The Restaraunt
The naked city, whatever that is, has a million stories, or so they say. I suspect the number is probably far higher. I could've probably gotten a million just looking around that restaurant. The couple in the booth behind me was getting a divorce. The girl at the table in the corner always took a sip of her drink before each bite of her meal. There was a guy by the entrance who had his arm in a cast, probably acquired through attempting some stupid stunt. The stories of the people in the restaurant don't concern me, except that guy by the bar who was turning blue, choking on the meal he hadn't touched. He'd be dead before I left and become my problem in a few months, after the police had stopped trying. His family will be directed to me. I am Greg Turpin, the private investigator, P.I., private eye, or detective of the paranormal.
I needed a smoke, so I left that round, blue, drab building.. It was nighttime, the sun having just barely set. I note this because all the world's problems seem to arrive at night. Almost as if on cue, my beeper went off. It was an urgent message from my friend Lee Danvers. Being one for face-to-face encounters, I buttoned by brown trench coat, lowered my hat, and rushed to his office. While doing all this, I was thinking of the past, as I generally do upon leaving that restaurant.
My current life all started with Sharon. I was an aspiring fiction writer. She was the waitress who always served me coffee in that same blue restaurant, which didn't become dreary until she went away. We got to talking, liking each other, dating, and wedding. And then... no, that hurts to think about.
My current life all started with my father. Jim Turpin was a drunkard, but a good man. In my childhood, he be used to take me to the restaurant, once every week. It was our bonding time. Back then, it was a vibrant place. It's become a lot darker since then. No matter how the food was that day or what might have been happening around us, my father ignored it all for my sake. When drunk he sometimes became abusive. But every minute inside that restaurant made up for it. During those meals, he seemed like a real father. His words, which were strong and persuasive, and his actions, noble apart from the drunken abusiveness, shaped my personality into what it is today.
After a short amount of time, I made it to Lee's office. I was surprised at what I found there. See, Lee was a strong man, always in control. When I walked into his office, though, I found him drunk and fighting sleep in his chair; his clothes were dirty, more stain than cloth; his hair was disheveled and his body was pale. He became somewhat alert when I entered and even moreso after I started talking.
“I got the message. What's wrong, Lee? You don't look good, like you haven't slept in days.”
“I don't look good? I don't look good?! Of course I don't fuckin' look good!
“Don't snap at me, Lee! I'm not your problem!” I interrupted.
“Sorry. It's just there's something haunting my house, doing all kinds of crazy shit. It manipulates my emotions and gives me dark dreams. I look like I haven't slept because I haven't. And there's nothing I can do!”
“How long has it been bothering you?”
“Sorry. It's been about a week since this started. I'm so tired and stressed that I'm surprised I can even function. Yesterday, I didn't even bother going home because I knew what was waiting.”
“Why didn't you tell me sooner? You know I woulda helped.”
“I couldn't. I was ashamed. A grown man, beaten by the shadows of his home. Besides, I knew you were busy solving that child-abduction, crazed-fairy case.”
It's true. I had been. I wouldn't have had the time to help him.
“I'll help you. Consider it my payment for that poker debt I owe you. Now, why don't I go to your house with you? Since that's where the trouble is, that's where I'll be most effective.”
“Yeah, that sounds good. I'm done for the day anyway. Let me grab my jacket and we can leave.”
Lee was silent in the taxi. Looking at him reminded me of how I looked after I lost Sharon.
Sharon and I were happy together. Our tastes and traits complemented each other. We were a happy couple. True, our parents didn't really like the pairing due to the low income, but that didn't matter. Love, at least in stories, conquers all. Then the tragedy came. She was working the late shift one night when the restaurant was supposedly robbed. She was shot, supposedly at point-blank range. Repeatedly. No bullets were found, even though they couldn't have escaped her body. There were no signs of struggle. There were no signs of money being stolen, though money was strewn across the floor. Inevitably, the police stopped trying. Who could blame them? They had nothing to work with. I called them cowards and scoundrels and took the case upon myself. I didn't make it any farther than they did. Depressed, I turned to fiction for comfort. That's when I found detective stories. That's where I found the supernatural.
On some occasions, people talk too much. A man previously beaten low, who finally sees some hope, is one of those occasions. I wasn't listening to Lee's ravings about what all his guest could do and what he thought it might look like. People generally exaggerate in such scenarios. But the way he sounded reminded me of my father.
When I finished high school, my father wanted me to join his construction company. Ever since I had been little, he had occasionally mentioned aspects of the inner-workings of his business. He became very bitter when I refused his offer and told him my wish to become a fiction writer. We didn't speak to each other for a few years. He still helped me pay for college, though. Shortly after I graduated, I made plans to get married. My father became very stressed, about me, about the marriage, about his own asthmatic attacks. The stress was too much for him and he snapped. When I returned from my honeymoon, he killed himself using the gun he'd always had for protection. I guess it finally did it's job, protecting him from his own insanity.
After some time passed in which I tried to have a conversation with my silent friend, we reached the house, I was surprised. The house actually looked haunted from the outside. It was gray, bent, and looked old, just like they do in horror movies. Lee didn't even bother to pull out his keys; the door easily opened. And that's when everything went into fast forward. I noticed everything. Books and papers strewn across the floor. No lights on. Cold stagnant air. I was ready to leave, get some tools, and return prepared. Then the door slammed shut, Lee collapsed onto the floor, and an apparition appeared before me. It wasn't a ghost. Ghosts are for Halloween. This was something that could scare the tattoos off an ex-con. The opaque, jellyfish-looking thing kept morphing, changing color and features as it proceeded toward me. I tried opening the door, but I knew it would be jammed. The door is always jammed. I looked for a way under it or around it, but found none. The apparition just kept coming closer, forcing me into a corner. It then began shaping itself into a more humanoid form.
His lawn looked like a graveyard. His house was on fire. When we arrived, the look on Lee's face was the most pitiful I'd ever seen. It was so forlorn, like he'd finally lost everything. I tried to comfort him as we got out of the car, while assuring the taxi driver that this was the right place. It had to be that when I showed the least bit emotion, Lee got snatched by a giant red tentacle... thing. It grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into the house, with him struggling the whole way. I chased after, secretly knowing there probably wasn't much I could do.
My coat caught fire. In the confusion, I bumped into something, which is when I lost my hat. There were no shapes in this house, only smoke and fire. I had to use Lee's pleas for help as guidance. In order to not choke, I stayed low and tore off a piece of my shirt, using it to filter the smoke in the air. My the smoke all around and my senses dulled, I had little idea what I was actually doing. I think I climbed some stairs. I think I walked down a hallway.
At the end, there was a light. The smoke and fire were behind me. The room was so well-lit it was almost blinding. When my eyes adjusted, I was horrified at what I saw. Lee had been impaled, stuck to the wall, slowly dying. Before him stood the demon or, should I say, demoness. She was orange with tentacles flowing from her sides. Each hair on her head had a mouth. Her eyes seemed to be made of fire. She had legs like a dragon and the overall physique of a well-toned athlete. That's the way real demons look.
The apparition, in mid-transition, raised one of its jellyfish-like tentacles and struck me in the head. I received a flow of information. The apparition was after my soul, to keep itself alive. It couldn't have haunted me because, due to some unwritten rule in the Grand Design, the apparition couldn't take my soul unless I had entered its domain. Everything I owned couldn't be affected by it either due to a variation on the same rule. The apparition had spent the last few days making this house as much its domain as it could and used Lee to lure me in. It wasn't Lee's house anymore. As I processed this information, the tentacle morphed into an arm as it pulled away from my face. Before me, in all of this ghostly splendor, was Jim Turpin.
The demoness looked at me in a way I didn't think such a creature could look. It had love in its eyes. But it had a mission. Due to her past transgressions and secret dealings, she had been condemned. I'd learned all about them after her death when I went looking into her past. I hadn't realized the true extent of them until I was in that room. The demoness told me verything through her graggily voice. I learned that the demoness was lonely. Because this the demoness, Sharon, wanted me to join her in eternal damnation. Forever.
My father grabbed me and began smothering me in his ethereal body, despite my struggling. As each part of his being touched mine, I felt a pounding on my chest, as if he were forcing his way into my body.
Sharon rushed after me in order to embrace me, but I moved out of the way. She took this as a sign of resistance, of unwillingness to give her what she desired. So, she sent those arm-tentacles at me. A few immobilized me. The rest began beating me, largely whipping me across the chest.
“He's coming around!” screamed the head above me.
Images came into focus around me. Everyone in the restaurant was gathered 'round. I was laying on the floor. When I raised my head, a cheer rang out and a few began praising the head, which now had a body. I had to ask that question.
“Can anybody tell me what happened?”
I regretted it as soon as I finished.
Everyone began chattering, attempting to tell amongst the many other voices what had happened to me. I was able to piece together the important details.
I had apparently passed out and had gone unconscious, laying on the floor for minutes on end. Some seemed to think it had been a heart attack. Others thought it might've been food poisoning. The woman who had been receiving the praise had given me CPR. She was the only one to ask me if I was okay. I don't remember answering her. I do remember that the chatter stopped as she helped me my feet.
“Thank you,” I said as I prepared to leave.
“Just doing the right thing. You shouldn't go anywhere. We called for an ambulance.”
“I'm fine. I don't know what came over me, but it's not affecting me now. You all can go about your business.”
With that, I left the restaurant while realizing I apparently hadn't earlier. I immediately began trying to figure everything out. Deep down I knew that I hadn't suffered some medical malady. But I couldn't figure out what had caused my “death.” While unconscious, I had gone on a journey in which I followed Lee to his home, which should've been a clue of some kind considering Lee's been dead for five years. I remember conflicting information, almost as if Death had played tricks with my memory so that I wouldn't remember the experience properly. I knew, at the very least, a former loved one had been trying to make my death permanent.
When I got home, after dumping my hat and coat on the coar rack, I checked myself to possibly learn the truth. To my shock, I found whip marks across my chest and a burn mark right in the center.
I pulled out a pack of cigarettes from my pants pocket but didn't start smoking. Instead, I stared at it for a few minutes and ended up putting it in the trash. Living had suddenly become far more appealing.
