Chapter 4
“Come in!” a deep voice called out, and Starr drew in a deep breath, let it out in a rush, and opened the door to Professor Tiggs’s office. She closed the door behind her, went to stand in front of his desk, and waited until he looked up to acknowledge her.
It took five minutes, but he looked up and frowned. “I know you, right?”
“Yes, Professor Tiggs. I’m Starr King, I’m in your night class for Hollywood makeup.”
“Ah, that’s right.” He nodded as he tossed his pen on his papers and leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh. “What can I do for you?”
“I took your assignment you gave us three weeks ago very seriously.”
“As you should, but how seriously are we talking about here?”
“I sketched some designs, contacted the people I want to transform, made molds of their faces, hands, teeth, but not until after they gave me permission to use them. Now, I’m here to tell you what I have planned and ask if I could use three or four other people to help.
Oh, and also if you know of anyone that would be interested in working with the group of people I contracted as set designers.
They have an idea of what they want, but don’t know if they can pull it off. ”
“Oh, wow, that sounds like a lot.” He rose from his chair and went to the coffee pot in the corner and when she declined a cup, he rejoined her at his desk. “I think you’re the first person to ever come to me with your idea well in advance of the actual due date of the assignment.”
“Yeah, well, if my ideas work, then I’ll have a lot, and I mean a lot of work ahead of me. I’m anticipating that just one person being transformed will take me six hours. That’s the minimum. I plan on transforming twelve of them.”
“Good God, woman, now you have my interest piqued. I guess instead of asking all the questions shouting in my mind, I should look at your designs first?”
Starr only nodded as she passed him her prized sketchbook and took the seat before the desk, without it being offered.
She hoped her professor would be enthralled after the first page in her book.
She withdrew her own bottle of water from her backpack and took a sip, just to ease her dry mouth, not enough to make her nervous to run to the bathroom though.
She studied his face as he opened the book.
She sighed when after five minutes she couldn’t read his expression at all.
Totally blank, so she didn’t know if he liked them or not.
Since she timed it, it was one hour and seven minutes later when he closed the book and looked directly at her, causing her to shiver at the look in his eyes, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She only breathed a sigh of relief when he broke out into a gigantic grin.
“First, pardon me for swearing, but holy shit, woman, you did this? I take it the quote, unquote, naked, people are how these gentlemen look in their everyday life?”
“Yes. How much background do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this first person? Lucifer?” She flipped the book open to show her Luc as a normal guy.
She laid her finger on the edge of the page, then flipped to the color coded tab she wanted and flipped the entire book to all the men standing on the steps in front of the bar, however, the bar hadn’t been drawn, just the steps.
She tapped the page again. “And all these guys?”
“Yes?”
“The first one, here,” she pointed to Luc. “That’s Lucius King, he’s my older brother. He’s five years older than I am. These guys grew up together, so I’ve known them all my life. However, what you might not know is that Luc, is the president of the local motorcycle club.”
“Which one?”
“Hell’s Coffin. These guys are all fully patched members, and these steps are the bar they own, which is also called Hell’s Coffin.
I just didn’t draw the building.” She flipped back to the beginning where Luc had turned into Lucifer.
“This is not only how I see Luc, but Lucifer is also his club name. All these guys have club names, and I drew these pictures based on those names.”
Professor Tiggs nodded and flipped through the pages again. “Let me guess, there’s Vampire, Skeleton,” he paused when she corrected him.
“Scarecrow.”
“Okay, Scarecrow, Wolf, Hawk, and the others.”
“Correct. I’m asking if you know of anyone in the class that hasn’t come up with an idea yet if they would be willing to work with me.
Luc, my brother, said that the club wants to turn their bar into a haunted house for Halloween.
They want a black and red theme, they will be painting some of the old exposed beams black, as well as the front of the bar.
However, they don’t want to paint the walls red.
They want to know if you know of anyone that would be able to help them with the design they want.
I’m sure they’ll pay, but we didn’t get into that, because I didn’t know if you knew of anyone. ”
“I do, however, will your brother and these men be willing to talk to me so I can get a feel for what they want?”
“Yes, I told them you may want to come out and see the bar, you know to get a feel for the bones of it. Oh, and one of the guys is already a construction worker, and he wants to build a coffin, like as shown in old western movies where they’re basically propped up empty in the street before a gun fight.
Anyway, he wants to build one like that, and Luc mentioned that he wanted to raise from it, dressed completely as Lucifer, like he was rising from Hell, at the beginning of opening the bar for that night. ”
“Oh, I like that idea. Something to talk to your brother about.”
“What’s that?”
“He probably already knows, but he’s going to want to talk to the local fire marshal about occupancy.
I’ve never been there, but maybe if they have an area in the back of the building they could set up as the actual haunted house, it might be better to expand that way, than to restrict entrance for a code violation. ”
“I understand, I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Here,” Professor Tiggs said as he handed her several business cards.
“Give these to your brother, and if need be, tell him to give one to the fire marshal. I will contact you, or your brother, however you prefer, to get out there and see the bar. Right now, I’m buried with mid-term exams for seven classes.
Give me a couple of weeks and I can make it out there.
I’ll discreetly ask around to see if there is anyone struggling to find a project.
I can ask, David, my PA from that makeup class if he has heard any grumblings.
Do you have any preferences, male or female? ”
“No, but I don’t want anyone to come in and take over.
I already told the guys that though these are my designs, the other artists may come up with something slightly different.
They agreed that was fine, however, me and only me will work on Luc.
” She flipped the pages to show the finished product of Lucifer.
“I totally agree, about you doing Lucifer, and being in charge of this project. We haven’t covered it in class yet, but there is a section about designing costumes to go with the makeup.
This isn’t just about the makeup. I can picture how Lucifer’s horns will work, and they don’t have to be from molded clay.
” He leaned in with a wink and a grin. “You’d be surprised what a few manipulated pool noodles can look like. ”
“Really?”
“Yes, think about it, would your brother want to walk around in full makeup with some broken horns because they are too heavy to keep on his face, or a full set of horns made out of pool noodles.”
“Personally, I’d go with the pool noodles.” Starr laughed, then stared at him in shock.
“What is it?”
“Oh, I told the guys to draw up an NDA for the other artists to sign.”
“Why?”
“Because they will be working with a fully operational, fully LLC licensed, motorcycle club. It’s to protect everyone, that whatever club business they might overhear, won’t be able to be repeated, nor will it be used against them in any way.”
“I totally understand.” Professor Tiggs nodded.
He stood and held out his hand. “Thank you for coming to me with this, I have a lot of ideas going through my head, however, I need to get through these mid-terms, then the finals in six weeks, then I can fully concentrate on my night course. I’m not saying it’s going to take me six weeks to go out to Hell’s Coffin to look around, but I would like to get these mid-terms out of the way first.”
“I understand,” Starr said and handed him a piece of paper. “That’s my contact information. I told Luc that I would be the go between with the two of you until you could get out there.”
“Good, good.”
“Oh, one more thing,” she said on a giggle as she flipped the book back to Luc’s normal picture. She pointed to his one furrowed brow. “See this?”
“Yes, what about it?”
“Everyone in the family, Mom, Dad, me, our grandparents, we all swear that Luc perfected that look while in the womb. Dad even said he was born with that scowl. I didn’t draw it any differently than normal. This is his everyday look.”
“Damn, that’s intimidating.”
“Yeah, but if you can get past his gruff gravelly voice, it sounds like his voice box went through a cement grinder, then he’s a great guy. I’m not saying that because he’s my brother, I’m saying it because it’s true.”
“Fair enough, I look forward to working with him.” They shook hands, and Starr left the meeting, doing a happy dance all the way down the hall and out to the parking lot to her car.
Since she had been done with classes for the day, she headed back to her small apartment and started making different prosthetics with different mediums to see which ones would work better for what she wanted to accomplish when the time came.
It wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of sets of the different materials, so she could change things on the fly if they ran into any problems.