The Least Complicated

The heavy oaken front door of the well aged brownstone soundlessly opened inward revealing a nervously smiling couple. They were both nicely dressed in clothes that I imagined had to be fashionable by some set of standards that well exceeded my means. In addition, the gentleman’s ensemble had a way of complimenting what his wife was wearing, and vice versa. It came off with a subtle flair that refused to be categorized as ostentatious, but, at the same time, demanded that almost anyone, even myself, would notice. As it stood, I found myself tempted to share my observation with a healthy dose of vomit, as was often my response to anything that came close to falling into the ‘cute’ category. Before I had a chance, however, the lady’s hand snaked out and snatched up mine in a flash, which, as she drew my right hand away from the safety of my side, also managed to shake free my preoccupation with being sick.

“Good afternoon, Sir!” she exclaimed loudly in a shrill voice that was a little higher than I expected. In addition, something about the way her mouth formed the word, ‘Sir’ rubbed me completely the wrong way. Not that she said it with a condescending tone, and I would have expected, but something about it was not right.

“It is so good of you to come on such short notice!” she continued, disappointingly unaware of my overly critical analysis. All the while her hand steadily rocked mine up and down. When she finished speaking, she let the handshake falter, although she still clutched firmly to my hand. The thought flitted through my mind that she could be an empath trying to emotionally read me through the physical contact, but I dismissed the paranoia just as quickly as it appeared. I had endured enough run-ins with psychics and empaths, and I was attuned enough to know when I was being read. As it stood, I let myself assume that her demeanor was on account of her being awkwardly nervous.

“Yes,” the gentleman finally chimed in, having the social grace to disconnect me from his wives’ grasp. “Thank you for coming. Won’t you please come in?” His voice was more akin to my expectations. It had a deep timber with a firm tone. I stood, for a few seconds, drinking in the sight of the two people standing in the open doorway. I wanted to be sure, before I stepped over their threshold, that whatever service they might ask of me, I would want to help these two people. Even if they were not empaths, that did not eliminate them from my very long list of nasties. I let my mind relax, and drunk in the emotions that they were radiating and hue of their auras. For the most part I’m shit when it comes to empathy and reading, but I knew enough to get by. The truth of the thing is that knowing enough to get by was sort of my standing motto.

“Sir,” the gentleman asserted, shaking my concentration, “Sir, would you like to come in?” There was clear hesitation in his voice, and I could tell that he didn’t know fuck all about what I was trying to do. “Your acquaintance,” he continued, “Mister Barriston assured us that you would be more than willing to help us out.”

That was the rub, right there. Mister Nicky Barriston was certainly not an acquaintance of mine. No acquaintance of mine has the pull to call me up out of the blue and insist, as a personal favor, that I help out a couple of friends. The truth of the situation is that Nicky is my sister’s husband. More to the applicable point, he is a sergeant with the Federal Beaureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. On multiple occasions Mister Nicky Barriston has gone out of his way to offer up precious aid to me in some of the random situations that I find myself neck deep in. Even if it weren’t for the obvious quid pro quo of the situation, I still would have come simply because he’s married to my sister.

Of course, standing there in front of the gentleman, having him wield the name of my sister’s husband like a bloody cricket bat left me more than a little annoyed. Nevertheless, it was par for the course when dealing with the social elite. And that is why, even without a clear read on the fashionable couple, I begrudgingly smiled, nodded my head, and stepped over the threshold into their house. Not so much because I fully trusted them, but because they seemed transparent enough to be harmless. That and the fact that I wanted the gentleman to kindly shut his mouth.

The second I was firmly both feet inside the foyer, I felt the all too familiar pit of regret and warning strike in my lower intestines. I made a slow fuss of checking my shoes, and while I did I began to go back over the couples emotions and auras. By the time I had my left New Balance unlaced, I was fairly certain that she was agitated and nervous, and that he was feeling impatient and upset. I wasn’t clear what the context was for any of those readings, but I mentally jotted the sensations down for future review.

“So, um, Mister John, is it? Tell us, how does this work exactly?” I let my gaze and my mind slowly focus again on the physical plane around me, and found myself making eye contact with the gentleman. His eyes were solidly locked on mine, but his body was jumpy and agitated. His fingers bobbed nervously, and his toe was practically ready to vibrate through the floorboards. Thankfully, none of that gave me any indication that he, or his wife, were any threat to me.

“For starters,” I answered with an intentional slowness to my cadence, “It is NOT Mister John. It is just John.” I gave a hard look over at the woman, and then let my eyes settle back on the gentleman, hoping that my pregnant pause was carrying enough weight to make my point absolute. Names are a funny thing, especially to those who dabble in magick. I knew that the two dimwits in front of me would be hard pressed to pose any threat to me, but years of working with mystics and paranoids had led me to a fairly heavy handed routine.

“Okay, sure, John it is,” the lady finally responded, breaking the silence of the gaze I had initiated between the three of us. I could see that look in her eye that betrayed her desire to shake my hand anew. My palm quickly slid into the tight pocket on my canvas shorts. Now that I was squarely within their domicile, I was reticent to allow further physical contact. When it was clear that another handshake was out of the question, the lady turned and softly elbowed her partner. “John will be fine, right Richard?” The gentleman immediately nodded his agreement, and took the lady’s hand into his own.

“Of course, of course. John is just fine. Completely fine. So, John, please, can you tell us how this is going to go? What can we expect?”

“Well,” I answered slowly, trying to attune myself with my surroundings. “Before we get to involved with anything, why don’t you describe your problem to me.” As I maintained the slow cadence, I tried to give off an air of clinical routine to my statement. The truth was that I would be hard pressed to care less about whatever they thought their problem might be. Instead I was more interested in acclimating to the interior of their spacious brownstone.

Houses are a funny thing. I like to think of them in terms of clothing. Some houses are gaudy and flashy and uncomfortable, just like some outfits. But there are other houses that tend to be an easy fit or practical. The bottom line is that every house is different, and the sort of house a person lives within can say a lot about the person. Ordinarily I have a sense of the person from their house within minutes. Oddly, I was more than two minutes inside the brownstone, and I was not really getting a sense of anything. I pushed my senses and tried to hone my focus on what I was experiencing, but still found myself picking up a lot of nothing.

“We’re pretty sure it all started shortly after that,” the gentleman droned on with his explanation of the supernatural. “Isn’t that right sweetness?” The lady’s head began to feverishly nod in agreement. He continued on about some neighbor and an incident that simply must have been the start of everything. It took everything I had not to scoff out loud at the gentleman’s deductions and connections. In my experience, there were two things that were always true about a mystical issue with non practitioners. The first was that they would have little to no valuable information about anything relevant, and the second was that listening to their boring rot was bound to be the hardest part of the job. My usual M.O. in a situation like this would be to poke around the house, while they jabbered on, but these two had not yet offered to let me do any poking.

My attention managed to stay with the droll account for almost a minute before my eyes caught a glimpse of movement deeper in the house. My head reflexively snapped to attention in the direction of the movement, and my eyes began to scan left and right over the area. Both the gentleman and the lady attentively turned to try and spot what had caught my attention, although I’m not sure they saw anything at all. If they did see it, they made no indication whatsoever. Truthfully, I could barely see it at all, even using my peripheral vision.

A fuzzy shadow floated about three feet off the ground, through the living room and halfway down a narrow hallway. At first I thought it might be a strong aura of someone else in the house, but there was a feeling emanating off it so strongly that even sixty feet away I knew it was not coming from another person. I absently took a step in the direction of the glow, but it immediately faded from view.

“John?” the lady asked tentatively. “Is everything alright?” For nearly a minute I kept my eyes scanning from side to side hoping for another hint of what I had seen, before I finally gave up.

“What’s that Love?” I switched into a quicker cadence, and tried to convey an air of flippancy. “Sure, sure, yes ma’am, everything is right as rain. Just thought I recognized that glorious vase!” I immediately moved past the two of them into the main living room. With my right hand I indicated a fair sized porcelain vase resting on top of a wide based pillar near their fire place. “My great uncle, the good lord rest him, had one that looked almost identical! But I can see now that this one is a little different.” Before I gave either of them a chance to respond, I moved deeper into the house, in the direction of the mysterious glow I had spotted.

“It’s alright if I take a look around, right?” I called back over my shoulder, refusing to wait for an answer before I moved deeper.

“Well, I-,” the gentleman called after me, which was abruptly interrupted by the lady.

“Don’t you want us to finish telling you about the incidents?”

“It’s all about frame of reference,” I called back to them, nearing the spot in the hallway where I had seen the glow. “I’m more of a visual learner, really. Once I’ve got a lay of the land, so to speak, those accounts will mean so much more!” I could not see them well enough to know if they were buying the crap I was selling, but I was too far committed to back out now.

In a profession like mine, assuming you are generous enough, or crazy enough, to deem what I do a profession, there are a lot of hunches. I have always been a firm believer that there is no such thing as luck or coincidence. If you have the focus and the practice being attuned to yourself, then your hunches will always prove to be rooted in relevant data. Of course, sometimes a hunch is as simple as the fact that this tosser managed to drag me out of my comfortable reclining chair on a Saturday afternoon. And even though that would not qualify as a coincidence, it also does not register as particularly relevant. Those thoughts flashed through my head as I spewed nonsense to the couple in the hall, who, for whatever reason, left me with a terrible taste in the back of my throat.

I pushed all of those thoughts aside, and tried to focus on the area in the hallway where I was standing. Within a half a dozen even breaths, my senses were bombarded with feelings of anxiety and despair. Fighting off the initial surprise of having such a strong reading after receiving nothing in the entrance, I let myself sink into the emotions, and tried to accumulate a sense of who they were coming from, or why. My mind slowly absorbed the feelings, and I took care to sharpen my focus and remain objective amidst the tumultuous chaos. A sense of identity was starting to form on my conscious, as were various visual smatterings, when, suddenly, everything went blank. I evened my breath, and meticulously kept rising shock and panic in check, while I tried to redouble my focus. All I was met with was a numbing sense of nothing.

“John,” the lady said, surprising me by placing a hand on my arm. Somehow she had crossed the room without me hearing her. “Why don’t you let us finish telling you about the incidents here in the house? Hmmm?”

“Yes,” the gentleman chimed in. He too had crossed the floor without me noticing. My brows furrowed and I found myself wondering if I was losing it. “It won’t take too much longer, I assure you.”

I tried to figure out a polite way to brush them off long enough to get a better read on whatever I had sensed, but I was suddenly feeling completely drained out of all my energy. I knew I could come up with something to buy me a few more minutes of snooping space, but it seemed so clear to me that the best way to go would just be to patiently hear them out, and then go from there. In fact, I figured that they might even have some valuable information that would help me understand what was happening in the house.

“Why don’t we just step back out into living room, and finish talking about it?” I found myself nodding in agreement to the lady’s words, and let her gently guide me by the arm back toward the spacious living room. After two steps, I reflexively glanced over my shoulder back at the spot in the hall, hoping that I would catch another glimpse of the emanation. As I looked, my arm slid free of the lady’s tender grasp. The second that I was no longer in physical contact with her, I felt a sharp stab of nausea lance through my insides. I was struck by the oddness of my decision to casually listen to the two people’s accounts, and I felt an all too familiar pinprick of anxiety creep up the back of my neck.

“We tried to do this the easy way,” the lady said, her voice growing higher in pitch as each word hissed from her mouth. Her hand snaked out and latched unto the front of my shirt. In complete defiance to logic, and the laws of gravity, her frail figure leaned back and lifted me clear off the ground. I found my breath ragged and hard to catch as the fabric of my shirt dug into my armpits. With as much strength as I could gather, I pulled both of my feet up and in, then I rocketed both limbs straight out into the lady’s chest. I can only imagine that the sight was fairly ridiculous as I flew through the air four or five feet before hitting hard unto the floor.

“I cannot believe that we were so strongly cautioned about this pathetic human,” the gentleman’s voice cut through the haze that was threatening to overtake me. I desperately groped both of my hands against the floor trying to secure some sort of stable purchase. I looked down and realized that a large portion of my shirt had torn free when I made my escape attempt. Much worse than the torn shirt was the set of lacerations running along my chest coated in some sort of dark ichors, and oozing blood. I tried to figure out how the slashes could have caused her hand to bleed so badly on me, and then I realized that the blood was mine.

Waves of light-headedness and nausea rolled over me, and I firmly felt the desire to curl up close eyed. It occurred to me that I was being played by some sort of overwhelming despair, and that if I did not up my game immediately I was going to be easy prey. The whole situation was quite mortifying and ridiculous, and I had been blind stupid enough to walk right into the midst of it. Even the shame and self pity I was currently feeling, I realized, was probably a by-product of the despair that the gentleman or lady were emanating. And, of course, it would probably be the last thing I felt and thought as they ended my life.

Now that I had a certain perspective on the situation, I could even sense the emotions pouring off the duo, and crashing down on me like wave after wave. Even though the raw emotion certainly lacked the potency to do permanent damage to me, it left me completely helpless while they physically picked me apart piece by piece. The temptation to laugh at the obviousness of the trap was not wasted on me, even if I lacked the will to act on it. I pushed myself and managed to mentally weigh my options, and found that there was really only one viable plan under the circumstances. Wallow in my overwhelming feelings of self pity and despair that these creatures, whatever they truly were under their human form, were drowning me with until I died. It was not a great plan, but even the thought of anything else seemed to strike jolts of physical pain through my body.

“Just do it, and end him,” the gentleman’s voice was almost unidentifiable at this point, and I dearly wished that I had lingered just a little longer in that doorway.

“Fine,” the lady’s reply was in a tone and pitch almost identical to the gentleman’s gravelly voice. I managed to rock my head back so that I could watch her approach. Even the way that her body moved had taken on an alien-like quality. Her hips seemed disconnected, and the legs, assuming that they were still actually definable as legs, swung way out to each side as she advanced. It gave me the impression of a drunk alien cowboy. That realization was followed by the understanding that my life was about to end at the ‘hands’ of said drunken alien cowboy, and my soul was probably in jeopardy to boot. As much as I wanted to resist, I knew that I was doomed, and that understanding brought with it a serene acceptance. After all I had certainly had a good run, and there were few regrets worth mentioning. The more I reasoned out the comedic inevitability of the situation, the more calm I found myself.

The lady’s taloned fist came at my midsection hard, and as much to my surprise as to hers, I managed to roll hard to the left. Her claws slammed hard into the wall where I had been, slashing deep into the drywall.

“What have you done?” the gentleman’s voice hissed. At this point the only way I could differentiate between the two of them was based on location. Not that it probably made any difference which of them had assumed which form, but my mind continued to categorize them. By the time the lady had her dainty fist removed from the cracked and badly dented drywall, I had already begun my cantrip. It was a simple one, but also one of the last things I figured they would figure on me doing. As the lady side-stepped in my direction, she proved my figuring to be one-hundred and ten percent correct.

The gentleman apparently saw it as the lady activated the cantrip, because he hissed the second before it was triggered. Not that it did any good to either of them as the lady’s body began to shake and finally dropped to the ground. I would love to believe that the lady was screaming in agony, but the sensible part of me knew that the cantrip wouldn’t have hurt anything but her pride. As her form finally stopped bubbling, I could clearly see that she had reverted to the human disguise she had started out as. Her own look of befuddlement and horror almost gave me cause to laugh out loud. The truth is I started with a hearty chuckle, but immediately checked it when I saw the gentleman leaping over the lady. I changed my laugh into a simple whistle, which caused the lady’s now human again form to slide across the floor in my direction. Another simple cantrip, but in my dispensed state simple was all I seemed capable of pulling off.

Her body half slide, half rolled across the floor in a snap, and the gentleman’s chitenous foot came down on to of her hip. The claws on the back of the foot tore into her flesh, and this time I was rewarded with screams of pain. The momentary hesitation from the gentleman, as he looked down to assess the damage done to his compatriot was all the break I needed. I pulled a piece of chalk off my belt, and sketched a hard circle around me. As soon as the line was drawn I could feel my will and reasoning return in spades. Each little sigil I sketched was accompanied by a chain of Latin. When the fourth sigil was done, I knew that I had the Mother Fuckers right where they had wanted me. As if the gentleman had sensed my cue, a taloned hand tore into the wooden floor in an attempt to damage my circle.

“You’ll still pay, you have my promise!” the gentleman spat as a second hand tore up floor board. I gave the tosser my finest Shit-eating grin, and gave my crotch an inviting tug to seal the deal. The gentleman almost seemed to fume steam, as both hands pumped up then shot down at the floor. With talons extended it was clear that a waggle of both hands would cause the protective circle to shatter. I think that the germ even paused to smile at me. I tried to feign fear, in order to better sell the ruse, but mostly just got ready to watch the shenanigans hit the fan. Both hands flexed up, destroying my protective circle, and in the process, triggered my ward of banishment.

It was hard to truly enjoy, because the broken circle meant waves of despair rolling over me again. Fortunately it also meant that the two dog-lickers slowly melted into a pool of de-pixelated trash. An intense exhale later, they were gone, and I collapsed unto the ravaged floor. I was almost sure that I was going to pass out, that is, right up until I felt, or maybe saw, I’m not positive, the faint amber glow of some aura thicken all around me. It came out of no where and quickly accumulated all over my body like dew on early morning lawn. I looked up at the two figures looming menacingly overtop of me, and could clearly see now that neither were human. They both had dark blotchy patches to their skin and face, and there were unusual growths about their temples and shoulders that looked to be a cross between bone formation and spindly vines. The two of them converged and attacked.

At first I thought that I had worked the banishment incorrectly, then I realized that I was watching them attack a young girl. And that what I was seeing was more like a spectral after-image. I tried to focus my thoughts, to determine how recent the death was, or how rooted the girl’s ghost was to the location. Instead I found myself vomiting up food I didn’t even remember eating. All in all, I was dead on about the day involving vomit.