Chapter 5

“Come on down,” called out a woman from the dark, and Isaac knew it was the voice from the voicemail. He couldn’t see much of his surroundings. What light there was came from flashes of a flickering orange glow. He couldn’t identify the source. It came from somewhere hidden deeper inside the house. But, like a moth to a flame, Isaac followed it, and it led him down a hall and to a woman who, much to Isaac’s chagrin, was not Margot Robbie. It was obvious to him. She was African American. Isaac couldn’t hide his disappointment, which didn’t escape the notice of the woman. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I thought you were Margot Robbie.”

“Only on Tuesdays,” the woman laughed, her dyed-red hair vibrating with warm energy.

Isaac stood there for a moment until it became awkward. The woman was staring past him into the inky black from where he came. “Are you expecting someone else?”

“Yes.”

“Who?” He looked over his shoulder, paranoid.

“You are Isaac, the Gemini, correct?”

“The one and only.”

“That’s cute.” The woman laughed again, but this time it came with an undercurrent of condescension that was silent to Isaac. She waved him into a Papasan chair that threatened to collapse under the weight of its adorning accent pillows.

The woman’s office, one of the bungalow’s bedrooms, was a temple to everything and nothing. It was as if a coexist sticker was an entire interior design theme. The proof of concept was the coffee table where a zen garden, a dreidel, and a magic eight ball all rested comfortably together. The room’s orange light came from lit devotional candles, each one bearing the likeness of a different character from The Office. Dwight Schrute’s candle burned brightest. The rest of the room’s light was blue-green and produced by a thousand cheap, glow-in-the-dark star stickers stuck to the ceiling. Within them, Isaac recognized a reproduction of the Orion constellation.

“I’m sorry I didn’t pick up your call earlier, but it came through as ‘scam likely’ on the ID,” the woman apologized. “I’m Anne, by the way.”

“Anne. Isaac.”

Anne was seated opposite him, with the coffee table full of cultural talismans placed between them. Behind her was a hallmark of any tried-and-true LA institution, the wall of fame. There was an eight-by-ten grid of 8 x 10 photographs of various celebrities, most of them headshots and all signed in Sharpie. Isaac marveled at it. There were famous faces, infamous faces, unknown faces, and faces Isaac recognized but couldn't place. Some of those he did know belonged to Tom Hanks, Tupac, and even Grumpy Cat. Audrey Hepburn’s photo surprised him the most. The woman across from him couldn’t be that old, but he remembered a lesson he learned from an episode of Real Housewives Atlanta: black don’t crack. Isaac gasped, pointing to the second to last photo in the grid. “That’s Margot Robbie.”

“She’s my 3 o’clock on Tuesdays.”

“These are all your clients?”

“Current and former.”

“They don’t care if you put them out here for everyone to see?”

“I’m a psychic, not a psychiatrist. But perhaps I’m making a distinction without any difference.” She laughed.

“I don’t get it.”

“That’s okay. It wasn’t for your benefit,” Anne paused politely, turning to the audience, to you, the reader, much like Jim from the Office, before giving her attention back to Isaac. “I appreciate the niceties, but, please, enough of them already. I’m terribly anxious about the well-being of Captain Flapjacks. Your message suggested you know where he is...”

“I saw him.”

“Where?”

“In a dream.”

“Wonderful. He’s the man of my dreams as well.”

“He was in danger.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at Isaac, considering the credibility of the person in front of her. “Continue.” And Isaac did, telling her the contents of his dream to the best of his recollection, which was nothing more than regurgitating the contents of the script he wrote.

“Who’s Super Jesus?” Anne asked when he finished.

“Who’s Super Jesus?” Isaac repeated, stammering with bewilderment. He couldn’t believe it. Her ignorance went beyond living under the proverbial rock but to something greater, to not knowing a priori knowledge. Asking who Super Jesus was was akin to asking for the answer of two plus two. This was some real tabula rasa shit.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Who’s Super Jesus?” Anne confirmed.

So Isaac told Anne the story of Super Jesus, which began in a one-horse town just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the birthplace of Jesus Ornelas, the second coming of Jesus Christ. The story mirrored the teachings of the New Testament but mostly followed the traditional superhero origin story and tropes: humble birthplace, a childhood marked by tragedy, and how that trauma led to the discovery of superpowers, or, as Super Jesus calls them, miracles. He received his first mission not from a burning bush but from a raging dumpster fire.

Aside from battling various villains, Super Jesus’s central conflict was conversion. He didn’t have any followers, social media or otherwise. No one believed he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, no matter how he spread the good word. The competition to capture people's hearts and minds was much stiffer than it was 2,000 years ago, especially when today’s non-believers had their choice of superheroes to idolize. For what’s walking on water compared to Spider-Man’s web-slinging or a Hulk Smash? So the second coming had to play second-fiddle to the rest of the Avengers, toiling away in the shadows of Captain America and Iron Man, an irony that the screenwriters exploited to great comedic effect.

Anne smiled. “Walking on water is some weak tea, all things considered.”

“Exactly,” Isaac agreed. “But the movie is funny and heartfelt and inspirational, which I don’t know if that came across in my synopsis,” he paused. “It’s sort of a big deal. I like the movie just fine, personally, but people love him, well, not the people inside the story, who are skeptical of Super Jesus, but us, the audience. There are true believers, too. There are Disciples that have their own Super Jesus churches. Haven’t you seen his symbol, the middle school ‘S’ [See: Appendix E], or heard anyone say, ‘¡Dios mio!?’ That’s a Super Jesus expression.”

“I think that’s a Mexican expression,” Anne explained.

“Yeah, but now everyone says it. It’s like in the lexicon or whatever you call it. Jargon. I say it without even realizing it, and I’m not even a Disciple. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of him.”

Anne shrugged. “I stopped watching TV and movies during Y2K. I wanted to play it safe, and I’ve never looked back. Plus, it keeps me clear-headed with my clients who work in the industry.”

“Meow,” said a cat that wasn’t Captain Flapjacks. Curled up in Anne’s lap, its presence startled Isaac. The cat was an orange tabby, similar to the one that graced the front cover of Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. So where had it come from? Isaac looked around and saw that the room was now full of cats. At least six of them that he could count, as if they materialized out of thin air, coming to the foreground of his consciousness like a decoded magic eye picture. What other surprises could he expect? Isaac picked his feet up and sat on them in case the floor turned to lava while he wasn’t looking.

“Jones,” Anne indicated the cat on her lap, “wants to know how your so-called dream will help find Captain Flapjacks. I’d also like to know.”

Isaac blushed as he thought about it. “I was hoping you could help me, actually.” He indicated his psychic surroundings. “I thought you could explain my dream to me. Crack the code since my therapist couldn’t.”

“What school does he belong to? Not the Freudian one, evidently.”

“Hogwarts.”

Anne snickered. “You poor thing. No wonder your vibes are so, uh, interesting.” She passed Isaac a cup of tea that he didn’t notice her pour.

“So, can you help?”

“Of course,” she said and gestured toward the cup, so Isaac drank the drink, and its taste reminded him of the growing mold in his apartment. He took a second sip.

“No can do. Dreams are a tricky business, Isaac. Dreams that you don’t remember dreaming even more so.” She stroked the cat.

“Please. Anything will help.”

“No.” Anne’s voice turned stern, catching the cats’ attention. “What are you trying to pull, exactly? I’m not sure if you’re dumb or just playing dumb. Either way, I’m beginning to suspect that my phone was right and this whole business is a scam.”

“No!” Isaac protested, “I promise you that I am, in fact, very dumb.”

“Well, then, let me enlighten you. A bad or incomplete dream reading is not something I’ll stand for. I’m not some hack you’d find on the boardwalk. You can take your pleasures there if that’s what you want. Dreams are dangerous, Isaac, they’re portals to the subconscious and even different dimensions, and I won’t be responsible for your blood on my hands if the reading goes wrong.”

“Blood?” Isaac sat up straighter. What had this cat gotten him into?

“Not to mention that anything taken from an incomplete dream reading may be more misleading than helpful. This is supposed to be tracking a cat, not a wild goose chase.”

Jones, the cat, meowed, flicking and swishing his tail from side to side.

Anne continued, “My next appointment is about to arrive, so I’ll have to ask you to see yourself out. If you see Captain Flapjacks in a dream or out on the street, you know my number. I’d be happy to have you back.”

Isaac screamed, leaping out of his chair. One of the cats, a Russian Blue, had jumped onto the armrest, scaring Isaac. The cat’s thick fur was cold against his skin. Isaac got a head rush from standing up too quickly and suffered a sudden chivalrous urge as a result, “I’m going to find him, you know. I promise. I have to save that cat.”

Anne raised an eyebrow. “We’re counting on you.”

Isaac got an idea. “Do you live here, too? In addition to working, I mean.”

“I do.”

“Then why did you put your posters around Beverly Hills? Why do you think he’s there?”

“That’s where I saw him last.”

“Curious. What business did Captain Flapjacks have in Beverly Hills? How did he escape?”

“I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“And you were powerless to stop him?”

“Have you ever owned a cat, Isaac?” Anne’s red hair bristled.

Isaac bit a lip. “Not that I know of.”

“I’m not surprised. Otherwise, you’d know that they can be quite compelling creatures. He wanted to go to Beverly Hills, so he did.”

“Can you offer me anything? Any words of wisdom? Any leads? Help me help you.” Isaac was confused, not understanding why he had to twist this woman’s arm so much to find her cat for her. Something was happening here, and he didn’t like it. Who knew that psychics were such a strange breed?

“I can’t,” Anne bit her lip, thinking over her options, before finally grabbing the cup of tea Isaac had finished drinking. She frowned after peering down into it. “But maybe you can help yourself. Tell me what you see in your tea leaves,” she said while handing the cup back to Isaac.

A gulp got caught in his throat, and he choked on it, for when he gazed into the cup, he saw something grim. He tried to spin the cup around and around, but it was useless. No matter how he peered inside it, the clumps of tea leaves did not change. Instead, they remained in the form of a skull.

“Good luck,” Anne said as she ushered him out of the bungalow and back into the June Gloom. “Hope to see you again soon!” She laughed.