... I Finished It

(post-titled by Amber)

Sun slanted dramatically through the slats of the hip window coverings in the sun room of the Sunny Cafe, where H.B. Lovecraft sat arranging his pens and drinking his 3rd chic, cinnamon-sprinkled, foamy light cherry cappuccino. He prepared to dive into the final chapters of his operatic, quasi- modo-like epic, "The Anomaly In My Kitchen."

His mother entered with a squeak. "Are you done yet?" She peered over his shoulder.

"Mother, I don't like you hanging out at the same places I do." H.B. said v. quietly. "Soon this place'll be full of old ladies in mob-caps drinking plain teas and playing bridge." He then told her that his creature of animated discount auto parts was about to dismember one of his supporting characters in a none-too-lovely way and he needed some privacy, please.

She looked around the cafe. "Well, I see that you have no friends to support you in this clearly pivotal moment in your career. Would you have me abandon my son in his hour of need? What kind of mother would I be then? Honestly!" She seated herself across from him.

H.B. stared at her with undisguised loathing, she smiled sweetly back. Turning his loathe on someone else, H.B. aimed it at the next table. At the occupants of the next table to be precise.

He liked to intimidate his fellow patrons - it kept business in the Sunny Cafe at a minimum and gave him a healthy outlet for Mother.

The guy at the next table kept looking over to see if H.B. was still glaring – which of course he was – then the guy would look away again to see if his friend was catching the glare. Finally, the two of them stood and walked over, and the first say, "Looks like sissy boy needs a spanking." He clenched and unclenched his fists.

"No, he's had that," his mother commented dryly.

"Well this just gets better and better," sneered the first guy. "Look whose mommy is here to protect him!"

"Are you an idiot?" asked Mrs. Lovecraft.

"What?" The guy was taken aback.

"Mother-"

"Harold, stay out of this."

Mrs. Lovecraft stood eye to eye with the guy.

"You must be an idiot to still call your mother 'Mommy'!"

Going beet red, the guy who was so upset said, "What? No! I don't call *my* mother 'mommy' - I'm insulting your son by implying he still calls you mommy."

"Well then you are an idiot, boy, because you just heard my son call me 'mother'."

"That's not the— I mean, it don't matter, cuz he's still a sissy-wissy pants little—"

Smiling patronizingly, but victoriously enough to stop a 250 lbs bruiser in mid-sentence, Mrs. Lovecraft merely said: "Only baby boy idiots use phrases like "sissy-wissy." You should take lessons from my son on not being a baby boy idiot. He's a baby boy genius."

The guy stood there, fish-lipping vacantly.

"I'm so sorry," said the second guy at last. "This is my fault. I'm a conflictaholic."

Everyone turned to look at him, except H.B. who used the momentary respite from being involved, even indirectly, to return to his manuscript. Whence a slanting beam from the sunny sun outside the cafe shone in his eyes and caused him to spill his foamy cherry cappuccino across the paper in one big, wet, dump.

As H.B. eschewed computers, backups of any kind were abhorrent to him and he now knew true horror. Brown soaked down through page after page of kitchen anomalies, smearing ink, wiping away three years of meticulously assembled prose, while in the background his mother patted the conflictaholic sympathetically on the shoulder and got a pinch on the butt for her troubles.

"Come on, Harold, we're leaving" and that began yet another argument.