Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:49:50 -0500 From: Fang Saito Subject: Welcome to Avernus - Chapter 2 This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real people or places is purely coincidental. This story is the property of the author and is protected under copyright laws. The author retains all rights. No reproduction is allowed without the author's consent. Conversations and feedback are appreciated to Greyson B. via email at hokkaidohotel86it@gmail.com. I love hearing from readers. If you enjoy this story, please support the Nifty archives today with a thoughtful donation by visiting https://donate.nifty.org/. Welcome to Avernus Chapter 2 Checking my phone, I saw that it was only a few minutes after seven. I really wanted to roll over and not deal with the shit of... whatever happened last night. But two things were really bothering me, comfort-wise. I had socks on in bed. Who the fuck sleeps with socks on? And I also felt pretty grimy. A full day in the car, and I hadn't taken a shower before sleeping. Well, that was going to be the first thing to fix. I stripped off and headed to the bathroom. Standing under the hot water felt divine. Fortunately the skating time, short as it was, had let me stretch out any stiff muscles from being trapped in the car for hours on end. Well, almost all the "stiff" muscles. Hehe. I thought about taking care of that, but oddly I didn't really feel the need, even though I hadn't taken care of business last night before bed. But no dwelling on that. I don't need to be thinking about last night. Not until I can make sense of it, at least. I walked back into my room, still kind of drying myself off, and froze. I had just realized that the table was cleared off. So was the nightstand and the top of the fridge. I hadn't done anything with my extra food before going out skating, planning on having a quick snack before bed. But now there was no food. Running the towel through my hair, I opened the fridge. The extra Cokes were in there, and opening the little flip-up door, I saw that the banana split was still in the little freezer section. I shut the fridge and walked over to check the trash can. It was empty as well. Somebody had obviously been in here and cleaned everything up, while I was asleep. Creepy. And they had brought me up here and put me in bed. Creepier. And they had undressed me. Pedo much? I jumped when my cell phone rang, jolting me out of my thoughts. I picked it up to see the screen. Ugh, Mom. I swiped up. "Hi, Mom." "Mornin', Honey. My, you actually sound awake. I expected to have to drag you kickin' and screamin' out of bed this mornin'," she said. God, what did I do to deserve her being so full of pep this early in the morning? "Yes, Mom," I said with a deadpan lack of enthusiasm. "The world has come to an end. I'm actually up." "Now come on, Jason," she reprimanded me. "That's not an attitude I want to hear out of you, even if it is the ass crack o' dawn." "Sorry, Momma." "Come on downstairs and have breakfast with me. I'm about to head out of our room now." I could hear her rustling around with something. "After all, Jase, we've got a lot to get done today." I started to say, "Yes, Ma'am", but was cut off mid word when she hung up. Fuck, what was this all about now? What did she mean, "a lot to get done"? I wasn't starting at my new school for another week. Even our house wasn't supposed to be ready for us for another couple of days. What did we really have to do that couldn't have waited until noon? Or tomorrow? Great, so now I don't know what we are doing today, so how should I dress? Well, business casual it is. A clean pair of jeans, Guns N Roses tshirt, and a black zip-up hoodie. And my ever present Cons. I took a few minutes to run some gel through my hair and brush it out. Once it was presentable, I grabbed my phone, wallet, and room key, and made my way down to the elevator. I made it downstairs and started looking around for the dining room. I finally figured out where it was. I thought I was going to have to really look around to find my mom, but she was only one of two people in the whole place that could have seated probably 30 or more. The only other person there was an older man, dressed real nice in this tan wool-looking suit. Maybe it's too early for most of the guests? Maybe it is too late and they have all already started their day? Either way, weird. "Hey, Mom," I said by way of greeting as I slid into the chair across from her. "Where's Dad?" "Mornin', Sweety. Your daddy got picked up about 30 minutes ago. Something about a 'power breakfast' or somethin'" I paused at that, trying to figure out what the hell that meant. "This whole thing is fucked up, isn't it?" "Language!" she fussed, smacking my hand. But I could tell she was only trying to mean it, considering she used worse pretty much daily. I think she was just as overwhelmed as I was. Not just this hotel, but this whole damn situation. The job, the employer, obviously, but just, all of it. It was so much bigger than us. We're fucking nobodies from Alabama, the armpit of the country. Just the name of our fucking state is like, the ultimate joke about redneck hillbillies. Up here, even in the wide open nowhere of upstate New York, even this felt more cultured than back home. At least here I doubted I was going to see a Confederate flag or a Trump MAGA flag on every third pickup truck. "What are we supposed to be doing? You said we had lots to do today?" I asked my mom. Before she could answer, a server started toward our table. She couldn't exactly take us by surprise, since there was no crowd to hide her, and no other destination she could possibly have. We sat in awkward silence, not enough time to really continue talking without getting interrupted, but seeing it was going to take a good half minute for her to get here. Finally she got to our table, we put in a breakfast order, and she left. "So where were we?" asked my mom, all perky again. "Um," I said, "I was asking what we could possibly be doing today, when we have no house and no school yet." "Don't be a smartass," she said with a laugh. "Your daddy got a signing bonus, and it would have been just silly to do all our shopping back home, just to pack it in the car and bring it along on the drive up here." "Well there's not exactly going to be a mall or anything around here, is there?" I asked. She laughed, as if I had said something completely ridiculous. "We haven't moved to Siberia or something, Honey", she said. "There's stores here in Avernus, and there's a big ol' mall up in Plattsburgh, about a half hour from here." "So," I paused, not even sure myself whether it was out of confusion or for dramatic effect, "you want me along to help... carry bags? Or what?" Mom kind of looked at me funny, as if I was missing something obvious. "You're gettin' new clothes, too, Sweety. Especially school clothes." Then she uttered the phrase I'm sure every kid hates. "Or if you'd rather not go, I suppose I can pick out all your clothes for you." Ugh. Now if I don't go, she's going to pick out, I don't know, 1950s corduroy pants or something equally hideous and embarrassing. I've seen what kinds of utter crap she'd bought the times we had a little bit of money. She had the style and taste of, well, a former stripper. And I've seen her idea of what she thinks teenagers like me are supposed to think are "cool". Fuck no. The food arrived after about 15 minutes and despite my mood, I had to admit that it looked fantastic. I had ordered what they called a fajita omelette, which was stuffed with steak fajita meat, onions, peppers, and cheese, and then topped with salsa and sour cream. It totally worked for me. We pretty much dropped the conversation while we ate, and soon enough we were ready to go out. Apparently a coworker had picked up Dad, so we were able to take the car. I was kind of surprised he was letting Mom drive his new baby, but I guess there wasn't much choice. Mom even seemed a little nervous getting behind the wheel. She punched something into the GPS on the dashboard and we started off. It was kind of nice to be able to get out and get a look at the new town we would be calling home. It seemed that the hotel was on the southern outskirts of the small town, so we were able to take everything in as we headed deeper in. Everything was set up in a really convenient grid system, two main roads running parallel to each other north and south, and another two running east and west. These main roads had two good sized blocks of houses, then businesses, between them, leading to a giant town square like you always see in TV shows. The buildings lining the square had a giant town hall on the north side, a huge church facing it to the south, and strips of old businesses lining the east and west sides. In the center, there was a pretty big park lined with trees, and a big grassy area with four fountains, each with a statue in the middle, at the four corners of a big covered gazebo. I swear, either this place had been built by someone who had watched all those cheesy small town TV shows, or all those shows were modeled after this town square. We drove around the square slow as fuck, and I spent the time looking out the window, trying to guess what some of the stores were. I saw three in particular that I thought I should come back and check out later: a winter gear sports store, what looked to be a record shop, and surprisingly, a comic shop. "Are we stopping here?" I asked. "In a bit," said Mom. "We have a couple of stops first. And from what I'm guessing, most places here won't open until 9 or 10 anyway." I shook my head at that and checked the clock on the dash. She was right, it was barely 8:30. I was curious where we were headed next, but decided it was easier to just be patient and satisfy my curiosity in real time. We turned off the square and I saw that literally the next block was residential houses. Only four blocks from the square, we turned off onto a side street and then into the driveway of the third house. It was two stories, wood siding, painted this weird blue. Kind of halfway between a primary blue and a baby blue. Maybe a turquoise, but without a hint of green? I couldn't tell if the trim was a pale grey, or if it just looked grey against the blue paint. "Is this..." I started to slowly say. "Yep, this is it. Day after tomorrow, this will be home," Mom said. "It's big. Can we go in?" "Unfortunately not, Honey," she answered. "They are supposed to be finishing something with the walls and floors today. But don't worry, there's a nice, big ol' room in there, just for you!" She finished her response with a laugh. We pulled out of the tiny, narrow driveway after Mom put something else into the GPS and we headed to our next mystery destination. It was only a five or six minute drive, and I should have guessed where we were going. It was someplace I was both dreading, and morbidly curious about: my new school. Let's see, a five minute drive meant about a 15 minute walk at these residential speeds. Guess who's fucking walking to school? It was bigger than I expected for the size of what the town seemed. Shiny steel letters stood out against the red brick above the carport lining the front, spelling out "Theodore Roosevelt High School". But then I noticed off on the right side of the building, another sign announcing "Theodore Roosevelt Middle School". So I guess they shared a building. We parked and went inside. Mom thought there was a whole process to finish the registration that had been started over the phone last week, but apparently everything had already been done, except to tell them I was actually here. They had even received by records from back home already. The office lady wanted to know if I was going to start school tomorrow, but Mom informed her that we weren't even going to have our house by then, and then the moving truck with all our stuff wasn't scheduled until Friday. They agreed that it would probably be best for me to start fresh on Monday. However, they did arrange for me to come by on Friday to pick up my school issued laptop, schedule, and examples of where my classes were in their progress. This as supposedly so I could use the weekend to be caught up by Monday. As if. Going back to the shops on the square turned out to not be as fun as I thought it would be. The winter store turned out to be more gear than sports, and we quickly agreed that we needed to wait and learn what we actually needed for the kind of weather we were going to get up here. The "record shop" turned out to be a general electronics store. Now that all the music can be gotten online, they just kept all the record decorations around, but didn't really sell any. The comic store, though, turned out to be real, and looked cool. Except the fuckers weren't open until noon. So instead I had to putz around, following my mom from store to store while she checked out the clothing and other garbage. Finally we got on the road and headed to the mall. She had said it was 30 minutes away, but it was more like 40, and felt like two hours, as slow as she was driving. I swear, I remember reading at one time that right after the automobile was invented, people were concerned that if the human body went faster than 20 miles an hour or something like that, it would have a catastrophic breakdown and have, like, a heart attack or something. I think my mom was driving under that assumption. At last we made it to the mall, such as it was. It was pretty tiny. It didn't even have an FYE or a Hot Topic, although it did have Spencer's. We mostly just did our shopping at the Target they had there. And yes, most of it was just me following Mom around, carrying her fucking bags. We ate lunch at this really shitty Chinese restaurant in the mall. Not like the "good" shitty ones you always see in the food court, with like, one meat and two sides for $6.99, served in a Styrofoam takeout tray. That's the good MSG. Ha! No, this was shitty cafeteria food, trying to pretend to be a real restaurant. Mom didn't say anything, but I could tell she was as disappointed as I was. We finally got on the road back to Avernus a bit before two, and I could tell Mom was beat. "What's got you so worn out?" I asked, then joked, "Want me to drive?" "Quit bein' a smartass," she snapped at me. Then, realizing she had overreacted, she said softer, "I'm sorry, Baby. Your daddy and I didn't get much sleep." "Ew! TMI," I said with a grin. "No, not like that, silly," she said. "No, we just both had some bad dreams is all. We talked about it for a minute while we were getting' up, 'cause we were in each other's dreams." "Sorry to hear that. Nightmares suck," I said. "What about you, Honey. Did you sleep good?" "Yeah, Momma," I answered. No way was I going to tell all the weird shit, so evasively I said, "I crashed early, and don't remember if I dreamed." The rest of the drive back was quiet. We listened to the radio, since the new car came with Sirius XM and there were some cool oldies rock channels that we both liked. That had been a godsend on the long trip up from Alabama. Once we made it back to the hotel, Mom said she was going to take a nap. I told her I was going to go out exploring, and reminded her I had my cell phone if she needed me. We agreed on a time to meet for dinner, then I grabbed my board from my room and headed out. It took a little over half an hour to make my way back to the square. I wanted to check out that comic store and see what that was all about. It was open when I got there, and it turned out to be a lot bigger than I was expecting. There were a half dozen guys in the store already, along with a pair of girls, even. They didn't just have comics, either. They had a bunch of card games, board games, and even miniatures. I was impressed, but then, I wasn't in backwards Alabama anymore. Maybe there were going to be some benefits to no longer being in the Bible Belt. In the back of the store there was a pretty good sized open area with dining room sized tables. At first I couldn't make out what was scattered all over them, but as I got closer I realized there were little buildings, with hills, and trees, and all sorts of cool miniature stuff, like you would see on a train set. But instead of trains, three of the boys and a girl had all these cool miniature army men and tanks and shit all over two of the tables. They had books and dice all over the place, and were using tape measures to move the minis around. I had heard about games like this, but had never actually watched one before. One of the guys nodded at me in greeting, and I nodded back. I did my best to watch for a while, without getting close enough to get in their way or anything. After a while I left them to their games and browsed the rest of the shop. There was some cool shit in here. I thought about picking out some comics and stuff, but decided it would be safer to wait until I had a bedroom to put it all in. I thought about introducing myself to some of the kids in the store, but decided to play it safe, and wait to see what the cliques looked like around town. That idea lasted until I stepped outside. The door had barely closed behind me when I heard the song of my people. The hissing and clack-clacks of a group of skateboards nearby. That was certainly a sound I could not ignore, so I popped my board to the ground, snapped it around with my feet, and headed across the street to a group of boarders riding the sidewalks in the park in the center square. One of the guys hopped his board up to grind about a foot of the front edge of one of the benches lining the sidewalk. As I got closer, I noticed the benches were older wood, painted green, but they had newer metal strips lining the front edge of the seat. I had a funny feeling they had been ridden so much that someone had been forced to reinforce them with metal strips to keep the benches from falling apart. I had to be careful how to approach this. Skaters are funny about interlopers. Often a good fellow skater can drop right in, and they will give him a chance to prove he's not a poser. Unless they are a crew, a team, a clique. If they have rivals or enemies, they can often be extremely territorial. I needed to pull a trick that would be decent enough to show I could handle my board, but simple enough I was fairly guaranteed to not fuck up. I decided the safest bet was to emulate what I had just seen a couple of them do. I stayed about 20 or so feet away, but easily within hailing distance, and built up a bit of speed. As I approached one of the benches, I ollied up, which was a bit taller than I was used to, but I eyed it pretty well, and managed to hit the edge pretty smoothly. I ground the lip of the bench, and as I approached the end, I had to make a split second decision. Do I just ollie back off and hit the ground, or do I try a flip kick? In the end I took too long, pussied out, and just ollied off the edge. Still, I hadn't busted out, and I was fairly satisfied. Two of the guys stopped their skating to watch me approach, kicking up their boards. I decided I needed to do my signature move to impress them a bit, and once I got a few feet away, I did an impossible pick up, rolling the board over my foot to bring it up to grab with my hand. I'd practiced this move enough times that I could pull it off smooth, because I knew it impressed. "Do that again!" barked out the taller of the two guys. "I want to see if that wasn't just an accident." "What, this?" I dropped the board, stopping it under my foot. Then I popped it up, rolled it over my foot again, and caught it. "It's just a basic impossible, but you catch it partway." His buddy dropped his board and walked himself through the trick. He had his impossible down, but it took him a half dozen tries to get where he could intercept the board properly before it hit the ground again. The first guy watched him for a minute, then hopped on his board, and... just did it. Do or do not, there is no try, I guess. I was impressed, and said so. "It's flashy," he said, "But once you wrap your head around it, not really difficult." He said it as though it were fact, not ego. He stuck his hand out. "I'm Taki." "I'm Jason," I responded, shaking his hand. "Taki?" "We call him that because it seems to be all he eats," laughed the shorter guy. "Liam," he said, offering his hand as well. "Where you from?" I winced, knowing what was coming. "Alabama." "Alabama?" laughed Taki, exaggerating a southern drawl. I know I have a southern accent, and hate it. Did he have to mimic it right to my face? To add insult to injury, he added, "Isn't that right around the belt buckle of the bible belt?" I fucking hate the south. I hate the attitudes all the RepubliKKKans down there have, and I hate everyone else's opinions on finding out where I am from. I've been dealing with this shit online for real. No reason the same tricks shouldn't work here in person. So I responded, "No, it's pretty much the asshole of the south. You can't make fun of it more effectively than I can." I made sure to keep my demeanor joking, and Taki and Liam both chuckled. By now their three friends had come over to see what was up. Now I had a real audience, so I continued. "What has twelve heads, twelve cocks, and twelve teeth? An Alabama jury." A few chuckles, but also some excitement as to what was coming next. "Speaking of juries, why is it so hard to solve a murder in Alabama?" I looked around, seeing that everyone was grinning in anticipation. "Because there's no dental records and everyone's related," I said with a laugh. They all laughed right along with me, so I kept it going. "And you know why there's so much incest in Alabama. After all, if you can't keep it in your pants, at least keep it in the family!" They all bust out laughing at that one, and almost missed the last line. "I mean, why go across town, when you can go across the hall!" Success. Situation diffused. I didn't know if Taki, Liam and their friends were going to be buddies, but they certainly weren't going to be enemies. I was in. While the mood was still jovial, I was introduced to the others; Scott, Boots, a nickname, and Wheeler, going by his last name. They all seemed to be roughly my age, and only Boots was shorted than my five and a half foot height. Taki and Wheeler were both tall and lanky, easily topping six foot, and towering over me. So now it was time to take advantage of my new friendly status, and gather some intel. "So what do I need to know about this place, being new in town?" I asked. The group settled down a bit now that a new discussion was getting started. "And by new," I added, "I mean that we literally drove into town last night after dark." It was like a blast of cold air hit the group. All five guys shivered and looked around at one another. After a moment, Taki looked back at me. "After dark, huh? Why do you say it like that?" I was a bit taken aback by everyone's reaction. "Nothin', man. I just meant that we got into town super late, so you guys are literally the only residents I have had time to talk to, other than some hotel staff." "Staff, huh?" asked Liam. "You're staying at the Avernus Inn?" When I nodded, he added, "You aren't staying there long, are you?" He glanced around at the others while he asked this. "Yeah, we don't even get our house 'til Thursday, and our stuff won't arrive 'til Friday. So I think we are staying there the whole week." "Better you than me," muttered one of the ones in the back. I didn't catch who said it, but it was such a weird thing to say. "What," I asked with a shaky laugh, "is it haunted or something?" "Or something," replied Taki. "You get used to seeing weird shit happen around here." "I've definitely seen some Mafia type shit around," I said, not sure if I was trying to say it as a joke or seriously. But either way, I was fishing for information, and I think it was pretty obvious. "Any gangs, bullies, or rival crews I need to avoid?" All five started swiveling around, as if each were daring someone else to be the first to speak. Finally Boots spoke. The moment he did, all four of the others looked away, not making eye contact with either him or me. "Ravens," said Boots quietly. "Huh?" I asked, not sure I heard right. "The ravens," said Wheeler. He had a high, squeaky voice that didn't fit with his towering height. He had to be well over 6'2, and I was expecting a baritone, if not a good bass. "Watch out for the ravens. They're nothing but trouble." Everyone nodded as he said this. "This another skate crew? A gang, or something?" Liam looked up at Taki, then at me. "Kind of a gang, I guess? You make your crack about the mob. But picture what their kids would be like. Just stay away. They're trouble with a capital T." "Or don't!" laughed Taki. "We're not your mother. Let's fucking skate." The mood broken, we all split and rode in different directions. I think everyone needed to get the tension our of our muscles. I felt less need now to show off, so I started making riskier tricks. Some landed, drawing comments. A few landed me on my ass. I got some laughs, but they were good natured and encouraging. These were good guys. Like all good skaters, we pushed one another. We dared, we showed off, we succeeded, and we wiped out, all in equal measure. The sun was starting to dip to the horizon when Wheeler was the first to leave, saying he was expected home. "He's latchkey and needs to fix dinner for his little sister," commented Boots. "But you watch. Now that he's leaving, everyone else is going to disappear in the next ten minutes. Liam's not even going to say anything. He'll just slip off." Sure enough, it happened exactly as he said. It wasn't even five minutes before Scott announced that he needed to head home. Taki almost immediately stated he should really head home as well. And just as Boots had said, I hadn't even noticed that Liam had vanished at some point. I looked over at Boots, who shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "See?". "You headed out as well?" I asked. "Naw," he said. "I can walk you back to the hotel, if you want." "Sure," I said, pulling out my phone to check the time. I had about 45 minutes before I needed to meet my parents for dinner. I told Boots my deadline and headed out. We skated partway, but then snatched up our boards so we could talk. He filled me in on some of the drama of my new school. Liam was the oldest and a sophomore, but Taki was the group's unofficial leader, being the most assertive and outspoken. The other four were freshmen, like me. I found myself asking if I thought Boots was cute. He was maybe an inch shorter than me and a bit on the skinny side, but he was obviously athletic and had a killer smile. He had brown hair like me, but his was decent bit lighter than mine. He had a nice sharp jawline that I appreciated as well. I couldn't tell which way he swung, but I was starting to realize I wouldn't mind finding out. We got back to the hotel and Boots' whole demeanor changed. He went from friendly, outgoing and charming, to cold and closed off. Immediately after, I felt that same feeling. Someone, something, was watching me. Staring at me. It was the same feeling from last night. It was like my soul was being x-rayed. It was almost like I kept catching movement in my peripheral vision, but could never catch whoever it was. It was creepy as fuck. "I.. I gotta go," muttered Boots. I looked over at him, and one thought went through my head when looking at him. Prey. Victim. Target. "What the fuck is that?" I whispered to him. "Do you feel it, too?" Boots started to back away. I reached out and grabbed his arm. He jumped as if he hadn't even known I was there. I could see real fear in his eyes. "What the fuck is it?" I asked. He just shook his head, as if trying to deny what he was experiencing. Boots pulled away from me, nearly pulling the sleeve of his hoodie off his arm. I let go, and he backed away, wrapping his hoodie around himself, as much against the... whatever... we were both obviously feeling, as to ward off the oncoming chill of the night settling firmly around us. Neither of us said another word as Boots bolted off at a run. He was barely out of range when I heard the snap-hiss of his wheels hitting the pavement.