"We have to talk," Chelion said in its most take-me-seriously voice.
I intended only to dismissively glance up from my pinball game, but its appearance commanded a double take. I managed not to tilt the machine, but I lost my ball. "Not while you look like that," I shuddered.
"Like what?"
"Like fifty farts in a trenchcoat." I pulled back the plunger and released the ball, hoping that if I annoyed it enough, I could get through my game.
There was a pained pause. The singed-caramel reek of the thing assailed my nostrils. Well, not on the corporeal level. Still. "It's not a trenchcoat," it pouted.
"Of all the --Then like a hundred farts in a hoodie."
"Why a hundred now?"
"Hoodie fabric's breathable. Takes more farts to look like that."
Chelion sighed and put its icy hand on me. "Kurathel..."
Flinching, I lost my other ball and slapped the machine in frustration. It flashed TILT at me. "Well, what?" I glared at it in embarrassed frustration. Humiliating. "Nice hoodie," I sneered.
"You cheated." It looked mad. Billowing clouds of s'mores-flavored smoke poured off it, spilling from its amusingly mundane hood.
"'Course I cheated. Cheating's what I do. But I'm serious: you look like an asshole. You're scaring the norms. Knock it off."
It facepalmed its fake flesh hand into the mist, leaving a metaphysical mask behind, but looked barely better: the face it had crafted was inhumanly beautiful, glassily impassive. "You shouldn't have told me that Cards Against Humanity was a legitimate measure of human merit."
I couldn't help but yelp with laughter. "That?! That's what you're pissed about?"
A hipster playing the what-he-thought-was-ancient Pac-Man machine nearby glanced at us, then did a double take. I grinned and stuck out my forked tongue. His mouth fell open, jeans darkening with urine: fuck, why couldn't people just be oblivious? Nostalgia for arcade games wasn't the only reason I missed the Goddamned 80s.
I grabbed Chelion by its elbow-equivalent, flinching again as I felt its vaporous chill through the knit cotton. "My place," I hissed.
It sighed, sending up a single plume of incense-smoke, probably to Heaven. "Gross."
I let go and apported. It followed. When it arrived, I spat, "I feel the same way."
Its mask rolled its exquisite fake eyes. "That's not what you said yester-"
"Lies, remember?" I pointed at myself. "Do you understand?"
It shook its head. "But that doesn't matter. I disintegrated and damned my human because of her cards, Kurathel."
I laughed so hard I lost my human shape. When I got my shit together, it was still staring sorrowfully at me, its impassable mask completely unmoved. That set me off again. "You what?!"
"I took a human life."
"You take hundreds of human lives," I managed to choke out, still giggling. With flaming hands, I smoothed away my barbed tail and squeezed my own butt.
"I took a human life because she said ... never mind what she said. It was horrible."
"Was it super gay?"
"No, Kurathel, why would I care about that?" It ran its hand through its mist, stripping off its mask of humanity as it did so, and turned to look at me in all its ethereal anguish. "No, it was super blasphemous."
I ran my tongue over my fangs, grinning. "What'd she say?" It shook its head. "C'mon, what'd the murder victim say?"
"Stop, Kurathel."
I went and took its misty hands. "You can tell me, Chelion. Was it about altar boys?"
It sighed. "No."
"Abortion?"
"No."
"St. Augustine's pear tree?"
"Be serious, Kurathel."
"Was it the card about the nail holes?"
"There's a card for that?" it wailed. "Heavens, no!"
"Hell yes, and you'd hate it. Come onnnnn. Give me a little hint." I put an arm around it. "You wouldn't have come to me for help if you didn't intend to tell me."
"She said... she said that her personal Lord and Savior ... was Batman."
I stared at it. It stared back. It looked much unhappier than I felt the situation warranted. "Um. I can safely say I have heard worse."
It threw its hands up. "Batman is fictional," it scoffed.
"Wait. You understand that Batman is fictional but not that somebody's cards are fictional?" I started giggling again.
It elbowed me. "This is serious. I killed a person."
"Sounds like she busted a Commandment. Like, the first one."
It waggled an airy hand. "Not genuinely. Not enough to justify smiting her and tormenting the soul."
"Okay. I'll help you hide the body if you do a little something for me..." I wagged my eyebrows and pointed meaningfully downward.
"No, I disintegrated the body, remember?"
"Bah."
Chelion softened, if a cloud of mist could be said to soften any further. "But it's really decent of you to try to cheer me up."
I gave up pressuring it for sex. "Say that again and I'll cut you."
It shook its topmost cloud. "Don't be like that."
"That is literally how I be."
Chelion bent to pet Virgil, my badly-behaved tomcat. The cat rubbed against its clothing and wove through its tendrils of mist, spreading its icing-and-myrrh stank to drown out the cozy brimstone-catbox-and-dirty-laundry aura of my apartment.
I scowled. I was never going to get its smell out of my sheets. "So, your Batman worshipper is dead and dusted, and you now understand the error of your ways. Seems fine."
"It's not fine."
"Can you finagle a do-over?"
"We don't have those," it said softly, picking up Virgil. He rumbled like a twelve-dollar vibrator.
"Then what the Hell do you need me for?"
It brightened. "I need you to get the soul back for me. Pretty please with sugar on top?"
"Ew, sugar."
It continued staring at me until I gave in. Fuck.
"Okay, okay, Sugar. You be on top."
Chelion glowed, but then again, that was normal. "Thank you!"
"Please. Don't mention it." Damn, I wish it wouldn't, but I knew better.
Topic: Against Humanity, 2nd draft (Read 2052 times)