Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
I can hear water running in the bathroom, and the sound of female tinkering and muttering. She’s not happy. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she had the kind of temper that made her come storming back out here to give me another piece of her mind.
Awaiting her choice words, or perhaps the indefinite prolonging of a very good sulk, I smile to myself. I do enjoy a good battle of wills. Though I intend to prevail, this is still a pleasurable part of our association for me. I have to admit, if she is in a foul temper, it is partly of my provocation. I could have introduced myself in a less obstructive fashion. I could have been friendly. The very thought makes me shudder, but it was technically an option.
I learned long ago not to make friends with my clients. Starlets are flighty, fame-obsessed, and usually so busy once the tour starts they barely have a moment to think, let alone give me any trouble. My job isn’t to be liked by the talent. It’s to make sure they’re safe.
While I’m thinking, I note that she’s been in the bathroom for a very long time. I’ve known many starlets to take upwards of three hours to install their makeup though, so that alone is not of concern. What does get my attention is the sudden increase in volume of the shrieking fans below. They’re suddenly a lot louder, even from dozens of floors away.
If there’s one thing I regret more than anything, it is not being able to duplicate myself. There’s only one of me, and I can only occupy one place at one time. It’s a limitation that I absolutely wish I could overcome. As I’m not likely to overcome it in the next three seconds, I am left with rushing to the window like any other limited physical creature.
I am used to seeing large, screaming, sometimes seething crowds. It’s not uncommon for my charges to draw so many fans that the streets around various hotels are blocked for, well, blocks. This being only the beginning of the tour, and my client’s fame being much less extensive than it one day will be, the crowd is relatively small and is only shutting down the intersection directly in front of the hotel.
Their screams are absolutely feral, and I soon see why. My client, the human female I have been assigned to protect at all and any costs, is clinging to the side of the building. I am briefly stunned by the incredible audacity and stupidity of what I am seeing. To have climbed out the bathroom window is almost unthinkable. The fall from this height is lethal. I have never lost a client before, but right now I am forced to confront the very real possibility that I am about to lose this one, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I am furious at her for doing this to herself, and for doing it to me.
And then it gets worse.
I see my human charge drop the last half a story or so down into the midst of a bunch of strangers who grab her and break her fall. I watch with a growing sense of horror as she more or less disappears into the crowd, intermittently obscured from view. The neon pink and yellow jacket, which might have made her easy to find, is immediately removed and then she is nothing but a human in a sea of humans.
I tear out of the room and run as fast as I can down the stairs, clearing them entire floors at a time. The bare concrete pads of these access stairways crack here and there as I land with a thud, my four-hundred pound muscular frame crushing each landing.
What an absolute little shit she is. I thought she’d be easier to contain thanks to being a little older and maybe a little saner, but apparently not. I’d heard humans get less troublesome with age. Maybe nobody has given this one the memorandum.
I get down to the lobby within two minutes, but that is two minutes in which she has had the chance to be mauled, molested, or worse by any number of unhinged individuals in that crowd.
Lyric
LYRIC! LYRIC!
They’re screaming my name. I can hear their shrieks and shouts getting louder and louder as I climb down. I guess what a lot of people don’t know about me is that I’ve been working my whole life. I haven’t been sitting in a studio since I was six years old like the intergalactic starlet Sparkle who preceded me. Starlets are usually born and bred. I know I don’t really fit the mold, and frankly I’m afraid this isn’t going to go as well for me as it should. But it also means that my previous life experience is useful to me. One of my old jobs was as a lines-woman. I have been up and down power poles for the last six years, and I was an avid climber before that. The side of this building is absolutely nothing to me. It has more grips, handholds, and hangout spots than the beginner wall at a climbing gym. Yeah, it’s a long way down, but I take it one step at a time and I get there while my fans cheer.