Double Or Nothing: A Coin Flip Away

Tough to Stay Put

The smell of coffee gripped Jack by the nostrils, forcing him upright from the carpeted floor. Planting his gloves in the soft stringy fabric, Jack lifted his face, slick with saliva and red with marks, into the air, rubbing his eyelids and stretching his spine out. With three cracks and a pop, Jack exhaled, slumping over on the floor. "I fell asleep," he muttered with a face full of carpet. The detective rolled over to his back, propping himself on his knees before his boots hit the floor, lifting him upward. Jack stretched his arms and legs out, everything tingling like television static from a distorted sleeping position.

Jack's eyes blinked around the apartment, rubbing out when the click of a turning doorknob shifted his attention to the door opposite the circular living room. The door swung open, and in stepped a very refreshed and relaxed Eleanor. The reanimated assistant stopped whistling and screamed when she saw Jack awake and standing, clutching her mug. "Oh my god!! You're...you're awake," she gasped, grabbing her heart. Jack pursed his lips, averting his eyes to the floor. "Yep," he mumbled, wiping saliva off of his cheek, "I'm up. How long was I out?" Eleanor sighed, placing her mug on the table beside her. "About ten hours, Jack."

The Sin Hunter balled his fist, rubbing crud from his eyes. "Ten hours down the drain," he muttered, blinking through the murky gray sky outside. Eleanor rolled her sleeves back, setting her coffee next to the detective. "After that chase with the Demon agents, you passed out cold. Then your phone started buzzing and I answered, it was somebody named Elena Blackwell. She's landing here in a few hours, and she-!" Jack swirled around, his eyes wide in shock. "She what?! Why is she coming here, doesn't she know that there's Demons here?!" Eleanor scoffed, fixing her glasses.

"Well excuse me, Jack! Not all Demons are as terroristic as the ones we've been running from this entire time!" Jack pointed his finger toward Eleanor but paused after looking around the room. "Whose house is this?" Eleanor shrugged, rubbing her shoulder. "I had to improvise, so I threw you in here. Thankfully the owner hasn't come back yet, I wrote a note-" "Oh my lord," Jack groaned, clutching his eyes as Eleanor continued, "-and taped it to the fridge, so they know we were here, and-!" "EL! You can't just break into people's houses like that! This isn't Hell, there's rules here!"

Jack and Eleanor froze as the door into the apartment clicked open to reveal a short middle aged man, rubbing his eyelids. Tufts of hair hung from the sides of the man's head while a set of polished gold spectacles sat on the man's face while eyes unsure of their surroundings fixated on the arguing couple in the middle of his apartment. "Can I help you two?" He mumbled. Jack, hands lowering to his sides, dropped his shoulders with an exhale. "I'm sorry, sir, my friend and I were out sightseeing and we stumbled into your apartment by accident." The short man said nothing, moving into a connected room with a grunt.

While the old man left the conversation, Jack seized Eleanor by her wrist, dragging the specter out into the hallway. Out in the corridor cloaked in reds and beiges with gold lamps, Jack stopped Eleanor, planting her on her feet with both of his hands on her shoulders. "You," Jack sighed, "stay here. I need to call Elena back." Eleanor, too stunned to speak, nodded her pursed lips and trembling sand-colored hair bun. While Jack moved away for his call, Eleanor jumped when a rattling sound followed by a slam echoed from the other end of the hallway. A door across the hallway had closed, and voices muttered behind a nearby door slot.

Eleanor glanced down the hall to Jack, then glanced at the door that she had seen shut quickly. 'I mean,' she told herself, 'as long as I stay in this hallway, Jack won't mind, right?' Keeping her hands by her sides, Eleanor inched down the hallway, glancing back at Jack to make sure he wouldn't notice. Approaching the door where the rattling noise came from, Eleanor placed her ear to the frame, trying to listen in on a muffled conversation. From the sound of the noise, it seemed like five people were speaking. Eleanor stepped away from the door, turning toward Jack. The detective was occupied with his phone call.

Jack, meanwhile, had connected to Elena's phone, rubbing his eyes. "Elena? Are you there?" He asked. A calm, monotonous voice responded. "Ms. Blackwell is using the bathroom at the moment. Are you Jackson Winchester?" Jack planted his glove on the swirl patterned wall, keeping the phone by his ear. "Yeah, it's Jack. Listen, I need to talk to Elena, there's some things she needs to know right-!" Jack cut himself short, turning to the end of the hallway. A door was closing and Eleanor was nowhere to be seen. Jack's eyes narrowed as his knuckles whitened against the phone cover. "Lemme call you back," he snarled, ending the call.

Jack tore through the hall toward the closing door. Before it shut, The Sin Hunter's hand ripped the door back, flinging a hooded creature into the hallway in the process. The creature resembled a kind of red cultist, cloaked in a hood with eyes and studded blood jewels. As soon as its pointed snout graced the air, its pointed features split into bloody ribbons of teeth and a shrieking maw. Jack leapt back, tearing out his revolver. Bullets screamed through the hissing creature, reverting the hooded cultist into red Swiss cheese in the hallway.

With the twitching corpse of the Demon behind him, Jack sprinted into a room with too many signs of a struggle. Overturned furniture, broken glass and a window thrown wide open. Leaping to the windowsill, Jack pushed his head out, his eyes darting around the city below. His eyes locked onto a sewer grate across the street, sliding shut with dark red robes flowing under the lid. "Dammit, El," Jack growled, leaping down the fire escape after the Demon cultists.