He stared at the door.
Jack's office was small, with a pair of sofas facing each other in the middle. A netted bay window behind him filtered the glow of morning across the hardwood floor; there was no decoration, only peeling white wallpaper and some magazines on the table.
On the desk in front of him lay a laptop, a mug of tea, and a phone plugged into the wall. At least, it had been, until he'd ripped it out.
Bloody Andrea McAllister.
Was it normal for a parent to phone bomb their child's new employer with ridiculous questions like 'is there a lunch included?' or 'you will make sure she gets her blood, won't you?', as though she were sending her diabetic child on a school trip?
He'd only been out of the hospital a week, but it already felt like eternity, because only eternity could be hellish enough that the soundtrack was the constant trilling of a mental break.
He jumped out of his skin. There was a rhythmic tapping, muffled and distant. Narrowing his eyes, he continued his staring contest with the inner door.
The front was unlocked; he imagined the knock to be a warning. 'You have approximately fifteen seconds to close that incognito window and put your penis back in your pants', or something like that.
He kept staring.
Another knock.
Heaving a sigh, he pushed his chair back, rising slowly and plodding towards the exit. Opening it, he descended the stairs and pulled the front door open.
On his doorstep was a girl in her late teens, with a dimpled smile and colourless visage. Her eyes shone red, and her teeth were sharper than they had a right to be. She carried a red parasol above her head. She said, "excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and saviour, Count-"
He slammed the door in her face.
***
Hannah strode into the office, dumping her parasol by the door and a black handbag on the coffee table. A leaflet fell out, displaying the benefits of the Church of Dragula. She walked over to the desk, stopping in front of it and looking at him expectantly.
"Good morning!" she said, her voice bright. "I'm looking forward to my first day."
Faltering, he turned a confused gaze over her. "First day of what? Why do you need to work for me when you've clearly got the missionary thing down?"
"Missionary isn't a job." She threw her shoulders back. "It's a calling."
"I thought it was a position?"
"No, it's a calling."
He grit his teeth. "Go do that, then!"
"Are you saying you don't want me here?" Her lip was trembling.
Sighing, he rubbed his forehead. With the New Bloods, everything had been frantic; there hadn't been any time for him to really understand anything. Like, for instance, that even on the border of twenty, a teenager is still a teenager.
"No," he said, "what I'm saying is that at no point in time will I ever want to hear about your lord and saviour, Count Dragula. Be as religious as you want; just leave me out of it."
She nodded. "Okay. But what about his assistant, Alvir-"
"No!" He thumped the desk. "And who do you think is gonna understand that reference?"
She shrugged. "Old English people?"
"Who is this novel even aimed at?"
"Beats me. So what are we doing?"
Resting his elbows on the desk, he arched his fingers together. "We have no clients right now, so I thought I'd take some time to lay out what's expected of you."
"Like an orientation?"
"Yeah, like that. So tell me, what do you think the most important thing's gonna be for working here?"
She placed a finger on her chin, making a thoughtful expression. After a while, she said, "empathy?"
He made an 'x' with his arms. "Brrk! Try again."
"Hmm." She pursed her lips. "Reliability?"
"Nope."
"Attention to detail?"
"Still cold."
"Ability to control a giant turtle?"
"Getting warmer."
"Willingness to clean up after a giant turtle?"
Narrowing his eyes, he said, "oi, just what do you think this job is?"
Backing away, she threw her arms up, slumping into one of the sofas. "Fine, I give up. What is it?"
Closing his eyes, he cast his head down, before opening them to look at her with intensity. "Humour."
She stared back, her face aghast. "What do you think this job is?!"
He nodded. "Good. You've been playing the wise guy since you walked in, but we can't all be wise guys. Keep making retorts like that and you'll be a great straight woman."
"Uh, no." With her voice wavering, she knit her brows. "Weren't we talking about being your assistant?"
"We still are. Listen, if we're not funny, then the readers might cotton on that this is actually just a slice of life in colourful clothes."
"Why is that a bad thing?"
"Because then it all falls apart," he said, his expression solemn. "At that point, people start to notice the botched literary themes; the author's not good enough to write literary, so he just turned it into a parody! Wouldn't you feel cheated?"
A bead of sweat fell down her forehead. "Uh, not really. And we probably shouldn't talk about things like this, what if people complain?"
He shook his head. "Don't be a moron. This is a web-novel from a first-timer with only twenty-one chapters, who do you think cares enough to complain?"
"Don't we have chapter comments?"
"All from one person." He folded his arms. "The author's friend."
Raising her hands defensively, she shied away. "What? So, you mean, all of the attention is artificial?"
He nodded. "Just obnoxious link-dropping on Tweeter."
"Isn't that called marketing?"
Growling, he clenched his fist. "Ordinary marketing leads people to the front page, not the first chapter! The Moonquill rankings have been gamed, dammit! I demand a recount!"
She glared at him. "You shouldn't just give away the chimp's secrets like that."
"I'm the protagonist, I can say what I want!"
"But what does any of this have to do with being your assistant?"
"Right, well, getting this job means you're not just my assistant." He pointed at her, his muscles taut. "It means you've been promoted to main character."
Her eyes spread wide, arms turning slack as she gaped. "Are you serious? I'm a main character now?" She beamed.
"That's right," he said, rising and heading towards one of the doors on the right-hand wall. "But with this monochrome business, it's hard to make you stand out; you need some kind of defining feature. With that in mind, you seem quite attached to that parasol, so…"
He disappeared through the door, reappearing a second later carrying a red oriental dress in one hand and a pair of hemispherical hair ornaments in the other. "I thought we could build your outfit around it. Turning an umbrella into a machine gun is a bit hard, though…"
Grimacing, her eye twitched. "I'm a vampire, not a Yato."
"Same thing."
She growled quietly. "You can't just rip things off and expect no-one to notice because it's from an anime; this is the internet! Besides, she's a wise guy character, and I thought we had enough of those."
He cleared his throat. "Actually, since it's from an anime, the correct term is 'boke'."
"Nobody cares!" Throwing her head back, she sighed. "We're twelve hundred words in and this chapter's already hopeless. There goes my main character debut: no-one's gonna read the second volume now."
"No," said Jack, his voice lifting. "These are the people who kept reading even after I spent half a chapter arguing with a traffic cop; they'll understand."
"But what is there to understand? All we've been doing is making references and breaking the fourth wall."
"You mean like we spent the entire first volume doing?"
They stared at each other, the silences becoming pregnant.
I say silences because there were a total of three in the room: the first was-
"Don't screw around," said Jack, shaking his fist. "You're not fit to lace R*thfuss' boots."
Cradling her face in her hands, Hannah said, "I wonder if it's too late to apply for a job at the Waystone…"
***
"Um, Jack," said Hannah, "we're still not even at fourteen-hundred words."
"But that's the end of the chapter," said Jack, "we gave it a cool punchline and everything!"
Lydia snorted. "You're about as cool as the turd that comes after a vindaloo."
He thought for a second. "Wait… what are you doing here?"
"I don't know," said Lydia. "More importantly, what is this place?"
"Not sure," said Jack. "There's no description, so I assumed we were still in my office."
"Whee!" said Hannah. "I'm a floating head; this is so much fun!"
Jack sighed. "Not for the readers, it isn't. Imagine reading a scene and it's just 'he said, she said' with no action. How boring is that?"
Lydia: We could change the format?
Jack: Who wants to read a story in a script?
Lydia: People too lazy to read description?
Jack: (Has aneurysm)
"What the hell is 'has aneurysm' supposed to mean?! Be more specific; like I know what an aneurysm looks like!"
"You're meant to act it in your own way," said Hannah.
"Like hell! I don't care if this is a story or not, I ain't here for people's amusement! What are we supposed to do with this set-up, anyway?"
"We could do a sing-along?" said Hannah.
He looked at her, incredulous. "This is prose. The written word! How do you expect people to be able to sing along?"
She smiled. "It's real easy! You just need to pick something that will autoplay in people's heads!"
Lydia perked up. "You mean like this?"
Some… body once told me, the world is gonna roll me, I ain't-
"No, that one's not okay!" said Jack.
She pouted. "But all the movies use it."
"That's exactly the problem!"
Chuckling, Hannah puffed up. "Come on, there's one song you have to sing every time."
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down-
"Hell no!" screamed Jack. "No matter how much you wanna go for troll humour, that's too far!"
"Well, what else can we do?"
Jack sighed. "How many words?"
"Seventeen-hundred."
"Why don't we do a preview?" asked Lydia.
Jack nodded; it was the best idea yet. "Alright, sounds like a plan. Ready?"
They both nodded.
Jack cleared his throat. "Next time, on The Supernormal: after a new client leads him on a wild goose chase, Jack finds himself discovering a mysterious blue box. From that box will come a stranger who changes everything. Follow Jack and his new friend as they uncover the secrets of time and space, fighting aliens and saving the Earth! Tune in tomorrow night for Doctor When's Bizarre Adventure!"
Hannah's ears were steaming, her face crimson. "That's just a rip-off!"
He squinted. "Are you sure you're not confusing it with a dream you had?"
"Don't give me that, it's clearly just D*ct*r Wh*!"
"Oh. Really?"
"Yes, really!"
Jack said, "and that's all we've got time for. Tune in tomorrow at 10:30PM UTC!"
Hannah frowned, eyelids quivering. "And this time, we'll take it seriously."
Lydia: Yes, of course we will.
Both Jack and Hannah shouted, "no-one believes you!"