Hell is supposed to be a place of utter despair. It should have a lot in common with a family visit to the mall then.

Abigail Ortiz

I slapped my father’s hand away from the car dashboard for the umpteenth time, scowling at him. Reading Daniel’s letter had only kept him busy for a few minutes, and since them he had been thoroughly making a pest of himself, playing with the A/C, radio, and whatever he could put his hands on.

 The A/C was especially entrancing to him obviously. We had already circled from hot to cold and back three times, and I didn’t want one of us to come down sick.

He had declined seeing Daniel, arguing that all needing to be said had already been when they last saw each other. I guess seeing your friend thirty years older while you stay the same is not a bright prospect.

There were lots of questions I wanted to ask, pity my hands were busy with the steering wheel. The reality of the situation was starting to sink in and I had a hard time keeping my equanimity.

 “There wasn’t all that stuff in cars when I went to sleep, technology progressed a lot in a short time.”

Make that umpteenth +1…this would be a long trip…

Just thinking of the plane ride back home started a headache.

A couple hours later, we were parking behind a clean enough looking motel. If we were to continue directly to the airport, we’d be there during the night, and I still needed to book the return tickets.

Wandering Acapulco’s streets or airport at night was not something I wanted to consider.

Besides we needed to buy daddy dearest clothes before heading back, on top of getting him in a bath. Airport security would never let us through with the hobo madman looks he had going.

As we walked to our rooms, a horrifying thought emerged in my brain.

“How are we going to go past security without an identity card for you?”

“Identity card? You mean this right? Daniel included it in his letter. Apparently he’s been getting forged ones every ten years or so in case I decided to come back.”

“How the hell does a farmer in the back country gets the connections and money for that? Not to mention the spare time…”

“He didn’t tell you? He owns a big swath of land that he bought with the money I turned over to him when I went to sleep. It hardly made a dent in the money though, so he did a couple things in my interest on top, papers being one. When you book the tickets make sure we have half a day in Zurich before flying to France.”

“You are so reimbursing me for the plane tickets and stuff we’ll buy today!”

I left him to his shower while I perused the flights to Zurich and home, and sent an update on the situation to mom.

Luckily there were no issues on getting the tickets using the forged ID. Uriel King uh? Sure went right with his spoiled and commanding personality.

I was almost done when said spoiled individual barged in the room with his hair still wet, and holy crap was there a change.

The previously dusty and dirty hair and skin were now respectively a shining gold and white, giving an ethereal impression to his whole appearance. My own looks were quite ok, but right now I felt defeated.

“I’m done here, so how about we go get clothing and a haircut? I don’t mind long hair myself, but I didn’t see many people with it, so I might blend in better with shorter one in this time.”

And so it was done that I retrieved my jaw from the floor and we headed to the mall, also known as hell.

“If someone asks I think we should say you’re my cousin. With your looks nobody will believe it if we say you’re my father.”

“Pouting is a bad habit you know; you’ll get furrows in your brow, it’s not my fault I look so amazing.”

There were quite a few ravenous glances directed at us when we entered the clothing store,

and we soon had our pick of shop attendants vying for Uriel’s attention.

“I’ll ask your advice on this, I have no idea what the current trends are.”

“Aren’t you worried I’d make you look ridiculous?”

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“Nah, since you’ll be stuck with me for a while. You’d become a laughing stock too. I’ll go try those, I’m counting on you here.”

I think we might have tried half the shop, before deciding on the outfits. The vendors had been busy sneakily taking pictures on their cellphones, and the female population had increased quite a bit in the area. We might need to call security to extract ourselves from the prowling wolves.

As soon as we paid, I hurried him out of the store and to the hairdresser. Might as well do all in one fell swoop and be done with this nightmare.

Uriel opted for short messy style enhancing his angular features, thus completing his makeover in a modern guy. A modern teenager guy that is.

“Looks like I’ll have to beat back the women away with a stick to have any peace around you.”

“Oooo, my darling daughter is willing to protect my chastity?”

“In your dreams, I just don’t want a gaggle of sex crazed women following us around everywhere.”

“So disappointing, and here I thought your frozen little heart was finally thawing.”

“Not a chance.”

We went back to the motel for an uneventful night. I either didn’t dream, or I didn’t remember my dreams.

Another warm and sunny day welcomed us in the morning, although the bluebells growing in the carpet were a new addition to the room. They were quite pretty, with the added advantage of being completely innocuous.

“At least I didn’t set fire to anything this time around.”

My father burst in laughter when he saw them.

“I guess this is what you get when you mix dream-walking with a nature’s god blessing. I wonder what kind of dream you had?”

“No idea. Good thing it wasn’t a nightmare.”

“Nah, a nightmare would have awakened me. I wonder if we could nudge your dreams a bit…there are a couple rare plants I’d really like to get my hands on.”

“How about trying not to destroy any more carpeting?”

Some bluebell plucking later, we headed to the airport. The forged papers might have been of pretty good quality since going through security was a non-issue, even in those tense times.

“What will we be doing in Zurich?”

“Daniel turned over to me most of my old assets, we’re going to retrieve a part of that, and the keys to the rest. They might not let you come with me, so it should be better for you to wait somewhere.”

“I’ll wait in a Starbucks, I want to check my emails anyway.”

We parted way at the airport. I stayed at the Starbuck while he went to the bank.

Only important email I had was mom telling me she cleaned up the guestroom. Good thing we had an unused room at home.

I decided to check the news while waiting, I had been left of the loop for the past week, and I wanted to see what was said about my impromptu arson in the alley.

Apparently the official version was kids playing pranks in the garbage, good for me. On the other news there had been a light earthquake in Turkey, and a whole slew of ufos flying here and there. One would think the little grey men would have better stuff to do than flying around good ole’ earth.

Our politics being true to themselves…yet another embezzlement scandal, and a new species of snake discovered in Greece. It was really dazzling too, with almost metallic scales. They were talking about adding a whole new genus for it.

After that I spent a couple leisurely hours sipping chocolate while reading webnovels and random stuff.

I didn’t need to raise my head to know when Uriel was back. The general migration of the female population was enough to warn me.

“Did you get all you needed?”

“Yup, all good, now I can treat you to all kinds of goodies!”

…Is this what it means to be a birdbrain? If so, please let me retain my human one, all gods in heaven!