Bum Magic: A Tale of Sludge and Slime

It had been over fifteen years since I last spoke to Anita McCall. She wasn’t the worst mother in the world, but she was water, and I was oil — we just naturally repelled each other. She’s the most disciplined person I’ve ever known. She was a beat cop for three years and a detective for twenty. She retired on a Friday, and that next Monday she had started her own private detective service. Working hard and putting criminals away was her entire reason for existing, and she wanted me to be just like her. I, on the other hand, didn’t particularly give a shit about what criminals were up to and mostly wanted to do shrooms and drink in the woods with my fellow burnouts — not much has changed in that regard. When I flunked out of my first semester of college, Anita called me a waste of space, a freeloader, and a bum. That’s how it had been my entire life: she would try to force me to be a productive member of society, I would go along with it until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and then she’d berate me until I was willing to try again. Flunking out of college was the last time I tried. I knew that I would never be a normal person, and I didn’t want to be one, so I packed my things and left in the middle of the night without saying a word to anyone. I hadn’t been back since. I may be a bum and a waste of space, but at least I wasn’t a freeloader.

I couldn’t think of something I wanted to do less than see Anita now, under these circumstances. Yet somehow I was in front of her office, looking at the same sun-bleached sign that hadn’t moved in fifteen years. As much as I hated to admit it, Mickey made a lot of sense. She would be able to help us get more information on the cult, if she felt like it, and she was one of the few people on the planet I could be certain wasn’t associated with Reverend Alec — if she had been part of a cult of superpowered lunatics, I probably would’ve noticed at some point.

I led the way through the glass door. It felt like I had been sent back in time to when I was in high school. Everything was exactly the same as it was fifteen years ago: the same stiff leather chairs in the waiting area, the same painting of a waterfall on the wall, and the same heavy, platinum blonde receptionist behind the front desk, though she had a few new wrinkles.

“Hi, do you have an appointment with Detective McCa— oh my lord. Gus, is that you?”

“Mmm,” I grunted. “How’s it going, Tammy?”

Tammy hopped up from her chair, shuffled up to me, and grabbed my head to examine me.

“Wow,” she said, “you look old, honey. Where have you been all this time? Your mom never wanted to talk about it.”

“I’ve been around, here and there. Speaking of Anita, is she busy right now? My… partner and I have come all the way from Tennessee because we need to talk to her.”

“Oh, right! I got so excited I didn’t even notice your… partner? over there. Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I used to babysit Gus when he was a little boy, so ask me anything you want about him. Anything.”

Mickey looked deeply amused.

“I just might have to take you up on that,” he said.

She smiled wide and shook his hand. I couldn’t stop picturing her exploding into a shower of body parts until the handshake ended.

“Is Anita seeing anyone right now? We’re kind of in a hurry,” I said. Tammy’s smile faded.

“Oh, right. No, she’s free for the next hour or so, and I’m sure she’d clear her schedule if she knew you were here anyway. It’s good to see you, Gus, really.”

“Thanks.”

I walked past Tammy towards Anita’s office with Mickey following behind. I opened the door, and a small, wrinkled woman with a tight gray bun and hard black eyes looked at me.

“Sit.”

She gestured to the two gray chairs in front of her desk. Mickey and I both sat down, and Anita leaned forward and studied my face.

“What do you want?” she said.

“That’s how you’re gonna greet me after seeing me for the first time since I was nineteen?” I said. “Fuck’s sake, it’s like I never left.”

“No, you did leave,” she said flatly. “You ran off to live on the streets because you were mad that I wanted you to do something with your life. Now you’ve come back, for the first time since you were a child, and you’re sitting in my office with a meth-addicted companion, preparing to ask me for a favor. That’s why you’re here — not to rekindle any sort of familial relationship, not to see your mother in her old age. You want something. So I’ll ask again: what do you want?”

“I don’t think we’re gonna get that family discount,” Mickey said. It took all of the restraint I had to not cave his face in. My face was hot and bright red, partially out of embarrassment and partially out of anger. Anita was a master of making me feel like shit. She could find my sore spots like pressure points and prod at them until I submitted. She had a way of getting to the truth of the matter and presenting it in an objective, devastating way. It’s what made her such a good detective and such a shitty mother.

I sighed. “Well, Mom, I guess I’ll get right to it. Mickey and I here are being hunted, and we need to know who is hunting us. We know one of their names and that they’re the leader of a cult. That’s about it. I need someone I can trust to handle this, and you were the only person I could think of.”

“If someone is trying to kill you and you know their name, just call the cops,” she said.

“It’s really not that simple. These guys are fucking nuts. The cops can’t help us.”

“Sounds like you know more about these people than you’re letting on. I don’t know if I want to help you yet, but I won’t be able to if you don’t give me all of the information.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. I guess I was going to have to tell her everything.

“You see this?” I rolled up my sleeve to display my mark. “He’s got one too. This dumb motherfucker right here stole a bottle of wine out of this cult’s church, we drank it, and now we have these on our arms, and we can do shit you wouldn’t have thought possible. Their leader, Reverend Alec, isn’t exactly thrilled that we did all of this, and now he wants us dead. I’ve already had to get away from him once and barely made it out alive. So can you help us or not?”

She came from behind my desk and grabbed my arm. She ran her finger over one of the black blobs and yanked her arm back like she had just pet a cockroach.

“What the in Hell are you talking about, Gus? What kind of ‘shit I wouldn’t have thought possible’?” she said.

I pointed my index finger at the coffee cup on her desk and blasted it off with a stream of slime. She gasped and Mickey cackled.

“Jesus, Gus, I could’ve just put her leg to sleep or something. You made a damn mess in here,” Mickey said.

“Touch her and I’ll fucking kill you right now,” I said.

Anita’s mouth hung open as Mickey and I continued to bicker. I had never seen this look on her face before. She had a deep frown and her eyebrows were raised; I think she was trying to look concerned.

“So you’re being hunted by people with supernatural powers? And you have them too? You’re the Human Squirtgun, and your friend here is fucking Doctor Deadleg? What do you guys plan on doing when you find out more about these guys, exactly? I sure hope you don’t plan on fighting them.”

“I don’t think we have any other choice,” I said. “They’re coming for us either way. It’s either fight or die. It’ll be fight and die if we don’t know what we’re getting into. Seriously, I need your help. You know I don’t say that lightly.”

Anita sat down at her desk and interlocked her fingers, thinking deeply.

“Ok, so you want me to gather information on a gang of superhumans, or wizards, or whatever the hell you want to call them, and you only know the name of one guy?”

“I know where their church is, too,” Mickey said. “It’s back in Leesville.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I’m sure that place is on high alert now that you broke in there — doubt we could get back in there. Plus, it sounds like a lot of them will be coming this way anyway. No sense in traveling hundreds of miles back east. We need to draw them out and take a prisoner to get any real information.”

“Wow, that’s some hardcore shit, mom,” I said. “How are we gonna do that?”

“We’re gonna use you as bait, that’s how.”