Serenity Hills

My name is Rick Dagless.

I’m a doctor.
I went through three years of advanced and hyper accelerated medical school and graduated top of my class. Some would say that I was a medical prodigy. Some would say that God himself must have placed me on this earth to practice medicine since I am just that good at it.

To that, I would say… Who am I to argue with people’ opinions and conclusions?

I practice medicine at my hospital, Darkplace.
I say it is my hospital only because I work there. It’s not really my hospital of course. The hospital is actually run by Won Ton and administrated by Thorton Reed, a real ball buster but fair boss.

I work at the hospital alongside my best bud, Lucien Sanchez. He’s the kind of friend that always has your backside covered; even though we do occasional have the punch ups. What friends don’t?

I had just finished up a grueling yet fairly routine day at the hospital, dealing with an invasion of robotic dermatologist zombies screeching an unholy cacophony of ‘exfoliate’ as they tried to sand the skin right off of everyone with their sandpapery like tentacles, when I decided to pop by my office and pick up my mail. Having not checked it for several months, the pile was somewhat daunting.

First, I found out that I won the national lottery and was four thousand pounds richer than I was. Since I’ve been trying to build the Darkplace Dagless kiddie wing for the hospital this news was considerably welcomed, but the very next letter I opened was a notice that I had failed to pay back taxes for several years to the tune of four thousand and eleven pounds and the government had seized my bank account.

Oh well, easy come, easy go I thought.

The next letter I opened was a notice from the apartment I had been renting in town telling me since my last rent check had bounced, due to the government seizing my account of course, that I was now without a place to live.

What a bother.
I rarely left the hospital because their need for my great medical skills were always in demand but even I liked to occasionally have a place to go home to, pop open a cold beer and watch reruns of Doctor Who while wearing nothing but a baggy pair of knickers.

Sure I could always use the lounge to watch television during breaks in my shift at the hospital but Liz, Dr. Liz Ashner, a highly strung female co-worker at the hospital, tended to over react when she caught me in my briefs watching telly so it was far from ideal.

As I ponder my now homeless state, I noticed a gold envelope among the other normal drab postal offerings. Wondering if I had won yet another lottery or this was my notice that I had won the peace prize for medicine, I pulled the letter out and looked it over.

There was only my name on the envelope with no return address. Opening the letter, I wondered yet again. Could this be another lottery wining notification, or maybe an invitation to tour some creepy guy’s chocolate factory? If it was the latter, I decided to give it to Liz. Women tended to appreciate sugary chocolate treats more than us men did and it helped to mellow them out when it was 'their time of the month'.

To my surprise the letter inside was neither a lottery winning confirmation nor was it an invitation to tour a chocolate factory where creepy little subhumans toiled day in and day out to produce insulin depreciating treats but a real estate advertisement and a key.

Seems my name had been offered as a potential new client to somewhere called Serenity Hills, one of those planned out housing tract communities. Reading further I found that the letter claimed if I was interested in examining one of their houses to buy, all I had to do was put the key that came with the letter in any door lock, turn it and open the door and if the letter was to be believed, it would open onto the community.

Now an ordinary kind of bloke might have dismissed the whole thing as a scam or a bad joke but having had experience with portals, considering the hospital had been built over a Hell’s Gate, I knew there was a chance the letter was legitimate and the key might work.
Or it might open onto a hell dimension flooding the hospital and this world with demons of all types that would rape, pillage and feed on the innocent souls of those here. You just never could be sure with strange keys.

Having considered for a few moments, I shrugged and placed the key in the lock of the door of the room I was in.

I had been on constant duty at the hospital for two weeks and the law said I was suppose to only work at most 48 hours nonstop before being forced to take time off and Reed under Won Ton’s orders had recently decided to enforce that silly restriction so I had time to waste and I did need a place to hang my hat. Not that I usually wore hats mind you but even the proverbial ones need a metaphorical resting place now and then.

With that in mind I turned the door and opened the key.

Admiring the house in front of me I waited for a realtor to show up and try to pitch a sale to me.
I had a list of special requirements.

Off in the distance I could see my sis Susan looking at a overly pretty house with flowers.

After a very strange, yet fun conversation with Miki, Victor found a house that reminded him of his house growing up.

He walked in and started looking around. A note out front said the realator would be at this particular house shortly.

Dear Weirdbard:

We would like to inform you of a magnificent housing community located in the nexus. Your belief in community and family values make us believe that you are a perfect candidate for our development. And please don't be concerned about your ex-demon status as the founders of our development are aware of your past and in no way hold it against you or your 'children'. We will be having an open house for you and a few select others that we would like to encourage to move to our development this weekend. We hope to see you there. A packet of information and an address is enclosed. Thank you again for your time.


Weirdbard sourly looked at the paper in his hand one more time before glancing at the crowd he was currently sharing space with as they examined open houses at a gated community.
It wasn't the fact that the letter found him. With Washu's mail forwarding system he was used to letters finding him where ever he went. Although it was unusual to have any directly addressed to him personally. Most of them simply said, to the founder of Weirdbard Academy and were sent to the school.
No this letter had been addressed directly to him and with his real home address. And that was impressive in itself.
The last time he had received a letter addressed directly to him and with the correct address had been a letter from Ed McMahon telling him he might have already won millions of dollars.
A remarkable feat but considering it was McMahon, not so surprising. The ability of that man to find someone to send them junk mail like that was legendary throughout the multiverse and was only rivaled by agencies tracking down people with overdue student loans.

No, someone not only knew of him and where he lived but also that he was a demon. And that concerned Bard but what worried Weirdbard the most was the fact that his imps 13 and Susan had also been singled out to receive almost identical letters as well.
That they, whomever they were, knew Weirdbard and that he was a demon was worrying. That they knew his imps and what they were as well was deeply troubling.
And of all of his imps why send letters to just 13 and Susan?

Still Bard was more likely to ignore the offers and shrug off the who and why of it, if it hadn't been for Susan.
She was enamored of the idea of having her own place. Susan was hundreds of years old in demon terms but in human terms she was just reaching what could be considered 18 or 19 so the idea of her own place was highly appealing to her.
Bard didn't really understand why Susan wanted a whole house to herself though. She had her own room back at Cragmore Mountain so why could she want a place away from it?
But Susan with much tears and blatant manipulations on her part had finally convinced him to at least accompany her to the open house and keep an open mind about her getting her own house there.
Susan could afford her own place with the wages she made working at the Academy and various other odd jobs she held and although Weirdbard himself couldn't understand he accepted her pleas that she wanted to live above ground, with room for a garden.

And 13? He was around here somewhere too. In his case he didn't care one whit about gardens or open air but Bard had heard him muttering something about desperate housewives and Wisteria Lane, any more after that Bard had to admit that he had tuned out.

Weirdbard discretely sniffed the air once again. He was currently in his human form and to deeply breath in the air to sample it as he wished to do would have looked out of place on a human so he resisted the urge. There was something about this housing complex that set his nerves on edge. The grass was cut a little too perfectly and it was a little too perfect a shade of green. The houses were all beautiful with classic lines. A little too beautiful. Everything humans or humanoids did always had a tiny flaw to them but Bard's eyes he could find no such flaws with the houses or grounds of this gated community.


Weirdbard having been one of the 'true fallen' as in an angel kicked out of heaven had memories of the perfection of heaven and like anyone who had been there, he yearned for such perfection again but having experienced Hell and having lived among mortals, he knew the adage of something looks too good to be true, it probably is. And this place looked far too good to have been created by mortal hands, yet there was nothing of it that Bard could detect as being divine or even demonic either.

Bard's wanderings were interrupted as Susan, also in her human form came running up breathlessly to him. She was wearing a skirt that Bard felt was far too short and a blouse far too tight to be decent but having discussed it over and over again with Mavra and Reiko he had been informed he was being too overly protective of her and finally agreed not to comment on her clothing.

"Isn't it gorgeous here?" Susan gushed. "Look at the flowers! Have you ever seen more perfect flowers?"

There was that term again. Perfect. The only problem was Susan was right. Demons, even in human form, had eyesight much better than a human's. Flowers had colors that humans simply could not see. Those vibrant colors were usually reserved for bees, some birds and demons to see, but these flowers were as vibrant and alive to normal human vision as they were in 'bee or demon sight' and frankly that should have been impossible.

"You don't like it here?" Susan asked almost pouting when she noticed the slight frown that cross her 'father' demon's face.

"I cannot find a single thing to find fault with." I honestly answered her.