Starling- A Lovecraftian Comedy Chap. 3 Moving In Mysterious Ways

The night passed peaceably. It had been an active and productive day one, but I was pretty tired. [[Marti]]’s sofa was no more comfortable than I remembered, and the dreams I had were gory and dreadful, hunter and the hunted through the ancient dark woods, rutting wildly coated in the thin waste of my prey until my heart gave out. Which was also the same as last time. 

I think Marti might have mold in her apartment somewhere. Or maybe some kind of spiritual gas leak.

Marti woke around the same time I did, stretching and twisting fit to break a structural engineer’s heart. 

“Staring is rude.” She said, not even glancing in my direction.

“Looking away would be ruder. That was as pure a demonstration of life and contentment as may ever exist, expressed in its most aesthetic form.”

Marti shrugged her fascinating shoulders and went and brushed her teeth. She always took a long time doing that, but who’s going to fault her for good dental hygiene? I zoomed over to the takeout box that had been converted into a seed incubator. Not far to zoom, in Marti’s studio apartment. The window looked out over a pretty normal neighborhood, if a touch rough. 

These pine tree highrises look so fancy to those who don’t know, but once you know that Elves used them to house serfs back in the day, it gets a lot less impressive. Now, of course, they are “an economical, sustainable, inclusive housing solution that directly improves local air quality and reduces the heat island effect.” 

The Elves generally fail to mention that the reason they are so damn affordable is that, one, it costs the knife-eared pricks almost nothing to grow them, and, two, they wanted to deliberately undercut other property developers and the building trades in a bid to weaken non-elf economic interest groups. The fact that this effort failed before it really got off the ground is a testament to just how feral and degenerate the elves have become. Couldn’t even corner the housing market with free housing. Pathetic.

Hey, the seed is sprouting!

“Marti, you beautiful, wonderful product of a beautiful, wonderful, enlightened people, you did it! The seed is sprouting!”

“Oh wow.” She strolled out of the bathroom in a black tank top and boy-cut briefs, and my brain briefly fused into a solid mass. Then I shook it off. This was no time for her monotone apathy.

“I’ve never seen it do that before. This is amazing.”

“It’s a seed. Give it moisture, warmth and a little nudge from magic, it’s going to sprout. The real question is can we make it grow.” She seemed disinterested in the miracle of the seed’s transformation. “Don’t suppose you feel like running out and picking up breakfast?”

“I got dinner. Also no, I am going to stare at this beautiful little thing until we are ready to plant it. Look, it’s got brave little roots-”

“Hypocotyl.”

“And adorable little leaves-”

“Cotyledon.”

“And it’s still a seed! It hasn’t even been planted yet. What a brave, wonderful little thing you are. Who’s a good seed? It’s you. Yes it is! You. You are going to grow up to be just the best spirit root giving plant ever. Yes you are. YES you ARE!” 

“Guess I’m doing breakfast then. You like omelets?”

“Love ‘em.”

“What kind?”

“Whatever kind you want to cook.”

She grunted charmingly and fetched some eggs from her bone-bedecked fridge. “I’m thinking simple- just herbs and butter.”

“Sounds delightful. Almost as delightful as you, you precious little wonder. Woosa woosa woosa best little seed? It’s you. It’s YOU!”

“You are baby-talking your seed. Why are you baby-talking your seed?”

“Talking to plants helps them grow big and strong. This is a science fact.” Marti gave me a look. I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel it anyway. 

I settled for just humming happily for a bit. I could sweet talk my little sweetie later, when Marti was off doing Marti stuff. I looked over to watch her cook. Marti cooking was another thing absolutely worth staring at. 

First, she set the pan on a low heat. While it warmed up, she began to crack the eggs. She had the strangest way of cracking eggs I ever did see- she put a plate on the counter and dropped the eggs onto it from about a foot up. The egg cracked perfectly but did not shatter. No leaking, no mess. She would then pick up the egg, deposit the interior into a bowl and toss the shell across the room and into the pots of her bonsai trees. She did this six times, never missing once. 

The eggs were well whisked with a fork, butter into the pan, then half the eggs. In no time at all, the goth goddess had two beautiful Parisian omelets on paper plates, butter shined and topped with chopped herbs. The most gentle pressure from a fork sliced through them, the interior still gooey and mesmerizingly soft. Sheer, elegant perfection. I tried to savor it slowly, but like all perfect things, it couldn’t last and was gone too soon.

“Outstanding. Just… outstanding. Ten out of ten. Those chickens lived a worthwhile life, having produced those eggs. They should be grateful that their unfertilized embryo could contribute to a supreme achievement like those omelets.”

“Yes,” Marti nodded naturally. “I, too, feel that chickens should know their place.”

“Do they not?”

“They are convinced they are still dinosaurs.”

“Are they not?” 

“Meh.” Marti wiggled her hand.

“Speaking of bringing something into the world, is the seed ready to plant?”

“Looks like it. Let me grab a little pot.”

“Wouldn’t a big pot be better? We don’t know how big it will grow.”

“Doesn't work like that. You want to make sure the seed gets all the water and nutrients it needs all the time. Extra dirt and extra surface area just means the dirt dries out faster. We can always move it to a bigger pot later.”

“You know best,” I nodded. She smiled and went and got a little pot out while my heart rate recovered. It was a crude little pinch pot, clearly handmade and fired in an equally crude kiln. A little hole had been poked in the bottom, and the sides daubed with strange paints. Rough caricatures of humans, perhaps, or demons, or some amalgam of all of those things. Fun.

“This will do. About seven centimeters wide is right.” She dragged over a little bucket that had been shoved in a corner. “This is the good stuff. Black earth from an ancient floodplain, formed from thousands of generations of plants and animals living and dying near the water, enriched by minerals washed down the mountains. It is the very stuff of life itself. And every part of its creation was dense with meaning. Spiritually rich on every level.”

Well now I just felt bad about my lousy spiritual water. It wasn’t nearly that fancy. 

“Although I grant you, it barely qualifies as a spiritual material in the sects. Those guys are pure elitist snobs. If it doesn’t meet their definitions, it’s not really spiritual.” She rolled her perfect eyeballs. Then using her long, beckoning fingers, she filled the pot with dirt, patted the seed in place, and lightly covered everything in another layer of dirt.

“Do I water it now?”

“Yes and no. I’m really not sure what this plant wants, in terms of water, so we are going to start with a good soak and see how it goes from there. Sprinkle over the top, just to wet everything down, then-” she got out a big soup bowl. “Fill this with water. We’ll put the pot in there. Capillary action will draw the water up and saturate the soil. The surface will dry out a little faster, but that’s good because it will help reduce the risk of mold.”

“Oh cool!”

“Sounds nicer than “Butt Chugging,” huh?” She laughed merrily, like the tinkling of fairy bells over a bacchanalia. 

“Shh!” I covered the pot with my hand. “I don’t want you using such crude terms around the youngster. Who knows how it will grow up otherwise.”

“You do know it has no ears to hear or brain to comprehend language, right? You do understand that about plants?”

“Spiritual plants are different.” I argued.

“No, they are not.” Marti insisted, wrongly. 

I gave her a look. She gave me one right back. I doubled down. So did she. Little did she know, I could double down again! Shockingly, she managed it too. Eventually she elaborated.

“Spiritual plants can develop sentience and sapience over millenia. Not as a damn seed. Even if it was sapient, its thoughts would be so utterly alien as to make communication impossible. You cannot harm a plant by swearing around it.”

Having won the argument, I decided to be gracious. “Thank you for admitting you were wrong. I know you will do your best to provide a nurturing, positive environment for little Rocco in the future.”

“Rocco? You named the plant Rocco.”

“What else could you possibly call him?”

“Janet? Because it’s a her?

“Nonsense. It’s going to give me a spiritual root, an inherently masculine activity. It must be male. I could consider Ralph.”

“You think I can’t sex a plant? I could compromise with Lavinia.”

Lavinia was a lovely, traditional name. Even if she were wrong about the gender, anyone would be proud to be a Lavinia.

“Alright, it’s Lavinia. And I fully believe you could sex a plant. Everything about you screams “illegal fun in Texas.”

“What’s Texas?”

“A state full of those who enjoy self-abuse. They call it the lone-star state. Make of that what you will.”

“Sounds like a good time to me, actually.” Marti looked interested for a moment, then violently shook her head. “Wait, what are you even talking about?”

“Young Lavina’s early childhood education?”

“Look, even with all the magic support in the world, it’s going to take a few days to grow into a healthy little seedling, let alone become a ripe, harvestable… whatever it will be. Just leave it be. It will get plenty of warmth and sunlight in the window.”

“Alright. Good point.” I mulled it over. I was completely focused on getting that spiritual root, but there were some quality-of-life things I could do to get this loop going strong. Actually, I could pick up some things to turbocharge my ascent into immortality. “I’m going to need a fresh suit and a briefcase. And a camera.”

____________________________________________________________________________

I rushed around the city, quickly assembling the pieces I would need. I bought a lighter from a certain shop, so I could light a catboy’s cigarette. The catboy I barely stopped from huffing spraypaint out back of a shitty dive bar. He had been stood up. 

I calmed him and reassured him that, of course, he was beautiful. Desirable. Wanted. I declined his generous offer to prove my words physically but offered to take some pictures for his portfolio instead. He had a camera, I had the skills, and pretty shortly, he had some killer street candid's.

I borrowed the camera while he ran off to grind the pictures in someone’s face. Old Polaroid camera, except the branding was different, and it never ran out of film. Odd, but not that odd for Raleigh. 

From there, I joined a high-intensity game of dominos with some old-timers down by the canal. Just a bunch of good 'ole boys sunning their scales and shooting the breeze, but they put those tiles down like they were iron tablets. 

Pretty soon, I persuaded Paolo that I needed a suit. Paolo, he of the jagged white scar through blue-green scales around his round eye, allowed that as the owner of a second-hand clothes store, he might have something that fits and at a nice price. 

He sent me to his niece, who did not have scales but did have a keen eye for the human figure. She got me fitted out at the store. A few passes with a magic wand, and I was tailored to Savile Row standards. They even threw in a decent pair of brogues, all for a hundred pesos. A better deal you couldn’t find!

From there, it was time to do a little snooping, and snooping requires timing. I had run this route a few (dozen? I lose track) times, so I knew I had exactly seventy-five minutes before slipping in the back door of the Marquez residence.

I should probably mention that the Marquez family was one of those low-key rich families. Theirs was a modern modernist townhouse with a private garage and a new model golem-pulled carriage, but nothing outrageously fancy. It wasn’t until you dug into their books that you realized they stacked pesos by the pallet load. Big, BIG players in the commercial laundry business. They preferred to spend their money on more refined pleasures than mere ostentation. 

I stopped off at a great little café in the Three L’s, a nice little neighborhood of mostly humans. A little bland, sure, but they made up for it in sheer intensity. This place was no exception. A basic sandwich came loaded with chilies, the coffee had enough caffeine to trigger apotheosis, and the waiter… well, the waiter-

“I would kill for you. You have the eyes of the Jaguar God.” The waiter hadn’t stepped from the table since he delivered my coffee. Looking at me. Unblinking. 

I tipped the rest of my few remaining pesos, whispered, “Tomorrow night, the aqueduct, you know what to do!” and then left at speed. No idea who that was. Always learning something new!  

Great sandwich, though. Had me sweating bullets, but super flavorful. A quick wipe with the tissue thin napkins provided and then off to the Marquez residence.  

Now, there are many little tips and tricks to burglary. Speed, of course, is paramount, but speed requires preparation. In days of old, gangsters would even rent warehouse space to practice their heists on dummy sets, just so the job would come off clean. 

I naturally disdained such minor tricks, not least because they took far too much effort. I simply burgled the place, over and over, resetting as needed. At this point, I could walk through the place blindfolded, steal the treasure, steal Mr. Marquez’s wounded heart, and be best friends with their pet lizard, all in less than half an hour.

Not that I was going to do most of that. Did you know that a person can have a wounded heart and a tortured soul but still be a complete irredeemable piece of shit? They can. Also Mr. Mister, the Komodo dragon, was “friends” with anyone that would throw him a dead goat, and mortal enemies of anyone not delivering a dead goat. Mr. Mister could get fucked. Hopefully by a dead goat.

The burglary started as it would continue- with a brick through the back window. I knocked out the last couple of bits of glass with a stick as I approached, then hauled myself up, over and in. They didn’t have the alarm on, as the Marquez's were in. Indulging in a rather upsetting game involving a young couple that really didn’t know what they were volunteering for. Mrs. Marquez was also vile to the wretched core of her wretched being. I burned this house down with everyone in it dozens of times, and it never once got old.  

I walked directly through the house to the Marquez’s living room and applied the same brick based lock defeating system to the glass fronted cabinet containing their collection of ritual athames.   

Describing these blades as merely “cursed” would be accurate, and spare the thesaurus some horrible abuse. Sometimes metal just screams like the souls of damned nightingales, and sometimes it causes the bacteria in the air to know fear, and shame, and an inescapable knowledge of sexual inadequacy. You don’t need more words than “cursed” to explain it.   

I nudged my target off its hooks with my trusty brick, and it fell directly towards my foot. My foot wasn’t particularly underneath the dragger. The dagger just went out of its way to try and stab me. After all this time, I was used to its funny little ways.   

I got my brick under the blade before it could fall far, and the athame sank through the brick up to its hilt. Target acquired, I carefully lit the silk curtains on fire with my lighter, then made a swift exit. The fire wasn’t necessary to complete the burglary. It was just a public service.   

Well… It made me feel better, and gave the Marquez’s playmates a shot at a normal, bipedal life in the future. So basically a public service.   

I shook off some unpleasant memories and got my focus back on the run. So far, so textbook, and the hard part was officially over. Just needed to get some pictures, find a briefcase, get into costume, and then take a meeting. Easy peasy. I’d done it dozens of times before.  

Four hours later, I walked into an all night diner. My gray suit was immaculate, my shoes mirror polished, my slim attache case a businesslike brown. My hair had been carefully styled with just the right amount of gray streaking through it. I looked like I meant business. The woman I had come to see did not.   

She looked like the kind of person who had lost it all, and saved her pennies so once a week she could drink coffee with four milks and four sugars and free refills at an actual restaurant around actual other humans. She looked like this was as close to a healthy human interaction as she got. She looked like she was so down and out, she looked up to earthworms. She looked like what she was.   

“Maida Vale.”  

She looked up, startled. “Sorry?”  

“Your name is Maida Vale. You are forty seven years old. You have been unemployed for the last four years, homeless for the last three. Disowned by your surviving daughter. The last emotions your husband of twenty years felt before he died was pure hatred for you. The last emotion your son felt before he died was horror and confusion at why you would do such a thing to him. Every single good thing in your life has been lost. Ruined and defiled or destroyed. And every single person that knows you would say it is entirely your fault.”  

I sat down in the booth across from her suddenly white face.  

“Everyone would be wrong. You didn’t do all those things. You didn’t murder your family. You didn’t burn down your home. You didn’t steal from your employers. You didn’t attempt to rape your daughter. You didn’t attempt to poison your friends. You did none of these things, but took the blame for all of them. You don’t know how it happened, or why. But I do.”  

“Who are you? Why are you saying all this?!”  

“My name is irrelevant. I serve a higher power. Inside this attaché case is irrefutable, indisputable proof of who ruined your life. There is also a cursed dagger. A single cut with the dagger is enough to kill a person. There is one hundred bodies worth of curse left in the knife. Any investigation by any law enforcement body, sect, neighborhood association or clan, will terminate on the recovery of the body and the identification of the wound. No matter who you kill.”  

She stared at me in complete confusion.  

“Open the case.” She did. It was full of pictures, a select few files, and the long, serpentine blade of the athame.  

“This… can’t be real.”  

“Ms. Vale, when you were twenty-one, you had a moment of profound spiritual realization. You felt a strange timelessness as you watched the rain fall from leaf to leaf over the red maples outside Blessed Golphin Chapel on the corner of 78th and Ampersand. You were all alone with the trees and the rain and the incredible sense of oneness with the world. You never told another soul about the experience. It was too precious to degrade with words. But I know.”   

I smiled humorlessly at her. “I know a lot of things. It is my job to know them and share what I know with the right people.” 

I stood, dropping ten pesos on the table. “Coffee’s on me tonight, as is a slice of pie. You will consider all the options on the menu, but in the end, your curiosity about the chess pie will override your desire to prove me wrong. You will be delighted to discover that it is as good as I said, not realizing that you are crying as you eat the most delicious thing you have tasted in four years. Then you will carefully read everything in that case. And then you will make your choice.”    

She looked stunned. “I don’t know everything, Ms. Vale. For example, I don’t know what you will choose to do with the case. As always, the choice is yours. Remember, the investigation will only stop if you use the knife. Anything else, and you are on your own.” I started walking towards the door. “Goodbye, Ms. Vale.”  

“Wait, wait! Who are you? How is any of this-” I walked out the door, not slowing by even half a step. She would come charging out to look for me. I turned left, then left again, and just like that- I vanished in the crowd.

_________________________________________________________________

I let my self go. I mean that literally. _I_ let _myself_ go. The I and me all vanished for a little while, as I fell into Raleigh. That which was once me, and would be me again, walked with the city. Passing through alleys, cutting through yards, and homes. In the front door of a restaurant, and out through the kitchen. Never stopping. Always watching.

The Once and Future "I" was like one of the myriad blood cells in the body of the city. Picking up life and air, carrying it to where it was needed, removing that which was not needed. Couples paused in screaming at each other to look at it, then looked away again as it strode though the paisley wallpapered walls of their apartment, through the open window, out onto the fire escape, and down the rusty ladder to the dumpster below.

It strode past the food carts, and the buskers playing strange and haunting melodies. Playing jaunty rigs and reels from those shores no man returns from. Singing songs that once echoed across those fields beyond those we know. Watched them smile gratefully as a few coins or a crumpled bill fall into their hats.

To "me" it was neither bad nor good. It simply was. On this day, in this time, at this place, this song plays. And that was that. And the awareness moved on, driven by the beating heart of the city to wherever it was needed next.

It is a strange thing to have awareness without consciousness. To absorb and accept what your senses tell you without the mediation of the mind's critique. A shirt wasn't "blue," it was simply the color it was. Later, when I came back to myself and remembered the shirt, I would think "Ah, what an eye-searing aqua," but not a the moment of perception. 

Maida always got me like that. Her, and stories like hers. Even after everything I have seen. Even after the awful, unforgivable things I have done, every now and then a life slips through and catches me under the ribs. A story, a person, slides in and guts me. They stop being NPC's. Stop being pieces on my infinitely complex puzzle. They become...

People.

Possessed of a single, fragile, life. A life that they treasure and is worth treasuring. 

I have often wondered what it is like to meet me. Oh, I have interrogated hundreds trying to nail down the precise sensations and experiences, but I feel like I can't really _know,_ any more than one person can truly know the internality of another.  

I'm terrifying. Not always and to everyone. But as a rule? Terrifying. Sitting across a table from a person who you have never met, but knows ever detail of your life. Who finishes your sentences before you. Who knows exactly what you have in your pocket, and your first fifteen throws of rock-paper-scissors. Even though you didn't know what you were going to throw until you did it. 

I am a monster, and all the scarier because I look human. It hurts to be a monster. I don't want to be a monster. So sometimes I forget myself for a while, and drift.

When I came back to myself, I was watching some kids spray painting something on the side of the wall. It looked like some kind of fish/human hybrid doing R-Rated things to a telephone pole. Well, they were doing their best. I just watched them go at it. Eventually a minotaur came charging out and the little squiddies ran off. 

"I don't care if it's their religion. It's graffiti." He grumbled. 

"Is it religious?"

"That's their excuse. It's every week with them. I've talked to their parents, and they say they will make them stop, but-" he waved at his defaced wall.

"Makes you want to give them a slap, eh?"

The minotaur glared at me. "Not funny man. Not even as a joke."

"I apologize. I was trying to empathize."

"I get it, but... things are different when you are as big as me." And he was big, at eight feet and God knows how many stone. "You don't get to be mad like other people."

"Oh? I don't really understand." I think I am about average height, and have a slim build. He snorted and waved me into his shop. He had a reddish sort of fur. Big face, even for a minitour. You could imagine him with a push-broom mustache. He filled up a bucket with water and added some kind of solvent to it. Big bucket, but it looked dainty in his hand. He held it with two fingers.

"Hold this for me."

I grabbed it with both hands. This was wise. The weight yanked me sharply down. The big man grunted and grabbed a mop. He started walking towards the door, and I struggled to walk behind him. He stopped, reached over and grabbed the bucket again. It didn't slow him down any.

"You get this big, this strong, everything you do is scary. Everything you do can hurt somebody." He dunked the mop in the water, then started scrubbing away the picture. "Everything. You can be sitting down and people think you are about to hit them."

Made sense. He wasn't being hostile, exactly, but the intensity of his words was making me wonder if I was about to be reset.

"And when you are young, or an asshole, it feels great. Everyone is scared of you, and you think that's "respect." You are sure you are going to get women, and when you don't they are just bitches and sluts and speciesist. Obviously YOU aren't the problem. Not realizing, somehow, that even Holsturs don't want anything to do with your violent ass."

"You learned better."

"Most of us do. Most of us." He carefully pushed on the mop. I could see it flex a little under the pressure.  "Takes a while. Then you realize you got to work on yourself. Manage that temper.  Learn what real self respect looks like. Hopefully before you put someone in a grave or yourself in prison."

"Damn."

"Happens all the time. Usually with cannids or elves, not to sound speciesist myself. They say some dumb shit, used to us good little animals doing as we are told. And then someone has to talk to their families, explain why their kid's skull is a red smear on the sidewalk. Or other minotaur's start it, but we can take the hit."

"So you don't joke about it." I nodded.

"Especially when it's kids. Never that. Because if I did give them a smack-"

"They wouldn't learn a lesson. Now, or ever again." My voice was soft, surprising me.

"Yeah. And everyone knows it." The paint was coming off. I guess it helped if you caught it fresh. "Because even after you put in the work, even after you have spend decades never raising your voice, never mind your hand," He looked down at me "You are still the big scary monster. And they aren't wrong for being afraid."

"So how do you deal?" I asked.

"How does anyone? One dumb thing at a time. One day at a time. One choice at a time. Reminding yourself that this will pass. That no matter how strong I am, nobody is strong enough to carry all the shit people throw at you. You got to drop it. Just let it go."

"To be a peaceful man, but not a weak one."

"Yeah. It's not easy. There's always that part in your head yelling at you that you are being a pussy, that they will keep disrespecting you until you punch them in the mouth. Make them shut up. Get's quieter and quieter with practice, but I don't know that it ever goes away completely."

"So you learn a new way to be strong."

He nodded, and kept on mopping. 

I smiled a little. I would remember him, but I made a point of not remembering details. I would try to avoid becoming a monster in his life. 

"Well, I can't convince the kids to shape up, but I do know a guy who can sell you some vandalism resistant paint very cheap."

"How cheap is very cheap?"

I smiled. I didn't have to be a monster all the time. Time enough for that tomorrow.