Washington, DC

You sit at the small table by the window in this fast food restaurant. Your leg twitches and shakes so much that you can feel the floor vibrating from your anxiety. Roger should be reporting back to you or calling the pay by the minute cell phone you just picked up. He should be... any time now.

A man with slicked back hair and strangely pointy ears, just visible through the hair, sits down at your table.

“Uumm... hi? I’m waiting for a friend, did he send you?” You fidget a bit in the seat with one leg crossed and lean up a bit to give yourself a taller position.

The man shifts in his seat, holding a package similar to those of the fast food joint’s fry wrapper. He smiles at you as he reaches in and pulls out a fat western fry, the thick kind that are often served with steaks. “Nope, he didn’t send me. I do think that we have some things in common and some things we should discuss.” He chomps down on the fry and it must be double fried or something, because as the man chews the fry, it crunches and cracks unlike any fry you’ve ever eaten before.

You glance around the tiny restaurant lobby. There are a couple of employees posted up behind the counter and two people waiting for to-go orders. Other than that, you are alone with this new slick haired stranger.

“Alright. And what is your name?” You give him your name.

“The name is Iggy. That’s what they all call me these days. Kinda ditched my last name, just Iggy. It’s rare enough, not much worry of getting confused with another Iggy. Besides, any other Iggy wouldn’t be in the same league as what I’ve got.” His thick eastern European accent actually makes you feel a bit more jittery. Then, he puts a hand on your shaking thigh and you actually jolt back from the table.

“Woah! Okay.” You plant both of your feet down and sit straight up, ready and at attention. “Just tell me what you want, Iggy.”

The crunching sound of another fry actually grows to be quite distracting, Iggy starts speaking as he still chooses the final remnants, “Well, let’s just say that your friend Roger is looking into one of my friends. I don’t like it when people start to bother my very so very busy friends. They have work they need to do. Both of you getting involved here does not help with our work. I know why you’re looking into Harry. You know he’s had some sort of contact or has a connection with a friend of YOURS. Mysticalis...” Iggy stops for only a moment, gauging your reaction. “Yup. Thing is, Mr. or Miss or whatever Pulchris is not interested in your intervention. In fact, he/she would like you to go away. You don’t have a place in Myst’s life any more. Go get your own.”

You try to read the facial expressions of Iggy. They are eccentric and easy to read, but sarcasm and exaggeration can be easily misread as something else.

Iggy sees what you are doing and starts making open mouthed, teeth bared goofy faces that throw off any sort of emotion or intention you could have read off of him. “Aahh... not sure whether to believe me? I’ll just have to deal with you the hard way then, but I don’t like to get my hands dirty unless I have to. Fry?” He holds the wrapper up to your face, across the table.

The stench of them is not like the comforting smell of French fried potatoes. You glance down your nose into the wrapper, awkwardly. You now notice, up close, that these are not potatoes at all. You move first one hand up to your face and then the other as you feel your stomach start to turn. That crunching sound from his chewing... those were fingernails... those were bones.

He laughs as he holds the wrapper in your face, grabs a fried finger and holds it above his open mouth. He lowers it and starts to chew on the tip, open mouthed, smacking his lips loudly.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

You throw the chair back against the seat behind you and start to run to the bathroom as the bilious taste of vomit starts to fill your mouth and your stomach wretches.

The sound of half mouth filled, guttural laughter fills the air and then is suddenly cut off as the bathroom door closes behind you. The stall looks like it hasn’t been cleaned yet this morning. You stoop and blast your stomach’s contents over the stall wall before finally aiming to the already dirty toilet with a long clump of toilet paper floating in it. You feel dampness on one hand that clutches the side of the toilet.

Finally, after a minute or more, you start to dry heave. Then, as your heart beat calms, you manage to stop the uncomfortable, constant thumping of your digestive system.

Your eyes lazily fall onto the yellow cheap metallic walls around you and your head sinks to lie down on the toilet seat. You know there’s probably vomit there, but you really just don’t care right now. You lay there for a minute, pathetically, until there is a knock on the door that pulls you out of your self-loathing and misery.

“Be out in just a minute...” you manage to sigh out as you finally lift your head and go to the sink to clean yourself up. You hope that Roger is okay; at least Iggy didn’t seem to want to harm you physically. Though, he did say that he did not like to get his hands dirty. Roger really could be hurt, and they could be on their way here now for you.

You open the door and see an empty restaurant, just the sound of the heat lamps buzzing in your ear. You slink out the front door, trying to draw no attention after leaving such a mess of the bathroom.

You walk the several blocks, in the direction of Kepler’s stolen car. Walking doesn’t seem good enough and you try casually jogging while trying to keep a low profile. You hop in the car and, in your nervousness, back the car right into the front bumper of another car. You groan in annoyance at yourself and throw the car in drive. You hit the roads leading down 14th Street, toward the Capitol.

After only a couple of blocks, you realize that a car is tailing you. Could be the car you bumped, could be someone on your tail to ‘teach’ you a lesson or even kill you. You start to drive on autopilot, almost feeling disembodied. You don’t want to end up in the Potomac again. You just drive casual. You cross the bridge into Virginia and realize that you are driving in the direction of the empty house where you and Mysticalis stayed on your last visit to DC. You keep heading there without another thought. As you come to just a couple blocks away, you run a red light just changed from yellow and see in the rear view that the car following has stopped. You make the final turn and barely throw the car into park as you run to the side door. You’ve got no idea if the place is still empty or not occupied, but if it is, you plan on running into their arms and asking for them to call the police.

The side door is still open, just like you left it. You run into the house and start to look for some way to defend yourself. You can’t find anything with so little time as the car that followed you pulls up out front. You get behind the front door, unlock it, and wait, breathing heavily but trying your best to calm your heart rate.

You stay plastered against the wall and listen closely. You faintly hear the sound of footsteps on the concrete just on the other side of the door. Someone is definitely skulking around. Finally, the person tries the door handle just to see if it is locked, which it is not, of course.

You get into a zen mind state and patiently wait for the inevitable. The guy finally opens the door and just after the second step into the house, you push off of the wall behind you and put everything you have into the door, flinging it toward your pursuer. The door unexpectedly nails who you assume to be Harry, and you hear a grunt as the force of the door puts him against the crease of the doorway. The crushing force of the door, and the wall joint in his back, jolts the guy. You pull back the door and slam it forward again with all of your might. Once, twice, and one final third time, you slam the door into your assailant. He collapses in agonizing pain and exhaustion. You immediately grab him and yank him into the house, ripping his work shirt and then slamming the door closed and locking it.

You rip off this guy’s shirt completely and use it to gag him and tie him up with the longer scraps. You know that won’t do for long as you run to the kitchen and dining area and start to dig through the boxes. Minutes and three boxes later, you find a cord of neon rope. You run back to the living room and quickly work to tie the guy up more thoroughly.

You pull back the shirt gag, “Who the fuck are you and why are you following me?”

“Harry...” he says laboriously and coughs up a mouth full of blood. “And I ain’t telling you nothing more. Nothin’!”