Object show oneshots

19. Pillowpop - Touch Tone Telephone

I have listened to nothing but Lemon Demon for like a week
so yes.

"Please don't hang up... please, pretty please... I can convince you."
Lollipop straightened her overcoat as she frowned out of the telephone box, tipping her broad-brimmed hat. The receiver was far from leaving her ear. She was hooked. Too fascinated in a simple wrong number she dialled at home, caught up in crazy ramblings of somebody clearly unhinged beyond belief.
"Aliens haven't come." she started provocatively, shaking the sleeve off her wrist to check how late she was. At the present moment, fashionably.
"They haven't??? Have you not been listening to anything I've been saying? Oh my god, I thought you could understand-"
"Or at least not yet."
A relieved sigh crackled down the line.
"Ah. I guess that radio signal from space in the seventies convinced you. More of them wanna come to earth, but I guess it's a very long way for them to travel."
Lollipop's boss would probably be tapping his desk and crossing his thighs in mild impatience by now. He could die for all she cared, though. This tinfoil-hat wearing little scientist was far more interesting than anybody else she'd ever met.
"So they're just not close enough for us to detect them yet?"
"Well, there's overwhelming evidence they're already here. Why would the government be so keen on protecting Area 51?"
"Pillow. Two words for you."
Smirking in clever ploying, Lollipop twisted the phone wire around her pointer finger, mimicking the yarn she was about to spin.
"Two?"
"Nuclear weaponry."
A loud gasp shocked up the line. The slight tinkle of dropped glass rang like bells in the background, slightly obscured beyond the cracking of signal disturbance.
"N-nuclear weapons? Oh... oh my, I think I'm going to faint. You're precisely right. Precisely... I only hope they're storing the aliens far away enough from them to keep any disastrous accidents from occurring."
A wild rustling of paper and the scratching of an old fountain pen across parchment could be faintly heard as the receiver of the scientist's phone scraped over the desk. Lollipop's ear was assaulted by various clattering and exclamations of horror.
"Oh my, oh my... I must write this down. You are an excellent theorist, I'm so glad you called me back after yesterday morning. We have to exchange ideas. We should co-write something. And maybe even get the sheeple on board with what we're saying. Yes... yes! What a fantastic idea. Meet me at the corner of Beech Street - tonight! At the stroke of twelve!"
The receiver on the other end smashed down with an aggressive crack, ending a soft trio of beeps as the call ended. Stunned, Lollipop kept the phone to her ear, surprised at where her lies had taken her. She had never expected the wacko to take her words so seriously. Well, she guessed she had an appointment at midnight now.
A barrage of change flushed out into the tray, where the late-for-work woman scooped it out into her hungry pockets. She'd inserted a lot more than she'd needed: hoped she'd be there for longer than that. Hanging up the receiver, she burst from the telephone box, ready to start her work day, albeit a little later than usual.

The small scientist crouched inside her worryingly conspicuous laboratory coat at the street corner. Midnight had always appeared to Pillow as a mysterious witching hour where no mortals walked the streets beside the odd oblivious person that quickly got ripped to shreds. Her years hidden inside with the news jammed on her television 24/7 in her windowless bunker had clearly warped her perception of how the outside world was. But enough about her delusions! She was here to talk about what she'd got right. About what was so clearly real and in front of her. What the flocks of late night shoppers rushing home to switch out the lights in both their homes and their brains could never understand.
She wasn't worried. She wasn't paranoid outside of the quizzical stares that people gave her, and how every single one could be an agent waiting to dispatch her in her state of all-knowing. She adjusted her round glasses as somebody loomed out of the fog.
"Hello, miss." came a bold, slightly condescending tone that resonated like tuning fork through her bones. Unmistakable.
"Oh, you! From the phone earlier! Delighted to meet you!"
Pillow took the stranger's hand and shook it with firmness, her bold eyes blinking massively through the magnification of her glasses. The curiously seductive woman wore a black coat that ended about halfway down her thighs, and a purple shirt that was buttoned a little too far down. Maybe a secretary? Who... wanted to get with her boss? She smelled strongly of mint too. And she was chewing - some form of bubblegum perchance. Pillow didn't know if this would come in use for her later, but she decided she would make a mental note of it just in case.
"So, this book of yours, will it be of our findings?"
"O-oh, yes. The book." Pillow blushed enthusiastically, pulling two sheaves of notes from her coat pockets, breathing out a cloud of vapour in the chill air, which took her off guard. It had really been years since she'd left her bunker.
"Follow me."
Hearing Lollipop stride after her in her heavy black boots, Pillow took careful steps down Beech Street, holding her ramblings out in front of her in tender hands like a raccoon, swerving down an alleyway hidden in overhanging hibiscus bushes. The fragrant, rotten blooms bled petals onto the two women as they descended the tunnel down into the mouldy bowels of the town.
There was an armoured door on one side. A keypad. Built to last, to survive a nuclear attack, with lead linings deep within the several feet of concrete. This was Pillow's sanctuary.
And it was to be Lollipop's too.
"We're here..."
Unable to control her excitement, Pillow began dancing from foot to foot as she rapped in the code on the keypad, a selection of twelve little lights shining up orange as she pressed them. A thirteenth jab at the ok button, then a fourteenth for luck, and the blinking eyes grinned green. The doors slid back into the wall, and the two walked in. The bunker sealed swiftly like a tomb.
Lollipop was instantly bombarded with a tiny laboratory, filled with fascinating objects and what seemed to be multiple studies on different political figures. A couple of pill bottles had cascaded their contents off the worktops, leaving a few tablets crushed accidentally to powder by the rushing feet of the past over the floor. Every last item contributed heavily to the 'crazy scientist' aesthetic.
"I love what you've done with this place." she snickered, only half in irony, heavily fascinated. Pillow grinned.
"Yeah, it's pretty cosy but when you spend too long in here it does feel like the walls are slowly closing in. That and the - wait, I probably shouldn't draw attention to that."
Lunging forward suddenly, she swept the two pill bottles into her hand, shoving them deep inside her already overloaded pockets and laughing nervously.
"But I suppose you're used to it?"
"I am. I've been shut in here for years and will be until the truth comes out, or I'm ready to tell the world my findings."
As Pillow began to rustle her mad parchment-and-quill nonsense into surprisingly structured heaps, Lollipop felt an ember of unease spiral down onto the floor of her chest. This woman had clearly not opened the hatch in a very long time. Her telephone was calmly sealed away from the outside with soundproof glass. The TV was tuned to the news, constantly droning the terrible tidings from war-torn countries. But she didn't seen neurotic. No, she was the opposite; she was crazy obsessed, but in a planned way. That was murderer material. She could keep her body in here forever and nobody would know, maybe dissolving a single fingerbone in acid every day to slowly rid herself of the mouldering puppet that Lollipop would become, with just a blade to the chest or a needle to a vessel as a chemical crawled through her bloodstream, squeezing her arteries shut...
But you know. Just one of the many things that could happen. Look at what this place was turning her into! An overly nervous idiot. Pillow was three quarters her size. She could deck her without even breaking a sweat.
"So, what are you looking on discussing first?"
Pillow ruffled her stained pile of paper, and sat down on one of the stools as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"Well the nuclear weapons were interesting. How about we start with those?"
"Sure. Hmm..."
Lollipop's unease increased tenfold as she realised she hadn't expected to get this far. She'd bullshitted so much that she'd left herself no room to build any higher. Trying to find a way to skirt around the limit, she grabbed onto a dash of lightning and pursued it.
"The government... the government are the aliens. That's why they keep themselves secret and hidden inside their bases. They built the nuclear weapons - or, maybe even better... they are the weapons."
Pillow raised her eyebrow.
"The aliens are the weapons? Oh, come on. That's nonsense and you know it. And I've suspected the government is run by lizard people for years." she tittered.
Still she scribbled down a lengthy couple of paragraphs for about half an hour, in dead silence.  A few times Lollipop wondered if she'd forgotten she'd invited her in, or if she was imagining that the room was still empty after all those years of solitude.
Eventually, words.
"So. Anything more?"
This time her eyes seemed to relax, becoming less crimped and pinched by harsh living. They stared into hers. Pillow's voice had lowered significantly into another octave down below ground level. Her words seemed to be crawling out from the bunker itself below earth.
"Well, is awfully late. I was hoping this wouldn't take long and we could perhaps arrange another date."
Pillow snickered, love creeping into her face.
"Oh, you're not leaving. You really think you'd let the only human being who's ever understood me run away? The first person I've seen this century? This entire millennium?"
The laugh pitched up higher in glee. Lollipop sprang from her stool in terror, reaching out at a nearby clamp stand for something to brandish. It was nailed down.
"Lollipop... I've been looking for a partner to write a book with since forever. Please love me."
"Love you?"
Disgusted and disturbed but not showing it anymore, Lollipop cursed herself for playing with fire. This woman was not to be trifled with and she'd found out too late.
"Just give our friendship a chance! The world isn't ready for us yet. We're too real."
Pillow's hand curled around her fingers, holding on tight, but Lollipop wasn't able to pull them away, as if a curse bound them tight together. Two large, plotting eyes blinked calmly; imploringly.
"I have a house! I - I don't want to live here! I have a job... it'll drive me insane to live somehwere so small... let me go!"
Bursting to her feet and scrambling to the doors, Lollipop began to scuttle fingers over the keypad and gallop combinations twelve numbers long into the system. The fact that Pillow didn't even bother to get up worried her. A combination, of 12 numbers. Pretty much impossible to guess, but she had to try.
"You can't get out. You can't win. I can't be beaten."
In frantic panic, Lollipop found calm. 1234. 567. Wrong. Red lights. Start again.
"Help me show the world who we really are..."
098. Blank. Red. Restart.
"Come to me. I'm the most fun you've had in months, aren't I? Admit it!"
The light froze orange, then winked out. Lollipop's pointer finger was paused, hovering over the 6 button to press it a third time. It never fell.
"I suppose that's true." she sighed, sadly but with a note of poignant acceptance. Pillow was interesting. She had been great company on the phone.
"Then come. Let's write. Ooh, and I'll make your bed! This is so exciting... it's gonna be great!"
The creepy persona she'd briefly adopted a few seconds before was rapidly gone, leaving Pillow wiped clean as a slate, happy and filled to the brim with zest, almost as if she were free. It was endearing.
Even though she was still shaking from her ordeal, Lollipop felt herself about to grin, but quashed it. Pillow may be fascinating, but nevertheless...
It was gonna be a long, long couple of years.

Happy crimmis MOTHERFUCKERS! meant to get this out for Christmas day but heehoo that did not occur
I am incredibly ill with a cold and watched 5 hours of friends yesterday so my brain is just mushed avocado at this point so sorry if the end is terrible