Marilyn Manson and My Busy Life

Marilyn Manson had a new image, the TV said. He was going to be a country singer. He looked pretty good in cowboy gear, considering, but he sharply contrasted with his stage show. There were hundreds of pneumatically-controlled dancing blow-up dolls simulating sex acts behind him as he sang about missing his woman. I changed the channel.

I had a comb in my pocket with a flip-top lid. It looked like a Zippo lighter until you opened it and a comb sprang out. I combed my hair.

Three people knocked at my door. Two were very old and wore mystical robes. The one in the middle was also old and dressed in a worn brown suit. He was obviously dead, but I didn't want to hassle them any. They were probably necromancers, and you don't want to piss off necromancers.

They asked if I had a compost heap, and I replied in the affirmative. They wanted to partially bury the body in the compost heap, do some horrible rituals, then leave it there for a few days. I asked if it was going to reanimate or do anything awful, and if I could use the compost afterwards.

"Don't worry," said one of the necromancers, "it's perfectly safe. We're trying to kill someone else, and this guy is just part of that. We're going to bury him when we're done."

So I said they could. They dragged him into the back yard and inspected the compost heap. It was a pretty big one, and it passed their inspection. A couple of semi-decayed zombies with shovels came in through the gate, and at the wizards' command started interring the corpse in my compost heap.

I went back in the house. The wizards had given me a business card, so I paperclipped it to the calendar.

I headed up to the attic to get something - I've forgotten what. When I got up there, I found a pale and thin vampire going through one of the trunks. It was full of some grandmother's clothing. He looked embarrassed. I recognized him from something, thought for a second, and then I placed him. He was a Tremere I'd met at a party some time back. He started to stammer something about needing the clothes for a ritual, when suddenly he grew breasts. In a couple of seconds he'd turned into an average-looking woman. I just rolled my eyes and walked past him.

My sister was sitting at a desk in the middle of the attic, typing on an antique typewriter. She was busily indexing the various trunks, then slapping a sticker on them detailing their contents. I told her about the vampire in the women's clothing, and she shrugged. Her system wasn't that specific; it just said "women's clothing," not "5 bras, 3 skirts (short), 12 stockings."

I asked if she wanted anything for lunch, as I was thinking about fixing some soup. She politely declined, saying she was almost done with the trunks and wanted to finish those before she did anything else.