maggie touches grease with her hands

You know what I like? Reading the keywords for people's icons.


"No luck with the box yet, huh?" Dean said, then grinned (while Sam pre-emptively rolled his eyes) and added, "-- not like that's new for you."

"Did you get some food, at least?"

Dean tossed a box of chicken at Sam and settled down with his own, turning the motel tv to an All in the Family rerun while they ate. Sam was quiet, almost grim as he mowed down his coleslaw, and he kept frowning at the musty wooden box all through his meal, reaching for it with fingers still greasy while he was chewing his last bite.

"Leave it for a minute and have some hot wings," Dean said, leaning far back enough in his rickety chair to aim the toe of one boot at Sam's knee. Sam froze half-sprawled across the bed, turning his head to stare at Dean, then next thing Dean knew his brother had his fingers all in the box of wings. Picking out bones and breaking them apart. Digging in his bag until he found a piece of red string, wrapping them around the bones to make an equal-armed cross. Holding it up in Dean's face with a distinctly crowing expression, and declaring, "I'm a genius."

"Craft time with bird carcasses sure means genius to me," Dean said, but Sam was fitting the bone thing into the box with just the right little twist to make it pop open with a disturbing-but-satisfying hiss. "The key in having a key," Sam told him, "is knowing it's a key."

"Imagine what we could open with some curly fries," Dean said, but it was no use. Sam could already tell he was impressed.

( others behind the cut )

I'll probably do this again, if none of the icon owners who I randomly choose object to it. *g*

Opening taken from one of callmesandy's subject lines. I think the heavy grey sky right now is getting to me, because I'm kind of muffled and headachy-feeling, but this has been itching under my fingertips all day. So here we go -- The Simpsons, Homer and Lisa.

.the underground awaits

before more people show up and poke my dead grandmother

For once, it looked like they were going to get through this okay. There wasn't any acid rain, Mr. Burns' lawyers had advised him that prosecuting a dead woman might be seen as slightly unreasonable, and Reverend Lovejoy didn't quite seem to understand the significance of the incense that Grandma's friends were burning and thanked them for the air freshener. By the time the coffin was being lowered into the ground, Lisa had even eased up on clenching her fists enough so that circulation started to creep back past the constricting lace of her good gloves.

But in the best tradition of Simpson occasions, the craziness was just saving itself because when Grampa stepped forward to throw a handful of dirt on the coffin, he prefaced it by saying, "I was always a pretty lousy husband, Grandma, and I never understood all your commie talk about gun control and environmental safety. But now you're gone, and I can't mess things up for you any more," and then tripped over the astroturf and fell on Chief Wiggum, who accidentally unloaded all the bullets from his service pistol into the coffin before tipping over and smashing open the crate of live doves, who promptly flew up into a bunch of telephone wires and then plummeted smoking to the ground.

"At least she went out with a little excitement," Bart offered in the shocked silence that followed. "Now I gotta revise the plans for *my* funeral." He took out a notepad and Lisa watched blankly as he flipped to a page headed, "21-Clown Accordion Orchestra" and added 'more clowns' under it.

People wandered away from the grave and Lisa hung back even though she knew her mom would probably appreciate some help corralling the mourners back to the reception at their house. She'd make it up to Marge by balancing the checkbooks later, she told herself; right now she just wanted a little time to say goodbye.

But when everybody was gone, Lisa found that she wasn't alone; her dad was still there, standing solemnly at the foot of the grave. "Dad?" she ventured, going up to him. "Are you okay?"

Homer shook himself. "Oh, hi, Lisa," he said. "I was just getting the dead birds off Grandma's coffin." Lisa tugged her collar as she realized her father was using Wiggum's gun to shoot the dove carcasses until they were charred feathery clumps.

"I...think she'd really appreciate that," she said cautiously, then sighed. "I wish I could've gotten to know Grandma better," she said. "We seemed to have so many moral convictions in common!"

"Yeah. And she knew how to make marshmallow lasagna, and wrap my knees up in Wonder Bread so it wouldn't hurt when I fell down." Homer scratched the back of his head. "I kinda wish I knew her better too."

Lisa slipped her hand into his. "There's some of her in you, Dad," she said. "She's there every time you listen to 60's songs, or stand up for what you believe in, or even when you eat classic Fig Newtons instead of that new kind with strawberry filling--"

"Strawberry Newtons, feh!" Homer exclaimed. "That's like filling Twinkies with hamburger! Or a monkey with gasoline!"

"Well, in theory, I guess." Lisa squeezed her dad's hand. "What I mean is, she'll never really be gone."

Homer smiled down at her. "No, she won't, honey," he said gently. "Because apart from the whole fugitive thing, you're pretty much just as smart and special as she was." They turned from the grave and he said, "Hey, think you can figure out how to make lasagna like Grandma did?"

Lisa let her father pick her up and when she was comfortably settled on his shoulders she said, "As long as we have enough marshmallows, I'll try!" She sounded remarkably cheerful, she thought proudly, and wiped at her tears before they ran down her chin and fell on her dad's head and ruined her whole stoic bravery bit.

Homer held her ankles when she wobbled and murmured, "I got you, honey," and trotted onward to the car.