welcometojapha-blog

[welcometojapha-blog]

Worms!

It is August in Japha.  The leaves are starting to turn, school is about to start back up, you know the drill. There’s even a 50’s themed party on campus to welcome the returning students; how fun!

Chris was wearing a black leather jacket; it isn’t exactly the right style, but Chris didn’t exactly want to go to this party in the first place, but some friends were pressuring him so...it's fine, whatever. To prepare for a night of forced social interaction he didn’t want in the first place, Chris knew just what he needed: bong and video games!

Chris had just gotten to the part of Earthbound here Jeff is crossing the lake on the Loch Ness Monster-inspired sea monster (you know the part), when suddenly there was a knock at his front door. Seeing no one through the peephole, Chris opened the door to find an unfamiliar child at his door (not that Chris is super familiar with any children...just, like, he doesn’t know this kid from anywhere). Before Chris could figure out whose kid this is or where he came from, the kid asked, “Does it bother you that the dreams call you a girl?”

Chris was shaken by this.  This boy was entirely unfamiliar to him, yet somehow knew A LOT about Chris that Chris had yet to share with ANYBODY. How did he know about the dreams? And the misgendering bitch that came with the dreams?

Before Chris got a chance to engage in some banter that would have no doubt been lively and productive, another new person appeared in the hall and scooped the boy up.  The man quickly explained that his name was Josh and that the boy was his son, Jordan, and that they had just moved into Chris’ apartment complex, just down the hall (no judgement, I mean, Chris lives there and all, but it isn’t a great place for a kid to have to grow up, even a freaky, weird kid like Jordan).  As the pair leave for their apartment, Jordan turned around and whispered at Chris, “The Diner.” Chris knew exactly what he meant….pancakes would be amazing before the party. And with that, Chris found the nearest save point in his game and set off for the local diner.

The scene at the diner was...well, it was weird.  There were cops all over (which Chris didn’t love, given his current state of inebriation), and the owner was shouting loudly through a megaphone.

Oh and there was a MASSIVE sinkhole directly outside the diner….that was also new. Being reassured that the restaurant was still open by the yelling owner, however, Chris was undeterred and continued on his quest to satiate the great hunger growing inside him.

Though the food at the diner was fantastic as always (at least a massive sinkhole can’t change that), however Chris could not shake the conversation he had had with Jordan in his doorway earlier. He needed answers, and there was only one place to get them. So Chris set off to meet with Antigone Jameson, a local drag queen who was basically like a second mother to Chris and always seemed to know a little about a lot of different shit. On the walk over, Chris heroically set up a Twitter account (@SinkPit) in an effort to bravely snark about any further weird shit that might happen as a result of the diner’s new sinkhole. That completed, Chris refocused his energy on getting some much needed information out of Antigone.

Chris got no information out of Antigone. The most she had to offer was that kids are weird (which is true, but Chris already knew that). When the sinkhole came up in conversation, however, Antigone bolted into a secret backroom of her shop (which Chris until this point had assumed was more an urban legend than anything real), and remained there for 10-15 minutes before returning just to tell Chris he should be careful and sending him on his way.  Feeling the weird interruption in their conversation deserved no follow up, Chris left without fuss. It was nearly time for him to make an appearance at this party on campus, anyway.

As Chris approached the frat house where the party was being held, things suddenly started to look better: people were already leaving in droves! Unfortunately, before Chris could text his friends that the party was dead and they should just have a drunk movie night back at his place, the people fleeing the house got closer, and Chris realized that maybe something more was going on; they all seemed pretty freaked out.

Luckily, it was around this time Chris noticed Caleb, another guy from around town, headed into the frat house with the single biggest axe Chris had ever seen in person.  The ratio of axe-to-man wasn’t totally stupid or anything, either, as Caleb was probably one of the single biggest guys Chris had ever seen in person. Emboldened by the assistance of a real-life giant, Chris headed inside to investigate what was scaring all these drunk college kids away.

Once inside, it quickly became apparent to both that the real danger was in the kitchen. Caleb wanted to just scavenge leftover party booze and play Goldeneye on the N64, but Chris knew that if they didn’t take care of whatever this was, nobody would, so he convinced Caleb that they should investigate what is going on elsewhere in the house first, then they could return to alcohol and nostalgic multiplayer action later (SPOILER ALERT: They never returned to play Goldeneye).

Once they got to the kitchen, the boys found a trapped party-goer; some girl Chris didn’t know was trapped in the far corner of the kitchen by a worm.  A big worm.  A really big worm. Think of like one of the worms from Dune or Tremors, only instead of those-sized, it was about the size of a medium dog (so I guess it could’ve been a worse situation). A quick Jack Daniels bottle to the back of the thing’s (probably) head redirected its aggression from the girl, and from there it proved little match for Caleb’s axe.

While making her exit, the girl informed Chris and Caleb of two very important things: these worms don’t like light and there is another worm in a nearby bedroom. Regrettably, when they opened the bedroom door, they found they were too late; the damned worms had gotten Chad! Why, of all the people at this stupid party, did Chad have to die? He had always been so awesome!

In a blind rage, the two immediately dispatched the worm that had gotten Chad and hurried on, leaving Chad to finally rest with a little dignity (a much dignity as a body can have after having a hole chewed through it by a giant worm).

While sweeping the house for others in need of assistance, Chris and Caleb encountered another brave party-goer, some rando Chris also did not know, who was in the process of tenderizing what appeared to be an already dead worm with a baseball bat.  After some brief discussion, the new guy proudly proclaimed that there were only two remaining worms and they were both in the backyard and valiantly volunteered to lead the trio into battle. However, Chris knew the true order of things, and took front and center himself.

Once in the backyard, Chris quickly surmised that in addition to light, these worms didn’t seem so keen on water.  Armed with this knowledge, Chris managed to used his cell phone flashlight to wrangle the worms into a position where they were pinned between the light and a large puddle that had formed in the backyard.  From there, Caleb took out a worm out handily, as they had also proven to be not wild about being hit with axes.  The third guy, however succumbed to his worm, but not before getting in several good blows with his baseball bat. Seeing his new comrade fall in glorious battle, Chris launched himself forward and delivered the final blow to the the worm, quipping “Welcome to Earf!” Everyone really appreciated the timely topical reference (at least Caleb did...since he was the only one left alive here).

Following the battle, as Chris was helping Caleb load one of the worm carcasses into Caleb’s trunk to take to an alcoholic friend of Caleb’s at a nearby bar, Chris realized what he needed more than anything. The whip! His whip! That whip from the dreams and then it turned up in real life and he freaked out and buried it in the graveyard because he didn’t think monsters were real but now he needed it because apparently monsters are real. After a little convincing, Caleb agreed the whip is too useful, and they should halt further investigation until they acquired it.

On the way to the cemetery, the pair met up with Dave, a friend of Chris’ from work at the library, and Denise and Padma, whom Chris knew from her research work in the library and from just generally being hot around campus, respectively. They all seemed just as on board with the “get the whip” plan as Caleb had been, so the crew continued on toward the cemetery.

Once they all arrived at the local Catholic cemetery (the others were in a golf cart; did I mention that Dave also drives a golf cart? He does.), Chris borrowed a shovel Caleb had been keeping in his trunk for just such an occasion and headed on in.  Chris made his way to the back corner of the graveyard, to the lone Jewish person buried there (Jewish grave in a Catholic cemetery...pretty memorable marker for a buried treasure, huh?).  Five paces from the back of the headstone, and Chris started digging.

And digging.

And digging (should be to it any minute now).

And then Chris heard the others seemingly talking amongst themselves, but he couldn’t make out any particular conversation because he was still digging.

And digging (okay, we have got to be at least a foot too deep at this point).

And nothing. No whip. No trace of a whip. No note saying where the whip had gone. It just wasn’t there anymore.

From up on the surface, someone said something to Chris about a humanoid monster, pallid grey, with dripping fangs, nasty talons, and a loping gait, but he wasn’t really in a place to absorb information anymore. The whip was gone and he was all alone with monsters in the world.

Some time later, Chris found himself in the golf cart with Dave and Denise, headed to the police station to fix some issue or other that had come up while he was out of it (something about Padma teleporting the dead worm and leaving it on the police station’s doorstep).

When they got to the police station, however, they found the dead worm had already been dealt with by someone else.  The team immediately agreed that they needed to make sure the body wasn’t getting into the wrong hands, but while they were discussing the best way to locate the current whereabouts of the worm, Officer Elaine Bullock emerged from the station.  While Elaine was a friend of Chris’ and generally pretty cool about most things, Chris figured the less police involvement at the moment, the better, so through distraction on the part of Dave and Denise, as well as a bit of cunning on Chris’ part, Chris was able to extract himself from the impromptu interrogation and make his way around to the back of the station to poke around.

Around back, Chris was able to pull himself up enough to see in through a small slit window.  From there, he was able to see that the police had in fact acquired the dead worm and appeared to be performing experiments of some sort on it. Just as he was taking all this in, Chris received a telepathic message from Denise that Officer Bullock was coming back around his way, so Chris courageously played possum so that Elaine would just think he had wandered off and passed out, because everyone knows, you can’t arrest a passed out person.

The ruse worked! As soon as he was discovered, Chris almost immediately heard a sigh of defeat, followed by footsteps headed back away from him. Once he was sure he was alone again, Chris headed for the nearby river to lay low until the heat was off.

Eventually, Padma and Caleb turned back up from wherever they had gone off to following the failed whip-retrieval mission at the cemetery, and then Denise and Dave reemerged from the police station, having had the entire worm adventure dismissed by officials as a one-off strange creature escaped from the campus lab, with “drug use” filling in the gaps in that explanation.

After a bit more discussion, the group retired to Caleb’s back yard to burn some duffle bag that Caleb and Padma said needed destroying.  Upon lighting the bag, it quickly became apparent that there had been a body inside (the smell wasn’t the best).

In an effort to speed things up to get rid of the smell, Denise used some weird magic thing she can do to make the fire heat up to the point of incinerating the body and duffle bag, after telekinetically throwing a lawn chair around in order to break up a fight brewing between Padma and Dave (Padma isn’t a very nice person).

Almost as soon as the body was dealt with, Denise suddenly freaked the fuck out like she had a really loud noise going in her ears, and with some difficulty, was able to explain that an alarm she had placed back at the sinkhole to make sure no one else messed with it while it was unattended had just gone off, but also wasn’t functioning properly so it was WAY too loud for her. The team quickly got the magic alarm dispelled and hurried over to the sinkhole to make sure everything was okay.

Once at the sinkhole, the gang found that nothing was out of the ordinary, but through the use of more magic the Chris didn’t fully understand, Padma and Denise joined forces to see that someone had recently entered the sinkhole, and then exited again shortly thereafter.

Seeing no more immediate danger to deal with, but plenty of new weird shit to still figure out, the newly formed Monster Mashers vowed to solve all the supernatural shit that needs solving around Japha and the surrounding region, and with that, they dispersed for the evening to get some sleep.

P.s.: Monster Mashers?! No...no, that’s not what they’re going to be called. Sorry about that, but we’ll do better with it next time!

[welcometojapha-blog]

Welcome to Japha

Welcome to Japha! 

Weird name, right? I think it comes from somewhere in the Bible.  The town was founded way back in the day by some religious types.  Now it is mostly just kind of quiet, unassuming town in the North Georgia mountains.  I mean, it is home to Georgia College at Japha, but otherwise I don’t know that there’s anything else of note, broadly speaking.

Now, I can’t say for certain but I’m pretty confident certain some rather noteworthy things are about to start happening (what with me setting the stage and all), and when you’re telling stories of noteworthy shit, you need a heroic figure to swoop in and save the day. Here comes the hero(?) of our story. Well, the star, at least...let’s just call him “the only person you really need to know much of anything about at this point,” shall we?

His name is Chris.  Say “hi” Chris! Oh...no...no, he can’t do that; it doesn’t work that way (sorry, still trying to get a feel for my narrative structure).

Chris comes a historically great line.  Every roughly 200 years, the women on his mother’s side of the family produce a Valkyrie of sorts, able to battle hordes of monsters and meant to combat an ancient evil force.

Chris’s ancestors came to America sometime in the 1790’s and more or less eked out a quiet, relatively unassuming existence.  Then in the early 1990’s, Chris was born, and his birth is where the story gets interesting again.

Oh, Chris was born Christine.  Did I mention that?  Because that’s about to be important.

Around the age of 12 or 13 the nightmares started.  Not every night but most, and often multiple times a night, Chris was plagued by dreams of hellish battlefields; scores of monsters the likes of which Chris had never seen locked in combat with various teams of humans, usually different, but always aided by an extremely badass warrior woman.  Warrior women in his dreams was not so surprising, as Chris had always sort of had a thing for powerful women, but why did they all fight with the same weird nightmare weapon? Different places and time periods, but always that whip.

After a few years of constant nightmares, Chris turned to a steady diet of marijuana and pop culture, in an effort to drown out the haunting visions which by this point, had begun to repeat themselves. It kind of worked; hiding away from his real world troubles led to reduced stress levels during his waking hours.  The nightmares, however, continued.

Two nights after his 18th birthday, Chris awoke from a particularly gripping nightmare, but this time instead of evening back out as he woke, he felt so much worse.  Lying on the foot of his bed, inches from his foot, was the whip from his dreams.  Pitch black leather, covered in gnarly obsidian thorns and ending in a slightly curved, steel blade. Thoroughly freaked out, Chris quickly dressed, snuck out, and buried the whip in the nearest cemetery.  He was never sure why the cemetery, he just wanted it gone.

From there, Chris went on to go to college locally, since his parents teach there and he could get in without much fuss.  After graduating, he went on to work as extra staff in the campus library, reshelving books and whatnot, also since his parents teach there and he could get in without much fuss.

Okay, cool, I think that catches us up to about this general point in time.  You know, when the weird shit is about to begin.  Tune in next time to see how it all begins! And, hey, who knows? We might even meet some other characters worth mentioning as we go.

P.s.: Sorry for all the direct-address business in this one.  I promise I’ll try to do better about just telling the story going forward (and I’ll try not to editorialize too much, too).