30 December 2007
Chapter 5: Hangover
Matt woke to a beam of midday sunlight hitting him directly in his right eye, the scratchy upholstery of Cat’s couch rubbing into the small of his back, and a throbbing headache. Never again, he thought, trying to control his breathing and stop his head from pounding so much. He shifted and blocked the sunlight with an equally scratchy throw pillow, and briefly considered drifting back to sleep. He rubbed his eyes and blearily looked around the room.
Three coffee cups from the night before, in various states of emptiness, still sat on the coffee table. His sweater, covered with blood and grass stains, was wadded up on the floor next to the couch. He appeared to be alone in the apartment.
“Work,” Matt murmured to himself, remembering that Cat worked at the coffee house on Saturdays. She didn’t start until two, though. It must be late.
He yawned and stretched, and then whined as his head throbbed anew with the sudden movements. After some difficulty, he managed to right himself and get his feet on the floor, but found he had to lean back onto the arm of the sofa for a bit. The pain in his head was worse when he sat upright.
He remembered taking some drugs, leaving a party, going to a gay bar, and getting involved in some weird fight. A fight with a giant pink monster. With tentacles.
Never again, he told himself, over and over like a mantra. Never again, never again, never again.
He rose unsteadily to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen, cupping his hand and getting a drink of water directly from the tap. That helped some. He picked up and tilted the insulated carafe on the counter, hearing the remainder of the previous night’s coffee slosh around inside. He took a mug from the cupboard and emptied the contents of the carafe into it—only half a mugful, but at least it was still a little warmer than room temperature. He sniffed at it, then went to the refrigerator for some cream.
After he filled the mug to the brim with heavy cream, the resulting color was not unlike a California centerfold in late August. He carefully raised the mug to his lips as he thought, I don’t take cream in my coffee. He sighed and took a big enough gulp of the now cool beverage so that he could carry it without spilling. Perfect. Weird.
Never again.
Just then, he heard a noise at the door; heavy footsteps, the sound of someone fumbling with keys. He set the mug on the kitchen counter and moved flat against the wall, staying silent and listening. The door opened, then closed, and he heard a few more careful footsteps as someone entered.
“Hello?” came a man’s voice from around the corner. The footsteps became less tentative, and came towards the kitchen. Matt clenched a fist and watched the doorway in anticipation, seeing a hazy shadow appear on the hardwood floor before the figure himself filled the doorway.
Jake jumped back, startled, seeing a bedraggled Matt pulling his fist back in readiness to slug him.
“Jesus, fuck, Matt!” Jake swore, his arms going up instinctively to protect his face. He’d been carrying a laptop computer, and only just managed to keep it from falling out of his grasp. “Chill out, it’s just me!”
Matt’s burst of adrenaline subsided; he put down his dukes and retrieved his exceedingly tan coffee, gesturing with it to illustrate his level of caffeine deprivation and complete space-case-ness. He still didn’t have the energy to say much, though he hoped his expression was apologetic enough.
Jake left the kitchen with a snort, setting the laptop up in the living room after sliding the half-empty mugs on the coffee table out of the way. Matt saw him pull something out of his pocket: a small microcassette recorder.
“Oh, no,” Matt rasped, as his brain made the neccessary connections and embarrassment washed over him like a blast from a space heater. “That’s the tape that Cat made of me last night. I don’t even want to hear it. Erase it. How did you even manage to get it away from her?”
Jake ignored Matt, concentrating instead on connecting the cassette player to the computer with a short audio patch cable, He launched some kind of recording software and tapped a few keys on the keyboard, then pressed “play” on the tape. Matt couldn’t hear anything, but waves of little little green, yellow and red equalizer lines began to dance one the screen. Jake adjusted some settings until the red appeared only occasionally.
“Oh, hell no!” Matt said. “You’re going to put this online on one of those video sites, with pictures of me passed out with underwear on my head something. Cat put you up to this, didn’t she, just for—”
Jake reached out and grabbed Matt’s hand, giving him a stern look. When they made contact, Matt felt something like a mild electrical jolt, like grabbing a battery and accidentally touching both the positive and negative poles. He shook his head a few times, feeling it clear like fog disappearing off a windshield.
“There’s no time for this,” Jake said, flatly, then turned back to the computer to monitor the duplication of the cassette. Matt came over to the coffee table, collected the mugs from the previous night and set down his new one. He took the mugs into the kitchen, placed them in the sink, then came back out to sit down on the couch next to Jake. He took a long sip from his coffee, and set it on the coffee table again.
“I’m still never taking drugs again,” he said.
“Strigoi,” Jake read off the screen. “That’s what I said last night, something about being ‘frightened of the Strigoi.’” Jake had done a few searches and come up with an encylopedia entry, but it consisted of a single page, some links to video games, and no pictures.
“Some of this seems familiar,” Jake continued, “but it’s not enough. I’m going to need to bring out the big guns.” Jake opened several more windows, and Matt soon saw dry, text-heavy sites that looked like they’d been born with the Internet, with catchy names like “Eastern European Library Archives.” To his horror, Jake clicked a small box in the corner of the screen and entered a username and password.
“Oh, I’m sure this hobby has kept you entertained on many a cold night,” Matt teased, noting the headings enticing them with subjects such as “drinking water purification systems of the 1400s”.
“I’m a history teacher, remember?” Jake retorted, annoyed, and opened multiple searches, his fingers moving quickly over the keys. “Or maybe you don’t remember. I told you just before I went all samurai with that rake.”
“Me, I had a job at a movie theater,” Matt said idly, “but I didn’t run out and subscribe to ‘dry film database online.’”
“Somehow, that’s not surprising,” Jake said sarcastically.
Jake continued with his research, while Matt tried to point out useful links and suggest search topics, though he quickly realized Jake found his input less than helpful. Finally, he stood up and wandered around the room, instead, mulling something over in his head.
“So… we’ve never met before today, right?” Matt asked. Jake looked up from the screen, surveyed Matt from foot to head, shook his head ‘no,’ and returned to his work. “We didn’t do ‘shrooms one time and have some kind of bonding experience that I can’t remember?” Jake didn’t even bother looking up for that one.
“Well, I don’t know,” Matt continued. “I’ve had experiences in the past—nothing quite as intense as this one—where I thought I saw something weird. Or thought I remembered someone I didn’t know. I always thought it was just drugs.”
“It was just drugs,” Jake said, still not looking up.
“Oh, come on”, Matt insisted, “after what happened last night, I’m re-evaluating a lot of stuff. The time I went to that commune, drank that freaky tea and ‘saw’ the music, that Halloween in high school when I was sure that our decorations were coming to life, or unlife as the case may be, the time when—”
Jake abruptly stood up, came over to Matt and shook him roughly by his shoulders.
“Just stop it!” Jake shouted, voice quavering with exasperation. “This is not some validation of your long-term love affair with controlled substances, this is something entirely different, and entirely more dangerous.” He stopped, still holding Matt’s shoulders and looking into his eyes. Matt stared back, surprised at the outburst.
“It nearly…” Jake started, the words catching in his throat. “It nearly killed you last night. I almost had to watch you t-torn—” He stopped speaking, and held Matt close to him, suddenly, Matt’s arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. The one-sided hug continued for a little while before Matt raised his arms and put them around Jake as well. They stood for a long time, motionless.
When they disengaged, Jake, his face wet, brushed his lips against Matt’s cheek, and seemed as if he was going in for a kiss on the mouth.
“Oh, awkward,” Matt said, evading Jake’s attention with a nervous laugh. “Really. No offense intended, really, no offense, but I am so not turned on right now.”
Jake was about to say something, apologize or explain, when he cocked his head and looked through the window, as if he’d heard a noise outside and had turned to orient on it. In truth, it wasn’t so much something he heard—it was almost as if he was feeling the presence of something. He looked to Matt to let him know but saw that he, too, was focusing on the whatever-it-was.
Wordlessly, Jake went to the kitchen and retrieved a large carving knife. Matt nodded to him, and the two of them headed out the front door and down the stairs, hugging the wall as they went and staying alert. Matt clasped his hands together with what Jake thought was nervousness, at first, but then he remembered the lightshow that Matt had been able to conjure up last night with just a few gestures, and understood.
They came out of the front door after first making sure no neighbors or passersby were watching; they didn’t relish the prospect of explaining why they were skulking around suspiciously carrying knives with dogs being mutilated in the neighborhood. Jake slid the knife inside his jacket to hide it, and they tried to look more casual than they felt as they got onto the sidewalk and headed down the street. Matt even started to whistle a little, before abandoning the affectation as plain stupid.
Before too long, they’d gone several blocks, turning this way and that to focus on the creepy psychic geiger counter sensation they were feeling, a sensation that got stronger the further they went. They were led to a vacant lot that was overgrown with thick weeds and sapling trees, and stood next to an abandonded old house, rooved with loose tarpaper shingles.
Either the house has been painted an unfortunate gray and off-gray combination, or something very odd had happened to the structure as it weathered. It looked as if the color had been drained out of it, like the house was a giant snow-cone that wasn’t holding its flavor well, and had been dropped in a fireplace ashes, to boot. The building didn’t seem unsound, just unkempt and unloved, and the feeling they were getting was definitely emanating from inside.
Jake headed to the front doorway and found it locked. He looked to Matt, who shrugged, and then Jake forced the door with a solid jab from his shoulder. The dry, brittle doorframe splintered as the deadbolt came loose, and they were inside in short order.
“It’s trying to hide,” Matt murmured, putting into words what Jake was also feeling. “It knows what we did last night and doesn’t want the same thing to happen to it. It would rather we leave it alone until it can gather some others and take care of us properly.”
“They’re cowardly,” Jake said, as if remembering. “when they know they’re up against something that’s not helpless. When they’re up against us.” There was something more, on the tip of his tongue that Jake couldn’t quite vocalize. Some reason why they could do what they did, and why creatures like these would hate and fear them.
Matt saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned quickly to focus on it. It was small and squarely shaped, about the size of a housecat but standing on two legs. It was hairless, a dull creamy orange color, and had three tiny cartoonlike eyes and a pinprick of a mouth. Its demeanor wasn’t threatening; it looked more scared and confused than anything, and looked completely out of place in the colorless house.
Matt hesitated for a moment, and then the thing started pumping its stubby legs to run at him.
As it ran, it grew in size and speed. Its tiny eyes stretched until they were gaping, ragged eye sockets with shrunken gray balls lolling around in them, its mouth stretched wide and grew rows of sharp, dirty teeth. It also became more translucent, as if it was sacrificing density in order to grow in volume. Like a condensed ghost expanding in water.
Matt dove out of the way, not wanting to test the thing to see if it would pass through him like a ghost, and was glad he didn’t. The creature’s newly horrific mouth managed to take a large bite out of a support column that was in its path, bits of chewed wood and plaster falling to the rotted carpet in its wake.
Jake leapt in, brandishing his carving knife at the thing, and trying to distract it until Matt could get his footing again. The orange beastie was now about Matt’s height, a little shorter than Jake, and looked to be gaining confidence. It opened and closed its mouth several times, which made Jake think that it was anticipating having a human meal. It then erupted with a spray of foul-smelling spittle that Jake couldn’t avoid. He managed to keep the stuff from getting into his eyes, but the smell made him gag, and he dropped the knife to wipe as much of the goo off of his face as possible.
The creature took advantage of the invitation to lunge at Jake, its maw expanding even more until it looked large enough to swallow someone whole. It came within a foot of Jake before stopping short, a flash of purplish blue flame shooting up betwen them, sending the creature recoiling backwards. As an added bonus, the “heat” from the unnatural flames seemed to dry out Jake’s nightmare spitwad attack. Taking a few breaths of the now palatable air, Jake stooped and gathered up his knife, and kept his eyes on the temporarily cowed orange beast.
Jake didn’t make the mistake of threatening it and waiting for it to charge again; he lunged at it, himself, knife forward, slicing forcefully at it just below its bottom lip… or where its lip would have been if it had any. The thing shrieked.
Matt immediately noticed how odd the wound was; it didn’t bleed, and the insides of the thing didn’t seem to be any different from the outside. It just seemed to become disconnected from its body, somehow, making the areas around the cut move out of sync with each other. As the mouth opened and closed, Jake could see all the way through the gash he’d made and through to the wall behind it.
Jake made another slicing motion, and made another “tear” in the creature, eliciting another howl and shudder. He was set to make a third cut when the beast lurched forward and clamped its mouth down on Jake’s arm. Hard.
Matt gasped in shock and made a swift gesture, causing thing’s center eye socket to blaze with purple flame. A screen erupted from it, and it opened its mouth wide in pain, staggering backwards.
Jake did not, thankfully, seem very injured; he’d been bitten by the side of the mouth he’d been slicing at, and the thing had been unable to apply much pressure. Still, his arm was bloody from rubbing against those numerous ragged teeth, and he didn’t seem at all pleased about it.
Jake strode forward to the flailing thing and plunged the knife just under the leftmost, non-flaming eye socket, making a deft, circular motion. The lower half of the socket came loose as if Jake had used a biscuit cutter, falling to the floor and disintegrating instantly, leaving a patch of dull orange powder. The creature now had a clean, round hole going straight throught its trunk.
Not missing a beat, Jake plunged his whole knife arm into the gap and swept the blade up, having the effect of separating the top two halves of the creature entirely. The thing now looked like a strangely-carved mango, halfway on its way to being an ingredient in a fruit salad.
Matt gestured and concentrated again, muttering something under his breath that Jake couldn’t quite make out, and the edges of the beast took on the familiar purplish-blue glow, and separated further from each other, ripping where the blade had not yet cut. The thing’s mouth flapped uselessly on one side and it made loud moaning noises. It could no longer see to get away, and started to flail and shake and lash out blindly. Jake had to stay in constant motion to stay out of its reach.
Another swift cut, and a good-sized portion of the beast’s splotchy orange head came loose and fell, also crumbling into dust on the decaying rug. Another, and its leg came loose, making a little “v” shaped dust pattern on the floor. The thing began to shrink down again, now, becoming less frightening, but still Jake continued to carve.
Eventually, he found himself hacking away at a beast that was now about the size of a rat, and more difficult to cut since it had grown much denser. He diverted his attention and looked up at Matt, who was watching his work with a mixture of fascination and concern.
“Jake,” Matt said, gently, “It’s done, isn’t it?” He looked back at the pitiful thing, trembling, huge parts of its head and jaw missing like puzzle pieces, its one remaining little eye looking at Matt mournfully. Matt put his hand on Jake’s shoulder, pulling him back. “It’s done.”
Jake moved to join Matt, but as he did, the creature inflated one final time, coming at the two of them wildly and almost shaking the house with the force of its wailing. Jake met the thing with his blade and cleft it exactly in two. Both halves turned to dust instantly, raining slowly to the floor in an orange cloud.
“Now, it’s done.” Jake said, blowing some stray monster residue off of his battered arm. The cuts he had didn’t seem as deep as he might have worried. His weapon, however: he noticed that the knife had numerous deep scratches in it, most probably also made by collisions with the creature’s teeth. Jake was astounded that his arm had fared as well as it had; either he was healing very fast, or he was a lot tougher than he’d ever been before. Well, the latter went without saying.
It was then that Jake noticed that Matt was standing, completely still, staring into space, his eyes locked on a point somewhere outside the room, studying it. Jake knew what he was looking at, and what he was going to say before he said it.
“There are more,” Matt said. His voice was evenly split; half dread and half eager anticipation. “There are lots, lots more, and they know how to find us, too.”