Cool Cucumber

“Just glad to be here,” Harper said. Don’t think of all those things you feel. Just be glad to be here, he told himself, trickling warmth into the tone of his voice. The electronic music gave the massive room a futuristic feel, a young woman’s voice singing in the background. His blue suit was beginning to split down the back.

“Nice house?” The rich man asked, his green eyes singeing him. High ceilings, greyhounds, artifacts, portraits, busts, bodyguards, pools, symbols, cocaine, a sad girl on stage. Nice.

“I don’t belong here.” Harper said, contradicting himself. Why was he being such an asshole?

“No?” The rich man handed a whiskey. The city swept out before them, a thousand lights, a thousand homes, a thousand lives, each relentless.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, trying to calm down, trying to calm everyone down. The rich man grunted and turned away. The daughter looked at him sharply, her gown flashing red.

“You’re a strange one,” she accused. Her pupils flared, the wind picking up her long black hair. Stop being paranoid.

“What do you want from me?” he asked, reasserting himself within his suit. The rich man downed his whiskey, his curly mullet and his cufflinks hallowed in the gold light.

“Let me show you.” He gestured expansively, like all the world was his. He was short, a criminal.

“Here,” he said, opening a box. Inside was a pool of thick green wool. Inside that was an egg, smaller than a chicken’s and speckled with red, but definitely an egg.

“What do you want?” Harper asked pointedly at the rich man and his daughter. They had no idea what they were dealing with. He took a huge sip of whiskey and kept it in his gullet as he had been trained.

“He’s an idiot.” The daughter snapped, spilling champagne.

“No?” The rich man said. It was his favorite phrase, full of possibilities. The egg shivered and cracked, smoke hissing from one side, a thick black tentacle sliding out beneath the crack. The tentacle split into two and into two again. Harper slipped his zippo lighter in his hand.

“You’re going to get me my son back,” the rich man gesticulated over it like a magician.

“Fuck you.” said Harper.

The tentacles grew bigger, wrapping themselves slowly around the rich man’s wrist.

“Ooooh mama you shouldn’t have,” he crooned, his mad green eyes flashing.

Harper down the rest of the whiskey and then brought it all back up with what he’d been keeping in his gullet. He spat it out into his waiting zippo and spat a fireball at the two freaks. And that’s when the egg cracked and the spirits came. Huge towering ethereal entities burst through the house like cucumbers and into the sky humming with energy, black tendrils pouring off the egg, sucking the rich man and his daughter into it like strands of spaghetti.

One the terrible spirits swiveled on its journey to heaven and flattened its enormous glowing head at the man with the split suit .

“Just glad to be here,” Harper said again.