Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday; I had the worst day EVAR. Briefly:
Tuesday evening, I was supposed to take care of my parents’ dog, but forgot about it. So I drove there late at night to discover the dog had left a large present on the foyer carpet. Joy. I got to clean that up.
I got home and decided to take a sleeping pill, hoping to get a reasonable night’s sleep. Oh boy did I get sleep. That pill knocked me dead for twelve hours.
That means I woke up at 11:30 a.m. And I had to go take care of the dog again, who by this point was nervous and annoying, running in front of me and just generally being a nuisance.
I didn’t get to work until 1:00 p.m. I arrived to find an
Plus, the sleep was the sort of sleep that left me feeling drugged all day. And, because I woke up late, my eating patterns were all out of whack, so I was hungry and not hungry at weird times.
So, yeah. That was my Wednesday.
Thomas awoke with a bang.
Literally. The thin door to their room slammed open with such force that dust drifted from the ceiling. Thomas started up in bed, the tangled sheets coiling themselves further around his body. He blinked to clear the haze from his eyes.
Two very large Asian men, wearing business suits, strode into the room. Each had a pistol, one leveled at Thomas and the other at Doodlehopper’s bed. She was still curled into a ball under the sheets. Thomas continued to blink, his brain still a few subway stops behind.
“You’re Thomas Aznable,” one of them stated. The events of the past
“You two again?” he said.
Both intruders shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well,” the first one said, jerking his head towards Doodlehopper’s bed, “we didn’t expect him last time. You covering him, Karl?”
Karl nodded, his gun aimed straight at the curved outline of Doodlehopper’s body beneath the sheets, and his face showing intense concentration. Thomas’ brain — which was still a bit dreamy from sleep — vaguely wondered if the thug was trying out some sort of mental powers, or was just that stupid. He figured it was the latter.
His mind had recovered sufficiently to realize that they thought Doodlehopper was male. He filed that way as potentially useful.
“Boss?” asked the first thug, still looking straight at Thomas.
Thomas blinked back at him. “Me?” he asked.
The thug gave him a disgusted frown. “No, not you, you idiot. I’m trying—no Boss!” His eyes grew wide with panic, and he straightened his spine but he continued addressing Thomas. “I was talking to someone else Boss! I’m sorry Boss!”
Thomas realized the thug must be wearing a mobile phone with a wire thin enough to be taped to his neck and made essentially invisible. Thomas felt himself frown slightly. He hated it when people did that.
“It’s the guy, Boss!” the thug said, his voice as excited as a kid in a toy store on delivery day. “We found him! And he’s with…the…other guy!”
Thomas was not typically a man of action. He preferred to use his brain, which was his excuse for not exercising. But it was true; he simply didn’t have a “bias for action,” as he’d read of in a
But he was learning.