Writing: Character Sheet: Mrs. Maybury or Alice to her friends

Greetings everyone from here up north! I’m visiting my family. My sister just had a baby boy. Lovely thing…really. There is nothing like a brand new baby smell. Better than buying a car.

Here is an appropriate character for the occasion. Its the aunt you dread coming to visit. Based on my sister’s older kid’s reaction, I’m just that. He pulled my hair, sat on me, tried to tickle me to death, and insisted me reading a bedtime story which would never end.

Anyway, here is Alice Maybury: (I am kind of proud of the name.)

Role in Story: A major character who has a surprising effect on the story. Is showed as a minor character.

Occupation: A Town Hall council member

Physical Description: An undead. Alice isn’t that badly gone. She was well preserved as she has direct access to the best taxidermist in the city (the taxidermist being her sister.) She still has most of her hair intact, but it is difficult to say what color it is. In one light it looks like grey, in another it has a touch of blue and silver in it. It is short and is curled just under her chin. Occasionally she wears hats, on those days when she is having a bad hair day or something has made her hair their permanent home. One of her ears has been nibbled from her lobule. She could fix it, but she thought it gave her personality and left it there. Always wears dresses and looks very aunt-like.

Personality: Unpleasant, always complaining, hateful, spiteful, insecure, doesn’t honestly want harm to others, but don’t know how to mend her own insecurities and shame she feels. So she acts out and bites anyone who gets too near (of course, figuratively.) Introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging. Prim. Fearless, dutiful, bossy, picky, thoughtless, stingy, rude.

Habits/Mannerisms: An air of arrogance. Interrupts everyone, face twisted in contempt, belittles those around, her eyes shine when she has triumphed over someone. Touches her nibbled earlobe when she is feeling insecure. It centers her. Laughs openly, her whole body shakes when she does that as she lets down her guard.

Background: Mrs. Maybury has lived all her life in Necropolis. She married a decent man who ran a shop selling food and other miscellaneous items people might need in their everyday life. She birthed three sons. Mrs. Maybury worked as a clerk at the Metropolitan Police station, she transcribed everything done and said inside the station. Seeing what life was from the dark side of human affairs, made her think she knew better. That she had an inside to the human mind. That everyone else was dirty, foolish, and she knew better what their lives should be like. So she ran to be a council member, and with support of her family, she got in. Not long after her husband died suddenly, he was lost at sea when he was coming back getting one of his shipments. Mrs. Maybury didn’t know, but her husband was sacrificed to the Kraken. He had drawn a short stick when he and his crew had ended in the biggest storm in the century. As soon as Mr. Maybury had been pushed overboard, the sea had calmed, and the shipment and the men got safely to the shore.

When that happened, Mrs. Maybury had been attended a Town Hall meeting. She never recovered from the loss of her husband, and she vowed when she would die, she wouldn’t leave her sons alone. That he would be wakened. Her sons didn’t need that, they were big and strong men who had taken over their father’s business and grown it into a chain of stores from Necropolis to nearby villages. When finally Mrs. Maybury had died, her sons had respected her wishes to come back, and they had bought the best necromancer in the city to wake her up. Not Jeremiah Black, as her sons thought his lifestyle made him a risky investment. They had been right. It isn’t a good thing to draw up too much attention, climb up the social latter, and be obnoxious about it. They had been right. Mrs. Maybury had died because she had forgotten to eat. Nibbling only here and there, when she was in a social event. Her sons didn’t notice her loss of appetite. They weren’t programmed to see such things, and their wives had never liked Mrs. Maybury as she intruded their private lives and told them how they should run their households, bring up their children, and dress and think. They stayed away from Mrs. Maybury as much as they could and never noticed either that she wasn’t eating.

Awakening of Mrs. Maybury didn’t make her any more pleasant. She was still the superior her, even more so now as she had taken a glimpse what it would be like in the afterlife and she wasn’t convinced about whoever was running the place. It was disorganized, messy, and too bright.

Internal Conflicts: To be loved again, feeling loneliness and unworthy.

External Conflicts: Being bitten by ghouls and lead into the underground world, Petula’s life being in jeopardy. Minta Stopford and her rule.

Notes:

Mrs. Maybury sat in the Town Hall’s auditorium. She heard once again Frederick Kilborn speak against her kind and attacking against the speech she had just given. Once they had been friends, or as friendly to each other as two politicians can be, and taking into account what she could be like, but now he was openly hostile against her. It had only been right that she changed her political parties now as she was dead. She saw nothing illogical in it, not even when she had bashed those who had done the same before her, but she had forgotten all about that. She had never done such a thing, being uncivil for the newly dead. Their lives were hard enough for the living to start attacking them. It was odd to get used to your own body from a new unattached perspective.

Mrs. Maybury stood up when she had had enough, she said, “That is untrue. And it is shameful how a representative of people can speak degradingly about legitimate voters of the city. I have heard enough, and you better sit down.” She looked sternly at Mr. Kilborn.

The man didn’t even flinch. He had gotten used to her antics before, during, and after her leap to the Union of the Undead. “If I’m right, I still have the floor, and I presume to have uninterrupted time to state my point like I gave to you,” he said.

“Here, here,” his fellow party members said.

“So, would you be so kind and sit down,” he continued on.

“I do no such thing while you are agitating against my people,” she said.

“What people that might be? Last week it was us and now…” he let his words trail off.

A tick came to her face. The same tick that later would end up her being bitten by a pack of ghouls and the fabric of Necropolis to change. She stood her ground. “It is against the constitution to give hate speeches.”

“Everyone has a right to be heard, and what I’m saying are genuine concerns Necropolitans have,” Frederick said.

There was a great urge to stomp her foot, but no lady did anything like that, so she lifted her head and sat down.

“Thank you. Now that I can continue…” Frederick said.

Mrs. Maybury didn’t listen to him. She looked at Bertha Chaplain, who was shaking her head. She didn’t look happy at all about Mrs. Maybury’s outburst. She had done nothing wrong, someone had to defend them, and if their leader wasn’t willing to do that, then she had to. This was one of the reasons Frederick Kilborn was secretly happy that Mrs. Maybury had jumped the ship. The party meetings had gotten whole lot peaceful, and no one was complaining about the inadequacy of Mrs. Kilborn’s cookies and other bakings. Suddenly they were the talk of the meetings, and that made both him and his wife happy. Mrs. Maybury didn’t know that. What she knew was she needed the get back at both Frederick and Bertha. They would know what it would like to cross her, and she would make sure nothing could be traced back to her in any concrete way. She would make them look like fools. She was no fool! How dared they.

Have a pleasant aunt-free day ❤

© K.A. Ashcomb