Subject: Designing Shadows Part Five
From: N.E. Collins
Date: Mon Dec 18, 2000 8:23am

The ghost watched Suzanne Sugarbaker as she moved about the room matching swatches of patterns and paint samples. Now here was his idea of the perfect woman. She was sooo big and beautiful and he couldn't resist from placing a little love bite on her behind. "Ahh! What the hell?" Suzanne exclaimed as she stood up straight quickly. "What was that?" She looked around and saw nothing at first, and then she spied the cat lounging on a nearby divan. "Oh, I betcha think that was REAL cute, huh? Well, look here puss, nobody and I mean NOBODY touches my rearend unless they put a RING on my finger!" The cat leapt from the divan and disappeared behind a desk, and disappeared would be the oppuritive word here. You see, the cat was a ghost as well. It had lived each of it's nine lives and now it was suffering eternity haunting the great house. It had no allegiance to any of the others much the same as it had not in life. The lights flickered on and off a few times which caused Suzanne great irritability.

"ANTHONY! ANTHONY!"

Anthony Bouvier came into the room looking a bit haggard. "You bellowed, madam?"

Suzanne ignored the comment. "Anthony, how am I supposed to get ANY work done if the electrician's keep playing with the lights?"

"Suzanne," Anthony explained. "They are not PLAYING with the lights. They are trying to fix them, but they don't see anything wrong with them."

Suzanne took a superior stance as she continued. "Well, anybody can SEE that they NEED fixin'. A CHILD could SEE that!" She changed the subject. "While you ARE here I want you to catch that cat and take it somewhere else."

"Suzanne, I am highly allergic to cats. And as you can plainly see I am neither sneezing or tearing up excessively, which leads to the conclusion that there is no cat to remove. Now, if your highness will excuse me, I have real work to do." And with that he took off leaving Suzanne alone with ghost cat and the ghost of Carl Collins who was languishing over her anxiously.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.