Dr. Horrible and the Mud Monster (Twyla)

So far Locke had one opinion of the state of New York. It was too cold for any sane person to want to venture outside. As a result of not wanting to go out where the largest amount of workable material was, Locke got to be very familiar with the layer of dirt that liked to stick to his clothes. The more time he spent at the Institute the greater the amount of dirt that managed to find him. Each potted plant that he had walked past gave him a bit of materials. A pinch here, a little handful there. Of course this meant that he had to laundry more frequently then you would think a teenage boy would do. Yes he now had more then just three days worth of clothes thanks to the packages Kendra had sent, but unless he wanted to walk around looking like a molehill, Locke needed to do a load every couple of days.

Which was perfectly fine with Locke. Laundry rooms tend to be very warm thanks to dryers running, and he liked the hum of the machines. Late at night when other students had gone to bed Locke would make his way to the laundry room and enjoy the warmth and peace that was offered to him. As usual he was running a little later in the day. A period of re-adjustment the doctors called it, time to re-teach your body how to function under new circumstances. The last five years had been nothing but one perpetual period of re-adjustment for Locke. In five years he had lost the ability to tell depth, lost hours of sleep to keep two screaming babies happy, quit playing in a band with his best friend, and learned ten different ways to make hot dogs tolerable eating options. He was now in a new period of re-adjustment, one that had lasted for days now and did not seem to be going so well. Oh yes he had less problems at night now, living with a mass of people rather then three others kept the silence away, and yes, he no longer felt the stress of not opening his mouth about who he really was, (though it was still very much quiet on the Locke front), but he had not gotten use to one simple fact.

Three hours.

Locke's inner clock had for the past sixteen years been set to Pacific, so a few days was still not nearly enough time to convince him that it was later then it actually was. If inner clocks could actually be seen, the Californian's would have the hour hand running backwards, the minute had going around triple time, and the second hand always stuck one second before twelve. It did not help that he would get instant messages from his friend when he was trying to settle down, or that he had no watch to look at and keep track of the time. Three o’ clock was the official time. To him it was noon, and time to get the first load going. Locke paused for a moment as he stared at the clothes he had tossed into the washer. There was still some room in there for a few more things. Since it had been fairly quiet he stripped off the three shirts he wore placing them aside on a dryer. His hand still in contact with the shirts it only took a bit of focus to pull the dirt into a pile that he had been working on. In this new environment it was about as close as he had gotten to a friend, not counting that Tarin guy from the medium shop. There was just enough there for a small golem and he wanted to test something out. With a hiss the washer started up.

A small sink was in the room for people to do some delicate hand washing. Locke turned it on and used his hands to transfer some water onto his dirt pile. Would a mud golem be easier to work with then a dirt one? He took a deep breath, held it for three seconds and then breathed out for the same length of time, settling his mind into the dirt as music from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog played on his computer, stirring the water in a bit.

A nudge here. A prod there, and the mud started to take shape. Two lumpy hands, two tumourous looking arms, a blockish chest… Locke’s focus was so much on the golem, that he failed to really notice anyone or anything else. The machines weren’t a problem. He couldn’t feel their shaking.