by Paul Neuhaus
“It’s a tough sell, I’ll admit.”
“Plus, there were other missteps. Dad tends to lead with his chin. To act on instinct. He invested in a line of pet synagogues. That went about as well as you’d expect.”
“Pet Synagogues?”
“Yeah. A real flame-out. He couldn’t get the little yarmulkes to stay on the doggies and kitties. It was doomed to failure.”
“Wow.”
“I know. If you see my dad again, don’t ask him about the poster. He’s sensitive.”
“He’s sensitive? Then why’s he got the poster on his wall?”
Keri rolled her eyes. “I dunno. He has a thing about destiny and an uncaring universe. You know the shtick.”
I stood up and walked away from the desk. In transit, I accidentally bumped the mouse. The screen came awake and, at first, I didn’t pay it any mind. Then I did a double take and backed up. On the screen was a photograph. In the photograph were two men standing on either side of a horse. Not a cartoon horse, but a real horse. Both men were dressed as characters from “My Little Pony”—and that wasn’t even the most arresting thing in the photo. “Get over here,” I said to Keri.
Keri got up off the couch and came around to stand next to me. “Oh my god!” she said.
The man on the left was Elijah. I didn’t recognize the guy on the right. “Who’s the guy on the right?” I said.
Keri leaned in to take a closer look at the picture. She was fixated on the same thing I was fixated on. “What? The guy on the right? That’s my dad’s best friend. Chad Kroeger.”
I was stymied for a moment. “Chad Kroeger? The singer from Nickelback?”
“No, but he has the same name, so he does that ironic, hipster thing of embracing it. He claims to be the world’s biggest Nickelback fan.”
“And he’s also a brony?”
“Looks that way.”
“Ouch.”
“Why’re you focusing on Chad? Look at the fucking horse.”
She was right.
The horse between the two men had wings.
3
Fear and Loathing at BronyKonfab
Seeing the picture gave me a shot of adrenaline. For the moment, thoughts of sleep went out the window. The horse in the photo was either the Pegasus of legend, or it was some damn-convincing equine cosplay. I looked closely, trying to determine if the wings were made of papier-mâché. They looked like the genuine article. Like bird wings only fucking huge. I couldn’t see the animal’s back because his head was in the way, but the wings looked like they were placed properly and were sturdy enough that they could’ve gotten the critter aloft.
“Is that what I think it is?” Keri said.
I squinted even harder, almost willing myself to find some defect. “It sure as hell looks like it.”
“What do you think now?”
“I think maybe we oughta go find your dad.”
“See? I told you there was something weird going on!”
“Good for you. When they hospitalize me for exhaustion, you can tell them you were right. Come on. We’re going back to Santa Monica.”
We exited the room for the second time, shutting both doors behind us. On the way to the stairs, the teenager moved toward her bedroom. “Hold on a sec. I gotta get something.”
“Time for another dose?”
Keri tried to look innocent, but she took my meaning. “A dose?”
“Of happy pills.”
The girl dropped her hand from the knob and went for the stairs. She didn’t comment, so neither did I. When we got outside, Beardie was still sitting in his BMW. I waved at him as I got into the Firebird and started her up. Sure enough, as we pulled out of Westwood, the beemer followed at a discreet distance.
I took the long way back to Santa Monica by way of Malibu. If the picture of Elijah, Chad and the winged steed was real, I wanted some back-up. I needed my Intel.
All I wanted to do was scoop up Hope and be on my way. Unfortunately, another rude surprise was waiting for me when I opened the door. There was Hermes sitting on my couch in front of my laptop with his pants around his ankles. He scrambled to cover his cock and I slammed the door. Through the door, I heard him say, “Don’t you believe in knocking?!”
I shouted back at him, “This is my house, motherfucker!”
After a moment, he poked his head out the door and said, “Please. Come right in.”
Keri and I brushed past him. Both of us gave the messenger god a sour look. “What were you even looking at on there?” I said. “I don’t have high-speed Internet.”
Hermes shut the laptop. “An archive of J.C. Penny’s catalogs. Lingerie section.”
“Dude. You have a problem. You need to talk to someone. You have no impulse control.”
“You made yourself into Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo,” Keri said to Hermes.
Hope chimed in. “I cleared my throat a few times, but he ignored me. He’s like a horny little monkey.”
Hermes rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. We all got to see a god’s pee pee. Big deal. Let’s try and stay adult about this.”
I started to say something about maturity levels and self-gratification, but I didn’t wanna spend any more time on it. I turned to Keri. “What’s Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned it. Was it a kids’ show?”
The teenager shook her head. “No, it was a real place. My dad used to take me there. During better times.”
Hope drew my attention away from Wiener. “Thank the gods you’re home,” she said. “We’ve got an Evil right on top of us. In Santa Monica even.”
I hadn’t expected to hear that. “Wait... What?”
“I just picked up a blip,” my jar-bound friend said. “Right before you came in. He’s only a few miles from here. And he’s a nasty one.”
“Swell. That’s a complication we don’t need. You said Santa Monica... He wouldn’t be in the Convention Center, would he?”
“That sounds about right.”
“Fuck. Okay. I knew I was right to stop for Intel.”
Hope cooed at the word "Intel". I’d found an idiom she was deeply in love with. “Take me with you. I can be Nicky Parsons!”
“That’s right. You can be Nicky Parsons.” Nicky Parsons was the character Julia Stiles played in the Bourne movies. More often than not, her role was to feed Matt Damon information through an earpiece. I scooped up Hope and opened the front door again. “When I get back,” I said to Hermes. “I’m going over this place with a black light. Just so you know.”
The god mocked me in a sing-song cadence. “Just so you know.”
Keri and I exited, ran to the Firebird, and jumped in.
On the drive over to Santa Monica, Hope and I shared info. I told her about our probable Pegasus sighting and she told me the Evil in play was none other than the Kraken. A sea monster spawned by Poseidon. That added an extra dimension since the Kraken had a personal beef against Pegasus. It was Pegasus and Perseus who stopped the Kraken’s attack on the coastal city of Argos. The beastie might’ve been looking to settle an old score.
After Hope told me her bit, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Because the Kraken was one of the nine thousand we already had. He must’ve slipped out when I rolled over. On top of Vasquez Rocks.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied. “That was a joint operation and we were spinning a lot of plates. The fact we only lost one of the little fuckers is nothing short of amazing.”
“I know, but I still feel bad. And, yes, before you ask, I did take an inventory as soon as I realized the Kraken was loose. He’s definitely the only one that gave us the slip.”
I shrugged my shoulders as I drove. “Look on the bright side. The fact we came out as well as we did kind of makes us badasses.”
Hope mulled that over for a moment. “Don’t be too hasty,” she said. “There’s an aspect that maybe hasn’t occurred to you...�
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“What do you mean?”
“Well, this is only a theory, but it seems like a strong one: What if the Kraken got access to Pegasus? What do you think he’d do?”
“You mean apart from killing him for revenge?”
“Yeah, apart from that.”
Then it hit me. I saw exactly where Hope’s head was at. “Oh. Shit.”
Keri had been looking back and forth between me and my talking jug. “What? What would the Kraken do apart from killing Pegasus for revenge?”
I sighed, hooking us off of the Pacific Coast Highway into Santa Monica. “A long time ago, Hope and I captured the Kraken. When that happened, we sucked out his essence and put him in the pithos. When he escaped us recently, he was still just a disembodied spirit—but he doesn’t have to stay that way. If he can drink the blood of a magical creature—like Pegasus—he can get his physical form back.”
“And that would be bad?”
“Only if you think having a forty-foot bipedal crab running amok over Southern California is bad.”
I had to hand it to Keri. She was taking the more outlandish elements of our misadventure in stride. Maybe she was the type to soldier on and put off the nervous breakdown until after. Maybe that’s what the pills were for. “Okay, okay,” she replied. “Hope said the Kraken was at the Santa Monica Convention Center. That’s not where Pegasus is. At least it doesn’t look like that’s where he is.”
“No, but there are at least two people at the BronyKonfab who know where the horse is holed-up.”
“My dad and Chad...”
“Your dad and Chad.”
“Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”
When we got to the Convention Center, the first thing we noticed were the cop cars and the ambulances. They were hard to miss since they were blocking one of the entrances and their sirens were strobing blue and red. In fact, we’d arrived in time to see a gurney wheeled out of the big building—a gurney with a body covered from head-to-toe by a sheet. Where the head was, there was a huge red-black stain.
Keri gasped. “Oh, shit! Do you think that’s my dad?”
“No, I do not think that’s your dad,” I said in the most reassuring tone I could manage. “The odds of that being Elijah with all the other people who’re in that building, are slim to none.” I started going over the options in my head. There was no way in hell we were parking at the Convention Center with all the chaos surrounding it. I tooled around for a while until I found a meter on a side street, then I parked. Sure enough, the BMW S was still lurking about. I’d almost forgotten about him in all the confusion.
Keri was still nervous. “What’re we doing? Are we gonna walk to the convention? Do you think they’ll let us in, or do you think the place is sealed-off? What about tickets? We don’t have tickets.”
“Settle down,” I said. “Cool your jets. Right now, we’re gonna do something we should’ve done back at the house, but, duh, I didn’t think of it until just now.”
“What? What’re we gonna do?”
I indicated the girl’s leather purse. “You must have a phone, right?”
“Yeah, I have a phone, but I see where you’re headed,” the teenager replied. “My dad doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t believe in them. Which is almost as weird as the whole brony thing. Anyway, don’t you think, if he had a phone, I would’ve called him and found out where he was before I even came to see you?”
She had me there. “Okay, okay. Dumb question. I was gonna see if you could call your dad and he could sneak us in the back. We’re gonna have to improvise.” We got out of the car and I grabbed my backpack out of the trunk. For a moment, I stared longingly at my “Peekaboo” brass knuckles, but decided they were a little showy for the occasion. With Hope attached to my back, Keri and I walked downhill toward the Convention Center. “If any weird shit goes down, I want you to stay behind me, alright? I’ve got tons of experience dealing with this kind of thing.”
“Okay, but don’t baby me,” Keri replied. “Remember: I’m mean, and I got a low center of gravity.”
“I remember.” We picked up our pace as it started to rain.
Keri and I snuck around the back of the Santa Monica Convention Center just as a maintenance guy popped open one of the doors in the back. He looked both ways, making sure he didn’t see any cops, then he dashed across the blacktop behind the building. Who knows what his deal was, but his exit granted us the sneaky entrance we needed.
We were in a hallway with the most hideous carpeting I’d ever seen. The air smelled of hot dog water and stale popcorn. I guessed we were in the same wing as the food court. Before we headed toward the door on the other end of the hall, we heard the sharp crack and muffled voice of a police radio. We froze and waited for the sound to pass. It did. We dashed toward the door and went through it, emerging into, sure enough, the food court. The brony-packed food court. The place was jammed with people dressed like cartoon horses. Some of them had tiny wings. Others had unicorn horns. Almost all of them were males over the age of twenty-five. All their heads turned toward us when we entered. Keri and I were suddenly uncomfortable—especially since, to a man, the bronies looked shell-shocked and afraid. “As you were,” I said, and most of the guys went back to whatever they were doing when we came in.
“God, look at this place,” Keri said. “It’s like another planet.”
“Forget about that for right now. Something’s going on. These guys look like they’ve seen a ghost.”
“I know, but my God. Can you believe this? A bunch of grown men dressed like tween girls at a sleepover. It’s fucking bizarre.”
“Keep your voice down. The last thing we need is to get rushed by a bunch of ticked-off bronies. Scan the crowd. Look for Chad and your dad.”
The teen nodded and stood on tip-toe, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. I whispered to Hope over my shoulder. “Is the Kraken here?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s here, but he’s just an ambient presence. As soon as he shows himself, I’ll be able to get a tight lock.”
I nodded and approached the table nearest where I was standing. At it sat the Laurel and Hardy of “My Little Pony” fans. One thin as a rail, the other shaped like a blueberry. Neither one of them had come in full cosplay mode. They were wearing pony-themed t-shirts, but that I could overlook. “Excuse me,” I said. “What’s going on? Why’re you all corralled in here?”
Hardy was the one who replied (Laurel looked like he was more than a little girl-shy). “You didn’t see it? You weren’t in the atrium when it happened?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t in the atrium. What was it? What happened?”
Hardy ran his palm down his face and sighed a PTSD-in-the-making sigh. His eyes were haunted. “I was out there. Me and Dill. This is Dill.” Dill, AKA Laurel, nodded at me. “We saw Derek Graywillow headed toward us. He’s the webmaster of brony hearts beat true dot com. We recognized him; we were excited. But then he started screaming. Blood started pouring out of his eyes. Out of his mouth. He yelled, ‘Get it out of me! Get it out of me!’ and then he leapt over the railing. We’re on the fourth floor. He fell four stories. Me and Dill froze in place. We didn’t know what to do. And then this big black cloud rose up from where Derek took his leap, and I swear it had a face. It had a face and it laughed at us. It laughed at everyone in the atrium.”
Fuck. Hardy had just given the perfect layman’s description of an Evil. The Kraken was definitely here with us in the Convention Center. And he wanted to play. “What happened next?” I said. “Where’s the cloud with the face now?”
Hardy looked at Laurel, and Laurel, said. “It went into an air duct. Then all hell broke loose. People started running here and there. A few minutes later, the cops and the ambulances showed up. The cops rounded everybody up and put is in here; told us to sit tight.” Then he shook his head and his voice dropped in volume. “God above. I never seen anything like it.”
Right then, I heard my name. “Dora! Dora!”
It was Keri and she was waving me over. Before I turned away, I squeezed Laurel’s arm and told him and his friend everything would be okay. As I walked away, Laurel said, “Hey! How come you have a jug on your back?”
“That,” I said. “Is a really long story.”
Keri had done well. She was standing next to a man I immediately identified as Chad Kroeger (as in our Chad Kroeger, not the Nickelback Chad Kroeger). Unfortunately for us, Chad was decked out for the occasion. He was wearing a one-piece unicorn outfit with a rainbow mane and tail. I say “unfortunately” not just for the obvious reason, but also because the get-up was skin-tight. Before the two of us had even exchanged a greeting, I knew that Chad was uncircumcised—which is, you know, super-gross. “Hey, Dora,” Keri said. “This is my dad’s buddy Chad. Chad, this is Dora.”
Kroeger held out his hand and I shook it. “I feel like I know you already. I’ve heard tons about you. We’re talking years of anecdotes.”
That took me aback. I almost never talked about Elijah—mostly because I didn’t know anybody that’d listen. “Not all bad, I hope.”
Chad waved a hand at me. “Are you kidding. I started calling you ‘Saint Dora’. You’d think El never had a girlfriend before you.”
“Technically, I don’t think he did,” I said.
“Come on. El’s over in the coffee bar on the other side,” the full-grown man in the unicorn suit said to me. He raised his eyebrow in reference to my prior comment. “No one before you, eh? Can you verify that?”
“You mean do I have my own fact-checking department? No, I’m just telling you what he told me. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m his friend. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t use rumor and innuendo to humiliate and degrade him?”
“Point taken.”
By then, Kroeger was leading us from where we were, across the atrium, to a coffee bar on the other side. His outfit did some impressive lifting and separating of his buttocks. Thank the gods his swishy tail distracted Keri and I from the spectacle. We passed three cops walking by, talking amongst themselves. We were moving into the atrium, a center court area looking down on multiple floors. The ceiling above was glass. Hanging from crossbeams were long banners depicting the characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Fluorescent colors. Real retina burners. Bronies—male and female—stood in little clusters chatting nervously. I noticed one of the attendees had a Corgi on a leash. The Corgi was cosplaying, too. Little horse ears, a mane, the whole nine yards.