THE MUSEHOUSE SAGAS

Part 1

'SeanMuse Comes Back'

or

'Carbon Copies Make Bad Pets'

Unfortunately By: Laura K

Disclaimer: Right. About MuseHouse...It doesn’t really exist. Not even in my mind...Because that would just be prime excuses for my parents to lock me up. A lot of you guys have expressed interest in my SeanMuse. Well, um, I can’t loan him out, but you can always get one of your own...If Sean ever finds out about this, he will probably either laugh so hard at me being an ignoramus, or just never read anything here again. Which actually seems safer for everyone's mental health. All the real people belong to themselves and all the characters that belong to other people belong to those people then, don’t they? Harper, Anne, Maris, and anyone else I mention coming directly from ‘The Oracle Ones’ or ‘The Evermore Thread’ are mine mine mine, and using them is naughty. Also- this is just an experiment. I sometimes dream up things like this, and talking about Sean as a muse prompted me to make him a ‘real muse’ like some LOTR fanfiction I have read...Kudos to those rabid pervy Elf lovers for planting the idea; especially Mary A and Malinore, the best royal concubines east of the Anduin and possibly all of Middle earth.

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Ah yes...Yet another completely fruitless evening at her computer.

The blankness of the WordPerfect document mocked her in the worst way, flaunting its empty super-bright whiteness at her wan, washed out face. Even her freckles seem to have lost their color. Everything about her was rumpled and flattened and wrinkled in the wrong places from sitting in that damn chair so long.

That was what she had written so far.

Resisting the compelling urge to bang her head against the desk, her bloodshot eyes closed wearily. No energy. No inspiration. Just the horrible knowledge that every key she pressed would be the wrong one.

The internet called her with the siren song of her heinously out of date dial-up connection, but she put all her willpower into resisting. What was the point? It was a Sunday evening. None of her friends would be on, and she had only five minutes ago responded once to probably every recent post on the message boards she frequented. None of it had served to give her that heady rush of creative energy, that addictive sizzle in the back of her neck. The best thing she had gotten was a faint tingle of inspiration from reading a so-so Legomance. If LegolasMuse was still in the talan he had built for himself up in that huge oak tree, perhaps she could get some inspiration out of him. Then she would at least get something done, but knew that would, in the end, only prove completely fruitless and drive her further into her slump. She needed her most important Muse. The unfortunate, unwilling, and somewhat uncoordinated leader of the Muses.

Unfortunately, SeanMuse had gone out to the PigglyWiggly for carrots and dip. Two weeks ago.

She had called his mobile several times. Got his voice.

"‘Lo. I’m not here. Leave a message or bugger off." After this part of the message there was an awkward silence. How a person could manage to make an awkward silence on a voice mail auto message, Laura didn’t know. "Nanoo nanoo." The recording concluded hurriedly.

She had only left one message and that had been days ago.

"Laura?"

Hark. Someone called. The red-headed girl managed to raise her head and stare blankly, working on bringing the blurry forms in the doorway into her focus.

EvaMuse and ScoloviMuse were standing there, looking expectant. They had their coats on and obviously were going someplace. However, like all Muses, they needed their authoress/author’s permission to leave the premises. It was a stupid rule, but she had a few unruly Muses who would be off and running had they not had this binding law set up.

"Mmmm?" She hummed, trying not to use her jaw or any muscles, for that fact.

"Would it be okay if we went out for the night?" Eva inquired. Both of their coats were already donned. She could smell the delicate rose oil perfume all the way over where she slouched in her computer chair.

EvaMuse and ScoloviMuse were the copies of two friends from school that she kept around...Eva was a girl that could be described as voluptuous. She had long, dark, very thick hair and the sort of carefree take-no-prisoners air that would have made her a delightful New York socialite or Front Row Girl had she grown up anywhere but Wisconsin. Scolovi was a skinny guy, who was similar to, but completely unlike Johnny Depp; dressed to the nines in hard rock memorabilia, he was a complete opposite to Eva Jean Jelly Bean in her pink peacoat.

Laura gave a grunt to the affirmative and managed to jerk her head up and down a couple times to make things completely clear. With a concerned look cast in her direction, Eva breezed away, Scolovi trailing like a sullen shadow behind her.

So the evening dragged on. She could hear BeatrixKiddoMuse and HaldirMuse in the attic- the clash of razor-sharp metal on metal was unmistakable. One floor down, the deep rumbling voice of MichaelClarkDuncanMuse (also known as BearMuse) could be heard distinctly, followed by the exuberant guffaw of CarolBurnettMuse. They were tangoing again- she could hear Carlos Gardel on the record player and the sound of bodies bumping into various objects. She supposed IanHolmMuse would be reading in the library with a brandy. Briefly, she longingly thought of joining him-, either that or creeping quietly into ViggoMuse’s studio and trying to paint a little something. But she quickly gave up on these ideas as well. Trying to move was useless.

Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted by the distinct sound of the kitchen sliding door rumbling open.

She straightened slightly, ears perking to the noise.

"Anybody home?" The Someone bellowed from the other room. Laura leapt from the chair- she’d know that voice anywhere.

She dashed madly around the corner, narrowly missing Viggo’s rare Japanese blossoming tree he had put there in a giant urn, and skidded onto the freshly washed blue linoleum floor of the kitchen, coming to a dramatic halt.

She gawped.

There was SeanMuse. Obviously un-raped, un-butchered, but, well, actually rather unclean.

He looked up at her from where he was crouched next to a brown grocery bag, unloading five jars of peanut butter. He had two weeks worth of growth on his face and his hair was one big giant cowlicked mess. He kind of looked like an axe murderer. His clothes were encrusted in mud so badly that she couldn’t read the smart-ass words on his t-shirt and the floor around him was drizzled with bits of dried earth.

Obviously he knew what was coming; as the moment she had rushed into the kitchen like that, she began to show the tell-tale signs that a ear-buster was on the way. While he didn’t have his earplugs on him at the moment, he still took five necessary steps away.

She didn’t hesitate in the slightest to pitch herself onto the floor and begin her hellish five-year-old temper tantrum special.

For the next few minutes, the world in MuseHouse consisted of a lot of banshee-like screaming and screeching, ginormous amounts of slander against SeanMuse’s person, and some very very very nasty Dutch words.

Looking like someone in a particularly severe fit of rabies, Sean’s somewhat-but-not-entirely-faithful authoress turned several distinct colors. Viggo once said that she could probably complete the entire art wheel on a very bad day if they let her.

Finally, with one last, drawn out wail and a lingering obscenity (directed at her errant Muse), the blitzkrieg barrage stopped and she lay limp as a fish on the floor, breathing heavily and feeling quite lightheaded.

Heaving a sigh, SeanMuse stepped right over her, and humming something cheerily, meandered his way to the bathroom.

"How DARE you!" She wheezed, trying to make it as menacing as possible, which just came out sounding as if she had no vocal chords. The door slammed down the hallway.

She lay on the floor for several minutes. The irregular silence that had fallen over the house was generally ignored. Most of her Muses had come down to see what had upset her so badly, their heads peeping around the corner, one right over another like a demented totem pole. Seeing that she seemed to have spent the rage that had been mounting for about 14 days, they went back to whatever they had been doing, muttering quietly to one another.

Finally, she hauled herself up and crawled pathetically down the hall like a wounded soldier. She scratched on the bathroom door with her nails, intent on making SeanMuse open up and tell her why he had been gone, and when there was no answer she pressed her ear against the wood. Water running. Great. He was taking a shower.

With a groan she got to her feet and went to slump in her computer chair. Then, unhappy with just sitting there, she automatically began to write in spite and anger. It wasn’t exactly a sudden burst of inspiration, it was a letting-go of her rage, taking it out on her characters. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything really bad to Harper McKinnion, the character which SeanMuse was inspiration for, in this part of the story for retribution against her Muse alone...Harper was far too near and dear. Unlike some people that looked remarkably like him. Perhaps Harper and Anne should have a bit of a row, just to clear the air of tension. No, wait- Harper and Andrew should have a bit of a row...Hadn’t that been what she was aiming for anyway? Shrugging, she began to bang on the keyboard like some people bang on a piano.

It was a full half-hour before SeanMuse emerged from the bathroom. She had kept her office door open for that reason alone, and when he tried to sneak by, a much mollified and vastly more sane Laura stopped him.

"I see you."

He stopped and she could see his shoulders hunch up in a visible wince.

"Come in here."

He did so, reluctantly, with a wary look on his face. Leaning up against the wall, he crossed his arms, and attempted to smile. SeanMuse was not normally a nervous Muse. But as he was both emotionally and physically bound to his authoress for as long as she chose to have him there, she could hurt him if she wanted to. Somewhat badly, at that. What had she done when KevinMuse tried to eat one of the others? Well, it wasn’t pretty. However, SeanMuse wasn’t a ferocious and psychopathic cannibal, so he usually went physically unharmed. Except for his ears, which were still ringing from her long-winded tirade.

She was looking up at him calmly. Obviously, things hadn’t been going well...He could see the circles under her eyes and the blueness of her veins lying under her skin.

"Where were you?" She inquired sweetly, looking him straight in the eye with her bloodshot ones.

"Getting carrots?" He attempted. Yeah, he was trying to put some humor into the situation, but it obviously wasn’t working. She just stared at him.

"For two weeks?"

"Right...That." He began slowly, scratching his jaw absently. "Well-, it kind of started out with my bike getting bent up pretty badly-,"

Laura sighed. Not this again. When she had SeanMuse created, there had been a small defect- there usually was, somewhere in the copy. Unlike the original model whose full name they did not speak, her Muse seemed to have little to no ability with cycling, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, he shared the same fascination for it as his real-life counterpart. This caused some bruising and scraping and numerous trips to the hospital.

"You know what, Sean?" She interrupted, raising one hand. "I don’t wanna know anymore. This sounds like its going to be a long story, and I’m on a roll, here."

He looked relieved, and cleared his throat a little. "Great."

"Great." She echoed, and turned her attention back to the screen.

As she began to clack away once more, Sean picked up a stack of papers and began looking through them all. Things had rapidly gone back to normal. He was only grateful Laura forgot about things that he did fairly quickly.

The night’s peace was partially restored, and it was though it had never happened. They bantered about silly things. He put one socked foot on the table and she growled at him to take it off or else. He complained that her sporadic bursts of furious typing was giving him a headache, so she smacked her hands on the keyboard really obnoxiously. Normal, everyday stuff that they did to annoy one another.

"The bathroom looks pretty questionable." He mentioned as he read through a page of back story concerning the character Anne’s history and lineage.

She didn’t pause in her work. "I thought Bear cleaned it?"

"Doesn’t look like its been cleaned in a month."

She sighed, knowing she would wind up having to do it...Living in a house with more than twenty other people was tough. She had to move out of her old house back in the day and have a new one built with tons of extra rooms and conveniences. The attic had been turned into a training room, the library had a fireplace put in, and the laundry room had to be enlarged (laundry alone wreaked havoc with her electricity bills). They couldn’t get help, no one thought the place was sane enough to stay in and work for, plus she was only a menial fantasy writer, and the last book was still struggling up the popularity scale. So, she was sometimes stuck with cleaning the bathrooms and whatever else, which she would have to do once more...But later. She was on a roll.

It was true that SeanMuse was the biggest force in her work. Originally, it had been SeanMuse’s original copy, who was very likely not aware that he had a couple of Museclones© running around (no one quite knows how Muses are made down to most exact details, and MuseCorps aren’t telling, either). However, Laura quickly realized that even though his snarky and sweet personality was quite nice, she’d have to have something deeper for a muse...Something more ‘hands-on’(no pun intended). So, SeanMuse had been purchased.

And it had worked.

Sure, SeanMuse wasn’t...The Real Thing. But that was all right. She thought The Real Thing would be a bit uncomfortable about the whole business, anyway.

SeanMuse hadn’t been her first muse, but he was undoubtedly her best and most helpful. And he knew it too, which sometimes caused animosity between them.

"BLEEDIN’ CHRIST!" Someone screamed from the direction of the 1^st floor bathroom that SeanMuse had been talking about.

"Told you." Her antagonist said, face hidden by the notes he was engrossed in.

BasherMuse came bounding out of the bathroom, sweating profusely. "Bloody eff, Laur, what’s happened to the loo, eh?"

They both shrugged, not looking up from their separate jobs.

"There’s gonna be, like, rats or something in there, I’m positive."

"Use my bathroom then, Bash." She said. "I have to get cleaning that one later."

"Thought Kiddo was doin’ it."

"No. She’s on kitchen duty."

He did some sort of incomprehensible East End curse under his breath. They were all sick of Kiddo’s rice...She made it with every meal.

"Go away, Bash, I’m trying to write, here."

"Anything about me?"

"No."

"Cow."

"Numpty."

"Bloody kife."

"Male trollop."

BasherMuse snorted and slunk away. She could hear his boots on the carpeted staircase.

"Don’t make a mess in my bathroom!" She shouted after him, then scanned what she had just written.

["If you’re asking why, then I don’t have an answer." Harper said, looking his employer in the eye. "I know there’s no excuse." He paused, and glanced at the fire seriously, as though thinking carefully about his next words, before turning back to the elderly man whose lined face held plenty of worry for his charges’ predicament.

It was then something that only could be described as a snort emitted from the person to her left, and she broke off, startled.

Looking around curiously, Laura spotted him reading a paper with a very incredulous expression on his face. Her stomach gave a funny lurch.

Oh no. SeanMuse had found her lamest experiment, it seemed.

He made a funny choking sound that was the bastard child of a laugh and...Well, something else; his face was contorted with both disbelief and barely stifled hilarity.

She snatched at the two stapled pages he held, but he moved quickly and her fingers closed on air.

"What IS this?" He demanded with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing! Give it back, it doesn’t matter!"

Sean stood up, holding the paper high above her head, squinting up at it.

"You wrote a SEX BIT?!" He said in disbelief.

"Give it to me!" Panic began to run its tingling fingers up her skin. "It was just something I did to kill time!"

"Right! What the hell are you making me do with my tongue?!" He asked, eyes flying over the hastily penned sentences.

"SEAN!" She grabbed for his knees, not truly caring if she hurt him at the moment- it was payback time.

He wobbled on the chair he had climbed to stand on dangerously, but he managed to somehow break her grip around his legs and jump down before making a run for it.

"GET BACK HERE!"

They ran around the house for quite some time, until a dangerous fold in the rug made him trip. She immediately pinned him down and tore the badly crumpled pages from his hand.

"There!" She shouted triumphantly, tearing them to tiny bits. "There! Ha! Its gone now."

"I can’t believe you wrote that!"

"I’ve written stuff like that before and you know it!" She said, blushing furiously and running her hand through her hair again.

"Not about me."

"Its not about you, you dingbat, its about Harper." She hissed. "The difference is monumental. Because Anne would at least go for Harper and try to get him in bed."

"What? Harper’s just like me! How can that possibly make any sense?" He asked, smirking at her from the floor.

"It makes sense to me! Harper is my creation, so I know him back and front." She lied smoothly. "Also, making him just like you would be stupid and childish. He’s more interesting than you are."

"Okay, because of the amazing photograph-memory skills and all that. Sure. Still, he’s got my personality."

"They’re similar!" Laura shouted. "SIMILAR, I tell you! Okay, Harper, I guess, is a improved alternate universe you."

"Come on, just admit it." He said cheekily. "You think I rock."

"No. I think you are retarded. Now go away, I’ve got more work to do, and I don’t want you bothering me, unless you want me to ship you down to Chicago and have you put in Peacher’s closet." She snapped, and then marched away, nose in the air.

"Writers." He sighed to himself, slumping back on the floor. "Why the hell do I bother?"To Be Possibly Continued...If I Feel Like It.