The Traveller

  In a small apartment in a large city, there was a small room. This room had an entrance hidden behind a bookshelf. To enter the room you had to pull a fake copy of He Who Fights With Monsters out exactly one and a quarter inches and push the danger noodle statue on the shelf above it back to the wall then slide it sideways two inches. The walls of the room were coated with several layers of aluminum foil underneath a double layer of the bottom half of egg cartons. Why was the room set up this way? Well it’s pretty easy to figure out once you know the apartment’s owner. He’s bat shit crazy. Always talking about time traveling and making up crazy theories about what is going to happen.

  And wouldn’t you know it, the maniac appears in a flash of light. Excitedly he moves to sit down at the computer he has set up in his secure room. Logging on to Patreon, he can’t wait to tell the others what he has learned. Jake’s bloodline isn’t a bloodline. It’s the remnant of a part of the soul of a forgotten god erased by Eversmile. He knows no one is going to believe him, so he’ll tell the truth this time. Only the Malefic one will know and that’s all that matters. He can set up his defenses, buff his security, change his password, but he will never stop the Traveller. He will know his cliffs are useless against the mighty intellect that has accepted his challenge.

  Feeling something moving in his long white beard, he removes the trucker cap that says, “I’m not a hot mess, I’m a spicy disaster.” and swats the spider seeking skin to bite into. As the spider flies through the air, he flicks his wrist and conjures a metal spike that penetrates the spider in its cephalothorax and pins it to his wall. Getting up he looks closer at the creature as it fights to break free from the spike of metal and get back to its prey.

  “Nasty. Wandering spider mutated for increased size and speed and increased potency of its venom. You’re getting trickier, Malefic One.” the man says as he puts the ball cap back onto his shaved head. “Not tricky enough to capture the Traveller though.” He cackles in glee and sits back down.

  Logging into patreon, he scrolls through the comments looking for an opportunity to hijack the conversation. “Perfect.” he exclaims as he finds a post from Bluetaco asking what everyone thinks is going on with Jake’s bloodline behaving oddly after he reached A grade.

  He begins typing. “That is the remnant of the soul of the Primal Hunter reacting to the presence of Eversmile.”

  Lemonsquisher responds with the rolling eyes emoji. ATallChevy literally types “Groan.” Daniel types, “LOL. Here we go again.” Jessie responds with, “What are you talking about?” Bluetaco, always ready to spin the steering wheel and fly off the interstate onto the side roads of crazy speculation enthusiastically asks, “How did Jake get the remnant of a god’s soul?”

  The man starts to answer, but a red light starts flashing. Looking up at his security feeds, he sees two enormous men with long blond hair and beards wearing navy blue suits underneath long overcoats. One of the men motions toward the vision rune inscribed on the brick above and to the side of the door. The other man takes out a hatchet and in a flash of essence destroys the rune, the screen showing the front door goes blank.

  “Not today Ragnar.” The bearded maniac says as he sends some essence into a crystal by the entrance to the secure room. The shelves slide into position and a thin brick wall slides down behind the entrance attached to an inch thick sheet of essence enhanced metal. The man slides two solid metal bars into place before he lifts a section of floor from the corner of the small room. Sliding into what from the outside looks like a large air duct, he carefully replaces the section of floor he removed before sliding down the chute.

  After falling a short distance, he goes through a portal that takes him to the basement of a nearby building. Taking out his phone, he quickly tells the other patreons what is happening and apologizes, promising to explain more about Jake’s bloodline when he reaches a secure location.

  Going up the stairs, he follows the path he has rehearsed many times. Up the stairs, past the custodial office and into the elevator to take him to the parking garage. He pulls out a pair of dark lensed wayfarer sunglasses as his eyes scans for threats while he stops to tie the strings of his white leather new balance 608’s. As his phone falls out of the cargo pocket of his baggy shorts, he reaches for it and scans underneath the cars for the large feet of the scandinavian thugs sent to retrieve him.

  Seeing no immediate threats, he calmly walks out to the street and steps onto a bus taking a seat at the rear. When the bus passes the street with the main entrance to his building, he sees a large black Cadillac SUV pull out and accelerate behind the bus. Cursing he types a quick message to the other patreons, that it may take him a bit longer to get back to them before throwing his phone and his watch out the bus window. Slipping into the shadows between the seats, he enhances his muscles and darkens his skin while his hair grows out into a slicked back high skin taper. He replaces the unbuttoned short sleeved oxford shirt he had been wearing over his T-shirt with the picture of blue cat with spikes growing out of his back.

  Buttoning up the long sleeved plaid shirt, he moved through the shadows underneath the seats to appear a few seats away from where he had left his other shirt, sun glasses, and ball cap. When the bus stopped, he exited the bus with two other people. The SUV followed the bus as the man calmly walked down the street and stroked his short dark black beard while thinking out his next move.

  Turning to walk down an alley, he went into the side entrance of a restaurant and out its back door. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he heard tires squeal as the black SUV made a turn to come towards him. The man quickstepped down the entrance into the subway. Hopping on the train, he squeezed his way to the back of the car and began removing his clothes. When he was down to his bikini with images of a cute green bird, he pulled his backup phone from his dimensional storage and set it up on a short stand on the floor. Doing push ups, he explained to his “chat” that in order to reach your peak, you had to take advantage of every opportunity you had to work out. As he spoke, he transitioned from regular pushups into the “navy seal” workout popular with inmates. People moved away from him as the sweat began to fly, many of them cursing, “Dumbass influencers.”

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  At the second stop, he grabbed his phone and clothes he had removed and hopped on one leg explaining polymetrics or some other bullshit term to his chat. When he finished his video with a reminder to click the link below to order his new protein powder, he turned off the phone and placed it in his rolled up bundle of clothes.

  In front of him, a petite woman was chatting on her phone with her suitcase behind her. As he passed, he overheard her cussing in russian as he touched the handle of her luggage and made it disappear into his dimensional storage. Passing a large garbage container he stuffed his bundle of clothes into it before stopping at a kiosk selling phones.

  “I’m sorry, but do you have any fully charged phones? I seem to have lost mine and I’ve only got a few minutes before an important conference call.” He said with a smile. The young lady at the counter looked at him doubtfully as her eyes went from his gold chain around his neck down his sweaty body to the ridiculous bikini he was wearing.

  Having dealt with plenty of strange people working at a phone kiosk in the subway system, she pulled out the newest samsung. “It’s only got a half charged battery, but it should get you through a call and you receive a free charger with it.”

  “Great. That will work fine. How much is it?”

  “$1475.” She said as she began pulling out some paperwork.

  Realizing he had thrown away his wallet, the man reached behind his back and summoned a tightly rolled wad of money. The girl at the counter’s nose wrinkled in disgust at where the man had apparently just pulled a wad of money from while he carefully counted out twenty five one hundred dollar bills. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, could you just get the phone ready for me and then fill out the paperwork yourself?”

  The girl put on a pair of rubber gloves as she gave the meathead a disgusted look. She marked each of the bills with the special marker for detecting counterfeits and held them up to the light before counting them. She smiled and said, “Sure thing mister Smith.”

  As the newly named John Smith walked away from the booth, he spotted a mens room. Ducking into one of the stalls, he shut the door and pulled the suitcase from his storage. Opening it, his smile dropped into a frown. The woman must have been a ballerina and the only thing in it was a pink tutu, an overcoat, and a pair of custom black calf high Doc Martins. After a long sigh, the man shrugged and shrunk his body down. As he pulled the tutu on, he grew out an exorbitant amount of chest hair and a long fu manchu mustache. He slid on the boots and laced them up before putting on the overcoat.

  He exited the stall, leaving the suitcase and underwear behind and walked to the sink to wash his hands. A transit authority police officer washing his hands next to him did a double take and turned to look him up and down, “What the hell?” he said. The man in his newly acquired tutu turned one foot out, placed his hands on his hips spreading the coat to expose the tutu, and cocked his head to give the officer an eyebrow raised look that screamed, “What, you bigot?”

  “Jessie. How are you? I haven’t seen you since…” the officer looked down shyly before continuing, “...that night. I’ve looked for you everywhere.”

  The man in the tutu softened his gaze and patted the man on the shoulder, “I’m so sorry honey, but I’m not Jessie. Keep looking. I’m sure you’ll find her soon. I’ll be back in town in a couple months and I’ll find you and keep you for myself if she hasn’t found you by then.” He blew the officer a kiss and swung his hips as he walked out of the bathroom leaving the officer behind to stare in disbelief before shrugging and walking out of the restroom with a big smile on his face.

  As the man exited the restroom, he downloaded patreon and informed everybody he had escaped and gave them a little bit of info on what had happened. When he exited the underground transit system, he looked left and right and cursed as he saw a black SUV turn onto the street and head in his direction.

  Calmly he walked into the nearest entrance to a building by handing the doorman three one hundred dollar bills and asking how to get to the rear exit. The doorman pointed down the hallway past the elevators as an angry concierge stepped from behind the reception counter before being cut off by the doorman as the pair watched the man in boots and an overcoat walk towards the back entrance.

  Walking out the back of the building, the man felt his arms grabbed roughly as two oversized men stepped from the shadows. “Mr. Jenkins, the boss is upset. You’ve been sharing his secrets again.”

  The man in the tutu whose feet were now dangling nearly a foot off the ground smiled and said, “Ragnar. Rollo. So nice to see you again.”

  The larger of the two scoffed. “Not going to be so nice for you. We warned you last time.”

  The other large man smiled as his eyes changed to reptilian slits, “Nice outfit, Jenkins. We’ll make sure the boss gets a picture of this to post in the discord.”

  “Awww. Come on guys. You know that no one believes me. I post more bullshit that I think will be funny than actual information.”

  The two men shook their heads as the SUV ominously rolled slowly down the alley towards them. “He’s pissed this time. You went too far last week.”

  *****

  The SUV rolled into an abandoned factory building. “Take out your phone and type this into the Patreon chat.” He handed him a piece of paper.

  “I, Bret Jenkins am typing this message of my own free will and under duress…” a scaled fist smashed into Bret’s face and his eyes went cross for a second. “What?” A claw pointed at the word, “No”. Bret continued typing “sorry, no duress. Everything I have posted is completely false and made up. I apologize to my fellow patreons for misleading them with this disinformation. I further apologize to the almighty Malefic Author, the greatest author ever. Send.”

  Another scaly backfist smashed into his nose, however this time, Bret smiled as a flash of light came from his golden necklace and he disappeared, teleporting to a different time and place.

  *****

  A small boy read a book by flashlight. He quickly turned the pages as he devoured the story at a fast pace. The Ogres had just captured the heroes when…

  “Zachary Oliver Garth.” His mother scolded as she pulled the cover he was hiding under down and grabbed the book and flashlight. “You need to get to sleep.”

  Zack pouted, “But mom, the ogres just captured them, just give me a few more minutes to find out…”

  “Absolutely not. You can read it tomorrow.” his mother stated as she exited the room and shut the door.

  The small boy threw a mini-fit slamming his fists into the bed in frustration, completely unaware of the strange man hiding under his bed in a tutu and doc martins patiently waiting for his amulet to recharge.