everything is true
chapter one
Claude was jogging were he shouldn’t have been at that time of night, that was the problem. Wearing a bright yellow and green plaid windbreaker, he was running along John F. Kennedy Drive in the middle of Golden Gate Park, and decided to turn up Chain of Lakes Drive East, toward Fulsome. A couple dozen meters under the trees, he stopped and stepped off the path to take a short breather and look out over the south end of North Lake. Perhaps he would have felt something if he was less removed from his ape ancestry- some lifting of hairs, some tingle of warning. If only his senses were not dulled by centuries of escape from nature, he might have smelled the blood in the air, heard a rustle out of time with the wind, seen the dark shape in the trees above him. Alas, a human being in a familiar environment almost never looks up.
“Go on fifteen!”
“Thank you!” Twenty-seven-year-old Helix dumped her gnocchi for twelve, cranked the heat on a pan full of Alfredo sauce and dunked the penne in one of the strainers back in the boil. Then she picked the pot of rigatoni back up, finished stirring in the ladleful of Bolognese, plated, put it in the pass next to a steaming lasagna, and called “Out on twenty-one!”
The little printer in the small kitchen of the hotel bistro chattered and hummed, and she snagged the ticket on her way to grab a fresh sauté pan. Table nine, four top, no apps, she winced. No appetizers meant no grace period; she was going to have to move quickly if she was going to get the food for nine started before she had to finish fifteen, especially since she had not managed to get the veggies for the penne down while she was putting out twenty-one, but at least 2 eggplant parms and two spaghetti marinaras were fast and easy. She slammed her sauté pan down, splashed some olive oil in, and cranked the fire all the way. She dipped about a tablespoon of diced garlic into it, wiping her fingers on her apron after. She turned the fire down on the alfredo, tossed in some parm for thickening and flavor, gave it a stir and turned the heat to medium low. Then, moving at top speed, she scooped the floating gnocchi out of the small boil, put the full strainer down on her cutting board, grabbed two lasagna dishes, laid a scoop of marinara into each with a breaded slice of eggplant from the fridge unit under the counter, by which time the garlic in the pan behind her was starting to sizzle slightly, so she dropped the other two slices of eggplant on the board. She inhaled deeply; one never got tired of that heavenly seared-garlic-in-butter-smell. She knocked the small fridge’s door closed with her hip as she turned back to the stove, reaching her left foot back without looking to tap it shut when it bounced open an inch.
Meanwhile, her hands were busy. They darted here and there like a kestrel mating dance, put the fire under the sizzling pan to medium, gave it a flip so the bottom of the garlic wouldn’t burn, upended the steaming strainer of gnocchi from the cutting board into the alfredo sauce, gave it a couple quick flips to fold it in, pulled the penne out of the boil and let it hang in the stainer, pulled the sizzling garlic off the fire before it could burn, and reached over for a big handful of mixed veggies. She popped them into the garlic pan, flipped it to coat them in the oil and garlic, and moved it back onto the fire, which was too high, but she needed it fast.
Spinning in place, she lifted a handful of grated mozzarella and split it into her eggplant parmesan dishes, covered the cheese with the two eggplant slices she’d left on the counter, scooped more marinara over that, tossed a bit of parmesan on top of it all, and hooked the oven door open with her foot. The two lasagnas for eleven were almost done. Once the eggplant parms were in, she glanced at the clock (they would need 9 minutes) and hit the veggies with some white wine a little too early for deglazing and flavor, but lidded the pan so they would steam fast enough for her to not lose the gnocchi. Briefly her mind emptied, and she suffered a full two seconds of frozen panic.
Spaghettis! She jogged two steps to the reach in, killing the fire under the gnocchi alfredo as she passed, pulled two portions of spaghetti, dumped them in the boil, laid hands on a sauce pan, and scooped in four and a half ladles of the spaghetti sauce she’d prepped the day before- on the heat it went. She lifted the lid up off the veggies to it’s home above the stove. In went the penne and a scoop of marinara, flip. She checked the gnocchi, it was holding fine. She separated the spaghetti in the boil just as it started to stick, killed the fire on the penne primavera. Tossed a teaspoon of butter in the spaghetti sauce, gave it a stir.
The printer was chattering at her, two tickets, but it would have to wait a minute. She dashed to the oven and pulled the two lasagnas for eleven out, placing them under the broiler to finish. Snatching three bowls down and glancing at the clock, she turned back to the penne, and plated quickly. Clank! went the empty pan into the bus tub at her feet as she swiveled; the gnocchi was starting to skin, too thick. She needed to revive it before the penne primavera died. She twisted the heat on full, added about an ounce and a half of cream, and reached for a spatula to stir it. She left it on the heat just long enough to garnish the primavera with basil leaves, then plated the gnocchi into the two empty bowls. She reached back without looking and turned the heat under the spaghetti sauce down to medium, then pulled two liners down for eleven’s lasagnas, which she could tell by the sizzle were almost done. Garnished the gnocchi alfredos with a little parm and some oregano, grabbed the penne primavera, and set all three dishes in the pass
“Out on fifteen!”
The Ix had woken, and that meant no good to anyone. The entire bogus of Ix had lain slumbering, a furry pile of malign unconsciousness, for time outside of time, until a cousin of coincidence folded up his message to them into a paper-airplane, hit the topmost snout square on with it, and ran away from the resulting chain reaction. The pile, squirmed, the pile hissed, the pile seethed and bit. It built into an all out ball of brawl, before the Ix woke up enough to sort themselves from each other and start looking for something non-Ix to fuck with. Irritatingly, there were only the dozen or so Ix, so they began going over their equipment and snarling groggily at any other Ix that got too close before they'd finished waking up.
Jinx was having a wonderful time, running through the hotel from seven Suits on a mission to kill or capture him- it wasn’t boring, and that was a fact.
Ten minutes earlier, he had awakened, had a rum and smoke, and done a big stretch. Then he noticed his watch, which told the actual time. This was problematic. He looked at it very closely, and it did SEEM off, but all the particulars were correct: faded leather, same scratches as always, slightly dulled metal, light patina on the clear face cover. Jinx was aware of how important ‘seems’ could be, and remained suspicious. He smelled it carefully. Aha! that was a smell of a different color, alright. Just then, there was a small rattle from the door. Jinx, pissed about his watch and naked as the day he was born, threw it open, and yanked one of the two black-suited men standing outside into his room, slammed the door and flipped the bolt, leaving the other man standing in the hall with an electric lock-pick and a confused expression.
“WHAT have you DONE with my WATCH!?”
The man inside the room shook his head, confronted with a shouting naked man covered in tattoos that seemed somehow to be moving slowly across his skin. “Um,” he said distractedly, “you’re.. holding it?” The door thumped loudly.
“Bullshit!” yelled Jinx, “Why does it say 9:50 p.m., hunh? WHY THAT!?”
“Uh, because.. that’s what time it is?” the writhing tattoos were really unsettling.
“EXACTLY! MY watch, my VERY IMPORTANT WATCH, is quite specifically very carefully with definite purpose set to NEVER, EVER- give me that!” he snatched the pistol out of the startled man’s right hand as the door behind him banged and rattled “-tell the correct time EVER! Which means that the WATCH I am HOLDING” he continued, looking at the gun in irritation and tossing it over his shoulder “is NOT my WATCH, but some OTHER- no phone calls!” Jinx grabbed the small black device out of the still disoriented man’s left hand “-some OTHER watch and- WHY IS THIS NOT A PHONE!?” he screamed “This is a, like, a GPS tracker with...” Jinx stopped mid tirade, and looked at the watch in his hand. Then, looking back at the device, he calmly threw the watch out the window, staring intently at the little screen while the watch fell away from them. “Oh. Oh. Also, that was a gun you were holding before, wasn’t it.”
The door flew open with a loud splintering noise and the Suit from the hallway burst in aiming a pistol in all directions before pointing it at Jinx, who began pacing. “Freeze!”
“No,” said Jinx, continuing to pace.
The two Suits looked at each other, and the first one shrugged helplessly, and began edging toward his own discarded weapon. The second Suit turned back to the pacing Jinx. “This is a 357 magnum. If I were -“
“So?” Jinx interrupted, smiling widely; his canine teeth seemed just a little too long and sharp.
“-..’so’ what?” said Suit number two.
“That’s what I’m saying” Jinx agreed.
“What are you saying?”
“‘So what’.”
“Wait, you’re saying ’so what’?”
“Yes; why, are you slow witted?”
“I’m not slow, you idiot, I’m armed and-“
“Yeah, but so what?”
“What do you mean, ‘so what’? I could kill you with-“
“No you couldn’t”
“YES, I COULD, stop interrup-“
“Why should I?”
“Stop it! Why should you WHAT?”
“Gods, you ARE slow; why should I stop interrupting you?”
“BECAUSE I HAVE A GUN POINTED AT YOU, you complete-“
“We’ve been OVER that, but you haven’t answered me”
“Stop INTERRUPTING ME! Answered what?”
“No, ‘so what’- it’s very different”
“WHAT’s different?”
“Yes”
“Wait, what?”
“I SAID yes”
“Okay, you said yes. So what?”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly... what?” Suit Two wasn’t sure when it had become a conversation or where he’d lost track of it, but he was confused and angry. The first Suit managed to get his gun back in hand, and rejoined the party.
“That’s enough.” said the first suit, pointing his recovered weapon at Jinx ,who stopped pacing and licked one fang thoughtfully.
“Who did you guys say you were again?”
The second Suit tried out his best evil grin, and said “That’s classified”
Jinx grinned too, the kind of grin that would make even the toughest hyena hand over its lunch. “Oh, so THAT’s who you are; the ensemble does kind of give it away- you guys should maybe rethink your wardrobe.”
“Look,” said the first Suit, “all you need to know is, YOU are the Hunted, and WE, well, we are the Hunters” The naked tattooed man in front of them laughed silently and then seemed to crouch slightly without moving at all.
“Wrong”
Helix was struggling to keep her rhythm. The little galley kitchen could accommodate two cooks, but they only scheduled one on sunday nights, which, usually, Helix preferred. When she got slammed though, it was a mad, mad symphony she had to conduct. She had a rail full of tickets, a stove full of pans, a flat top full of food, and an oven full of dishes, and the printer would not. Shut. Up. She swore the little thing actually sounded as if it was saying “check-a-ticket, check-a-ticket, uummm, check-a-ticket” every time it printed. Some nights she had nightmares about that sound. Thank gods it was almost nine, the rush was almost over. She just needed one last strong push and then she could spend an hour or two doing the nightly deep cleaning of the kitchen. It was amazing how a single night in a restaurant kitchen could result in the same kind of mess you’d expect out of a month of not cleaning the kitchen at home.
check-a-ticket, check-a-ticket
She threw seven dishes at the pass, yelling “Out on three! Up on fourteen! Out on nine, please!” pulling the three tickets and matching them to the dishes. Then she pirouetted, tossing empty strainers, used spatulas, and dirty pans into bus tubs, sinks, and corners. A quick sweep of her arm wiped her board clean of odds and ends into the compost before she moved to the printer and lifted a streamer of tickets like a magician’s handkerchief, scanning the contents and cursing under her breath. Shifting her existing tickets as far down the rail as they would go to accommodate the newcomers, she was careful to leave the break between the eight tickets she was currently working and the four she hadn’t even started yet, just as she was careful to glance at each new ticket as she slid it into the rail. It was best to be sure as early as possible that there were no surprises, such as an order for the stuffed portabellos (despite her having told everyone they were out of them at the pre-shift, she’d had orders for them twice). Finished filling the rail with the new tickets, Helix turned and took a calm look at the chaotic kitchen; the bread for sixteen’s meatball sandwich was burning, but bread was fast and easy, so she opted to let it burn while she conducted her much needed survey.
The boil pot full of strainers containing pasta took up only one burner on the range. The other five spots all had sautés going at various stages of readiness, and she had three prepped pans off to the side, olive oil and garlic already in them. She had three egg parms and six lasagnas in the oven, set to come out in their various groupings at 9:59, 10:01, 10:03, and 10:06, plus a couple each in the salamander that were almost done browning. Some of them had to be ready at the same time as some of the sautees, some were matched to hot sandwiches on the flat-top, one to a club on her board. Some of the sandwiches were going with sautees, some were paired. One sautee was by itself, but waiting for the slow diner at the bar to finish his soup. She had to keep track of a hundred, a thousand, a million particulars; a host, a myriad, a multitude of things could go wrong with the food, while she threw herself around this cluttered little room full of knives, fire, hot oil, and boiling water. Right next to the open flame of the front left burner sat a small blowtorch, for creme brulee. Haphazard stacks of heavy metal boil pots and large sauce pans slouched on their shelf above her head. Oil and water insisted on maintaining separate kinds of slippery on the floor. She spared no thought for any of it.
check-a-ticket, check-a-ticket-
In thirty seconds she would need to deglaze a primavera, in forty seconds, she needed to flip the corned beef and lay a slice of swiss cheese on it. Before that happened she would have to find room for the single/done steak, and right after the cheese went down for the ruben, she’d have to pop the bread on to toast. She had to remember that the primavera for ten needed to be no salt, and to get some more parsely chopped for garnish by the time the spaghetti for thirteen was ready to plate, and she would need to complete steps for the four other sautees in between all that. She had to remember which tables were out on apps, and which weren’t, keep an eye on the clock for the things in the oven, and she couldn’t forget the salamander or she’d have to start two 9 minute egg parms and two 12 minute lasagnes completely over.
-uummmmm, check-a-ticket
She needed to run to the back and grab another couple bottles of wine, she needed to refill her mozzarella from the lowboy, she needed to get whoever was least busy to get her another bin of mixed veggies from downstairs. A dozen other adjustments and procedures screamed and clamored. The alfredo for ten wasn’t thickening right and needed attention. If she mistimed anything, something would burn, needing to be re-done, or would not be ready in time to serve with the rest of the table. Any of this, anything, a mere question about a dish she wasn’t focused on, could tangle the insane dual mental and physical dance she was attempting. Helix clamped down on the tired, familiar panic just in time for her boss to run over and tell her “I need a medium burger sub swiss no tomato, and a primavera no carrots extra parm on the fly for table two, the order never got put in and they’ve been waiting twenty-five minutes already. Oh! and hold on sixteen, the salads came back and I’m resending apps.”
check-a-ticket check-a-ticket, uummm, check-a-ticket
Claude was not having a very good night. He had been, a lovely, temperate evening, right up until the alien had stepped out of the trees onto the edge of the path. At first, Claude was amazed by what he was sure was a fantastic costume, short, slender, covered in gadgets, almond eye’d- classic. He’d straightened his stylish plaid windbreaker and almost walked right up to it; surely a prank or costume party was the explanation, after all, nobody just saw an alien walking through the park, that was nonsense. However, when the little being had turned and seen him with what turned out to be quite creepy and utterly believable eyes, his disbelief suspended itself in a hurry. Those were real eyes. It was a real alien, handling a device in a manner that said real weapon, coming toward him in a familiar way that bypassed the meat-eater in Claude and went straight to the part of the brain that has been hunted and devoured since mammals first hid from the last of the dinosaurs. Cold fear debated tactics with hot panic and lost: Claude unfroze and fled.
The Ix looked a lot like ferrets, if the little weasels had been designed with an extra pair of arms/legs halfway down their slinky bodies. They were of a fairly weaselly disposition also, and swarmed around on two, four, or six limbs, each of which ended in a hand/foot just a tiny bit more ape than ferret. When walking upright on their haunches they had a tendency to sort of waddle. Standing thus, they were, on average, about two and a half feet tall, covered in leather harnessing, belts and pouches. They had nothing else for clothing, and their fur was a varied gray, each with some natural pattern, usually including some kind of mask, and also permanently dyed markings on, like tattoos. Every Ix had a uniquely evolved prehensile tail, this one with pincers at the end, that one extra long and thin, another barbed wickedly. As they bumbled about, one of them, remembering something from their last excursion, started loudly chanting “Coffee! CoffeeCoffeeCoffeeCoffee!” He was immediately dog-piled by a snarling trio of the others, but there was a general chattering hiss of agreement. Nix looked up from deciphering the contents of the paper-airplane, and took charge before the bogus could fall to total chaos.
“Nagh! Belay-that-and-knock-off-yer-squirming-and-noise!” He chatter-growled, “Stix-Quix-and-Flix! Get-off-of-Mix! Everybody-check-all-- Dix! Stop-humping-Kix's-leg! Check-your- Pix! Stop-pinching-Tix! I-don't-care-which-you-or-who-started-what! Everybody-check-all-yar-mees-and-mines!” There was a bogus wide inventory of items.
“Nagh!” cried one, “I'm-missing-a-mine-what-has-sharp-parts-and-bits-for-the-picking! Which-Ix-has-his-mitts-on-my-mostest-of-mine!?”
The largest of them, an Ix that looked like he only ever ate steroids, gingerly picked up what appeared to be a pickaxe designed for tree-chopping. “Um... Pix?” the large Ix chuckled in a voice full of help but devoid of smart “Pix?”
“Nagh! MineMineMine!” cried Pix, and launched himself at the oafish Kix without hesitation. And then immediately re-launched, when that body-builder of an Ix lashed out with a hind leg and sent him flying backwards. A fierce wrestling match ensued, and Nix was forced to interfere before the bogus could pick sides and join in. “PreyPreyPreyPreyPreyPrey!” He screamed at them, and that got their attention quick enough. “We've-a-jobby-bit-and-a-Prey-thing-to-hunt!” He reminded them, tucking the rolled up note into a loop in his belt and settling his eye-patch. “With-every-all-yer-mees-and-mines-we'll-go-and-”
“-and CoffeeCoffeeCoffee!” screamed Mix, dancing crazily in place. This time the whole bogus picked up the call, the cave echoing with shouted demands for coffee. Nix shrugged to himself.
“Bellydown-me-swarmy-Ix, to-the-One-Side-world-and-Coffee!” he proclaimed, and then Nix streaked out of the cave, the whole tumbling lot of the Ix on his heels, chattering and cheering and biting.
The roof had been a bad idea. When Jinx saw the man in the deep black suit and dark, dark sunglasses step out of the shadows he thought for the first time that night that he might be in a bit of trouble. This was no lackey, this was one of the Boss Suits. His soft, thick, three-piece suit was made of a material never seen by any civilian. His sunglasses housed unknown technologies. His face was the blank mask of a man who had never smiled or frowned, and he moved in a way that suggested he weighed far more than a man his size should. Dangerously, this Suit knew enough about his quarry to have come up here, instead of waiting in the lobby. Jinx took all this in at a glance, and immediately leapt off the top of the building.
Claude was pretty sure things couldn’t get any worse. Running away from the alien along the shoreline of North Lake, wondering if aliens could swim, he was thinking that he might just make it, when he dodged around a tree and ran straight into what was most certainly a werewolf in the act of dropping down from the branches. When he spun around and sprinted for the lake, he knocked the beast (which had in an instant sprung completely over Claude) into the water. The creature thrashed and regained an uncertain footing, moonlit liquid cascading off it and then blooming into a glittering cloud as it shook itself, doglike.
Unlike the first moments of his encounter with the alien, Claude had no doubts about the thing’s veracity- hands, feet, fur and snout were all too obviously parts of a living animal; he could see the glint of saliva on it’s teeth (oh god, look at its huge teeth!) and he’d smelled the foul breath of the thing when he’d inadvertently body checked the solid, warm mass of it’s very real, muscle-wrapped skeleton. Staring at it as it stumbled on the rocky lake bottom and fell over once more, his brain shut down around his last thought (which was, somehow, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”) and froze. Luckily, his nervous system, older and more experienced than his brain by millennia, had already seized direct control of his body and was propelling him away at high speed.
Ahead of him, he could see lights through the trees, where the park ended at Fulsome. There would be houses and businesses and people, who, you never knew, might even have weapons of some kind.
Market Street of One Side Earth was not prepared for the arrival of the Ix. They swarmed out from under a manhole cover, and all thirteen of them formed up standing on the roof of a bus stop like a group of wicked meercats, surveying the busy street. Behind them, a car got it's wheel stuck in the manhole they left uncovered. Nix licked a needle-y two inch fang and snuffed appreciatively as, over his shoulder, the bogus grinned and snapped, looking around at the scene with their tongues lolling happily at their prospects. “Fun-fun-fun-fun-fun” was the general chatter. “My-nefarious-Ix,” Nix announced, “let-us-hunt-amid-this-chaos, Nagh! and-catch-ourselves-some-Coffee!” and the Bogus cheered and scattered off the bus stop, chanting “-CoffeeCoffeeCoffee-”. None of the thousands of human ears in the vicinity believed themselves enough to tell their conscious brains they'd heard this, and not an eyeball near let such nonsense as a pack of Ix past the optic nerve. The Ix weren't invisible, they were Unacknowledged. Also, like most All Siders, they could create, not an absolute, but just a tendency in One Siders to step around and otherwise avoid an unacknowledged All Sider in their path (or, truly useful, one in their chair). All Siders caused this subconscious avoidance by trying to remember to be somewhat malevolent, angry or at least very irritable; in this, the Ix were naturals.
They poured through the crowd in a frenzy, a sudden wave of ailment. Stix, armed with a pair of what were essentially giant toothpicks, was jabbing people viciously in the leg or foot as he passed, and pausing now and then to snatch up a discarded piece of gum and expertly fling it beneath a descending shoe. Mix was riding around on people, so malicious they never acknowledged his presence, and using three hands and his slender forked tail to reorganize the contents of their pockets. An assortment of All Sider insects fell continuously from Tix, crawling into the nearest electronic devices they could find to cause system errors, while Tix herself sprang about like a deer, smacking people in the face as they twitched and flinched and failed to realize she was there. Bumbling Kix forgot to be irritable, and people began tripping over the bulky Ix, their eyes never once believing that they saw him. Dix was humping a flurry of legs and every dog he saw, which, as dogs find All Siders more observable than humans do, was causing a lot of canine misbehavior. Sores and colds and rashes broke out wherever Six passed, throwing an occasional little powder puff bomb and rubbing his mangy coat around people's legs like some disease-ridden cat. Fix dashed along under vehicles, his middle hands a blur above his back as they expertly arranged malfunctions. The whole bogus raced about frenetically while moving the same direction, much the way objects caught in a hurricane travel the same direction as the storm.
Nix was the only one of the little weaselly beasts not zipping about in this melee of misfortune. His mind was the sharp focus a ferret gets when the myriad things it is eternally distracted by happen to turn out for the moment to be all the same thing. He merely drifted along, moving forward at the same pace as the tempest of Ix. Middle hands hooked in his belt, top arms crossed across his lanky chest, he swaggered down the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring the crowd disdainfully, his pair of infamous hatchets strapped diagonally to his chest and back. Behind him, like an afterthought of evil, his tail whipped lazily, and every person the long flicking tip touched, some valuable possession they carried instantly reversed into nothing.
All around him, as the Ix asserted their presence, the world went wrong. Fights broke out. Dogs trailing leashes threw snarling fits, and children cried. Jackhammers failed, trucks broke down, traffic lights began giving conflicting signals. People looked down to find their muffin sprouting mold and their latte somehow rancid. Windows cracked. Men forgot everything but the woman they happened to be looking at, and walked into poles or out into traffic. A young couple at a bus stop suddenly started throwing up. One poor man, too angry himself to tend away from Unacknowledged All Siders, was unfortunate enough to step on Nix's foot, and was dismantled to nothingness by the terrible hatchets in the blink of an eye.
Aside from that one man (and an old woman who failed later to recover from her encounter with Six) nobody else died. This was largely because the Ix were simply playing, and didn't particularly care if anyone was killed or not. They were only having a good time on their way to find a prize. Just ahead of Nix, a fire hydrant exploded. Off to his left, some Ix or another caused a car crash.
It was a couple minutes to midnight, and Helix was nearly done with her kitchen shift. She wadded up all but one of the cleaning rags she’d been using, tossed them into the towel bucket, and pulled the garbage bags out of the two bins from her area. “Hey, Bill,” she called over to the dishwasher while she was tying off the trash bags, “I’m taking my garbages out, you need anything taken to the dumpster?”
“Naw,” said Bill, “I gotta lotta stuff, and I’m not done puttin’ it together, thanks though”
“Yup,” acknowledged Helix, and went out the back of the kitchen just as Monday morning rode the witching hour’s first minute into town.
The back door opened onto the hotel parking lot. Helix took two steps toward the brick-wall-enclosed dumpsters when she heard a clattering from above her. She looked up in time to see a strange man, dressed in leather and canvass wearing a folded-brim hat with three feathers in it, coming down the fire escape like a stone through water. Above him, a dark-suited figure followed nearly as fast. Rather than lower the ladder from the bottom platform, the man in the hat vaulted the railing, landing in a crouch several yards away. In a flash the odd-looking fellow was up and next to Helix, snapping a (rather large) knife out from a sheath strapped to his leg.
“Hi,” he said in a mild, friendly voice, “mind if I borrow this?” as he lifted the compost bag out of Helix’s suddenly nerveless hand.
The man in the hat slashed the bottom of the bag, and sent it skidding across the pavement back toward the area under the fire escape, trailing restaurant slime like some kind of giant speedy snail. The man in the suit and sunglasses jumped the fire escape rail and landed in the slippery mess, his feet shooting straight out in front of him and dumping him right on his ass; the man next to her laughed silently with his tongue out in a way that reminded her of a dog. As the other man was climbing to his feet, Helix became aware of a distant yelling, getting closer. The man in the sunglasses took a long barreled pistol out of his impossibly dark suit. Some guy in a yellow and green plaid windbreaker came running out of the park across Fulsome, yelling as he went. When he saw the gun, oddly, the guy ran straight to the man holding it, babbling about wolves and little green men.
At that moment, an honest to god alien sporting a jet pack dropped down into the little parking lot, while at the same time some sort of I-shit-you-not giant wolf/ape leapt up out of nowhere into a crouch on the brick wall by the dumpster.
Everyone froze. There was a rapid reassessment of priorities by all parties. The man in the plaid windbreaker continued his stream of gibberish but now at a whisper. Helix tried to run away without attracting any notice and wound up not moving at all. The suited man’s attention was completely on the alien, the man with the knife tipped his hat respectfully to the wolf-thing.
Then the man in the suit, still seeming mesmerized by the alien, reached back without looking and shot the man in plaid. This left Helix alone in the parking lot with a murderer, a corpse, an alien, a werewolf, and her only possible ally, the weirdo next to her, a man who had actually managed to bring a knife to a gunfight.
Mondays, she reflected, were really raising the bar on suck.
Later, as they escaped by, of all things, hopping on a bus, she questioned her erstwhile ally.
“I really haven’t got time to go into detail, but, the short version is, it’s all true, everything.” So saying, Jinx leaned back in his seat and scoped out the other passengers on this, the first bus to anywhere they had found as they ran from the scene in the hotel parking lot. Jinx, thought Helix, really fit in with the rest of the people on the late night bus, talking about multiple dimensions and strange creatures, just like any other crazy person Helix had encountered on public transit.
“So... vampires. They really exist?”
“Yep”
“And, government conspiracies?”
“Oh my me yes”
“And aliens?”
“Obviously”
“Elves? Dwarves? Wizards?”
“Positive, yes, absolutely”
“The Easter Bunny?”
Jinx sighed, “I mean, that was a one-off, really just a quick fix for a genetic anomaly that cropped up among a relatively small sub population one season about 12 thousand years ago, needed a carrier, didn’t work with birds or carnivores, not enough deer hunting going on at the time, wound up using rabbit to spread a counter-contagion that would pass to the offspring, though, I gotta tell ya, you were THIS close to having an easter dog, you know; amazing how that story has hung around.”
“I... see.” She didn’t. “Cyborgs? Are they real?”
“Yes.”
“Sentient computers?”
“Don’t talk about those. Ever.”
“O...kay. Time travel?”
“Yes already, I told you, everything.”
“Santa?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Coke invented Santa in the 50’s. I did once hang out with the first Krumpus though, if you know who that is”
“Yeah, he’s like, the christmas boogieman, right?”
“Hey! Points for that much, anyway, nice to know some of those stories are making a comeback”
“And, these are all creatures from some other dimension?”
“Oh my me no. No, no, no. Well, a couple of them. Although, some of the others do move in and out of parallel dimensions. Less these days though. It got dangerous.”
“What about-“
“Look, I really don’t have time to keep going through this stuff, though the trip down memory lane was as the first flowers of spring” Jinx stood up as the bus came to a stop.
“The first flowers of... ? Hey, can’t you just tell me what the heck is going on?”
“Sorry, kid, gotta go- and listen: don’t fuck around with those guys in the suits; really, stay the hell off their radar. And be careful, I hear someone’s waked the Ix - good luck!” and with that he was gone. Absentmindedly, she put on the pendant he had insisted on giving her.
Nix confirmed his One Side location on Oxford St. matched his given coordinates and slid his eyepatch around his head until it was up behind his ear. The black string that remained across his brow and under his other ear blended with the black fur of the natural eyepatch that was his only facial marking. “BOGUSMINE!” he screamed like a small mountain lion “Coffee-Coffee-Coffee!” and he pointed into the internet cafe and after-hours club to his right.
The whirlwind of Ix contracted, dog-piled briefly in the entrance to the shop, and then streamed in. They quickly spread until they were everywhere, under tables, on top of counters, inside cupboards... everything that could be tipped was knocked over, everything that could be opened or uncovered became so. Wires were chewed through. Chairs appeared to leap up and topple. The panic within began instantly but was achieved too slowly for anyone to make it out in time.
Later a bewildered policeman, assigned this cafe from among the battalion of emergency personnel that descended on the aftermath of what the media would bill as the Market St. Calamity, would interview the still conscious. Upon hearing some of the descriptions, he would exchange a look with his partner and very carefully write down much shorter things, such as 'witness extremely confused', which was easier on all concerned and would keep his captain from screaming something like “what the fuck is this, Benson, a fucking bed time story!? I sent you to write witness statements, not an episode of the fucking X-files!”
According to the four eye-witnesses still standing, what happened inside was this:
“Everything started, like, flying around-”
“What I first saw was the table rockin' like a earthquake”
“Everybody started screaming.”
“-like, chairs and coffee cups and everything-”
“-Tell him about the cash register, Sarah.”
“Only, see, it spilled my iced caramel half-caff skim latte all over my lap when it started rocking like that”
“-and all the coffee machines and things started going off like crazy-”
“-Sarah, tell him about the register”
“-and the lights started flickering-”
“The screaming was terrible. 'Cause of all the burns too. From the hot coffee and tea flying everywhere.”
“And these are new pants, a hundred-fifty bucks they cost me”
“-for a minute I sort of thought I saw a bunch of evil, like, monkeys slamming cabinets open and shut-“
“-Sarah tell him about the register, Sarah”
“I can still hear the, the screamin'. And gurglin'. Fucked up gurglin' screams, because of, y'know, all the throwin' up.”
“Won’t come out, I bet, you just wait and see; 30% cashmere you know. Then a chair flew over and hit the man next to me in the face”
“-while everything inside them burst off the shelves-“
“-Sa-ra-a-a-a-ahh, the register, tell him about the register-”
“-and the register sort of floated up, shook itself empty-“
“-and flew like a bullet right at my head! My HEAD! I could have been killed! Dude! Seriously, Sarah, you’d think you didn’t even care I’m almost dead! And what are the cops going to do about it, anyway?”
“Of course he started bleeding RIGHT on my shoes, just my luck”
“Awful sound, people still tryina scream while throwin' up. I'ma have nightmares.”
Down the block, a frustrated Nix double checked his eye-patch and found that his quarry had gone to ground, no trail. Frustrated, he gathered the quite caffeinated bogus and raced back to the All Side.