A Reluctant Meeting
"You're not making me do this! You can't!"
Carl raised an eyebrow at his somewhat nervous comrade. "You are such a fuckin' wuss, pencil-neck. What, I gotta ask, is the worst shit you think's gonna hit you here? These are your arseholes, y'know."
"They are not my arseholes! They are an entirely different breed of arseholes! Several entirely different breeds of arseholes, in fact, so don't tell me that these are my arseholes! I mean, look at that one!" He pointed out the Sentra's windscreen, nearly poking Carl in the back of the head, at a tall, thin, lugubrious-looking man in a threadbare dirty yellow smock clutching a pinhole camera to his chest. He'd have seemed like a collector of photographic antiquities until you noted the furry brown skin, arachnoid eyes and mandibles, and the two extra sets of arms.
"Mike ... you should, like, really stop pointing at people like that, y'know? It's really sort of rude and stuff." Annette turned around in the driver's seat of her car and looked at him a bit sympathetically. "They can't help the way they're made or whatever, and I think what Carl's trying to say is that, like, they're people--"
"That one's dripping!"
"--More or less people ... who share the same interests as you, sort of thing. I figure it's got to be, like, the best way of getting a little more understanding and stuff on what we deal with every day. You know, on a personal level, sort of thing." Annette looked at him with wide puppy-eyes. "Pleeeeease give it a try?"
That got a look from Carl. "And what the hell, if I may ask, is so fuckin' important about Mike going to this thing? C'mon, Annette. You're so big on that 'do as you will' shite; you wouldn't be shoving this at the poor fuckbake if you didn't really need him to for some reason. And seriously, if so, drop the fuckin' subterfuge; you know the little arse'd jump through fire for you--"
"CARL!" Mike jumped as if stung at that, and then tried to burrow into the seat and disappear.
Annette, surprisingly for someone who did naked yoga in the back garden with no hint of embarrassment whatsoever, blushed. "Look, it's not really for me, y'know? It's just that it's kind of getting to Rachel, sort of thing, and I figured--"
Taken rather aback, Carl turned to Annette ... actually, nearly turned on Annette. "Now what the fuck do you mean? What's getting to Rachel? Bitch hasn't said a damn word about--"
"Annette, what are you talking about?" This from Mike, a bit more subdued. "I'm not really seeing what my attitude towards ... it has claws, Annette; how does it operate a zoom lens with...?"
That earned Mike a swat upside the head from Carl. "Focus, fucktard."
Annette sighed. "Look, it's, like, kind of getting to Rachel because she's kinda sorta psychic, remember? And she feels it every time you freak out because you never, like, try to tone down your mental panic attacks or whatever and it's hard to block out and stuff! Why do you think she's been looking like migraine city for the last two weeks? I just figured if you, like, dove in at the deep end, then it'd stop freaking you out so badly and you wouldn't be so hard on Rachel, y'know?"
Annette subsided, and silence filled the car. Mike sat staring at his camera, shamefaced. Carl looked at Annette in something like horror for a moment, then turned around and glared at Mike, who didn't notice. Uncomfortable quiet was the order of the day.
Until about thirty seconds later, when Carl opened the door of the Sentra and growled. "Right. You're fuckin' going."
That snapped Mike out of it. "But ... isn't there an easier--?"
"No!" This from both Annette and Carl, the latter while shoving the back of the passenger seat forward and reaching out to bodily drag Mike from the car.
"Listen, you pasty little fuck," said Carl, in a threatening grumble not unlike thunder somewhere just over the horizon. "She has been nothing if not good to you since you fell into this shite, and you don't really want to be fucking her over now just by being there. Or if you do, you're an arsehole. Either way, I don't care. You are going to shut the hell up and do as you're told, or you are going to suffer the universe's most brutal arse-whooping. Now, since we're clear on that, you are going to attend this bloody stupid meeting of the Side Ways Photography Enthusiast's Society and you are going to like it." And before Mike could speak another word, he was thrown bodily towards the community hall in which the meeting in question was going to be held, to sink or swim more or less on his own.