Talk about Nefera
The perks of being a middle child begin with the neglect that leads to freedom. Abe was bright enough to know feeling sorry for himself wouldn't help his life. He also knew that he would never be as bad off as his older brother Nemo. Fortunately, that bag of chum hadn't been seen for almost a week.
At the time Moby, his small fry brother, could be depended on to be a bother.
"If your hair eats does that mean they poop in your brain?" asked the little finned child asked his gorgon neighbor.
Cali stared at the boy's protruding head fins, waiting for him to leave. Knowing that wouldn't work Abe picked up his brother, slippery as he was, and plopped him in the hall.
"Go read a book, Moby."
"I can't read." The little tadpole lied while tugging on his shirt.
"Then please go learn." Abe said before he closed his bedroom door.
Fake crying started on the door's other side, but Abe ignored it.
Abe sat on the floor- the room was very clean so he was unsure what to do. There was a sound system, a bookshelf, the chair Cali was in, an armoire, a large water tank to sleep in and cubbyholes of organized magazines and accessories. The color scheme was dark blue, smoky grey and hints of bright green here and there.
There wasn't much the amphibian thought could send the right condoles to a house burning down and hearing a big secret in the same night. So Abe watched Cali sit in the big, gushy chair in his room corner. She was processing what to do with the revelation.
He held out a tray of homemade sushi. They were Cali's favorite but she still didn't eat.
"We need to learn more." Cali told him after twenty minutes of processing.
The amphibian agreed with this plan, though he was scared of what would be found. "So far there's a Grandpa on the council,"
"Dozens of monsters to choose from."
"Someone named Nefera,"
"A pyro who seems to hate my parents- I think we'll become the best of friends."
"Then what's my purpose here?" Abe asked, his face still sweet and calm. It gave his dry remark a stronger kick.
"You're who I depend on to help pick out the outfits I wear when I'm about to kick dorsal fin." Cali informed him then picked up an East Virginia roll.
"Position accepted." Abe said, he pushed his blonde hair out of his eyes (it was time for a trim) and opened his iCoffin's search engine.
He typed in 'Nefera', and before he blinked a giant red sign said 'CLASSIFIED INFORMATION'.
The hissing snakes didn't sound angry as much as they sounded intrigued.
"That would've been too easy." Cali stated and put another roll in her mouth.
His webbed hands taped on his phone before Abe suggested. "We could ask my mom if she ever knew anyone by that name."
"Your mom has always been the nicest, most real mother on earth. We can't trust her on this." Cali did like Abe's Silver-winning mother a great deal but she didn't want to ask Lagoona for help.
"Admittedly the 'classified' sign does give this all an ominous feeling of darker, high forces but my mom isn't, well, how do I put this?" Abe's large bright green eyes rolled up in thought.
"A pathological liar? A cobra in the grass? My mother?" Cali got up from the gushy chair. She walked up to Abe and took his iCoffin to begin looking through his contacts.
"The world is spinning backwards, Abe. Up is down, onyx is the new black, we're both hiding the fact we're secretly jonsing for David Wolfe." Cali had rethought it over and over again and decided she wouldn't waste her time on such a loser.
Abe's ear fins wiggled, Cali didn't notice it and he spoke before an awkward silence could start. "Since you've lost all faith in the world, what are our other opitions?"
"I'm looking for Spectra." Cali told him, she was surprised he had Sally Binx on his phone. That werecat was always making nibbling jokes when her fishlike friend went around- odd but Cali would ask later.
"You want to ask a gossip for honest, important information?" Abe waited to hear the logic to this one.
"Everyone else we thought were truthful are liars, so the common liar should be the truth-teller in this deceitful, crazy world. With me so far?" Cali clicked on the purple box with the strange, beautiful winking eyes.
"From birth to earth." Abe promised. He was one of the only people that understood Cali's brain. It wasn't because he was super smart, Abe was just patience enough to wait for her sense to sink in.
The bubble rang once, a boring computerized sound. Then it popped open to an active scene of Spectra Vonderghiest floating around a party.
"Abe! Tell me you're coming here! The boy you're jonsing for looks extra yummy tonight!" Spectra's black eyes squinted in a playful tease.
"Spectra, we need you to leave there now- it's crucial." Cali semi-shouted to the ghost-ghoul, the bad music was loud where Spectra was floating.
Spectra gasped, "Cali Gorgon lives! This means Wolfe has to change the theme of this party."
As Spectra said this a goblin and gargoyle in blazers carried a pool-size calzone.
"You're driving me bonkers." A phrase that usually meant 'I'm flattered' though Cali's sarcasm was common-knowledge. "Spectra, can you hear me at all?"
"Sorry, can't hear you at all! Life is happening here and needs me to record it!" The transparent girl said before she signed off.
Cali dropped her shoulders and a few of her snakes hissed at Spectra's short attention span.
"Plan B?" Abe asked, hoping Cali wasn't curious about Spectra's gossip on a potential crush.
"Plan D- we're going to Lala's." Cali informed him. She pushed Abe towards his closest. If they were going out, they needed jackets. Not because teleporting was cold, but because they needed places to hide her iCoffins.
"On paper asking a 16-hundred year old vampire makes sense but it's Lala, who I love very much but isn't, well, remembering faces isn't her strong suit. Though remembering suit designers she's actually got some skill in." Abe said.
He saw Cali with hands on two jackets.
"I like the teal, it brings out their eyes." Abe said, and then held out a flipper to catch the faux sea-cow leather jacket.
"I'm going with the purple one instead." Cali thought the jacket was nice but teal was a color her mother favored. Teal had become abhorrent and gross to the young ghoul.
[Hospital/ Namely Deuce's room]
Patricia's overworked personal assistant, Nif Baker, was alone for one afternoon. He could handle that.
The afternoon dragging on into the night was going to cause his ulcer to grow. The bysen wanted a strong, long lasting career so he sold his soul to the CEO of a large toy company.
Baker was not charged with setting budgets, forms partnerships, and stirring teams to hold the company together. Strategy and vision were Patricia's abilities and Barker's job was to translate them to everyone else in their business when she was busy (or didn't care to speak to people lower than her). Patricia was confident he could handle all of the appointment making, rescheduling and mending deals because he'd done so before. Even if the boy had a few panic attacks along the way, Patricia knew he was more competent than he believed.
There were a dozen messages on Patricia's iCoffin of Baker promising to end his life if she didn't answer.
"Why did you agree to it?" Patricia was applying ointment to her husband's burned neck.
"What do you mean?" Deuce asked, he wanted to ask what they should say to Cali. It would be a big reveal to her, but Patricia needed to process the reveal first.
"You spent the last fourteen years pretending to be married to a Normie. All the hassle, the hate- this life-long charade. I found it to be romantic, and a little fun bashing the non-believers." Patricia maliciously smiled, not feeling very guilty.
"Remember when you hit that old Normie with his own cane and he landed in a drum set?" The gorgon smiled, he wasn't bitter about the abuse from Normies and the old man did ask for it.
"Three million hits on Fright-tube. I miss the top I wore in that season." Patricia would never go back on fashion, but there wasn't a law on remising.
"Going against the world was fun, we helped some monsters. Even a couple of Normies."
Patricia didn't like that they were off topic. "Yes, yes, we're saintly mavericks. We didn't have to be. It would've been easier and I wouldn't have had to-"
"Keep your wraps under wraps?"
"That's still not funny. And you haven't answered me yet." Patricia closed the jar of ointment and waited for him to speak.
Deuce lessened his smile but his attitude stayed the same. "I knew if I didn't go with it, you'd go without me."
His wife made an 'Ack' sound, like she did when shocked and almost outraged. "Oh what made you think so stupidly?"
"Babe, how many times did we break up before Cali came in?"
"Once." Patricia told him. Deuce rolled his head to her like he was waiting for her to say more.
"Seriously?"
"I only count graduation. There were frequent 'breaks' in between when you were bad but we always got back together." Patricia could've admitted she was bad sometimes too but they were discussing Deuce's action.
All good humor removed from his face, Deuce decided to come clean. "Do you know how you looked that night?"
She had a crystal clear memory of that night. "Hideous, why are you rubbing it in?"
"You were terrified. On your best days you're irrational, so on the worst day of your life you were so wild it was sane. The pregnancy did not induce safer thinking, especially after…" Deuce's snakes squirmed in disgust. "If I hadn't done exactly what you said I would've lost you. And my kid. Agreeing to a payment plan with a witch and erasing my high school girlfriend and first love out of everyone's mind was just what I had to do at the time."
Patricia kneeled on her husband's hospital bed and made her way to sitting on his legs. His arms were stiff in the casts, leaving him defense against whatever twisted, potentially hot, actions she could commit.
" I would've poisoned that little ghoul after she learned talking. She has my dominating spirit so we would've killed one another in days. I'd say she fell, she'd say I had an accident with a plastic surgeon." Deuce smirked as his wife's solar plexus got in his face. Patricia hung her arms around his neck.
"Outfit aside, you're the one thing I will not change." Patricia learned to see through her husband's sunglasses after admiring her reflection.
"Aww."
Patricia's sweet mood was interrupted by the remark of a nurse behind them.
"This was such a romantical moment." The dumb nurse with nice legs and smooth antlers said.
Wondering when pretty ghouls got charitable, Patricia watched the nurse place the pain-pills on the little nightstand. She did not plan to move- especially with a well shaped little ghoul in a uniform was the in room. Deuce knew he'd probably get a new nurse in the next twenty minutes, one that with horrible skin and a repellent personality.