Janu(i)s is a (salesman) wrote in repose, @ 2016-10-09 23:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, janus allen |
Janus: Narrative
Who: Janus
What: Professional Review
Where: The Bus Stop
When: Now
Warnings/Rating: Creepy.
Janus was wearing a face that none would recognize, one of these generic, middle-of-the-road American types with enough scruff and plaid that no one much looked twice at him. He wore neither nametag nor jaunty hat; one of his primary failings as a body in general, in Janus' opinion.
The music over the speakers was talking about a house in New Orleans called the Rising Sun, and Janus was drinking watered-down coffee while he waited for the time to tick by. Tow-head tilted down, with one of his hobbies in his hands, he felt the light stutter.
Janus didn't look up, the way people did when the lights flickered in their moorings. He looked ahead, into space, not watching the world above but the one beyond. He felt something take the light and put it back again. It felt like being nearby when a jet engine had recently taken a plane by, if a jet engine could be accompanied by the utter silence of a vacuum. Janus' nose twitched. He pushed what was in front of him away from the front window and set his coffee down so the tremble in his hands wouldn't show in the pale ripples over its surface.
"Ooh," the visitor said, smiling from where he now stood in the center of the room, like a vortex in the pale flex of reality. "I do like it when you wear the boys."
They both knew Janus didn't have him in mind when he'd put on this face, but it would have been stupid to change it out of spite. Janus didn't trust himself to answer. He put his elbows on the counter that divided them and leaned out from under the sign depicting the schedule for the week.
"Such good taste." The visitor opened his lips very wide and clicked three sets of teeth together in a grotesque mimic of eating. Instead of eyes he had two sets of teeth to go with the white ones under his nose. His hair was whiter than Janus', and his clothes were dirtier. There was some dried blood, obviously not his own, encrusted in the neck of his t-shirt where a cheap washer didn't reach. He smelled like carnage.
Janus flinched, which made the visitor click his teeth again.
"What do you want?" Janus asked, more belligerently than he meant to. The visitor did not rise to the bait.
"Have you seen Lucifer lately?" The visitor lowered a set of last decade's glasses to stare through his incisors at the schedule.
"No," Janus said, grateful this was the truth.
"But he was here." It was not a question.
Janus raised his eyebrows. "Why, you want to leave a message?"
The visitor laughed. It came out of the big mouth, because that one had a tongue. "Not for him. For you. Because you can tell me if he comes back. Right?" The visitor winked. It sounded like brakes when they'd gone bad, the grinding of metal on metal.
"Why would I?"
The visitor put on a hurt face. "Do I need to answer that with a threat? It's kind of boring. You already know." He swayed where he was standing, as if thinking, left-right, which way to step. His fist bumped against his leg, waffling as if deciding to move.
Janus sat back behind the poor shield of his counter. "No, we don't need to."
The visitor shrugged, as if he didn't care one way or another.
"Who is looking for him?" Janus asked, when he could speak again.
"Almost everyone," the visitor said. "Above your paygrade, baby." He talked like a 90's television villain. Janus didn't smile.
The visitor wandered the circuit of the room, taking some of the light with him, making the bulbs spit overhead. He did the full circle, appearing to jump in mid-step as the lights revealed and then hid the room, sputtering his form first by the door, then the edge of a bench, and then right in front of the counter, so close the teeth gleamed.
His left eye needed flossing.
The visitor casually took Janus by the front of his coat and dragged him forward across the counter, a move so easy for him that one could not quite call it violent. Janus didn't have time to react. The visitor put his mouth next to the scruff of Janus' cheek and tasted the line of his jaw. It was not a sexual move, but a nearly scientific sampling. It was like he was examining one of the pamphlets that told him which way the winds blew in the spring.
Janus' entire body froze. He didn't even breathe. He stopped every muscle he could stop and kept his hands on the counter to keep his weight off the cut of his shirt into his body. The visitor clicked his teeth. All three sets moved as his jaw did and he rolled the taste of Janus' skin in his mouth. He put Janus back in his chair, still doing this with a thoughtful sound of a tourist on at a panoramic spot. "Tastes like heaven," the visitor said. "And you got some humanity seeping in there, baby. Somebody sweet." He smacked his lips, and made a disappointed, playful little hum. "Careful, careful."
Janus pushed his mouth flat to keep it from trembling and made no attempt at reply.
"You're so ambitious," the visitor said. He was not referring to demonic politics. "Professionally. Go for the big game." He wrinkled his nose into kissing smile. "I do like that about you. High-stakes."
Janus felt as he had once a long time ago, when you had to hope that you didn't exist, that the flame of your soul wouldn't attract attention. Attention hurt.
Closing his mouth to smile once more at Janus, the visitor settled his glasses high on the bridge of his nose. "I'll see you around. Got to keep my eyes peeled."
He laughed, took the light once more, and was gone.