Nell's Ongoing Dilemma
a half-way there rocky horror fanfic
this being instalment no. 1: introduction

It was too late to start working on anything. She knew it. The clock face at the lower right hand side of her work station told her so. 2:13pm and a class to get to at three. She sighed and pulled at the closely cropped hairs in the nape of her neck. She could almost hear Richard's voice, that strange little middle eight of his, telling her patiently that if she could only be more organized, more focused. Wonderful things could be accomplished if she could only find the shortest path between focusing and bringing her fingers near a keyboard. It seemed like that, anyway. But she wasn't getting anything done. Nothing remotely related to writing, at least. Instead, she was waiting for the Altavista window to hurry up and display the results for her query on Rocky Horror fan fiction. Computers in the ageing McGrudder lab at the University of Central Flatland were so slow...

She read through the list of results that eventually scrolled down and groaned to herself. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow, Dark Shadows. At least she could console herself with the thought that if anybody out there wrote about Buffy and Willow then there had to be at least one Rocky Horror story. Right? Not among those Altavista links, though. She bit her nails and decided to try Excite. She wasn't sure if adding in a plus sign between search words would be of much help there, but it couldn't kill to try. She typed in her query, hit the search icon, and sank into her seat as a rather long list of nothing particularly Rocky fiction related scrolled down.

"What? Doesn't anybody keep a fan fiction page?"

Sighing, she clicked over the first link she found, knowing full well what the fan fiction content would be. Zero. One if she was lucky. She wished she could remember the URL for that site Tim had showed her a few nights ago. Once again Richard's voice stole into her subconscious. Organization, focus. She drew a hand over her eyes and tried not to sigh again. The page she had clicked into was little more than links. Links with no descriptions. Nothing nothing except David's Rocky Horror Page and Wakko's to give her a clue.

"Who the Hell's Wakko, anyway?" she grumbled, five seconds before an error message flashed on the screen, signalling that not only was Wakko someone she didn't know, he no longer had a page either. A Real Time window popped into her page, begging her to upgrade to Quick Time Three, and she clicked it shut before trying out Magenta's Mysterious Dream. It seemed to her that any page with Magenta's name on it deserved at least a chance. The page keeper was all the way in Australia from the looks of the URL. The page was taking its darling time coming down. The lower right hand clock face read 2:35pm. She bit her lip. Damn those slow university lab computer left-overs. Cannibals of the information age.

"Come on, come on, Magenta..."

Still nothing. White cyber voids stared out at her like so much old make-up. No sense wasting time. The RHPS Fanzine sounded promising. She hoped it wasn't that Italian page she had visited earlier. She hated those pages devoted to letting everybody know that somewhere out there was a fanzine you could never read (out of print, she figured) with articles you'd very much like to read. But the Fanzine page didn't seem to be the Italian one. A message window briefly explained that the original keeper of the page had given up on the whole thing due to bust schedules and that now Brad Ericson (not the real name, but I do not wish to insult anyone with this essay-story because I know that the keeper of The RHPS Fanzine has nothing to do with the lack of Rocky fan fiction as picked up by search engines) was in charge and who the Hell was Brad Ericson anyway but who cares just click and hope his archive has fanfics on it. So she clicked and bit her lip and drummed her fingers and bowed to tell Richard that the reason she wasn't all that focused was that there didn't seem to be anything to focus on. He'd probably laugh. Not a mean laugh, just a yeah, life kicks me too, and ain't that some regular bona fide shit right there laugh. Not that she'd enjoy one of those either.

Her fingers ceased their drumming. Home: A Love Story. Good golly, it sounded like a fanfic. She scrolled through it quickly, trying not to be too disappointed when she discovered it seemed to be about Frank. It was definitely a fanfic. An oh good god feeling washed over her, a smile nowhere in sight as she typed the address onto an Email and glanced down at the clock and read 2:45pm. Richard would take care of things. The lab printers were busy as Hell. He'd be late for his class. So would she. Who cared.

"It's at http://www.frontiernet.net/~macattack/RHPS/Transylvanian/Transylvanian.html," she called out, watching as Richard, sitting across from her, stumbled while trying to type it out. It was then she noticed that he had been typing for quite some time and looking over at where she sat every minute or so. It was then she realized that her life had become nothing but these words you read now, and she found that quite funny.

"Better change that black background before you send it to print, though, or you'll have only white paper for a printed copy," she told me. I grinned and decided that enough was enough for that day.

Hello. As you can see, I'm not too good at comedy. I'm not getting far in finding fan fiction about Rocky Horror, though, so I'm yet to prove to myself that a serious story can be written. Knowing the Internet, I doubt it... but ah well.

coda

This story was first written out on the twenty sixth of January of the year nineteen ninety nine. It is an actual description of how Team Bonet member l nevellson and I, cc hargrieves, decided to spend an afternoon searching for Rocky fiction. Why we decided to write the story from Nell Campbell's and Richard O'Brien's point of view, we don't know. We were both feeling rather silly, I guess. It was a lot of fun, though, and gave birth to several other "instalments". I guess we decided to stick to Rocky comedy after all. Seems a lot safer.

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January 26th, 1999 Team Bonet. The Rocky Horror Show is 1973 Richard O'Brien. Lives don't have copyrights, but I'm sure Little Nell's and Ritz's are copyrighted to themselves, respectively. All web pages mentioned are copyrighted to their respectful owners and creators. Altavista and Excite are also copyrighted to themselves, and we hope none of the above will take offence from this story, because it was certainly not our intent to insult or defame in any way.

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