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“I wonder why they hung up on me,” Claire Voyagira said after getting blown off by Nefuenidd for the hundredth time. “They, um… must have had something important going on… I’m not sure why else they’d be ignoring me when I give them praise all hours of the day…” Claire, at the moment, was sitting in her foreboding underground lair mainly dedicated to Nefuenidd worship. Her actual house was pretty unassuming, in the suburbs of that one city around there somewhere, but she’d discovered a massive cave directly underneath her basement, which she’d decorated according to the guidelines of her religion (Nefueniddism). The religion was her own, and, to her knowledge, she was the only practitioner of it.
She had first encountered her god at the age of 13, when, lying in bed one night, she was awoken by a voice telling her to send a prayer to the great deity Nefuenidd. The cost of her not doing this, apparently, was instantaneous immolation. She of course complied. This led to her performing weekly, eventually daily, eventually hourly incantations to Nefuenidd, so as to avoid dying. Eventually they called her on her phone and told her that they weren’t actually a god, they couldn’t actually kill her, and they were just threatening her into prayer to prove a point (long story: Nefuenidd was trying to get a raise from the Universe at this time, and, to prove they had many supporters, attempted to coax a few people around the world to send a prayer their way (no one besides Claire responded (hm, that story actually wasn’t that long))). She assumed that her god was just being humble here and, much to their chagrin, continued to pray to them hourly (it was a bad idea to call her, since now she could reach them with even more ease knowing their number). She also regularly offered human sacrifices to her god.
To the left of her chair, the giant red mass of flesh located in the corner of the lair that named itself as The Red said, “You know, Claire, you could remove that sight-impairing gray cloak anytime you want. Nefuenidd never said you needed to wear it.”
“Don’t call me Claire, that’s not what I go by when I’m worshipping my eternal savior god of destruction! Call me the Seer! Show a little respect! And I do, ok? It is clearly helpful for getting in the mood to perform ritualistic human sacrifices for Nefuenidd.”
“Uh… about that…”
“And yes, I do need to kill people for them! Ok? Can you stop questioning everything I do? I’m the Nefuenidd expert here, not you!”
“Uh, ok…” The Red swallowed another rat that walked too close to his form. Claire didn’t really remember why or how she got ahold of The Red, but he was pretty effective at clearing out the extensive population of vermin residing in the lair. He was also a pretty nice guy, but Claire couldn’t really tell since she did not fit that description herself. The Red probably would’ve left by this point, but he kind of got himself stuck in the corner and wasn’t the most mobile creature out there.
“Now, back to what I was doing…” She turned back over to her current victim lying on the blood-soaked alter table, name being Andrew Knifeman, and raised the dagger above his head. “Looks like I’m the knife man now, Andrew!” She let out an awfully evil-sounding laugh. She was the one to come up with the idea for the human sacrifices. As previously established, Nefuenidd did not give a shit about any of this.
Andrew kicked and screamed a little more as she lowered the blade towards his bound throat, but right before the terminal moment, she was startled by a burst of light shining through her door. It was her only friend (besides The Red, if you count him), Emily Darkle, currently wearing her signature black shades and smoking a cigarette, as she was often seen doing. Her long blonde hair swayed gently in the artificial breeze of the fan installed next to the door (which was pointed towards the door, not to the lair, which was a bit of a misstep on Claire’s part). She waved to Claire and said “Hey, mind if I come in here?”
“No!” Claire yelled for a little too long. “No one besides The Red and I are allowed to come into the lair! You know this! Get out!” She conspicuously didn’t mention her sacrificial victims, who Emily never noticed.
“Hey, it’s chill, I’m not gonna do anything,” Emily said with her signature relaxed inflection. Besides her lowkey attitude, her most striking feature was her love for experimental cinema, or “kino” as she frequently referred to it. She really never shut up about it, it was a real issue for her. Her stated reasoning for wanting so badly to enter Claire’s dungeon was to, quote, “have an Inland Empire-type experience.” No one was really sure what she meant by this.
“Just leave, I’ll be out in a minute!” Claire yelled back.
“Ok, fine. See you in a bit.” Emily puffed on her cigarette again and shut the door behind her as she walked back into the basement. Claire stabbed Andrew a solid ten times and then performed her characteristic seven Hail Nefuenidds, followed by dumping Andrew’s body in the ravine next to the alter table. She waved to The Red and walked back upstairs, joining Emily at the dinner table.
“You know,” Emily said, taking a sip of sparkling water between clauses, “I really am not sure why you believe all this Nefuenidd stuff, but I’m glad it’s seemed to give you some direction in life.”
“I believe it because it’s true, Emily!” Claire said, slamming her fist on the table a little too hard (which hurt more than expected). “And yes, it has made my life much better.”
“Well, I am not a religious woman, but I can respect the positive impact it’s had on so many people.” Again, she didn’t know about the corpse-filled ravine. “You know, Claire,” taking another sip, “you can take off that cloak. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you with your hood down.”
“No, not planning to. The world really doesn’t need to see anything other than Nefuenidd. If my plans go off without a hitch, as we all hope they do, everyone other than Nefuenidd will be invisible.”
Emily chuckled before her face straightened back up. “What?”
Claire kept staring at her without saying anything.
“I’m, uh,” Emily said awkwardly, “just gonna assume you were joking about that.”
“Thanks.”
As this conversation was happening, Trent Bloodbag had almost approached his next murderee. It turns out, as a matter of fact, he never would’ve been a murderer without Emily’s past actions. But, well, that’s a story for another time.