Freaks - "Episode 1"

[José Luis Flores]

"Gary Busey's balls it's hot out here," José grumbled, letting the weed-eater hack away at the chain-link fencing along the street.

He released the gas trigger, letting the motor wind down to a muted putter and looked around, noting how much he had left until he was finished. He'd meant to get back to work, but he had no mind for anything else as he saw one of the sexiest girls ever walking down the street toward him.

At least it seemed like she was walking toward him.

"Holy shee-it," he grunted, his eyebrows rising and a smile growing on his face.

She was blonde haired, and though he couldn't see her eyes, he didn't care what color they were. Her figure was deadly.

This chick was smoking hot.

He went back to work, but only put a quarter of his mind to the job, and the rest went into overdrive when confronted with the problem of approaching her, even as he drew closer to Jim.

"Hey," he said, gesturing to get his attention, before whistling. "Yo! Who's that?"

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim was on his hands and knees and armed with a wire sponge, rubber gloves, and a bucket of grey water. He scrubbed furiously at a small frothing square of sidewalk while singing badly to bad songs. In the grand scope of drudgery, kowtowing to the pavement like a turd-sniffing mutt, his task was decidedly short in its glamour appeal. José had a power tool, a goddamn power tool, a fact he'd refused to go unmentioned no fewer than six times, whereas he, on the other hand, had been equipped with what was quite possibly the mildest chemical agent in the world. How he had begged to hire a soda blaster! What joy a soda blaster would've brought into his life! Instead, resigned to his dreary fate, he contemplated the potency of human saliva as a cleaning agent, and scrubbed.

Meanwhile, from behind the sinisterly slatted windows of 114 Banyon Street, Miss Garcia watched. Occasionally, Jim spotted her anaemic silhouette before she vanished behind a flutter of wood. Miss Garcia disliked mutants, and that, in Jim's estimation, was putting it mildly. But more than mutants she hated vandals, and gangs, and, here comes the irony, racism. Recently, Miss Garcia appeared on a local news report bemoaning the pall of violence and hate-crime that had descended upon Los Santos, and in coming forward, broadcasting her grim reptilian features to every television in the area, she had unwittingly declared upon herself open season. Now, if there was one thing the shrivelled reclusive raisin disliked more than mutants, hated more than gangs, and despised even more than racism itself, it was latex paint. White latex paint splattered all over her driveway, to be precise, and it was a loathing in which Jim was beginning to find common ground. So, he scrubbed.

And then José whistled, drawing his attention to the blonde bombshell sauntering up the road. Jim recognised her at once and fought with his blue overalls to scramble to his feet. He poked his thick-rimmed glasses back into position, squinted, then sighed a mighty sigh.

"Svetlana Ustinov," he said dreamily, "Ain't she suttin'?"

José was distracted. Jim was concerned, "But-but-but-but-but-but-but-but- don't get any ideas, hotshot! Dat girl's spoken for, arright?"

By now, Jim had rounded on his community-service brother-in-arms and was wagging a disapproving wire sponge in his face. José was unphased by his assertions, in fact, he seemed completely oblivious to his very presence. It was, admittedly, difficult to remain stern-faced when the faint click-click of dainty feet approached. He beamed excitedly.

"Wait-til-you-hear-her-accent- Hey, Lana!" he called.

[Svetlana Ustinov]

If there was one thing Lana absolutely loved about living in Los Angeles, it was the climate. Year-round sun – bright and sinfully hot in the height of the summer. The perfect place for a young mutant who couldn’t live without it.

Kitten heels clicked along the sidewalk after she got off the bus, slender fingers pushing her sunglasses back into place. In this much sunlight, her green eyes glittered and glowed more than she could control. A glance down at her Blackberry told her that she was early as usual, so her pace was casual even though her senses remained alert.

Sunny though it was, it was still Los Santos.

The chain-link fence around Redención House made her carefully adjust her soft cropped top and denim mini skirt. There were two people working in the yard, while Ana and another woman she didn’t recognize sat on the porch in the shade. Jim she recognized in an instant, his unmistakable look making her smile as he flailed a wire brush in the air. The other she thought she recognized from school, but not wanting to be wrong, simply smiled brightly as she passed and sauntered around the end of the fence.

“Jim! Bozhe moy, you’rre a mess! How’s the worrrk going?” Lana replied with her usual lyric accent, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. Fingers pushed the long, loose platinum curls back over her bare shoulders before adjusting her bag.




Google translate: "Bozhe moy" = "Good lord"

[José Luis Flores]

José felt his knees go weak, which he'd previously thought only a turn of phrase. He grinned in return, feeling some sweat bead down his face, but ignored it.

He turned off the weed-eater and set it on the ground, and winced as he got a whiff of his body odor. Shit stank.

"Doesn't look like it's going too well for ya," he added, looking at the stained concrete. Water vapor slowly steamed up from further down as the sun continued its merciless assault on the Los Santos area. "Didn't think it sat for that long."

He cast a glance back at the mothers, but they'd gone inside while Lana had said hello.

"Lana is it?" He said, not waiting any longer to introduce himself. "Name's José. I'd shake your hand, but I'm pretty rank right now too."

[Jim Lewinski]

"Six hours, José! In a well-ventilated area, latex paint dries in under six hours, and you don't get much more ventilated than this!"

His arms were outstretched in emphasis, as if to embrace the white hot panorama of Los Santos itself. Off snapped the rubber gloves and the wire sponge was slam-dunked into its bucket, which in turn spat a small geyser of water at his face. He skulked back, using his beanie to dry his glasses.

"Y'know, callin' it latex paint is somethin' of a misnomer 'cause there ain't no latex in it anyway. It's true! Just a bunch of synthetic polymer imposters that happen to look like natural latex."

Now that his glasses were clamped in place and he was once again suitably bug-eyed, he considered Lana and José for the briefest instant, and presented them with a finger thick with paint, wiped fresh from his overalls. It was rubbery under his thumb. He gave it a sniff and extended an open invitation to them both to share in his investigation.

"Freakin' apes didn't even have the decency to buy the good stuff. I reckon we're dealing with a four-to-one ratio of vinyl and acrylic resin, which is a real bitch because the lower acrylic levels make it harder to wash but provide enough alkali resistance to make that bucket of piss useless-Wow-I'm-still-talkin'-huh? That happens from time to time, just stop me otherwise- WE CAN PEE ON IT!"

Jim wheeled on José, wild with excitement: "Human-urine-is-typically-acidic, particularly-as-a-result-of-a-high-protein-diet, it's-perfect-" here, he clasped José's bicep and suddenly crestfallen, uttered, "You ain't a vegetarian, are you?"

[Svetlana Ustinov]

"A pleasurrre to meet you, José..." she smiled brightly, tilting her head as she looked over to him. Her glowing gaze cascaded over him briefly before Jim wandered over. The phrase "a mile a minute" was certainly written for him, she mused, eyeing the proffered finger as he kept talking.

A response was halted as he exclaimed, a brow arched in some form of disapproval before her laughter took over. Granted, it took her several moments before a coherent sentence could emerge, in spite of Jim's matching enthusiasm and indignancy.

"How about I take carrre of the paint instead?" Lana asked, tucking her phone in her purse as she glanced down at the driveway.

[José Luis Flores]

José nodded in return, smiling a bit stupidly, but Jim's especially weird stream of consciousness jarred him out of his stupor. He frowned.

"Dude, I'm not pissing on that," he said, while Lana chortled. Jim started to frown and speak, but José cut him off. "Dude. I'm not pissing on that."

José shook his head, but was stopped once more when Lana offered to take care of it in her sexy sexy accent. José blinked and furrowed his brows slightly as he thought he saw her glowing. As in, actually glowing, not metaphorically being happy and bubbly.

"How?" José asked, unable to stop himself. He pictured her in her outfit, scrubbing the concrete. It was odd, but it was a nice picture.

[Jim Lewinski]

Wonderstruck, Jim gazed first at Lana, and then the paint-stained pavement, and then Lana again, "W-what-what? You can- with your- nooo- really!? That's so cool!"

Such was Jim's delight that his eyebrows were practically launched into his beanie. Then, just as suddenly, they crashed down upon his nose, arrow-shaped, and pointing at the gaping mouth which had fashioned itself into a small surprised hole. One index finger was held aloft, and then he was gone. The door to Redención House rattled violently on its hinges, and as it started to creak shut there was a second rush of air punctuated by Jim's reappearance. He presented José with a pair of vintage gold-rimmed shades.

"Safety first, but, oh man, are you gonna love this!"

Beaming almost as brightly as Lana, Jim snapped on a pair of welding goggles and shuffled quickly into line alongside his fellow spectator, who required some assistance in assuming the correct spectating position. Then, eyes locked onto the pavement, Jim called out:

"Okay, Lana, do your thing!"

[Svetlana Ustinov]

She dipped her head as she smiled, her expression as bright as her intensely glowing eyes. "It is not that exciting..." Lana began, but stopped as the door creaked painfully on its hinges. Jim was, as usual, off like a shot with his enthusiasm and mile a minute thoughts taking the lead. It was adorable, really, so as he and José donned sunglasses, she took a few steps and set her bag down on a clean patch of grass.

Taking a deep breath, Lana glanced around, first to ensure that Miss Garcia was not in her customary spying spot, and then to see if anyone else was about. Mercifully, there was no one - then again, in the high heat of the Los Santos afternoon, very few dared to be out as it was.

Heels clicked as she returned to stand near the paint, crouching briefly to look at both it and the pavement. Nodding to herself, she rose and extended her left hand, breathing steadily as a rush of white-hot energy leapt from her fingers. It slowly and methodically flowed across the concrete, leaving a rush of steam and a faint cloud of ash in its wake as the paint was incinerated.

Lana shook her fingers as she finished, the energy dissipating as she tilted her face up towards the sun and sighed softly. It wasn't a great chore to expend energy in such bright, hot sunlight, but concentrating it to remove only the paint and not scorch and crack the concrete made her a touch light-headed. Nothing, however, that a few more minutes in the sun couldn't mend.

"Carrreful...the concrrrete is verrry hot. Let it cool naturrally so it won't crrrack. Made that mistake once." Lana smiled as she turned to face the two spectators, tugging her sunglasses back down over her eyes as she did.

[José Luis Flores]

"Holy shit." José gaped. What else was he going to say? Other than a bunch of puns about how hot she was, and how hot she actually was. "Dude. That's bad-ass."

He managed, with some effort to bring his eyes back to Lana's breasts as opposed to the cooling concrete. The sight of them helped ground him.

"Uh..." he looked down at the weed-eater and sighed. "Ain't no way I'm gonna be doing any more work today. You just blew my mind."

[Jim Lewinski]

"Well, since Lana just polished off my quota for the day and you got mental problems, whatcha say we slip outta the blue collars and get ourselves some R n' R?"

Jim was squatting beside the searing sidewalk, he snatched a sample of the ashen vapour and gave it a quick inspection. Every last drop of paint had been incinerated. He stood, his delighted face pink and glistening from the heat, and there were pale rings around his eyes where once were clamped his goggles. Beaming, he closed in on the Russian beauty. A hand was extended, which Lana was gracious enough to accept, only to find her own silken paw the subject of rigorous scientific analysis. Jim first tapped the palm gingerly, fearful of burning himself, and when he was convinced he was safe, he studied the hand in earnest, a scrutinising eyeball mere milimeters from the flesh. Finally, the hand was held aloft, almost victorious, and shut out the sun. Jim looked puzzled.

"Y'know, you really should be green," he said, with some concern, and released her at last, "Unless chloroplasts ain't the cause of your photosynthesis. Maybe-it-ain't-photosynthesis-at-all. Interesting!"

The bucket of water was reclaimed, and quite ready to dispose of the hateful thing, Jim rounded on the pair expectantly.

"So, what's the plan? I got Battlestar Galactica on DVD - we're sorta in the middle of a house marathon here but it's cool."

[Svetlana Ustinov]

"My motherr doesn't even know what it is eitherr, and she's a..how do you say it in English, 'motherr earrrth'. Herr powerrs are plant-based, but herr physiology is rrelatively human. I don't have norrrmal blood, though. It is a brrright grrreen." Lana smiled patiently, amused as Jim finally released her hand after his delighted scrutiny. As he retrieved his bucket, she took the time to reclaim her bag, slender fingers plucking her Blackberry from its inner sanctum.

With impeccable and eerie timing, it began to ring, the caller ID bringing a decidedly warm smile to her features. "Aleksanderrr! Therre you arrre...I'm a bit earrly and have alrrready arrived at the House." Settling the bag on her shoulder, she listened as she sauntered back over to where Jim and José waited.

Her smile faltered slightly, but she kept her tone bright and even as she could. "No, don't worrry about it. Worrrk takes precedence overrr shopping with yourrr girrlfrriend. Call me tonight...ya tozhe tyebya lyublyu."

Ending the call, Lana wrinkled her nose as she stared down at the Blackberry and tucked it away again. Her smile returned as she looked back up at each of them in turn. "Well, I was going to say I don't have time to stay, but that was Alex. He's worrrking late, so you two arrre stuck with me. I don't suppose you want to come shopping, do you? I'll even trrreat you to lunch..."