Lunch Break [Open]

"Is that his wife?"

Chairs were gathered around the little tv fastened to the wall in the break room. Maybe if soap operas were on air after 5 p.m., more work would get done.

"SSH-- no, that's his mistress." Jorg tried to ignore the involuntary sob from the mexican wailer behind him-- "Nobody ever cares about the mistress...!!!"

Yakaterina, herself, was not paying too much attention to the story-- hence the questions. The last time she had watched something on a screen had been in 1927-- it had been alot larger and had cost her one American dime. She could hardly see anything on this new, smaller screen-- but the color had certainly taken her by surprise. "But it looks like his wife."

"Because his mistress is his wife's twin! Now shut the hell up, I've been waiting to see this for days."

It had also come as a surprise that a hairy german was so invested in a melodrama. Taken aback, she took another bite of her salad (which now had a few arachnids crawling in it--) and settled back in her chair.

Perhaps they should have been more worried about working, but the place was so slowed with bureaucracy as it was, it would take forever for any discipline to get to them. Yakaterina's and Alegria's work was so piled up there was no way to really tackle it, and Jorg hardly had any work to do at all.

So it was best to just forget about all that and take a 2 hour lunch instead.

((I COULDN'T REMEMBER MY PASSWORD-))

"Why would a man cheat on his wife? That's just so...so awful!" The scarecrow squeaked, clearly appalled by the entire concept. "If Doug snuck around with another woman....I'd be so mad!"

If Hans had eyebrows carved into his bright pumpkin head, they would been quirked at Autumn's comment. "I think you'd be a little more than just 'mad', don't you think?" Of course, Autumn showing anger was just as unbelievable as getting a Christmas bonus because the higher-ups were 'feeling generous'. The man poked at his microwavable meal, frowning as a spider from a certain Dybbuk crawled out from under the less-than-appetizing chicken breast.

It wasn't like he had to eat, anyway. He just did it to look normal just as the scarecrow beside him did.

"Jorg, I never took you as the type to watch, eh," He attempted to find the appropriate word "this."

Yakaterina snorted halfway through a bite-- really, since she was dead already, she didn't need food. It fed the things that decided they would crawl around in her stomach, though, needed it-- and she was no expert on her own inner anatomy, because there was no way to tell, but it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that if she could be unraveled like the scarecrow, only creepy-crawly things would come out. Food had long since begun to taste like ash when she ate anything, something that she, having grown up in a culture and religion where food is an expression of survival and pride, would have admitted was painful and sad.

But the thought of Doug cheating-- or even trying-- made her laugh. "Khaverte, I don't think you have to worry about that. Unless she looked just like you-- and that just means he got a little confused." At first she was afraid of the skeleton... but had come to find him ridiculous. She was only 19 but could gossip as well as any old jewish woman-- if she had been alive, she would have been one by then. "When I think of a good man, I don't think of a bag of bones." There was nothing on her face that indicated she meant malice by anything she said-- she just told the truth.

Jorge was getting a bit tired of all the conversing. "What do you mean, this? This show has everything, laughs, tears--" The Latina ghost wailed again in the back and he nooded his head as if to say 'see?' "-- and scandal, something this place is seriously lacking." Unless of course he was prepared to risk getting written up by HR again. He stretched out his hooves in front of him and remarked, taking a swig of his beer bottle (he was perfectly capable of tasting things and was perfectly okay with getting caught drinking in the office), "I ain't gonna take critique from a guy who has a pumpkin for a head."

"Oh, you sound just like my mother!" Autumn pouted at Yakaterina "'Skeletons can't support a family', she says. 'He'll just kill you', she says! Well, so far he has shown no such intention! He really is sweet though. Nobody believes it because he's the former Grim Reaper..."

Suddenly, a warm smile curled on her burlap face. "He has brothers! Maybe I could set you up!" She took the woman's hands in her own and let out another squeal. "Then we could be..relatives!"

"We don't need drama." Hans snorted "Things are fine the way they are. The last thing we need is you running about naked trying to capture women's hearts, or whatever it was you were trying to do, again."

Admittedly, Hans used to be afraid of Jorg as a child but now that he had eternity to work with him..he wondered how. The man was a clown much to the very serious horseman's dismay. What happened to the frightening monster he used to read about in stories? Apparently he had softened over the years and now Hans had to deal with his shenanigans, like tacks on his chairs and super glue on his keyboard.

"I think you're the only person who likes this," He glanced back to the Mexican woman, wondering if she was crying because of the show or because it's generally what she did "Can't we change it?"

((I had something to show you that reminded me of Jorg but I forgot hrg--))

"Kill you?" The thought was incredulous to her. "I've never seen him kill anything!" Could a skeleton even have a family? Apparently, since she was about to be set up with some. "What..." Her gray pallor completely blanched. "I don't think.... well... men don't like me much..." How could she get out of this? She hadn't been on a date in... never! "...Are they skeletons too?"

Jorg raised an eyebrow and turned his chair to face Hans. "Listen, pumpkin head, I don't really control when I look more human" which would make it easier to blend in the living world, "and more like me." which was half true. Sometimes he transformed for laughs. He scratched his sideburns. "Sometimes you all get to see dick. Consider yourselves lucky. But I got hobbies, besides, and one of them is watching this show." Which had effectively been ruined by the women.

True, he used to be a real monster, but kids got spoiled and they eventually lost the ability to fear him. Only once in a while did he get to completely become a krampus, but it was a bone-cracking, hair-growing ordeal that he'd rather not go through every day if business was slow. Despite who he was, he did have a soft spot for children. Which was why he just sneered at the mention of changing the channel. "She's the one who killed her kids." She was also the reason he couldn't bring kids back to the office-- she always thought they were hers.

((fffuuu-- if you find it, definitely send it my way B) )

"No worries he doesn't do it much anymore! And to tell you the truth... I don't think hr could hurt me if he wanted to...we're already in the underworld- unless!" Autumn gasped and stared at yakaterina with big dark eyes. "Do you think...when we die down here..do you think we go up among the living?! I've always wondered what it's like to be human! Is it nice? Your limbs don't detach as easily, right?"

She was so involved with her own conversation she almost missed the others inquiry. "Nope! Which is surprising considering they're family...then again he calls them incarnations rather than brothers. But they all act so much alike!" The scarecrow stared at her eagerly. "I think you'd love'em!"

"We're not at all lucky to see that." The man scowled "Have you ever considered in investing in pants for when it does happen??"
Again Hans glanced back at the woman. Just like with other coworkers, he didn't exactly know her story. She was weepy and she spoke Spanish, that much he knew. But killing her kids...?

Hans, although normally proud and confident, could never find the courage to speak to (human) females. So her story would remain unknown to him unless the krampus filled him in...which was why he was suddenly staring at him with large, hollow eyes.

She wondered if the man even enjoyed his job, the way she was making it sound. She suddenly felt the urge to ask him what he felt when coming for people like her-- who sought him out. Snapped out of her thoughts by her coworker's imagination, she smiled lopsidedly and mused, "I don't know if that's how it happens. I hope not, I think I like it here." The scarecrow didn't care where she came from, and the only barriers here were religious-- although who could really fight about it, since everyone ended up here anyways? "So I wouldn't be quick to jump in front of a bus if I were you.... I think Mr. Doug" She didn't feel right just calling him "Doug"... He was Death, after all. "Would try to save you, instead."

Quiet for a moment, she tried not to dampen the scarecrow's spirits with what she really thought living was like. "I think for some people it is the greatest think you can be-- alive. People write books and plays and..." she nodded to the screen. "Sappy moving pictures about it."

And about the limbs? She stopped concentrating and let her neck go lax, and her head slipped down to her shoulder, neck bent limply at the dark purple welt that circled it. "Detach... You'd be surprised how easy it is to detach things on the inside!" It wasn't a dark comment to her-- it was her saving grace. Sometimes she did cover it with a scarf, but that was only to hide it for important occasions.

Snapping her head back up at the mention of the skeleton's brothers (though it always hung a little lax, as if she was just slouching), Yakaterina was suddenly at a loss for words. "I... I'm sure I would but... I don't think... They'd like me." Nervous, she hiccuped, sending an arachnid out of her mouth, hanging on a web threat. She pulled it off and shooed it away and stared Autumn down with wide, hopeless eyes, almost begging her to not say anything about what had just happened.

"I'm barely paid here, you expect me to buy new pants after other ones get ripped apart?" He leaned back in the chair and grinned, pointed teeth meeting together like a zipper. "Besides maybe you don't like it, but think of how much the ladies love it."

Peering around Hans to make sure the Mexican woman wasn't looking, he spoke in a hushed tone. "Apparently she had kids with a guy from Spain or something, but then he left her for his actual wife. So she drowned 'em to get revenge, and yet she acts like she doesn't remember-- like she lost them." but apparently she knew she lost them in water. "She keeps tearing out the sinks in the ladies' bathrooms. Not that I been in the ladies' room. Lately."