by Detergent
It was All Hallows Eve, better known to the Terre Haute yokels as Halloween. Larry had decided to stay at the luxury garage inside Sauron's southern Indiana compound rather than at home where Juniper insisted upon passing out candy before holding her quarterly ritual to appease the land. He knew she would try to get him into bed tonight- He had seen the Peppa Pig Happy Fun-Time Cock and Ball Torture dick prison on the nightstand in her room earlier that day after they had a quick romp between the sheets. She had been so foolhardy as to have fucked him before he had seen of the implement. He had felt quite fine and lively afterwards, having once again siphoned off some of her lifeforce to sustain himself, so he did not have to allow her to peg him tonight- He wouldn't need to siphon her for lifeforce for some days. She was, however, behaving oddly again as if she was going to try to turn the tables on him or worse- Use him as they had intended to use his Father's Republican lackey, Jim Banks, to feed the land and its spirits to repay them for permitting Sauron and his brood to continue in their dark workings on Hoosier soil. The land required a sacrifice several times a year, the most important being on his birthday- Samhain. He wondered what Juniper had planned- if she would try to sacrifice him this year. She had made him a huge, albeit half-raw, half-burnt breakfast of cornbread and unidentifiable muck in addition to black, crispy bacon that she had set before him at their crooked kitchen table that morning. She had also given him a genuine Chanel hair scrunchie, which he had pocketed with some halting thanks since she never gave him designer anything without there being strings attached.
Juniper pinched his cheek in a rough approximation of fondness. "Hims is going to have such a party today!" she squealed and clasped her hands together momentarily before unceremoniously grabbing a handful of his be-Gucchi'd arse. "I'll see you later, widdle Sugar-Rump!" She left the house, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.
Larry stood at the grimy front window of the house he and his girlfriend shared but did not watch her car back out of the driveway, past another that sat upon cinder blocks without its wheels. Instead, he withdrew the stupidly-expensive silk and diamond hair scrunchie from his pocket and studied it for a moment. His eyebrows, like two majestically-feathered, night-dark ravens knitted together upon his pale, shining brow, shadowing his eyes of wine-grape iolite shaded with silvery depths. The Chanel charm adorning the scrunchie had been cast in gold, highlighted in diamonds. He could tell by the feel of it and by its heft. He lifted the scrunchie in his hand and lowered it, gauging its value and weighing that against what he thought she might be planning.
Larry did not like where this was going at all. Juniper was having her hair done. She attempted to make him breakfast. Last night, she had taken the time to make a fresh batch of henna paste and had loaded it into cones but had not done her mehendi as of yet. All of that on top of the gift made him uneasy. She was trying to lull him into a false sense of security. Larry stuffed the scrunchie back into his trouser pocket, lifted his fourth-hand jacket from its peg and left the house, locking the dilapidated door behind him. Given all of the signs, Juniper had not managed to groom another sacrifice in time. Usually, she was kind enough to include him in the ritual itself as her aide. Even though she had tried to hide it, Larry knew her intentions- She had gifted him like a sacral king. He had to remove himself from her influence for a few days for his safety. She'd have to find another target or shed a few drops of her own blood this year. He was going to take himself out of harm's way. He would go to Somer Fable, his secure, fortified garage in his Father's Terre Haute compound and spend more time with Cash-Blaze, his ensouled black Bentley.
Some time had passed since Larry's harrowing experience in Ancient Rome. He had spent a good deal of time at the garage with Cash-Blaze, his luxury auto, sulking and being waited upon by the shiny black Bentley. Day after day, he seethed over the loss of the purse of gold coin that had been wrested from him, coin that was his- fair and square. His back had finally stopped aching where that minion of his Father's had stabbed him but his pride had not recovered from his treatment. That coin was his, that coin was his, his mind chased the thought worrying at it like a street mutt with a bone. The only thing that reliably cheered him up was that while he had spent time in the past, Cash-Blaze had taught himself to honk his horn in a manner that reliably imitated a British servant calling Larry 'Sir'.
"Sir," the Bentley idled towards him, a silver tray balanced upon its hood. Larry's iPhone lay upon the gleaming metal. The phone was playing classical music and he could see his Father's name displayed on the screen. Larry leaned forward in his once-beautiful leather chair and lifted the phone to his pale, shell-like ear after swiping to accept the call.
"I will allow you to drive to My estate in Zionsville to receive your birthday gift directly from My hand." His Father's stern voice made the invitation sound more like a command. "You should make haste- I will not be subjected to hordes of small, dribbling children dressed like drunken superheroes whining for free candy on My doorstep. My gates will close and lock at 7 pm. If you don't make it, you'll just have to wait until next year for another opportunity to travel to ancient lands to make your fortune."
Before Larry could thank his Father, Sauron disconnected and Larry's iPhone chirped sadly, indicating the call had already ended.
"We are going to Zionsville, prettieth," Larry stood and slid his phone into a back pocket. He reached out and stroked Cash-Blaze's shiny hood. "Thou musteth get ready immediately- Thine Daddiest knows you are speedy and that thou willeth hurry. As it is mine birthestday, putteth on thine best autobra, the one with the brilliants and makest thy tyres to gleam. I will changeth so I mightest appear pleasingeth to mine Fatherest."
Cash-Blaze tooted his horn twice in happiness and ended with honking "Sir," then rolled off to retrieve his black pleather autobra from the cabinet on the far side of the garage. He slid it over his grill and fastened the straps as Larry went to his closet and took out his dress clothes
The brisk day was lingering over the embers of the sunset as Larry and Cash-Blaze made their way past the final security gate and up the drive to Sauron's Zionsville estate. It had been unusually sunny that day for Indiana in the autumn. Larry had dressed in his best third and fifth-hand finery from the consignment boutique and thrift shop to render himself presentable enough to be admitted into his Father's presence. As he was invited to such an exclusive neighbourhood, he felt safe riding in his gorgeous black Bentley instead of his decrepit hooptie- The neighbourhood Sauron dwelt in was rich beyond wealthy and his son had no fear of the car's mirror-bright paint taking a scratch or his baby's hubcaps being pried off.
His Father's favourite house-orc opened the massive front door and allowed Larry to enter. Sauron's son followed the creature into a grand sitting room carpeted with hand-knotted silk rugs laid over a beautiful wooden floor that gleamed with care and expense. Shelves of tomes lined walls adorned by rare paintings at intervals. On one end of the room sat a massive fireplace mantled in Italian marble. Elegant furniture had been tastefully arranged with the fireplace as a focal point. The house-orc led him to the main grouping of chairs and bade him wait, adding that Lord Sauron would be with him shortly. The house-orc then left him standing amidst all of the statues, costly furnishings, rare plants, and books without even so much as offering him a seat on a footstool. Larry examined everything several times as a smile slowly spread itself across his face. The riches surrounding him oozed into his blood, like taking a hit of a powerful drug. His stomach fizzed with giddiness and he could feel all of the money, all of the power behind the costly items boosting his strength. Greatly daring, he chose an armchair of caramel leather and seated himself in it. He closed his eyes and imagined himself as the commander of all this wealth.
"Did I offer you a chair?" Sauron growled at Larry as the Lord of Gifts swept into the sitting room.
Before Larry could stand, two invisible hands yanked at his collar and beltline scooping him out of the leather lounge chair and plopping him onto his feet. Larry flapped his arms a bit to get his balance but the rug seemed to shift under his feet. He supposed if it hadn't been his birthday, his Father likely would have upended the chair and dumped him onto the beautiful Persian rug to grovel where he now stood.
As Larry flapped, Sauron moved before the armchair and, after flicking out the skirts of His long coat, seated himself and waited for His inept son to stop making an idiot of himself. Larry couldn't do anything without creating embarrassing drama. Sauron's nostrils flared in impatience but He reigned in His temper. It was Larry's re-birthday, after all, and He had decided to be forbearing, despite His desire to the contrary. Sauron sighed again as Larry whipped around to face Him.
"As it is your birthday, your re-birthday," the Dark Lord corrected Himself, "I have decided to allow you to use My hourglass to travel once more in time and to return to the present day."
Larry's Dimatapp-purple eyes gleamed. Sauron could almost see His son's thoughts like a hologram projecting from their purple depths- Larry and piles of gold and jewels. Larry with his favourite male harlot, Cole in Las Vegas or Monte Carlo drinking chilled champagne and betting at the tables; Larry surrounded by ancient artefacts receiving terrifically handsome compensation for donating them to a museum. Money, wealth, prestige, power. He could barely choke down a snort of mixed amusement and derision.
"As you are having issues keeping your balance, I want you to know that I expect you to be extremely careful with My hourglass. I will allow you to keep it for two weeks and afterwards, you will come here and place it directly into My hands. The hourglass will be returned to Me exactly as it is today. And I'll warn you: DO NOT MEDDLE IN RECORDED HISTORY. Changing an important timeline has consequences and even I cannot right things completely if they are disturbed. Ordinary lives, you may disturb. But you will not play god or emperor, do you understand Me?"
Larry bowed his head in acceptance of his Father's instructions. "Yea, Fatherest. I mighteth still bring backst objects of value, however?"
"Of course. Why else do you think I am lending you such a powerful object?"
Larry bowed his head again, finding it prudent to remain silent.
Sauron's favourite house-orc entered the sitting room bearing a golden tray of delicacies. Tiny cakes frosted with gold foil gleamed on a priceless china plate and he could see a platter containing petits toasts topped with creme fraiche and Almas caviar as well. On the other arm, the creature bore a stand for the tray. With a practised flick, the creature set up the stand and carefully loaded the trays onto it. The house-orc retreated from the room for a few moments as Larry's eyes riveted themselves to the golden cakes and the most expensive caviar in the world. Soon, the house-orc returned with an ice bucket on a stand in which was nestled an extremely costly-looking bottle of champagne and, on the other arm, a tray of beautiful plates and two crystal champagne flutes.
Larry, tipsy on champagne and dreams of his extravagant future as a super-oligarch pranced dizzily down the walk from his Father's door to the huge, sweeping driveway where Cash-Blaze sat. Something seemed off about the luxury auto but he failed to place it until the driver's side door swung open and he was yanked inside. Reflexively, he curled his body around the hourglass, protecting it so it was not smashed against the centre console. He pushed himself against the passenger-side door as far as he could as he beheld Juniper in the driver's seat.
"Hewwo, Sweet Buns! I hope Daddy gave you a goodly birthday present. We're going to him's special party now, yes we are!"
It was then that Larry noticed that a screwdriver carved with sigils had been jammed into Cash-Blaze's ignition. The runes glowed with a faint, sickly silver light. He squeaked out a few small farts of horror. Of all things that Juniper could have used what magic she possessed to achieve, she had decided to hijack his beloved luxury auto. She slammed her door closed and put the Bentley into gear with a shrill grinding of metal. "Sir! Sir!" Cash-Blaze honked in pain.
"What artest you doing?" Larry gasped, pressing harder against the door as they backed down the long drive at an alarming speed. As he squirmed, he shoved the hourglass beneath his shirt and down past his belt and encased it in his Kelvin Klorne underpants, hoping that she wouldn't try to grope him as she drove.
With another screech of gears, they sped out of Sauron's estate, barely pausing for stop signs, and gained the freeway.
"It's your birthday," she explained as if to a small, dull child. "It's also a special holiday on the year-wheel: It's Samhain. You had your ritual meal and I've gifted you appropriately. You're my Sacral King this year, Lur-Lur. This corn-riddled, backward land needs a sacrifice or we won't be able to stay here and channel power for Father's special meth. No meth, no orcs. No orcs, no army. No army, no Kingdom on Earth. And I was born to be a Queen; it was read in my fortune, you know. So now you pony up so I can have what I'm entitled to. Father will be very happy with me and hell, he'll be proud of you for once too."
Larry's mouth worked but no sound came out. He reached for the door latch but Juniper made a gesture and his seatbelt lashed out and bound his wrists down at his sides. Clack! He couldn't wriggle free.
"Hims has to buckle up for safety," she sang. She wagged a crooked finger at him. He tried to snake a finger to his crotch to touch the hourglass to activate it and make his escape but he couldn't reach it.
Larry bit his lips in dread as mile after mile disappeared beneath Cash-Blaze's glossy tyres. Soon, they were turning down a lonely paved road and then down a gravel one that cut a gash between great swathes of golden corn. Then they turned up an ill-kept track that followed a fencerow and drove into one of those oceans of corn. Juniper threw Cash-Blaze into park so hard that Larry could smell oil and metal. She got out and came around to the passenger side of the car and ripped his door open. She cut his seatbelt and used it to bind his arms at his sides and, grabbing one of his elbows, began to march him down several paths that had been cut into the cornfield.
Larry's mind cleared a little bit and he found himself desperately planning how to escape her. If he could get a hand on the hourglass, he could activate it and hope he wound up in a better place than this. He was sure he had to get a hand on it as it was nestled against his cock and all of the wishes in the world weren't activating the artefact since he was still trapped by his loving girlfriend.
They made several turns and, at what seemed to be the centre of the great cornfield, they came to a large piece of fieldstone upon which laid a chalice and a dagger of what appeared to be obsidian.
She pulled him over to the stone and forced him onto his knees. She was going to do it- Juniper was going to sacrifice him in a ritual of power. He was unsure that his Father would resurrect him of His Own accord. And, no matter what she maintained, he was also unsure that his girlfriend's purple invocations would bring him back to life no matter how many times she uttered his name with power. Larry racked his brains for a way out. His bladder began to ache with fear.
"I hath to piss," Larry pled. "I knowst thou liketh piss but consider it the last requesteth of the sacralest kingeth."
"Awww did hims forget his diaper?" Her hand floated in the air above the dagger.
"Yes mummy," Larry forced himself to pander to her fetish. "I hath beenest an bad boyest. Mighteth I go winky-tink as an last requesth?"
He watched her struggle between the desire to indulge her love of casting Larry as her little baby and the need to make the yearly sacrifice to pay the Hoosier soil to tolerate her family's dark magics.
"You may go," she said without releasing him.
Larry panted now. He was going to die in a puddle of urine. It couldn't end so meanly with his knees in filth.
"Mighteth I make an big-boy pee-pee, mummy?" He pled, squeezing out a few crystal tears from his twilight-hued eyes.
Juniper paused for a moment.
"Okay, but you must stay in sight. If you are good, I will resurrect you later."
"I wilt be good," he promised, feeling sweat running down his asscrack as she released him from the seatbelt straps. The dubious promise of resurrection barely registered. He knew she would likely have to get their Father to bring Larry back from the dead no matter what she promised. But would she really ask Sauron for His help? He had no intention of finding out what the outcome would be.
He took as many paces away from her as he dared and then undid his trousers, reaching for the hourglass.
Juniper caught a gleam of something and leapt after Larry with the dagger. He struggled to get the hourglass out of its swaddling of underpants but it kept catching and his concentration was spent on trying to escape the knife.
They dodged through the corn, the papery leaves catching them in the face, grabbing their clothes, cutting their skin. Larry bounded ahead, breaking through yet more rows, tugging at the hourglass. He got some small distance from Juniper and finally tore the artefact out of his underpants. He invoked the magic and zzzzt! found himself somewhere else entirely.
It seemed he had landed in an abandoned city garden littered with lumps of concrete and asphalt, leggy plants growing over everything in a desperate bid to reach a grainy-looking sun. The sky was gritty with pollution. High up, he could see some sort of craft slowly sailing past impossibly tall skyscrapers. Then he heard a noise- There at the entrance to the unkempt garden stood a different version of Juniper dressed in torn black pleather, a knife of light in either hand.
"Dere hims is!" he heard her shout. Larry turned and took a few steps before one of his boots caught on a stray lump of concrete. The artefact flew out of his sweaty grasp.
The hourglass hurled to the ground, snapping in half where the two chambers of sand joined. Time ceased to flow correctly. A brilliant flash of deep red light erupted from the break and left behind a tiny pinpoint of colour that hung in the air and did not dissipate. Stunned, Larry could not force himself to move. Before this pinpoint, a thin stream of sand drained, a thread of sanguine colour snaking across the ground before lifting up like a rearing serpent and disappearing into the dot of colour. Before his stunned gaze, the dot swallowed more and more sand. The more sand it ate, the larger it grew. First, it became the size of a dime, then the size of a quarter. It gorged on the sand, faster and faster until it was the size of Larry's front door. Everything around the portal went uncannily silent for the briefest of moments and then the image of the polluted garden behind the light seemed to shift a few inches away from him before blowing out towards him, the cinnabar image barreling through the air towards where he lay as if it had been ripped from the fabric of reality. A sound like an infinitely deep groaning could be heard just at the threshold of his hearing as if the universe protested being mingled with whatever lay on the other side of the portal. He could see shimmering motes dripping down from the top of the circular portal. As soon as the seal of reality popped, the motes were sucked back into the opening. Reality rushed past Larry like a wind, pulling loose debris past the verge. The vacuum tugged at his clothes. Soon pebbles were lifting from the ground, hurling themselves past the brink. Then the vacuum picked up both halves of the hourglass.
Larry scrabbled for the broken artefact but only managed to snag the half that still contained sand. The other half launched itself into the portal and disappeared. Soon, reality grabbed him up and pulled him towards the cinnabar wound in the universe. He fought with everything he had to stay where he was but the rush grew stronger still. Larry's fingers skinned themselves upon the ground and his fingernails broke, bleeding from the quick. The vacuum hoisted him into the air and he flew through. His mind churned helplessly with horror as the portal disgorged him and he fell from an indeterminate height.
He hit the ground.
Blankness exploded around him.
Slowly, his awareness faded in.
First, his ears tickled on and off as he floated through grey clouds of nothingness. After some time, he realised the tickling in his ears was two people speaking to each other. Soon, he felt something annoyingly hard beneath his back but he tried to ignore it. The voices spoke intermittently. He could hear a hush like the sound of a rattle or a rain stick now and again. The sound irritated his brain like someone tickling his face with a feather every time one of the people in the room began shaking the damned thing.
"I think he's coming around," he strained to place the familiar tones. Juniper, his sluggish brain finally supplied. Fear stabbed him in the gut but he slowly realised that she no longer seemed bent on sacrificing him.
The other asshole in the room began shaking the damn rattle for all they were worth. Larry raised his hand and tried to bat the infernal thing out of the hand of the person bent on torturing him.
"Larry? Can you hear me?" Juniper shouted over the racket.
"Barely," Larry grumbled sarcastically, continuing to wave his hand like a man waving away flies in hopes he'd make contact with the other person to punish them for the auditory assault.
"Open your eyes," commanded a female voice he couldn't place.
"Only if you stop that fucking noise," he growled, unwilling to give her the satisfaction as long as she insisted on making that noise.
"No. First, you open your eyes. Then I stop." The sound grew even louder and more forceful. "I can do this all day," she added placidly as if his temper was common and not even of note.
Larry harrumphed a sigh and pried his eyelids open. His vision was still blurry, perhaps from the fall. A vaguely Juniper-shaped blob swam into view. Gritting his teeth with the effort, he forced his vision to resolve. He blinked a couple of times and then his eyes landed upon a woman with amazingly porcine-shaped features- Chubby cheeks and a nose that turned up to resemble a human snout someone might have called cute. Her mouth was small, her lips plump, and her face very round. She had a pale complexion and dark, somewhat piggy eyes that were much improved by a thick application of eyeliner and eye shadow.
"I'm so glad that you were able to bring him back!" Juniper clasped her poorly-hennaed hands together in her joy. "You must be so thirsty after all of that exercise with your drum and shaker. I'll just pop downstairs to the kitchen and get you and Lur-Lur something to drink. I've been to the store: We have Pepsi."
"Just water or tea for me, please," said the stranger laying her rattle across her lap. After Juniper left, she turned to regard Larry with a strange, benign look.
The man on the bed struggled to swallow the indignity of being called Lur-Lur... and in front of this strange woman with her porcine aura as well.
"It was very difficult to retrieve your soul and to get you back into your body, Laurentius," she commented in an indeterminate British accent.
Larry's eyes rolled hard. Evidently, this was one of the innumerable occult friends that Juniper had made. This woman didn't even look rich- She wore layers of linen and what appeared to be some form of natural leather. Her hair hung in long, rose-gold tangles, some tied with ribbons of torn cloth or caught with leather doodads. Here and there hung braids of varying width, some undulating in and out in different widths down their length. These braids held beads and bird feathers, and sometimes tiny wooden carvings hid in the weaving. She looked strange, though some might have said pretty in a New Age, exotic fashion.
Larry sighed. Perhaps he had been in some kind of magical danger that Juniper required help with- hence the annoyingly-loud soul retrieval. Juniper always seemed to require a lot of outside help for being a supposedly powerful witch. He sighed, calming himself.
"I thinketh we hastnth met," he began.
"My name is Phillipa Sinclair but you may call me Pippa. I'm a shaman- One of the reasons I am here."
Larry pressed his lips together, studying her some more. Her rose-gold mane seemed familiar, entangled with songbird feathers and strips of cloth though it was. He could almost place her chubby cheeks, that upturned nose but his mind skidded around like a man slipping on mud until he gave up his attempt to place her.
"A shaman," she pronounced it rhythmically as if singing the syllables- her high voice gentle and not unpleasant- "does not encounter anyone coincidentally. The spirits, the ancestors, the gods have brought us together just as they brought me into Juniper's life."
She seemed so self-assured that Larry couldn't decide what to say to her assertion. He didn't know if he should feel reassured that she seemed familiar and was so forward with some kind of strange destiny in their meeting or if he should be wary, considering that she was Juniper's friend and Juniper had very recently tried to sacrifice him to the Indiana corn, even though it seemed she had also wanted him back.
Soon, Juniper bustled in with bottles of drinks. She handed Pippa a bottle of Arizona iced tea and then twisted off the cap of a Pepsi soda before handing it to Larry. As he was determining how to drink it, prone as he was, Juniper rammed her arm under his pillow and forced him into a seated position. Pepsi shot out of the bottle and up his nose where it fizzed and stung, causing Larry's eyes to water before he expelled several sneezes and some soda as well. Juniper got some tissues from the nightstand and solicitously helped him mop off his face.
"My poor widdle boy," she cooed, patting him on the shoulder before tossing the tissues into the bin.
Larry eyed her warily but after a moment, the Pepsi got his full attention. Even though the drink was unsophisticated, a brown, mass-produced, unapologetically lower-class American beverage, Larry's mouth watered. He couldn't help it; he dearly loved Pepsi cola. He put the bottle to his ripe cherry lips and took a sip, then another and another and another. He paid little mind to the idle chit-chat between his girlfriend and the shaman.
Just as Larry had finished his soda, Juniper got up from her place near his head and excused herself to go to the bathroom, leaving him alone with her guest. Neither of them spoke but it felt like there was a conversation happening on a higher level, somewhere unseen. Larry felt almost comfortable with her there. Outside, the sky had darkened with purple-blue clouds. The wind blew tufts of dead grass across the lawn past the rusted-out car. Rain tapped gently against the cloudy windowpane.
"It's raining, so I must leave you for now," Pippa rose from her seat and collected the bag that contained her drum and beater. She tucked the rattle into one of the loops of cloth that encircled her waist. "I do so love to splash in mud puddles," she explained brightly with a little mischievous smile, as she wrinkled her nose. "Don't worry. When the time is right, we will meet again." And with that, she glided out of the room and left the house before Juniper returned from her trip to the bathroom.
Larry laid back. He felt the hardness in the bed dig against him again but for now, he didn't care.
Later, he'd go downstairs and help himself to another Pepsi.