1.2

Thirty minutes later, I'm upstairs, in a window booth by myself. In front of me is a mug of room temperature cocoa, a root beer float, and an omelette doused in off-brand salsa straight from the refrigerator. The salsa is so thoroughly chilled that it has also stolen the warmth from the hash browns on the other side of the plate. This would be an unforgivable crime in any other establishment, but the fact of the matter is that nobody comes to Candy's for the food. And as it happens, I'm beginning to feel a little nauseous.

Phone in hand, I peruse the BleedFeed app – the only social media platform that funnels our collective human misery directly into the mouth of a carnivorous elder god. Will this cursed info-stream soothe my tummy of its rumbles? No... likely, it will only burble them further. But I doom-scroll all the same, sauntering idly down a conveyor belt of junk-food emotion and propaganda-masked-as-trivia. The masochist in me is on the hunt, weeding through these memes and snapshots for something to injure himself with. He is, as always, successful.

The bludgeon of choice tonight is an invitation; specifically, its absence. In celebration of the release of their first album, The Laryngeal Phalanges are hosting a bacchanalia this evening, the emergent petty scandals of which have already been extensively well-documented. I examine the available evidence: the exuberant smiles, the exposed midriffs, the exhibitionistic exploits, and in the center of every gloriously incriminating frame, the very dagger in my FOMO-curdled heart, the one and only Amphibian Mary Vertheron.

So, they didn't invite me. Is this because of the abruptly curtailed romances I shared with not one, but two of the band's five members? Or are they still mad about the jacuzzi incident?

“It's both,” says the tickler in the trenchcoat, materializing in the booth seat opposite me. “And also, that you kept coming to their house to raid the fridge. I think it was that one the most.”

“Aw, shucks,” I groan, burying my face in my palm. “I thought I banished you.”

“You did,” the phantasm says with a shrug. “And then I came back. But really, I never left. I've been around for a while, Mujo. Hashton's an interesting town, with a lot of unusual residents. There's a lot to see here. There's a lot to watch. The soap opera that is the Laryngeal Phalanges is always a delight. But lately, I've taken a shine to your performance. ”

“Are you talkin' 'bout the new show or the old one?” I grumble.

“The current season, in which you refer to yourself as the 'Cosmic Detective',” purrs the phantasm. “That's a bold title you've awarded yourself. But if you truly are who you claim to be, then perhaps you are bold enough to be useful,” He reaches for a handshake, but I leave him hanging. “My name is Chester Gundt,” he says, arm still outstretched. “Say it out loud. It'll help you remember.”

When dealing with fae, whether unseelie or otherwise, assume that anything that could be construed as a contract may, in fact, be binding, a very strange friend said to me once, and a handshake seems a little too much like a contract. With my phone already on the table, I conspicuously slip my bluetooth headphones over my ears, for appearances' sake. “Cosmic Detective,” I say, speaking into the dangling bluetooth mic without enthusiasm.

Chester's eyes dart around the room. “Come on, Mujo. You don't need the props. It's five in the morning at Cotton Candy's Chokehouse. No one here is sober enough to worry about you or the conversation you may or may not be having with an empty seat.”

And he might be right about that. This diner is a wook hub, a garden of kooks and spunions, a noisy little place where the doors never stay closed and the floors never stay clean. Hashton's strangest saunter, crawl, and tumble into and out of this place at all hours of the night, here to make the laced-coffee pilgrimage they need to see them through to sunrise and departing as soon as that holy grail is drained. They come with powdered nostrils and dilated pupils. They come with filthy dreadlocks and face tats. They come to strategize with their tech start-ups and break bread with their polycule covens. They come here when the show gets out to pre-game the after party, and they come here when the after party gets out to pre-game the work day. This is not a place where projects are finalized, no, but a place where terrible ideas are born, crumpled up, and discarded like napkins by the time anyone reaches the exit. Candy's attracts enigmas the way a burning house attracts moths, and that means me and the invisible pest blend right into the bonfire.

“Let's get to it,” I say. “What can I do for you, my guy?”

“No. It's 'what can we do for us',” Chester corrects me. “You and I are in a situation, Mujo. You've got your situation – that's a world on the verge of collapse. And I've got my situation...” he says, reaching out to snatch my root beer float only for his hand to pass ineffectually through the glass. “... and neither of our situations are good. In fact, your situation is particularly bad. But from this side of the glass, all I can do is watch. So it seems to me that the smart thing to do is for us to help each other out.”

“Meanin' what?”

“You could start by saying my name,” says Chester, a shade too eager for my tastes.

“No deal,” I reply, taking a gulp of my float.

“Root beer, eh? Is that the genuine article?” asks the trickster.

“Matter of fact, it is. You wanna taste?” I offer, a shade diabolically.

A subtle tension creeps across the apparition's jawline. “Your hot cocoa is getting cold.”

“It was never hot,” I assure him. “Heat messes with the marshmallows.”

“I don't see any marshmallows.”

“I ate two and took the rest to go,” I explain. “Now would ya please leave me to my omelette? I'm havin' a little trouble chokin' this down, for reasons that are hopefully obvious by now.”

“My dear Mujo... you have more important things to worry about than eggs,” taunts the trickster. “Take the cosmic eggshell.”

“Cosmic eggshell?” I reply, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yes, the cosmic eggshell. As in, the protective bubble of amniotic stasis currently keeping you cozy and warm. As in, the hamster wheels of habit and familiarity that protect you and your infantile certainties. As in, everything you love and hold dear.”

“Yer paradigm offends me, sir!” I retort. “I'm Mujo Morell, the Cosmic Detective, not some navel-gazin' embryo. I'm a natural born explorer, my guy! A neophile! A psychonaut! Transcendin' the mundane is my entire brand!”

“Hypocrisy is your brand,” Chester counters. “And you're about to find out the hard way. Because like it or not, the cosmic eggshell that contains you and your entire world is about to crack. Yes, Mujo, your cosmic eggshell can shatter – just like any regular egg might shatter when dropped upon the concrete – and when it does, everything you were, everything you had, and everything you thought you knew shall all smear and bleed together, like so much runny yolk upon the sidewalk. But no, by all means, ignore me, your friend, your savior, and go finish your omelette. No, really. I'll just sit here, and watch. It looks delicious.”

“It's not.”

“Then stop wasting time!” Chester shouts. “Mujo, let me help you! Before it's too late! For even as we speak, ancient energies converge upon your little village of Hashton. Yes, somewhere in the darkness, the slumber of the eons draws to a close and strange eyes awaken. Yes! There is doom upon the wind, Mujo. Can you smell the doom? Come on, detective! Put your ear to these streets and listen! Put your ear to the floor, and listen to the murmur of the underworld!”

“I'm not puttin' my ear on the floor of Candy's Chokehouse, my guy. I'm a regular here. Do you have any idea how many people I've watched puke on these tiles?”

“And here I thought you were a professional.”

“And here I thought you were a fear eater,” I counter.

“How dare you. Fear eaters are grimy little shadow-gibbons who can't even form complete sentences. They could only dream of my lexicon, of my capability, of my skill. An individual of your supposed vocation should be able to tell the difference me and a mood monkey, Morell. No, I am not the chimp at this table.”

“Get to it already. What's yer pitch?”

“My barter is knowledge,” says Chester. “All the knowledge you could ever fit inside your dented little skull, knowledge you will need to survive the days to come. And isn't that the crux of your so-called profession, my dear Cosmic Detective? Knowledge forbidden to all but the bravest and most contortable of minds?”

“Well, if you're so smart, then how come ya need my help?”

“There's knowing and there's doing,” Chester explains. “I am trapped in the realm of knowledge, and therefore, I cannot do. You are trapped in the world of doing, and there is so much you do not know.”

“And am I just supposed to take ya at yer word?” I ask.

“You may look for yourself,” Chester replies, his hands clutching the lapels of his trenchcoat once more. “And you will look, won't you? After all, this is your line of work. To ignore me now would be a dereliction of your duties. Am I right, Detective?”

“You're not wrong.”

“Then let me show you what I'm talking about,” he says. “But first... take another hit of that dream steamer pen.”

Said pen dances nervously between my fingers as I glance nonchalantly around the restaurant. As it happens, Cotton Candy's Chokehouse is the only all night diner in the city of Hashton where patrons can vape profusely, and no one will complain. The atmosphere here is saccharine-tinged with fruit-adjacent odors, a reeking airborne conglomerate of off-brand candy flavor. The scent of steamed dreams will hardly be noticed in such a milieu.

Preparing for lift-off, I give the table a quick lavender-eucalyptus spritz, and then sketch a quintet of wards upon my napkin to low-key sanctify my environs. I select the lowest of the pen's three settings, and take a gentle pull. I count to twenty-seven and then exhale in a hiss, though it seems that everything is hissing a little bit. Are the things emanating the hiss? Or is the hiss coming from the space between the things? Either way, I'm levitating ever so slightly, so I take another small drag on the pen. Holding in the vapors, I forget about the diner around me. I tune out the pastel blue paint job, and the translucent tables, and the uncomfortable booths with the tangerine peel seats, and the perpetually damp off-white tile floor, and the pissed-off college student across the room drunkenly coming unraveled at the lack of vegan options on the menu. I depart the world around me, and I zero in on Chester, who leans back in his seat, pulls the wings of his trenchcoat open wide, and unleashes the full resplendent glory of the animate artwork sprawling and crawling across his torso.

The dark heart plunked dead center of his mandala draws my gaze first: a smooth spherical bloodstone of planetary weight, glinting with ominous flecks of hot lava. A great slumbering serpent with scales of citrines and emeralds has wrapped itself tightly about this round crystal. Sleeping with its tail tucked into its mouth, the serpent is the only part of this squirming tattoo that keeps itself still. Disembarking this central point, a spiraling swarm of tiny shiny mechanical bees emanates outward, busily crafting an ever-unfolding golden labyrinth of hexagonal honeycomb. From this sticky sanctuary crawl the re-animated bodies of long-dead holy men, shamans, and sorcerers. One after the other, they clutch their guts and retch every last drop of the vivid bile from their regenerated bowels. The primordial soup they have regurgitated splashes and splatters across Chester's thorax, a viscous swirling muck-swamp from which springs glowing arterial highways and coruscating venous byways. I know all too well these bifurcating roads and the buildings and landmarks that line them. Tattooed upon Chester's body is the city of Hashton – my city – swimming in whirlpool vortices around the pulsating jasper buried at its core. Tree-lined avenues climb all the way to Chester's scalenes and oblivious pedestrians wander his nipples and rib cage. This dilatant mobile topography is idyllic, almost saccharine, serenely free of the ballistic hedonism for which my beloved city is known.

But that is quick to change. The eyes of the sleeping serpent awake, its tail tumbles free of its jaws, and the scaly beast rears its jewel-encrusted head. In response to this tectonic shift, the spinning latticework of the city shudders and rends itself apart, zipper-splitting streets from sidewalks and sending jagged cracks through the walls of every building. Now the honeybees proliferate and ascend en masse, bursting from fire hydrants and manhole covers to blanket my shattering city with their teeming multitudes. As the golden aurora of the vibrating hive spreads upwards to Chester's perpetual five-o-clock shadow, he grins with the cold certainty of one for whom the mysteries of fate unfold as predictably as a gas station road atlas.

Reflexively, I turn my head away and glance westward out the window, exchanging the apocalyptic simulacrum of my city for the assurances of the genuine article. It's too dark for me to see the BackBone (as we Hashtonians have dubbed the jagged jotun vertebrae of the local mountains that poke above the treeline). Instead, I allow my eyes to fall to Fiat Street outside. This late at night, there are almost no pedestrians. Many of the parking spaces along the street are empty, though in a few hours, they will likely all be full. There's something of a ley line running down Fiat Street. Most of Hashton's human population – the locals and the tourists alike – have no explicit awareness of this phenomenon, but we all pick up on it in one way or another. This is where all the most interesting curios and cafes are. This is where all the most exquisite street art graces the walls. This is where ghosts and fae folk alike hide behind the gargoyles atop the gutters and rainspouts of Fiat's brick facades. This is home.

“You know what it means,” Chester prompts me.

Still gazing out the window, I shake my head. “All I saw was one more mesmerizin' mess of tea leaves and inkblots. But I know what ya want me to think it means.”

“You know what it means,” the trickster insists with a smile. “Something is coming, Mujo. Change is coming.”

A moment later, a giant spinning metal bagel comes screaming down out of the night sky and collides with the deserted asphalt of Fiat Street. It bounces once, hits the asphalt again, bounces a second time, and then starts to roll heavy down the street. It wheels into, through, and past the frame of my observations, coming to a loud and abrupt halt somewhere just beyond my view, and doing so with enough force to shake the foundations of this entire restaurant.

“Change has arrived,” Chester mutters, closing his trenchcoat and crossing his arms on top of it. Eyebrows akimbo, he appears to be the only other person in the Chokehouse to have seen what I just saw.

A moment later, a new arrival broaches the doorway. He's tall and disheveled, with big sympathetic eyes and a sweaty pallor that matches the humid tiles on the floor. He's wearing skinny jeans that expose his bony ankles and a brown bomber jacket with an abundance of tears and burn marks. The new arrival appears freshly bruised, and he walks stiffly, his knees either uninterested in or incapable of bending. He staggers past the intricately labyrinthine gumball machine and the unconquerable crane game that flank the foyer, and he plops himself down at the bar at the north end of the diner. There is no one else sitting at the bar right now, and the only two waitstaff currently on duty are desperately trying to keep three separate tables of crunk-funky twenty year olds from descending full-bore into animal bacchanalia. With root beer float in hand (and Chester Gundt stalking me like a shadow), I depart my booth and take a seat next to the new arrival.

“Howdy hey, new buddy. How's that human suit treatin' ya?” I ask.

The disheveled new arrival twitches involuntarily at my question. He exhales, composes himself, and plasters on a nervous grin before turning to face me. It's too much grin, and he can see that reflected in my eyes. But this self-awareness only increases his nervousness, which in turn increases the size of his grin. His lips are peeling back a little bit now. “You my soup treat, yeah?” he says.

“Buy me a little soup, yer treat, eh?” I reply. “Very generous of ya, friend.”

“Stuff you end,” he says.

“That's right! In fact, here at Cotton Candy's, the clientele's been known to stuff themselves at both ends!” I say. I'm enjoying the conversation, but I detect a little syntactic clumsiness from my new chum. Judging by the awkward diction and the ill-fitting human apparel, I'd say this newcomer is woefully underprepared for his current circumstances. “Alright, visitor, here's the DL,” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper. “I can tell at a glance that you're extraterrestrial, but that's 'cause I'm a professional. That said, and I mean no offense here, but yer ensemble lacks integrity. The vacant stare, the childish smile, the tag of yer backwards shirt peekin' up over your clavicle,” I say, reaching over to tuck said tag back down. “But, hey, look, I gotcha. I'm gonna help you get yer sea legs, by which I mean, yer terra firma squirmas. First, let's get ya oriented: you are now on planet Malkiss. And fuck Malkiss, by the way. We're in a nation known as the BeDeviled States of Merkaba, east coast, and this here's the city of Hashton, in the great state of Cololina. If yer intergalactic verbal translator isn't calibrated to the local vernacular, you might wanna switch it over now.”

“Wicked odor, wow,” he says, sullenly turning away from me. Perhaps my forthrightness has soured the mood.

“Hey now. It is not my intention to condescend to or upset ya. It's just... well... I saw ya burn up on re-entry over there, and I felt the Glinda thing to do was check in. So I'm checkin' in,” I say. “You feelin' alright?”

“Young freely ride...” he says, trailing off.

“I know, I know. You'd much rather I left ya to yer situation. But on a night like this, in a town like ours, I really can't do that,” I say.

“Sure you can,” says Chester, belatedly mounting the barstool opposite the wayward extraterrestrial. “He'll be just fine without your meddling, Mujo. Why don't you get back to slurping your sassafras and leave the tourist to me.”

“Cursed and mean,” says the new arrival, turning to regard my phantasmagoric counterpart with only a modicum of curiosity.

“Oh, you can see him?” I ask.

“Puke scene,” the new arrival confirms.

“Hey, out-of-towner... did you know this guy's a detective?” Chester asks, pointing an accusatory finger in my direction.

That word 'detective' gives our guest a mild shiver of paranoia. “Disguise a vector?” says the new arrival.

“Cosmic Detective,” I clarify, brandishing my celestially-bedecked business card before placing it into the new arrival's outstretched palm. “Mujo Morell, at yer service.”

“And I'm his partner,” Chester says.

“He's not my partner,” I counter.

“The name's Chester Gundt,” my anti-partner continues. “Say it out loud, it'll help you remember.”

“Che-” the new arrival starts.

“Nope,” I insist, placing a firm but gentle hand over the alien's mouth. “We don't say his name. Not out loud. Not even once. Got it?”

“Accosted,” mutters the new arrival.

“Now, now. I'm only tryin' to help,” I assure him. “Helpin' folks like you outta trouble's just what I like to do. And friend, you do seem primed and ready to bring a whole world of trouble down upon yerself. I cannot recommend enough that ya pay close attention and heed my advice.”

“Feed mice,” says the new arrival.

“I know, I know. You're hungry, you're tired. That's why ya stumbled into this fine establishment in the first place. But if ya hope to survive in this unfamiliar biome, you're gonna have to learn the rules,” I say, patting him warmly on the back. “Rule number one: never ever say that guy's name aloud.”

“Game allowed,” says the new arrival.

“No, it isn't,” I insist.

“You're killing me, partner,” says Chester, smiling the patient smile of a man playing the long game.

“Rule number two: blend in,” I continue. “The vast majority of the humans you encounter here on planet Malkiss cannot know the truth of yer otherworldly existence. They are but children in the womb of the restless spiralin' unknown, lost lambs feedin' blindly and contentedly upon the sweetgrass of narcosis. Most humans are simply not prepared to match minds with a bein' who has seen the dance of nebulae in bloom. No, you must not startle these delicate but feral creatures. Instead, you must try to blend in. Do not do alien things. Do human things. Which reminds me... did yer vehicle by any chance come to rest in an appropriate parkin' spot?”

“Epic snot,” the new arrival replies, a little indignant.

I scrub my nostrils with a napkin, but find nothing untoward. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to be condescendin', but it really doesn't hurt to check. You'd be surprised how quickly the meter police descend on out-of-state plates,” I add.

But the new arrival is losing interest in Chester and I, and has instead become deeply invested in a laminated menu. “Whoa,” he says, marveling.

“Yes indeedy, we certainly do have quite the variety of breakfast items here on Malkiss,” I concur. “In fact, some Malkissians would say that breakfast is the only meal worth havin'. Now, uh... what'd ya say yer name was, Mr. Suspicious Visitor?”

“Mouthsnex Picklesnicker,” the new arrival declares.

“Alright... Let's whittle that sucker down a peg. How's about we call you Mouse?” I propose.

“Mouse?” the alien replies, cocking an eyebrow.

“Mouse,” I repeat. “Havin' a cute animal name'll humanize ya to the humans.”

“Humor knives,” mutters Mouse, snatching up a nearby fork.

“That's right,” I say.

“Hey there, fellas,” says Jonah, a coffee pot dangling precariously from his index finger. He seems well recovered in the wake of his incident, perhaps even a little bit cavalier. “Can I get ya anythin'?”

“Uvula, many rings,” Mouse orders.

“Hang on,” I interject, plucking the menu from Mouse's hands. “Just 'cause you haven't flashed yer allergy card yet, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We gotta keep yer, uh, potential dietary restrictions in mind.” I do a quick scan of the menu. “He'll have... the fruit cup. With a glass of orange juice. And no extras. This young fella's already extra enough.”