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Another One Never Finished

It can’t be helped, in these cases. He’d tried countless times to sit and organize his thoughts in a way that would somehow resemble his sense of feeling. He was starting to realise, however, that the sense that made sense to him was often twisted outside his head. Or so he thought. To him, his thoughts were like organisms that could not exist outside the hermetical sphere of his brain. As if they withered and rotted, or changed somehow into something entirely unrecognisable once hatched. He’d struggled with it more and more as he grew older, the things that seemed unchanged to him were completely inadaptable to the world his world had become. It wasn’t really that though. It wasn’t him that changed; likewise it wasn’t the world that changed either. But we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves.

Our hero, one Roy Waterson, was born to an average family, in an average town, and lived a more or less average life. On the outside, in any case. Beneath the surface of his quiet facade and shy demeanour, Roy was actually quite out of the ordinary. He imagined things that many people would say were impossible, ridiculous and even entirely outrageous. Roy was a fierce goblin hunter, for example, and would spend many evening hours in the woods tracking and stalking invisible little beasts. “You have to hunt them at night,” he once told me. “They’re easier to see when it’s completely dark.” The idea, he would go on to explain, is that the unseen things are unseen because we don’t know where and how to look for them. I’ll be honest, it never really made sense to me, but I sensed some truth somewhere in his ideas, perhaps only because of his own conviction in them. All the same, I would listen to him, and wander the winding logic with him until I was either convinced of the plausibility of the ideas, or he got tired of explaining and changed the subject.

It wasn’t so strange to me that Roy grew up to be a somewhat creative man, although his outlets for that creativity caused him a fair amount of stress. It was my privilege, on rare occasions, to partake when Roy spoke about the amazing things he envisioned in his head. He’d try, as I said, to write his thoughts, but was always, always thwarted by his own over exuberance, and more often than not lost where he’d started before he could begin. He would tell me, when he was suitably inspired, about some of the things he imagined though, things that never failed to impress me.

I can’t take credit for this small tale, because it came entirely from the mind of my friend, and though he never wrote it himself, I don’t think he would begrudge me sharing a bit of his world with you. But I’m explaining too much and not telling you anything. So let’s just begin, shall we?

“I happen to know that a lot of people aren’t people at all. It’s true. And unless you really know what people look like, underneath their exteriors, you might not be able to tell one being from another. I’ve made it a hobby of mine to watch people, to be able to identify the other things that move among them.” Roy sat across from me, leaning on his elbows while holding a pint in his hands and looking cautiously around the room.

“Like your goblins,” I suggested. His eyes rolled slightly and he shook his head.

“That’s nonsense. I’ve told you, goblins live in the dark. They can’t take the light, except in very low levels.”

“Ah,” I said nodding. “Can you give me an example?” I was truly curious, but I couldn’t suppress the slightest smirk. Roy was looking back over his shoulder, however and didn’t notice the playful smile.

“There,” he nodded at an older man who was wandering on the sidewalk outside the pub. “See that old guy there?” The man he was referring to was an old gentleman, typical in his khaki slacks and striped shirt, balding and white, wispy hair moving around his head in the wind. He was pretty ordinary I thought. Still, we watched him for a short minute, and I finally shook my head puzzled.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look,” Roy said impatiently. “See him talking on his phone? The way he’s holding his hand over his mouth as he talks.” I looked on, puzzled that someone would hide his mouth while on the phone, but only shrugged and continued to watch. “He’s hiding something, something both very important, and something he’s ashamed of.” Roy turned back and looked at me grinning across the table.

“Come on,” I said, raising an eyebrow and sipping my beer. “You get that from the way he holds his phone?”

“Naw, not just that.” Roy turned around again and watched the old guy. “He’s pacing, walking in slow, long circles. He’s waiting for something, for someone. Whoever it is he’s talking to, he’s expecting to meet them here. Watch him a bit longer. In fact, let’s do one better and go outside for a cigarette. You still smoke, don’t you?” Roy didn’t wait for me to answer, but stood up from his chair, and took his coat that was hanging on the back of it.

“I’ll indulge you, as always, but you’ll have to lend me a cigarette. I don’t have any,” I said, standing up and subconsciously patting my pockets. I’d actually given up smoking a few months before, but was willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of the experiment.

Immediately after walking out the door, the man we’d come to stealthily observe turned and froze. He stared at the two of us for a minute as each of us lit our cigarettes and I blew grey and sweet smoke rings into the air. I missed smoking, I really did, but the morning coughs and the horrible shortness of breath finally convinced me to quit. Roy picked up a casual conversation about music, entreating me to talk about what new albums had come out in the last while. I talked, and he seemed to listen, but I’d played this routine with him before. He had one ear turned away from me, and was straining to both block me out and catch mumbled words from the conversation the man was having into his hand.

“I still say there are many popular artists worth listening to,” I droned, really just speaking random phrases from iTunes reviews that I may have read. It was a string of jargon and bullshit, all the while Roy would occasionally rejoinder words and phrases that he was picking up from the old man.

“’Thought you’d be here by now,’” Roy said, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“The best new album, in my opinion...” I continued, the two of us having different conversations, while quietly taking in the same words. I enjoyed this with him, a subtle mix of espionage and telepathy.

“’I’ll wait,’ I can’t tell, maybe ten minutes.”

“...unlikely success of his solo career...”

“Succubus.” He smiled broadly at me, throwing his cigarette butt into the nearby receptacle. I blundered to a stop.

“What did you just say?” I was not expecting that. Roy had said it loud enough that even the man stopped and looked up at us, his hand falling from his lips, the phone still to his ear.

“I said I need another beer,” Roy said casually, walking back into the pub. I smiled at the man with his phone, who looked at me crossly and put his hand back over his mouth and resumed talking quietly into the mouthpiece. I then discarded my own cigarette and rejoined Roy back inside.

After sitting back at the table, Roy smirked at me triumphantly. “You said, ‘succubus’. How did you come to that conclusion? I thought succubae were women?” I knew a fair bit about the various creatures of folklore, but I was admittedly stunned that he would come to the idea that this shy, lonely, though admittedly somewhat eccentric old man was a succubus.

“Not him, you doofus,” he said putting his palm flat on the table and leaning toward me. “The woman he’s talking to. He want’s to see her, like he feels compelled, but he wants to meet her here, someplace public. From what I picked up, she wants him to come to her place, but he doesn’t want to go. He’s ashamed because he has to see her, but unable to say no to her.” Roy paused long enough to take a mouthful of beer and continued. “Watch the way he walks. He has a slight limp.”

“Not uncommon in older men,” I said, shrugging again and looking at our subject.

“Jesus man, if you ever got laid, you might know the signs.” I took his abuses good-naturedly. “It’s not a ‘I’ve got a bum knee’ limp, or ‘oh my poor aching back limp.’ He’s got the limp of someone who has had too much action.”

I could tell the beer was affecting him. He tended to get more outspoken (and crass) after he drank. “And how, oh master of women, can you tell that?” Roy laughed and threw his hands up.

“Watch his left hand every third step or so.” He motioned out the window. Oddly enough, every few steps, the man reach down and shift the front of his pants. “He seems a might uncomfortable to me, Watson.” He smirked then, maybe not unjustly indulging in his own cleverness.

“What now, Sherlock?” I put on my best accent. “Do we retire to reading the paper, waiting for clues from the distressed old friend, perhaps chief-of-police?”

“No, we follow him.” He was serious, I realized almost instantly. There was a brief period where, just at the beginning, I thought he was mocking me. “You ready?” He threw back his glass and finished his beer in a quick swallow. He turned in his seat to face the old man out the window.

“How do you know he’s even going to go? Maybe he’ll convince her to come down. Maybe he’ll just give up and drown himself in a bottle at the bar.”

Roy continued looking straight ahead, but turned his head just a little and laughed. “Suc-U-bus,” he said slowly, pronouncing each syllable for my benefit, as if pronunciation was the key to the mystery. Realizing how conspicuous he must look, waiting for the old man to make a move, Roy turned back to face me. “Watch him. If he moves back down the street, we follow.” He picked up the empty pint glass on the table and lifted it, turning it upside down to his lips. Realizing no more beer was going to come from it, he waved the empty at the waitress behind the bar. “You want another one?”

“No time,” I said. “He’s moving.” Roy turned and stood up. Our “mark” had closed his cell and put it in his pocket. He looked up the street, turned towards the door to the pub. For a long instant, he paused, his hand on the door handle. I hoped he would come in, both to see the poor wretch save himself, and to give me a smug feeling of triumph over Roy. When the man turned away from the pub and walked down the sidewalk, I almost called out to him.

“Time to go,” Roy stood and walked past the waitress, who was just about to put down his pint. His eyes were focussed only on the old man, and though he instinctively looked around the room and dodged obstacles between the table and the door, I could tell he didn’t really “see” these things. I paid the waitress for our tab, and followed Roy out the door and once again into the sunlight. “Now we follow him to the succubus. This is exciting,” he beamed childishly at me.

We chatted at each other, trying to look casual as we followed “mark” through the busy city streets. It was warm; lazy, stale summer air, mixed with the heat and sweat of crowded sidewalks and noise and exhaust from the cars started to make Roy restless and anxious. He had to check his pace four times as we followed the old man, or run the risk of running the unfortunate man down. Several city blocks later, and a sense of creeping hopelessness started to permeate my brain. “Still excited?”

Roy looked up, “it can’t be much further. She has to be nearby.” He was determined, though his focus was starting to fade. “He’d have taken a cab otherwise. I mean, the bastard’s limping. He should have taken a cab.” Roy’s downfall was always self-doubt. As long as he believed himself, anything was possible. However, once he started to lose faith in himself, it was an inevitable downward plunge that would take him to the depths of depression. I’d been witness to it before, so I tried my best to encourage him.

“Where are we? Do you know anything about this area?”

Roy looked around at the buildings and crowds. “No, not really. There’s a good restaurant around here somewhere, but otherwise I don’t come here.” He scratched his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair frustrated. “Fuck,” he said, coming to a stop. His eye followed the old man further up the street, while his shoulders sagged, defeated. I stood next to him, biting my lip subconsciously. I was about to offer some words of comfort, when Roy’s face finally lit again, a grin spreading across his lips. “There,” he said barely above his breath, nodding his head in the direction of the old man. I looked up again just as Mark crossed the street cautiously and walked up the steps to the porch of the little house just on the edge of the city’s residential area, flanked by Starbucks and a small bakery.

“What an awful looking place,” I said, sneering. The house itself was old, as were most of the homes in these “halfway” areas of the city. The shingles were peeling from the roof, though there was fresh paint on the handrails of the porch. I watched the man move toward the door, ring the bell and shift uncomfortably, his hands fidgeting in front of him, looked as if he were trying to decide whether or not to turn and run back down the stairs and away from the rundown house. Before he made his move, however, the front door opened and Mark went in, his head bowed.

I strained to catch a glimpse of the occupant of the dwelling, but the inside of the house was shadowed. “Well,” Roy said, smirking smugly, “that’s that.” He turned and looked for the first time at the surrounding storefronts.

“That’s what?”

“Well, now we know where he’s at, so let’s get a seat.” The greatest thing about the city was its overabundance of pubs. One would be hard pressed to walk more than a block without stumbling passed at least one. And the great thing about Roy, he enjoyed a good pub as much as I did. True is, he also enjoyed the bad pubs. In any case, we wandered together a few shops down to a little pub with outdoor seating and sat in view of the house, ordered a couple of pints and waited.

“So, what now? We case the joint, wait for nightfall and storm the place?” Roy squinted at me, smiling slightly devilishly and sipped his beer. “Seriously?”

“Why not?” He shrugged slightly, and turned his eyes back to the house across the street. “I just want to get inside and see what’s going on.” Roy pushed back the rest of his beer and leaned forward. “Wait here, would you, and keep an eye on things. I have a couple of errands to run, but shouldn’t be more than an hour.” I nodded slightly as he stood and walked back down the street in the direction we’d come.

I passed the time, watching the house, the traffic, the people making their way back and forth through the city heat. I admit to growing a little impatient, becoming quite bored at waiting for what was apparently nothing to happen. The afternoon wore on, and when Roy finally returned, well over an hour had passed.

“Anything,” he asked, taking the seat across from me again.

“Nothing.” I ran my hand over my forehead, pushing away the sweat that formed there. The temperature had started to climb, inspite of the dark clouds that rolled in overhead. “How long are we going to wait here?”

“Not much longer.” Roy looked at my watch. “It’ll be dark for a few hours, so why don’t we order some food and another drink?”

We talked for a while after that, between pints and our meals. Roy told me about several of the projects he’s been working on in his head, but hadn’t written yet, and I told him about the recent vacation I’d taken to the mountains. When the clouds overhead turned to rain, we moved inside the pub. “Strange,” I commented as we stood up, to move inside, “that we haven’t seen him come out yet.”

“She’s probably hungry,” Roy said in an off-hand way. “You don’t know a lot about them, do you?”

“Not really, no.”

Roy shrugged, “there’s not much to know really. They are demons who seduce men to steal the life energy from them. Most times, the succubus will keep the man alive, returning to feed. It’s easier, I suppose than trying to seduce and new victim everytime.”

“So, they’re sexual vampires.”

“In a way, yes, except you can’t become one by being infected. Unlike vampires, werewolves and the like, the succubae are incapable of propagating themselves. They’re simply demons in human form, who leech the lives of regular schmoes like our unfortunate friend, Mark.”

The next couple of hours passed as we played crib at the bar, waiting for sunset. I wasn’t thinking about it too much at the time, but in retrospect, sitting here copying down the tale, I wonder what had possessed us. Roy would have said we were like any cops, waiting on a stakeout, except that we weren’t sanctioned by anyone, and to the best of my knowledge, cops don’t guzzle down pint after pint before a raid. I remember as the streetlights outside came on, and dusk settled around the city feeling a prickle of dread and anticipation at the base of my skull.

Roy was looking out the plate window at the house across the street when he gave me a poke in the ribs. “Look,” he said, “we’ve got movement.”

I bit back my eagerness and looked slowly over my shoulder. I’d expected to see our friend walking out the door, however this time, it was another man going in. He was tall, balding, and well built. He turned his broad shoulders and ducked as he crossed the threshold. “What do you make of that? Another victim?”

“Possibly,” he considered, his voice seeming to come from far away. “It does complicate things somewhat.” Roy turned back to face the bar and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He seemed lost for a little bit, until he came back to the present. “Ok, plan’s the same.”

“Wait, we have a plan?” I interrupted.

Roy rolled his eyes at me again. “Of course we have a plan. Haven’t you been paying attention?” He leaned forward again, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath. “Ok, I’m going to get inside, and I want you to wait outside, just in case.” He leaned back again, lost in his own thoughts, I could tell.

“That’s it? You’re going in and you want me to wait outside, ‘just in case’?” I was baffled. “In case of what?”

“Well,” Roy started, but he spoke slower, and I got the impression he really hadn’t thought this part of the plan through. “Fuck it then. We’ll both go in.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but what then?”

“We’ll play it by ear.” He smiled and looked a little demented.

“I know what happens next,” I said, taking a long drink of my beer, steeling myself against the impending storm that was coming after we got out of the rain. “Next we either get killed by that monster that just went in or we get arrested.”

“Have faith, my friend,” he said patting me on the shoulder, “have I ever led you astray?”

“Yes,” I responded simply. A few minutes of silence followed between us, as we prepared ourselves as much as we could. Simultaneously we rose from the bar and walked out onto the rain soaked street.
“Hey, thanks, by the way,” Roy said as we crossed the street a few doors down from the house. “You’re being a great sport about this. Hopefully you aren’t disappointed.”

“You’re welcome, Roy,” I said sincerely. “It’s not often one gets adventure like this anymore, right?” He smiled at me, and didn’t say another word. In a way I understood him like others couldn’t. He may have been absorbed too much in the fictitious world in his head, or he was just the kind of adventurer that people haven’t seen too many of since the advent of microwaves and television. He wasn’t one to live vicariously.

The rain was coming down hard, the dark clouds obscuring the last bits of sunset, making it seem later than it actually was. I followed silently as Roy lead me up the sidewalk passed the house and around the corner at the far end of the block.

posted by September @ 9:33 AM