VamZombie WereWitch Girl and Demon Boy ✓

11 - Secret Susan

-December 11, Los Angeles CA-

I look up at the sign in front of me, ‘The Gallon Hemelda’, the rest of the letters that were there when Aleniese brought me here aren’t up yet even though the sun set about an hour ago.  That’s odd right away; if a bar is having half off drinks it should have its sign up for that for weeks, not hours before the event.  It’s nearing six now, the drive up to LA took about three and a half hours, a bit longer than I expected, but that’s traffic.  Even so the place doesn’t even open till 8pm and the event is not supposed to happen until past midnight.  I have time to kill.

With two hours till the bar opens I decide to walk the block.  I made sure to clean up before coming here, something I hadn’t done in a while since I quit my job and broke up with Rebecca.  Today I went unconventional even by my own standards with my hair spiked, something I haven’t done since middle school.  I’m wearing a blue polo shirt, the only polo shirt I own and probably the only one I will ever own, a gift a coworker got me during one of the Christmas parties at work—a secret Santa kind of thing.  For pants I went with black slacks—a pair that I used to use for work.  Well, seems like my desperate attempt is being fueled by my old job.  Wonderful. 

One circle around the block and I end up at a restaurant down the road, it’s a diner, breakfast and dinner 24 hours.  At six there is a healthy crowd at the place, but it seems the age tends to be of the senior variety, this is not to exclude the teenagers in the corner nor the pair of families directly adjacent to each other by the front windows.  But most of the place seems to be seniors.  I pick a seat at the counter, and quickly get a menu and order a burger and coke—hardly even realizing how hungry I am until now.  I don’t think I’ve eaten anything all day, and when I was getting to that point of hunger earlier Aleniese showed me the boy split in half and suddenly all notion of food was gone.

Two hours drag on slowly.  Allowing me the play with the fries and sip the coke extraordinarily slow, even going as far as ordering a small cake desert to just to prove to the restaurant that I still want to be there after two some hours.  But eight slowly came and even though I’m not facing the bar, it can be seen every time I turn around, a glowing light in the distance.  The crowd that is at the diner has dwindled considerably, everyone around me has changed over at least once, and at 8:15 I think it is time for me to take the walk over to the bar.

I pay the tab with my card—knowing money is going to become precious to me very soon, and walk out the door noticing a large sign that has been hung up on the diner’s front door.  “We have the right to refuse service to intoxicated partisans.”  Ah, the woes of having a 24 hour diner within eyeshot of a bar.

It’s 8:20 when I get in front of Mel, I don’t need to read his name tag to know who he is, looking up I notice the sign still hasn’t been changed, even since the bar has opened up about twenty minutes ago.  A low boom is coming from the bar, probably background music to the empty place for the employees to listen to before the place goes a-wall.  In front of Mel I reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet.  “Hey, isn’t The Basket Case playing tonight?” I casually ask as I hand over my ID.

“How do you know Kid? Supposed to be a secret show. You friends of the band?”

“Uh, No.” I look up at his hefty body.  As expected his nametag is on his shirt and I can see the same tattoos from the dream across his arms.  He hands me back my ID and crosses his arms, putting his body between me and the door.

“Ain’t nobody supposed to know about the show tonight.  Or who The Basket Case really is. If you know and you ain’t friends you’re trouble.  Don’t want your kind here ruining our shit, not until the clues are set and the message is sent out.”