Mouth of Madness

by Hunter Blain

  “Where are Magni and Ludvig?” I asked Locke as Tiny Tim came galloping out of my room with tongue flopping and tail wagging so hard it threw off his balance. I scooped him up and rolled onto my back, letting him cover my face in adorable puppy kisses.

  “Grocery shopping. You wouldn’t believe how much Ludvig eats. We had to install an industrial-strength toilet for him! I seriously think the man is partly responsible for the rise in hemp toilet paper use. If we still used wood sources, the entire Amazon rainforest would be gone.”

  “Grocery shopping, huh? That would explain the, ah, couch,” I said slowly, letting my eyes flick between Locke’s phone hand and crotch.

  “Hey, it’s my hous—” he started before catching himself. Instead of correcting his choice of words, he decided to let it go as his eyes drifted off of mine and to the floor.

  “Whe-where am I?” Depweg asked, looking around with squinted eyes as if the place were bathed in spotlights pointed directly at his eyes.

  “You’re home, buddy,” I said reassuringly.

  “Yes, how did you get here, if I may ask?” Locke questioned, returning his eyes to me.

  “Made a new, um, ally…I hope.”

  I explained everything to Locke while picking up Tim and sitting on a recliner chair next to the couch. Lilith, I would have to deep-clean that thing later.

  “I can feel your judgment, and I reject it,” Locke stated. “I am confident that Lily and yourself have done considerably worse on everything but the kitchen sink. Wait, I take that back, including the kitchen sink.”

  My mind flashed to a hundred instances where Locke was right on point.

  “Game-set-match,” I admitted to Locke.

  “Wait…wait a second,” Locke breathed out, scooching close to the edge of where he sat. “If you are here, doesn’t that mean…”

  “That Asmodeus will be heading this way. Lilith damn that Aztec god!” Understanding dawned on what exactly Tezlypolkapants had done.

  “You did ask for his help, dude,” Joey said, helping Depweg to the couch. I lifted my feet up as if I were in a movie theater and someone was trying to pass. Mostly because the weres were completely nude and I didn’t want any rogue appendages touching me. Tim climbed up to my shoulder as I gave them room and proceeded to kiss inside my ear, which was both ticklish and gross. Depweg sat his naked, bloody ass down on the couch, and I stuck out my hand and inhaled to protest before deciding that fire was the only thing left to clean that particular piece of furniture at this point. I let my finger drop and exhaled the air I had sucked in.

  After helping the exhausted Depweg onto the couch, Joey left and disappeared into his room.

  My naked were friend slowly turned to see Tiny Tim, scrunching his brow while his nostrils flared.

  “H-How?” Depweg asked as a weak finger lifted in the general direction of my resurrected puppy.

  “Oh, right! Um, Oberon—or maybe it was Lolth—brought Tim back in a bullshit effort to throw me off my game. Once that bitch was sucked into the black hole, Tim was left as himself again, just like Joey.”

  “But, but his—”

  “—legs,” I interrupted, or rather finished his stammering sentence. “I was able to heal him with help from my celestial armor. You know, before I had to give it up.” I finished with a sigh.

  Depweg looked at me and then Tim with a trepid expression, which was out of character for my hulking military friend. He had been Tim’s owner, though, and was probably struggling with how to handle the situation.

  “Hey, there’s enough puppy kisses to go around,” I reassured my friend. “And I’m sure he’ll enjoy as many tummy pets and behind-the-ear scratches as he can get. I’d hand him to you now, but, ah, you know…you’re all covered in blood and stuff.”

  Depweg looked down at himself as if for the first time and nodded both in confirmation of my statement and appreciation for my gesture. We would all love the adorable little Tiny Tim equally (though no one could ever possibly wuv him more than me).

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked, turning to Locke.

  “Grand Master Silver will surely know you are not in Mexico anymore.”

  “But at least he doesn’t know we are here, right?” I asked, waving my hand around the room to signify the iron.

  Locke turned his gaze to me, cocked his head, and asked in a sarcastic tone, “And you think he won’t be able to easily find John Cook’s house? Everyone else freaking seems to know where you live.”

  “Fortress of Solitaire or, at the very least, lair. Show it some dignity. And if it’s such a big deal, then why didn’t you move it when you thought I was dead?” I asked, leaning back in the chair and crossing my arms while tilting my chin up to the ceiling.

  “Because everyone thought you were dead, so there was no need to come here, simpleton,” Locke countered.

  Ouch, that hurt. Not because he was right but because of the thought that I was the singular cause of danger to my friends—at least ninety percent of the time anyway, and with a ten percent margin of error.

  Locke took the silence as my submission to his point.

  Joey came out of his room fully clothed and went into Depweg’s room. The click of a light, opening of a door, and rustling of coat hangers rang out in the silence.

  “You said Grand Master Silver,” Depweg asked, letting his hands drop from his head to regard Locke.

  “Yes. Why?”

  Depweg turned to me and opened his mouth before I interrupted him. “Yes, we can assume he is related somehow,” I said, closing my eyes while nodding.

  “Then he deserves to kill me,” Depweg said with a finality that sent a cascade of cold vibrations down my spine.

  “No, dude, he doesn’t. How many countless lives have you saved? Hell, if it weren’t for you, Hitler might still be here, running the world like some sort of galactic emperor. I can see it now: instead of ‘gooood, gooood’ he’d be all like, ‘nutzennnnn, nutzennnnn,’ which isn’t as epic. Mostly because it has ‘nut’ in it,” I said with air quotes.

  “John, that was a hundred years ago,” Locke added. “Surely Hitler would have died by now, as he was not a young man when he took power.”

  “Right, but, ah, I figure they’d have, like, Nazi nanorobots or something to prolong life. Or some sort of serum or something. I mean, they did all kinds of nasty experiments on the innocent searching for things like the fountain of youth.”

  Locke just stared at me with eyebrows knitted together, as if he were trying to determine if I was serious or not.

  “Aaaaaaanywhoooooo,” I breathed, changing the subject, “Depweg, you’ve done immense good for this world. Would you say that I deserve the ultimate punishment for my mistakes?” I asked as I nodded my head toward Magni’s room.

  “I don’t just mean for Benji. My mind is hazy, but I know I did bad things recently. Really…bad…things,” he emphasized the words as he looked at me with tears welling in his eyes.

  “You did, man. I’m not gonna lie to you. You did some nasty things that you will spend the rest of your life atoning for. You can start by helping me figure out a way to kill Asmodeus, or at least send him back to Hell with a swift kick to the behind. I’m purty sure that would earn you some Heaven points. Dontcha think?”

  “John,” Depweg said as the tears spilled down his cheeks, “If I were to do good deeds with the purpose of saving my soul, then they wouldn’t count.”

  That struck home like a baseball bat to the nads. I had the same reservations about my own actions.

  “Yes. The fact you feel bad about doing good because you think it’s selfish shows precisely how unselfish you are, brother. You’re a good man who’s made some mistakes. You can be forgiven; you only need ask,” I said as I pointed my index finger to the ceiling while making a point of looking up to the Heavens. Letting my finger and face drop back, I finished with, “The hard part will be forgiving yourself.”

  Depweg looked at me with a quivering lip he tried in vain to
conceal. It seemed the harder he tried to still the emotion that was seeping from his face, the stronger it presented itself.

  Joey came out of the bedroom carrying neatly folded clothing. Depweg took them while mouthing, “Thank you,” unable to muster up the energy to give life to the words. Joey sat in the chair on the opposite side of the couch from me while Depweg looked down at his clothes and just stared at them.

  I snapped, done with the pity party. “Listen up, Marine, you need to snap out of this self-defeating bullshit and man the fuck up. We have a baddest of the bad warlock on our trail with his pet demon lord. I need your head in the game, eyes on the prize, and other such sports-related fluffery. You know, Rome wasn’t built with swinging every miss you, um, take, and all that.”

  Depweg looked at me for a moment and then barked out a single exhausted laugh at how absurd I was.

  “Ha! You laughed! Everything’s okay now!” I pointed both index fingers at him while alternating them shooting back and forth like the needles of a tattoo gun.

  “I missed you, John,” Depweg said as he nodded once, wiping his cheeks and eyes. He set his clothes on the coffee table and began to dress.

  “Er, um, might I suggest a shower first?” I said, letting my eyes pointedly roam over his blood-covered frame.

  “Oh, right. Sorry about the couch, Locke.”

  “I seriously don’t think he minds a stain or two,” I breathed just under a whisper.

  “What was that? Something about the drawer of a nightstand?” Locke goaded while crossing his arms and raising a single eyebrow in challenge.

  “Hmm?” Depweg asked as he stood up.

  “Nu-huh-huthing!” I said with awkward laughs extending the word. “He’s just playing.” My eyes shot down to Locke as I scrunched my brow while simultaneously making my eyes grow bigger in a gesture that said, “Dude, shut the hell up!”

  Locke smiled, catching my submission once again, and let it drop.

  “You two are weird,” Depweg said as he walked to his room. Another door opened and then shut as the unmistakable sound of water pipes echoed through the ceiling.

  Joey turned to walk into his room, saying over his shoulder, “Need to take a nap,” before shutting his door.

  Looking up to where the sound of water was coming from through the ceiling, I asked Locke, “How’s the rain filtration system working? Sounds different than I remember.”

  “That old thing busted years ago. Since I bought the property, I had a proper sewer system installed and connected it to the city. Everything is legit, even the internet.”

  “No more stealing from the groundskeeper’s shack?” I asked with a smile. It had been for the best that I had used the internet at night when he had been asleep, otherwise he might have called his service provider and asked why his speeds were so terrible. Those hi-def puppy videos weren’t going to stream themselves.

  “No more stealing from the groundskeeper’s shack,” Locke confirmed.

  “Wait, if Wo-Fi doesn’t need boxes, how do we get it forty feet below AND inside an iron box?”

  “Had to run a line from the surface that extends the signal through an insulated glass-fiber tube down to that,” Locke pointed to just below the paper-thin TV where a tiny rectangle stood on a stand.

  “That’s neat right there, I don’t care who you are,” I said, imitating Larry the Cable Guy.

  Something Collin had mentioned was next in my thought queue, and I said, “Oh, by the by, the SAC Baker told me that the wardens are looking for me. So, ah, keep an eye out for visitors.”

  “Who’s SAC Baker?”

  “Ah, right. A new ally with the FBPI.”

  “FBPI? Paranormal Investigations?” Locke asked in regard to the acronym.

  “Yeah. No one ever accused the U.S. government of being creative when it came to naming its agencies.”

  “Fair enough,” he responded, thinking. “What do you think the wardens want? And, ah, can we kinda sorta keep me away from them?”

  “Why? Think they might be a teeny bit upset you and your fellow warlocks sent most of the world’s supe population to Faerie to die?”

  “Yeah. That reason,” Locke confirmed as he squirmed on the couch, unable to find a comfortable position all of a sudden. “I have a feeling the police force for the supernatural community won’t be as forgiving of past transgressions as you and Depweg were.”

  I let his statement roll around the inside of my skull for a while like an intense game of Pong.

  “Have any of your contacts heard any whispers?”

  “I’ve let them go by the wayside ever since our little Avengers group grew.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, you can’t say that,” I whispered as I pretended to look around for a hidden recording device while leaning forward in my chair. “Pretty sure that’s copyrighted. Or trademarked. Or both. Hell, I don’t know what to call it. Either way, I don’t wanna get sued.”

  “Then what would you call us, if not a popular movie reference?”

  “Hmm,” I answered while letting my thoughts run free, searching for the right answer. “How about…John and his team of ultracool, but still not as ultimately cool, as…I don’t know where I’m going with this.”

  “Hmph,” Locke answered as his head nodded in amused annoyance, as if he knew precisely what I was going to say before it left my mouth.

  “Preter Friends! You know, like Super Friends from that other comic book franchise, but legally different! ’Cause we are preternatural? Get it?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Locke breathed out as he rested his face in his palms and shook his head in disbelief. “Thank God you are not an author, John. You’d never make it with that complete and utter lack of imagination.” Locke lifted his head in sudden realization before saying, “Now it makes sense. You can’t even do something as simple as naming someone. Da? PS? That is the epitome of lazy creativity. Yeah, you’d definitely never make it as a writer.”

  “Not sure how to feel about that,” I stated. “But at least I could secure a job at the freaking naming department of the government, right?”

  “There’s that, I suppose. Always good to have a backup plan.”

  Frustration boiled over without warning as I took in everything Locke was saying, probably because of the mention of Da. “Wait a feck’n minute, I’m a damn millionaire! I don’t need no stinking job!”

  “Billion,” Locke corrected.

  “Ex-squeeze-me? Come on my tits again?” I asked in a high-pitched voice while positioning my hand behind my ear to better hear with. “Did you say ba-ba-ba-billion? With a ba-ba-ba-B?”

  “So when’s your next trip to Faerie? I already need a vacation from you,” Locke said while heavily massaging his temples. “Yes, John, billion. Several, actually.”

  “How much many is many much?” I asked eloquently.

  “It’s probably best you don’t know, otherwise you might buy entire countries on a whim.”

  “I can do that?” I asked with budding excitement. My fists where next to my face, and I was shaking them joyously with wide eyes.

  “Sweet baby Jesus, help me,” Locke prayed, pushing on his temples so hard his fingers were turning white.

  “Hey, if I have a buttload of cash, why do we live in this underground freight car Lego set wannabe?”

  Locke stopped massaging his temples and slowly looked up at me. “You know, I don’t really know. I mean, I stayed here because with you gone for that relaxing vacation period, no one was looking for you. That, and I wanted to lie low from the wardens and, um, my old boss.” He tilted his head and nodded toward the ground when mentioning his “old boss.”

  “Ah, got ya. Anyway, can we, like, buy a mansion or something? You know, with machine gun turrets, motion-sensing lasers, and attack dogs! Yeah!”

  “That,” Locke began as he looked at me with mouth agape, “is one of the smartest things you have ever said. I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about you. Well, mostly everything. You still suck at
names.”

  “SAID LOCKE THE WARLOCK! You got to pick your own damn name and you freaking rhymed? Are you kidding me?!”

  “What were you expecting? Harry? There’re enough wizards out there to cover that one.”

  “I can only think of two. Potter, who clearly isn’t real, and that one tall dude up north somewhere, Chicago, I think. But seriously, Locke the Warlock? That’s like me calling myself, um, Nick Feratu the Nosferatu. See what I mean?”

  “Terrible example, but I can understand the attempt. So, ah, mansion?”

  “YES! With a shit ton of land and underground stuff. You know, like super-secret rooms and whatnot. Enough to survive a direct nuclear explosion!”

  “I’ll whip up some ideas and get back to you.”

  We sat in silence for a spell while waiting for Depweg to come back. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my comfortable chair as I absentmindedly stroked the sleeping puppy’s fur. Something came to mind, and I turned to Locke and asked, “What can you tell me about warlocks?”

  “Do you mean individually or as an organization?”

  “Warlocks are organized into one group? That’s pretty impressive.”

  “Well,” Locke began, letting out a puff of air as his mind reeled on where to start, “um…oh, let’s try this. Warlocks are like a company; at the head is an owner, president, and/or CEO. That’s what Grand Master Silver is. He runs the show and makes the big decisions. Under him are the COO, CFO, etcetera, etcetera. They have their own departments they oversee, with supervisors that work for them to ensure the company’s total vision is followed. The list goes all the way down to the equivalent of interns.”

  “And where does Satan fall in all of this?”

  “He is the bulk of shareholders that the company must please if they—if you forgive the expression—want to stay alive. The CEO may run the show, but every decision has to account for the shareholders that have the bulk stake in the company.”