I'm putting my swc stuff in a project this season. Not all formated yet, but in the mean time here's lovely lovely Sylvester from Looney Tunes. Daily March 15th: Arete stood on the highest, rockiest cliff he'd ever stood upon. His hands gripped the handles of a zip line so tightly that his knuckles turned white. If it had been any other day in his life, he would have been back at home reading a book. He felt his legs go weak and gripped the handles tighter. It wouldn't matter, soon, anyways. However, in order to find how he got himself into this predicament, we will need to trace his steps back exactly twelve hours earlier. … Arete Cathen was an ordinary man of about the age of twenty-four. He had wavy brown hair that grew out to his shoulders and wore button down shirts with geometric designs on them. He worked a job working as a newspaper vendor and he was quite content with it. What interrupted his happily regular life was this: it was about to end. Arete stood at his little newspaper shop (if it could be called that. Really it was more of a table with walls.) as he usually did on a Wednesday afternoon. It became unusual foggy and dark, and there had hardly been any business all day. In the doldrum of it, he let himself get distracted in one of the recent headlines. Dead at Twenty-Four. Arete cringed. What an awful thing to think about. He must have been distracted, anyways, because he never saw the cloaked figure approach. He just turned his head and they were there in front of him. “Ah!” The young newspaper salesman coughed into his sleeve to hide his surprise. The customer seemed unfazed. “Ahem, um.. how can I help you today? Interested in a newspaper? A magazine? A pack of gum?” The man in the dark cloak shook his head pausing to look around the shelves. It was difficult to even see his face, which was enshrouded in the clock along with the rest of his body. When he finally answered, his voice creaked like a thousand year old stairwell. “I'll take a pack of gum… and a local newspaper.” The cloaked customer reached out with a long, thin gloved hand to select his flavor of gum. “....okay.” Arete grabbed a newspaper and a pack of gum, bagged it up and exchanged it for a very large stack of coins. He sighed and set them on the table in front of him to count them out. The cloaked man just.. stood there. Waiting as Arete counted out the change. “I.. uh, sorry. Do you know how much you gave me? I could just get your change. I'd believe you.” He kept counting under his breath, however, quickly sorting coins into their designated slots in the cash register. “It's exact change.” The cloaked man creaked. “Oh. Okay.” He scooped the rest of the coins up and sorted them out. The cloaked man still stood there. He opened his newspaper and scanned the pages dutifully. “Can I… help you.. with anything else?” Arete watched the man, uncertain as to whether he should interupt or just let the man stand in front of his booth. It wasn't like he was going to get any more customers in this weather. “No, no help required.. not by me..” He paused, silent for a long moment. “You're going to die.” To be continued...
