The Life of Stephen Gage
May 29, 2011 21:58:47 GMT -5
Post by Stephen Gage on May 29, 2011 21:58:47 GMT -5
EXTRAORDINARILY IMPORTANT: The Stephen Gage in this story is not the Stephen Gage from Hammel. I just have a tendency to re-use names, since it's easy. Very important that one understands that.
It's a moder urban fantasy that's fairly heavy on the light-heartedness. The formatting may be a bit off, as I transferred it from a word document and the formatting got all wonky.
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My name is Stephen Gage, and like I do most Thursdays, I’m sitting outside of an ice cream parlor at three in the morning with a gun in my right hand and a cone of the cold stuff in my left. Next to me is a Wizard or Sorcerer or Mage or whatever-you-want-to-call-him with a fondness for a combination of peanut butter, graham crackers, and cake-batter flavored frozen dairy. He prefers Greg, by the way. Says that “Wizard” doesn’t work because he’s not old and grey, “Sorcerer” isn’t a fit because he doesn’t live in a tower, and really, who has ever liked the sound of “Mage?” I called him a Warlock once after a few drinks and I spent three days with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” playing in my ears. No one else could hear it. He’s kind of a mean drunk. So, I take back that “Call him what you want” thing. Don’t call him that. Or at least, do it before you go to a bar.
Back to the ice cream parlor stuff. I do this often, whenever both of us have the time, of which Greg has tremendous amounts. I’ve known Greg since I started in this business ten years ago. Tried to shoot him, at first. About ten feet from where he just spilled a bit of peanut butter on the sidewalk. That plan kind of shit the bed when my gun turned into a piglet and I found myself holding a little squealing thing. Scared me half to death and I dropped it, and watched my gun-pig run off down the street. Sometimes I wonder if it’s still out there. Probably not. I don’t know the lifespan of pigs. I was young then, younger, and pretty sure that I was going to die or spend the rest of my days clucking or something.
“Sit down, shut the fuck up, and enjoy some fucking ice cream.”
That’s what he said, and it was then that I was pretty sure he was not going to kill me or make me a chicken. After a few centuries, according to him, you’ve had pretty much everything happen to you, so nothing really fazes you, including being shot at. Still doesn’t explain the vulgarity, and the guy swears more than a Scottish dockworker. That’s probably just him.
We’ve kept it up since, with decidedly less violence. We do this every Thursday morning. The gun’s part of my job, so it comes with me. Greg pops in, literally, about the time I show up. I use the subway system. I like that method of travel. It’s not quiet or calm, but it has its own sort of peace about it. There aren’t many people on the subway at this time of night, but it’s not the people that take away the quiet. The trains do that themselves and all the swaying and jostling makes sure that you don’t really fall asleep, but exist in a pleasant sort of daze. Unless you’ve just spent two hours chasing a Shapeshifter all over the east side. Then you pretty much pass out and the driver wakes you up and calls you a hobo and kicks you off. Been there. Nobody really appreciates what people like me do, but in their defense, they don’t know about it. That’s part of the reason I hang out with Greg, aside from the fact he’s got some pretty blunt and brutal opinions on just about everything. He’s met others like me. He knows.
What Subway-Driver doesn’t know is that I spend my life hunting the things that star in the fairy tales they tell their kids. I’m a Hunter, one of many across the globe and since I was twenty-two I’ve been keeping watch over my city to make sure I don’t wake up to find gnomes running everything. I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen enough. Sirens, Harpies, Werewolves, Basilisks, and I saw an Afanc once. It’s pretty much a big frog with claws. There’s a Welsh story about one, but it’s an entire race, not something that decided to pop in to existence. Common mistake. A friend of mine, he used to do my job, owns a farm. Keeps a Catoblepas in a room below his barn, a blindfold wrapped around its head with a hole for its mouth. That’s the tricky thing about those guys. One look, you die. There aren’t any laser beams, no special effects. You just die. It happens.
I don’t meet many Undead, which surprised me at first. Greg sorted me out. Though they’re pretty scary, the problem about being Undead is that, yes, you get to “live” forever and such, but all that “living” is still done with a dead body. Muscles atrophy, things decay and drop off, and eventually you crumble. It doesn’t matter what sort of magic or spirit made the thing Undead, once the muscles go, it’s harder to move, and eventually the Undead just stop trying and start hoping someone will come along and kill them again. Once they get down to just skeletons, they’re nothing but a pile of bones that happens to be capable, sometimes, of thinking. So Vampires, while pretty intimidating in their own right, are much less scary when you’re not in arm’s reach and if they’ve been embalmed well enough. The first one I found couldn’t even move out of his coffin. Just sort of laid there looking at me and hissed a lot. Frankly, I've met scarier cats.
Most of the time, I kill (or re-kill) whatever it is I’m after. I’d like to avoid sounding too pessimistic, but the pretty blunt truth of it is that most of the things that go bump in the night want to kill you, eat you, control you, or plant their eggs in your groin and let your body heat take care of them until the hatchlings burst out in a bloody mess and eat your corpse for nourishment. Lenores, they’re called, named as such by a Hunter a few centuries back who wrote a book and hated his wife. She was one of us herself, so she got her revenge. The fiend that does nothing but sit around and make a monotonous droning sound? Ankers. The drone is supposed to drive victims crazy after a long time. They’re tiny little things, and look a lot like earwigs. They dig themselves into the walls of your home and once you go crazy, they crawl in your ear and eat your brain. Don’t scorn Hunters. We’ve got better source material for insults than you. What I can’t kill, I keep. I’ve got a fog elemental in a jar on my wardrobe at home. It's just a face, and it hums sometimes, but otherwise it just looks misty.
But sometimes I don’t need to kill at all. Sometimes I just check in, make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to, and leave. But everything that’s not “normal” in this city, I have to investigate and decide whether it’s going to live or die. It’s busy work and it doesn’t pay well. Doesn’t pay at all, actually. Don’t be surprised to find a Hunter living as a vagrant in some city, his arsenal the result of years of collection and tinkering, and spread across their territories in little stashes. In all honesty, be more surprised that you found a Hunter at all. Then congratulate yourself on it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got a home, an apartment on the other side of town, and I float from job to job, whatever doesn’t require me to really show up often or mind sudden absences. I need to keep my schedule pretty free, and there are long bouts where I don’t have a normal job for months. But when all else fails, I’ve got Greg, who I’m pretty sure has only stayed around because he likes the ice cream here and listening to, me ramble on about my problems with the world, both of them, human and otherwise. He’s got a fling, the same guy for the past eleven years. Mind you, when you’re a Wizard and you’re the sort of guy that takes a good six hundred years to die of old age, a ten-year relationship is pretty much the equivalent of a one-night stand with perhaps more romance than usual. But, I don’t want to discredit Paul. Considering how much Wizards see in their lives, it takes a good deal to get one interested in you enough to stay around for eleven of our years. Paul’s an Unpredictable, which is truthfully as simple as it sounds. If he’s even remotely connected to the people in a prophecy, the whole thing’s moot. They’re the randomness-generators of the universe, the ultimate fans of free will, capable of giving any Oracle a loud and proud “fuck off” simply by existing. He doesn’t bother to read his horoscope or anything like that. Doesn’t apply. Paul lives in the moment and at the moment, he’s pretty happy with Greg. Greg’s stuck around instead of shipping off to Iceland or wherever he’s decided he’s going next, so I’ll assume he’s pretty happy too.
But you wouldn’t guess it with all the swearing. “So I’m telling you, Steve,” he says between mouthfuls of ice cream and peanut butter, “This old bastard’s giving it out to me because I’m not the sort of guy who spends centuries locked away in a library somewhere, growing a beard and ordaining kings or some shit.”
His voice is unlike most I’ve heard. It’s not magical, just strange. He’s been to so many places and lived so long that he’s compiled a mix of a fair few accents. Yet, the combination isn’t harsh or grating. Somehow, I think that it’s how English was supposed to sound in the minds of the people that made it up.
Greg’s always good for a laugh. This time’s no different, and I chuckle through a tiny bit of rum raisin. I cast him a glance out of the corner of my eye as he forcefully flicks off a stray hair that managed to land in his food. “And I’m sure he said it just like that.”
“Fuck off, will you? I’m telling a story here.”
“All right, all right. Sorry.” That’s the thing about Greg. He likes to talk. I suppose it’s warranted, though. He’s got a lot to talk about. I’ve done this almost every week for ten years and I’ve never heard the same story twice. Tonight’s tale is about his encounter with another Wizard, which never goes well for him. From what I’ve gathered from Greg’s stories and about Greg in general, he’s not like most of his kind. He doesn’t like learning from books, has only lived in a tower for fifty years (fairly paltry, by Wizard standards), likes people, and dresses like a normal human. Most Wizards are a pretty distant bunch, and as Greg says, part of the reason humanity’s been so slow on the advancement and development thing is that most Wizards just keep their knowledge to themselves. Knowing for the sake of knowing doesn’t do shit, as he put it. You have to make use of it. I guess this is his form of it, occasionally helping me with my troubles. A few times I asked him to come along with me to deal with some unpleasant characters. Wizards aren’t remotely omnipotent, but no smart Hunter will deny the opportunity to have one as a friend. I take another bite of my frozen treat, and he speaks again. “Nah, I’ve lost the flow now. Time to move on. I was… where was I today, right, at Radio Shak with Paul. He was getting one of those fucking, Christ what are they called, televisions. He said he wanted to be able to see the Panthers play without having to smack the box to get it working.”
“You couldn’t just fix it or something? I’ve seen you rearrange your entire apartment and all that took was thirty seconds, a snap of your fingers, and some magic words.”
He looks at me, confused. “Magic words? Who the fuck uses magic words to do that? What’d I say?”
“I believe the phrase you used was ‘The place looks like shit.’ Worked like a charm.”
He laughs, sending the ice cream that was in his mouth onto the ground in front of him as he lets out his hearty mirth. I’m not sure if he’s laughing at what the phrase or at my belief that charms might somehow do that sort of thing. It’s hard to tell with him. He composes himself, still smiling, and sets his ice cream down. The street is quiet, most city-dwellers either sleeping or at their night-job. Streetlights keep us illuminated, but they block out the stars. That’s the one thing I hate about cities, aside from the occasional smell. You rarely see any natural. Even the trees are spaced evenly and put in rows along the sidewalks or in the parks. It’s warm, but that’s no surprise in the middle of summer. The ice cream parlor is dark on the inside, and when Greg shakes his head and looks at me, I can see his reflection in the plate window do the same. “Come on, man. You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“Sure it does. Remember the time you fixed my crossbow?”
“Yeah, but I know how that works. Witch-hunters tried to shoot me with them enough to get me interested. I don’t know jack shit about televisions.”
“What, you don’t watch TV?”
“T what? Oh, TV, television- anyway, no.” He waves his hand dismissively, and then makes a genuinely curious face, green eyes looking to the empty sky as he thinks. Greg returns his gaze to me, and his voice is more inquisitive than it had been. “Am I supposed to? Why would I?”
For a pretty well-modernized Wizard, Greg doesn’t have an affinity for or much understanding of technology. There’s a saying, I can’t remember by whom, that any pretty advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Some might think this gives technology the advantage, but the problem is that magic usually thought of it first. “Well, yeah, Greg. Most people do these days.”
He spoons some more graham crackers on to his food, and then pops some in his mouth. Ever the gentleman, he speaks before he swallows. “Why?”
Fair enough question. “Well, I don’t know. Take the news. People want to know what’s going on in the world around them, the stuff outside their neighborhood.”
Another thoughtful expression. “Oh. We just scry. Does the same thing and it’s been around for ages. Lets us see whatever’s going on in the present, anywhere.”
Ah, now I’ve got him. I get excited at times like this. Technology’s one of the things I know more about than he does, so I like to show off my knowledge. Every little victory helps, you know. “Yeah, but what about things that have already happened? You can record shows for TV and show them later.”
“Why would I want to watch something that’s already passed?”
“The girl downstairs does it. She records all of her favorite shows and watches it when she has the time.” My first mistake has been made, but I don’t realize it. “She’s got this show about aliens or something that’s on Tuesday when she’s at work. She watches it Wednesday night. Says she loves the character development and the originality of the program. Let's her feel less normal, I guess, seeing the T.V. world.”
“Yeah, but that’s fake. If I want to talk to aliens, I’ll go find some. Better than anything you lot could come up with.” I’m quiet for a minute after this, my faults catching up with me. Two big ones. Not only did I assume that some computer-generated images on a screen would impress or interest Greg, I took for granted the Wizard’s pretty astounding abundance of free time. Greg does what he wants, when he wants, and most normal people would be surprised at how little a guy with his power does. Far from astounded or intrigued by most modern things, Greg spends almost all of his days just walking around the city, watching people. Not in the same way I watch things, making sure all the paranormals are in line and doing my order-keeping business. He watches people just to look at them and watch the stories of their lives unfold. He’s older than dirt, so I guess our lives are pretty much his version of a television program, just real in the most honest sense of the term.
I concede defeat, nodding. “Touché, salesman.” I’m done with my ice cream, nibbling away at the cone. This is one of Greg’s more mortal pleasures, I imagine. No one can make something out of nothing, he told me. It was, in his words, “fucking crazy talk.” The conjuring thing was really just moving things from one location to another. The closer you are to the original location, the easier it is. That’s why we’re in front of the ice cream parlor in the middle of the night: Greg’s a lazy bastard. And our conversations wouldn’t exactly go over well in a crowd, though he’s pretty sure people don’t listen to each other that much anyway. He’s finished his, and the Styrofoam bowl (He’s got some odd dislike of cones) has vanished. It’s probably in the trash can inside the parlor. Like I said: lazy. He gets comfortable in his chair, resting the back of his head against the plate window. I cast him a glance and somewhere in the time that I blink, a cigarette and lighter appear in his hands. Another mortal pleasure. He sets the end of the stick ablaze and takes a puff. Greg’s lucky. Cancer’s not a worry for him. I’ve tried to get him to teach our doctors how to put that into technology, but he just waves that off. Magic and science are close, but not close enough, apparently. He blows out a string of smoke, watching the clouds take shapes they usually wouldn’t. It matches his eyes: gray, cloudy. By the time he speaks the smoke dissipates. “So, tell me about this problem of yours, Steve.”
I fidget, and he notices, but says nothing. This problem’s been clawing at me for a while, and it’s almost embarrassing, the amount of trouble I’ve had with it. I can’t do this sitting down. It’d require me to stay still and sit there and I’ve always been too energetic a person to sit there. “Mind if we walk and talk? I’ve been itching to move around since I got here.”
He sighs, and I’m not surprised. But he goes along with it, standing up not without groaning and makes a scene out of it. The guy’s somewhere in the mid-three hundreds, and he doesn’t look a day over thirty-six. Wizards stop aging somewhere between thirty and forty, if Greg's representative of the rest of them. Or if he is really representative, they stop aging whenever they damn well please. One he gets around 550 or so, he’ll probably start aging the rest of the way. Magic. I’ve got a half a hunch that the Witch Hunters were just jealous of it. I had to work for everything I have, body and all, including the years of my life. It’s a nice thought though. Greg’s done his fair share of work and study in his time, but he’s a Wizard. Getting what he wants pretty much comes with the territory. I’m human, through and through and proud of it. The only thing that comes with that is an entitlement to work. The fruits of labor aren’t promised, but at least I know that I really own everything I have, from my knowledge to the wallpaper in my living room. He starts to walk away and I roll my eyes. “Greg. Come on. Not again. You could at least wait until I’m not looking.”
He turns back, eyebrows raised, and shrugs. “What?”
“The money?”
He does this a lot. Greg’s cheap. He doesn’t like paying for things. He can’t conjure money, so every time he buys something, I guess he feels like he’s actually losing something. Which, you know, maybe he is. Once you eat ice cream, it’s gone. You don’t eat money and it’s the sort of thing that feels more permanent than food or the fullness of a fed stomach. Greg crinkles his nose in disgust at the thought. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, I’m walking with you. Isn’t that enough?”
“A tenner ought to cover it, with the tip included of course. You ate the stuff, man. Have to play by the rules.”
“Your rules,” he grumbles.
“The rules.”
He’s frowning and muttering, but he’s reaching for his wallet. A good sign. He’s being pleasant tonight. Greg fishes out a bill and it disappears just after he holds it out for me to see. It’s enough to cover the cost. “Can we go now?” he asks, folding up the wallet too hastily. Another sigh from me.
“Greg.”
“What?”
“Come on.” I grab his wrist and take the wallet out of his hands, opening it before he’s got the chance to summon it back. Only one bill in the thing. From the looks of it, the same one he just paid with. I show it to him, and his shoulders slump like a dejected kid. More grumbling. “Son of a bitch…” He takes the bill out and marches towards the window, slapping his hand against it. He moves away, and the bill stays behind, clinging to the inside edge of the glass. Whoever opens up will have to peel it from the window. I’m holding back laughter. “You’re worse than a dwarf, you know.”
He mutters a string of sounds that I’m all but certain is comprised of profanities humanity hasn’t yet heard of. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
I smile and slide my gun into its holster beneath my jacket. The unfortunate thing about keeping the gun on me is that, unless I want to stow it in my pants and risk blowing off some stuff very important to me, I need to keep it in the holster. And the jacket keeps the holster hidden. So, in midsummer, in the South, it gets hot. I buy deodorant in wholesale stores. Every now and again, I can convince this alchemist I know to make me a salve that takes care of it for a small fee. Usually lead. You can imagine what he does with it. The Wizard and I walk down the road, one of us enjoying the shapes made by smoke of his cigarette and the other watching the alleys, half-expecting to see Nina flit by and blush in that curious, colorless way ghosts somehow manage. Nina died thirty years ago. She’s had a crush on me since last September. I’d probably return it if she wasn’t dead.
This is my life. Welcome aboard.
It's a moder urban fantasy that's fairly heavy on the light-heartedness. The formatting may be a bit off, as I transferred it from a word document and the formatting got all wonky.
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My name is Stephen Gage, and like I do most Thursdays, I’m sitting outside of an ice cream parlor at three in the morning with a gun in my right hand and a cone of the cold stuff in my left. Next to me is a Wizard or Sorcerer or Mage or whatever-you-want-to-call-him with a fondness for a combination of peanut butter, graham crackers, and cake-batter flavored frozen dairy. He prefers Greg, by the way. Says that “Wizard” doesn’t work because he’s not old and grey, “Sorcerer” isn’t a fit because he doesn’t live in a tower, and really, who has ever liked the sound of “Mage?” I called him a Warlock once after a few drinks and I spent three days with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” playing in my ears. No one else could hear it. He’s kind of a mean drunk. So, I take back that “Call him what you want” thing. Don’t call him that. Or at least, do it before you go to a bar.
Back to the ice cream parlor stuff. I do this often, whenever both of us have the time, of which Greg has tremendous amounts. I’ve known Greg since I started in this business ten years ago. Tried to shoot him, at first. About ten feet from where he just spilled a bit of peanut butter on the sidewalk. That plan kind of shit the bed when my gun turned into a piglet and I found myself holding a little squealing thing. Scared me half to death and I dropped it, and watched my gun-pig run off down the street. Sometimes I wonder if it’s still out there. Probably not. I don’t know the lifespan of pigs. I was young then, younger, and pretty sure that I was going to die or spend the rest of my days clucking or something.
“Sit down, shut the fuck up, and enjoy some fucking ice cream.”
That’s what he said, and it was then that I was pretty sure he was not going to kill me or make me a chicken. After a few centuries, according to him, you’ve had pretty much everything happen to you, so nothing really fazes you, including being shot at. Still doesn’t explain the vulgarity, and the guy swears more than a Scottish dockworker. That’s probably just him.
We’ve kept it up since, with decidedly less violence. We do this every Thursday morning. The gun’s part of my job, so it comes with me. Greg pops in, literally, about the time I show up. I use the subway system. I like that method of travel. It’s not quiet or calm, but it has its own sort of peace about it. There aren’t many people on the subway at this time of night, but it’s not the people that take away the quiet. The trains do that themselves and all the swaying and jostling makes sure that you don’t really fall asleep, but exist in a pleasant sort of daze. Unless you’ve just spent two hours chasing a Shapeshifter all over the east side. Then you pretty much pass out and the driver wakes you up and calls you a hobo and kicks you off. Been there. Nobody really appreciates what people like me do, but in their defense, they don’t know about it. That’s part of the reason I hang out with Greg, aside from the fact he’s got some pretty blunt and brutal opinions on just about everything. He’s met others like me. He knows.
What Subway-Driver doesn’t know is that I spend my life hunting the things that star in the fairy tales they tell their kids. I’m a Hunter, one of many across the globe and since I was twenty-two I’ve been keeping watch over my city to make sure I don’t wake up to find gnomes running everything. I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen enough. Sirens, Harpies, Werewolves, Basilisks, and I saw an Afanc once. It’s pretty much a big frog with claws. There’s a Welsh story about one, but it’s an entire race, not something that decided to pop in to existence. Common mistake. A friend of mine, he used to do my job, owns a farm. Keeps a Catoblepas in a room below his barn, a blindfold wrapped around its head with a hole for its mouth. That’s the tricky thing about those guys. One look, you die. There aren’t any laser beams, no special effects. You just die. It happens.
I don’t meet many Undead, which surprised me at first. Greg sorted me out. Though they’re pretty scary, the problem about being Undead is that, yes, you get to “live” forever and such, but all that “living” is still done with a dead body. Muscles atrophy, things decay and drop off, and eventually you crumble. It doesn’t matter what sort of magic or spirit made the thing Undead, once the muscles go, it’s harder to move, and eventually the Undead just stop trying and start hoping someone will come along and kill them again. Once they get down to just skeletons, they’re nothing but a pile of bones that happens to be capable, sometimes, of thinking. So Vampires, while pretty intimidating in their own right, are much less scary when you’re not in arm’s reach and if they’ve been embalmed well enough. The first one I found couldn’t even move out of his coffin. Just sort of laid there looking at me and hissed a lot. Frankly, I've met scarier cats.
Most of the time, I kill (or re-kill) whatever it is I’m after. I’d like to avoid sounding too pessimistic, but the pretty blunt truth of it is that most of the things that go bump in the night want to kill you, eat you, control you, or plant their eggs in your groin and let your body heat take care of them until the hatchlings burst out in a bloody mess and eat your corpse for nourishment. Lenores, they’re called, named as such by a Hunter a few centuries back who wrote a book and hated his wife. She was one of us herself, so she got her revenge. The fiend that does nothing but sit around and make a monotonous droning sound? Ankers. The drone is supposed to drive victims crazy after a long time. They’re tiny little things, and look a lot like earwigs. They dig themselves into the walls of your home and once you go crazy, they crawl in your ear and eat your brain. Don’t scorn Hunters. We’ve got better source material for insults than you. What I can’t kill, I keep. I’ve got a fog elemental in a jar on my wardrobe at home. It's just a face, and it hums sometimes, but otherwise it just looks misty.
But sometimes I don’t need to kill at all. Sometimes I just check in, make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to, and leave. But everything that’s not “normal” in this city, I have to investigate and decide whether it’s going to live or die. It’s busy work and it doesn’t pay well. Doesn’t pay at all, actually. Don’t be surprised to find a Hunter living as a vagrant in some city, his arsenal the result of years of collection and tinkering, and spread across their territories in little stashes. In all honesty, be more surprised that you found a Hunter at all. Then congratulate yourself on it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got a home, an apartment on the other side of town, and I float from job to job, whatever doesn’t require me to really show up often or mind sudden absences. I need to keep my schedule pretty free, and there are long bouts where I don’t have a normal job for months. But when all else fails, I’ve got Greg, who I’m pretty sure has only stayed around because he likes the ice cream here and listening to, me ramble on about my problems with the world, both of them, human and otherwise. He’s got a fling, the same guy for the past eleven years. Mind you, when you’re a Wizard and you’re the sort of guy that takes a good six hundred years to die of old age, a ten-year relationship is pretty much the equivalent of a one-night stand with perhaps more romance than usual. But, I don’t want to discredit Paul. Considering how much Wizards see in their lives, it takes a good deal to get one interested in you enough to stay around for eleven of our years. Paul’s an Unpredictable, which is truthfully as simple as it sounds. If he’s even remotely connected to the people in a prophecy, the whole thing’s moot. They’re the randomness-generators of the universe, the ultimate fans of free will, capable of giving any Oracle a loud and proud “fuck off” simply by existing. He doesn’t bother to read his horoscope or anything like that. Doesn’t apply. Paul lives in the moment and at the moment, he’s pretty happy with Greg. Greg’s stuck around instead of shipping off to Iceland or wherever he’s decided he’s going next, so I’ll assume he’s pretty happy too.
But you wouldn’t guess it with all the swearing. “So I’m telling you, Steve,” he says between mouthfuls of ice cream and peanut butter, “This old bastard’s giving it out to me because I’m not the sort of guy who spends centuries locked away in a library somewhere, growing a beard and ordaining kings or some shit.”
His voice is unlike most I’ve heard. It’s not magical, just strange. He’s been to so many places and lived so long that he’s compiled a mix of a fair few accents. Yet, the combination isn’t harsh or grating. Somehow, I think that it’s how English was supposed to sound in the minds of the people that made it up.
Greg’s always good for a laugh. This time’s no different, and I chuckle through a tiny bit of rum raisin. I cast him a glance out of the corner of my eye as he forcefully flicks off a stray hair that managed to land in his food. “And I’m sure he said it just like that.”
“Fuck off, will you? I’m telling a story here.”
“All right, all right. Sorry.” That’s the thing about Greg. He likes to talk. I suppose it’s warranted, though. He’s got a lot to talk about. I’ve done this almost every week for ten years and I’ve never heard the same story twice. Tonight’s tale is about his encounter with another Wizard, which never goes well for him. From what I’ve gathered from Greg’s stories and about Greg in general, he’s not like most of his kind. He doesn’t like learning from books, has only lived in a tower for fifty years (fairly paltry, by Wizard standards), likes people, and dresses like a normal human. Most Wizards are a pretty distant bunch, and as Greg says, part of the reason humanity’s been so slow on the advancement and development thing is that most Wizards just keep their knowledge to themselves. Knowing for the sake of knowing doesn’t do shit, as he put it. You have to make use of it. I guess this is his form of it, occasionally helping me with my troubles. A few times I asked him to come along with me to deal with some unpleasant characters. Wizards aren’t remotely omnipotent, but no smart Hunter will deny the opportunity to have one as a friend. I take another bite of my frozen treat, and he speaks again. “Nah, I’ve lost the flow now. Time to move on. I was… where was I today, right, at Radio Shak with Paul. He was getting one of those fucking, Christ what are they called, televisions. He said he wanted to be able to see the Panthers play without having to smack the box to get it working.”
“You couldn’t just fix it or something? I’ve seen you rearrange your entire apartment and all that took was thirty seconds, a snap of your fingers, and some magic words.”
He looks at me, confused. “Magic words? Who the fuck uses magic words to do that? What’d I say?”
“I believe the phrase you used was ‘The place looks like shit.’ Worked like a charm.”
He laughs, sending the ice cream that was in his mouth onto the ground in front of him as he lets out his hearty mirth. I’m not sure if he’s laughing at what the phrase or at my belief that charms might somehow do that sort of thing. It’s hard to tell with him. He composes himself, still smiling, and sets his ice cream down. The street is quiet, most city-dwellers either sleeping or at their night-job. Streetlights keep us illuminated, but they block out the stars. That’s the one thing I hate about cities, aside from the occasional smell. You rarely see any natural. Even the trees are spaced evenly and put in rows along the sidewalks or in the parks. It’s warm, but that’s no surprise in the middle of summer. The ice cream parlor is dark on the inside, and when Greg shakes his head and looks at me, I can see his reflection in the plate window do the same. “Come on, man. You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“Sure it does. Remember the time you fixed my crossbow?”
“Yeah, but I know how that works. Witch-hunters tried to shoot me with them enough to get me interested. I don’t know jack shit about televisions.”
“What, you don’t watch TV?”
“T what? Oh, TV, television- anyway, no.” He waves his hand dismissively, and then makes a genuinely curious face, green eyes looking to the empty sky as he thinks. Greg returns his gaze to me, and his voice is more inquisitive than it had been. “Am I supposed to? Why would I?”
For a pretty well-modernized Wizard, Greg doesn’t have an affinity for or much understanding of technology. There’s a saying, I can’t remember by whom, that any pretty advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Some might think this gives technology the advantage, but the problem is that magic usually thought of it first. “Well, yeah, Greg. Most people do these days.”
He spoons some more graham crackers on to his food, and then pops some in his mouth. Ever the gentleman, he speaks before he swallows. “Why?”
Fair enough question. “Well, I don’t know. Take the news. People want to know what’s going on in the world around them, the stuff outside their neighborhood.”
Another thoughtful expression. “Oh. We just scry. Does the same thing and it’s been around for ages. Lets us see whatever’s going on in the present, anywhere.”
Ah, now I’ve got him. I get excited at times like this. Technology’s one of the things I know more about than he does, so I like to show off my knowledge. Every little victory helps, you know. “Yeah, but what about things that have already happened? You can record shows for TV and show them later.”
“Why would I want to watch something that’s already passed?”
“The girl downstairs does it. She records all of her favorite shows and watches it when she has the time.” My first mistake has been made, but I don’t realize it. “She’s got this show about aliens or something that’s on Tuesday when she’s at work. She watches it Wednesday night. Says she loves the character development and the originality of the program. Let's her feel less normal, I guess, seeing the T.V. world.”
“Yeah, but that’s fake. If I want to talk to aliens, I’ll go find some. Better than anything you lot could come up with.” I’m quiet for a minute after this, my faults catching up with me. Two big ones. Not only did I assume that some computer-generated images on a screen would impress or interest Greg, I took for granted the Wizard’s pretty astounding abundance of free time. Greg does what he wants, when he wants, and most normal people would be surprised at how little a guy with his power does. Far from astounded or intrigued by most modern things, Greg spends almost all of his days just walking around the city, watching people. Not in the same way I watch things, making sure all the paranormals are in line and doing my order-keeping business. He watches people just to look at them and watch the stories of their lives unfold. He’s older than dirt, so I guess our lives are pretty much his version of a television program, just real in the most honest sense of the term.
I concede defeat, nodding. “Touché, salesman.” I’m done with my ice cream, nibbling away at the cone. This is one of Greg’s more mortal pleasures, I imagine. No one can make something out of nothing, he told me. It was, in his words, “fucking crazy talk.” The conjuring thing was really just moving things from one location to another. The closer you are to the original location, the easier it is. That’s why we’re in front of the ice cream parlor in the middle of the night: Greg’s a lazy bastard. And our conversations wouldn’t exactly go over well in a crowd, though he’s pretty sure people don’t listen to each other that much anyway. He’s finished his, and the Styrofoam bowl (He’s got some odd dislike of cones) has vanished. It’s probably in the trash can inside the parlor. Like I said: lazy. He gets comfortable in his chair, resting the back of his head against the plate window. I cast him a glance and somewhere in the time that I blink, a cigarette and lighter appear in his hands. Another mortal pleasure. He sets the end of the stick ablaze and takes a puff. Greg’s lucky. Cancer’s not a worry for him. I’ve tried to get him to teach our doctors how to put that into technology, but he just waves that off. Magic and science are close, but not close enough, apparently. He blows out a string of smoke, watching the clouds take shapes they usually wouldn’t. It matches his eyes: gray, cloudy. By the time he speaks the smoke dissipates. “So, tell me about this problem of yours, Steve.”
I fidget, and he notices, but says nothing. This problem’s been clawing at me for a while, and it’s almost embarrassing, the amount of trouble I’ve had with it. I can’t do this sitting down. It’d require me to stay still and sit there and I’ve always been too energetic a person to sit there. “Mind if we walk and talk? I’ve been itching to move around since I got here.”
He sighs, and I’m not surprised. But he goes along with it, standing up not without groaning and makes a scene out of it. The guy’s somewhere in the mid-three hundreds, and he doesn’t look a day over thirty-six. Wizards stop aging somewhere between thirty and forty, if Greg's representative of the rest of them. Or if he is really representative, they stop aging whenever they damn well please. One he gets around 550 or so, he’ll probably start aging the rest of the way. Magic. I’ve got a half a hunch that the Witch Hunters were just jealous of it. I had to work for everything I have, body and all, including the years of my life. It’s a nice thought though. Greg’s done his fair share of work and study in his time, but he’s a Wizard. Getting what he wants pretty much comes with the territory. I’m human, through and through and proud of it. The only thing that comes with that is an entitlement to work. The fruits of labor aren’t promised, but at least I know that I really own everything I have, from my knowledge to the wallpaper in my living room. He starts to walk away and I roll my eyes. “Greg. Come on. Not again. You could at least wait until I’m not looking.”
He turns back, eyebrows raised, and shrugs. “What?”
“The money?”
He does this a lot. Greg’s cheap. He doesn’t like paying for things. He can’t conjure money, so every time he buys something, I guess he feels like he’s actually losing something. Which, you know, maybe he is. Once you eat ice cream, it’s gone. You don’t eat money and it’s the sort of thing that feels more permanent than food or the fullness of a fed stomach. Greg crinkles his nose in disgust at the thought. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, I’m walking with you. Isn’t that enough?”
“A tenner ought to cover it, with the tip included of course. You ate the stuff, man. Have to play by the rules.”
“Your rules,” he grumbles.
“The rules.”
He’s frowning and muttering, but he’s reaching for his wallet. A good sign. He’s being pleasant tonight. Greg fishes out a bill and it disappears just after he holds it out for me to see. It’s enough to cover the cost. “Can we go now?” he asks, folding up the wallet too hastily. Another sigh from me.
“Greg.”
“What?”
“Come on.” I grab his wrist and take the wallet out of his hands, opening it before he’s got the chance to summon it back. Only one bill in the thing. From the looks of it, the same one he just paid with. I show it to him, and his shoulders slump like a dejected kid. More grumbling. “Son of a bitch…” He takes the bill out and marches towards the window, slapping his hand against it. He moves away, and the bill stays behind, clinging to the inside edge of the glass. Whoever opens up will have to peel it from the window. I’m holding back laughter. “You’re worse than a dwarf, you know.”
He mutters a string of sounds that I’m all but certain is comprised of profanities humanity hasn’t yet heard of. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
I smile and slide my gun into its holster beneath my jacket. The unfortunate thing about keeping the gun on me is that, unless I want to stow it in my pants and risk blowing off some stuff very important to me, I need to keep it in the holster. And the jacket keeps the holster hidden. So, in midsummer, in the South, it gets hot. I buy deodorant in wholesale stores. Every now and again, I can convince this alchemist I know to make me a salve that takes care of it for a small fee. Usually lead. You can imagine what he does with it. The Wizard and I walk down the road, one of us enjoying the shapes made by smoke of his cigarette and the other watching the alleys, half-expecting to see Nina flit by and blush in that curious, colorless way ghosts somehow manage. Nina died thirty years ago. She’s had a crush on me since last September. I’d probably return it if she wasn’t dead.
This is my life. Welcome aboard.
