“But how?” Zer0 pleaded from the wooden chair in the space that served as Aury’s dining room, a corner with a table near the door with the open kitchen in view. She made it to his apartment safely, panic-parked across two spaces in the street in front of his apartment, and ran up six flights of stairs because fuck if she was gonna trap herself in a moving, metal box-of-death after what she just saw. “Fucking demons!” she continued. “Out in the open and in the day time? I thought that wasn’t possible!”

“A lot of things can happen in a vortex,” Aury lamented, his eyes drifted downward under the weight of memory. He absently ran his fingers through his hair, intentionally pressing the pad of his middle finger along the scar on the back of his skull and pursed his lips.

Aury set down a heavy, ceramic mug filled with hot water and a fresh teabag. The white tag dangled along the side of the cup covering part of Bart Simpson’s face and his suggestion that the drinker not have a cow, man. He set his own mug in front of him, pulled the chair underneath him. He took a pull from his cup, set it down, and looked at Zer0 with strained eyes. Zer0 scoffed, dunked the teabag in and out of the water before she continued.

“I just don’t get it, Mathersburg,” she finally breathed. “Why does this happen to me?” She touched her fingers to her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Z,” Aury responded.

“It’s not your fault.” She pulled the tea bag from the mug, dropped it on the bare table with a splat. She took a sip.

“I feel like it is,” Aury rasped. “I asked you to go there. I sent you there for me.”

“Jesus fuck, Chris. I wasn’t complaining about tonight,” Zer0 said, thumping her cup down and making hard eye contact with wide, piercing eyes.

The doorknob wiggled and Bruce barged in, holding two paper bags in his hands and a set of keys in his mouth, mumbling. “I figured you guys would be hungry, so I brought Chinese and beers and—god dammit!” he shouted, dropping the keys from his mouth and catching eyes with Aury and Zer0 who were standing and menacingly pointing a Nokia 8810 and a glow-in-the-dark Marvel pog at him respectively. “What the hell!” The two at the table sighed and slowly sat back down, tossing their “weapons” on the table. “That’s twice today, Chris,” Bruce barked, leaning over to pick up his keys, packets of soy sauce, duck sauce, spicy mustard, and fortune cookies toppling onto the floor. “Oh yeah,” he said, nodding and glaring at the two. “Real nice. This is what I needed. What are you two laughing at?” he said, snatching sauce and napkins from the floor and jamming them back in the bag. “I just came over to try to help and you two are just sitting there laughing at my pain. Well at least come take these!”

Aury rolled his eyes at the welcomed break in tension. He literally wiped the smile from his face with his hand as he stood. He took the bags from a grumbling Bruce and walked them back to the table.

“That one’s yours,” Bruce said, pointing at a box with brown noodles. “Tofu.”

“I’m not eating tofu,” Zer0 proclaimed.

“Please,” Bruce replied. “That one’s yours. Extra meat, extra sauce, extra hot, no rice. God forbid you eat a damn vegetable,” he added sarcastically.

“Onions are vegetables,” Zer0 grumbled in response. Bruce rolled his eyes. She shook her head with a sneer that was designed especially for Bruce. “Where’s the beer?” she added, opening the iconic white, cardboard box of food. Steam slithered up and into the air filling the room with a spicy, garlicy perfume.

“Here,” Bruce said, handing her a bottle. “Guess I’ll just get my own chair,” he added.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Zer0 said through a mouthful. Another eye roll.

“So what happened?” Bruce asked, sitting and breaking apart his chopsticks.

“Mathersburg sent me to Willow,” Zer0 said.

“What the fuck, Chris?” Bruce said, dropping the dumpling in his chopsticks. “How could you send her there? What the fuck?”

“He didn’t force me, you hamster,” Zer0 spat, practically spitting food along with her words. “He asked and I went.”

“Why?” Bruce added, shifting his anger toward Zer0, as though him being mad at her decision could somehow buttress his worry.

“Something’s happening,” Aury added.

“Oh,” Bruce exclaimed with a hand gesture that made him look like he was going to throw his chopsticks across the table. “And that’s enough to send Z to Willow. Fucking Crixus.”

On that name, Aury’s eyes became hard and he glared at Bruce. Bruce looked away.

“So now you’re just trying to piss him off?” Zer0 interjected. “How’s that supposed to help?”

“Sorry,” Bruce said with his own eye roll.

“Fuck that, Bruce,” Zer0 continued. “That’s not enough. And besides,” she continued, setting her food back on the table. “Who the fuck do you think you are that you need to protect me? I don’t need your fucking permission to go anywhere or do anything, or did you forget that?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Bruce defended.

“I’m not fucking done!”

“Enough, you two,” Aury announced. “This isn’t helping.”

“That place,” Bruce started but stopped midway. He pulled a dumpling from the plastic take out container, stabbing it through with one chopstick, holding it in front of him as he inspected it. “I just don’t like that place.”

“None of us like that place,” Zer0 spat. “But Mathersburg is right. Something is happening.” Bruce took a bite of his dumpling, dunked the remaining half in the pungent looking sauce, then took another bite. “Oh, real fucking nice.”

“What?” he responded.

“Double dipping?”

“It’s not like we haven’t swapped spit before.”

“Don’t remind me,” Zer0 said, taking a dumpling of her own. She dipped it in the sauce and stuffed it in her mouth. “It wasn’t good in there, man,” she said.

Bruce’s eyes widened as Zer0 recalled the details of her mission and she was a damn good storyteller. She made gestures, recalled smells, mimicked that wretched clacking noise Trench’s mandibles made when he spoke. At one point she stood and ran into the wall with her full body as she detailed her escape. And with every image she painted, Aury sunk lower and lower into his chest.

He ran his fingers along the scar on his head again, hearing a hideous voice echo his middle name over and over.

“I didn’t think they could be out in the sunlight,” Bruce said at Aury as Zer0 sat back down and picked up her bowl of unreasonably spicy meat. “Unless,” he added, drifting. He met eyes with Aury, shifted to Zer0, then back.

“They’re not lesser demons,” Aury rasped. Bruce’s chopsticks slipped from his hand as he wiped his face.

“I’ve only heard of them,” Bruce breathed. His elbows thumped on the table and he leaned his head onto his hand.

“I didn’t wanna say it,” Zer0 added, leaning back into her seat.

“You’ve seen them before though, right?” Bruce asked.

“Not for a long time,” Zer0 admitted. “And they never chased me!” They both looked to Aury. His eyes were sweeping the table like he was watching a tiny tennis match play out in front of him.

The gluttony spirit was just a standard poltergeist, albeit overreaching. Aury knew poltergeist. He preferred them, even. They were easy, limited to inanimate objects just like any other lesser spirits. A Nextel with no battery chirping at random times in the night or an old CRT trying to lure kids into it. Aury would show up, dodge a few falling objects or trip over a random vacuum cleaner cord. Poltergeist were the spectral equivalents of annoying cats, especially the gluttons. They don’t hunt or hit the litter box but they’re always ready for food. And the sun destroyed them. But not demons.

Demons weren’t the blurry, disembodied consciousness of dead humans. They’d been around longer.

Lesser demons spawned at different epochs of the human lifespan, Prehistory, the Middle Ages. And greater demons: that was a different story. Greater demons weren’t just mortal sins or human drivers. Greater demons were feelings: fear, malice, hunger, rage.

“You said you got something from them,” Aury said, pulling himself out of his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Zer0 responded contemplatively. She twisted, wrapping her arm around the chair, reached into the backpack dangling off the back of the seat. A quick zip and yank, and she turned, sloppily tossing a dank looking card board box onto the table. It rattled a high-pitched tinkling when it landed. Bruce and Aury looked at each other then back at the box, still dusty after having been in her bag for the trip. The tape holding it together was stained brown and frayed.

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Zer0 picked her mug back and took a pull then looked up at the sound of a crackle and a clap. “I left mine in the car,” she said apathetically.

“Never do that,” Bruce ordered. “A cotton wick could be the difference between life and death.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she snapped.

“Well, if you know then you must not care ‘cause you’re walking around without it,” Bruce defended, puffing his chest up.

“Enough, you two,” Aury announced tiredly. Bruce and Zer0 sneered at each other and went back to looking at the box.

“Well?” Zer0 egged.

“Nothing,” Bruce confirmed. “No shadows, no crackle. There’s nothing supernatural in there.”

“At least not from the outside of the box,” Aury added. “Who knows about what’s inside.” He poked it with the clean end of one of his chopsticks.

“I’m surprised it’s not opened already,” Zer0 said, reaching past and picking at the tape. “Look. It’s all frayed and shit.”

“Be careful!” Bruce said as Zer0 pinched the tattered edges just enough to split in the seam of the cardboard. The box rattled with a sound of a broken lamp being held together and the top burst open. Aury’s hand shot out, pressing the box closed as another flap opened. He proceeded to play whack-a-mole trying to keep the box closed before Bruce’s hands joined as a puff of smoke snaked out of top and slithered itself across the table.

“Get it!” Aury shouted.

Zer0 shrieked, pressing herself against the wall. Bruce reached into his pocket whirling a candy necklace around his head, stumbling over a mouthful of numbers, looking frantically for something to hold whatever the hell just escaped. “Use the Talkboy!” Aury shouted. Bruce tore into his bag snatching plastic toys and packets of candy.

“I can’t find it,” he announced, continuing his digging. “Oh!” he shouted excitedly, whipping out a turquoise, wave-clad disposable cup.

Aury lurched to the box and opened the top. He flipped it upside down emptying the contents onto the table and dove onto the ground trying to trap the thing. It changed course at the last moment, missing Aury’s attempt and charging directly for Zer0, who screamed again as she jumped from her chair and started running in a serpentine motion across the wood planks of the apartment floor.

“Watch out!” Aury said, as it danced behind her, inching closer.

Zer0 placed both feet together, slapped her hands on the table against the wall that held Aury’s spare pop rocks, and heaved herself onto it in one smooth motion, knocking over an unnecessarily green beanie baby.

The smoke instantly stopped its pursuit. It dove and swirled around the teddy bear like a constrictor coiling prey. Then it pushed its way through the tiny doll, disappearing into its head. Aury and Bruce stared, slack-jawed.

When Zer0 finally noticed the sudden stillness, she stopped kicking and screaming from atop the table. She rolled onto her knees and looked underneath, careful to avoid the floor at all costs.

The trio’s eyes fixated on the bear waiting for something.

Aury inched closer, raising the box in front of him like a shield. Bruce started mouthing numbers, counting pastel disks on his candy necklace in one hand and raised the cup in the other.

The beanie baby’s ear twitched. Zer0 squeaked out a beep as she scurried off the table and secured a position well behind the other two.

The bear’s head turned left then right. Then it stood up.

“Oy, ya rat-bag! The fuck’s the idea?” the doll asserted in a thick English accent reminiscent of the cockney dialect but much older. “I’m talking to you, ya meater! One damn second I’m ‘ere trying to make my fancies with the dollymop ya got behind ye and next yous two jimmies go to leave me off to waddle me-self like some barger. Oy! You hear me? Fuck sake and plum puddin’,” it said, standing and dusting itself off. “’Ang on a bell. The fuck is this?” the bear said, gazing down at its intense, lime-green mits. “This ain’t me body. The fuck did you wankers do to me?” it accused, advancing on the three. “One of you fucks…” The bear looked up at a white tag dangling from its ear, swatting and blowing at it like a gnat. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Alright! One of yous is in for a ballockin’ I swear by Christ and Mary; and I’ll do it in this body. We’re gonna be hearing from the crier come sun-up about the first in a string of bludgeoning deaths from a fuckin’ bear, I swear from Joseph. Wait a minute.” It stopped and looked behind itself. “The fucks that sound?” It jumped up and down a few times. “There it is again.” It looked up jumping again. “I’m talking to you, ya pack of gibfaces. What’s that… Are those beans?” It said in an impressively accusatory tone continuing to jump up and down. “Are. Those. Fucking. Beans!” the bear shouted, jumping on every word.

“You’re a beanie baby,” Zer0 announced from behind the other two.

“Oh!” the bear drawled, nodding its head and—and there’s no other way to say it—sauntered toward the group like it was on an easy constitutional on a lovely afternoon in the garden. “Well, I thank ya for clearing that up for me, love. You know, before you came ‘round I was quite lost but here ya are, like the song says, surely didn’t an amazing grace find me. But,” he paused a moment. “And I do hope you’ll forgive me, love.” He dusted himself off and poked at the little thread bow tie around his neck. “What the fuck is a beanie baby!” The group started in unison, Bruce and Aury advancing on the little bear with a menacing look about them. The teddy balled his little paws into fists and started bouncing back and forth. “Oh! In for a rodgerin’ either way, eh? Alright, boy-Os. Have at ya, then.”

“Wait, wait,” Zer0 said, grabbing the two guys by the shoulder. “It’s talking to us. Maybe we can get something from it.”

“I’ll give ya something alright, love,” the bear said, not breaking its fighting stance. Zer0’s eyebrows furrowed.

“What’s your name?” she said to the bear.

“I’m not telling you anything, you mutton shunter. You’ll have to beat it out of me.”

Bruce snickered. “Mutton shunter?”

“Oh,” the bear digressed. “Apologies, gov. I’ll explain for the less blessed amongst us. A mutton shunter, you see, is a type of lawman tasked with keeping wagtails like the dolly over here from, shall we say, peddling her wares?”

“You think I’m a drug dealer?” Zer0 said, scrunching her nose and standing straight up.

“Drugs? Opium? Nah, love. You aren’t oriental. I mean your other wares. Natures wares.”

Zer0 shouldered past Bruce and Aury snarling, “you piece of shit!” Bruce shot between her and the bear struggling to stop her forward momentum. The bear resumed his dancing.

“Alright. Alright,” it said. “I got no problems teaching a lady a lesson.”

“Okay, Okay,” Aury shouted above the commotion. “Slow down. You were right, Z. Those two demons wanted something to do with this…” He looked at the beanie baby. “With you.”

“Name’s Bartholomew. Bartholomew Culpepper,” the teddy said, seeming to drink up the attention. He stood down from his ready stance and offered a little salute. “Me acquaintances call me Pepper, though the jury’s still out on you lot.”

Bruce snickered again. “Pepper?”

“I see you, long-shanks,” Pepper responded. “Not but a snap to climb your leg and give you proper shakin’, i’n it?”

“Wouldn’t do much for him,” Zer0 said with a snicker.

“Fuck off!” Bruce said.

“Hey. I see the bird here has some experience, eh?” Pepper added. “What ya say, sugar-nickers? Where do we stand? I may not look like much but I dare say I could still wally ya jammies a bit.”

“If you get any closer to me I’ll kick you through that window,” Zer0 growled.

“I’m game for that too, love,” Pepper said. “You know the old sayin’. Smackin’ her around only gets easier after the first go.”

Aury shot between Zer0 and the stuffed animal again, practically lifting her off her feet in an attempt to stop her attack.

“Alright!” Aury grunted under the pressure of a flailing Zer0. “Okay. Enough. Look,” he said, setting Zer0 down and calming the crowd. “We have some questions for you,” he said, turning to face Pepper.

“I don’t talk to mutton shunters,” Pepper responded.

“We’re not cops,” Bruce announced.

“The fuck is a cop?” Pepper asked, putting his tiny green fists on the part of his body that connected its floppy legs to his torso.

“Law, you ass,” Zer0 said. “Not too bright, huh?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Pepper started but was interrupted by Aury before he could get his entire thought out.

“Enough! Now look,” Aury said, lowering his hands and looking thoroughly exhausted. “We need to know when you were born.”

“And I need you to know I don’t talk to mutton shunters.”

“He probably doesn’t remember,” Zer0 added. “It doesn’t matter anyway, Mathersburg. Put his little green ass back in the box and we’ll ship him back the Queen. Let that old bat handle him.”

“Now you can say whatever you want about me, Night Flower,” Pepper asserted. “But you’ll mind a civil tongue when you speak of the Queen.”

“And why’s that?” Zer0 goaded, crossing her arms and leaning in a bit. She turned her head over her shoulder, making eye contact with Bruce and winking. Bruce did his best to hide his smirk.

“Queen Victoria’s the greatest of royalty to ever been blessed with the burden of the crown,” Pepper preached. “Noble through and through. A damn saint! She’s leading us into the golden era, she is.”

“Victorian,” Bruce pronounced.

“Oh, what are you on about now, pork pie?” Pepper asked, stretching his little teddy bear face as much as it’d let him. He lost the attention of the trio and it pained him so.

“So that’s what that is,” Zer0 said, pointing to the table. A dusty old, firm-bodied doll lay stiff on the wood. Its porcelain head broken into several large pieces. “It was holding a Victorian spirit.”

“Oy!” Pepper said, walking towards the trio, who had entirely turned their backs on him as they convened. “Oy!” he shouted. “What are you blokes on about? You know I’m still here, yeah?”

“We need to talk to the Duchess,” Aury said in a whisper that made Bruce’s skin crawl.

“What’s that now?” Pepper asked, shifting left and right, trying to catch someone’s eye. “Who’s the Duchess? Hey!” He shouted, clapping his neon mittens together angerly. “Hey! I’m still here!”

“Nope,” Bruce said, shaking his head. Aury looked at him, cross. “No, Chris,” he reiterated. “No! Last time I was there she hit me with her damn car. I’m not going back.” He crossed his arms in as stoic a show as he could portray.

“It was an accident,” Aury consoled.

“Accident my ass, Chris!” Bruce blurted, the force of his retort causing him to uncross his arms. “You don’t accidently swerve across two lanes of fucking traffic and damn near run up on a curb to hit me! Accident,” he added in a grumble.

“She wasn’t driving,” Aury responded, his face consoling now. Bruce pursed his lips and stared as though to say “who the fuck do you think you’re kidding right now?”

“If we gotta see her then we gotta see her,” Zer0 stated, throwing up her hands, apathetic to Bruce’s plight. It was for the greater good, after all; though “greater good” to Zer0 could easily mean “anything that gets Bruce’s nerves in a tangle.”

“See who?” Pepper shouted, jumping up and down and waving his hands. “I’m still down here! Who are we seeing?”

“Oh you’d love to know, wouldn’t you?” Zer0 said, her voice slithering and seductive from between her teeth. She delicately plucked the old, cardboard box from Aury’s hands as she traipsed, one foot in front of the other, toward Pepper “Well I’ll tell you what, little fella.” She held the box in front of her. “If you get in the box, and you promise to be good, not only will we tell you, we’ll let you talk to her.”

Pepper’s nose twitched. His button eyes fixated on the box, then at each of the three people standing in front of him, one at a time, inspecting them with intent. He glanced back at the box. “And no funny business, yeah?” he said.

“No funny business,” Zer0 agreed, smiling sweetly. Bruce was visibly uncomfortable. Pepper regarded him again, then went back to the box and, finally, looked back at Zer0.

“Alright,” he said with a nod. “Alright. So long as there’s no funny business,” he added, pointing a would-be finger—if beanie babies actually had fingers. Zer0 widened her smile. He put a hand on the box and lifted one leg then replaced it on the ground. He looked hard at Bruce with a grimace, then kicked his leg back up. He made a harrumph sound and a little groan that sounded like a screw being driven too tightly into old wood and, with a clap, Zer0 closed the box and turned with a smile.

“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it” she said to the sound of pepper cursing from the box.