The Eyes Of Horace

gavin cardigan stepped into Poor Yorick's Pub, shutting the door quickly against the blustery wind. "what's for supper tonight, danny boy?"

"fried oysters," replied danny blake as he poured a Bass Ale for cardigan. "with a chipotle-lime dipping sauce. care for some?"

"i'd care for more than some. make it a double order, my friend."

danny nodded. "you got it, hoss."

cardigan nodded at the witches in the corner as he joined his friends at the back.

"gavin's here!" marian elfman proclaimed. "now you can tell us about your date, sierra."

cardigan grinned as he took his seat. "another winner, charles?"

sierra charles, the Pub's resident D-list celebrity, shuddered. "why does it have to be this hard?"

"aw, cheer up, sierra," taylor young told her as he wiped up the beer he had just spilled. "ducky here got lucky. you will, too."

marian rolled her eyes at her vampire boyfriend. "don't jinx her like that, taylor. now," she turned to sierra, "tell us what happened!"

sierra sighed. "my agent belongs to the Guild of Entertainers' Representatives, the GERbils, they call themselves."

this was greeted with an appropriate amount of snickering.

"anyway, one of the GERbils decided that he was tired of his clients winding up in the tabloids because of one failed relationship after another, so he started up a matchmaking service for GERbil clients, run by the GERbils. my agent set me up with a another agent's client, and i foolishly agreed. stop laughing!"

she glared at her friends, who weren't being very supportive at the moment. Myterious Lurker was wiping tears from her face as she tried to control her laughter. "i'm sorry, but the fact that you were set up by matchmaking GERbils...how can you expect us not to laugh?"

sierra grabbed an oyster from cardigan's plate as danny set it down. "i think i need another beer, danny."

cardigan glared and moved his plate away from sierra. "bring her some of her own oysters while you're at it."

"so up with whom did they set you, miss sierra?" shakespeare asked as he cleaned off a nearby table.

"horace humboldt," she shuddered again as she said the name.

"i've never heard of him," cardigan noted as he swallowed his first bite. "what kind of a celebrity is he?"

"he owns Horace's House of Horrors, right?" danny put in as he brought sierra another beer. "that theme restaurant that's supposed to be a haunted house."

"a restaurant owner? and he has a GERbil?"

"he's also an actor. a stuntman, really," sierra explained. "he played an orc in the Lord of the Rings, a zombie in Shawn of the Dead, an alien in District 9, something in Hellboy. all i knew at the time was that he was an actor and a restaurant owner. my agent knew i liked good food, so he thought this was a good match."

"oh, dear," marian tried not to giggle as sierra named off the movie roles. "where did you go?"

"his restaurant, which is the worst food i've ever had."

danny nodded. "i've heard that."

"the entire experience was awful. there were bad actors with worse accents walking jumping out at people to scare them, talking animal heads on the wall, a 'band' of robots who sang stupid songs. there were screeching teenage girls and crying children. and horace," she shuddered again.

"what about him?" taylor asked. "has he ever played a vampire?"

"i don't know, but he's definitely creepy. he sat against the wall under a portrait of a nobleman whose eyes moved around, but horace's eyes never move and they never blink. ever. it's as if he were dead and nobody bothered to close his eyes. i couldn't decide which was worse: the portrait with the moving eyes, or the real person with the dead eyes."

"well, you could have looked at the food instead," cardigan noted.

"more eyes! the ice cubes in the drinks looked like eyeballs! he ordered pizza that had olives on top of pepperoni slices so it looked like eyeballs! nachos with oval pepper slices that looked like eyes! deviled eggs that looked like eyes! eyeballs everywhere!"

taylor fell off his chair laughing. cardigan was choking on an oyster from laughing. marian and the Lurker had tears streaming down their faces and were no longer trying to suppress their giggles. danny was chuckling as he wiped beer glasses. the witches were cackling. sierra was hmph'ing.

shakespeare cleared the table and said to her, “teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.”

"zip it, shakespeare."

"hmph."