Misery County

Chapter 4 - Part 1

The juices from the burger leaked down her chin as Cassie bit down into it. After her eventful night, she saw nothing wrong with celebrating her victory with the greasiest, fattiest meal that Missouri County had to offer. Another bite provided reinforcements to the various gastronomic disasters dribbling down her chin, and people from the neighboring tables were beginning to glance over in disgust at the spectacle.

It wasn't that Cassie didn't realize how bestial she must have seemed to the other diners - it was more that she didn't care. I saved all y'all's asses last night, she thought as she made eye contact with a horrified-looking man across the restaurant floor.

Her chewing was suddenly halted as a sight from the other side of the window caught her eye. She couldn't believe it, but it was unmistakably him, and looking the same as ever, at that.

"Eric!" she called out through a mouth full of burger bits, spewing some of them across her table and onto the back of a man sitting at the next one. Eric didn't seem to hear even if everyone in the dining area did. Cassie stood up from her table and called out again while flapping her arms, but he just carried on walking.

Opting to leave her meal behind, she ran for the side exit and down the sidewalk to catch up with him. As the warm outside air embraced her, she realized that she had yet to pay for her food. Oh well, never mind, she thought. The people of Missouri County would just have to accept her monster killing work as payment, even if they didn't know it.

"Hey, shitstain!" she shouted out as she closed in, and this time he turned around. "Oh, so you answer to that now?"

"Cassie?" he said as an uncharacteristically kind expression appeared over his face.

"Fancy seeing you out here, partner."

"I'll say. My, how you've grown."

Cassie knew that Eric's comment wasn't intended to be condescending, but she felt condescended toward nonetheless. She hated being seen as a little girl. She was a fully-grown woman now, and it enraged her that Eric still couldn't see her that way.

"I was twenty when you last saw me, Eric. I don't think I've grown much - or at all, for that matter - since I was thirteen."

"Yeah, sorry about that. It's just the most polite way I could think of for saying that you're looking older."

"Older?" she scowled.

"See, that's what I didn't want. You know I mean it in the best way possible, don't you? Come here, you." Eric took a step forward and embraced her.

His odor was intoxicating. Eric wasn't one to lean heavily on deodorants or colognes, and that's just how Cassie liked it.

"We should catch up," Eric said, letting go of her.

"Fuck yeah, we should!"

"What do you say we do so over a bite to eat?"

"I never turn down food. Where do you want to go?"

"How about this place?" Eric said, gesturing to the diner that Cassie had just left.

Thinking about it, she was surprised that in the time she had been standing out there, no one had come out over the unpaid check. That in mind, she decided she was probably pushing the limit as is. "Uh, no, I'm not feeling it. I'll tell you what, though, I know a dive bar clear across town that serves a mean bowl of cheesy fries."

"Sold," Eric exclaimed. "Lead the way."