Wasting time...
Teri is so tired of "hurry up and wait for the apocalypse"
Transmigrated Teri is a WIP that is part of a “post 200 words a day during July” challenge issued by
. Episodes posted daily will be of various lengths and sometimes will stop in the middle of the scene. You have been warned!The set up:
Teri Travers, a nearly-50 bitter “office lady” who has not led a happy life gets in a massive car accident after being sent home on the first day of COVID lockdown in 2020. She (and her dog) wake up in a strange new world that is also strangely familiar…that’s right, she’s been transmigrated into the world of her favorite 1990s fantasy novel series, the massively popular, critically disdained, and incredibly tropetastic Allisar Fireborn Chronicles by the infamous Chadwick Jarvaldson, aka “Fuckin’ Chad” to all his very annoyed fans who are still waiting for the final book to be published.
Previously: Thinking about serving time trapped in the house with her mother for an indeterminate lock down, Teri clutched her phone so hard she heard the case creak. Looking up at the entrance to Barkingham Palace, she saw the line for pick up was out the door.
March 16, 2020, continues in the parking lot of the doggy daycare center, Barkingham Palace…
Resigning herself to at least a 30 minute wait, she pulled up her audio book app and punched at the screen until the dulcet tones of baritone Harold McGuire filled the car as he continued reading book four of the Alissar Fireborn Chronicles, The Shadow’s Betrayal. It was the start of the part where Gervyn comes into his fireborn powers, just after his sister Vycett gets murdered by evil Emperor Nikodosis as a sacrifice to the demon god Mortu.
It was the penultimate part of Gervyn’s character arc and Teri hated it and hated Fuckin’ Chad for writing such a terrible end for a great character like Vycett and really, it was the worst scene possible to pick up on, given her mood.
But it was the Alissar Fireborn Chronicles, and if nothing else Teri’s damned loyalty to the book series meant she could not skip a chapter, even if she hated it. She mouthed the words along with McGuire, who had once in his younger years been tapped to play the rakish mentor character Valerontarius, before the movie series went into perpetual “development” and he had eventually aged out of the role. Still had the voice for it, in Teri’s opinion, and clung to the hope that the rumored animated series would be picked up by Netflix and they would hire McGuire for a the voice actor for Valerontarius.
Despite Vycett’s terrible and completely unnecessary demise, Teri found herself relaxing just listening along and thinking about her favorite fix-it fanfics. There were so many. Sometimes she suspected the legendary fandom, which was over twenty years old, kept going strong on spite alone. She honestly hoped that the delayed (and delayed and delayed) publication of the final book in the series would spell the end for the massive popularity of the story. Not that it would alter her own perverse dedication. It might be due to sunk cost fallacy but she had been invested in the story since her twenties and she was not going to drop it just because Fuckin’ Chad kept screwing over her favorite characters.
Her phone chimed and she looked at the screen.
HI, Ms. Travers. It’s Louis at Barkingham. We’re closing in fifteen minutes and Theo is ready to go.
Startled, Teri realized that she had been sitting in the car listening to the audiobook for nearly forty-five minutes.