5. Library Demon Part II

            Previously on My Life: I’m at a library.  It’s dark.  I’m fucked.

            Somewhat embarrassingly, despite being in a syntactical synagogue, I was having a bit of a pronoun problem.  The demon that was extending freakishly long bony legs from beneath its floral print skirt to launch itself through the air at me, had until this point appeared female.  But according to several credible sources, not the least of which is Priscilla Presley, Nicholas Cages have been historically male.  Still, I have never encountered any of these creatures in a sex act (Thank God!) so they could conceivably all be Barbies down below, meaning that gender neutrality is equally possible.  But thinking ‘he or she or it’ makes internal monologging difficult.  So, in the interests of generating faster reaction time by simplifying my auto-narration, I will refer to the whispering witch Cage as She-it, because that was what I said in slow motion as her clawed fingers swiped the phone/flashlight from my extended hand.

            In part I was she-itting myself because a horrifying horn-rimmed harpie was hurtling herself at my head, but mostly I was pissed at myself for not having bought a lifeproof case for my new phone (which I’d recently acquired through Cassie from a movie set where it had apparently been used by one of the old Night Court cast members).  I’d heard that those – lifeproof cases, not John Larroquette – protected against falling from cliffs, being rolled over by cars, and even submergence in water.  So a demonic swipe should have been fine.  But, as the case may be (or not be), her-its hand struck my unprotected phone and sent it flying to lodge in a stack of books on the paranormal in the Dewey 140s.

            Fortunately for my face, I was able to dodge out of the way by the time she cleared the final feet between my hands and my head, and I watched in horror as the skin around her arms fluttered in the wind as she flew past. Her-its aforementioned floral skirt disguised the actions of dangerous legs beneath, which coiled up, then re-extended directly into my chest.

            Twisting my body, I wielded Signs of the Scourge in front of me like a shield as I plunged straight through an entire shelf into the neighboring aisle.  Minimal damage was done (to me – I can’t say as much for the books) as I decimated a shelf of decimal 150s, then caught myself just before crushing the 160 rack, which I suspected I was going to need.  After all, logic appeared to be my only weapon against these foul creatures.

            I glanced back through the psychological hole I left behind and saw her-it crouch and stare through, growling in rage as she-it saw that I hadn’t been, I don’t know, paper-cut to death?  She-it turned, velociraptor-like away down the aisle, and I knew she’d be appearing in mine momentarily.

            I dropped Signs of the Scourge and started to run, but I stumbled over a well-placed book on obstacles to productive reasoning and caught myself against 162.  I glanced back and, as she-it rounded the corner, my powers of deduction made me realize that where all other sources of information had failed Scourge might succeed.  I needed that book.

            So I raced towards the book, playing a game of chicken (an apt analogy for her grotesque skin) with the librarian who approached at a gallop from the other side.  I snatched the book then dove to my left, barely avoiding the chicken-scratch as I passed through a hole in my psychological shelf to land back where I’d started by the demon-books on the other side.  This time I wasted no time deweying anything except running away as quickly as I could, very much aware of the animalistic howl that pierced the air behind me.  So much for whispering!

            I wasn’t about to waste time, so I bolted for the front door of the library, stumbling over stray books in the near-darkness.  Which reminded me… I turned and went back for my phone.  Who knows if the production company had insured it, and if so, would a demonic strike count as an act of God?  Godlessness perhaps?  But I couldn’t find it and…

            I wasn’t about to waste time, so I bolted for the front door of the library, which unfortunately was also bolted.  I tugged harder on the handle, energized by my pulse pounding adrenaline and the ringing in my ears, which it turns out was not a result of high blood flow, but rather caused by the magnetized strip on the back of Scourge that I had failed to check out before racing through the book theft detection gate.

            I knew that she-it was probably hearing the book-alarm too and honing in on my exact location, so I left the door behind and ducked into the nearest room.  Which was the teen room.  Which unfortunately had a glass wall facing the entrance to the library.

            She-it appeared through the window, now crawling on all fours, hind-legs fully extended from beneath the floral skirt.  She snarled and hissed animalistically, which gave me an idea.  I ducked behind a cardboard cutout of Jacob from Twilight as I watched her-it stalk towards the main entrance.

            I pressed myself flat against his flat back, thanking God and/or the library decorators that they’d used a New Moon cutout and not a scrawny Lautner from the first movie.  As I waited, I considered the rest of the decorator’s decisions and decided that this room was definitely not arranged by a teen, and probably not even by a human.  Only a demon would have pitted Episode 2 Anakin against Iron Man.  Even my werewolf hiding place was oddly standing alongside Ron Weasley.

            Brief aside:  Why not represent the bookish characters from these respective franchises?  Where were cutouts of Pepper Potts or Hermione or… does anyone in Twilight actually read?  Hell, if she-it wanted a werewolf on display in the teen room window, why not spring for a cardboard Lupin?  At least he was well-educated.  But no, they went with Jacob.  How ironic.  And speaking of…

            I guess Tony Stark reads.  I mean, he must to be as intelligent as he is, right?  At least, if those arcane pages on the ground around his feet are any indication… Oh shit!  Some of the pages had fallen from Signs’ loose binding and now littered the floor around the Cardboard Man’s feet.

            The idea that my arm could pass for Lautner’s wolf-tail disappeared as she-it snarled her way into the teen room, passing by my cardboard concealment and gazing around with her-its evil eyes.  She-it stalked past me towards a display where new-Spock was gesturing illogically towards a stand of Jane Austen books, and I took the opportunity to sneak behind her towards the emergency exit at the far corner of the room.

            I thought I was going to make it when I felt a set of claws sink into the back of my waistline and I found myself hurtling back across the room.  Fortunately, Hayden Christensen was there to catch me.  You can call me Padme Amidala, because I was soon riding young Vader, and unfortunately we can extend the metaphor further by calling the glass teen room wall ‘box office records’ or better yet, ‘audience hopes and dreams’, because either way, we smashed right through it.

            Anakin lost an arm in the process, and I lost no time getting to my feet and getting out of there.  Actually, I lost a little bit of time, as I had again dropped and then gone back for Signs of the Scourge which had again managed to eject a few of its pages.  Fortunately she-it hesitated for a moment, perhaps in shock that of the three things to go through the glass, I was the only one left undamaged.

            But she-it sprang into action as I finished collecting the errant pages and made off for the stairs to the second story.  More seconds were bought in my favor when she-it delicately closed the stairwell door behind her, rather than letting it slam as I had.  Muscle memory I guess.

            I quickly found a new hiding place on the second floor, but for future reference, reference books shelves, those short ones, are terrible for your future.  So I ran along, crouched down and clutching the book to my chest while listening to the librarian’s snarls, which echoed off the walls in a very disorienting and un-whispery sort of way.

            I considering turning into a room labeled ‘Microfiche’ but figured that though I didn’t know what exactly that means (are they like minnows?) the prefix ‘micro’ implied a lack of good hiding places.

            So I continued scuttling through the reference section until I reached the balcony that overlooked the first floor of the library where I had been reading just minutes ago.  I considered jumping, but knew that I couldn’t do it here over the tables.  Maybe if I just moved down a little ways to where those lettered file cabinets were…

            And I was moving.

            Towards the cabinets.

            Really really fast.

            I slammed into them, knocking the wind out of me and a few files out of the cabinet.  I glanced around for Scourge, and had just fished it out from beneath a pile of unfurled family trees when she-it landed on top of me, legs bent, feet pinning my ankles, hand on my neck.

            I slapped feebly at the demon, and managed only to send her-its horn rim glasses hurtling out into the reading area.  If only I could send her following them.  But no.  She pinned my arm, and despite my best efforts, I knew I was trapped.  Sure, I could swing the hand still clutching Scourge at her, but there’s no way I would be fast enough.

            If I, an only son, died in the genealogy section after going to the library on the advice of my father… how Shakespearean.  My family tree would die just like the tree families that had been used to print all of these ancestral lists.  Is it cruel to print a picture of a tree on a piece of paper?  Were these really going to be my last thoughts?

            “You should have listened,” she-it growled.

            “I didn’t think the flashlight app would violate the phone rules!”

            “When I said Demons are fiction.”

            “Well, I’m listening now.  Loud and clear.”

            “That’s the problem with you… people.  You lack… Wait, maybe it’s your…”

            “R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”

            “Mother?” Obviously, she-it said this not me, as I was silently thanking Daisy for calling at such a perfect time, despite the unhappy voicemail she would no doubt leave when I failed to answer.  I certainly didn’t think my mom was calling.  And the demon… was she Aretha Franklin’s daughter?  Certainly didn’t look like it.

            ‘What the fuck?’ crossed quickly through my mind but I slapped it away then backhanded the bitch-bastard across the face with Signs of the Scourge.  She-it staggered a step back from the book’s weight, and I didn’t wait a moment before booking it towards the nearest door.

            Which opened into another set of stairs.

            Which led to the roof.

            Shit.

            I needed a helicopter.  Maybe Cassie could call in some sort of movie favor.  No.  This wasn’t a movie.  This was a library.

            The doorway opened again and I turned as she-it emerged slowly onto the roof.  I turned towards her-it and backed slowly away as she-it took slow deliberate steps towards me.  I was rapidly (or relatively slowly actually, but it’s all relative isn’t it?) approaching the edge of the roof.

            “So, can we talk about this,” I asked.

            “You think you can hunt us,” she-it snarled.

            “I really, really don’t…” I said then corrected myself to “do not,” as I thought she-it might appreciate a more formal tone.

            “You won’t,” she-it said, so much for formality, “There hasn’t been one like you for a long time.  And there won’t be one again for even… longer.”

            And she charged me.  With nothing else to do, I flung Signs of the Scourge at her face.  I was a little sad to finally toss it, but considerably less sad than I would have been if I were getting clawed to death by a loose-skinned demon.

            What happened amazed me.  The book opened up to swallow the librarian.  Sort of.

            Actually, the binding fell apart as the book flew through the windy rooftop air, and the pages fluttered into a white cloud, obstructing my attacker’s view of me.  Meanwhile, I called to mind the martial arts training of my youth and collapsed into fetal position.

            She-it tripped!  Over me!  And went off the edge of the roof with a horrific howl that abruptly ceased before the sound of a splat reached my ears.  Long before actually, because that splat sound never came.

            I stood and made my way very cautiously to the edge of the roof, and guess what I saw?  I’ll give you a clue.  In fact, I already did.

            Remember when I mentioned that giant bubbling stylus statue outside the library?  Do you remember what purpose it was serving at the time?  Why it was there, at least as regards me?   For shadowing.

            Yes, that’s right, the demon had fallen nicely onto the tip of the Fountain Pen and had been skewered straight through the torso.  Fortunately for tomorrow’s cleanup crew, she had been completely pen-etrated and the fountain still flowed properly.  Through a brief gap in the bubbling spray, she locked eyes with mine, and as her eyes became Nick Cage’s, she slowly shook her head.

            Then exploded in a ball of blinding light that didn’t actually hurt, but still knocked me back on my ass amidst a flurry of pages blowing in the wind.

            Had she really just exploded?  That didn’t make any sense!  If only there was a book that could explain demon mechanics to me, one that wasn’t busy swirling around on the windy rooftop!

            Shock would have to wait.  I sprang to my feet and began collecting as many pages as I could.

4. Library Demon

            I parked my mother’s van in front of a Starbucks and tried to adopt my best ‘this isn’t actually my van’ face as I walked past a group of baristas on break smoking in the parking lot.  Unfortunately, this attempted façade ruined my ‘this isn’t actually my purse’ face, and the smoking servers eyed my laptop SATCHEL with distinct derision.  I scrubbed the blush from my face with the thought that they were just measly Starbucks employees then reapplied it when I saw the ‘Now Hiring’ sign on the front door and considered that I should probably take an application.

            But I didn’t.  Instead I did a bit of quick Nick recon, scouring the establishment to ensure that I looked more like a Coppola than anyone else in the place, and once satisfied, I made my way to the counter to order a cappuccino.  I’d like to call special attention to the fact that I did NOT put my bag down at a table, claiming it as my own before going to get a drink, and I’ll further clarify that my aversion to this order of events stems not from a fear of theft, but rather from an awareness of the rudeness of staking out space before you actually need it.  It’s the kind of thing Nicholas Cages do.  And the kind of thing I did before Daisy explained to me how rude it is.

            So I spent the next minute eying the corner table that would afford me the most privacy and the best view of the door, while crossing my fingers and hoping no one else took it.  When my drink arrived I hoisted it quickly and over-excessively (redundant, I know, but the foamy froth in cappuccinos makes them far lighter than they look, and the fact that my muscles can’t remember this makes it doubly embarrassing) spilling a bit of steaming steamed milk down my hand and yelping as I double-timed it to my table of choice, barely beating out some squirrelly Sorority girl who hadn’t ordered a drink yet. Win!

            I stared at the girl extra hard as she ordered – presumably a Kappaccino – just to be sure that she wasn’t too Cagey, then I gave an apologetic glance to the middle-aged mother of two (at least) shaking her head at me from in line behind the girl.  Then I buried my face in shame behind my laptop, and after a moment I decided that while I was there, I might as well set to doing what I had come here for in the first place.

            So I drank some coffee.  Which scalded my lip.  So to put that off, I figured I might as well do some research.

            It didn’t take long before I’d e-spiraled into a series of articles, all published through a Wikipedia-esque site called Hubworks, that essentially categorized ‘face-shifters’ – yes that was my first search keyword, but no it was not my last, and yes I jumped after typing in ‘switch faces’ and Nick pics came up – into three different groups.  I figured that even though the mall girl and traffic guy easily qualified as dickheads, it was safe to assume that they were not futuristic undercover agents from a Philip K. story.  And I found it even less likely that they were Tim Curry’s acting career.  This left only one other option.

            They were demons.  According to Hubworks.

            I know what you’re thinking.  I skipped a possibility.  What if Nicholas Cage actually has Mystique’s X-power?  Or what if Mystique uses Nicholas Cage as her default setting?  Just read that out loud and think about how ridiculous it sounds.  Because let’s be honest, sometimes movies do get the casting right.  If someone out there could constantly shift faces, but they wanted to have a default to go back to, they would probably settle on something like Jennifer Lawrence.

            Anyway, demons. 

OK, Hubworks, I believe it.  I’ve never been particularly religious, but lacking a better explanation, I suppose I can accept yours.  Now, what does that mean?  What are demons?  What do they do?  What do they want?  How can I kill them and/or persuade them to be nice to me?

            Well… Hubworks had answers:

            Demons are fallen angels, who now reside on Earth and attempt to sway the souls of men (and presumably women) towards evil in order to tip the global balance in favor of their dark lord Satan.  They manifest in the form of swirling gaseous clouds, large-dicked goat creatures, serpents or serpent-like mammals, whores, and of course seemingly everyday people with shifting faces.

            They are a human personification of an alien race that seeded our planet in the distant future and has since then been working backwards through time, and who appear in their distinctive red-skinned horned appearance because of human anticipations of the end-times that marked their arrival.

            They are really just normal people whose minds have become twisted by biological perversions and whose willpower is strong enough but rationale weak enough that they have since adopted the ability to physically manifest these psychological problems.  They believe that they are doing good in the Aristotelian sense, but because of their warped perception, most of their behavior operates directly in the face of conventional moral norms.

            They want to steal your soul, fuck your wife, sway you towards evil, drag you down into hell, lift you up into their ship, assume control of your body, fill you with dissatisfaction, eat your innards and paint their homes with your entrails, murder your pets, scare you into eventual suicide, recruit you to their demonic legion and imbue you with a sense of perpetual sexual insecurity, and allegedly they also want you to have a lot of fun.

            Which is to say, that no one seems to have a clear idea of what the fuck they are or what the fuck they want.  At least the internet doesn’t, but when does the internet ever have a clear stance on any confused issue?  Never.

            I did however notice an interesting trend.  Three of the articles I read were written by the same man (or by three men who all shared a name), but the three articles were wildly different in their explanations of demonic behavior and categorization.  Apparently one Daniel Tiernan personally witnessed a demon transform into a snake and crawl down Al Gore’s throat shortly before filming of An Inconvenient Truth.  A second investigated an archaeological dig and discovered that demons are all the result of Ancient Egyptian rituals and were released by tomb raiders to now roam the Earth as dangerous (and unsanitary) clouds of dust and ash – I’d have to check with Daisy about that one.  The third Daniel Tiernan was apparently consulted in his sleep by Satan himself and asked to join the ranks of demons (all of whom are human) who wage his unholy war on Earth.

            Daniel Tiernan was not to be trusted.  And neither was Heather Williams, who had both been warned by Jesus about the power of demons and been abducted by them into their floating space cave.  John Vicari’s considerably more academic recounting of no less than six diametrically opposed demonic explanations were equally incredible (in both senses of the word).

            This struck me as baffling.  I mean, the internet is almost always misleading, and often deliberately so, but for these people to write articles that directly contradicted themselves… it just didn’t make sense.  But then, neither did reverse turn signaling.  Or stealing un-activated gift cards.  Or matching the speed of a right-lane driver.  Or switching clothing on the hangers.  Why would people do such a thing?  Unless…

            They weren’t people.

            So, for the moment I figured I would assume that the authors were demons.  And if they were, it should certainly have been no surprise to me that the internet was rife with them.  Hell, at a few clicks of a button you can find Nicholas Cage ad infinitum.  Rule 35: If it exists, Nicholas Cage’s face has been photoshopped onto it.

            Would you go to a KKK meeting for a biased and helpful view of their true motives?  Unless you were Hunter S. Thompson, Timothy Treadwell, or apparently Daniel Tiernan, no… you wouldn’t.  So why trust this digital demon den for my face-shifting fact-finding?

            Thirty minutes and one paternal recommendation on research methods later, I was on my way to the library when I realized that I had no idea where a library is, because, who does these days?

            Not wanting to waste data, I pulled into another Starbucks and – I should explain: I cancelled our internet, without telling Daisy, in order to save money to buy her a necklace and/or American Eagle a new changing room mirror.  I figured I’d reactivate our service well before she got back – bought myself another cappuccino so that I wouldn’t look like one of those wi-fi moochers, then over-lifted it again, cappuccinos being the escalator endings of the drink world.  One minor steam-burn, a moment’s disappointment over the loss of a corner table, and several keyword searches later, and I was on my way to the library again, or rather, for the first time.

            The parking lot was nearly empty, so I pulled into the one spot that was entirely in the shadow of the giant stylus statue, which was apparently in desperate need of repair because it was perpetually leaking a spray of ink into the fountain where it was situated.  Barely passable as art, it did serve as a functional, albeit extremely specific parasol to protect my eyes from the blinding light of the setting sun as I got out of the car and approached this temple of books.

            A couple of teenagers cleared their throats as they acclimated to the normal volume world outside of the library, and I tried to do the reverse as I prepared to speak only in quiet, but it came out only as a slight gag.  If they noticed, they didn’t say anything, of if they did, I didn’t hear it.  Maybe they had just enough whisper left.

            The librarian was so comedically terrifying that it wasn’t even worth speculating that she might be one of the demons.  They – at least so far in my limited experience – tended to look relatively attractive, enticing, or at least normal, only to turn on you and become the Nicholas Cages they really were, or at least looked like sometimes to me.  But this lady was not that.  She looked like someone had stuck one of those bag-sealing vacuums into her and let it run for a few minutes.  Her skin was both clingy and saggy and perhaps was only there to hold on her bluish-gray hair, which was remarkably thick even though… oh, it’s a wig.

            She looked up at me with tired eyes from behind horn-rimmed glasses – would a demon really wear horn-rims? – and asked if she could help me, reminding me all the while of that secretary from Monsters Inc.

            “I think I’m beyond help,” I said.

            “The exit’s that way,” the words sounded like they were crawling out of an unmarked grave.  Once free, they no doubt fled the building, racing to follow her half-extended arm towards the exit.

            “Sorry,” I said, in typical Craig fashion, “I was wondering if you have anything on demons?”

            She raised her eyes, perhaps to block mine perfectly behind the horned rims, then pushed creakily back from the desk and stood up.  She rounded the desk, revealing a hunched frame that supported her head just a few inches below mine.  I reflected that if she stood up straight, she must have been about eight feet tall.

            “Follow me,” she said, and hobbled away towards the back of the book emporium.

            She raised her eyes at me again a few minutes later when I explained that I wasn’t after Dan Brown or Stephen King books.

“Do you have anything that’s more, you know, non-fiction?”

            “Demons are fiction,” she said.

            “Ok, but demonology is a real study, right?  There must be books on that.”

            “Follow me.”

            She briefly considered the computer on the counter before passing it and rolling back the top on an ancient Dewey decimal system card catalogue.  She used the lengthy nails that she had apparently evolved for just this purpose to flip through the cards before eventually pulling one out.  She eyed it.  Then me.  Then it.  Then me.

            “You go have a seat in the reading area,” she said, “I’ll bring you out the books.”  Bad grammar for a librarian.

            I was in the midst of reflecting that this library was eerily quiet, even more so than the traditional eerie quiet that libraries are supposed to display, when that quiet was fiercely penetrated by Aretha Franklin.

Spelling the word RESPECT loudly in a library is definitely ironic.

            “Hey Daisy, how are you?”

            “Not bad.  Why are you whispering?”

            “I’m in a library.  Doing some research.”

            “Sorry, I can barely hear you.  Did you say you’re in a library?”

            “Yeah, doing some research.”

            “Some research?  Research omelet…”

            “Did you say omelet?  Sorry, I’m… you don’t have to whisper too.  You’re not on speakerphone.”

            “Oh…”

            “Unless it’s for solidarity.  Anyway, what’s up?”

            “I just wanted to talk to you about, you know, life and stuff.”

            “That sounds awesome. Have you ever heard of Daniel Tiernan?”

            “No, Craig, I…”

            “No phone zone,” said a stack of books that had materialized over my shoulder but now quickly descended towards the desk, revealing the haggard face of the accordionic librarian behind it.

            “Sorry,” I said to the librarian. 

“Sorry,” I said to Daisy, “I’ll talk to…”

            “No phone zone,” she said again, pointing, as was her habit, to a sign that spelled out her message in Englishes, both olde and new.

            “…you later.” I said and hung up the phone before turning to look at the empty space where the librarian had just been.  I sighed in a whisper and redirected my attention to the stack of books.

            Their titles were promising, but their contents were ultimately underwhelming.  I was immediately struck by the same consistent lack of consistency that had marked the Hubworks articles and their online ilk.  All of my paradigms were being rocked.  Not only could the newer generation obey library rules, apparently physical books, and not just the internet, could be full of nonsensical lies.  I double-checked the spines to confirm that these books were indeed from the non-fiction section, and it was then that I noticed that several of the books had the same authors.  Among them: Daniel Tiernan and Heather Williams.  Curious.

            Then the lights went out.

            I checked my phone, despite being in the wrong zone and saw that it was 7:06 PM, a weird time for the library to close.

            The glow of a hexagonal stained glass window and half a dozen Exit signs prevented the expansive building from being pitch black, but the darkness was still unsettling.

            I stood and circled the table, looking down the aisles of books in the hopes that the librarian was nearby and that I hadn’t been mistakenly locked in this treasury of misinformation.  I considered calling out, but yelling in a library just felt unnatural and it didn’t seem like whispering would be particularly helpful.

            “Hello…”

            Not my voice.  Not the Librarian’s.  Adele!

            Just Daisy texting me ‘That was rude!’ with no idea how accurate her statement was.  But the librarian didn’t pop out of the stacks to remind me of the phony zoning regulations.  I decided it might be best if I just headed for one of the copious exits, and I had just started to do so when I glanced back at the stack of books on the table where I had been.  I reminded myself that I wasn’t one of those people who prematurely stake a claim at Starbucks.  I even bus my own table at Fast Food restaurants.  I’d be damned if I was going to start acting like a demon now.  Ironic phrasing, I know.

            Whatever, I could figure out where those books belonged and re-shelve them myself.

            It turned out that I was a little over-confident, and the duration of the Dewey decimal lesson that I had ignored back when they still taught that in school was roughly equal to the amount of time I spent looking for the spot where these fictional non-fiction books belonged.  But I did still remember my numbers pretty well, so it took me no time at all once I’d found the spot to refill the half a shelf they had occupied.

            As I slid the last book into place, I noticed something odd.  The book’s former neighbor had left a single page behind and it had been brushed to the back of the shelf.  I pulled it out, un-creased it carefully, as it appeared to be quite old, then I produced my cell phone and flipped on the flashlight app, as the aisle had somehow grown even eerier and darker.

            The page appeared to be from a book’s bibliography but all of the sources that it referred to were titled in Latin and consequently indecipherable but seemingly trustworthy.  And at the top of the page was the book’s title: Signs of the Scourge.  It’s a pity, I thought, that the rest of the book had gone missing, except wait… what’s that by my foot?

            I crouched and slid the rest of the book out from beneath the shelf where it had apparently fallen.  Or been kicked.  I flashlit the cover, which appeared to be made of leather and it struck me as something of a travesty that some library worker had stuck a sticker over its antique spine.  But then, this thing was hardly in collector condition.  The pages had all come loose from the binding, which explained how one had been left up top.

            I tucked the book, now re-acquainted with its severed page, under my arm and stood up, intent on finding the librarian and seeing if she would still allow me to check out the antique tome or if she could at least hold it for me until tomorrow.

            It didn’t take long to hunt her down.  As I swung my phone-light around to replace the now absent stained glass glow the narrow beam fell upon a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

            Her witch-like face grinned at me then rose out of my beam as she stood to her full height, a good (or very bad) foot taller than me.  I tilted the light up, and illuminated Nicholas Cage’s face, which grinned down at me and spoke.

            “No phone zone.”

            Then it pounced.

3. Traffic Demon

            Drinking at your parents’ house is always a tricky balancing act because you want to drink enough for them to be tolerable but not so much that they question your maturity.  I figured two glasses of wine was an appropriate weight-distribution stick to carry across the tightrope.  That’s right, I didn’t plan to get drunk, so no, I had not arranged for a DD, but unbeknownst to me, I would be encountering one of a different sort later that night.

            I guess I should go ahead and clear this up now: I will be referring to my parents by obviously pseudo ‘nym’ names as well.  They will be Papa Nym and Mama Nym, and yes, as I thought through this naming convention, I had a good chuckle and a few minor regrets.  It’s a pity that my father doesn’t have a sister who could be Auntie-nym.  Get it?  Like antonym.  Maybe she could be Papa’s diametric opposite.  Or if I had a gay twin brother who sounded just like me…  But I don’t.  Which, actually, is kind of why I was at my parents’ house in the first place.

            A nasty thought had been festering in my mind for several days after my encounter with the mall demon (though at the time I didn’t know that this was what she was) but even once I had planted myself at the kitchen table of my youth, it took me over an hour and two glasses of wine before I was able to spit it out.  The question, I mean, not the wine.

            My mother was talking ad infinitum about work at the food bank and how frustrating it is when people turn in food that is well past its expiration date, or submit seemingly sealed boxes where the inner bag has already been opened.  My father had no doubt heard this complaint at least a thousand times more often than I had but he still fixed his understanding eyes on her and nodded empathetically.  I, meanwhile watched those eyes and that nod, and tried to determine how Cage-y they actually were. 

            “How come sometimes when a bag of Lindt truffles get hot, they melt out of their wrappers into a bag of mush, but sometimes it’s just the insides that turn into liquid?”

            “Very interesting,” I said, “But what I want to know…”

            Mama fixed me with a disapproving glare, and Papa affected a smirky little half-smile, curious to see how this potential argument played out.

            “Sorry,” I said, “I guess it just doesn’t seem like starving people need Lindt chocolate truffles in the first place.”

            “Well, they don’t usually get them.  Some employee always nabs them first.”

            “Oh, well that’s good then.  Or… How do you know the insides turn to… sorry, I was wondering… I don’t, I mean… there’s no possible way I have a sister, is there?

            Mama brayed like a donkey.

            Papa hung his head.

            “So, that’s a no?  OK, that’s what I thought.”

            “Why?”

            “Well, it’s nothing really.  I just ran into a girl the other day and I thought she looked a bit like…”

            “And you figured you should make sure you weren’t related before you…” Papa thinks he’s funny.

            “Don’t you dare cheat on Daisy.”  Mama doesn’t.

            “I wouldn’t.  I was actually at the mall buying Daisy a gift when I saw this…”

            “Can I see it?”

            “No, mom. But anyway, the girl looked a lot like, well, us, but no sister.  That answers that.  You’re sure?”

            “I would know, sweetheart.”

            Obviously.  But now she and Papa were making weird eye contact and he seemed to nod slowly.  Holy shit!  Was he confessing an affair to her?  I poured a third glass of wine and thanked the heavens that I hadn’t described the face-shifting bimbo in more detail.  What if dad used to have a blonde big-boobed secretary in the years after my birth?  I didn’t remember ever meeting her, but then, I wouldn’t have, would I?  Did carpenters have secretaries?  Jesus Christ…

            “Your birth was a miracle, sweetheart,” said my mom.

            I drank some more wine.

            “Your mother and I never planned to have children,” added Papa.

            Miracle, accident, potato, potahto.

            Mama took a deep breath and continued, “I had a condition when I was young, and the doctor’s told me that I had… that I had lost all of my eggs.”

            “Her internal Easter bunny did too good of a job,” said Papa, reminding me where my sense of humor came from, and I don’t mean a rabbit in my mom’s vagina. “But apparently he missed one.”

            “We were really scared when I started to… you know, show.  But then we realized what was happening and we… well, we warmed up to the idea.  The doctors said it didn’t make sense, that the chances were insanely small of any viable eggs remaining, of one actually being fertilized, but now it seems obvious… you’re one in a million.  That’s why we named you ‘Craig’.”

            (An aside: Obviously that sentence makes no sense with my nym name, but for the sake of journalistic integrity, I’m leaving her speech intact.  And to you demons out there, if you’re able from that to figure out what my name is, well… I’ll see you soon.)

            “And you’re sure that…”

            “We did research,” said Papa, “That’s what you do when something doesn’t make sense.  And consider that this was before the internet.  I called clinics, I sent off for medical papers.  I wanted to know how it had happened.  I wanted to know how we had been… blessed with you.”

            Interesting.  I pushed back from the table.

            “I should really head out,” I said.

            “But you’ve barely touched your food,” bristled Mama. 

This wasn’t true, I’d touched it quite a lot, pushing it back and forth on my plate to create the illusion of eating, a deception which had apparently failed.  It’s not that my mom is a terrible cook, though she is, but I was distracted by thoughts of my potential siblings, my problematic patronage, and by the troubling prospect that my father had perhaps been unfaithful.  I shook my head.

“Did she really look that much like us?” she asked.

No, I thought, just like dad.  And me. 

Then he read me’s mind.

“After you were born,” Papa added, “The possibility of another surprise child weighed heavily on us.  But we knew it wouldn’t happen.  It was impossible, but then, so were you.  Still, to make it a certainty, to ease our expectations… when you were still a baby, I had a vasectomy.”

I think my mother misinterpreted my sigh of relief as a half-gag of disgust, because she said, “Woah, TMI, honey.”

And even though this was LI than the ovary-bunny, I still finished off the last of my wine and headed for the door.

“Hold on,” Mama Nym called after me, “If you’re not going to eat dinner, at least take some desert.”

She placed two Lindt chocolate truffles in my hand.  I pocketed them, gave her a hug, and shook Papa Nym’s hand.  He locked eyes with me in an ‘I just talked to you about my penis’ kind of way and said, “Be careful out there.”

I assured him that I would.

But it’s hard to focus on the road when your mind is filled with unwanted thoughts about your parents’ genitals and I reflected that perhaps I could transfer this focal subject to something newer, younger, and better.

“Call Daisy,” I requested of Siri as I turned my car – yes, I was still driving a car at this point – out of my parents’ neighborhood and onto the highway.

“Hello.”

“Dr. Jones!” I over-said, “Discover anything exciting today?”

“As a matter of fact, beneath the top layer of dust I located a second, equally fascinating layer of even more dust.”

“Sounds like my dick.”

“What?”

“You know?  Because I haven’t been using it lately.  Obviously.  Because you’re out of town.  Sorry, I’ve got dicks on the mind.  But at least it’s my own now.  Could be worse.  Could be my dad’s.”

“Do I even want to ask?”

“No… perhaps not.”

“OK then, I won’t.  So, aside from dusty dad dick, how’ve you been?”

“Not great.  Not bad.  I thought for a moment I might have a sister, but it turns out I don’t.  And though my dad didn’t have an affair, or at least, not a fruitful one anyway, I learned that my mom probably steals Lindts from the food bank, so I guess I do descend from morally dubious stock.”

“Well, glad to hear it about the sister thing.  I guess.  I do have a sister, but you knew that already.  You said your mom steals lint?  Like pocket lint?”

“Actually…” I tapped my pant-leg then shifted to my left butt-cheek while shoulder-pinning my phone to my ear as I fished one of the chocolates out of my pocket.

“Hey Craig,” Daisy said, vaguely questionish, “Do you feel like there’s something wrong?  It just seems like you’re distant.”

“Well, geographically I am.  But sorry, no, we’re good.  I just got distracted by a chocolate that I’d rather not have melted in my pocket.  Figure I’ll eat it to help me visualize how insanely sweet you are. Anyway, how’s the dig going?”

“It’s fine.  Not much to do out here for fun though…”

She kept talking right through that ellipsis, but my listening trailed off as the truffle ejaculated molten chocolate all over my chin and shirt.  I shoved the remaining hemisphere of dripping sweetness into my mouth then grabbed the nearest piece of fabric I could find – a torn extra-small shirt – to try and get the brown lava off of my actual shirt before it stained.

Of course, in the process of doing this, my attention to both Daisy’s train of thought and the speed limit had lapsed, so when I saw the blue lights approaching in my rearview mirror, I metaphorically shat myself in much the same way that the troublesome truffle had literally just shat my shirt.  I merged into the right lane, braked just hard enough to look suspicious, and dropped Daisy into my lap just in case there was some kind of no-phones rule in whatever parish I passing through. 

The blue lights were joined by a left-hand turn signal as they followed me into the right lane.  Either he had signaled backwards, or those three – why did I drink three!? – glasses of wine had affected me more than I thought.  This was bad.  The turn signal blinked off as the lights approached rapidly then were joined again, this time by a right hand signal, which signaled to my lungs that I should breathe a sigh of relief as this officer wasn’t pulling me over.

But instead of going right, he merged back into the left lane and flew past me blaring his horn.  I assume his intent was to give me a hands-on lesson about the Doppler effect, which I appreciated almost as much as the realization that this guy wasn’t actually a cop, but rather one of those tools who buys blue headlights for absolutely no reason.

“Hey, sorry about that,” I said as I lifted the phone back to my ear.

“Are you OK?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah, this guy is driving like a lunatic and I got chocolate on two of my shirts.  No big deal.  Extra-small, in fact.  Anyway, what were you saying?”

“What was the last thing you heard?”

“Uhhhh… most of it.  You’re bored.  And do we have a problem.  We don’t.”

“Ok,” she said, “I was just saying that we got a new group of researchers at the site today and they seem like an OK…”

I had now slowed considerably to avoid further scares as I continued to try and clean my shirt, but found that I was still gaining on Honky – I mean this acoustically, not racially – the pseudo-cop at an alarming speed.  Once I was close enough to read his assorted bumper stickers, he switched on the right hand turn signal again, and slowed down further, forcing me to do the same.  I considered passing, but cars treating the speed limit like a Buzz Lightyear slogan were zipping by in the left lane.  Besides, I was going slow anyway, and why not wait the extra few seconds?  That would give me a chance to listen to whatever Daisy was now saying about her degree of career satisfaction.  Or I could read the bumper stickers.

One of them seemed to be written in Braille, and another said, “Be glad your parents weren’t pro-choice.”  I’d seen this bumper sticker before and I had always hated it.  Talk about a major assumption there, honky.  Not every pro-choice woman aborts every pregnancy.  I had always commented to whoever was passenging with me when we passed such a sticker, that it should have a clause that read “if you weren’t a planned pregnancy, like I was.”  Except now I’d just learned that I wasn’t.  Maybe the bumper sticker should read ‘Be glad the doctors tricked your parents into thinking that they didn’t need to use birth control.’

            As my thought process moved steadily forward, my car didn’t, for though the other car’s turn signal was still on, he had yet to turn.  Cars behind me kept waiting for openings then darting out to pass me on the left. 

            And then, just as I had countered the driver’s rightwing bumper sticker, he now contradicted his right-hand turn signal and merged into the left lane, cutting off a car that had just snuck out from behind me.

            “Are you kidding me?” I muttered.

            “I know, right?” said Daisy.  Well that was lucky.  And so was the guy who managed to brake just in time to avoid reading a Braille sticker with his front bumper.

            I accelerate back to a little below the speed limit and returned to cleaning my shirt as Daisy continued talking about whatever it was I had just agreed with.  I genuinely tried to listen, but I kept getting distracted by the endless honking.

In front of me, the cone of my headlight colored headlights were hanging out with a matching light-blue set, and a glance to my left revealed that Honky – who I now saw was a heavyset black man – had matched my speed.

Except Honky wasn’t the one honking this time.  No, the cacophony I was hearing came from the rear where a dozen cars and counting had collected behind our slow moving vehicles, which now blocked both lanes.  I speculated that perhaps the pseudo-cop had slowed to avoid harassment from a real cop.

“Hey, can you just call me back when you get home?” asked Daisy from where she had again fallen to my lap.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, pressing the phone, and a splotch of muddy chocolate to my cheek.

I glanced over at the neighboring vehicle and saw that he was looking at me.  Did he want to get over?  I suppose we had already established that he was turn signal impaired.  I slowed to let him pass.  He slowed to match me.  The cars behind us accelerated the frequency of their honks.

I sped up.  He matched me again.

I glanced over again and did a double take.  I wondered if his fixed stare might be the result of the unintentional partial blackface that Mama’s Lindt had put on my cheek, an oddly ironic yin yang type scenario, since his black face had now turned white.  He saw me staring, and I think he knew what I was seeing, because he finally accelerated. 

As his taillights cleared my hood, he flipped on his left turn signal, and perhaps because I hadn’t caught on to his directional dyslexia, what he did next caught me totally off-guard.  He cut to the right, right in front of me and I cut off the road caught a guardrail.

I sat there in my car, staring out at the passing traffic in shock.  I was horribly confused, not by the Braille bumper sticker, not by a sighting of a rare black republican, but instead by my encounter with yet another Nicholas Cage who now, 60-seconds later, was gone.

There was no way Papa could have fathered the man I just saw, but vasectomy aside, he had seeded an idea in my mind.

“Research,” he had said, “That’s what you do when something doesn’t make sense.”

And research I would.  But first I needed a tow-truck.