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“Mm, this food is really good,” Ellen Seedy was saying as she took another excessively large bite out of her entrée.
“Uh… yeah, sure,” Cosma said. They were eating at the restaurant Captain Beef’s, which was pretty terrible unless you ate there at least ten times, at which point you got used to the abrasive flavor and it started getting pretty good. Cosma wouldn’t have known this, though, since she hadn’t eaten anything since they got there, and they were around midway through their lunch at this point, so it was well beyond the point of a social faux pas by this time. “How long do we have to stay here?”
“What, are you not having a good time?” Ellen said between mouthfuls.
“Um.”
“I’m just trying to get you out of the house a little Cosma, I think it would do you some good. You should eat a little too,” gesturing down at Cosma’s plate.
“I’m, uh… fine,” Cosma replied.
“Alright Cosma seriously, what is getting you so down recently?” Ellen said, putting her fork down to signal how seriously she took this phase of the conversation. “This isn’t… well, this is pretty much like you, but dammit, it shouldn’t be!” accompanied with a fist-slam on the table.
“There’s a lot of, um,” Cosma stuttered, unsure if she should divulge the information about her recent hole adventures (with the reasons not to being that a) Nefuenidd likely wouldn’t want her to and who the hell knows what they’re capable of and b) she might get committed). “It’s fine.”
“It clearly isn’t,” Ellen said.
“Uh…” Cosma was desperately trying to think of an out of this stage of the conversation so she could return to her regular routine of living in her wretched domicile and not interacting with the wider world. Well, besides going to her job at the misery fuck factory, of course.
“Just tell me! What is so hard about this? You’d consider me a friend, right?” Ellen said expectantly.
“Um,” Cosma started before being thankfully cut off by her phone buzzing. She looked down at who it was. Dammit. “Sorry Ellen, I’ve, uh, gotta take this real quick.” She picked the phone up and said “Oh my god what is it?”
“Cosma!” Nefuenidd yelled. “Dump something else into the hole STAT! Your life may depend on it! Jesus Cosma, don’t start flaking on me now!”
“I’m, um, out at dinner with a, uh… another person right now. I don’t have access to my hole currently.”
“Not an excuse!” Nefuenidd didn’t really understand how excuses worked.
“Uh…”
“Get to that damn hole right away and start shoving more stuff down it!”
Ellen leaned over to Cosma’s phone (on speaker mode) and said “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Goddammit Cosma why do you have your phone on speaker? What are you doing here?”
“I, uh…”
“Listen here, I don’t know who you are but don’t speak to Cosma that way! I don’t even want to begin to speculate what this hole business you’re talking about is but it’s clearly getting her down, stop being such a jerk about it! I’m gonna hang this up now, so don’t call this number again, you hear me?” Ellen jammed on the hanging-up button, but as Cosma had already discovered, it didn’t work (besides for Claire, who had been granted special hanging-up abilities by Nefuenidd in hopes that it would make her talk to them less).
“Uh…”
“Haha, you imbecile! You can’t hang up on me! Ahahaha!”
“Cosma, I’m really not sure what’s happening here, who is this person? You should really stop talking to them if they’re like this all the time.”
“Uh…”
“Don’t tell her Cosma! This is important covert secret stuff, or something like that! You can’t just tell everyone!”
“Why’s that?”
“Ah dammit now you’ve got her questioning why it’s all secret! At that point why even bother!”
“Uh…”
“Wait hold on I’m getting another call.”
“Cosma what’s happening here? I don’t understand.”
“Hey Nefuenidd! Did you enjoy my last sacrifice to you?”
“Stop fucking calling me Claire, I’m in the middle of something here!”
“Who is Claire? Who are you anyways?”
“My name is Nefuenidd! It’s not important what my name is! You don’t need to know! Aaahh!!”
“Who else are you talking to Nefuenidd? Who are those on the other end of the line?”
“It’s no one, stop worrying about it Claire, just hang up and I’ll talk to you later. I don’t need you jeopardizing this for me!”
“Jeopardizing what? What kind of name is Nefuenidd anyways?”
“Uh… I didn’t even realize that was your name until now… why didn’t you tell me earlier? That would’ve cleared some things up, I think.”
“Hey Claire, who are you talking to over there?”
“Oh ignore it, it’s just my friend The Red that lives in my basement and eats rats for me.”
“Hm?”
“I really think you need to stop talking to Nefuenidd so much Claire, your mental state is really starting to spi-”
“NO!! I NEED TO KEEP TALKING TO MY LORD AND SAVIOR!!! I AM HUMANITY’S ONLY HOPE TO APPEASE THEM, RED!!!”
“I-”
“Oh hey Claire, there you are! What’s going on down here? Oh hey Red, forgot you were still here.”
“Hello.”
“Oh hey Emily, what’s going on? I’m just talking to Nefuenidd on the phone! They brought along a few other pals to talk apparently too!”
“Alright, sounds cool enough.”
“Who the hell is Emily? What’s happening? Cosma can you just hang up the phone so we can get back to our dinner?”
“She will do no such thing! Don’t hang up Cosma, I swear to god, or else the consequences will be beyond dire!!”
“Um…”
“You all seem like a pretty chill bunch, who are you all anyways?”
“It’s really not important Emily, just go back upstairs, I’ll be up in a second ok? Just need to finish talking to my god here, really important stuff, I wish you’d understand.”
“Alright, I’ll be up there then, see ya in a bit.”
“Now Nefuenidd did you-”
“JUST HANG UP ALREADY!!! I’M TRYING TO TALK TO COSMA!!!”
“I’m trying to have a dinner with her! This was already scheduled! It takes precedent over this ‘hole’ nonsense!”
“I agree with Nefuenidd Claire, you need to stop on this stuff.”
“No, I will never! Never!!!”
“Uh…”
“Hey Claire, sorry to bug ya again but do you have any- OH FUCK,” Emily yelled as she bolted away from the doorframe of the basement, knocking Claire’s phone over and hanging up the call she was on. Claire stumbled backwards, briefly stunned, as they both looked over and saw Trent Bloodbag’s silhouette emerge over the threshold, knife held in hand and ominous countenance worn. “Wh-who are you?” Emily managed to stammer out, perpetually-worn sunglasses beginning to slip from the motion.
“I’m Trent Bloodbag, your old high school friend! Ahahaha! Prepare to die!”
“Wh-what?” Emily barely remembered Trent, and definitely didn’t remember him having any cause to kill her, but he rushed at her anyways. They did a brief oppositional dance around the basement floor, but Emily was managing to avoid any of his stabs or grasps, until the fateful moment when he landed one directly in her shoulder blade. “Ow, shit! That, hm. That actually feels a lot better now.”
He was preparing another jab when Claire’s foreboding cloaked form appeared out of seemingly nowhere being him, gripping her sacrificial dagger tightly. She plunged it into him, causing a veritable blood geyser to spew out, and him to fall over. She grabbed him and tossed his soon-to-be cadaver directly into her massive corpse pit.
Within the chasm, the last of Trent’s élan vital drained out of him. At this exact moment, the spectral figure of that member of the Snuff Sodality materialized next to him. “Trent, what did you do this time?”
“I got killed by that cloaked asshole up there. I was this close to finally getting revenge on my mortal enemy, Emily Darkle, but she stopped me right before the terminal moment!”
“Yeah…” they said, “this close… why were you trying to kill her anyways? She didn’t seem to really recognize you.”
“She didn’t want to listen to one of my ramblings I was about to go off on back in high school.”
“Really? That was it?”
“I promise you it was a great ramble. Here, I’ll actually do it now. You see, the thing I hate more than anything else is-”
“Yeah alright,” that fellow said as they vaporized Trent’s soul.
Back in the upper part of the basement, Emily was still standing in place, spattered in Trent’s blood. She hadn’t moved from the spot of his execution in at least two minutes. Claire was standing by her, awkwardly waiting for her to calm down.
“Hey, Emily…”
“...”
“Now that I killed Trent, and sacrificed him to Nefuenidd, their protection spell should be on you now, so you shouldn’t have to worry about any more harm coming to you for a while! Isn’t that great news, Emily?”
“...” Emily was still standing in place shakily.
“Emily?”
“... you, uh, kill people down here, don’t you?”
“Uh…”