Sueth

ENTRY THREE: The Most Boring Part of a Novel

     The neighbor's massive dog barking at me through the fence. My 6 year old mind knew for certain that it had to be a bear.

     The first time I asked somebody out on a date. We were both in the same biology class. He told me he was seeing somebody. I found out a week later that he wasn't.

     The basement at my grandmothers house. She had once dated a man who carved mannequins, and refused to toss out a particularly terrifying one. It stood silently in the corner,

     "SUE!"
     Valentine's voice snapped me back to the cramped booth in the far corner of the fast food restaurant. A look for pure bewilderment lit up his face, his green eyes sparkled. My mind had taken my fear and generated a little show of corresponding memories.
     "So that's what it looks like when she goes back?" Valentine was noticeably fascinated.
     "It's just a bad habit. Overactive imagination. What were we talking about?" I tried to rewind to the part where Valentine just casually mentioned that he was supposedly an undead entity older than modern civilization. He had dropped this little tidbit of information on us midway through a bacon cheeseburger with no bun.
     "Hold the phone miss," Valentine laughed, "overacting imagination my ass. You were tripping. Not like, drug tripping, but you were having an out of body experience."
     "No, it's just a silly thing I do sometimes," I nervously laughed.
     "Listen kid," he paused to take another bite, "I don't have time to play the whole 'you're a wizard Harry' game with you. If this was a novel, then this would be the part where I have to sit you down and explain all the lore so you're convinced to join my side and save the day... I hate that part. That's always the most boring part of the novel. Let's skip past the part where I offer you the red pill and jump to the part where we unplug you."
     Donny was face down. His brain had short circuited from the chaos. Not even a brand new milkshake could reboot him.
     "You're part soothsayer," Valentine explained, "You know, beware the ides of March? Probably not pure blooded, but it's in there enough that I could smell it the moment I met you," he took an exaggerated whiff and gave a toothy grin, "Lemme guess, orphan or something right? No offense, that's just usually how it goes."
    "Soothsayer?" I awkwardly tried to give an unconvincing chuckle. He had a bit of a point on the last guess. The full description I had been given of my father as a child was 'some trucker from Kansas, or Arkansas'. Thanks Mom.
     "Future reader. Fortune teller. Oracle," Valentine elaborated in the style of a thesaurus, "You don't seem to have any control over it, but it's in there."
      Valentine lifted his hands from his dinner and did a little interpretation where he gazed into his large glass of milk like a crystal ball. It did nothing to sell the concept to me, so he dropped the act and took a sip instead. I sat silently for a moment, unsure how to take in the situation.
     "Dude," Donny's voice caught us both by surprise, "you're a ghoul, she's a psychic, they were demons, and everything is screwed. That's great. That's all really great! Good for you two. I'm still just Donny. Now, why the hell did a something out of Spawn just decide to drop in and try to rip our collective heads off?"
     "Good question," Valentine admitted. The conversation paused for an uncertain moment. I didn't have an answer, and it was clear Donny didn't either, so we just stared at Valentine waiting for another pop culture reference that could tie the whole mess up into a nice comprehensible bow.

     "You have no idea, do you?" Donny finally raised his head from the off colored tile tabletop.
     "Nope," Valentine laughed, "but it's a bad sign, and I do intend to do something about it.
I haven't been keeping this little slice of heaven demon-free for well over 200 years now just to have two amateurs waltz on in and start tossing around benches."
     "Two?" Donny groaned.
     "You should really listen when otherworldly entities are trying to kill you. They're a wealth of expositional knowledge. It said it had a brother. I don't know about you but I only counted one spooky asshole smashing up the street, unless that brother was possessing the little punk who played dead. If that's the case, he wasn't very helpful when we turned bachelor number one into a firecracker in the sky. That means the other one is either not here yet, or on the down low for the time being. All I know it that they had something planned, and we inadvertently stepped in the way of it by killing one of them. Gave 'em the old 'trick possession reversal'!"
     He paused and took a deep breath, looking between myself and Donny for a moment, then to his burger, then back to us. Neither Donny, myself, nor the slab of charred beef had a valid response.
     "See what I mean," he scoffed, "I told you explaining things is boring! This is the kind of stuff that should be delegated to a flashback at the beginning of a movie so you can skip right to the action bits."
     "What even happened back there?" I asked.
     The ghoul rose to his feet and turned around, unfastening his belt in the process. For a moment I thought he was going to moon us. Instead, he lowered his waistline just far enough to reveal the shittiest tribal trampstamp I had ever witnessed in person.
     "I wouldn't be showing that off if I were you," Donny gazed in disbelief.
     "Get off it," Valentine snarled, "it's an ancient rune of purity. Any being who bears this marking is protected from lower-level possession. The little bastard was doomed the moment he jumped inside me." He paused for a second, recognizing his poor choice in phrasing.
     "And you got it above you ass why?" Donny winced.
     "Listen, the placement didn't have that connotation when I got it inked 2000 years ago," Valentine hiked up his pants and refastened his belt.
     "Well congratulations on killing one of the scary demons," Donny gave a small golf clap as his head returned to the cold comfort of the table, "but that was all you. I had nothing to do with any of it. There is zero reason why I should continue having to deal with any of this."
     "Don't sell yourself short kid. You somehow stink so badly that you caused a distraction. The old 'hang a head of garlic' thing isn't just a wive's tale. Evil spirits are susceptible to overwhelming sensory input."
     Donny winced with confusion.
     "Our basic human senses aren't really a thing where they come from, smell especially." Valentine switched to layman terms for the sake of time, "so when they're hit with a lot of it at once it overloads them a bit. But yeah... You're right. You could walk out that door right now and I won't care. I'm only here because I need her help," Valentine turned to me.
     "My help?"
     "Well if something big is heading this way I sort of want to know ahead of time. And hey, look, suddenly there is a sooth in town. I not saying it's fate, but I'm not about to turn away a very happy coincidence. Kid, I don't usually play this card but you might be directly responsible for a lot of nice people not dying terribly."
     Valentine stared me down with his brilliant emerald eyes. I could feel the draw again. It made sense. There was no way those eyes could belong to anything other and a crazy demon hunting ghoul. They certainly didn't belong to a dentist, or clerical worker, or anybody named Brian.
     "As long as you need her help and not mine," Donny finally grabbed a hold of his second milkshake. It was more milk than shake at that point.
     "Listen," I pleaded, "just because you say I can do something, doesn't mean I can do it. You can insist all you want that I can fly and shoot lasers out of my nose, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna wake up tomorrow as some nostril avenger!"
     Even in his broken state Donny began to chuckle. Clearly the visualization had been directly up his alley.
     "You're the big bad supernatural know-it-all, find somebody else that can do all this stuff," I sulked. Feel free to judge me, this wasn't a moment of bravery in my life.
     "Not it," Donny's hand jolted towards his nose. There weren't really any moments of bravery in his life. 
     The thought entered Valentine's mind, then splashed across his face. He sat silently, raising alternating eyebrows as the gears turned in his head.
     "I mean, there are a few other species out there who can call things before they happen. A handful of them are extinct, endangered, or in hiding. Your kind is mostly in the third category. I personally haven't talked to a Byangoma in years, and don't get me started about the likelihood of stumbling onto one of those old coin operated Princess Doraldina fortune machines that is still hosting an active spirit. Most creatures of forethought just keep out of the limelight for obvious reasons, and they're good at not being found. One had a talk show for a while, but he wasn't very talented for his kind and just made most of it up."
     Valentine finished the last bite of his cheeseburger as he continued to talk to himself, "we're basically looking for a being that can see into the future and isn't afraid to be seen," he paused as his eyes widened, "oh god."
     "What?" Donny and I asked in concerned unison.
     "I know one," he dropped his head into his hands.
     "Good! Go bother them instead of us," Donny gave him a shove.
     "Dionysian nymphs," Valentine grimaced, "under the right conditions, they can see past the horizon and through realms. They're one of the most powerful clairvoyant species still in existence. There's just one problem."
     "Does that problem have to do with the phrase 'the right conditions?'" Donny asked.
     "Essentially. They have to be drunk. They have to be really drunk. Not buzzed, not tipsy... They have to be completely shitfaced. I'm not talking self medication here. They derive power from indulgence and pleasure. A few shots might get us a glimpse, but to really look into the beyond we need something caked in self-indulgence. I'm talking a kegger, a rager, a party to end all parties."
     "Wait, are you saying we should throw a party for a nymph? Are they a guy nymph?" Donny expression changed instantly. Suddenly he was up for the challenge. Demons be damned, this was a mission he was wholehearted invested in.
     "He is, and I doubt we'll have to throw anything. If he's still in town I'm sure we'll already find him at one."