When the D-men First Arrived
This was from a flash fiction prompt of the following:
This week I want stories about unlikely or strange allies dealing with bizarre situations or enemies. I am more interested in the relationship between the apple and garlic farmers and how they came together to fight Dr. Acula than I am in showing me the fight, but if you can do both, please do!
I took the flash challenge, which let you choose to either have one of the two “guys” described to you, or a situation given for them to navigate through (or both?). I went with a given situation, and received this from the prompt-giver:
Your guys are potty/litterbox/house training a baby imp.
I felt I had a good idea, but as I wrote it out I hit the 1500 word limit at around the 2/3 mark of the story in my head. Complicating this, I really enjoyed what I wrote and had difficulty finding enough to cut, and the time window for submissions was closing so I curtailed the story to a different ending and went with that.
It stood unnaturally still. Not absolutely still like the stars, or walls of solid stone which its skin resembled. No, the D-man’s pose had the faintest traces of motion to it, but too little to be conscious of. Less than a meter in height, its stone-like skin was difficult to see through the layered curls of acrid smoke rising slowly from cracks within its form. Its eyes were orbs of smoke. Ashen snow globes, socketed in an unblinking stone face, with no focal point to tell where the creature was looking. Maybe its vision saw clearly in all directions at once.
“Panagía, Panagía, an aftó to plásma ypofére…”
“Jesus christ on a crutch!!”
“… apeleftherós–What are you doing!? Your prayer will lose its power if it is no longer secret!”
“Huh?” Martin was in a state of such deep shock and horror that being pulled from it so abruptly was almost as big a shock.
“You must whisper. See how I do. Did your mother not impress that upon you?”. The man wasn’t a day under 75. He looked like a sad reality version of Santa Claus. Santa if he still had gray hairs mixed with white, ate salads once in a while, and gave up his greater calling to become a sleepy town’s sole mortician. His gaunt jolly face was surrounded in a strange headdress getup and draped in huge necklaces. Most of them had crosses at the end.
Whoever he was, both of them were gawking at an impossible creature out of folklore. Shit, maybe Santa did exist.
“Sorry, that’s not a prayer, that was… well just look at it!”
The beast made no indication it was aware of them.
The strange man’s name was Nev. Well, he had a longer name but the two agreed he would go by Nev for now. Martin wanted to call him Santa but professionalism intervened. Professionalism, and the fact that the woman responsible for bringing him here also was in charge of the soldiers with guns that lined the rooms and hallways. Linda he understood. She called the shots, she could decide to kill him over national security (humanity security?). Don’t fuck with her, don’t even annoy her. Easy. He knew he was getting a partner in this, but a guy like Nev?
Nev introduced himself. Martin didn’t understand what he meant and eventually he said simply that he was an Orthodox bishop, or some special designation of one. Martin introduced himself as “the complete opposite of that”. One of the guards in the room exhaled suddenly and loudly through his nostrils. Could have been clearing the pipes but more likely was stifling a laugh, but there was no mirth in those steel eyes. He reminded himself Linda would have access to everything said and done here.
“I mean, I’m Martin. I’m a theoretical physicist. UC Berkeley. That’s in California”
“Yes, I have heard.”
“I assume–I assume they told you as little as they told me?”
Nev looked at the D-man. He tried to mask the terror and dread that crept over him, but it was clear as day. At least they had that in common. “A being of hell. A creation of him who I would not name in its presence.” He crossed himself, in a gesture a little different than Martin was used to seeing with catholics. “We are here to find a way to banish it.”
“No… We’re here to learn from it.”
Nev considered this. “Learn yes, but only to learn how to banish it.”
Their disagreement continued like this. Martin was told to learn as much as he could. Finding ways to fight it, banish it, kill it, and a number of other suggestions were included in his briefing but all as secondary considerations.
The beast stood in the same pose while the two of them made slow introductions amid their natural inclination to bicker and fundamentally disapprove of each other. Without any warning it began to writhe about and hiss.
It was loud, like someone taking air out of a tire, startling everyone. It wasn’t just from one source, though. Martin tore his eyes away from the view screens in the control area (what a joke of a name) and walked across the hangar-sized room towards the edge of the containment area. Bright markings on the ground denoted the no-go zone that the imp stood within. He stopped a few paces short of that threshold and gave an acknowledging wave to the guards nearby, who had their weapons trained on the imp but watched him meaningfully. The creature stood another 20 meters away, in the corner of the no-go zone with several feet of steel-reinforced concrete behind it.
It continued to writhe, but stood in place. Its arms flailed, its head wrenched around, and its wings shuddered all with unnatural speed. Impossible speed. Like reality was a strobe light giving brief snapshots of fluid motions. The hissing was not coming from its mouth, but from multiple sources all throughout its body. The cracks in its skin were his best bet. Martin held up a hand to shield himself from the unbearable heat.
Feeling the heat so intensely was enough to finally activate the physicist in him. He rotated his arm to let the cooler side have a go while he marveled at the heat radiating off the side of his hand that was just facing the creature. The air broiled and shimmered around him.
“... apó ponirá pnévmata, apó poniroús anthrópous, apó mágia, katáres, to kakó…”. Nev walked up beside him, a large cross brandished, his eyes wild with fear. He kept walking forward and Martin barred his arm across the man’s chest. Guards pointed their weapon near the two men as they were perilously close to the no-go zone.
“They. Will. Shoot. You.” Martin had to shout to be heard through the din of hissing. He also had to shout because this man was flirting with life and death by simply walking.
Their confrontation was interrupted by an ear-shattering noise and an indescribable surge of heat from the D-man. A roar from moisture boiling off in the air. They staggered backwards. A haze of steam and smoke obscured their vision but as it dissipated, the imp was visible again. It hopped along one of the walls, with the aid of its apparently functional wings, and resumed its stance away from the corner it once occupied. Where it stood, a pile of magma pooled along the floor, flames licking its perimeter as it crackled and slowly darkened.
“Ssshhhhit,” said Martin.
An hour later, in an office regulated at a cool 77°, Martin tried to explain the situation to Linda.
“You said creating matter from energy was already understood.” Linda sat behind her desk, a trio of lanyards dangling from her neck, trying to calm Martin like some patient middle manager having to shoulder complaints about the break room coffee. “Something even we could do.”
“Y-yes, but that’s all theoretical.”
“Well good thing we have you here, a theoretical physicist.”
“Ha ha. I’m not talking about a handful of Fermions, here.”
“What are those again?”
“It doesn’t matter. My point is we can barely pull together the energy to produce subatomic particles, much less a…a whole molecule. Much less a fucking bucket worth of bubbling silicon! Like he’s taking a shit!”
“But theoretically, the D-men can do that.”
“Theo–no. M-Mathematically you can do it. But that’s not cutting corners on the laws of nature. That’s throwing the book out and saying ‘Hey ya’ll, watch this!’”
“I can see you are upset by what you’ve witnessed. Join the club. Are you saying you don’t want to work on this anymore? No? Okay, let’s move past it.” She drummed her fingers on her desk. “How is it going with your partner?”
Martin sighed. “We had a really good talk after that incident. He said he respects the value and knowledge I bring.” Martin reminded him that god doesn’t exist, but he left that part out. “He said he looks forward to working with me on this important issue. I can respect him too, I guess, but I need to be frank: I think at best we’ll be stepping on each other’s toes. I’d like to see if there’s a way we can make a change.”
“Funny you say that. I had a pleasant talk with him and he asked that he be paired with somebody else.The two of you don’t want each other but the two of you are going to have to figure this out. So he creates matter like taking a shit? Then the two of you figure out how to use that.” She cracked a smile. “Potty train the thing. Together.”
They met again in the control area. Martin shared a plan for collecting more data on the creature. Nev considered this and nodded, saying he had found some prayers that may inhibit the imp’s abilities slightly. They shook hands and got started.
