Yep, She's in Trouble. Big Trouble.
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 15547
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"It was tough, I mean, my uncle never rode a train in his life. So I was
kind of suspicious. The first thing I thought of was that movie - you
know, the one where the insurance salesman and the wife plot to murder
the husband and make it look like an accident? So I called Aunt Sophie,
and she said yes, Uncle Arcane had just bought life insurance, but she
swore she didn't have anything to do with it. Uncle Arcane was supposed
to come down from Oregon, had some business in San Francisco. I guess he
was going to fly out of Portland, but he changed his mind after he dreamt
the plane would crash. Some good it did him."
So there's the insurance angle. But she still hasn't told me anything about what this cursed being is or why she needs to find it. "This insurance salesman - the one who sold your uncle the insurance - is he the cursed one?" "No, no, not at all. He was my brother. He got the same strange message I did, on a street in New York. I guess he did what he could, sold him the life insurance just in case something was going to happen. Maybe he thought it would have changed something. "I got another strange message last year, this time when a billboard changed on my way to work. It went from a Ditech advertisement to saying 'Melinda, your brother is in trouble. If you do not help, he will die.' And then it went back to Ditech. A week later he - I mean my brother, the insurance salesman - he died, coroner said of a heart attack. But I swear, by the expression on his face, that was no heart attack. He had always had a weak heart. Something scared him to death." All right, where's the meat, where's the part where you go find that beggar and pay him off? Shut up and get to the point. God. Women. "It just got worse. I got a memo at work six months ago saying the same thing as the other two messages, only about my boyfriend. At this point, I still didn't believe. Five days later, shot dead during a botched robbery. A week ago, I got a strange letter in the mail, saying my Uncle Krypto was in trouble and he would die if I didn't help. Well, by this time, I was convinced. I went to the return address - the letter was anonymous, but the envelope had a return address - and found an abandoned warehouse, filled with stuff I'd only seen in arcane rituals before. Suddenly, the lights went out, and I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned around - I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black, but I could feel hot breath on my neck, hear labored breathing. I felt something warm running down my legs - at that point I thought I wet myself. I tried to scream, but no words came out; something had caught in my throat. Suddenly, the lights came back on, and whatever it was disappeared before I could see it." I nodded. Another fifteen minutes, and she might actually tell me what I needed to know. "The person who turned the lights on was Ralph - you remember, the beggar in London. 'I think we barely got here just in time,' he told me. Then he smelled something, and his face turned sour. 'Not in time enough,' he said, shaking his head. 'It looks like you've been marked by one of them.'" "One of what?" I asked. "I don't know. Ralph wouldn't say. Said he didn't want to invite any of that kind back. But the way it sounded, it was a descendant of - scenes that shall not be named." I nodded again. No need to speak that name; they were author-spawn, the worst kind of author-spawn. They had no names as individuals, but were like viruses, parasites seeking only to reproduce, often as graphically as possible. I was probably safe, but Melinda...that was another story. "Ralph said he was sorry, he hadn't figured it out until it was too late. My uncle, he said, had worked with him, hunting those fiends, so initially he thought the murders were revenge, part of a larger war. But later, when my boyfriend died, he realized he was on the wrong track - they were all designed to get at me. One of those things had been trying to systematically eliminate all the men in my life, so that I could belong to it totally. Then, my death would make me a slave to the one who killed me. The men would all be replaced by it - it would be my new father, husband, brother, whatever, forever. I'm marked for death, and an eternity I don't particularly care to experience, and I don't know why." Okay. She was definitely in trouble. And going up against one of them - that wasn't going to be easy. "So, you want me to find this thing, without any clues as to its identity?" "No. It marked me as its, but luckily was scared off before it could complete its conquest. That means it's bound to come back for me at some point. I stayed with Ralph for a couple of days, but then he had to go out and do some hunting, and he said he couldn't take me with him. So I came here. Maybe you can follow its scent too."
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unknown adventurer
3/3/2006 12:00:17 AM
Extending Enabled
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