Julius sat in the driver's seat of the cart, and gave an idle flick of the reins. The brown horse gave a return flick of her tail, and sped up nominally. The black one ignored it, and the cart slowly drifted across the road, till he righted it. To think a year ago he had thought horses a worthless frivolity, enjoyed by people who liked wasting time. Motorcycles were certainly a faster way to get around, but the profit margin simply wasn't there if you were actually transporting something.

  The back axle of the wagon creaked, and Julius nervously glanced backwards. No one really knew how to make a wagon these days. Its construction was a monstrous amalgamation of wood, metal, and plastic. Sitting atop the thousand pounds of rice loaded into the wagon box was Alex.

  "Perhaps you could get off and walk?" Julius suggested. The wagon was only rated for a thousand pounds of cargo, and that was already pushing the amount the horses could pull.

  Sighing Alex picked up his rifle, and hopped down, as the axle let loose one last, plaintive, groan. "You're paying me to guard, not to walk. That was a tactical position," Alex complained.

  "Well it's not like you've done much fighting. We'll be laid up all day if an axle snaps," Julius replied. The road started to curve, and the horses followed it without any prompting. To keep talk from starting as to why he wasn't walking himself, Julius made a show of using the reins to steer them.

  "Goddamn. One day I'm going to kill whatever eldritch asshole made it so anything with more than two wheels blows up engines. I hate walking," Alex complained.

  "I have my suspicions it's the moon," Julius replied.

  "What?"

  "The eldritch being. It has to be powerful if it's effected the entire planet, and I'm sure you've heard the rumours about people going mad looking at the new moon. Really I just find it weird there are no werewolves.”

  "Wait, what do werewolves have to do with it?"

  "I just think that if the moon was real, we would've run into werewolves."

  "I guess that's not the craziest thing I've heard you say," Alex conceded. "Hold up!" He shouted, suddenly serious. Julius pulled back on the reins, and the horses stopped. “Bogey on the distance,” Alex reported, unslinging his rifle, and sighting down it. “It's something for sure,” he said, sounding worried. “Looks like a starving person in rags. Really starving too, and dehydrated for that.”

  “Dehydrated?” Julius said incredulous. It was spring and the ditches to either side of the road had a slow stream of water. Not the cleanest, but good enough for the horses. After a run through a filter, Julius himself wouldn't mind. Perhaps the person was delirious?

  “Black eyes,” Alex said, and Julius's blood went cold. Black eyes was the sign of a demon. “No clue what type, never seen one like it before.”

  “Do you think it's seen us.” The ditch wasn't steep. If they unloaded some rice, they could go into the field, and try to skirt it.

  “Oh, it's seen us. Been making eye contact for a good while.”

  “Crap,” Julius swore. It was getting closer, and it did look bad. Like those pictures of African children with the twig limbs, and distended stomachs. It wore a ragged t-shirt and jeans, and stumbled as it walked. Julius had spent the over a year since the apocalypse travelling to towns. As a merchant he had collected gossip on every of eldritch and supernatural event people would talk of, and seen a few more than he would have liked to himself. He could be considered an expert on such things these days.

  “Knew I should have been worried when we didn't run into any thugs taking a toll on that bridge yesterday. Always a bad sign when no one is around to extort you. Should I take the shot?” Alex asked nervously.

  Julius fingered the derringer pistol in his sleeve. “No, we don't want things to turn violent.” Julius thought hard, something about this was familiar. He hopped off the cart, and unharnessed the horses. Taking them to a tree, he tied them up. Animals always spooked at demons, and the last thing he wanted was them tearing off with the wagon. He came back to the road, and the demon had gotten significantly closer. Each stride ate up more ground than it should have. “Are we sure we don't want to start unloading on it?” Alex asked again.

  Julius' gut said no, and he always followed his gut. “No, I don't think it will attack first. I've heard some story about this kind of demon.” It was a gut-wrenching minute as the demon grew closer. It stopped some ten feet away from them, and spoke in a raspy voice. “Food, water, clothing, please anything, help me,” it begged.

  It was a hospitality demon, Julius finally remembered. Now was he supposed to give it something, or refuse? He had remembered just enough to be of no help. “I could give it some lead,” Alex suggested.

  “No. I think we are supposed to either refuse it completely or give it something.”

   “Well, which?”

  “If I knew I would just do it,” Julius snapped. His gut was no help, it was to busy feeling out if there was any lunch left to throw up. The demon was getting more twitchy by the second, and if he didn't do something quick it might kill them both. Reaching into his pocket, Julius pulled out his lucky coin. He rubbed his thumb along the plenty polished face, and flipped it in the air. He slapped it against his wrist, looking and seeing tails. With the decision out of his hands he felt relieved.

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  “We have nothing for you foul demon, begone!” Julius shouted.

  “Yeah screw off,” Alex joined in.

  The demon froze motionless, then gave a spasm and screamed. “CURSE YOU!”

  The words hit with a physical force, and sounded like they echoed, but all at once. It knocked them both to the ground unconscious, as there wellworn psyches tried to pull themselves together. When they stood back up the sun was setting, and the demon was gone. “Well that could have gone worse,” Alex commented.

  “True we're still alive,” Julius agreed. They dusted themselves off, as it seemed they had spasmed some on the ground, and started making camp. They took the tent and camping kit from the cart, and went to the tree where the horses were still tied. Julius untied the horses and lead them to the ditch for a drink. He wondered if the coinflip had been the right one or not.

  When he returned, Alex had a fire started, and was working on the tent. Julius got started on dinner, setting water to boil, and walking back to cart for two cups of rice. He put together a fair meal of rice and carrots with some gravy mix, a budget curry. Julius began to relax, putting the events of the day behind him. Compartmentalizing was an important skill, the people who couldn't manage it had become raving lunatics back when all this started. Alex stiffened from the other side of the fire, and Julius felt blind terror that the demon was back. “What?” He asked, his voice coming in a croak.

  “Your shadow, it's going towards the fire.” Julius looked down, horrified to see his shadow was pointing the wrong direction. It was disappearing into the flames, instead of going away from it. It seemed like a thin shadowy blanket had been cast between him and the flames. The light was slightly muted, more washed-out than darkened. “No,” Julius said firmly.

  “What?” Alex asked. “I couldn't hear you, just some buzzing.”

  “My shadow is not pointing the wrong way!” Julius said, despite that obviously not being the case.

  “What? That was all buzzing again.”

  “I said, my shadow is not pointing the wrong way!” Julius repeated, becoming hysterical.

  “I heard you that time,” Alex replied, confused. “God, I think we got cursed for real. I've heard hunters talk about it, bad things can curse people and each person gets a different one. It makes you marked as touched by one of them. Your curse must be that your shadow points the wrong way. The guy I met had his hands switched around so his left hand was on his right, said his heart was on the wrong side to.”

  Julius slumped eating the last spoonful of food. “I guess it isn't that bad,” he said, resigned to his fate. “What about you then?”

  “I don't know, my shadow is fine.” Alex turned looking around, and nearly fell into the fire when he looked up. “The moon!” He screamed terrified, and then looked down at his feet.

  “What, your curse is to scream obvious observations?” Humour was an excellent defence mechanism.

  “The moon is fine,” Alex said, and tilted his head in confusion. “Did you hear that?”

  “What? You saying the moon was fine?”

   “No, the buzzing. I mean that was what I said, but all I heard was buzzing.”

  “What is up with the moon?” Julius asked.

  “You were right the moon isn't the moon. Its something else, I can't look at it.” He glanced up, but looked down in an instant. “Nope, no, I am not going to look at that. Rule one, do not look at the mind shattering eldritch horror.”

  “So what was the buzzing then? If your curse is seeing the moon all crazy?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Wait,” Julius said, a theory coming together. “I am twenty feet tall.”

  “You buzzed there, after you said wait.”

  “You are my brother. Did you here that?” Julius double-checked that the moon looked normal. Perhaps the vague shape of a face that was always there seemed a bit more sinister.

  “Yeah I heard that fine.”

  “Maybe your cursed with something like not being able to perceive falseness. So you couldn't here statements that were lies, and could see through whatever illusion the fake moon is using to look normal.”

  “Great want to trade,” Alex said dejectedly.

  “So they moon really is a giant monster?”

  “Yup.”

  “Maybe we could nuke it.” Julius suggested.

  “Oh yeah, because that worked so well against Cthulhu.”

  “Well to be fair, no one knows it didn't work. He isn't in the sky any more, after all. Tomorrow will probably turn out better, we are due to reach the town. Good night.”

  “Yeah sweet dreams.” Alex said sarcastically.