Page 7 of Lucifer's Revenge
Chapter 4
“Come in!” a deep voice called out, and Starr drew in a deep breath, let it out in a rush, and opened the door to Professor Tiggs’s office. She closed the door behind her, went to stand in front of his desk, and waited until he looked up to acknowledge her.
It took five minutes, but he looked up and frowned. “I know you, right?”
“Yes, Professor Tiggs. I’m Starr King, I’m in your night class for Hollywood makeup.”
“Ah, that’s right.” He nodded as he tossed his pen on his papers and leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh. “What can I do for you?”
“I took your assignment you gave us three weeks ago very seriously.”
“As you should, but how seriously are we talking about here?”
“I sketched some designs, contacted the people I want to transform, made molds of their faces, hands, teeth, but not until after they gave me permission to use them. Now, I’m here to tell you what I have planned and ask if I could use three or four other people to help. Oh, and also if you know of anyone that would be interested in working with the group of people I contracted as set designers. They have an idea of what they want, but don’t know if they can pull it off.”
“Oh, wow, that sounds like a lot.” He rose from his chair and went to the coffee pot in the corner and when she declined a cup, he rejoined her at his desk. “I think you’re the first person to ever come to me with your idea well in advance of the actual due date of the assignment.”
“Yeah, well, if my ideas work, then I’ll have a lot, and I mean a lot of work ahead of me. I’m anticipating that just one person being transformed will take me six hours. That’s the minimum. I plan on transforming twelve of them.”
“Good God, woman, now you have my interest piqued. I guess instead of asking all the questions shouting in my mind, I should look at your designs first?”
Starr only nodded as she passed him her prized sketchbook and took the seat before the desk, without it being offered. She hoped her professor would be enthralled after the first page in her book. She withdrew her own bottle of water from her backpack and took a sip, just to ease her dry mouth, not enough to make her nervous to run to the bathroom though. She studied his face as he opened the book. She sighed when after five minutes she couldn’t read his expression at all. Totally blank, so she didn’t know if he liked them or not.
Since she timed it, it was one hour and seven minutes later when he closed the book and looked directly at her, causing her to shiver at the look in his eyes, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She only breathed a sigh of relief when he broke out into a gigantic grin.
“First, pardon me for swearing, but holy shit, woman, you did this? I take it the quote, unquote, naked, people are how these gentlemen look in their everyday life?”
“Yes. How much background do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this first person? Lucifer?” She flipped the book open to show her Luc as a normal guy. She laid her finger on the edge of the page, then flipped to the color coded tab she wanted and flipped the entire book to all the men standing on the steps in front of the bar, however, the bar hadn’t been drawn, just the steps. She tapped the page again. “And all these guys?”
“Yes?”
“The first one, here,” she pointed to Luc. “That’s Lucius King, he’s my older brother. He’s five years older than I am. These guys grew up together, so I’ve known them all my life. However, what you might not know is that Luc, is the president of the local motorcycle club.”
“Which one?”
“Hell’s Coffin. These guys are all fully patched members, and these steps are the bar they own, which is also called Hell’s Coffin. I just didn’t draw the building.” She flipped back to the beginning where Luc had turned into Lucifer. “This is not only how I see Luc, but Lucifer is also his club name. All these guys have club names, and I drew these pictures based on those names.”
Professor Tiggs nodded and flipped through the pages again. “Let me guess, there’s Vampire, Skeleton,” he paused when she corrected him.
“Scarecrow.”
“Okay, Scarecrow, Wolf, Hawk, and the others.”
“Correct. I’m asking if you know of anyone in the class that hasn’t come up with an idea yet if they would be willing to work with me. Luc, my brother, said that the club wants to turn their bar into a haunted house for Halloween. They want a black and red theme, they will be painting some of the old exposed beams black, as well as the front of the bar. However, they don’t want to paint the walls red. They want to know if you know of anyone that would be able to help them with the design they want. I’m sure they’ll pay, but we didn’t get into that, because I didn’t know if you knew of anyone.”
“I do, however, will your brother and these men be willing to talk to me so I can get a feel for what they want?”
“Yes, I told them you may want to come out and see the bar, you know to get a feel for the bones of it. Oh, and one of the guys is already a construction worker, and he wants to build a coffin,like as shown in old western movies where they’re basically propped up empty in the street before a gun fight. Anyway, he wants to build one like that, and Luc mentioned that he wanted to raise from it, dressed completely as Lucifer, like he was rising from Hell, at the beginning of opening the bar for that night.”
“Oh, I like that idea. Something to talk to your brother about.”
“What’s that?”
“He probably already knows, but he’s going to want to talk to the local fire marshal about occupancy. I’ve never been there, but maybe if they have an area in the back of the building they could set up as the actual haunted house, it might be better to expand that way, than to restrict entrance for a code violation.”
