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Dollar Store Book Club (Part 3)

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Part 1

Part 2

(This isn't getting much attention, but I already wrote it so let's continue, shall we?)

So where were we?

Oh, yeah.  Ignoring the call.

This bitch doesn't so much ignore the call as stab it in the back, push it down the stairs, drop an anvil on it, bury it, piss on its grave, dig it back up, rape it, shoot it 15 times in the head, back over it with a truck, and dump it in a well.  

But we'll get to all that.

We'd expect that if you snubbed a bunch of professional killers after finding out they're planning on betraying the organization you work for, they might do something after that.  Especially since they know where you live and it would mean death for them if you told anybody about it.

Turns out they do absolutely nothing.

Okay.

For her part Lira doesn't do anything either.

So she goes back to her regular day to day.  Back at the flower shop she runs into Cardboard Face again.  This time he tries to make some amends for his behavior when they first met and introduces himself.  I forgot the name so we'll just call him CF.  Lirael picks up on that he doesn't seem as healthy as he should be.  At this point it's brought up that sometimes when a sleeper should become ill or injured their handlers will assign a second sleeper to take care of them.  I don't mean *bang bang* in the head "take care of them", actually care for them until they get better.  She is immediately worried that he might get the idea that she would be a good candidate for that role and tries to limit her exposure to him, but he has other ideas.  

Why, yes, we are introducing a major character this far into the book.  Don't worry, he's ultimately pointless.  Like everything else.  

I'm not sure why CF wanted her to be assigned to him.  He jokingly suggested at one point that maybe he's a masochist.  Judging by how Lira treats him, he absolutely is.  At any rate he does make the request and the handlers give her orders to care for him.

Considering how expendable they treat the sleepers this seems odd.  You have a sickly sleeper who now requires the assistance of a healthy one.  So you effectively lose two sleepers.  

Anyway, mostly her job is to help him with his book he's writing.  No, seriously, that's what they do with their time together.  He doesn't really need someone to take care of him as much as he needs someone to hang out.  At first she makes it difficult.  Being as aloof and unhelpful as possible.  Treating him with scorn and saying very little.  Eventually she decides that being difficult wasn't working and she just gives up and starts to do her job.  The two start to form as close to a friendship as Lira is capable.  Which involves Lira trying to sever their relationship several times before going back to him again.  

What's his book about?  I don't fucking know.  I think it's a children's book cuz Lira is drawing images to go with it.  Something about a dog.

So one night back at her home her grandfather notices a bonfire in their orchard.  He starts bitching about thieves stealing apples and heads out to confront whoever it is with his rifle.  Lira realizes that the only reason someone would start a fire out there in the dead of night was to attract attention.  She follows behind but isn't quick enough.  The rifle goes off and a scuffle is heard.  When she gets there she finds her grandfather dead, right next to the body of her grandfather (this event is later changed for some reason, stating that her grandfather's alternate killed him and she in turn killed the alternate in a rage).  She realized that the organization sent another sleeper to her house.  Back at the house the police arrive and she realizes that one of the officers is also a sleeper.  She gives an "official" statement that she didn't see what happened and later the sleeper cop takes her aside and she gives the "real" statement that her grandfather had managed to kill his alternate but died in the process.  

Immediately afterwards she goes to CF in her grief (this being a time when she was going back to him after trying to sever the tie).  While there she kisses him and realizes that she has fallen in love with him.

This is also pointless as CF becomes largely inconsequential afterward.

The next day she goes to the flower shop to meet her handler.  She's angry that they tried to send another sleeper into her home.  She throws a knife on the table and says if they don't trust her they may as well just kill her.  Her handler says that it's not that they don't trust her, they just thought she could use some help.  They also say that her younger sister's alternate is also in the program and if they need to they could accelerate her training.  Lira says that when the time comes she wants to be the one to kill her sister.  This is played off as a bluff or at least a reason for them to give her a heads-up when the time comes.  It never comes to that though.  Probably a good thing because knowing Lira if she was put in that position the safe money says she'd kill her sister.  

Shortly afterward her grandmother passes due to her illness and the grief of her husband's murder.  They're forced to sell the orchard and move into an apartment in the city.  They split the money from the sale between her, her sister, and her aunt.  Her aunt was introduced earlier in the book as a freeloader and a drunk.  Occasionally she stays with them before disappearing for months at a time with some bloke she met.  

Alright, where are we?  Oh, I guess I should bring up the part about someone killing off the sleepers.  

So there are news reports of people being hanged in pairs with their hands clasped together with a ribbon.  This is important because something very similar happened at the cottages.  A pair of trainees had fallen in love and were found hanging from a tree with a ribbon holding their hands together.  The inference being that they knew they could never have a relationship once they left the cottages so they decided to end it together.  However, it was suspected that Madam had found out about their emotional shortcoming and set up the scene as a message to the rest of them.  

And then there were news reports of people being found in the same manner.  At first they are passed off as suicides, and when more happen there is talk of a serial killer.  Of course, Lira immediately realizes that they weren't suicides nor was there a serial killer.  The victims were all sleepers (because somehow she can tell through the television too).  She wonders if maybe Elsie is behind it.  

The handlers start giving out more potent weapons than just knives after that.  Everyone is given several pistols.  Someone is targeting them and they might need more firepower.  

Eventually there is a disruption on the television.  All the channels are blank for a while.  Then an image come up.  There are a bunch of people on the screen.  They start to introduce themselves and say they are alternates of who they are supposed to be.  They lay it out straight that they are sleepers and that there are many more of them among you.  They say they are the ones behind the lover suicides and that those people where all sleepers as well.  They explain that the two Earths are at war, and nobody on this Earth is even aware of it.  

And the populace loses their shit.  

Finale
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Added: 3 years, 5 months ago
 
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