Perils of Fiona Hart

It’s Halloween! For any new readers, we tend to put all the normal stories on hold for our annual look into the lives of Fiona Hart and/or the Cursed Man. For fun. Starting at the beginning may or may not be helpful (At this point who’s to say). Enjoy, DD

Early morning in the city. The engines of automobiles hummed as an occasional horn blared. The streets were overcrowded, and the passersby were just plain old passersby… nothing more, nothing less. It was a far cry from what Fiona had experienced on the world just before this one. Where the cars were old timey, the roads, if any, were cobbled, and the passerby, were just as likely to be literal monsters as not.

Fiona Hart found the difference comforting. She stood outside an old apartment building a purring little kitten in her arms. She was apprehensive about what she may find within the building.

Fiona had been back for two years now. Exactly two years. She knew because she had returned on Halloween, two years ago. And today was once again, her day, Halloween. The day the veil became thin and some of the rules changed enough that she was quite a bit more powerful. Of course, the dangers she had faced in her youth were a tad different. The silly costumed spirits that once dogged her every step… were laughable now. Especially once she and Rita expunged the Ghost Train of every vile spirit that’d fit down her throat hole.

Playing with unknown magic scrolls was risky business. For some reason Fiona had assumed, her self proclaimed ‘father’, the Conductor was trying to enchant her; charm her, maybe put her ‘under his thrall’ sort of thing. Or however the thrall thing worked, whatever.

Fiona did not really know what she was thinking when she used the spell-scroll on the raptor. The scroll contained a spell of Will Wanting Wish. Ultimately the spell stretched beyond into the multiverse, where in each and every one there is a different possible version of the caster, of everything really. The spell finds the reality where the caster is the creator-god of just everything. Then the spell sits down with this higher version, to discuss what might be best for them. (What, exactly, this would have entailed had the Spell sat down to discuss things with the Conductor’s higher-self? Fiona did not know. It creeped her right the fuck out though. The only peace was that the spell-scroll disintegrated after use.) By the end of the spell, it changed the raptor– made her into a ‘talisman.’ Something that could do her bidding. So, sort of kind of like a thrall. Maybe? Fiona was not sure what a thrall even was.

Anyway, such talismans were like gargoyles, they swallowed evil spirits whole. Fiona fed the raptor all the evil spirits on the Ghost Train, minus her lunatic father/creator. (Not by any choice of her own. The Conductor went missing before she could end him once and for all. She was not surprised that he had ducked out just as all his loyal minions were being devoured, one by one.) The amount of food provided to the raptor/talisman finally won the beast over to Fiona’s side. Fiona named her Rita. The good news, it was not a natural raptor anymore, which meant she did not have to take care of a dinosaur every day. That would be incredibly inconvenient. Maybe could have got away with it on the Cursed World, but earth? Earth was a bit more mundane—in a good way.

Rita, a magical being now, tended to take the form of a tiny pink kitten. Which was great, at first. Until people got pictures of the little kitty. Pictures that ended up on the internet. Rita was apparently trending for a good long while. Fiona did not know what ‘trending’ meant. Once she figured it out, however, she leaned into it.

The little pink kitten that went ‘viral.’ Viral was another word she had to learn. It was great for the most part, everyone loved her kitten as much as she. Until a lot of the interest turned into whether the ‘pink dye’ may hurt the tiny animal. Fiona realized Kittens were not normally pink, and she did not have a good argument for why the magical kitty was naturally pink. Not one they would take seriously anyway. She made it through the ‘hate’ that followed behind the initial popularity.

Once the first year passed, and all the interest tanked to the fact that the famous kitten never grew up; never became a full grown cat… ‘Rita the Pink Kitten’ was dismissed as an AI created hack job. A lot of people were embarrassed, angry even. This worked out great, Fiona was sick of the attention.

The whole experience taught her quite a bit about the internet though. She was in the habit of checking her feed whether her pet kitten was viral or no. So, when the news was filled with one ‘April Fowler, Paranormal Investigator,’ –the popular streamer who talked a woman into believing a man was a werewolf, to the point that the young woman shot said man with silver bullets—in his own apartment, Fiona had a pretty keen interest in finding out more.

Ms.Fowler insisted that she simply had the wrong address. The claim, pretty much, just made her look even more foolish (and, also, scared all the victim’s neighbors). The fact that she was often referred to as ‘April Fooler’ instead of April Fowler, even in her prior broadcasts, was no surprise to anyone. Fiona suspected the amount of wordplay with the whole fowl fooler/fowler the fool/ fooler goes fowl, is what really kept it in the headlines for so long.

It was a disturbing story for society as a whole, but it also turned into a lead. A lead into where exactly Fiona’s friend may have landed once they all got God-Swept back to where they came from. Fact was, Fiona knew werewolves were real… she happened to be trying to find one. This was as good a lead as any, and proved to be fruitful.

All of this led her to that city street, humming engines and mundane passersby, standing out front of the very apartment building a man was murdered with silver bullets for being an alleged werewolf. Fiona supposed standing around outside was not going to get her anywhere. She headed in to find out what she could.

It often occurred to Fiona that she never could remember his name. She spent quite a bit of time with the man (a full year in a place often referred to as Dino-land). She could see his face, remember everything that happened. But his name…? it just could not be recalled. Every time she remembered this weird fact, she also remembered that she planned to investigate why. But every time, soon after, she would promptly forget again. As long as she did not try to solve the question of what his name actually was, she could remember this as a weird fact about him; it smacked of magic and curses… but she accepted it. (He was the Cursed Man, after all.)

In the end, finding a man with no name was a pretty good indicator for whether someone had come across the very man she was looking for. If they stammered and scratched their head, when asked for his name, it meant it was her guy.

So, when the landlord of the building, where the shooting happened, could not remember one of his tenant’s names, Fiona was feeling pretty smug that she had managed to trace the man down with nothing but, probably, the most ridiculous leads ever. Just ever.

When the landlord went on to say that he had not seen the tenant leave his apartment in the past year, Fiona was suddenly weary of the whole ordeal. Although it did not stop her from going up and knocking on the man’s door.

No answer.

Fiona dropped Rita down to the ground when the feline got a bit agitated. Fiona did not know what they may find on the other side, but if the magical kitten did not want to cuddle in her arms, it was probably pretty bad…

Fiona tested the door, it was unlocked. She turned the nob and gave it a shove… oops it opened. Rita darted in. She shrugged and felt like it would be okay if she had a quick look around. If anything, she chased her adorable kitten inside! Who was going to be upset about that?

The room was dank, the air stale. The kitchen was a mess; plates and dishes piled up. The counter was covered in grime. This was not the house of an active member of society. The whole place was a mess. She wandered in through the living room, located the bedroom.

Rita was already on the bed, crawling up onto the sleeping man in the sheets. He was dirty, the sheets were gross. A huge bushy beard and unkempt hair, but his face… it was him. She recognized him immediately. He was sleeping soundly, blissfully comfortable in fact. He looked perfectly content.

Something was not right though. Fiona tried and tried but the man would not wake up.

The kitten suddenly hissed at the bathroom door.

Fiona’s attention was called to the four-foot, ugly green-goblin of a being that wandered out moments after the toilet flushed.

Completely shocked and surprised by their presence, the little monster’s eyes bulged right out of its eye sockets. It took a minute to scoop the unattached spheres up, and another to force one of them back into place.

“Who the hell are you?” the goblin took on a different air once he got a good look at them with the one good eye. “What are you doing in my apartment?” He asked quickly after, even as he replaced the second eye into its socket.

“This is your apartment?” Fiona asked. She already knew it wasn’t; it was a lie, but the question bought her a moment to think. In fact, long enough for her to recognize the little monster as an imp. One from Mya, one she had dealt with in the past. It was known to deal in hard-to-get reagents and rare components for spells. The only question was how the little fiend had gotten to Earth. “I heard someone here had werewolf blood on tap…” she guessed, slyly.

“Oh well,” the imps attitude shifted, the greedy grin distorted his face. “That is a different story entirely,” the imp walked forward, the conniving dealer through and through, “I carry werewolf blood, sure, among other things… all are quite a bit pricier this side of the rift.”

There is a rift. To Mya. Available to something like this guy! She doubted it was the same portal she fell through in the past. This was not good news. If the Witch-queen makes it through… the Earth is as good as doomed.

“Wait,” the imp stopped, suspicious, “I remember you… The Queen’s pet hunter. Only in girly-girl form…”

Rita did not like the change in attitude. No sooner had the imp squared off with Fiona, than the kitten suddenly shifted into a seven-foot pink raptor. Forced the imp back as she hopped down off the bed, then physically pushed him to the wall with her snout… showing a maw of teeth that left the imp trying to keep his eyes in his skull. A clacking sound erupted from somewhere within her a chest. A threat not heard on Earth since prehistoric times, yet clearly still effective.

“Where’s the Queen…?” Fiona put the pressure on fast, partially because she was not sure if Rita would eat the little fiend, partially because she needed to know, “What’s happening on Mya?”

The imp stuttered out an answer, scared what was going to come next, “War… the Queens’ War! The whole planet is at war…” eyes covered by his nubby fingers trying to hold his eyes in place as the raptor bore down on him. “The balance has shifted. At least it was when I left…”

“Last year?” Fiona coaxed.

“What? Right, I mean a couple years… I don’t know!” it cowered.

“Wheeling and dealing werewolf blood? For rent? For food?” Fiona pressed more of her suspicions on the thing… even as Rita snapped her jaw in its face.

“You got it,” the imp agreed, ready to hand over whatever she wanted. “Listen, a guy’s got to eat. Come on now,” he pled, “You know what it’s like being a monster in a city like this?”

“How do I wake him up?” Fiona asked gesturing to the Cursed Man.

The imp was so shocked at the notion, a third eye inexplicably opened on his forehead, “What’ya want to do that for?” It looked at her as though she was ludicrous, “You know how many components you can carve from the creatures this thing pulls in?”

Rita snapped her jaw again.

The imp physically jumped, and the third eye suddenly popped right out of its socket. The imp was immediately depressed. “Uhg, that one is so hard to get back in,” he lamented as it rolled across the floor.

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Happy Halloween!