La Belle Bête (A Fairytale Retelling) (Adult Perspective Watty 2012)

The Block parents weren’t over protective, controlling or even all that conservative. They still made Emi’s ears nearly bleed with the things they said to Hunter about his behavior recently. Stepping outside of the house to escape the screaming, Emerald used her cell phone to call Cursed. Of course an answering machine picked up instead of a real human.

A man’s voice came on the phone, a velvety purr that made Emi blush just listening to it. No wonder they’d gotten him to record the basic answering machine, he had a phone sex voice! “Unfortunately Cursed has its doors closed right now but I would love you call you back and have intercourse so please leave a message after the beep.” Emerald’s voice held her laughter as she started to crack up over the clever play on words. Most would assume sex but intercourse was actually in reference to a conversation between two people. Whoever this guy was, he had a hell of a way with words.

“Hi, I’m Emerald Block. Last night my brother Hunter apparently started an altercation in your club and then proceeded to light parts of it on fire. I would appreciate a chance to speak with your face to face to make reparations and for my brother to apologize personally.” She left her cell phone number and her brother’s just in case and hung up. After that she all but forgot about the incident and headed out to get some work done in her art room.

Emi made her living designing costumes for the National Arts center and drawing children’s books on the side. She loved kids but being as big as she was for most of her life, she knew that it was unlikely she’d be more than the world’s coolest aunt once Hunter knocked some chick up.Her office was her very favourite place to be, a fact that she was grateful for considering how miserable everyone else seemed at work. She’d rented the entire top floor of an old heritage building. Down below was an antiques store that did very well and the top loft was open concept, had a ton of windows and she could play her music as loud as she liked and they never heard it down stairs.

The stairs on the way up had sketches of hers pinned to the walls, mostly pencil and unfinished because she had lost the desire to continue on them. Occasionally one would jump out at her again as she climbed the stairs and she’d complete the project. It was like a constant, gentle reminder of her back burner projects. At the top of the stairs were her incomplete coloured works. Same thing worked with them.  Most of one wall was taken up with a row of mirrors that had cost a small fortune for Emi to get but with all this natural light, she couldn’t resist making a few pieces for herself occasionally. That wasn’t quite the happy thought that she’d been aiming for because all of those fancy, sexy numbers were never actually worn. Emerald lacked both the confidence to wear them and the loved one to wear them for.

The walls around the mirrors had designs that she was working one tacked in projects, a helter skelter method of organization that looked chaotic but was actually rather complex and organized system. Her works that had the nearest deadline were on her work stand, the next in line closest on the wall. As she cleared projects, everything shifted a little. She could also leave everything tacked in place and work on another project as stroked her fancy. There was a small army of multi shaped mannequins huddled in the other side of the room, some stark naked, others pinned with fabrics. A couple of racks completed the comfortable mess, draped with some of the costumes that she had created and kept or hadn’t gone out yet. Plugging in the Sirius radio, she tuned it to a rock/dance station, turned it up and got lost in her own world.

She didn’t know how much later it was or how many times her phone had gone off, before she realized what that irritating sound was and lunged for her cell. Hitting the mute button she answered the phone, suddenly remembering Hunter’s little fiasco. “Emerald Block, how can I help you?” she said politely, smiling automatically even no one could see her. She knew how expressive her voice could be, it was one of her only points of pride.