“We are here Liam. We are a mile away from HP” Lenny said expressing his excitement with each word. If that high tone of his voice was not enough the wide-open smile of his was enough.
“Hoo Hooo… We ARE HERE HP” Liam shouted from the bottom of his heart and somehow topped his little brother’s thrill and joy.
Most of the other travelers on the ship saw them as two nut jobs, but ‘not giving a fuck’ was the one art these two young brothers mastered and perhaps it was the only art they knew.
“We can become legends Lenny,” Liam said loudly and joyfully.
“We are going to make Mama proud and shut the damn rest of the people up,” Lenny said.
They both had two medium-sized backs one was orange which belonged to Lenny and was mostly filled with beer and the other one light blue was Liam’s which was full of industrial alcohol rags and empty glass bottles to simply make Molotov cocktails three boxes of nails and a bag of strong fireworks to make effective homemade nail bombs.
“Imagine man we can be whatever the hell we want,” Liam said.
“You sure fireworks are not outlawed here?” Lenny asked trying to say it as lowly as possible so nobody could hear them.
“They clearly said no hot weapons and we brought no hot weapons. What we have is a ton of fireworks and alcohol which was not mentioned so with that being said, we are going to send a lot of demons back to hell” Liam said and he couldn’t hide his pride for coming up with his genius idea.
“Where are we going to use these?” Lenny asked.
“So do you remember Eddie? The guy who sold us those good weeds.”
“Ooooh yeah, weed Jesus. I remember him. Man, he grew the best weeds in the state. Too expensive for our taste but what a trip I had with his greenies”
Lenny savored each hit he took from those magical weeds and the truth was he could never forget the man who sold them those weeds with a twenty percent discount.
“Yeah weed Jesus, so he had a friend who came here two months ago and that friend knew guess who?” Liam teased Lenny with that question and had him all hyped up.
“Who?”
“Leo. Our one and only freaking cosine.” Liam said.
“So what’s the deal with his friend?” Lenny asked.
“So Leo’s friend happened to bump into a fucking orphanage in the middle of the forest,” Liam said.
“No fucking way man no one here ever talked about an orphanage in the middle of no were. I watched tons of YouTube videos man” Lenny said he was disappointed.
“Don’t get all hopeless for me wait for the punch line” Liam said to keep Lenny’s attention.
“So this guy was either a genius or a fucking madman, ten miles on the road he hears those fucking chilling voices coming from the forest. You know the damn voices all people heard right?”
“Yeah, yeah man, I know about the voices people call them Jitters on the net.” Lenny was all ears and looked convinced.
“So the guy hears the Jitters and he decides to follow them and puts all these yellow chalk markers to remember his way back and as he gets deeper and deeper he hears a bunch of children singing…”
“All guests abort. we have arrived.” One of the ship crew members yelled and rang a bell.
Liam got all fury and wanted to curse the sailor but Lenny disrupted him with his eagerness to show him the beautiful view of Moonland.
* * *
“Man, this demon burger is the best thing I’ve eaten in years. How did you end up making these great burgers as a demon? Just don’t tell me it’s human meat” Lenny talked to the peace demon who started his burger shop and as always he was the salty one.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“No don’t worry it’s cow’s meat,” Peace demon said as he was smiling.
“Liam, how is yours?” Liam was deep in his thoughts.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Liam said as he snapped out of his daydreaming and took another bite out of his juicy cheeseburger.
“Hey, Lenny…” Liam wanted to ask about the rewards for each demon’s head but it wasn’t the right place “Nothing. Buy two more for the road” Liam said and stared at the ground with an awkward smile.
“Cool man,” Lenny said and got busy with his chit-chat with the burger shop owner.
So many people come here and stay in Moonland for the whole week and then get back to the ship and go back home. Besides the PDs, there is not much to look for in Moonland, but just looking at a harmless demon and living with them for a week seems like the adventure of a lifetime for many.
But if you are looking to get rich and famous you must have something to show the world that no one saw or did and that was exactly what Liam and Lenny were here for.
As the sky turned bloody red and black clouds were looming above HP, Liam and Lenny had their second burger and they were close to the yellow chalk marks so they had their eyes peeled and focusing like an eagle for anything yellow. And after a mile of hiking in silence and absolute alertness, Liam shouted “Aha, there it is. Told you, man”
Lenny was relieved not because they had found the marks but because he was finally allowed to talk.
“I was dying of boredom thank god we found them,” Lenny said
Liam always thought if Lenny was to be an animal it would be a parrot but he did warn Lenny to stay quiet on the road or otherwise, he had to take both bags and carry them all the way to the orphanage and back.
“I was going to ask you Lenny, how much did the church pay for each head?” Liam asked and had nothing to worry about.
“Well, 1500 for PDs but no one ever tried to kill them since they are the only nice guys and honestly I think killing them is like killing innocent people, I mean did you see how nice Jok was?”
“Who is Jok? Oh, the burger shop guy?”
“Yeah. He even offered me a job to work as his cashier, said he would pay well and would give me a room and I could have three days off each month plus all the human holidays were counted” Lenny said with a warm smile.
“Wow, seems like a nice guy,” Liam said as they followed the yellow marks deep into the forest “ So, how much for other demons?”
“3000 each if they have no bounty on their head of course”
“We are about to kill dozens of demon children which no one ever heard of so 3k each it is.”
The calm sound of humming and children’s laughter suddenly sharpened their ears.
“You hear them?” Lenny asked slowly.
“SHHHHH” Liam put his finger on his lips and slowly kept walking toward the children’s sound.
The air was chilling and the red sky made the forest more visible but they both ready their flashlights ‘just in case’.
The lonely orphanage, colored in white stood tall in the middle of the forest as lonely as the demon children it sheltered far from any road or soul. The orphanage didn’t look welcoming and it gave Liam and Lenny a feeling of anxiousness. The orphanage was in peace and didn’t want to be bothered but Liam saw at least a hundred demon orphans which would make him rich.
Lenny and he didn’t have to be looked down upon after they killed all these demons.
“Let’s get rich dude,” Liam said and they started to make their nail bombs and Molotov cocktails.
“We are a BOOM away from our dreams” Liam continued and smugged.
Lenny was scared and knew something was wrong with that orphanage. It looked like alive