|
|
It was 10:30 in the evening, and I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and pretty damn annoyed with the world as a whole. I'd always considered myself a pretty reasonable person, and not really prone to outbursts of anger, but this whole sorry mess was trying my nerves.
After my departure from Jekyll's house or lab or whatever the hell it was, my main purpose in life was to figure out how to get back to Jenn's basement. Or to my apartment. Or to Central Park at 3:30 in the morning, for all I cared; I just wanted back to reality. Unfortunatly, the first reaction I recived upon emerging on the streets of London in what I had always considered to be a pretty nice outfit was screams from the women. Closely followed by propositions from the men.
Thereafter, my purpose in life shifted to finding some "decent" clothing.
To my absolute shock, when I checked my wallet (which, miraculously, was still in my pocket), I found it stuffed with English bills. Pounds or whatever. So I guessed money wouldn't be an issue. I asked for directions to a clothing store from a number of helpful looking people, all of which scurried away as though I had the plague. Finally, I did come across someone who was willing to give directions; I'm fairly certain she was a prostitute. Not that it mattered.
For the first time since my "arrival," so to speak, I realized that things could have been considerably worse. I could have gotten sucked into Jenn's favorite musical, The Phantom of the Opera. I don't know any French, so being in Paris would have been...bad.
Buying clothing was probably one of the most unpleasant experiances of my entire life, drinking the bottle of tequila excluded. I, who made by with 3 piece outfits at most - shirt, shorts, and underware - was abruptly informed that the "current" style was to wear a minimum of 65,938 articles of clothing at all times. The store owner, who was not exactly the nicest woman on earth, shoved me into a little room with a huge heap of clothes to try on. I didn't even know what half of them were. However, I did have money, so with a few tips, I managed to get the exasperated store owner to explain it all to me, and then help me get dressed.
I have seen New York City back alleys at midnight, I have seen my own apartment after it was ransacked by a thief, I have seen nine kinds of hell and everything that goes with it. But, until that moment, I had never experianced anything as unpleasant as a corset. I would have rather taken a knife and removed my own internal organs than wear that Godforsaken contraption. But, it seemed I didn't have a choice. It was the "fashion."
Apperantly, all the women of the late eighteen hundreds were masochists.
After paying what I think was an obscene amount of money for the dress and various other torture devices that went with it, the only thought in my mind was, and I quote, "I need a drink."
Like I said, it was about 10:30 by this point, and I wandered around until I found a bar. I'm not sure why, considering it was alcohol that got me in this mess in the first place. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had the thought that perhaps if I got drunk enough, I'd magically transport back to the good ol' US of A, preferably in the correct time period.
The interior of the bar was dank and disgusting, at least from what I could see of it. The whole place was too damn dark to make out much more than the hand in front of my face. Luckily, I ran directly into a waiter, from whom I demanded vodka, and lots of it.
Hey, I was brave, but there was no way in hell I was gonna drink tequila.
Slumping down at a table, I grabbed my vodka and quickly downed it. I was going to drink and drink, until this whole mess was completely obliterated from my mind...
At that precise moment, a gravelly voice inquired, rather mockingly, "May I sit here?"
Uh-oh...I turned around, and made out through the dark and haze, an angry, lustful, chillingly evil, but distictly familiar face....
"Oh, shit."