Vintage Misery: Part One (rough draft)

I had learned a few things from smart cars salesmen, televangelists, and other hawkers of usually broken schloch. I learned to razzle dazzle to sell something that many didn’t believe existed. It did, in fact it was a thriving side of the world few could see. For most what I sold was a form of entertainment, move franchises, late night television hosted by busty goths. It was all too real for me, having inherited my family’s knowledge, a touch of my mother’s gifts.

Much like a traveling salesman I tried to hit up well to do neighborhoods. But I learned that college towns also were a boon for my business. Especially when sororities and fraternities were involved. They usually resided in old houses, and those who resided within were usually children of old money. Old money meant new money for me. But it’s the old houses that usually sell it. The older the better, the more columns on the porch, the better. Especially in the south. I love taking business to the old south.

The houses there are usually remnants from plantations, and there is enough history there to build off of to scare some idiot kids into making their parents pay for my expertise. It’s easy to wiggle in too. Pretending to be a fortune teller, ghost whisperer, etc, etc, and performing for parties was how I started. After that, I would usually have repeat customers come asking for more. Bit by bit that’s when the hauntings would start.

One such party I had gone to recently was supposed to be a bg break. One of the girls in the sorority was the daughter of a notoriously superstitious beauty tycoon. The woman was known to only do business deals under strict guidance of her horoscope and the placement of celestial bodies. She used crystals, tea readings, and all those sorts of new age bullshit to run her business, her family. And her daughter was within reach. Her daughter who was about to witness a powerful medium, a medium who could be hired. But perhaps I was getting ahead of myself.

The usual shtick was easy, I pretended to read the young women as they watched flabbergasted with big eyes surrounded by too much eyeshadow. I sometimes think to myself how I could have been one of them had my parents not dragged me across the globe. But that’s me being bitter.

“And you, young lady,” I said to one of the girls, “you are currently dealing with unrequited love.”

The girl looks scared and then near tears. “How did-”

I tilt my head a bit towards a cool breeze. “It’s towards one of our teachers.”

“I knew it,” another girl said as shittly as possible.

The lovestruck girl shook her head at me. “Can I make it work.”

I feel the cold breeze again against my ear. “No. He’s your fucking professor, he’s either gonna use you and lose you, or keep you on the side for forever until he loses everything in the ensuing scandal and you’re left to fit the bill. Get over it. Besides, there’s a boy in Delta house who has your picture in his wallet.”

The girl, through tears, sniffled and looked at me hopefully. “Who?”

The breeze went through my hair. “Something Buchanen.”

“Max?” The girl who sounded shitty said.

I checked my wristwatch. “Oh dear, look at the time laddies.” I tapped the watchface. “Times up for me.” I stood up and blew out the candles then turned on the lights.

Shitty girl jumped up. “Wait! What did you say about Max having her picture?”

“It’s in your room,” I scoff. “Go and look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Now if you want me to stay longer you’re going to have to pay me.” A cold chill runs down my spine. “And buy me some burritos for dinner.”

Shitty girl ran out to go to her room and search for that wallet. I left with my money, heading down the stairs of the hold place. It was dark already and the streetlamps were casting shadows.

“You should have stayed!” The cold wind hit the back of my head.

“What for?” I snap. “I can get you burritos, Neil. There was a Mexican joint down the block from here.”

“But that one girl had a stash!” The wind steps out beside me, looking like a twice rung out stoner.

“You’re dead, you can’t get high anymore.”

“But I can remember,” he whines. “Just by the smell, the smoke-”

I shake my head. “You died stoned, of course you remember.” Neil was my best friend. I had met him ages ago during one of my parents' many paranormal studies. Neil had been the victim of a ritualistic sacrifice ages ago. Lured into a trap with food, pot, and a promise for his poetry to be published. His ghost had haunted the site for ages looking for his promised gifts. I promised him all except the poetry, which by then he had given up on.

“Whoa.” Neil grabs my arm. “What is that?”

Ahead of us there were some girls coming down the way. Beautiful ones at that, almost too beautiful. They all had creamy pale skin, beautiful clothes, beautiful hair. They passed by us and an actual chill ran up my spine. Behind them trailed another girl who was using forearm crutches. She was just as beautiful as the rest, even more so with her wounded bird atmosphere.

“What on earth were those?” Neil whispered.

“They’re called women Neil,” I scoffed and continued walking along. The chill I got from those girls wasn’t new, I was alway anxious around pretty people. But for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling even as we walked away.

I took Neil to the Mexican place, ordering him the burrito of his dreams. As long as I supplied him with his favorite food source, he stuck to our deal. I suppose I scared the waitress when I made my order. Or well, when I recited Neil’s order to her. The extreme burrito he craved would have been monstrous even for the likes of bigfoot or a tyrannosaurus rex.

Back when I first met Neil I equated him with my favorite teddy bear. Short, husky, hairy, and wearing a denim jacket. He was all but happy to leave the site of his death, and it was lucky for him I had a droplet of my mother’s abilities so I could free him.

The take out order was extremely heavy. Most of it was just the weight from Neil’s burrito. As we went back to the motel I was staying at, we passed a phone booth. “Wait a second.” I told Neil. “I should call home.”

“Oh come on! Can’t you call at the motel?” Neil whined.

I went inside the phone booth, sliding in quarters then dialing. The phone rang four times before the answering machine picked up. I heard my dad’s voice and then a long beep. “Hey it’s me. Just giving my weekly update that I’m alive,” I sighed. “Guess you’re still out, or you’re at the museum. Anyways, it’s me. Your daughter. Alive.” I hung up the phone and as I stepped out I saw giant globs of beans, beef, lettuce, sour cream shat out onto the sidewalk. “For the love of god, Neil!” I snapped at him.

He’s holding the burrito, unhinging his jaw to bite into it. But it only goes right through him to splat upon the ground.

“You’re just wasting it!” I snatched the bag from the ground, not realizing he took it from the shelf in the phone booth while I wasn’t watching. “That was a fucking twenty dollar burrito!”

The last bit of burrito hits against the ground, sending sour cream and beef juice to splatter over my feet and ankles. I glare at him and he just  licks his fingers. I rolled my eyes and moved along, no sense in arguing about it now.

The motel smelled like cigarette smoke and bleach, but it wasn’t the worst one I had ever stayed in. The yellow walls and orange bed covers, along with the brown carpet made me feel like I was in a sepia toned picture.

“When should I go back?” Neil asked.

“Couple of days,” I huffed. I sat down at the sticky little table by the window so I could eat my food. “Let them stew for a few days, get comfortable again. Then you can go back and do your business.”

Neil sat down upon the bed. “I feel so bad picking on girls though.  Much prefer scaring guys.”

I opened up my takeout box. “Yeah well, one of those girls can get us good connections with her very rich, very superstitious mother. We might be able to stop this nonsense and live the highlife.” I stop from taking a bite of food when I realize my choice of words. “No, you won’t be able to get high.”

Neil pouts then floats away through the wall. After I eat, I go to bed and lay there, just staring at the ceiling. There’s a huge water stain there. How long had it been there? Was it a sign of pipe damage of a shoddy roof? I think about these things until I fall asleep. I do this, or count sheep, in order to keep other thoughts from my mind.

There was a pounding, and I woke when I realized it’s on the door. I sat up, seeing Neil’s ass sticking out the door. He pulled himself back inside. “It’s cops!”

I huffed and got up to answer the door.

“What are you doing?” Neil snapped.

“What are you afraid of? We don’t have anything.” I opened the door but kept the chain latched. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Ma’am, were you at Alpha Sigma Alpha house last night?” The cop outside asked me.

“Good morning to you too,” I grumbled. “What is this pertaining to, officer?”

The officer was stone, and obviously not in the mood for anything other than being obeyed. “Please answer the question, ma’am.”

“Yes, I was. Now what is this pertaining to?”

“Please step outside, ma’am.”

I looked back at Neil who had hidden himself under the bed. I rolled my eyes, there goes my chance for explaining myself with some ghostly hauntings act. “Not until you tell me why I should.”

“We need to take you in for questioning,” the officer replied. Still as staunch and stoney as ever.

I furrowed my brow. “Questioning? For what?”

“So we can get a record of events last night.”

A child went down my spine. This wasn’t good. Either those girls last night turned on each other, or I somehow passed by a murderer on the way to the restaurant and didn’t know it. “Can I get changed at least? Maybe a coffee?” I huffed.

“I’ll be waiting here.”

I closed the door and started getting dressed. “Get out Neil, you have to go with me.”

“I ain’t going nowhere in no cop car.”

“You’re fucking dead, Neil,” I snapped at him. “Besides, you owe me for wasting that burrito last night.”

“You can’t use that against me.”

I slap on my jacket and glare at him. “You know I will, so don’t fight it!” I opened the door and stepped outside. “Okay, I’m ready.”

The cop looked over my shoulder into the room. “Are you in there with someone? I thought I heard a male voice.”

“It’s next door,” I closed the door behind me. “The guy in there has been pacing and mumbling all night.” Crap, this cop might be sensitive. He heard Neil but I don’t think he can see him.

The cop looked me over, his badge read Mercy. “What’s your name?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m questioned, Officer Mercy.” I followed him to his car. It wasn’t my first ride in a cop car, shockingly enough. I leaned up to the cage and separated the front from the back. “Am I allowed to request a coffee, Officer Mercy? You did wake me up rather rudely.”

“We have coffee at the station,” he said sternly.

“You play the part really well. Let me guess, it’s a family thing. Father a cop? Brother a cop?” I then wait for Neil who is in the front seat. “Mother a cop too. But she retired right? To raise a house full of boys.”

Mercy twitched and he looked at me from the rearview mirror. “What are you talking about?”

“She ran the house like a bootcamp right? Is that why you have trouble with constipation? You’re still stressed from that?”

At the stop sign he braked hard and turned around in his seat to look at me. “How do you know that?”

There’s a bottle of constipation pills in the glove compartment, along with a note from a doctor suggesting he take time off for stress. There’s also a lot of pictures in his wallet. Sentimental despite being bitter about his upbringing. It’s textbook to me by this point.

“Coffee first, or do you not understand what your last name means, Mercy?”

Officer Mercy gives me the eye before turning back around in his seat. “You really are psychic,” he shivered.

“Oh, so you do get it?” I leaned back in the seat while Neil came back to join me. “What happened last night? Did someone die?”

Mercy went quiet. But in the mirror I saw his brow tense. A look of fear in his young eyes. I knew that look, unfortunately.

“How bad was it, Mercy?”

“Ma’am, I don’t wish to talk about it here. You’re being brought in for questioning, not answers.”

“That bad,” I murmured. “Was it your first time seeing-”

“Ma’am!” He snapped.

I stopped, understanding I might be making his stress induced constipation worse. I sighed, crossing my arms against my chest.

Once we arrived at the station, I was led in where I saw some of the girls from last night. They looked awful, frightened, I felt for them, whatever they had to witness last night. I was taken to the back and sat in a very cold, dimly lit box with a two way mirror.

“How do you take your coffee?” Mercy asked.

“Enough cream to make it beige,” I answered.

He furrowed his brow at me.

“Not the worse thing you’re going to deal with today, Officer,” I scoffed. “I’ll behave, promise.” He left and I sat still, knowing I’d be waiting a while. All tactics. That I learned from my parents too. They’d done it before during their studies.

Another cop came in, bigger and more pitbull looking than baby-faced Mercy with his ‘child’s first’ mustache going on. “You are Alice Young, correct?” he says with a chainsmoker wheeze.

“I prefer Al, but yeah. You got me. Now can you tell me why I’m here? Officer Mercy was chintzy on the details. As well as the coffee he promised me.” I leaned back in my chair, waiting for Neil to get back to me.

Officer Pitbull tossed out some pictures to me. I recognized them as shitty girl and hot for teacher girl. “Did you speak to these young ladies last night?”

“Yes,” I answered. “This one hired me,” I pointed to hot for teacher.

He placed his elbows upon the table and placed one of his chins upon his knuckles. “Can you explain to me what for?”

I looked away from the picture, still waiting for Neil to come back in. I hoped I could hesitate long enough. “What were you told?”

Office Pitbull was obviously there to intimidate me. But I had seen much worse than him in my life. He didn’t scare me. “It doesn’t matter. I need to know what you were doing at that house last night.”

“I was hired for a job. The girls were having a party and I was brought in as a trick. I performed, I left, I went and got food at the restaurant Habanero.” I met his gaze without flinching. “Why am I here officer?”

The door opened and Mercy came in with my coffee. He looked white as a sheet, but he quietly placed my coffee before me on the table. I took a drink as Neil whispered to me, having followed Mercy in.

“Thank you Mercy, this is perfect.” I sat the cup down. “The girls were killed. Such a shame.”

“You told her?” Pitbull snapped at Mercy.

I shook my head. “In their beds, doors locked, windows open.” I looked directly into Pitbull’s eyes. “No blood but-”

He slammed his palms down on the table. “You stop your voodoo priestess witchcraft this instant! I won’t have it in my building!”

“It’s real-” Mercy started but quickly quieted himself and went back to his uptight stoney demeanor from before.

“They said you were hired as a psychic,” Pitbull spat.

I nodded. “I was.”

Pitbull thought he had me there. “And yet you couldn’t predict they were going to be murdered? Or did you not warn them?”

I sneered at him. “What do you think?”

He slammed both palms down. “You could be an accessory!”

“You literally have nothing. I was there, yes, I admit it. But all I did was tell them things they already knew. I can only tell things about people when I’m near them. I can’t tell the future. My abilities lie elsewhere.”

“Yes, I saw your card.” He slides it out from the same folder he took the pictures from. “Exorcisms and ghost removal. What sort of bullshit are you trying to sell?”

“Is this about me or are you going to do anything about those poor girls?” I stomp my finger into the picture. “I’m not at fault here, officer. I’ll tell you what I saw last night, but I had nothing to do with this. I was just in the house as a guest, a party act.”

Office Pitbull glared at me with his lip curled.

“I passed a group of young women as I walked down the street. One had forearm crutches. It was late and dark, I didn’t really see many people out and about. Even the restaurant I went to was surprisingly empty aside from a few drunks at the bar.”

“Those must be the Harvey sisters,” Mercy replied.

Officer Pitbull glared at him. “You’ll have to give me a full statement of what happened last night,” he snarled at me. “Everything from the moment you arrived to the time you left.”

This guy wasn’t going to let me off easy. He probably thought I did it just because I was a stranger here claiming I had powers. He probably thought I was crazy, and for him that was enough to label anyone guilty.

I gave my statement from top to bottom as best I could. I then was allowed to leave, but since Officer Mercy brought me here I had to walk myself back to the hotel.

“This is bad, Al,” Neil shivered.

“We did nothing wrong. What’s bad about this?” I huffed.

“No,” he shook his head. “Those girls, how they died. It’s bad, Al. Really bad.”

I stopped to look him in the eye. “What happened. You only said the bare minimum in the police station.”

Neil’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated, I mean, they always were, that’s how he died. But there was something new to them, a new look of fear. “They were ripped apart.”

“But you said there was no blood,” I huffed.

“There wasn’t!” Neil shook his head wildly. “It was like they’d been...eaten on.”

A stone struck down heavily in my gut. “Oh.”

Neil looked distressed. “I’ve seen some things, but I ain’t ever seen anything like that, Al. Those pictures...those poor girls.”

“Well, there goes my big pay day,” I scoffed.

“Is that all you care about?” Neil snapped.

“Look, we’re lucky this is all that this has to do with us. We’ll get out of here and that’ll be the end of it. I’m sorry you had to see that, but there was nothing we could have done. Nothing we can do now. This isn’t ghosts, obviously.” I huffed and shoved my hands into my pockets, continuing the walk back to the motel.

Once there I began packing, which wasn’t hard. The bus wasn’t leaving until that evening, so I stayed in the motel the rest of the day. The evening, just as I was leaving the motel office, I saw the girl with forearm crutches outside.

She was very petite, but very lovely. Her long hair was tied back into a lovely, sleek braid, and she was wearing a plaid skirt with a matching jacket. She reminded me of a doll.

“I’m glad I caught you!” She said breathlessly. “You’re the psychic from the Alpha Sigma Alpha house right?”

“Not anymore,” I huffed. This girl was so pretty it was almost criminal. My hands were getting sweaty just looking at her.

“Please, I need your help.” She came closer to me. “It’s about what happened last night at the house.”

I walked away from her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t-”

“I saw something last night and no one will believe me! Please, you have to help me. If anyone will believe me, its you.”

I stopped in my tracks, but only because Neil had grabbed hold of me.

“My name is Beth,” she said softly. “I can pay you for your help.”

Neil forced me to turn around. “What did you see?”

“It climbed up through the window last night. I saw it when I was coming back from class,” she said. “It looked like a demon.”

“Last night?” I frowned. “You had classes that late?”

“There are night courses I have to take,” Beth replied. “I even drew what I saw.” She took a piece of paper from her jacket and handed it to me.

I unfolded the paper and inside I saw a contorted, long limbed figure. The mouth was opened, stretched back towards the ears and filled with jagged long teeth.

“It reminded me of that movie, the old one,” Beth said, breathless. “The guy in it was bald and all white.”

“Nosferatu,” I grimaced. “Vampires aren’t real.”

“But I saw it!” Beth argued. “Please, you have to believe me. You’re the only one who can possibly help us.”

I looked back at the picture. “This won’t be cheap.”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t care. I need you.”

I folded the picture back up and stuck it into my own pocket. “Let’s talk then.”