OC snippets

Polybuis; In which a change cabinet does not store change.

Alone, Beth perked up a little. Making sure not to move too far from where the girl had left her, she stretched, yawned, and began poking at some of the games in her vicinity. Most of them needed change to play, which left her to reading the small 'insert coin' menu startups and observing the art on the sides of the clunky, tall machines.

She wasn't lying about being knowledgeable about tech, that much she was sure about. She could work her way in and out of a number of machines; camcorders and Polaroids, radios and cassette players, and maybe even the odd mobile phone or Tamagotchi when a kid cuffed round the ear turned up to the video store on the edge of Canary and Bensfeld. Arcade machines however, were a different story. She didn't have the foggiest idea how any of its functions ran, how to put it together and take it apart, or anything else she'd need to know in order to repair something that complex. Even just the mechanisms of a change cabinet could take weeks to learn (days if she neglected to sleep, as she often did), and would need an additional few hours to accommodate the actual fixing.

But then why was she here? She was good at lying, bullshitting had become a special skill of hers she'd mastered around age 16, but there was only so far that could take you when you're inevitably given a screwdriver and are expected to know what you're doing. The kid working the counter didn't seem like she'd be able to tell a difference between a false handyman and a real one if it knocked her in the teeth, but regardless, she was going to have to actually supply help of some kind in the near future. Just what would she do when the time came to open a change cabinet and mess about with its insides? Hell, what if there wasn't even a cabinet that needed fixing?

She was here on a hunch. That was answer enough to her. It wasn't much, yes, but she didn't need more than 'much' to go looking in the first place. She was so close, so close to finding something out, she just knew it. For the first time in 9 years, she was inches away from a new lead. It was fringed and decaying yes, and she really wished she'd had the thought to check in the first half decade before now when she still had years to spare, but for the first time since god knows when she had hope.

Hope, she learned, was not so easily smothered. It was headstrong and bull-faced, and liked to make a racket about its own self-importance. So eventually, she'd brushed her teeth, slipped on a pair of sweatpants, and walked over to the small arcade over on Marnes Street to find one 'Leslie Localine'

She should consider herself lucky that at the very least her plan dragged in who she was looking for. Localine. The name still struck a chord with her, as much as she despised it. A tragedy, really. The family hadn't done anything deserving of what came to them, and yet it happened anyways. A bit like herself, come to think of it.

Back in the '60s, one Gerald Localine had managed to go missing. He was a fine man, from what Beth understood. Caring and forgiving, and knowledgeable in all the right places. But one day, he left for the train tracks, and never came back. All he took with him was his coat and a pocketknife, some news articles said he didn't even kiss his wife goodbye. Just weeks later he was found dead by the quarry. Only the coat remained.

This much was something she'd gathered rather quickly. It was quite easy to collect evidence when you're fueled by that much fear and anger. She'd been desperate enough for anything to cling onto in those first few years, to find and punish the rightfully accused. It really is wondrous what you can accomplish with a time limit like hers.

ten years later, his firstborn daughter, Loraine Localine, had managed to go missing right along with him. She was well into her 20's at that point, an established young woman with dreams of entering the medical field. She'd graduated high school with honors and a decent scholarship, intent on visiting med school out of state. Her disappearance however, never came to a satisfying conclusion. No confirmed death, no later activity from her unearthed by the police. Just a clear cut cold case that had given up the ghost. it had been 20 odd years since then, and hope of finding a woman under the same alias had withered to the point of decay.