Forsaken Stars

For Creepos Part One, Click Here! 

 

Dale woke up moments later, feeling like he’d been hit by a garbage truck. His chest hurt, his back hurt, his ass hurt and his head was throbbing. The smoke alarm was going off and someone was pounding on his door.

Dale shook it off, mostly, and groggily got to his feet. He grabbed a stepstool and shut off the alarm. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire licking at his cabinets from the sink. He went to the door and opened it. Four or five of his neighbors stood at his door in their sleepwear. “It’s alright, Mrs. Donatato, Willis, Luxy, Bean. Just, a late-night crème brulee recipe experiment gone wrong. Go home. Don’t call the fire department. Everything’s fine.”

“I’m going to have to submit a formal complaint to the management,” Mrs. Donatato said, “You woke half the building and my Shu-Shu.” She raised her Bichon Frise to Dale’s face.

“I’m sorry, Shu-Shu. I didn’t mean to wake you,” Dale said. The dog licked his face. Mrs. Donatato huffed, pulled her dog back to her chest and shuffled away.

“If you figure out that recipe, call me,” Luxy said, drawing her sheer robe over her dark brown legs. Even when she wasn’t on the job, she wore sleepwear from Victoria’s Secret.

“You have issues, man,” Willis said, “You gotta get your shit straight. He shoved his Heckler and Koch P30 V3 in his boxers, shook his head and went back to his apartment.

Bean mumbled something in Spanish, smiled and left too.

Luxy’s kid, Chell, stood there in her Batgirl pajamas, staring.

“Go home, kid,” Dale said.

Chell pointed to Dale’s head, “Your bleeding.”

“It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”

“You need a band-aid. My mom has band-aids.”

“I’ll be fine. Run along.”

“My mom says you’re going through tough times.”

“Yeah? Well, like they say, this too shall pass. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

“I’ll pray for you, Mister Dale.”

“Yeah? Pray me a double.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Mister Dale.”

“Goodnight, Chell.”

Dale closed the door and shuffled to the kitchen. It was a mess, and it would probably cost a few bucks to fix it up. He didn’t want to think about that right now. He glanced down at the floor. The table and chairs were tipped over and broken, the cereal scattered all over the floor.

He shook his head and went to the bathroom. He ran the water and washed his face. The cut on his forehead stung, so he opened the bathroom mirror to grab the alcohol and band-aids. Something the size of a small hummingbird, holding a bottle of Hydrocodone-Acetaminophen, flew out at him. Dale batted at it, flailed his arms at it, shouted at it to get out, and it flew down the hallway.

Was that Graeddy?

Graeddy, he’s a kleptomaniac and will steal all your shit.

On the box art Graeddy was a little black demon with wiry hair upswept at the front, with big innocent eyes and smile, wiry limbed, and he hovered on little black bat wings.

Dale grabbed a magazine from the basket next to the commode, rolled it up and went after it.

Maybe a bat somehow got in the apartment. Like that time the squirrel did, Dale thought, moving like a ninja ready for battle down the hallway.

“Graeddy, if that’s you, I’m sorry about your friend. I didn’t mean to blow him up. Maybe we can talk this out,” Dale said. Of course it was crazy, but when was the last time your kitchen blew up after you dropped a cereal prize down the garbage disposal?

Dale could hear the tiny wings flapping, the pills in the bottle rattling, and little grunts. “Can’t get this fucker open,” Dale thought he heard a tiny voice say.

He came back to the living room.

The creepo was veering around the room in a figure eight pattern as it was trying to open the bottle.

“It’s creepo-proof,” Dale said. “Give it here, and I’ll open it for you!” He held out his hand and lowered the magazine, stuffing it in his robe pocket.

The creepo slowed down and hovered in front of him, his little body wrapped around the bottle the way a frat boy might wrap himself around a cold keg in July. His little wings flapped furiously to keep him and the bottle aloft.

“Oh, I’m gonna trust you?” The creepo said. Dale’s eyes adjusted on the flitting figure long enough to confirm it was Graeddy.

“Sure. You’ve been stuck in that box all day. I can appreciate the need for a little pill therapy,” Dale extended his hand again, took his other hand off the magazine in his robe pocket. “You’re a guest in my home and I’m more than happy to share.”

Graeddy looked around, hovering lower and lower, closer to the top of the leather recliner facing the smart tv in the corner.

“Listen, how about this, I will open it and set a few pills down on the coffee table, then I will step away and you can go to town. I’ll even grab a scotch on the rocks for you, how’s that sound?”

Graeddy mulled it over, eventually landing on the headrest of the recliner. “Okay, but no funny stuff! I ain’t ever met a human didn’t try to kill me or fuck me over.”

“That’s not my style, Greaddy,” Dale lied.

Greaddy took a few steps from the bottle and Dale snatched it up. He opened it and took out a few pills and doled them out onto the coffee table, clearing some of the dust from the kitchen explosion. “There. Have at ’em,” he said, and went to the small bar by the bookcase between the kitchen and the living room.

“So tell me, Graeddy, what’s the plan? What is a creature like you doing in a box of cereal? Why the masquerade of a phosphorescent plastic prize?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Graeddy said, lifting one of the pills like a football and shoving it impossibly into his mouth. His eyes and throat bulged as he swallowed. Then, choking, begged Dale for the scotch as he finished pouring it. Dale rushed to get it to the thumb-sized creepo.

Graeddy lifted the glass with a little difficulty, the alcohol bathing him as much as it flowed into his mouth. He set the glass down sideways, letting it roll along the edge of the coffee table and onto the rug. Dale waited for his moment.

“I don’t know. I have no idea. Why don’t you elaborate?” Dale said, sitting on an ottoman nearby.

“Shenanigans. Fun. Raping and pillaging. You know, demon stuff.”

“You’re a demon?”

“I would think the thinly veiled references to the seven deadly sins might have tipped you off, Mister Dale Ad Man, or maybe that’s why you are no longer employed at Mind’s Eye Advertising—couldn’t see what was right in front of your pasty white face.”

“No there’s no need to bring race into this, is there, Graeddy?”

“You probably right, Dale. It’s not like your advertisements were steeped in racial and cultural clichés.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Dale laughed, picking up the glass tumbler from the floor. “To punish me because my work wasn’t diverse enough?”

“Naw, I’m just here to have a little fun. Get my party on. Steal some shit, though, looking around, I don’t think there’s much here worth liftin’.”

“Well, Graeddy, I don’t mean to use another cliché, but I’d say the party’s over,” Dale said, dropping the glass tumbler on top of the drunk and drugged creepo. And on top of that, Kleppner’s Advertising Procedure, an 800+ pages advertising tome nearly four pounds in weight. And on top of that, one of his old laptops, easily five pounds.

“Hey!” Graeddy said, flitting around and pounding on the glass, “Big mistake, Ad Man! Big mistake! You think I’m alone? You think it was just me and Humpy? Take a look at that floor in that kitchen and tell me what you don’t see!”

Dale took a few steps back and looked over into the breakfast nook. He looked at the cereal scattered on the floor. He looked at the serious lack of baggies filled with creepos.

Where the hell did they all go?

That’s when Penelope hissed and screamed from the bedroom.

“The cat. Fuck!” Dale said, and ran.

 

End of Part Two. Part Three here!

Check back for updates! Also, watch my instagram for CreepOs concept art!