The Everborn (52 page)

To make matters even
more
confounding, the two withdrew their mutual glares as he approached, and they turned towards each other, arching forward face-to-face, hidden all too intimately to have not been engaged in a kiss.

If it
was
a kiss, it was likely a kiss not to spite him, but a kiss ignorant of him. They were neither receptive to his presence nor to the fact that he was alarmingly alien. This insight gave Ralston ample moments to retreat a step and regroup his thoughts.

We stay together.

That’s just what he’d told Andy-man.

Andrew
.

Ralston about-faced, in attempt to call Andrew to join him, forthwith.

But there
was
no Andrew.

There was merely the deserted sign-which read
WAIT
, now pivoted to face him as if to address him once more and the overhead soundtrack of instrumental easy listening.

***

“
Wait here, I think I’ll test the waters a bit.”

Ralston, after all, held a superior grasp on the situation, supposedly; to
be
here was
his
idea.

But Andrew instantly aborted his attention, however, to heed the unexpected call of his name by a voice both familiar and female emitting from the direction of his left. Intuition set him in motion to hearken, as if the voice
were
from Bari’s own multidimensional lips.

He abandoned the vestibule where he stood, exit stage left, ventured past Ralston and the Denim man at the counter to the beckoned call of his utmost interests.

Conceivably, the source of direction from which the voice summoned him was to the left; maneuvering that way pitted him against the sight of nothing more than what he’d already observed. The counter ended abruptly to his right by a walkway gap to the kitchen. This was succeeded by a textured wall embodying a single rest room door and meticulously hung Elvis Presley portraits. The places to sit were to his left now, an avenue of four booths of tables along the stretch of front windows.

The occupant of the far booth’s corner seat stirred, and by now Andrew assumed this had to be a woman, yet she did not raise her head from her folded arms.

No one else could’ve called to him, for no one else appeared to be around from where he swore the voice called.

Except for this…this
woman
.

Could she be....?

He approached her slowly until he drew closer to a glass door past the last booth and leading to the outside. Scotch tape held a poster of a cup of coffee and a can of MJB across its bottom half, and attached to its top pane of glass was a cardboard sign:

PRIVATE PARTIES ONLY
.

Then, the woman he approached lifted her head and glared directly at him, the hazel pools of her eyes a fountain of tears.

The woman was Melony.

Melony...in likewise condition that Andrew had seen her last, silky black Halloween witches’ gown and a belly bulge from the
Andrew-yet-to-be-born.

And in a pitifully heartbreaking state of anxiety.

Andrew froze, his instincts quick to stifle any exertion to take her by the hand and lead her the hell out of there...to so might have been just what her captors were waiting for.

“Andrew, I’m...I’m sorry. Get away from here! It’s a trap! I’m sorry...he...he
made
me call your name!”

“He?” Andrew was puzzled. “He
who
?"

“My
husband
....”

The gastric echoes of a toilet flush accompanied the opening of the restroom door, which by this time was to Andrew’s rear.

Andrew riveted to a deliberate stance in total view of the being which, after a few steps, emerged from the restroom and switched off its inner wall light absently, as if by habit.

By the looks of him, the being was clearly pissed off, gazing upon Andrew in a startled fury and recognition that had been rehearsed in hindsight.

Andrew recognized this being also.

“
Max J. Polito
....”

Only he
was
indeed a
being
. And clearly by definition of appearance not a human one. Not anymore.

His overall countenance resonated a distinct and eerie beige aura, despite the preppy getup of trousers and sweater and leather jacket, which he straightened at the collar. His blueblack hair was unkempt and flailed, his pale expression that of an intent but otherwise zombied madman.

He extended a defiant, ghostly finger at Andrew, accusatory and succinct. “You know what that
sound
is, you piece of Everborn toad shit? It’s the
sound
of my
marriage
going
down the toilet!!!”

A predominant intimidation festered Andrew’s first reply. “But...haven’t you been dead?”

“
You screwed my wife!!!”

“Yes, but, I can explain...wait a minute, I don’t have to explain. You’re a mindless shell of a puppet now, hosted only by the will of the Magdalene, Salvatia. I know. What the gobbeldy-goddamn do
you
care about, concerning the problems of your
neglected marriage??”

“You’re so very right, my bastard stepson,” replied the Max-thing. “But you can always call me
Uncle
Maxy....”

“How about if I call you
piece of shit?”

“How about if I call you a little
death
....?”

Uncle Maxy’s eyes flared from a color like that of his hair to a blazing orange to match his Magdalene creator’s.

“You can’t kill me,” Andrew said with bold confidence.

“But I know someone who
can
....”

And with that, Uncle Maxy lunged for him.

Melony, panic-stricken and helpless in the corner of her booth, let out a scream.

***

Ralston reached forth an attenuated hand and rested its palm upon the area of thermal jacket which would have been Jessica’s hip. Andrew’s absence from the situation was by no means cause for him to forsake the matters at hand; this was his
girlfriend
and
William Behn
, for chrissake!

What would’ve been who he’d perceived as Jessica was now a profoundly wizened, twisted creature in mock disguise, an abomination distinctly Everborn in all its pre-grey alien visage. The hair it donned was but a human wig which slipped backwards off its head as if retrieved into its thermal jacket’s backside by an unseen thing. Its hairless face was overcome by the barely healed scarred wounds of scratches perhaps caused, Ralston was quick to summarize, by the telltale straight retractable razor it clenched like an infant to a rattle within its right hand.

If this had indeed been Jessica before and not an illusion, then what faced Ralston now couldn’t possibly be it who was....

“Scratch!” cried Uncle Maxy from the other side of the diner. “
I’ve
got him! I’ve got a Midnight Meal Special for ya
!!!!”

Ralston wished he’d been given the opportunity to read
this
portion of the book, if indeed so far the events following his and Andrew’s departure from his Brea home hadn’t already altered history. He could not take his eyes off Scratch, not for anything, let alone to scope out what mayhem Andrew had gotten himself into since his partner disappeared from the WAIT sign, for to act upon this distraction might prove fatal.

Scratch himself cocked his head in a glance over Ralston’s shoulder in acknowledgment to the summons, a reflection of overhead lights converging into a single horizontal glimmer out his otherwise opaque left eye. After but a second’s time, he resumed his beady fixation upon Ralston. Scratch squatted where he sat, bare feet scabrous and ashen such as the rest of him with toenail talons flexing like those of a bird of prey into the brown cushioned bar stool. The red thermal jacket cloaked about him engulfed him from all sides but the front, giving off the aura of uncanny nobility like a gargoyle dwarf in royal robes. Apart from this, he wore nothing more than grime-soiled cut-off jean shorts which hung from bony malnourished alien hips as if it was the last morsel of overcooked meat on a beef rib.

“My Beloved One shall deal with
you
in a heartbeat,” was what Scratch said to Ralston. The hand baring the razor elevated not to strike but to bully, but the higher it went the further his minuscule hand regressed down his sleeve to leave all but his gangrene-toned fingertips and clawed nails clenching his weapon. “And I don’t think you’re gonna like what’s going
down
.”

William Behn raised his gaze once again Ralston’s way from behind Scratch, and this time, as gazes momentarily locked, Ralston noted Behn’s expression as one stricken with the impetuous fear of a mouse in a snake’s lair and driven to tears.

Then came the bombastic disruption of a limp and lifeless human corpse fallen from above without warning in a colliding
ker—thump
across the counter abreast of all three of them. The body of a very real and very slain Jessica rebounded a centimeter or two upon impact as an oversized gunny sack of grapefruit would, settling motionless and wide-eyed in a soulless stare, her head scalped into a pulpy baldness. Bloodflow escaped the lowest corner of her lips to form an expanding pool that saturated half her Tweety t-shirt and the portion of appetizer basket still visible at her abdomen. The arising excess trickled in cherry-black globules up, over and onto the tile floor at the feet of a Ralston taken aghast.

Secondly, in turn from above and suddenly from where Jessica fell, Salvatia herself released her invisible grasp of the ceiling and the unseen wooden beam between the space of ceiling and roof, descending in a deliberate pomp and circumstance to a position behind the counter. She faced the three of them in all her Messiah Complex self-glory, arms outstretched and like a voluptuous woman crucified over the breadth of Jessica’s remains. Her skin tone was of her typically exquisite shade of silver but far more lustrous, as if in result of a Tar-nex bath, as if she’d recently shed her skin. Orange-blazen eyes scowled down upon a Ralston insignificant in size to her.

Ralston stood where he was, alarmed by the rapidity of the situation transpiring before him, too mindful and earnest nonetheless to cower in fear.

Yet he
knew enough
to be afraid....

“Ralston, my darling,” Salvatia proclaimed in recognition of him. “Do you have any
idea
how all I’ve been longing for these past...oh, these past
centuries...
could have been accomplished years ago if only I’d known about you
sooner
? Why, I would have already won my right to freely become a physical entity in your world by now, if not for
you
and that surprise cameo of your wretched Watchmaid
Camelia
! But alas and all said and done, you’ll find your precious
book
is about to be
rewritten
by
me
....”

One broad backhanded swipe of her glossy black fingernailed talons was adequate for Salvatia to behead William Behn. His body slid and fell limply off the stool in a
plop
onto the tile floor with the impact of a water balloon splash of liquid crimson from his headless neck, his head toppling afterwards upon a blood-seeped cloud of thermal jacket fluff.

This act shook Ralston off guard enough for Salvatia to take him to his dismay, and she seized him within the grip of her unoccupied hand, his entire throat and neck engulfed the next instant by a fleshy silver palm. She lifted him upwards, up, over the counter, his limbs dangling in subjugated impotence, until their faces were within the odor of the other’s breath, their gazes locked.

Scratch, feeling a bit overcrowded, pulled out of the way and assumed Behn’s bar stool, stumbling amidst his own thermal threads.

“But like your agent just now,” Salvatia continued to Ralston, “your Watchmaid Camelia had gone the way of eternity and at
my
hands.
Your
little endeavor with the book, however and to my delight, has now become your fallacy. You see,
I
win in the end. The Magdalene await my advent, and I have an Everborn to kill. Let’s see if
you
will do....”

And the Magdalene Salvatia raised her talons to take his life. Ralston was hoping for a little intervention at this point.

“My God, Scratch, I’ve got him!” Uncle Maxy asserted a second time. “Come on and get him before the prick gets away!”

This time an all-too-eager Scratch hopped off his bar stool and scurried across the diner, confident that Salvatia had things under control. After all, it was really
Andrew
he wanted, also. His master’s beige minion monstrosity held Andrew captive as planned, like an unwrapped Christmas present of glory days.

Scratch had only to scurry past the
WAIT
sign at the diner’s vestibule for him to be out of range for Salvatia to remain materialized. She’d invested many a season tutoring Simon BoLeve towards her persuasions, yet he was always
thinking about his own ass first.

Hence, with Scratch’s departure, Salvatia faded away in mid-sentance from a “Get back here, you son-of-a....”

Ralston plummeted airborne and free and alone now, then into the arms of Bari as she materialized to catch him just before his forehead was to collide against a bar stool leg. His cut-off trenchcoat was like a trampoline canvas as she held him there, and his ebony tear-drop eyes fought to see Bari’s semblance against a curtain of eyelids drawn heavy with relief.