Filling in Blanks

All right, here's Part Four. Three hours of sleep followed by at least three naps and I finally got it done. A lot of dialogue today. Hopefully moving us into the next part.

“Really?” the girl asked. “Because I just saw you fight an old Asian man, murder him, and then he disintegrated. So please, let’s hear your perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Okay, maybe not perfectly reasonable.”

She took her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call the cops.”

“Are you?” he asked, sounding bolder than he felt. “You gonna tell them I vaporized a guy?”

She hesitated. “Okay, maybe not. What’s your semi-reasonable explanation?”

“Short answer? He wasn’t what you thought. He was something dark and terrible, and I had to stop him.”

“And what makes you think you’re not just delusional?”

Patrick looked at the pile of dust and ash being blown away by the wind. “Well, he, you know, disintegrated.”

She looked at her phone and put it away. “Fair enough. So we’re what, being invaded by aliens? Body snatchers?”

“No? It’s more… I don’t really want to get into it in a parking lot.”

She took a step back toward her front door and opened it, gesturing inside. “I think you at least owe me a proper explanation.”

“You seriously want to be alone with me in your apartment after that?” He gestured at the remnants of dust.

She stepped back over the threshold and picked up a baseball bat. “I think I can take you.”

“Oh, you definitely can.”

He sat on her couch. She leaned against the wall, bat in hand.

“Talk.”

“Okay, so they’re not people. They look like people to you, I guess. To me they’re just kind of empty and rawr with these… teeth. They are… from hell, I think? I’m really iffy on the details. I’m just supposed to stop them. It’s like my… calling.”

“Why you?”

“Oh… why not? Just, you know, circumstances.”

“Okay… and how long have you been a monster hunter?”

“What time is it? Oh, about… three hours? That’s why I’m so—”

“Shitty at it?”

“That seems needlessly harsh, but yeah. It didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”

“So what are you going to do? Just keep killing these things until you figure it out?”

“I guess.” He stood up. She raised the bat slightly. “But right now I have to go do a thing. A normal, human, non-murdery thing.”

She opened the front door. “Try not to kill anyone in the parking lot.”

As he passed her, he paused. “I’m Patrick, by the way.”

“Bryony.”

He walked the dozen blocks to Betsy’s Diner, where he had worked as a dishwasher until the day before. There was in fact no Betsy, and no one knew who Betsy was. Patrick’s boss was a guy named Frank, a large man who could cook an egg eighteen different ways. He was probably pissed that Patrick had quit, but also probably shorthanded.

Patrick pushed open the door. He could see the back of Frank’s head in the kitchen, where he was looking down, chopping onions.

Frank’s head jerked up like he had sensed something, and he turned toward the door. Just before he had a clear view to the front door, Patrick dove behind a booth. Frank hadn’t seen him, but he had seen Frank.

Frank didn’t have a face, just hollow pits in place of eyes.

I'm not making it up exactly as I go, more like making it up half a page in advance. So I kind of know what's going to happen before I write it. It's like that Nicolas Cage movie where he can see five minutes into the future.

I also got almost all the way through this part before realizing that the two characters had never been actually introduced to each other. I have a feeling that will move to an earlier point in a subsequent draft. But not right now. There's no going back, we're living five minutes in the future, baby.

I'll see you Wednesday, when I think we'll discuss why this story doesn't have a proper title.