“Diana.”
She took Sharon’s hand. A zap passed between them. It startled Diana but didn’t hurt.
“Sorry,” said Sharon. “That happens sometimes to people like us who have slipped just a bit into the beyond.”
She made it sound so casual, so everyday. Diana found that comforting.
Diana scanned the hall. There was a dog-sized housefly crawling along one of the walls.
“Is that one yours?”
“That’s just a phase fly. They’re all over the place this time of year. No, my partner isn’t here right now.”
“Aren’t you worried?” asked Diana. “What if something attacks you?”
“Why would anything attack me?”
“Because that’s what they do, right? I think that’s what they do. I don’t know if I quite get it yet, but displaced monsters might attack you in confusion.”
“I don’t really shine like you do. If anything, my bond has the opposite effect. I make most displaced entities uncomfortable. They tend to avoid me.”
“That’s a neat trick. Don’t suppose you could teach it to me?”
“I wish I could, but it doesn’t work like that.”
Sharon joined Diana at their table. They played a few games while Sharon explained some things. Vom had tried to enlighten Diana, but there was a chasm of perception between them. Their situation was similar. Both were struggling to make sense of an alien universe, but it was the difference in the areas they defined as alien that made things difficult.
The game of billiards was the perfect example. The reason Vom and Smorgaz had trouble sinking shots was that simple geometry was a bit confusing. They understood walking around solid objects, accepted the inconvenience of gravity, and could work with a one-way time continuum, but multicolored balls bouncing around a few square yards of felt was simply too subtle.
It didn’t help that Sharon’s presence proved distracting. If Diana was a comforting melody that kept the monsters calm, then Sharon was a low-pitched hum, too soft to be heard but rattling them on a cellular level, making them queasy.
Smorgaz smacked the cue ball with far too much spin. The ball leaped off the table, shattering someone’s beer bottle.
“Dang,” he said. “Thought I had it that time.”
Diana resisted the urge to smile and headed to the restroom. She was washing her hands when she heard a peculiar gurgle coming from the stall she had just used.
“Did you hear that?” asked the short, black-haired woman beside her.
“Must be problems with the plumbing,” replied Diana.
The woman opened the stall door as the toilet began spilling water across the tile. “Gross.”
Diana was getting a bad feeling about this. “Maybe we should get the manager.”
A bolt of lightning erupted from the toilet. The woman was disintegrated in a flash. She didn’t even have time to scream. The crisp smell of ozone filled the smoky bathroom, and a giant eyeball floated toward Diana. That was all it was. A huge eye rimmed by a dozen tentacles. Strange energies crackled in the orb’s interior.
Diana’s attempts to flee were hampered by the slick floor. She fell on her butt just as the eye creature unleashed a blast that blew a hole in the wall. She kept her head down and scrambled toward the exit. The eye monster looped a slippery tentacle around her ankle and pulled her back.
The creature studied her with its single eye. She remembered that this monster, just like Vom and Smorgaz, didn’t mean her any specific harm. It was just lost, confused, and trying to figure things out, figure her out. If she remained calm she could provide it with the anchor it sought.
“It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay.”
The eye narrowed, but it didn’t blast her, so she felt confident.
Vom and Smorgaz flung open the bathroom door.
“Don’t worry, Diana!” said Vom. “We’re here!”
“No, it’s cool,” she said. “I have this under control.”
But her defenders had already sprung into action, tackling the eyeball.
“Hey, no! Stop!” she shouted. “Damn it, listen to me!”
Sharon grabbed Diana.
“It’s too late for that. You need to put some distance between them, let them work it out on their own.”
“But—”
Sharon yanked Diana out the door. The people in the pool hall stood in shocked confusion at the howls and shrieks coming from the restroom. Diana resolved to, first, always save at least a little bit of her magic, and, second, avoid public bathrooms in the future. She realized that the second resolution was nothing more than superstitious impulse, but it couldn’t hurt to keep to it.
The foreboding crackle warned Diana to hit the deck just a moment before the bathroom exploded. She didn’t know what had happened to Smorgaz or Vom, but the eyeball hovered toward her. She stood, focusing her calming influence over the bizarre thing.
Sharon leaped in front of Diana. Her claim to be disruptive to alien monsters must have been true because the eye retreated.
Diana said, “Thanks, but I think I can—”
Several Smorgaz clones jumped the eye from behind. “Damn it!” shouted Diana. “Everybody needs to calm the hell down!”
The eye unleashed blasts at random. A sizzling beam cut a swath of destruction through the hall. Pool tables and people were scorched into piles of dust.
She waved her arms and screamed in a futile attempt to get things in order. Instead she found herself looking into the eyeball’s destructive gaze. She didn’t have time to ponder the limits of her immortality as the creature prepared to obliterate her.
A red beast leaped from somewhere. It swept Diana off her feet and tossed her over its shoulder. The eye beast unleashed its blast from point-blank range, but Diana’s furry savior was a blur, sweeping her from the line of fire.
The red beast darted from one side to the other, dancing with unnatural speed and grace around the eye’s pursuing beam. Everything the ray struck, including several people, dissolved. Quickly her furry rescuer was trapped in a corner. The beam swept toward Diana and the beast.
Several Smorgazes tackled the eye creature. They buried it under a rapidly growing pile. Flashes of light would lance out from deep within the mound of monsters, and one or two of Smorgaz’s spawn would disintegrate, only to be replaced by three or four more.
All Diana could do was stare at the devastation the eye had unleashed. Everything was just gone. Erased like it’d never been there at all. As far as she could tell the creature’s blasts just kept going forever. The trench that had been dug into the floor went down into the darkness, and she was willing to bet the blast had come out the other side of the Earth and was even now traveling through space, cutting an endless destructive scar across the universe.
The red beast shook Diana alert to more pressing concerns. She looked into its huge maw. Its head was almost wolflike, but not really. It had long ears like a rabbit’s, and two low-set black eyes. Its fur was long and wild. It opened its mouth, and she wondered if it was going to bite her face off.
“Snap out of it, Diana.”
The voice, buried under a savage growl, was almost unrecognizable.
“Sharon?”
Diana was almost too fixated on Sharon’s slavering jaws to notice her nod.
“You’re one of them?” asked Diana.
“No,” replied Sharon. “I’m not like them. I’m like you.”
A chill ran through Diana. Because whatever Sharon was, she wasn’t quite human anymore. And Diana was just like her. Only the realization that this was exactly the wrong time for this insight kept Diana from going mad.
The monsters spun around, knocking over tables. The pile of Smorgazes atop the laser eye creature filled half the pool hall, and it continued to expand. This would just keep going on and on if she didn’t stop it.