![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: There’s a Thousand Watts in You
Word Count: 2343
Characters: Charlotte, Neesa, Phil
Author’s Note: This was written for the Sensory Overload Ficathon by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ephemera_tales. She gave out the title and a word for each of the senses. Mine included: Sight-focus, Sound-clang, Smell-lemon, Touch-silk, Taste-bread. These characters showed up in a previous story but this is completely new and fresh. Thanks to applesprinkles for the typing (I'll trade you for cutting out invitations anyday!) and dream_queen for the beta.
~~*~~*~~*~~
Charlotte walked into the theater, breathing in deeply of all the smells that time had woven into the fabric all around the room. If she hadn’t felt every single one of her twenty-one years in her bones on this damp night, time might have stopped on the opening night of “A Streetcar Named Desire” her senior year of high school and failed to move forward properly.
“Can I help you with anything?” someone asked to her right. Charlotte blinked to bring the person into focus, trying to look like she belonged here.
“I heard there were auditions for a new play tonight.”
The person, still anonymous in the low light, nodded. “You’re the first one. Angie should be back soon. Her babysitter called and she had to run home to help get her kid out of a locked bathroom.”
“What another walk down memory lane that is,” Charlotte said as she pushed back the hood of her jacket, spraying the area around her with a fine mist from the sodden material. “I had the same thing happen to me when I was still on the babysitting lists. For a time, I never left home without a bobby pin.”
“Do they still make those?”
A loud crash from the back room silenced Charlotte as she started her witty retort and they both turned toward the sound. Another series of clanging metal falling on a hard surface reverberated around the high ceiling of the room.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Charlotte murmured as she followed the guy down the wide aisle and through a small door at the side.
“Neesa? Need any help?”
“I’ve got it. Don’t worry. I should have turned on the light when I came in.”
The brighter lights of this room gave Charlotte the opportunity to stare at the tall man standing indecisively beside her. Dark hair was one thing that drew her to a guy. Blondes, in her opinion, didn’t have very much fun. This hair cried out to be brushed away from equally dark eyes.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” he asked, his hand convulsively gripping the waistband of his sweatshirt. She’d never heard of the band name on the front but she definitely meant to check them out as soon as she was back home.
“Positive. Go back out front and make sure all the people fill out the paperwork. Let me stack these shields and swords back on the shelf and I’ll be out.”
As if he had forgotten anyone had followed him to the back, he passed right by Charlotte and back out the door. She turned to follow him but felt the pull to see if the backroom had changed in her absence. Were there still wooden swords of varying sizes laying on the rafters? Were there still bins of necklaces and earrings just begging to be tried on and flaunted?
Another loud noise and a curse decided it for here.
“If you let me know where you are, I’ll help you,” she yelled from the doorway.
“Angie?”
“No, she had an emergency at home that a bobby pin should solve. I’m Charlotte Adderly. I heard about the auditions and decided to come down to see if I can still do this type of thing.”
“I’m in the back corner,” the lost girl said, although Charlotte found her before she finished the sentence. It looked as if she had started to clean up but was fighting a losing battle with the dented metal sheets. For each colored shield that sat back on the shelf, another three lay haphazardly on the floor.
“I’m Neesa, the co-director this year. Normally, I’m not this clumsy but I seem to have forgotten the layout of the room since I was here the morning.”
Together, they stacked and steadied the battle wear into a pile.
“You’ve all been working on the play all day long?”
“No, I actually work here. The city employs me to make sure all their building are clean and presentable. It comes in handy for things like this yearly play. Have you ever done a play?”
Charlotte ran her hand over the sleeve of an Edwardian dress. The midnight blue silk made her wish the play was more along the lines of Hamlet or King Lear.
“A couple. Back when I was in high school, I decided I needed to add some activities outside of school to my resume.”
“Which ones?” Neesa asked, pulling her bag up from where it had fallen. Her curly hair was pulled back into a lopsided bun at the back of her head; her sweatshirt spouting the same logo as the boy from the front.
“I was a bride in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Oh, Tennessee Williams. I’ve never been in anything he’s written but I love the characters.”
Charlotte nodded. “My mom wasn’t too happy about me being in such a sexual production, but I promised to forget all the really salacious lines.”
Both girls grinned, silently mocking mothers in general. In that moment, Charlotte began to worry about trying out for the play. The expectations she heaped on herself doubled as she realized she really wanted to become this girl’s friend. There weren’t many girls her age in town that weren’t married with a household of children to spend every waking hour taking care of.
“So, think you’d like to do ‘Our Town’? It’s a bit tame compared to your resume.”
As Charlotte shrugged, she self-consciously put her hands in her back pockets. “I’m just looking for something to fill up my days until the next semester begins. I was in the hospital for the first part of this semester so missed registration and the first two weeks of class.”
Neesa had stopped completely, her eyes narrowing. “You said Charlotte, right? Charlotte Adderly? Cora’s little sister?”
“Yes.” Thinking, quickly, Charlotte tried to piece the suddenly jumbled puzzle pieces together without knowing what she was looking for. “You know my sister?”
A hug was the last thing Charlotte was expecting but she found herself engulfed in one that made breathing a memory. The girl murmured something unintelligible against her shoulder.
“I’ll have to let Cora know I saw you tonight. She must have known you worked here.” Since the girl was still holding onto her, Charlotte could only keep patting her shoulder like an auto man. “I think it may be time for the auditions to start.”
Only the mention of the play calmed Neesa down. “You’re right. We need to get you up on stage. Cora and I have talked about you. She tells me –“
Charlotte held up her hands for Neesa to stop, her cheeks bright red in embarrassment. She didn’t want to know what her darling older sister had been telling people about her. If there was one thing she abhorred, it was attention of the wrong kind.
“Let’s go,” she choked out, hurrying into the main room where a group was huddled around someone she could only assume was Angie. After grabbing one of the printouts from a stack being handed around, she tried to figure out what exactly was expected of her. It had been a long time since she had been to an audition where she didn’t have some kind of influence with the important people.
“Charlotte Adderly,” the tall boy finally called from his position at the edge of the stage where he read the second part for each person. No matter if it was a man or woman, he read with a smooth monotone that made him sound as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“Adderly?” Angie asked fro the darkened seats of the theater. Charlotte resisted the urge to squint in the bright light. “Any relation to the Fire Chief?”
Instead of falling back onto embarrassment now that she was on stage, Charlotte grinned. “But of course. Most people love the smell of baking bread of freshly squeezed lemons,” she pretended to hold a lemon in her hand a smell it, knowing she was working over the top but loving every minute of it. “I, on the other hand, love the smell of smoke. For years, it’s been the underlying fragrance in our house. What can I say?”
Charlotte shrugged, tilting her head to the side and clasping her hands behind her. The movements felt slightly stiff but they were just the warm up. Even though she was out of practice, it was coming back to her. It was time to light up this theater in her own special way.
“Are you ready to read through the prepared dialogue?”
Without waiting to nod her head, she launched into the opening lines and didn’t stop to think until the last lines finished echoing around the cavernous ceiling. The silence was odd considering she felt that she’d done her best. With a sigh, she dropped a curtsy and walked off the stage with a bouncy step she didn’t really feel.
Without waiting for the rest of the performers to finish up, she grabbed her jacket and walked out the backstage door. There would be other plays, other times to shine. Maybe she’d spend this waiting period with her sketchpad instead of plunging into something that would take up so much of her time. Plays were mentally tough, not to mention physical arduous and…there was nothing else she could think of to help convince herself that she didn’t really want to be doing the play.
“I really want to do this, “she said quietly when she stopped under the street light at the corner of the small park near her parent’s house. Once again, the silence mocked her. No more clanging armor or bright stage lights.
Running footsteps jolted her out of the pity party and hurrying to the protection of the shadows. Even these smaller towns had their seedier set. It might have been better if she’d driven like her mother had pushed, but it seemed like such a waste for six blocks. Besides, no one would be coming to the park at this hour.
As the sounds grew louder, she realized that the person was indeed coming straight to the park. It seemed she was to be wrong about a lot of things tonight. At this rate, she was going to find herself devoid of the cash and keys she pushed into her front pocket. As long as this melodramatic interlude kept up, she might as well give herself a black eye and a bloody nose. No, a knife wound.
“You’re certainly hard to catch up with,“ Neesa gasped as she ran forward, clutching at her side. “I didn’t figure you’d run away after that wonderful performance.”
“Wonderful?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes. Angie and I both loved it. Phil probably did, too, but he’s still at that age where he can’t handle showing his emotions. Give me a second to catch my breath.”
Charlotte nodded, bouncing from foot to foot as she tried to be patient. If it wasn’t good news, she didn’t figure the co-director would have run after her like this.
“I don’t know if you watched the other performances, but, well….” Neesa shrugged to finish off her sentence without unwittingly hurting anyone with her words. It made her like the girl even more.
“No, I didn’t see any of the rest. It makes me nervous to watch the competition and sometimes I can convince myself they aren’t watching me.”
Neesa smiled broadly again, bouncing from foot to foot as she worked off some of her stored up energy. “Whatever gets you through because you were brilliant. Excellent. Really, really brilliant.”
The rain that had been holding back for the last hour started falling once again, coating everything that wasn’t already soaked completely through. Charlotte pulled at her hood, trying to get it back over her hair. The last thing she needed was little curls popping up all over her head. This was the time for composure.
“So, come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about your role in the group.”
“Role?” Charlotte’s damp eyebrows shot up toward her jacket. “I really just wanted to memorize some lines and dress up in a moth-eaten dress. The cast party at the end sounds appealing, too.”
“But you don’t understand,” Neesa exclaimed as she stepped forward into Charlotte’s space. “You can offer the others so much if you would take a more active roll in the group. Nothing too hard, though. Just some private tutoring to get everyone through their lines.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think about-“
A sizzling feeling made the back of Charlotte’s neck tingle. For a brief moment, she wondered why the light overhead was so much brighter than it had just been – and then there was complete darkness. An ominous crackling increased in both volume and intensity, filling her with unease.
“Neesa?”
There was no sound.
“Neesa?”
“Can I help you?”
Charlotte opened her eyes, glancing around the darkened theater. With a sigh, she smiled over at the boy coming up the aisle. There was no dark hair that fell into his face…and the face was nothing like she’d imagined it. It wouldn’t have made sense to have someone else have Reese’s face. He wouldn’t have liked the idea of her spending anytime with another guy while he was on the band tour for the next six weeks. Charlotte had assured her that Neesa was bound to be in the building somewhere but there probably wasn’t a back room full of cool gadgets and clothing for her to be hiding in.
In her dreams, she was always a star. Unfortunately, she didn’t know if reality quite matched up. Good thing she had an imagination to compensate for her lack of confidence. There was no way she’d ever find herself up on the stage at the front of the room.
“No, thanks. I just stepped in to wait out the storm.” With an overly bright smile, Charlotte flipped her hood back up and eased back out the door.
Here is where the other stories are located in case you'd like to read some other original stories.
-Lar (who needs to work on endings more often)
Word Count: 2343
Characters: Charlotte, Neesa, Phil
Author’s Note: This was written for the Sensory Overload Ficathon by
ephemera_tales. She gave out the title and a word for each of the senses. Mine included: Sight-focus, Sound-clang, Smell-lemon, Touch-silk, Taste-bread. These characters showed up in a previous story but this is completely new and fresh. Thanks to applesprinkles for the typing (I'll trade you for cutting out invitations anyday!) and dream_queen for the beta.~~*~~*~~*~~
Charlotte walked into the theater, breathing in deeply of all the smells that time had woven into the fabric all around the room. If she hadn’t felt every single one of her twenty-one years in her bones on this damp night, time might have stopped on the opening night of “A Streetcar Named Desire” her senior year of high school and failed to move forward properly.
“Can I help you with anything?” someone asked to her right. Charlotte blinked to bring the person into focus, trying to look like she belonged here.
“I heard there were auditions for a new play tonight.”
The person, still anonymous in the low light, nodded. “You’re the first one. Angie should be back soon. Her babysitter called and she had to run home to help get her kid out of a locked bathroom.”
“What another walk down memory lane that is,” Charlotte said as she pushed back the hood of her jacket, spraying the area around her with a fine mist from the sodden material. “I had the same thing happen to me when I was still on the babysitting lists. For a time, I never left home without a bobby pin.”
“Do they still make those?”
A loud crash from the back room silenced Charlotte as she started her witty retort and they both turned toward the sound. Another series of clanging metal falling on a hard surface reverberated around the high ceiling of the room.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Charlotte murmured as she followed the guy down the wide aisle and through a small door at the side.
“Neesa? Need any help?”
“I’ve got it. Don’t worry. I should have turned on the light when I came in.”
The brighter lights of this room gave Charlotte the opportunity to stare at the tall man standing indecisively beside her. Dark hair was one thing that drew her to a guy. Blondes, in her opinion, didn’t have very much fun. This hair cried out to be brushed away from equally dark eyes.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” he asked, his hand convulsively gripping the waistband of his sweatshirt. She’d never heard of the band name on the front but she definitely meant to check them out as soon as she was back home.
“Positive. Go back out front and make sure all the people fill out the paperwork. Let me stack these shields and swords back on the shelf and I’ll be out.”
As if he had forgotten anyone had followed him to the back, he passed right by Charlotte and back out the door. She turned to follow him but felt the pull to see if the backroom had changed in her absence. Were there still wooden swords of varying sizes laying on the rafters? Were there still bins of necklaces and earrings just begging to be tried on and flaunted?
Another loud noise and a curse decided it for here.
“If you let me know where you are, I’ll help you,” she yelled from the doorway.
“Angie?”
“No, she had an emergency at home that a bobby pin should solve. I’m Charlotte Adderly. I heard about the auditions and decided to come down to see if I can still do this type of thing.”
“I’m in the back corner,” the lost girl said, although Charlotte found her before she finished the sentence. It looked as if she had started to clean up but was fighting a losing battle with the dented metal sheets. For each colored shield that sat back on the shelf, another three lay haphazardly on the floor.
“I’m Neesa, the co-director this year. Normally, I’m not this clumsy but I seem to have forgotten the layout of the room since I was here the morning.”
Together, they stacked and steadied the battle wear into a pile.
“You’ve all been working on the play all day long?”
“No, I actually work here. The city employs me to make sure all their building are clean and presentable. It comes in handy for things like this yearly play. Have you ever done a play?”
Charlotte ran her hand over the sleeve of an Edwardian dress. The midnight blue silk made her wish the play was more along the lines of Hamlet or King Lear.
“A couple. Back when I was in high school, I decided I needed to add some activities outside of school to my resume.”
“Which ones?” Neesa asked, pulling her bag up from where it had fallen. Her curly hair was pulled back into a lopsided bun at the back of her head; her sweatshirt spouting the same logo as the boy from the front.
“I was a bride in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Oh, Tennessee Williams. I’ve never been in anything he’s written but I love the characters.”
Charlotte nodded. “My mom wasn’t too happy about me being in such a sexual production, but I promised to forget all the really salacious lines.”
Both girls grinned, silently mocking mothers in general. In that moment, Charlotte began to worry about trying out for the play. The expectations she heaped on herself doubled as she realized she really wanted to become this girl’s friend. There weren’t many girls her age in town that weren’t married with a household of children to spend every waking hour taking care of.
“So, think you’d like to do ‘Our Town’? It’s a bit tame compared to your resume.”
As Charlotte shrugged, she self-consciously put her hands in her back pockets. “I’m just looking for something to fill up my days until the next semester begins. I was in the hospital for the first part of this semester so missed registration and the first two weeks of class.”
Neesa had stopped completely, her eyes narrowing. “You said Charlotte, right? Charlotte Adderly? Cora’s little sister?”
“Yes.” Thinking, quickly, Charlotte tried to piece the suddenly jumbled puzzle pieces together without knowing what she was looking for. “You know my sister?”
A hug was the last thing Charlotte was expecting but she found herself engulfed in one that made breathing a memory. The girl murmured something unintelligible against her shoulder.
“I’ll have to let Cora know I saw you tonight. She must have known you worked here.” Since the girl was still holding onto her, Charlotte could only keep patting her shoulder like an auto man. “I think it may be time for the auditions to start.”
Only the mention of the play calmed Neesa down. “You’re right. We need to get you up on stage. Cora and I have talked about you. She tells me –“
Charlotte held up her hands for Neesa to stop, her cheeks bright red in embarrassment. She didn’t want to know what her darling older sister had been telling people about her. If there was one thing she abhorred, it was attention of the wrong kind.
“Let’s go,” she choked out, hurrying into the main room where a group was huddled around someone she could only assume was Angie. After grabbing one of the printouts from a stack being handed around, she tried to figure out what exactly was expected of her. It had been a long time since she had been to an audition where she didn’t have some kind of influence with the important people.
“Charlotte Adderly,” the tall boy finally called from his position at the edge of the stage where he read the second part for each person. No matter if it was a man or woman, he read with a smooth monotone that made him sound as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“Adderly?” Angie asked fro the darkened seats of the theater. Charlotte resisted the urge to squint in the bright light. “Any relation to the Fire Chief?”
Instead of falling back onto embarrassment now that she was on stage, Charlotte grinned. “But of course. Most people love the smell of baking bread of freshly squeezed lemons,” she pretended to hold a lemon in her hand a smell it, knowing she was working over the top but loving every minute of it. “I, on the other hand, love the smell of smoke. For years, it’s been the underlying fragrance in our house. What can I say?”
Charlotte shrugged, tilting her head to the side and clasping her hands behind her. The movements felt slightly stiff but they were just the warm up. Even though she was out of practice, it was coming back to her. It was time to light up this theater in her own special way.
“Are you ready to read through the prepared dialogue?”
Without waiting to nod her head, she launched into the opening lines and didn’t stop to think until the last lines finished echoing around the cavernous ceiling. The silence was odd considering she felt that she’d done her best. With a sigh, she dropped a curtsy and walked off the stage with a bouncy step she didn’t really feel.
Without waiting for the rest of the performers to finish up, she grabbed her jacket and walked out the backstage door. There would be other plays, other times to shine. Maybe she’d spend this waiting period with her sketchpad instead of plunging into something that would take up so much of her time. Plays were mentally tough, not to mention physical arduous and…there was nothing else she could think of to help convince herself that she didn’t really want to be doing the play.
“I really want to do this, “she said quietly when she stopped under the street light at the corner of the small park near her parent’s house. Once again, the silence mocked her. No more clanging armor or bright stage lights.
Running footsteps jolted her out of the pity party and hurrying to the protection of the shadows. Even these smaller towns had their seedier set. It might have been better if she’d driven like her mother had pushed, but it seemed like such a waste for six blocks. Besides, no one would be coming to the park at this hour.
As the sounds grew louder, she realized that the person was indeed coming straight to the park. It seemed she was to be wrong about a lot of things tonight. At this rate, she was going to find herself devoid of the cash and keys she pushed into her front pocket. As long as this melodramatic interlude kept up, she might as well give herself a black eye and a bloody nose. No, a knife wound.
“You’re certainly hard to catch up with,“ Neesa gasped as she ran forward, clutching at her side. “I didn’t figure you’d run away after that wonderful performance.”
“Wonderful?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes. Angie and I both loved it. Phil probably did, too, but he’s still at that age where he can’t handle showing his emotions. Give me a second to catch my breath.”
Charlotte nodded, bouncing from foot to foot as she tried to be patient. If it wasn’t good news, she didn’t figure the co-director would have run after her like this.
“I don’t know if you watched the other performances, but, well….” Neesa shrugged to finish off her sentence without unwittingly hurting anyone with her words. It made her like the girl even more.
“No, I didn’t see any of the rest. It makes me nervous to watch the competition and sometimes I can convince myself they aren’t watching me.”
Neesa smiled broadly again, bouncing from foot to foot as she worked off some of her stored up energy. “Whatever gets you through because you were brilliant. Excellent. Really, really brilliant.”
The rain that had been holding back for the last hour started falling once again, coating everything that wasn’t already soaked completely through. Charlotte pulled at her hood, trying to get it back over her hair. The last thing she needed was little curls popping up all over her head. This was the time for composure.
“So, come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about your role in the group.”
“Role?” Charlotte’s damp eyebrows shot up toward her jacket. “I really just wanted to memorize some lines and dress up in a moth-eaten dress. The cast party at the end sounds appealing, too.”
“But you don’t understand,” Neesa exclaimed as she stepped forward into Charlotte’s space. “You can offer the others so much if you would take a more active roll in the group. Nothing too hard, though. Just some private tutoring to get everyone through their lines.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think about-“
A sizzling feeling made the back of Charlotte’s neck tingle. For a brief moment, she wondered why the light overhead was so much brighter than it had just been – and then there was complete darkness. An ominous crackling increased in both volume and intensity, filling her with unease.
“Neesa?”
There was no sound.
“Neesa?”
“Can I help you?”
Charlotte opened her eyes, glancing around the darkened theater. With a sigh, she smiled over at the boy coming up the aisle. There was no dark hair that fell into his face…and the face was nothing like she’d imagined it. It wouldn’t have made sense to have someone else have Reese’s face. He wouldn’t have liked the idea of her spending anytime with another guy while he was on the band tour for the next six weeks. Charlotte had assured her that Neesa was bound to be in the building somewhere but there probably wasn’t a back room full of cool gadgets and clothing for her to be hiding in.
In her dreams, she was always a star. Unfortunately, she didn’t know if reality quite matched up. Good thing she had an imagination to compensate for her lack of confidence. There was no way she’d ever find herself up on the stage at the front of the room.
“No, thanks. I just stepped in to wait out the storm.” With an overly bright smile, Charlotte flipped her hood back up and eased back out the door.
Here is where the other stories are located in case you'd like to read some other original stories.
-Lar (who needs to work on endings more often)
