by D. S. Ritter
“God, no! Maybe I could protect myself when this all comes down, or portal into another dimension or something.”
“There are other dimensions?”
“Yeah. Of course. Where do you think these things are coming from?”
She stared at him. “You’re kind of an asshole, you know?”
He shook his head. “I’m a realist. You can kill as many monsters as come out of that hole, sure. But you can’t change the direction of the stars, and you certainly can’t stop what’s coming.”
Sam finished her drink and got back from break a few minutes late.
At the end of the night, when it was time to cash out, Sam could feel the hammer about to come down.
"Hey, Sam?" Marcus was finishing counting up her bank bag with a telling look on his face. "I'm going to need you to step into the back office with me."
Yep. There it was. She followed him into the other room, which was used for management paper work. And also, talkings to.
"Look, you're normally pretty good about this kind of stuff, but I've been noticing some slipping coming from you, Sam," he said, frowning. "You get back late from break tonight, I look at the cameras and you're not always where you're supposed to be. You've been here a couple years, and I kind of expect better from you."
Sam didn't say anything, but nodded. The part of her that cared about her job performance was currently buried under the part that was terrified of the world ending, so his words washed over without touching her.
"Now, I'm going to have to write you up for coming back late from lunch, Sam. I don't want to do that. One more slip like this, and it's going to be a suspension, and I don't think any of us want that, right? We got new guys coming in to upper management and they mean business, you know what I mean?" He handed her the form to sign. "You can do better, right?"
"Right." She was having a hard time concentrating, or caring. The situation struck her as incredibly stupid and she laughed as she got in her car, partly to keep from crying.
Chapter Eight
Who do you tell about the end of the world?
Sam sat in her apartment and stared at her cell phone. She didn’t want to think John could be right, but if he was, what was the point of anything? She could try to get him to take her to the other dimension with him, but what about everyone else? The idea of running out on everybody felt terrible, but what would staying achieve?
She paged through the black book again, staring at the star charts she’d missed before. They were there, as plain as the nose on her face, but she hadn’t seen them. A brief interest in astrology in high school made them slightly understandable, but she had no idea how to read them. They were a detail she’d overlooked. What else might she be overlooking?
She really wanted to pick John’s brains and then bash his selfish head in. According to the internet, chaos magicians were not actually a thing, but then, the internet had been failing her a lot lately.
She kept hitting the wall of “What can I do?” over and over. The one useful thing the internet had told her, thanks to some new-age websites and NASA, was when the final alignment would occur. She had a couple of weeks before what John had described as “the end” would take place. That gave her a lot of time to panic, or plan. Sam tried to stick to planning and avoid going mad, but madness looked pretty good.
Eventually, she caved and picked up the phone.
[Unknown Number]
Freaking out?
Sam almost dropped it. “Fuck,” she said, staring at it.
Sam D:
Who is this?
[unknown number]
John. M little drunk.
Sam D:
How did you get this number?
[unknown number]
Magic
Sam D:
You gotta know something. How do we stop this?
[unknown number]
You don’t. Whats coming is too big. Once the thrall brings it we toast.
Sam D:
Then why text me?
[unknown number]
Wanna fuck?
Sam D:
I hate you. Lose this number.
She tossed the phone on the bed. Now, she was definitely going to fight. Screw John. She’d killed two monsters so far, she’d kill anything else that came out of that hole, somehow. Sam took a deep breath, picked up the phone and sent a mass text to the regular night shift crew.
Sam D:
You guys want to kill some monsters?
Chapter Nine
“You have a fucking crossbow?” Sam was hanging out next to Seven-Four East, the booth where Heather was filling in for a lunch break. It was a Tuesday night, so traffic was pretty much non-existent. “Why do you have a crossbow?”
Heather shrugged. “My dad and brother like to bow hunt up north. I was into it for a little while, but I really like that Renfest shit, you know? There’s a range like, forty-five minutes from here.”
“So, you’re like what, deadly?”
“I’ve never actually killed anything,” she said, looking over as a car pulled up. The man inside handed her his ticket, and she ran it through the machine in the booth. “That’s going to be three dollars, my man.”
The guy handed over his money without a word and drove away when the gate came up. Heather turned back to the conversation. “How many more of these things are coming?”
“I have no idea. A lot. You could kill a lot with a crossbow, probably.”
Heather nodded. “That might be cool. You can count me in.”
“Do you know if anyone else has anything?”
“Jesus has a lame-ass fake samurai sword.”
Sam thought about this for a moment. “These things have been pretty soft so far, so maybe that’ll work? You think it’s just gonna break?”
“Maybe. Looked cheap as hell.”
Another car pulled up to the booth. It was a mid-priced sedan with a man and a woman inside. Normal, reasonable seeming people. The man rolled down the driver’s side window. “We lost our ticket.” It’s amazing how level people’s voices are in the beginning of conversations like this one.
Heather sighed. “You sure you’ve lost it? Like, you’ve looked really hard?”
The man shrugged. “I think we left it at the restaurant.”
“You might want to go back and see if they've got it. The places around here save them if they find ‘em, so you might be in luck.”
The man shook his head. “Nah, we just want to get out of here.”
Heather looked the customer dead in the eye. “A lost ticket will be thirty dollars.”
They all paused for a second as the news sank in, and despite all the end of the world stuff going on, Sam felt herself holding her breath, waiting for the man to react.
“That’s fucking crazy,” he said, his face contorting.
“There’s no way we’re paying that,” said the woman in the passenger’s seat, leaning forward, trying to lock eyes with Heather, like that would be enough to change company policy.
“There’s nothing I can do,” said Heather, stone-cold. “It’s posted all over the place.”
“That’s bullshit,” spat the man behind the wheel. “I’m not fucking paying. Just raise the gate.”
“Sir, I can’t do that without processing your ticket, or issuing you a new one, which I can’t do unless you pay the lost ticket fee.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Sam knew which way the wind was blowing. It was like seeing the future as the guy looked back over his shoulder. There was nobody behind him, so he backed up about thirty feet. “Don’t you do it!” she yelled at him, forgetting all that “the customer is always right” bullshit.
The man floored it, bringing the sedan up to ramming speed. Sam took a step back and Heather shielded her face, flinching away. The gate offered no resistance. It bent and crumpled as the car slammed into it, splintering the plexiglass and bending the metal until it snapped, falling apart. Before the car could get around the corner, Sam was
following behind, taking a photo with her phone.
“You get the license plate, Sam?” asked Heather, the radio already in her hand. Just another night working in the parking garages.
“Yeah, I got it.”
The man driving off with bits of the gate dragging behind might have thought he’d gotten away with not paying the thirty dollars, but he’d just messed with city property. The next day, he’d be rudely awakened by a cop writing him a ticket that would cost two grand and, depending on the judge, some community service. “Boy, isn’t Jesus going to be surprised when he gets back?” said Heather, taking a cigarette out of her purse.
With her lunch break nearly over and maintenance and management on the way to handle the mess, Sam headed back to Seven-One.
The response to her text had been a positive one, with almost everyone volunteering. There were still weeks to go before the big event, enough time to amass an arsenal. Had Sam told them about the true nature of what was coming? No. Of course not. She could barely handle the idea herself. Panic wasn’t going to help anyone. And so, they seemed to be coming at it like an inter-mural softball game; parking attendants verses the hounds of hell. Kim was talking about having t-shirts made.
T-shirts for the end of the world.
That Sam would work anymore was a monument to the power of habit. But, if she wasn’t directing cars to the exits and putting tickets in the machines, she’d probably be at home freaking the fuck out.
Take the ticket. Put it in the machine. Smile. Swipe the credit card. Stripe up and to the right. Have a nice night. Maybe she was freaking out a little, anyway.
“This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen!” The customer had pulled cash out of his wallet and seemed more than a little annoyed his payment wasn't being accepted. Sam barely listened. How many times had she heard this particular tirade?
“Sir. I’m sorry you didn’t read any of the signs we have posted all over the structure, but this machine is not designed to take cash. It will take debit or credit cards.”
“Can’t you just take my cash and let me out?”
“I’m really not supposed to take cash,” she lied. Was she being the best parking attendant she could be? No. But under the circumstances, the fact she had remained polite should have earned points. “I’m out in the open here. I could get mugged or something, you know?”
The guy frowned. “So, what do I do?”
“You can pull over there,” she pointed behind them to an open Empire Employees Only space, “and pay at the machine in the elevator lobby.”
He swore under his breath, looked behind him and pulled his car in reverse. Just this act of making his day slightly more bothersome made Sam feel a little better. A tiny revenge, not on him, but on the general parking population.
But seriously, she thought, follow the fucking rules and save yourself a headache, people.
She knew from talking to customers who had parked in other countries that the American parking industry was soft on customers who didn't get with the program. You didn’t lose your ticket in Europe or Mexico, you didn’t just back up your car, because traffic was higher and everyone else had their shit together. The parking game elsewhere was fierce. Empire customers were spoiled in comparison. And the level of entitlement…
How many times had Sam dealt with a customer sitting in a car that cost more than her stint in college, who had eaten a meal that cost an entire day’s worth of work, but became pissed off because she dare ask them to pay their three dollar fee for parking?
In the grand scheme of things, though, now that the grand scheme included monsters, alternative dimensions, and the end of the world approaching, it was hard to get angry about stuff like that. It was hard to get angry about anything. She even found it hard to be mad at John, despite his being a selfish douche bag. Well, she forgave the booty call, anyway. And maybe she'd forgive his cowardice, but that was much harder.
While she waited for the customer to finish up in the lobby, she got a text.
Franklin M:
Hey, when we doing this thing?
Sam smiled.
Sam D:
You sure you’re up for this?
Franklin M:
I’m gunna fuck some shit up!!!
The support she was receiving from her coworkers helped keep Sam positive about her chances, but there were a lot of heavy thoughts going through her head that made sleep elusive, food flavorless. What if someone died? What if they all died? What if… She pushed this stuff into the background as the customer got back into his car, pulled up to the machine and jammed his ticket into the slot. “Have a nice night,” she said as he rolled up his window without a word and drove off.
Sam D:
A couple of weeks.
Get your stuff together.
Meet up soon.
***
As it turned out, the epoxy was not up to the challenge of subduing occult forces. Sam frowned as she inspected the seal at the end of her shift. The event was coming up and the creatures in the cistern were not dead yet. The epoxy was cracking badly. If what John said was true, about them being created by dark forces, they probably didn’t need to eat, or sleep, sustained on some sort of magic.
Magic. Who knew that would be a thing she’d consider?
She walked up to street level and went pick up her backpack from the bathroom. Inside, she found a U of M football flier posted on the wall. She glanced at it. Truth be told, she hated football. The amount of anger and screaming games elicited in her childhood home had made it impossible to like. This hate grew exponentially once she'd started working in a big ten college town. She looked down the list of home and away games. The first huge game was coming up;9/8 - Ohio State – HOME.
She swore under her breath. Ohio State and Michigan State were the two games she didn’t want to happen in Ann Arbor. Those match ups brought out the worst in the students and alumni, and they’d all come crawling out of the woodwork and into her life. But, there was something extra worrisome here; she looked at the date again. “Oh, fuck no.”
Chapter Ten
“Ugh, what?” Sam was still mostly asleep, her face half-buried in her pillow.
“Dude, the seal’s about to go,” said Carter, his voice distorted by interference. “It’s about to be monster town up in here.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” she said, rolling over. “Be careful, okay? If anything big comes out, just get out of there.”
“No shit,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she rubbed her face and blinked in the sunlight peeking through the blinds. “See you later.” She hung up the phone and tossed it to the end of the bed.
She didn’t feel nearly as confident as she sounded. Her stomach felt like a ball of ice. She was not a killer. Before those things had showed up, she’d never even killed a mouse. Now, she tried to decide things like if she her biggest kitchen knife was sharp enough to bother with, and wondered if she ought to invest in an axe or a sledgehammer.
Dragging herself out of bed, she tried to shake the nightmares. They became more and more real each time she put her head on the pillow. Last night, the monsters had been chasing her through a house she didn’t recognize.
It was dark, full of inexplicable shadows that moved of their own volition. The house was strange, made up of endless hallways crowded with old relics and containing almost no doors. The few she found were made of a wood so dark, the dim lighting made it seem black. Her heart hammered in her chest as she tried the handle to one of them, but it might as well have been a painting on the wall.
All the time, she could hear the scrape of their claws on the hardwood. They didn’t sound like the coolant goobers. These sounded big. The monster journal flashed before her mind’s eye and it seemed to catch words and phrases of the ancient writing, but none of it made any sense. And somewhere, deep in the recesses of a lower level, a screaming howl, like an angry wind, began. This sound sent a chill down her spine as she ran through
the house, her feet slow and clumsy, the monsters behind her, impossibly fast.
She turned a blind corner and found herself in a dead end, with nothing but walls on three sides. And on the wall in front of her, hung a portrait, though not of any person. What hung there was a depiction of a bound creature, huge and hulking, its bulk curled into a fetal position. It was cradled in the darkness of space, the stars surrounding dulled by its dark aura. The scraping of claws were deadly close, and the howling in the basement dropped in tone until it shook the walls with its bass register. As Sam stared, one of the portrait’s eyes opened and shifted to return her gaze.
Sam woke up shaken, and it had taken over an hour to coax herself back to sleep. She wondered if her life would ever be normal again, or if this was the new normal. Making a cup of instant coffee, she hoped not. Obviously, she would never be the same but, life needed to go on beyond September. She would make sure of that.
***
The first home game of fall was always rowdy. School had yet to get really serious, and the students were up for partying. Traffic was an utter nightmare, and it wasn’t even an important rivalry.
“What is taking so long?” demanded a man in a minivan, sitting halfway up the ramp. She watched his wife deal with their kids in the backseat, and Sam saw things quickly reaching a boiling point. The traffic in the structure was slow as molasses, but so was the traffic on the street, now that the game against Penn State had ended in a loss.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Sam, whose job was comprised of a lot more apologizing than they’d made it seem when she’d interviewed for it, “but there’s nothing I can do. We’ve got a traffic jam out there. Everyone’s trying to get out of town at once.” People wanted to get home in a hurry, rather than stay and drink when their team lost, so everyone seemed to have the same idea.