Back from a crazy work week and helping my wife's out of town parents move. The usual warnings apply. Thanks for reading!
With the eventful day Stirling had, the night had been a bit on the dull side, at least until the screaming started.
Once Sam and Sue had left to look after the growing mob of scared customers, Stirling had read a novel from his phone while Dimitri snored peacefully in an aluminum lawn chair. As he read, Stirling unconsciously ran a hand over his newly smooth scalp. He wasn’t particularly vain, but he still couldn’t help but think that a shaved head was the wrong look to be sporting when you wanted to appear innocent.
It was a well-known fact that hair hates a villain. The number of positive role models who shaved their heads was slim, while a gleaming scalp might as well be the approved dress code for villains. Lex Luthor, Walter White, Gollum, Ming the Merciless, Voldemort… the list almost made itself.
He’d argued with Dimitri that a shaved head made him look more like someone who was involved in dark magic and not less. Dimitri had countered by saying it didn’t matter because a lot of people shaved their heads, and even if he did look evil, the only one he needed to look less like was himself. In the end, he’d grit his teeth, lathered up his scalp, and thought of Patrick Stewart.
The only other attempt at an improvised disguise hadn’t turned out nearly as well. In a spasm of misplaced confidence, he’d once again proved that if necessity was the mother of invention, then boredom was the emotionally unavailable father of fuck-ups.
In one of the poorly travelled corners of the Internet, he’d stumbled across a product called a Lip Plumper. It was a simple device, a suction cup that one placed over their lips to create, “a more full, plump, and kissable-looking you.” It wouldn’t change his face dramatically, but he reminded himself that large changes were made up of small changes. Anything that would alter his appearance could only be a plus.
Since Amazon didn’t deliver to pocket dimensions, he decided to innovate. Stirling reasoned that by placing a plastic yogurt container over his mouth and sucking out the air, he’d be able to achieve the exact same results as the Lip Plumper and at a fraction the price.
In retrospect, he should have realized that this was one of those random acts of fuckery that was destined to crumble to dust under the harsh light of reality. Instead of fuller, more kissable lips, it now looked like he’d tried to repeatedly felate a hot curling iron. The swelling had mostly gone, but he suspected it would take longer for the perfect circle of light bruising around his lips to disappear.
When the commotion began, Stirling had been feeling it long before he heard it, but Like a frog in a slowly warming pot of water, he hadn’t noticed it until the feeling was already on top of him and it was too late.
When he finally became aware that something was off, he had the sudden and overwhelming certainty there were ducks in the taproom, and not just any ducks, his ducks. Now that they were so close, he realized that it was no wonder he hadn’t sensed the decoys when he’d looked for them before. The shape of the magic he’d pushed into the wood fibres had been drastically altered. It wasn’t until he was nearly on top of his creations that he was able to recognize the feel of his own work. He’d been looking for caterpillars, what had found him here were butterflies. Then came the sound of screams, breaking glass, and splintering wood.
Stirling heard the lawn chair shift and turned to see Dimitri rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Wassgoingon?”
“Not sure,” Stirling reported, “but, hey, remember those hunting decoys of mine that went missing?”
“Decoys?” Stirling watched as it took Dimitri’s sleepy brain a second to slip back onto the rails, “oh, right. Wooden ducks for rich white people.”
“Well, they’re in the main room, and it sounds like they’re raising some shit,” he said focusing his attention in the direction of the main room. “They’ve been changed. I don’t know how.”
“Changed?” Dimitri asked through a yawn.
A berserker roar and the sound of smashing wood rose above the cacophony for just a second and Stirling nodded toward the sound. “Changed.”
“Fuuuck.” Dimitri sat up straighter and looked more awake. “Hey what happened to your mouth?”
Stirling was saved from answering as just then, the roar of superheated air from the crucible began to noticeably increase in volume. Sparks began to shoot out from under the lid, and the crucible began to do a passable impression of a jet engine spooling up on the runway for takeoff.
The steady orange glow of the heated ceramic began to rapidly brighten to white, and Stirling took a cautious step back. There came the muffled sound of repeated thumps that Stirling could feel coming up through the soles of his boots.
Dimitri sprung from his chair like he’d been goosed. “What the hell is that?”
“Dude? You’re asking me? New guy here.”
“Don’t dude me. Dude.”
They were interrupted by another even stronger shudder as something heavy pounded on the floor. A second later there was a faint cheer.
“Let’s go check it out,” said Stirling enthusiastically. He’d been cooped up for the last four hours and had caffeine to burn.
“I think I should check it out and you should stay here.”
“So I shaved my head for nothing?”
“No, Brittany, you shaved your head so that there’s less of chance that someone will recognize you, doesn’t mean nobody will. Let’s be honest, shaving your head is about as good a disguise as putting on a pair of glasses. This isn’t a Superman flick, and trust me, Clark Kent, you ain’t.”
Stirling threw up his hands. “Glasses!” Why hadn’t he thought of glasses? His lips might be normal size right now if he’d only thought of glasses!
There was suddenly the new sound of heavy pounding from outside the room. Stirling peeked his head around the corner to look down the hallway. At the end of the hall, he could see the heavy door that lead to the main room rattling on its hinges. Another set of fists joined the first, then another.
“Think maybe we should still check it out?” asked Dimitri.
A thought occurred to Stirling and he squinted back down the dim hall. “Doesn’t that door open out from the hall?”
“Yeah.”
“Why pound on it when they should be trying to pull it open? It's a metal fire door.”
Dimitri looked at the door with a bemused look and shrugged.
"I deduce whatever's on the other side of that door must be a huge dumbass," Stirling predicted.
Stirling moved to the end of the hall. As he approached, he could feel the familiar texture of his own magic on the other side becoming stronger. Whatever had been done to his magic was on the other side and in a mood to get in. The door was a heavy fire door with a metal frame and wasn’t going anywhere fast.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Stop that!” Dimitri hissed at him.
There was no reply but the continued hammering of fists. Now that he was closer, the sense of the magic was heavy and polluted like old infected blood. He’d been around pulp mills and chemical factories a few times, and the pervasive stink was the closest thing he could think of to compare to his impression of whatever was on the other side of the door.
He felt a familiar shudder run up his spine and took a quick step back from the door. Someone had just died.
“Oh, this sucks.”
“Huh?”
“Somebody out there just died .”
Another sound became audible over the heavy blows. Stirling wasn’t sure what it was, but it sounded like someone smacking the shit out of a raw ten-pound steak against a linoleum floor. The pounding on the door grew a pair of fists less and stopped completely after another half minute.
Stirling gave Dimitri a questioning look, but Dimitri looked as confused as he was. He approached the door and put his hand on the knob.
“Wait! Hissed Dimitri, “Anything could be out there, Madame Rag, Mister Bone, the Alchemists, you don’t know!”
“I don’t think so,” said Stirling, twisting the knob and pushing the door open.
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