The Developer's Kit (Main Story)

An old-timey red telephone sitting alone on a small wooden stand began to ring, echoing throughout the dark laboratory. It'd been quite some time (five minutes) since it'd last gone off, but there was usually only one thing that anyone on the other end of the line wanted. And that, our dear Readers, is the business of the greatest scientist that's ever lived.

Zoey, the scientist's lovely gothic intern, swiftly snatched up the receiver after the first ring.

"Thank you for calling Edward's Laboratory, where your fetish is our science project! May I ask who's calling?"

"Oh, yes ma'am. This is the Queen of England, and my cunt itches. Would you nice folks happen to sell an extendable cunt scratcher? You see, my old hands are too busy stroking the two biggest black cocks in England to do it myself, so I need something long enough so that these tall gentlemen can use it to reach down and scratch my cunt."

"Hello, your Majesty." Zoey sighed. "How long did it take you to come up with that one?"

"Five minutes, give or take." Amanda Vett, Edward's niece and Zoey's best friend since childhood, said with a snicker from the other end of the line. "My mom's got dinner ready, so come up and get some grub if you guys are hungry."

"Oh, sweet." Zoey said, then looked over to where an unproductive Edward was sitting and blowing rings of skunky smoke into the air. "Edward, food."

"Food..." He nodded, his tired and bloodshot eyes not looking away from the burning joint between his beefy fingers as he held it up in front of his face. "Your shift is about done anyway, so as your last intern task for the day, bring me a plate, and I'll sign off on your hours sheet."

"M'kay." Zoey said, hanging up the shiny red telephone with a smile on her lips.

The plucky young goth skipped across the floor of the laboratory, feeling as light as a feather as she passed by the scientist towards the exit. Stopping at the wide set of stairs leading up to the huge set of steely-concrete blast-doors above, Zoey stopped and looked back towards Edward with a puzzled look on her face.

"Wait, what are you smoking?" She asked, her nose twitching at the foul scent filling the air. "That doesn't smell like weed."

"That's because it's not." He said, then took a few quick puffs and continued to wheeze his next words through strained, smokey breath. "Don't worry about it."

Zoey nodded and went up the stairs, knowing better than to pry into anything unusual that Edward either said or did, especially when he hinted and/or warned not to.

Some things were better left unknown, and she felt as though she already knew too much about quite a few things thanks to him.

In a few brief moments, Zoey stood at the top of the steps in front of the door and pressed a small red button located on the wall to her right.

The large impenetrable set of double-doors doors made several loud and obnoxious banging and clanging noises before they outwardly opened up, revealing the simple yet elegant backyard of the Vett household.

From the left corner of the yard, Zoey could see that he healthy green grass in the ground was freshly cut, the tall wooden fence surrounding the modest-sized property was solid and obscuring, a fairly large shed containing a hot-tub in the opposite corner of the backyard was open and unoccupied in this admittedly chilly weather, and the sliding-glass backdoor of the two-story Vett household was alive with light as Mandy stood behind it, waiting for her best friend with a warm smile on her pretty blonde face.

Zoey strode forward with a growling stomach as the thick doors to Edward's Laboratory closed behind her.