@Seon and @Tolina and @jackelgull and @Crezth
An evening at Denny's
"Ta-ta-ta-ta-tatatata-tat-atatata!" Aleks was humming some kind of a melody, barely resisting to start banging on the woods. "TA-TA-TA-TAAA TA TA TA!" they hummed a bit louder.
This attracted the attention of two students hunched over a school newspaper, getting a sudden gasp out of them.
"What the- you scared us, you bi- bas- you!" one of them said
"Eh? Me? What? No way." they said
"Look, whatever, just...uhm, don't go to Denny's tonight, okay? Something really weird is going on, and it's spooky as hell af." the male classmate said, the "af" being very audible.
"What?! But I'm going to go out and eat with my friend there!" they said, angrily
"Can't you go to a McDonalds? Or one of those fancy restaraunts?" the female classmate said
"No. She specifically said at Denny's. And it's going to be at Denny's, spooky things be damned!" Aleks said, and determinedly moved onwards, to their next destination.
The Anime Club.
They knocked politely.
"Konichiwa!" a voice said
"What?" Aleks answered
"Ko-ni-chi-wa!" the voice repeated again
"Look, uh, I have just some questions…" Aleks said "This is an anime club, right? Do you have one of those life-sized dolls, I need them for a bit, and I swear to the Almighty that this is not what you think it is!"
"B-baka!" the voice angrily said, and the door was locked.
"Goddamnit."
They looked further into the matter with the Denny's, and decided to visit it at 02:00; when the last time the ghost was spotted at...
----
“Jiiiiiinnnnnnnn…” Trudy moans out, almost sprawled against the table. “Could we go back to the dorm soon? It’s 2:00 AM. Everyone else here are here because they have no other optiooon…”
True to her words, most other people in the restaurant seem to be truck drivers or others involved in long haul transport, nodding off in their own corner of the restaurant. The only one who seem to actually enjoy being here is a man in a yellow cap, sitting at the far end of the restaurant, devouring an omelette with his fingers. Trudine doesn’t seem to notice him. “Besides, they told me this place was, like, haunted and stuff…”
“Grand slam is the best hangover food,” says Jin pointedly, jabbing her fork in Trudy’s direction. “Or pre-hangover. Or whatever. Just drink a couple espressos and you’ll be fiiine.” Jin scoops up a forkful of pancake and shoves it into her mouth. “Or at least like, an orange juice or something.”
“You are going out to drink again after this?” Trudy asks.
“Nah, I’m done drinking. I might go smoke a J in the park though. Always some crazy motherfudgers out at 3 AM, that’s for sure.” She downs a cup of scalding hot coffee in one go and scoops up some more pancake. “It’s Monday, after all. Party night!”
Trudy groans, and lands face down on the table. “You know, I didn’t really know how to drink coffee until like, last year…” she mumbles. “Too bitter. Still too bitter sometimes…”
The man in the yellow cap finishes off his omelette, licking his filthy fingers clean with a sickening slop. He turns to look at Trudy and Jin. Smiles, but that is not a smile. His eyes dart between Trudy, who uncharacteristically still doesn't seem to notice him, and Jin.
As a waitress passes by, she refills Jin’s coffee, and Jin takes a sniff of the aroma. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve always liked coffee. It’s like it reminds me of… home.” She frowns slightly, but shrugs just as quickly and resumes her meal.
Her eyes scan the other patrons of the restaurant for the first time all evening, and she notices the gross-out man in the yellow cap. “Jeez, get a load of this piece of work,” Jin snickers to Trudy, discretely jabbing a thumb in the man’s direction.
Trudy looks at where Jin is pointing, shivers, and then looks back at Jin. “What are you talking about?” she asks. The man in the yellow cap rises from his seat. His clothing is filthy, caked in mud and ketchup--or at least, Jin hoped it was ketchup. He begins to saunter over to the two girl’s table.
Jin blinks. “You - the guy in the yellow shirt?” she says, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice. She looks back at the man.
“Wha… what are you talking about?” Trudy asks, her voice shrinking to a whisper. “There’s nothing there… you are trying to scare me, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have said anything about this place being haunted…”
The man is by their table now. “Hey, ladies,” the man said, leering down, his eyes fixed on Jin. “It’s a fine night, isn’t it?” Trudy begins to tremble uncontrollably. The man’s breath is rotten, not bad, but like fruit turning to soil.
Aleks had been watching the two people who stuck out like sore thumb in the tables. Even for a place like Hero High, a girl with a flaming head and another like Trudy, about which they've been hearing a lot of stuff, stuck quite a bit. They seemed to be mumbling about something… expresso and apparently something haunted? Aleks tried to move in, but as they tried to eavesdrop in more, they could feel slowly losing balance…
"Goddamnitgodddamnitgoddamnit…" they mumbled to themselves, then decided that sometimes, the proper approach is just to be direct… They moved forwards to the two girls.
"Hey, uh, hello there, fellow class...girls?" she said awkwardly, and even more awkwardly putting their hands on Jin's shoulders, while cursing to themselves about being awful at this and also what the hell's that smell coming from? "Er..Uhh."
At this point Jin is visibly confused. Her eyes dart between the yellow man, Trudy, and Aleks. “I don’t remember getting high,” she thinks to herself. Focusing on the yellow man, she leans back, trying to keep her nose as far from the smell as possible. “So my, uh, associates here can’t see you. What’s your angle, pal? You a ghost, poltergeist, phantom, what’s up here?”
The man in the yellow hat laughs at that. “No, nothing like that,” he grins. “Hope you don’t mind if I… join you?” It’s not a request or a question. It is a joke. He laughs.
"Okay, someone tell me right away what makes this godawful smell." Aleks says, and stares through the yellow man.
“What smell?” Trudy asks. She doesn’t seem to acknowledge Jin and the man’s conversation.
"It smells like a morgue. Or how I would imagine a morgue would smell. I wouldn't know how a morgue smells, but this is how it would be in such a hypothetical case scenario." they say flatly.
Jin is largely ignoring the conversation between Aleks and Trudy, focused on the yellow man. “Dude, you can tell me if you’re a ghost. I’m a demon,” she lies and makes the sign of the horns. “So if you have some unfinished business in this Denny’s or something, or maybe you’re just like, haunting it? You could tell me that.”
The man grins. “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” he says. Trudy slides over a seat to make room for him, and he takes a seat next to her. He wraps an arm around her shoulder, leaning on her. Trudy stops trembling, and her eyes go vacant. He scratches his cheek hard enough that some of it peels off.
“It’s dangerous out here,” he says. Trudy stares vacantly out the window.
"I'm just saying that you can't have a dinner with a fine lady if, you know, it smells like a morgue." Aleks said again "Hey, is anyone listening to me…?" they say; to Aleks’ eyes, Jin is talking to space and Trudy is staring blankly out the window. They think to themselves that it's kind of a bitter irony that people would rather talk to the air than to them.
Jin hears this last note, however. “Eh? Sorry,” her eyes shift over to Aleks for a moment. “Uh, just - just a second.” She tries to focus on the yellow man again. She mimes scratching her own cheek as she says to the man, “You got a little schmutz on your - right there.”
The guy laughs, runs a finger through Trudy’s hair. She doesn’t react. “Jin…?” she mumbles. “What’s… what’s going on?”
The man wraps a hand around her cheek. “You can’t distract me like that, little girl,” he says. “I’ve only come here to explain things. That it is dangerous around here. Would you like to see something funny?” he grins.
“The way you’re interacting with my friend there is giving me some creepy vibes, dude,” Jin says evenly, the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “If you want to explain who you are, I’m all ears, but if you’re just here to ruin my evening, I’ll consider that pretty… rude.”
“Ohhh?” the man says, smiling, leaning over Trudy and concealing his face slightly behind her head. “How… scary…” he grins. He picks up her cup of coffee and begins to drink it. “How about I show you something funny instead?” He places the cup in front of Trudy again. She picks it up, begins to drink. The man grins. “So docile,” he whispers. “Creepy, eh? You obviously never even heard of what she did.”
Jin chuckles mirthlessly. “Dude, I come from hell. The exploits of you humans are downright pedestrian.”
Aleks stares as things occur that their mind does not perceive or understand. However, they hear something about someone near Trudy, and since their eyes naturally didn't see anything off about this situation, so they try to move into the booth adjacent Trudy, only to be pushed away, as if there was something getting in their way. "Eh? What the…?" they say, confused.
“So what’s this funny thing you keep bringing up?” Jin asks of the yellow man, noticing also that Aleks doesn't seem to realize the man is the reason they can't sit down. “Is it the story of how you crashed your truck way back in 1963 outside this Denny’s, or something? Got your head brained in by a waitress who thought you were a creepy customer?”
The yellow man does not answer. He turns to Trudy. “Hey, little girl.”
“What? Huh?” Trudy stands up, apparently noticing the man for the first time, but not reacting to it as she normally would. He grabs her by the neck, begins to drag her out of the booth. Trudy’s eyes go vacant again as she just lets herself be led out of the seat. “From out of town, by the way,” he grins. “We probably have a lot in common,” he whispers to Jin.
“Let her go,” Jin just about snarls. Her hands grip her coffee mug tightly. Her flaming hair flares a touch.
Cyril’s been sitting off behind the Denny’s booth our heroes were in the whole time, waiting, watching, and at some point, not blinking like some kind of statue. He’s been watching his … classmates? Acquaintances? Future friends? Deal with the ghoul sometime. They seem to have the situation under control, but it might be advantageous to step in right bout now. Before things got really dicey. Ghouls were malignant spirits possessing humans which was a difficult combination- they could hurt you and without there being much you could do to hurt them.
Aleks can feel a tension in the air. The way Jin spoke to the...air? Sounded tenser. Jin's hair got slightly more hotter than usual. Aleks went into something resembling a combat stance, although, against who or even what, that they did not know. All they knew was that the rumours about whatever being wrong were correct… "If anything crawls out of the floorboards, I'm gonna clock it in so hard." they thought to themselves.
“Ohhhh but she never let any of her’s go, isn’t that right?” the man says, running another hand down Trudy’s side. Tears stream down from her face, unable to comprehend the events occurring. “So, what are you going to do if I don’t?” He moves clumsily, like he doesn’t actually understand how his own body moves. His teeth are sharp, not quite fangs, but not human either. And yellow nails. Not cigarette yellow, but translucent.
The coffee in Jin’s mug is bubbling, boiling now, Jin’s grip on the mug producing tiny wisps of smoke. “Nothing,” she says, and throws the mug of coffee in the yellow man’s face, jumping out of the booth to secure Trudy.
“Ahh! Jin! What the fudge!” Trudy screams as the yellow man pushes her towards Jin, making them collide in between. The man laughs, jumps up and hangs from the ceiling. “What’s wrong with a little bit of justice?” he whispers. “I just love the taste of rapists. Thugs. Murderers. Everyone who thinks they can run away with their problems.” He giggles. “Like your friend there.
“Jin, what is wrong with you!” Trudy says, rubbing her head. “Let’s just go ho… why am I crying?” she rubs at her eyes.
Jin grips Trudy tightly, although her eyes are fixed on the ceiling, and does not answer; the flame on her head flares wildly as she glares at the yellow man, rapidly attempting to make sense of him.
Trudy’s face turns bright shade of red. “Umm… you are holding onto me real tight… you didn’t smoke a joint in the Denny’s did you?”
"That's a very good question, which I'd love to get answered as well." Aleks says. "Just what's going on here?!"
Cyril steps out of the booth and addresses Aleks and Trudy: “You guys do realize you’ve been threatened by a ghoul for like the past minute, right?”
"A what? A ghoul?! Those exist? I thought someone has been playing pranks here and it's been passed off as a haunting!" Aleks says in shocked disbelief. "It sounds like the kind of thing a school newspaper would do!"
Cyril rolls his eyes as that, before telling Trudy and Aleks, “Neither of you can see him, right? It’d probably be best for you to get out of here. Me and Jin can handle it”
His eyes flicker over to the ghoul and Jin and he mutters under his breath, “Probably”. Not that he doubts Jin’s skill, there’s just too many unknowns and
"Look, if I can somehow help, just give me the word, uh, was it Cyril?" Aleks says. "I mean, well. If this is really happening."
“Oh no you don’t. The girl isn’t leaving,” the man snarls. Click click click. All the windows and the doors of the restaurant shuts close, locks. Other patrons don’t even acknowledge the scene. “Umm… Jin? Cyril?” Trudy’s eyes dart back and forth. “Weird purple person? Why are you guys acting so weird all of a sudden? Is this a prank? Is there a hidden camera somewhere?”
"My name is Aleks, thank you, and well, I think we just got trapped." Aleks replies, their tone clear of any previous disbelief.
“We aren’t trapped!” Trudine remarks. “It’s perfectly normal for restaurants to lock their doors and windows after hours. Perfectly normal.”
"Right, but Denny's don't have 'after hours', or at least, not this one. Says '24/7' on the door, and all." Aleks replies. "Something is very, very wrong here."
“This is getting ridiculous,” Cyril snarls, and then his eyes glow with eerie, otherworldly light; suddenly, everyone sees the ghoul.
“Trudy!” he snaps. “Do you see the disgusting green thing try to kill us?”
"My God! What the hell is this thing?! This really smells like a morgue!!" Aleks screams, the smell now being ever-present.
“A ghoul,” Jin spits. “By the way, ghoulie, I’m not actually a loser demon. And you’re not taking my friend without a fight.” She smirks and lets Trudy go, stepping forward and conjuring flames in her hands. “Show me what you got, you half-baked infernal!”
Aleks crouches, and begins to wait out the perfect moment to strike out with her extendable fists as soon as an opportunity to do so presents itself. "Well, at least it's not molluscoid maneating aliens." they mumble to themselves.
The ghoul laughs an empty, hollow laugh, shaking himself sideways like a pendulum. “Sooo…. Sooo gullible…” he whispers. The jukebox comes to life, playing the Thriller song. Jin feels something cold at her neck--a knife at her throat. Trudy stands with her eyes vacant.
“You try to screeaam.” The jukebox pumps out its funky beat as Jin freezes, her heart pounding. “Trudy, what are you doing?” she nearly chokes.
Hypnosis, Cyril thinks. Damn it. There’s no good answer for this. The ghoul is still a massive threat and Jin is neutralized with a knife to the throat. So Cyril doesn’t hesitate to go for the least bad option. He plucks one of the many ghosts surrounding Trudy and shoves it in her head. He’s careful to keep the damage to a minimum, but it’s still invasive. It’ll probably keep her from being an asset to the ghoul and keep her alive and put Jin back into action, so he goes for it. He tries not to wince at her screaming.
“Jin, could you move out of the way and get the ghoul? I’d rather not keep a ghost in my only friend’s head longer than necessary.”
Plus the more Cyril is focusing on Trudy the less he can focus on separating the ghoul from its physical form. And with a ghoul you want all of your focus.
The ghoul frowns at Cyril. “You are no fun!” he growls. “And you would do that to your own friend? Hah! You might be tasty too!” He lunges from the ceiling, darting across the floor and charging towards Cyril. Claws outstretched.
Knowing that Cyril is about the only person who actually has a goddamn idea what to do with this thing, Aleks leaps at the legs of the ghoul, their hands entwining like rope around him, in the hopes of slowing him down enough for Cyril to flee...or do something. "JIN! TRUDY! DO SOMETHING!" they yell
Jin registers Trudy’s altered state briefly; though a flash of worry crosses her mind, she wastes no further time. A gout of flame rises from her hands and flows around her like a torrential river, her eyes glowing yellow and the fire on her head rising towards the ceiling in a brilliant spiral.
“Get back, purple!” she yells as the blaze roars forward, swooping down on the entangled ghoul like a tsunami.
The ghoul’s upper torso is engulfed in flames. The man in the yellow cap flails about, screaming incoherently, trying to shake Aleks off his legs. Trudy snaps awake, mind fragmented, but reassembling quickly. She gets up on her feet in one jump, picks up a steakknife from a nearby table, and charges forth at the engulfed demon.
She is almost a blur by the time she reaches the demon, knocking it to the floor with a kick to its throat--nevermind the flames. “You little horsehockey!” she screams. “Touch my fudging mind again, you fudge!” Her vocabulary when it came to insults were rather limited. She throws the knife into the demon’s eye. Picks up another knife from a booth, throws it into the other. Plunk. Plunk.
The demon swipes a claw at Trudy to defend itself. She hacks the hand off clean at the wrist with yet another pair of knives.
Jin steps over to the flaming wreckage of the ghoul as his rotting skin begins to smolder. The ghoul makes a rasping noise not unlike coughing. Jin scowls at him and then looks over to Cyril.
“Cyril, is there any chance you can banish this guy?” she asks.
“fudge that,” Trudy snarls, picking up a pitcher of water. “I want to rip him apart. I want to feel him die. I want to… No, no, no!” she screams, throws the pitcher at the ghoul. Even now, badly burnt, missing a hand, he smiles at Jin. “I told yooou…” he says.
Trudy stomps on his stomach hard enough for something to cough out of his throat.
At some point, Aleks realizes that the legs that so vigorously resisted against their grasp have...Stopped. Also, that in essence, they're holding a pair of two legs. Everything that had happened did so in a minute. No, not that was too much, in fact; perhaps moments? You never think about how much time passes when you're in the moment. What mattered, however, was that it was over. Or at least it seemed that way, to them.
Cyril knows better. The physical form has been destroyed but that can be replaced. Cyril can make sure he never comes back. He gathers his concentration and reaches out and pulls the demons consciousness to him.
You will obey he thinks. He is slipping into the necromancer the emperor of death. And he pushes against the rage against the malice and against the hate of the demon and he opens a rift to hell and shoves the demon through.
“It’s over” he says.
Aleks suddenly realizes that they're not actually holding anything anymore. And also, that a rift through Hell just opened in front of their eyes. They stand up.
"Radical!" they say, while rubbing their hands, slightly charred and with bruises from the struggle of the ghoul. "I didn't even imagine something like this would happen!"
Jin scratches the back of her head and sighs heavily. She places a tender hand on Trudy’s shoulder. “Uh, sorry for, er, dragging you out of bed,” she says sheepishly.
Trudy seems somewhat distant, staring at the place where the demon disappeared. Upon hearing Jin’s voice, she turns around, panic in her eyes. “Jin, oh my god,” she says, suddenly pulling her closer. “Are you alright? I didn’t actually hurt you, did I? I couldn’t stop myself--show me your neck!”
“Don’t worry so much I knocked you out before anything happened” Cyril says. His expression is apologetic and withdrawn. Cyril is not yet the perfect Machiavellian - he can be ruthless but it haunts him in the quiet moments when the battle is done. He really hopes he has not hurt Trudy but he is not naive enough to believe it.
Jin blushes. “It wasn’t your fault. It looked like you were having a rough time. Are
you okay?”
“I don’t give a crap what happened to me,” Trudy says. “Or even what almost happened. I’m… I’m glad you are fine,” she says, sighing, pulling away from Jin. “You,” she shoots Cyril a glare. For a moment, he understands what it feels like staring down a barrel of a tank gun. “You… I should… I want to… Gaargh!” She waves her arms. “Next time, just shoot me or something. I don’t… I don’t want to experience that again.”
“I choose to make all of you live. You may resent me for that if you want, but I will always make that choice.” Cyril says. He stares her down. He refuses to be afraid. The only sign of a break in his composure is a slight Russian accent - something that only comes up when Cyril feels young and vulnerable.
"What's the...? He saved our lives!" Aleks says in surprise. "I mean, I saved his life, therefore, I kinda saved all of our lives, in a way, but, uh…"
Jin looks at Aleks and Cyril, for the first time processing their presence altogether in a Denny’s. Her mind goes to her unfinished grand slam…
“Thanks for the help, guys,” she sighs. “Man! Demons in a Denny’s. Not exactly what I had in mind when I came out tonight. I need a break.”
“What’s your name, again?” she looks at Aleks
"Aleks. Al-e-ks. Not purple guy." they extend out their hand to Jin. Literally. "Good job there with the flames, uh, Jinn? Haha, that can't be an accident."
Jin’s upper lip curls slightly. “It’s not. But okay, Aleks.” She takes their hand and shakes it.
"You know… I think we could make a good team. Maybe. Uh. I mean, we didn't become the thralls of a ghoul presence from Hell." they think for a moment. "Hey, aren't you from Hell? I heard stuff like that, I think."
Trudy ruffles her own hair, expression inscrutable as she leans against a wall. “I don’t know what to think… it’s all so… fragmented. Confusing. I… give me a joint,” she suddenly says to Jin.
Jin stares at Trudy for half a second before smirking wickedly. “Now we’re talkin’. Let’s get out of here. Hey, I know a spot in Grant Park we can go to, right on the lake. That should help take your mind off things.” She claps Trudy on the shoulder and grins. “All’s well that ends well, right, roomie?”
“Yeah, okay,” Trudy says, massaging her temples. “I just… I just can’t deal with this sober right now.”
Cyril says to Aleks, “Next time don’t let a ghoul talk to you otherwise, well that might happen”
"Oh. Well. Uh. I wasn't planning on it, personally." Aleks says. Then hears Jin talking to Trudy, and asks awkwardly "Uh, would you mind a third person to come with you…?"
“The more the merrier,” Jin says casually. “Let’s blow this pop stand.” Jin begins to stroll out of the Denny’s, leaving behind the supernatural wreckage and the half-eaten nighttime breakfast, before she seems to remember something. “Oh, yeah, I’m not an
animal.” She leaves a tenner on their table before hefting her purse and fishing around in it.
"You coming along, Cyril? It's gonna be fun! Probably. I have a feeling those two seem to attract events to them, you know what I mean?" they pat Cyril on the shoulder, a bit more jovially than usual, and then follows Jin's lead.
Cyril shrugs. He’s not sure if they even want him around, but he does want the chance to apologize before the night is over. He follows Jin and Trudy out the door.
To be continued....
