounds like she means it; Hot Mom is clearly also a good mom, or at least good at teaching manners.
The waitress comes back; Hot Mom orders iced tea and a turkey sandwich, Cute Kid tries to order both the pancakes and a chocolate shake. When Hot Mom tells her she can't have both, she goes with the pancakes. The Trickster is at least a little well-disposed to her after that.
While they're waiting for their food, Hot Mom asks the kid about her day at school. "The teacher made the new boy sit behind me. He's a total butthead."
"Language," her mother says.
"Well, he is. He keeps pulling my hair."
"That usually means a boy likes you."
The Trickster thinks of the bruise on Hot Mom's face. He leans toward the girl. "Actually, it's been my experience that when a boy hurts you, it's because he's a big bag of dicks."
Cute Kid's eyes go wide and she grins, either at the forbidden language or at the validation of her original assessment. Hot Mom is obviously too well-socialize to correct what she thinks is a little old lady, even a foul-mouthed one.
By the time their food comes, the Trickster is finished eating, but he asks for a another cup of coffee while he considers where to go next. He's bored of small towns; maybe he'll head to New York.
Or, he thinks with a smile, he could swing by Washington D.C. Plenty of egos there just begging for a puncture.
Cute Kid points to something outside the window; a bigger, douchier truck is just pulling up. The driver pulls horizontally into two spaces, and from his seat, the Trickster can just make out the plastic testicles hanging from the rear bumper. Hot Mom looks suddenly afraid.
The guy who gets out of the truck clearly does his shopping from the same catalog as the Winchesters, but then, so do most of the men and quite a few of the women who live around here. He's big, with a thick neck and nearly colorless hair in a high-and-tight that he probably thinks makes him look tough. His face is red from what the Trickster judges to be a combination of sunburn, rage, and chronic alcohol overconsumption.
The waitress steps back from him as he comes through the door. Hot Mom and Cute Kid both shrink back. He plops down next to the little girl, and she scoots herself as far away in the booth as he can.
"Bet you thought you wouldn't find out that you were squirreling away money in your tampon box, huh?"
"I was saving it for your birthday, honey," she says, and it's the most transparent lie the Trickster's seen in a long time.
Tough Guy pulls up the hem of his plaid shirt, and Hot Mom's eyes go wide. The Trickster can guess that he's not just showing off a new tattoo. He wonders if the waitress is smart enough to call the police. Even if she has, he doubts they will get to the diner in time to do any good.
"Please don't," Hot Mom whimpers. "Not in front of her."
"I knew you should quit that damn job. What happened; you meet some new guy that's told you he's gonna take you away from all this?"
"No. I swear. I just wanted to help our family."
"I took you both in when you were living in that crap motel, a bad day's tips away from turning tricks to make rent, and this is how you pay me back?" He reaches toward his waistband again, and it's been millennia since the Trickster thought of himself as an Archangel, a protector, but he's never liked bullies.
He snaps his fingers, but the sound is obliterated by the clap of a gunshot.
Tough Guy keels over, out of the seat, and drops the gun because he's suddenly preoccupied with something entirely different.
"Oh shit, oh shit, I just shot myself in the dick!"
Cute Kid takes the whole spectacle in, wide-eyed. She's gonna need some therapy. "Mom," she says, with something like awe in her voice, "he just said the s-word!"
"Language," Hot Mom says automatically. She kicks the gun away, out of Tough Guy's reach.
"Oh Jesus fuck, it hurts!"
"He said the f-word, too!"
Eh, the kid's gonna be fine.
He hears sirens coming, and decides that it's time to make his exit. He drops a twenty on the table and shuffles out the door of Red's 24-Hour Diner, and nobody thinks to ask the little old lady he looks like to give a statement to the cops. It'll be an open-and-shut case, even without witness testimony.
Once he's past the range of the cameras, he drops the old-lady illusion with a snap of his fingers. Another brings a red Lamborghini Huracan into existence, facing west. He's going to head to Los Angeles.
Between the movie stars, the Scientologists, and the Kardashians, there will be plenty of opportunity for entertainment.
You can keep your Bigggersons, the Trickster thinks. Little places like this one -- Red's 24-Hour Diner, in Muddy Springs, New Mexico -- are his way stations of choice. The food is better than that mass-produced slop, probably because it's been cooked by actual human beings. And they have some uniqueness, some charm, instead of the stifling sameness of chain restaurants.
Red's has the bonus of being perfectly set up for people-watching. The north wall is by the kitchen; it's solid and painted with a mural of the same desert landscape any travelers would have spent the day passing through, with the addition of covered wagons and teepees. The first half off it is a long counter. A long padded bench, covered in red vinyl, runs along the rest of the wall; from there, the Trickster can watch everything. Wrapped in an illusion that he's a little old lady, he might as well be invisible.
The south wall is all glass; the booths are perpendicular to his table. So he gets a good view of the patrons, as well as the front parking and the long stretch of road that stretches to the vanishing point in both directions.
He's had some good times in Muddy Springs. The high school principal -- that's going to live forever in the students' collective memory, graduating seniors telling the tale to incoming freshmen. And while the pastor hadn't, admittedly, been his best work, there's a reason that auto-erotic asphyxiation remains a classic.
But it's getting to be time to move on. The Winchesters, the angels, all think he's dead, and he'd really like to keep it that way, thanks.
Still, he's going to miss this town.
Well, he's going to miss this restaurant.
Honestly, what he's actually going to miss is the Rocky Road pancakes. Whoever had the idea of putting both chocolate chips and marshmallows in pancakes should really have a statue erected in their honor.
Maybe, he thinks, he should leave one as a parting gift to the to the town.
Right now, the diner is quiet. The lunch rush has passed, and the high school won't be out for another couple of hours.
So that leaves him with the pancakes and the pathetic.
The trucker and the housewife are sitting down at the padded seats at the counter, ostensibly both on errands of their own. They're contemplating turning their emotional affair physical, of culminating their stolen, supposedly accidental moments in the diner over the past half year in a few minutes of grasping and thrusting in the sleeping cabinet of his big-rig in the back lot. They're both married, but they're so earnest and desperate that tormenting them would be no fun at all.
The road-tripping hipster newlyweds down at the far end are at least a little self-important, arguing about whether or not the ugly mural is racist or just ironic. They're their own worst punishment. Even without his help, one of them will either be filing for divorce or hiding the other's body within five years.
The family moving cross-country with their three cranky kids are similarly self-punishing, so he leaves the teenager to her sulking, the younger kids to their squabbling, and the parents to the not-argument they've clearly been having since they hit the road.
Messing with the town drunk, of course, would be like kicking an old dog.
Nope, as soon as he's finished with his pancakes, he's out of here.
A battered blue pick-up pulls into the lot, and he watches, idly wondering if someone interesting will get out.
When the driver emerges, she's definitely got his interest. She's easily the most attractive woman he's seen all week. In Hollywood she'd be lost in a crowd, but in Muddy Springs, New Mexico, she's a golden goddess. She reminds him of a Cranach Madonna; waves of blonde hair falling around a long, elegant face. She's wearing sunglasses, and she hasn't bothered to take off her blue Gas-n-Sip vest.
The kid who hops out of the passenger's seat is no serene Christ Child. She's restless, swinging her arms, kicking at rocks in the dirt. Her Brownie uniform (and the irony of naming an organization for little girls after a group of mercenary fairies doesn't escape the Trickster) is on the edge of being outgrown. The Trickster isn't good at guessing ages; maybe she's seven (a prime number, complete in itself) or maybe she's eight (the first cube, perfectly divisible.) Maybe she's younger than that.
He's never been all that interested in children. They might be self-involved, but it takes more than that to be a worthy target.
Mother and daughter enter the restaurant. Hot Mom doesn't take off her sunglasses.
He might as well enjoy the view. As the waitress brings them to the table, he creates, for just a moment, the illusion of unprepared tables, except for the one across from his own seat.
It's only once Hot Mom is safely seated that she takes the sunglasses off. But he can see, reflected in the glass, that her left eye is bruised.
The little girl opens her menu and studies it, her expression gone serious. Choosing what she will have is probably one of the few decisions she gets to make at her age, and she clearly wants to give it due consideration.
"You should try the Rocky Road pancakes," the Trickster says, and she grins, gap-toothed, at him. She's a cute kid, as humans go; wavy hair like her mother's neatly brushed into pigtails, and a spray of freckles across her upturned nose. When she says "thank you," she actually sounds like she means it; Hot Mom is clearly also a good mom, or at least good at teaching manners.
The waitress comes back; Hot Mom orders iced tea and a turkey sandwich, Cute Kid tries to order both the pancakes and a chocolate shake. When Hot Mom tells her she can't have both, she goes with the pancakes. The Trickster is at least a little well-disposed to her after that.
While they're waiting for their food, Hot Mom asks the kid about her day at school. "The teacher made the new boy sit behind me. He's a total butthead."
"Language," her mother says.
"Well, he is. He keeps pulling my hair."
"That usually means a boy likes you."
The Trickster thinks of the bruise on Hot Mom's face. He leans toward the girl. "Actually, it's been my experience that when a boy hurts you, it's because he's a big bag of dicks."
Cute Kid's eyes go wide and she grins, either at the forbidden language or at the validation of her original assessment. Hot Mom is obviously too well-socialize to correct what she thinks is a little old lady, even a foul-mouthed one.
By the time their food comes, the Trickster is finished eating, but he asks for a another cup of coffee while he considers where to go next. He's bored of small towns; maybe he'll head to New York.
Or, he thinks with a smile, he could swing by Washington D.C. Plenty of egos there just begging for a puncture.
Cute Kid points to something outside the window; a bigger, douchier truck is just pulling up. The driver pulls horizontally into two spaces, and from his seat, the Trickster can just make out the plastic testicles hanging from the rear bumper. Hot Mom looks suddenly afraid.
The guy who gets out of the truck clearly does his shopping from the same catalog as the Winchesters, but then, so do most of the men and quite a few of the women who live around here. He's big, with a thick neck and nearly colorless hair in a high-and-tight that he probably thinks makes him look tough. His face is red from what the Trickster judges to be a combination of sunburn, rage, and chronic alcohol overconsumption.
The waitress steps back from him as he comes through the door. Hot Mom and Cute Kid both shrink back. He plops down next to the little girl, and she scoots herself as far away in the booth as he can.
"Bet you thought you wouldn't find out that you were squirreling away money in your tampon box, huh?"
"I was saving it for your birthday, honey," she says, and it's the most transparent lie the Trickster's seen in a long time.
Tough Guy pulls up the hem of his plaid shirt, and Hot Mom's eyes go wide. The Trickster can guess that he's not just showing off a new tattoo. He wonders if the waitress is smart enough to call the police. Even if she has, he doubts they will get to the diner in time to do any good.
"Please don't," Hot Mom whimpers. "Not in front of her."
"I knew you should quit that damn job. What happened; you meet some new guy that's told you he's gonna take you away from all this?"
"No. I swear. I just wanted to help our family."
"I took you both in when you were living in that crap motel, a bad day's tips away from turning tricks to make rent, and this is how you pay me back?" He reaches toward his waistband again, and it's been millennia since the Trickster thought of himself as an Archangel, a protector, but he's never liked bullies.
He snaps his fingers, but the sound is obliterated by the clap of a gunshot.
Tough Guy keels over, out of the seat, and drops the gun because he's suddenly preoccupied with something entirely different.
"Oh shit, oh shit, I just shot myself in the dick!"
Cute Kid takes the whole spectacle in, wide-eyed. She's gonna need some therapy. "Mom," she says, with something like awe in her voice, "he just said the s-word!"
"Language," Hot Mom says automatically. She kicks the gun away, out of Tough Guy's reach.
"Oh Jesus fuck, it hurts!"
"He said the f-word, too!"
Eh, the kid's gonna be fine.
He hears sirens coming, and decides that it's time to make his exit. He drops a twenty on the table and shuffles out the door of Red's 24-Hour Diner, and nobody thinks to ask the little old lady he looks like to give a statement to the cops. It'll be an open-and-shut case, even without witness testimony.
Once he's past the range of the cameras, he drops the old-lady illusion with a snap of his fingers. Another brings a red Lamborghini Huracan into existence, facing west. He's going to head to Los Angeles.
Between the movie stars, the Scientologists, and the Kardashians, there will be plenty of opportunity for entertainment.
