“Golems?” Peter asked, leaning against a shipping crate.

“Yep,” Greg replied, one of his many guns disassembled for cleaning laid out in front of him.

“Leprechauns?”

“Yep.”

Peter scratched at his chin, lips scrunching up in thought. “Cyclops?”

“Nope.”

“Goblins?”

“Oh yeah,” Greg confirmed, looking up with a sour expression on his face. “But you probably won’t ever see one. They live deep underground.”

Riding a boat to Mexico, it turned out, took quite a lot longer than a plane would have. Almost as long as driving there would have, in fact. To fill the time and quench his curiosity regarding the supernatural, Peter used the time to confirm which monsters were and were not a thing here on Earth. Luckily, Greg’s contact, Hal, was able to get them a ship whose crew could not care less about a pair of travelers and they were able to relax on deck versus spending the entire voyage hiding. Flapjack even made a handful of new friends as they boarded and frequently wandered off to beg for food and pets.

“Aren’t we going deep underground, when we get there?”

“Not that deep,” Greg said. Then he grunted thoughtfully. “Well, I never made it into the tunnels. They actually might go that deep. I hope not. Fuck goblins.”

Staring off the deck of the ship into the endless blue, Peter thought of another one. “Mermaids?”

“Yep,” Greg confirmed. He placed one piece of the firearm he was cleaning down beside the others on a white towel laid out before him and then picked up another.

“Oh! What about the Japanese Oni?”

“Misrepresentation,” Greg explained without looking up. “They’re not exclusive to Japan, for one thing, and the term Oni is broad. Saying Japanese Oni is like specifying ‘all demons’ from a single region.”

“Hmmm,” Peter hmmm’d. “So demons are a thing then.”

“Yep.”

“Chupacabra?”

“Regional variation of a common myth,” Greg said, now starting to reassemble his freshly cleaned firearm. He scrunched up his face. “I think. I’ve never seen one.”

“Ah. Dang. That one actually seemed relevant, with us going to Mexico.”

Peter continued peppering Greg with quandaries for several hours while Flapjack napped nearby. The venerable corgi seemed soothed by the very same back and forth of the waves that sent Peter on frequent trips to the bathroom. The very filthy bathroom. So filthy, in fact, that it prompted Peter to go on a bit of a side quest. He found Jeraldine, a salty but secretly sweet old woman with a face of leather that Flapjack had befriended, and asked for cleaning supplies. With nothing more than a bottle of bleach and a roll of paper towels, Peter transformed the ship’s shitter into something he felt reasonably comfortable doing his business in. When they finally made port in Salina Cruz, Peter and Flapjack said a quick farewell to their new friends before disembarking.

It was hot, muggy, and green in Salina Cruz. A thick jungle teeming with life in all shapes and sizes. It took a series of back and forth calls and texts, but Peter and Greg were once again reunited with Renea some time later, who had rented a sizable SUV for the trip. When Renea saw Flapjack, she glared at Peter.

“You brought Flapjack?” she asked, arms folded.

Flapjack happily shuffled over to Renea, who sighed and bent to pet the dog.

“He’s never been to Mexico!” Peter defended his action, hands held out dramatically to his sides. “Why does everyone keep asking why I brought the dog? He’s a good dog.”

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“He is a good dog,” Renea agreed, scratching Flapjack’s ears affectionately. “But, Peter, I paid the kid next door, what was his name? Alex? Whatever, we’ll call him Alex for now. I paid Alex $20 a day, in advance, to come over and let Flapjack out a few times a day and make sure he has food and water.”

Peter folded his arms over his chest as he considered her words. “Have you heard from him?”

“Well, no, but I only left home a few hours ago. Good point. If he doesn’t call to let me know the dog isn’t there I’ll have to have a word with his parents.” Renea muttered something to herself that sounded suspiciously like her Peter impersonation stating, “He’s never been to Mexico.”

The hotel suite Renea had reserved for the trip was a six hour drive from Salina Cruz through rural Mexico, thick with jungle, but was easily navigable. The rental car had its own GPS, though Renea used the navigation ap on her phone. Much of the drive required Peter and Greg to talk in whispers as Renea took call after call, putting out fires and organizing the chaos of her department even as she drove through the jungles of southern Mexico. Sitting on Greg’s lap as though they were old friends, Flapjack kept his head out of the window, taking in his new surroundings with a happy, lolling tongue hanging from his mouth.

It was in the early hours of the morning, pale light illuminating the gulf of Mexico, when they arrived at their destination of Boca del Rio - which Peter was fairly certain translated to ‘the river’s mouth’, or something similar. One of his many manias in the past had been to speed-learn languages, essentially just memorizing the 300 most common words in the language without regard for sentence structure or syntax. It still made him sound like an uneducated foreigner, but allowed him to get by conversationally and translate important things like bathroom signs and menus at restaurants.

The city was beautiful, and Peter’s curiosity had to be curtailed often when they passed by the main attractions. Renea and Greg had agreed that their best course of action was to head directly to the hotel, check in, and get a little sleep before heading to the ruins. Despite having Flapjack’s vote to have an early morning look around the city, Peter was overruled. When they arrived, the local time was just after 9:00am and the sun hung suspended over the western horizon.

The hotel was everything Peter was hoping it would be while packing his swim shorts. It had a massive pool out front and even had the swim-up-bars where he could get his margarita on. He did exactly that while Renea checked in at the front desk. A few minutes later, Renea and Greg came to find Peter happily chatting with a group of young women in way-too-small bikinis, margarita in hand.

“Peter, the room is ready,” Renea said. She looked slightly out of place in her sharp, ironed, businessware. She eyed the women briefly, but just rolled her eyes.

“Alright, dear. I’m just having a nightcap then I’ll be up. What’s the room number?”

Renea bent to kiss Peter and handed him a room key. “It’s not a nightcap at 9 in the morning, love. Don’t be too long.”

An exhausted Greg looked back and forth between Renea, who was heading up to the room with Flapjack trailing behind, and Peter, with a gaggle of beautiful women in bathing suits all around him. He flashed Renea a questioning look.

“This happens,” she said, gesturing at the women with a dismissive flick of her hair. “I seriously can’t take him anywhere.”

Several hours later, Peter woke up to a headache and the strong scent of gunpowder and garlic. Greg was standing over him, his massive form blocking the pleasing equatorial sun against his skin.

“Fuck off, Greg,” Peter grumbled, turning over in the blanket to put his back to the big man.

“Get out of bed, pretty boy. Daylight’s burning,” came Greg’s gruff reply.

Peter groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. Pretending Greg was not there did not prove effective. The big man yanked the blanket off to reveal a very naked Peter Mayhew, who promptly curled into the fetal position, neck twisted to glare at Greg over one shoulder.

“Why are you never wearing pants?” Greg asked, averting his eyes to the window.

“I was perfectly modest under the blanket,” Peter countered, still glaring.

“Get dressed. We’re going to go over a few ground rules before heading to the ruins,” Greg said before leaving Peter and Renea’s bedroom.

A few minutes later, Peter entered the suite’s living area. He wore only a pair of bright pink, skin tight briefs. In his right hand, he was holding a pair of khaki shorts and another of his silly graphic t-shirts. In his left, what looked almost like a full hazmat suit.

“We’re going into the jungle, aren’t we?” he asked, face sour.

“Just wear normal clothes, Peter. I looked into it on the plane and the most dangerous spiders in the area are ones you’re actually already familiar with. Hobo, Wolf, and Black Widows,” Renea said over her shoulder. She was seated at a work desk in the suite’s living area, tapping away on her laptop.

Peter was terrified of spiders. So much so that, with no additional context, if he shrieked from anywhere in the house, Renea would come running and ask a single question: Where? He would point, she would kill it, and they would move on with their day. If a spider appeared in the house while Renea was at work, Peter would simply leave the house, not returning until she or one of his friends could come by to protect him. He knew it was stupid. That spiders didn’t even come close to deserving the fear he had of them. And that the worst case scenario almost every single time would be that one of them touched him. He cringed at even the thought.

“Spiders?” Greg asked, eyeing Peter skeptically. “We’re going into ancient ruins that may still be sheltering some of the most violent and powerful vampires to ever walk the Earth and you’re worried about insects?”

Peter looked back and forth between Greg and his wife, betrayed. “First, Renea, familiarity does not equate to comfortability. And Greg, yes. Absolutely.”

“Wow.”

“Hey blow me, alright? I’m scared of spiders,” Peter said, looking down at his clothing options consideringly. He huffed in irritation, and then went back to the bedroom to put both prepared outfits back into the dresser. “Tons of people are scared of spiders…”

When Peter returned in a standard Peter outfit, slim-fit khakis and a navy blue polo, Greg was waiting by the door with Flapjack lying near his feet. The big man had his ever-present travel bag-of-holding strapped over one shoulder. Peter, too, came packing. The backpack strapped to him was chalk full of anything and everything he may need to navigate ancient ruins.

“You ready, princess?”

“Let’s do this.”

“Have fun storming the castle,” Renea chirped as she left the work desk and wrapped her arms around Peter. “And, please, please, please be careful.”

“I will,” Peter replied, kissing his wife. “Promise.”

“And you,” Renea said, tone turning threatening as she whirled on Greg. “If anything happens to him I am holding you personally accountable.”

Greg gulped visibly. “Yes ma’am. I’ll keep your sweet Peter safe. You have my word.”

Renea stared him down for long, silent moments before decidedly handing the keys to the rental to Peter. Greg groaned dramatically.

“We’re not even going to get to the ruins before dark if he drives…”