Chapter Six

"I do wish our visions for the future could align. They once did, if you recall. I only opposed you for duty's sake, back then."

 

When Von and Clenard walked back into the apartment, they found Gina curled up on the couch, shivering with tears streaming down her face. Callana was sitting beside her, patting her head, saying, “It okay, it okay, it okay.”

“Uh,” Von said, “is everything alright?”

Gina locked eyes with him, pleading with her gaze. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from him, but… she needed a hug.

And, of course, Von obliged. He rushed over, knelt in front of the couch, and hugged Gina so tight, she immediately regretted silently asking him to come over.

“Okay, okay,” she wheezed, “get—getoffme!”

Von sat on the coffee table while Clenard shuffled beside him and set down his empty soup bowl.

“Did something happen?” Von asked.

“It okay,” Callana said, nodding sagely to him.

Gina shook her head. Then she shook her head even harder. “V-Von, s-sh—it’s I don’t—Von, t-there were so many e-eyes, Von. S-she smiled at me, Von.”

Blinking, Von looked between Gina and Callana. “Who, Callana? She… smiled at you?”

“N-no, you don’t g-get it, Von, she changed. She changed, Von, and she had s-so many… so many eyes—too many. It—it hurt so bad, Von, I c-couldn’t focus on h-her body, it kept d-disappearing, and—and I don’t know what to do, Von, I don’t know what to do.”

She curled up again, weeping furiously into the couch while Callana continued to stroke her hair, again repeating “It okay, it okay, it okay.”

She heard Von and Clenard go off into one of the corners, whispering indiscriminately to each other. Then, Clenard said something along the lines of, “I’ll get mumble, mumble soup, and mumble I’ll mumble, okay? You stay with mumble. Got it?”

Once again, Von was on top of her, but this time his hug was much, much gentler. After a few minutes of that, her breathing slowed enough to choke out a few words.

“She’s a god, Von. S-she’s a god. She showed me. She—she eats suns, Von. Like marbles.”

Von sat up, shuffling his way onto the end of the couch, and Gina repositioned herself so she wasn’t quite so curled up.

“She’s, like, four-foot-ten, Gina,” Von said, a calm disbelief in his voice. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I didn’t believe it when she told me,” Gina said, trying to hold back the tears. “She said she was o-older than t-the universe, and I thought she was just being weird, but then she just… turned into this h-horrible, horrible t-thing, and I screamed, and I think I passed out, and when she shook me back awake, she looked like herself again. I swear, I’m not making this up, Von, I—I swear to Brovar, I s-swear, I’m telling the truth.”

By the end of her rant, she was practically screaming again. Von held his hands up and said, “Okay, okay, I don’t think you’re lying, I’m just—confused, that’s all. I mean, you’re saying she’s like, some kind of eldritch abomination?”

Gina furiously nodded her head. “T-that’s it! Yes! She’s l-like an elder god or something! And she’s on Earth because some other gods or aliens or something chased her here, and she’s too scared to leave!”

Von cocked his eyebrow, tutting under his breath. “Okay. Okay, uh, yeah, that’s… I guess I did see her eat a pretty big picture frame, so clearly something weird is going on.”

“Can I show?” Callana asked Gina.

“No!” Gina said, practically screaming. “No, no, don’t show him!”

“Okay, okay, it okay,” Callana said. “I am sorry, it okay, I am not big anymore.”

“T-thank you,” Gina said, her voice quivering. “Thank you f-for being so… thank you.”

“Yes,” Callana said, sagely nodding her head.

Just then, Clenard walked in with three glass bowls of soup. He set them in front of the three couch-dwellers.

“Soup party,” he said with a half-smile.

“T-thank you, Clenard,” Gina said.

“Thank you, the Nard!” Callana said, grinning. She picked up the bowl and swallowed the whole thing in one gulp, spoon and all.

“Oh,” Clenard said. “I—I guess I should’ve expected that.”

“Gina says she’s some kind of ancient, eldritch abomination thing,” Von said. He stared at Callana as she wandered back over to her pile of bottles and started shoving them down her gullet.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Clenard said. “I kinda got that vibe…”

Gina sat up, shivering as she brought a spoon of soup to her lips. It burned, but she didn’t recoil—even pain was better than focusing on what she’d seen.

“Are we sure she’s safe to be here, then?” Clenard asked. “I mean, if she showed her, like, true form to Gina and she reacted like that, then…”

“I have no idea,” Von said. “I want to say I believe Gina—and I’m ready to believe a lot of stuff, considering everything—but we can’t discount the idea that she’s messing with us.”

“N-no,” Gina said, her shell-shocked eyes hollow and dull. “She’s painfully sincere.”

“Yeah?” Von asked.

“S-she’s got no idea what humans are, and she’s running scared from ‘Angry Things’ that chased her across the universe. From what she said after she transformed, I think she even crossed universes, changed the laws of physics, and was about to eat our whole galaxy, even, when those things came back and followed her here. And I don’t think she even realizes that eating the galaxy would be bad. She’s innocent—scary innocent.”

“What could hurt something that could eat a galaxy?” Clenard asked. “Short of Brovar himself?”

“What a Brovar?” Callana asked from across the room. “The Gina say ‘Brovar’ lots. Why?”

“Oh,” Von said. “Uh—Brovar is a god, I guess. He looks like us, but bigger, and he’s supposed to have created the whole universe and everything in it. He’s not real, I don’t think, but a lot of people believe he is. I mean, unless you’ve met him?”

Callana looked puzzled, shaking her head.

“I mean, that’s just one of his names… let’s see… uh, the Namnakani call him Ckresth, some people just call him God. Not ringing a bell?”

Callana shook her head again.

Clenard rolled his eyes. “She didn’t even speak Boraki until two hours ago, Von. I doubt she’d know any of the names we call him, even if she has met the guy.”

“What about ‘The Old Lord?’” Von asked. “Didn’t they used to call him something like that back in Ancient Niminvia?”

Callana shrugged.

“Damn,” Von said. “And here I thought I was being clever.”

Gina frowned but said nothing. Theological questions be damned. Today had been too much already. From the long, drawn-out emotional barrage she’d foisted upon her parents as she came out, to discovering an elder god on the side of the road, she’d simply done too much to be allowed.

“I-I think… I’m gonna go to bed early,” she said, leaving her soup half-empty. “It’s been a long, long day… oh. Oh. I h-have work tomorrow.”

“Oh, Brovar,” Clenard said. “On a Sunday? That sucks.”

“Y-yeah,” Gina said, taking her bowl around the corner, into the kitchen. Funny. It was such a casual thing to do, washing a dish, but it almost grounded her. Almost. When she walked back, she said, “My boss… fired our other server, so I’ve—I’ve gotta cover for him until he hires someone else. Probably won’t be for another month or so. Goodbye, weekends…”

“That’s absolutely insane,” Clenard said. “You should ask for a raise.”

“Yeah, that’s what the last guy did,” Gina said. “I can’t believe I just—I just met God, and I’m more worried about my dumbass, minimum wage job.”

Von shook his head. “What are we even gonna do with her tomorrow?”

Turns out, they didn’t need to decide what to do with Callana. Once she saw Gina go off to bed, she followed her in, claimed one half of Gina’s mattress (the lower half), and promptly fell asleep for an unreasonable amount of time. When she’d woken up in the middle of the night, three days later, she’d immediately jostled Gina out of bed, excitedly returned to her nest of bottles—which had substantially grown in the past few days—and watched more TV. Gina had shown her how to use the remote and instantly regretted it, as Callana found the way it changed things fascinating. For the remaining hours of that night, she changed the channels every few seconds, flipped the volume up and down at random, and laughed hysterically at a channel that only played static noise.

At least Gina had found a way to occupy her new roommate. When she’d woken up, all too groggy in the morning, she found Callana wrapped up in a pile of blankets, lying on the floor, with a bottle sticking halfway out of her mouth. She swallowed it whole, then grinned at Gina.

“Hi, Gina!” she said, her accent much less pronounced. “How did you sleep?”

“Uh… okay, I guess,” Gina said. She wandered into the kitchen, found a box of cereal, and set it on the vinyl-topped counter. She poured some into a big bowl, forgoing milk, and ate it with her hands.

“Why do you eat it like that?” Callana asked, pulling up one of the barstools and sitting on it in backwards.

“I dunno,” Gina said. “I’m lactose intolerant, so I can’t have milk. I don’t really need a spoon.”

“No,” Callana said. “Sorry—I am still not good with words. I mean, why eat it bit by bit?”

Blinking, Gina suddenly remembered who she was talking to. “Because I can’t fit it all in my mouth? And I can’t eat glass, so I just stick to the cereal itself.”

“Yes,” Callana said. “I have not seen a human eat glass on ‘teevee’ yet, even though I have see humans do lot of things. And you can not change how many hands you have.”

“No, can’t change how many hands I’ve got, sorry about that.”

“Why are you sorry about not changing?” Callana said. “I did not change for a long time, so I do not think you need to change. I like you with four hands just fine.”

“Ah,” Gina said. “Thanks. Also, uh we’ve only got two hands. The ones on our legs are called feet.”

“Oh!” Callana said. She seemed to light up at that. “I see! That makes sense, because they do not look the same.”

“No prob,” Gina said, finishing the last few bites of her bland, generic-brand cereal. “Crap, I think I’m gonna be late to work.”

“Work…” Callana said, looking pensive. “Yes, the ‘teevee’ said people go to work and come home and make ‘food’ and make ‘business.’ Are you making business today?”

“Oh yes,” Gina said. “Lots of business. Business like moving plates around and getting yelled at. All the fun stuff.”

“I see,” Callana said. “I shall come and see the business you make, then.”

Blinking, Gina shuffled uncomfortably as she started gathering her keys and purse. “Y-yeah, uh, I’m not sure my boss would be too comfortable with me bringing a friend.”

Callana’s eyes lit up, which was the exact opposite of what Gina had expected. “Yes! I shall not come as friend; I shall come and make business with you!”

“Oh.”

“Yes! This will be pro-duck-tive!”

“Uh, Callana, you’re not an employee at the restaurant. If you walked in and started working, I don’t think that would go over well.”

“He can give me a job, like the human man on the ‘teevee!’ You said Boss had ‘fired’ your other server. Yes! Boss could make me help business!”

Gina considered it for a moment. Was letting the sun-eating elder god work as a waitress a bad idea? Probably. Had she had worse coworkers? Definitely.

“Yeah, okay, I can ask if you can shadow me in a couple days. I'll have to ask my boss about it tomorrow. Just, uh, no doing anything a human wouldn’t do, got it?”

“Yes! I will make shadow business with the humans!”

Okay, so she’d have to explain that Callana was foreign, and Callana might eat a few cups and bowls—or customers—but at least she might get her weekends back.

 

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

Call an Ambulance!: An eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, a being that has lived through eternity, with no beginning and no end... Might be a lesbian?
The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.
Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.