*reupload from 2015 due to Blogger shenanigans*
Majorie Dickens, who was a mom of two and working to pay for some medication for her bad back, put on the porcelain mask and black robe and stood in the crowd. She knew that to her left was Danny Frederick, who was going to AA meetings and fixing his marriage, and that to her right was Abbey Jenkinson, who smoked weed and was wondering if her boyfriend was cheating on her. They were friends. But she didn't need to talk to them, not right now.
She knew that if she looked up, she'd see the high-vaulted ceilings of the chapel, made to what the architect thought was Gothic style. She knew that if she looked left or right, she'd see more people, robed and masked just like she was. But she didn't need to, because she was amongst the Rising, and she was safe and amongst friends. She looked fowards instead, at the pulpit, and applauded when Father Kristov tottered his way up to it.
Kristov was pushing eighty. He wore the robe with purple trim, because he was the head of the congregation, but he was everyone's friend. He wasn't in charge. He never told them what to do. He just gave them the truth.
White hands gripped the sides of the pulpit, and his masked face swerved back and forth like a sentry as he spoke. His voice was strong for his age, and had a bass quality that could have got him into a swing band if he'd been born twenty years earlier. It was a strong voice that carried the truth.
The truth about the Kobbers. The Kings of Beasts. The devils.
Majorie listened as he told them what they all knew. The Kobbers were wild, untamed, like the God of the Old Testament. They worshipped themselves and drank and fornicated where they pleased, and where they went, death followed. She sighed on cue when he told them just how many had suffered and died in the first two years of Manhattan, and how those who had most needed help were rejected, ignored - even killed. She took up the chant of "No" when he asked the three questions. And then she sang the hymn. It was "All Creatures Great and Small" today.
Kristov had said something new. He'd said that the people the Kobbers associated with, the Hublanders, were diseased, from a city that rotted like an apple. He said the immortals that lived there were just as callous as their mortal friends, and twice as capricious. He called it a Platonic Sodom. Majorie had never been to the Hub, and now she never wanted to go.
He'd also said that there would be a way, soon, to remove all of them from the face of the planet, and that way would be shown to the faithful. Majorie hoped it was her it would be shown to.
Then they sang another hymn. The service ended, and Majorie took off her mask and robe, had some biscuits and a chat with Wanda, who was sixty next week. Then she left to pick up her children from school.
---
"Okay, Sean. It's like this, right? I am not going to let you starve to death. Or die. Or waste away. I'm in your head, and whilst you've spent the past hour in a completely understandable catatonic shock about how a demon ruined your life, I've been busy. I learned that, right now, in this current... Dimension, hallucination, world, whatever - wherever we are, there is no network in the world that can hold me as I exist. Meaning if you die, I will have to chop my metaphorical arms off and hide in the cyber-dumpsters for the rest of my miserable existence. Fuck no. Also, I'm your friend and you're mine. At least, after three years of living in your head being privy to every thought you've ever had, I like to think that. So I don't WANT you to die. That'd suck, and blow my chances of getting back at old turkey face.
"So let me put it this way," finished Dimitri. "Sean Carte, if you don't get out of this shitty bed in this shitty apartment right now, I'll make you."
Sean said nothing. Then he pushed himself up, a tree falling in reverse, and stood. His eyes bored into the yellowing wallpaper.
"Thank the creator. Right, turn around and go into the next room."
Sean did so, moving puppet-like.
"Good. Okay, there's a wallet there on the kitchen countertop. It's yours now, if my guess is right. It's got a shitload of money - enough for us to get started. The currency is simple enough, the money's just made of paper. You're gonna need it in five minutes, so let me explain the concept of rent real quick."
Five minutes later, Sean paid the rent on his new apartment on the outskirts of Las Vegas, ten million years in his past.
