{"id":4218,"date":"2016-11-02T08:03:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2016-11-09T17:22:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T22:22:59","slug":"took-you-long-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/took-you-long-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Took You Long Enough&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/k-avatar-e1443983846496.png\" alt=\"by Kent\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>You think your great big husband will protect you?<\/li>\n<li>fanciful scarves and costume jewelry<\/li>\n<li>most of you aren\u2019t taking photos of it<\/li>\n<li>gripped my stick<\/li>\n<li>men in loose-collared business suits<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tune in next time part 124<\/strong><b>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/tune-in-next-time\/\">Click Here for Earlier Installments<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Took you long enough,&#8221; Tallulah said.<\/p>\n<p>The last thing I could afford was to show fear. Let her think of herself as the cornered one. &#8220;<em>You think your great big husband will protect you?<\/em>&#8221; I sneered. &#8220;Does he even know you&#8217;re here?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s in a shop two blocks from here, browsing <em>fanciful scarves and costume jewelry<\/em>. He doesn&#8217;t have any idea what I&#8217;m up to. The old-man disguise puzzled him, I&#8217;m sure, but he didn&#8217;t even ask about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Or about the other disguises underneath?&#8221; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He didn&#8217;t know about those.&#8221; She flushed the toilet. &#8220;Men love when a woman pretends to be another woman. I&#8217;m surprised <em>most of you aren&#8217;t taking photos of it<\/em> all the time, even though they would just look like normal photos, if the disguises were any good.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tallulah approached, seeming to think I was going to let her resume her concealment under my coat. I wouldn&#8217;t have much choice if she became insistent, of course. Her combat skills were deadly, even more than her sister&#8217;s. But I hadn&#8217;t seen Tallulah in so long&#8230; Or hadn&#8217;t I? Her words echoed in my mind. &#8220;Took you long enough.&#8221; Her Tessa impersonation was impenetrable. How long had it been the wrong sister? When was the last time I had really seen Tessa?<\/p>\n<p>Was there even a real Tessa?<\/p>\n<p>With my state of mind so shattered, I couldn&#8217;t protest her move to reclaim her hiding spot. But I wasn&#8217;t much help to her, either, so she <em>gripped my stick<\/em>,\u00a0as it were, to plant herself firmly in place and also to get my attention.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wait,&#8221; I spluttered, &#8220;what was all that about my son? Was that just to distract me? What&#8217;s your game, Tallulah?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to get back to the table,&#8221; she said. I waddled out of the restroom. Our table now held a completely new group, <em>men in loose-collared business suits<\/em>. I whispered this news to Tallulah.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Huh,&#8221; she said. &#8220;They&#8217;re early.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>bonus points for using them in order<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Stichomancy Writing Prompts\" href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompts\/\">about stichomancy writing prompts<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompt-generator\/\">try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You think your great big husband will protect you? fanciful scarves and costume jewelry most of you aren\u2019t taking photos of it gripped my stick men in loose-collared business suits Tune in next time part 124\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Click Here for Earlier Installments &#8220;Took [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,4],"tags":[403],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stichomancy-prompts","category-writing-prompts","tag-tune-in-next-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4364,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions\/4364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}