The Cabal

"We need to find the black card." The fat man took a bite out of the thick chicken leg he held in his hand. Grease dripped down his chin and on his shirt, but he chewed on and kept speaking. 

"This is fucking unacceptable. No time in history has the black card been absent and away from our eyes for so long."

The woman sitting in front of him snorted with disgust as she sipped wine that was older than her. And that was saying something. 

"We'll find the card, Porco. Our people are already looking for it and they'll even die for the card if it pushes it in circulation again."

"Cocotte, you underestimate the power of the black card. It cannot be taken by force. The card won't allow it. The passing has to be a given event. And we don't know how powerful the card has become after being in possession of a single person for so long." 

Porco bit into the chicken bone and crunched it in his massive jaw. He chewed it slowly, waiting for Cocotte to reply. Almost daring her to say something that would offend him and give him the excuse to bite her head off. He had been looking for an excuse for past 300 years, maybe tonight would be the night. 

Cocotte moved her neck clockwise and drained her glass of wine. It went down her throat like snake venom, burning and scaling all the way down to the pit of her stomach where the tiny mechanical worms in her gut started to work on the wine.

"Now listen, you motherfu..." 

The sound of the door opening stopped the words on her lips. Porco was almost out of his chair with his jaw opening to attack her.

The door opened and the Jester walked in. 

"Ah, I see you kids started without me! How very unhospitable of you!" He was dressed in all black. The cloth rippling over his body like liquid darkness. It hurt your eyes to look at him for more than a few seconds. The rippling of the cloth made him look like he was really not there, like he was part of some ancient dreamscape relayed to this reality through damaged satellites with rusty antennas. 

He smiled at the two and took a chair. He spun the chair on its legs and straddled it. 

"So, the black card is missing, huh. Who'd have thought that something would fuck up the grand scheme we'd going on for such a long long time."

He produced a flask from the sleeve of his coat and took a deep pull on it. The liquid inside shimmered on his lips before vanishing with a faint smoke. Whatever it was, was potent and it made Cocotte's eyes water just sniffing the strange concoction from where she was sitting. 

"Jester, it is no joking matter. The longer the card is missing, the more power it gains and once it's out of our collective abilities, who knows what will happen. We need to recover it."

"Oh, don't you worry, porky. I've got the best and most reliable man all ready to look for our card."

"And who is this man, if I may ask?" Cocotte leaned forward with curiosity dancing on her face.

"That man," Jester said, "is me!"

He let the flask drop from his hand and before it hit the ground, Jester was gone. 

"Cocky motherfucker," Cocotte grimaced.

"Hrrrgh," Porco said and picked up another chicken leg.

---

I thought I'd introduce these three while we're at it.

Regular updates to this story this week.

Black Card Paranoia

Throughout history of humanity, the owners of the Black Card have had a very short and eventful life span. Most of them kicked the bucket and shuffled their mortal coil within a month or so of coming in possession of the said card.

After all, once you wield the card for the said time period, there is nothing much left in life that can excite you or inspire a will to live in you. You just want to get rid of the card and your life too. That's how it works, that how it has worked ever since the Black Card was created.

But as all good things go, something had to fuck up. Someone had to throw a fucking spanner in the gears of a well oiled machine. The said oil was probably the blood, sweat, tears and other bodily fluids of previous owners of the Black Card. Now the machine was in disarray and for the first time, no one knew who owned the Black Card.

The most powerful artifact in the world was missing for ten months now. And with each passing day, the power of the card increased, making the person possessing it someone you'd not want to fuck with.

//

Mr. Kosmos turned the Black Card in his hand once more.

It radiated such a vibe of positivity that he knew everything was going to be alright in his life. He knew with the certainty of sun rising and setting that it was all A-OK. He had things in control. He was the master and commander of his ship. He placed the card back in his wallet and put the wallet in the front pocket of his jeans.

There was some blood on his shoes, but that was not important. The important thing was that he had a vehicle in his possession. The girl had been easy to kill. Just a snap of her neck, but the man had put up a fight and most of the blood was his. Mr. Kosmos looked once more at the whole scene that was spread out in front of him. The man's body was twisted and torn like a marionette with its strings cut. His head was at an awkward angle from his body. Completely unnatural, completely dead.

The girl's body was lying still on the ground like she was being made ready for some arcane satanic ritual. There was not going to be any of that, though. Not here. Mr. Kosmos had nothing to do with Satan or any of his minions.

No rituals, he reminded himself.

He had dragged the bodies to the side of the road and he was torn between digging a single grave for them or just setting them on fire. He decided to dig the grave. They had given him their lives and their truck, this was the least he could do. Luckily, there was a spade in the back of the truck. He slipped on his headphones, chose Cannibal Corpse from the playlist and started digging. He wanted to be done before dark.

He had to visit mother.

----------
Heyyy, it's Mr. Kosmos once again. It seems he got rid of his itch!

The Librarian's Dream

Lisa dreams.

She's in the library again. Walking among the shelves. Her fingers trace the spines of the books with the caress of a lover. The echo of her footsteps match the ticks of the big clock in the hall outside.

She breathes in the smell of old books mingling with the new and she can hear them all calling out to her.

"Help us, mother. Help us."

A tear rolls down her cheek. She's powerless against the enemy that she faces every night.

The Mongrifier, beast with a thousand fingers stalks her library. He dog-ears the pages and writes obscene graffiti in the books. On good days, he tears out one or two pages from the books and on bad days he rips chunks out of books.

And when he leaves, he throws the books on the floor and if he is feeling extra mischievous, he puts the books in wrong shelves.

So Lisa has to check the shelves once again to see if every book is resting in her proper home. She hates the beast and hates herself because she can't do anything to stop it.

"Mother, mother," the books cry, "you need to get stronger. You need to face the Mongrifier and kill it."

And so Lisa decides she needs to learn. She needs to study the advanced library sciences that would make a formidable librarian out of her. She longs to be the one who could inspire silence with just her presence.

She spends the rest of the night putting books back in the shelves and smoothing the pages that have been dog eared.

When Lisa wakes up she fills an online application for admission to the prestigious school of libraries.

Days pass.

The acceptance email lands in her inbox. Her life is about to change.

Lisa packs everything she owns and buys a bus ticket for the school.

In the bus, she dreams again and this time the Mongrifier knows of her plans. It rushes through the library, pushing the shelves to make books rain down in the library.

Lisa is being hunted by the beast. The mischief is gone and the Mongrifier is going for the kill.

A bookshelf falls and Lisa is too slow to get out of its way. She's pinned underneath it and the Mongrifier is coming for her. She holds a hardcover of War and Peace in her hands as some kind of shield and then a wicked pain shoots through her leg.

She wakes up and she's in the bus. The man sitting beside her has his hand on her leg. Without thinking, she gets up and slaps the tiny pervert.

He's saying something but the blood is rushing to her ears and she slaps him again. He falls down like a sack of flour.

She's getting him thrown out of the bus for sure.

---
Oh, you see where this is going? ;)

The Itch - Part 2

Part 1 is here 

Mr. Kosmos gained consciousness with his face in the mud and a wrecking pain in his jaw that spiked through his neck with every breath he took. 

There was a weight pressing down on him and as he moved he realized it was his luggage. They had thrown him out of the bus in this unknown place. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked in the distance. There was nothing except dust and dying vegetation as far as his eye could see. The sun was above his head and he could feel himself sweating under his clothes.

He took in the extent of his injuries. His jaw hurt pretty bad but it was not broken. There were some phantom pains blossoming through his body, probably a result of the fall, and he knew he'd be blue and black in a day. 

Sitting on the side of the road he wished he had not pinched that lady. What the hell was he thinking and what did he expect her to do. 

He would need to find another way to reach his mother's village. Maybe he could hitch a ride from any vehicle going towards the next station and from there he could catch another bus. He stood up and walked to the side of the road. Looking on both sides for the sign of any vehicle. There was nothing. Just heat waves wafting up from the road, muddling everything in his sight. Then the waves shifted and he saw a vehicle coming his way. He raised his arm and stuck his thumb out in the universal gesture of i-need-a-ride.

At first, he thought the vehicle was not going to stop. But then it started to slow down and by the time it reached him he could see it was a small truck with seats in front and empty carriage space in the back. 

"Hi, uh," Mr. Kosmos approached the driver, a burly man with a tattoo of an anchor on his huge bicep, "I hope it won't be too inconvenient for you to give me a ride to the next town. I need to catch a bus to see my mother."

The man glared at Mr. Kosmos and then grunted. It could have been a no or a yes, but Mr. Kosmos took it as a yes. He walked to the other side of the car and threw his luggage in the back. He opened the door and saw that the man was not alone in the car. There was a girl sitting with him and she sidled closer to the man as Mr. Kosmos climbed in and slammed the door shut behind him. 

Hello, he said to the girl. She made a face and sat a little closer to the man. 

The car started to move. 

It was a long way to the next town no one spoke and the travel drowsiness was soon apparent in the truck. The car took a turn and the girl's leg brushed Mr. Kosmos' leg. 

And like the flashback of life of a dying man, his leg started to itch like it was the end of the world.

-- FIN --

The Itch -- Part 1

The itch was driving Mr. Kosmos mad. It started somewhere in the area of his right thigh's underside and it spread till the heel of his foot. He scratched and scratched, but it brought him no relief. The worse part was that he was sitting near the window of the bus on this long journey from his home to visit his sick mother in another town. And the woman sitting by his side was asleep since the journey began. He could not even distract himself from the itch by talking to her because waking her up would be rude and Mr. Kosmos was not a rude man. His mother had raised him to be a better man. 

He sighed deeply and continued to itch his leg through the fabric of his trouser. What he really wanted to do was to rip off his trousers and dig into the meat of his leg with his nails till he found the source of that itch and then rip the culprit agent of itch out with his teeth. He was sweating more than usual even though the air conditioning in the bus was working fine. He tried to distract himself by looking out of the window but the same old scenery of trees and roadside foliage passed him by. It was boring, but not boring enough to take his mind off the itch. 

As he scratched his leg, he felt the itch growing like an ink stain in a glass of water. It spread all over his leg and if Mr. Kosmos had as much as a shaving blade, he would have sawed his leg off with that thing no matter how much time it took or how much he bled all over the bus. He grabbed the armrest on the left side of the bus because the large lady's arm was completely over the middle arm rest. He slammed his back into the seat and opened his mouth to suck in a little more of the sweet air conditioned air, but there was no relief from the itch. 

He finally decided that he'd have to get off the bus and handle the itch before making his way to his mother by some other mode of transport. He raised his hand from his seat and waved it wildly, waiting for the conductor of the bus to notice him. The man had his headphones plugged deep in his ears and he was bobbing his head to some strange beat. Mr. Kosmos was almost at the verge of tearing his hair out when he did something unthinkable for which he would blame himself till the day he died.

He slid his hand under the fat arm of the woman sleeping in the next seat and pinched her with all his might. She screamed like a train engine and that got the conductor's attention. He knocked on the driver's cabin and the bus slowly started to slow down. 

But Mr. Kosmos had a new problem very quickly coming his way. The woman stood up to her full height like some kind of behemoth and slapped Mr. Kosmos right in the face. The last thing he saw as stars swam before his eyes and birds circled his head was the woman's other hand rushing to make another introduction with his face. 

Thankfully, by then he had blacked out. 

And so began his real problems.

- part 2, soon -