Part 1 || 4 | Judy
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A Tale of Two Customers I
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After the daytime workers of The Cake Fairy wound down their operations at 9:00 p.m. and finished cleaning up and closing its doors by 10:00 p.m., the first ghosts and yokai and other oddities arrived an hour later. Most of them were the ghosts of waitresses from long-defunct eateries, but a few of them were effeminate yokai males from abroad, and they all came in wearing maid outfits and aprons and began their shifts by prepping the tables and chairs. And just before midnight rolled around, the two resident spirits of the cafe, the ghosts of two brothers that had set up a confectionary shop here in bygone days, manifested in the kitchen and began cracking eggs and mixing them with flour and sugar and kneading dough and baking them into tonight’s assortment of mooncakes and cheesecakes and tiramisu and other delicious sweets.
And as they all started on their work, their phantom customers started manifesting on top of empty chairs at newly-cleaned tables and making their orders. Amongst them was Judy Windermere, still dreaming about her friend at this time and unaware of her whereabouts. And just like in her dream, the girl sat at a table next to the curb and ordered cheesecake and ginger ale for herself and chocolate cake and cherry soda for her friend, then waited for her friend’s arrival.
Yet when the waitress returned with both cakes and drinks, she noticed that Judy’s friend had not yet arrived. And when the waitress placed the orders on the table, she saw Judy’s flighty glances at her surroundings.
So she said, “Is everything all right, miss?”
“I’m fine,” Judy said.
The waitress knew she wasn’t but humored her young customer, saying, “I’m sure your friend will arrive soon.”
But Judy said nothing to her assurance.
So the waitress stalked towards the other customers and waited on their orders but kept an eye on her lonesome customer. She saw Judy eating her cheesecake and drinking her ginger ale, all the while checking her smartphone over and over.
“Poor girl,” the waitress said.
Another waitress came up carrying a row of plates with slices of cake on both of her arms and said, “More tables are waiting, Jane,” and she went on her way.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jane said and stalked back into the cafe and through the entrance to get more orders of cake from the front counter.
While the waitresses waited on other tables, Judy had finished her cheesecake and her ginger ale and now kept checking her smartphone and waiting for her friend to arrive. Yet to any observer taking a glance in Judy’s direction, it became clear that her friend had chosen to stand her up, because the girl now began eating her friend’s chocolate cake and drinking her friend’s cherry soda. And in front of all the customers and waitresses, Judy started crying as she ate and drank, turning curious heads her way amidst whispers of boyfriend trouble.
Which included Jane, who had finished taking more orders of cake to a table and happened to look Judy’s way. At the sight of Judy’s dejected face, she fisted her hands and said, “Damn him! Whoever stood her up is a total bastard!”
“Aren’t you getting too worked up?” her friend said, who had just finished bringing a few orders at another table.
“How could I not?” Jane said.
“Who knows,” her friend said. “Maybe he’s running late.”
“Or maybe he’s just a bastard,” Jane said.
“Not all men are bastards, you know,” her friend said, and she pointed out the few yokai femboys throwing momentary glances their way upon hearing Jane’s outburst.
“But her ‘friend’ is,” Jane said. “God, I just don’t understand how he could do that to her. How the heck does he even sleep at night, this bastard?”
Yet before another complaint was spoken, and before another rumor was whispered, another customer manifested before the crying girl sitting on the chair across from her. And before Judy realized that someone was occupying her friend’s seat, she glanced up with sightless eyes at the faint outline of her strange companion. She was a blonde woman who seemed a year or two older than Judy, dressed in a kimono and sported a long fringe of bangs covering her eyes and flowing down the sides of her face and longer flowing locks of hair tied behind her head in a ponytail. Seeing Judy in distress, this customer leaned forward over the table and reached out her hand to caress Judy’s tear-drenched cheek—
When Judy gritted her teeth and squinted the image of her friend out of her thoughts and said, “I fucked up. Damn it, damn it, damn it, . . .”
At this, Jane the waitress approached the table and said, “Are you all right, miss?”
Yet Judy kept on cursing as if it was a mantra.
And her strange companion glared up at Jane with a flash of her red glowing eyes, growling under her breath, and said, “Stand aside.”
Jane flinched and gulped and backed away from the table, bowing and saying, “I’m sorry! I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you!” And she ran back through the cafe’s entrance and skirted behind the counter into the backroom, where she stayed for the rest of her shift.
Meanwhile, this strange customer turned her attention back on the still-cursing Judy, reaching out to caress the girl’s cheek, and said something that Judy couldn’t hear. Yet her silent words stopped Judy’s stream of curses, and she caught Judy’s gaze with one look from her red eyes for just a moment before Judy dissipated from the table back into the waking world. And for a brief moment, the fluttering shimmer of Judy’s soul lingered on the customer’s fingers.
Now, with all eyes fixed on this strange customer, she rose from her seat and bowed, saying, “Sorry for interrupting,” and she walked away into the moonlit street. And when she passed beneath the gleam of the moonlight, she cast a lengthening shadow along the street that changed its form against the cobblestones, making all the witnesses stare after her.
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Even at night, the sight was unmistakable. Everyone present on this night saw the outline of nine fluttering tails behind her and a pair of fox ears on her head.
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A Tale of the Three Jacks
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Judy woke up on her couch with her three volumes from Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft beside her. She looked up at her clock mounted above the floor lamp, which showed 2:35 a.m. on the dial face. It was now the wee hours of a Thursday morning during the last week of summer break, which would herald her sophomore year in Renwald High School.
“Damn dream,” she said under her breath. She got up, stretched her arms, and yawned. Then she raised her hand to her eyes, where she felt the sting of tears welling up in her drowsiness. That dream felt so real to her, as real as the thumping of her heartbeats in the miserable moments when she kept eating that damn cake by herself, even when she knew full well that none of that had ever happened in her waking life. Even if Judy would risk her friendship with Grace Ransom with a confession in her dreams, she promised herself she’d never do it for real.
But was it really okay for something to continue on like this, unrequited? Was it really better for her true feelings to wane on the vine of just friendship? Was it really . . .
She shook her head of such questions and concentrated on her current predicament. So she proceeded to pick her books off the couch, when she noticed the scent of cherry blossoms and peach blossoms wafting at her nose. She paused over the books, her hands trembling above their covers as she thought of the same scent lingering in her dream. And when she blinked, a pair of red eyes flashed before her mind and faded away, a ghost of a thought that raised goosebumps on her forearms.
She then took up the books, opened them, and found three Jacks in between their pages, where she had read about the corresponding motif of eyes in each passage. In Sax Rohmer’s The Green Eyes of Bâst, she found the Jack of Hearts marking the passage where Jack Addison had spotted the eyes looking at him through the window. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, she found the Jack of Spades marking the passage where Jonathan Harker had started in horror at witnessing Dracula’s ‘basilisk’ stare just as he was about to hit him with a shovel. And in Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark” in his Collected Stories, she found the Jack of Clubs marking the passage where Robert Blake was found dead with open ‘glassy’ eyes.
Two of them (the Jacks of Hearts and Spades) were each encased up to their armpits inside a peach blossom, while a third (the Jack of Clubs) was encased up to his armpits inside a cherry blossom. Judy picked up the three cards and took a whiff, and her nose confirmed the scent she noticed in her dream.
“Where did you three come from?” Judy said.
“We came from practice, lass,” the Jack of Hearts said.
“And we’re dead tired,” the Jack of Spades added.
“Good night,” the Jack of Clubs added.
And Judy’s reaction was immediate: she gawked and gaped with wide eyes. Then she fainted and fell backwards into yet another dream. This time, the dream took place in a massive dojo with sliding shoji screen doors and paper lanterns floating overhead.
Judy was watching it from a top-down view, like God, listening to a young woman say, “Game, start!”
And a weird game of ’52 pickup with guns’ began with this young woman and a younger girl (maybe her sister) running to one of the shoji screens of the dojo and hiding behind it, while a scattering of cards glowed neon pink on the tatami mats and turned into peach blossoms. There was something about a ‘general’ in the deck, the Jack of Diamonds, transforming into a dashing long-haired teenager, while the three other Jacks of Clubs, Spades, and Hearts all turned into long-haired handsome men as his lieutenants. And they all wore berets on their heads, doublets on their chests, and trews on their legs. Then the rest of the peach blossoms dissipated from the ground and manifested as dual revolvers in the hands of the four Jacks.
And the ‘general’ said, “Thou hast challenged me, the Jack of Diamonds, to a battle of 52 pickup. I’ll give thee the first crack at me and my—”
“Come on, boyo,” the Jack of Spades said. “No need to be all formal-like.”
“You’re too stiff, lad,” the Jack of Hearts added.
“You’re hopeless with that attitude,” the Jack of Clubs added.
Both sisters sniggered behind the shoji screens, and Judy found herself sniggering along with them and wondering if the Jack of Diamonds harbored a crush on one of the Queens. Judy then caught the older sister’s wave of her hand as she said, “Fire on the count of three. One!”
As the Jack of Diamonds huffed, Judy looked and saw Sakura taking a peek past the edge of her shoji screen door. All three of the Jack of Diamonds’ lieutenants were looking back on him, giving him advice on how to pick up women without sounding like he was reciting Shakespeare in front of a schoolmarm.
“Unless it’s the schoolmarm you’re after,” the Jack of Hearts said, which got the rest of his cronies laughing.
“Oh, shut up!” the Jack of Diamonds said.
“Two!” the older sister said.
Then the Jack of Diamonds (poor lad) went on a tirade about his tastes in women being different from theirs, a taste for more refined women, not the wenches they’re after. Which got his friends laughing again, because he was sweating and blushing like a bastard in heat.
“Don’t sweat it,” the Jack of Clubs said.
“We completely understand,” the Jack of Hearts added.
“Older ones have their charms, too,” the Jack of Spades added.
And just before the Jack of Diamonds went balls-to-the-wall berserk on his cronies, and before the younger sister or Judy could burst out laughing at their shenanigans, it was go-time.
“Three!” the older sister said.
And before Judy knew it, both sisters charged from the cover of the shoji screen doors, laughing like Jokers with smiles on their faces, raising their guns and firing off zap after zap on their practice foes. Fluttering petals of cherry blossoms and peach blossoms exploded off the backs of the three lieutenant Jacks, turning them into two giant peach blossoms and one giant cherry blossom, while the Jack of Diamonds cried out, “Foul, foul, foul! You’re not supposed to shoot people in the back!”
“Put a sock in it,” the younger sister said.
And before her dreaming eyes, Judy marveled at her athleticism as the younger sister leaped and rolled over a hail of retaliatory gunshots leaving holes in the shoji screens and tatami mats, which then turned into playing cards. And she marveled at their teamwork as the older sister circled around the remaining Jack and fired shots at his unprotected sides, while the younger sister circled the other way and managed a shot at his head, both girls turning their practice opponent into a giant peach blossom with a smaller cherry blossom for his head.
Now all four Jacks were engulfed up to their armpits in giant blossoms, and they all said in unison, “You’ve defeated us, fair and square.”
Yet the voice of the Jack of Diamonds sounded muffled, so they turned their flowery bulk around and laughed, and Judy laughed with them at the absurdity of it all.
“‘At’s ‘o ‘unny?” (What’s so funny?) the Jack of Diamonds said, and more laughter ensued amongst the Jacks of Spades, Hearts, and Clubs.
“Nothing much, boyo,” the Jack of Spades said.
“Just enjoying the view,” the Jack of Hearts added.
And Judy and the sisters accompanied the laughter with their girlish giggles of glee at the sight.
“And ‘at ‘iew ‘s ‘at?” (And what view is that?) the muffled Jack said, moving his revolver from side to side, aiming at his unseen tormentors, and getting more laughter for his efforts. “‘Ell ‘e! I ‘are ‘ou ‘o ‘ell ‘e ‘o ‘y ‘ace, ‘ight ‘is ins‘ant!” (Tell me! I dare you to tell me to my face, right this instant!)
“Don’t sweat it,” the Jack of Spades said.
“Wearing a crown isn’t that bad,” the Jack of Hearts added.
“Unless your crown’s broken,” the Jack of Clubs added.
At this last joke, Judy broke out laughing with both sisters as they bowled over in gut-busting hysterics, both girls adding to the uproar shared with the three maniacal Jacks at the expense of one of their own. And as the laughter grew, it filled the whole dojo and reverberated throughout, dissipating Judy’s dream back into slow-wave sleep as she was snoozing away in the arms of the three Jacks of Spades and Hearts and Clubs.
The trio carried the girl up the stairs and into her bedroom, where one of them turned on the lamplight, and the other two laid Judy on her bed, tucked her in, and admired her smiling face in the lamplight.
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TBC