“There’s Devils around here again, Cpt. Dick. Or Devil; I can smell it or them with my 6th sense.”
“ESP,” acknowledges the captain, drunk at the time (it was noon, after all) and knowing that demons manifested in the area occasionally, like in ’73 with the Buzz and the Bee. He swears he hadn’t touched a drop when he saw them. “How many?” he attempted to clarify, thinking back to that awful day in early May. “One? Three? 50?” He skips over the number 2; too many bad memories. He can still feel the effects of the stingers coming from each side just here, there and there. If only he were inebriated when it happened to curb the pain.
Jake Hardbody thinks harder, ramping up his abilities to the max, like a raging fire. “One. But: powerful,” he concludes, unwrinkling his forehead and reflexively drawing his gun as if the Devil were in the immediate area, which he wasn’t. He was still down at the ice cream parlor asking nonsensical jokes to unsuspecting customers while assigning them ridiculous names. But he was about to leave. Back to the Ultimate Creator in Hell Heaven who was also himself to report on what he’d seen on the other side of X-City, the place they usually try to avoid because of, well, because of well armed and experienced psychics like Jake H. here. UC had it that Jake had retired from the force — the last of his kind — after the windmill accident in Hoover but that was planted propaganda to lure them back. Jake Hardbody also had a hard head, like a Diamond. In truth, he was a type of God himself. He was the secret power behind the police force of Upper Western Middle X-City, and soon to be a hero for a greater cause.
(to be continued)
