It is between three and four a.m. and an old soldier stirs in her sleep. This is no cause for comment, as strange hours go part and parcel with her chosen calling. She has not had a full nights sleep in as long as she cares to recall, so it does not come as an absolute surprise to her when she is awoken by a figure at her side. It is a woman. A girl really, but then they hadn't been much more than children back in the day when you think about it. It is a woman she has not seen in a long while, and one she would hazard that she is not seeing now.
"I thought you were dead"
The woman, the girl smiles with a look of near joy in her eyes that the old soldier could scarcely recall having seen.
"Hasn't it clicked yet?"
"No. I mean I thought you were dead. I know that she is"
"No, you're thinking of..." a beat, a shift and the girl is gone, replaced by a cheerful looking older man, a little thinning on top "... my predecessor. You... you took care of him just dandy
with that little talisman, just the right thing at the right time. No I'm something else. I'm what comes after."
An ocean away, an old witch-woman is paying a visit to a friend who won't even know she's there. She has developed a taste for tea since first coming to these shores some twenty five years ago, and she sips it calmly while she talks about her day to a man who can't recall his own name. Like the soldier, she keeps strange hours, and does things few would ever believe had to be done, and so she too is quite unfazed when a girl, a different girl this time, long hair and soft blue eyes and a smile like nothing else appears before her. She does not flinch, and when she speaks there is an almost unnatural calm in her voice.
"It has been nearly thirty years and she has not spoken to me. Whoever you are, show me another shape or go."
"Are you sure... I mean" she, or it, or whatever glances at the floor, stumbling over her words "haven't you... a part of you I mean... haven't you wanted..."
"Another shape. Or go." A note of menace creeping into the carefully modulated voice. The girl shifts. Taller, male, peroxide hair.
"Suit yourself pet." The apparition lights a cigarette slowly
"You're not it. We killed it. You're something else."
"That's right."
"But you're like it. You're the same sort of... thing"
"Witch is on a roll. Can I tell you, or you still want to guess?"
"You replaced it. You're..." a moment, looking for the mot juste "The Second" a pause, almost an
embarrassed smile "only, you know, less lame-sounding"
"Nearly there love." the apparition takes a drag on the cigarette, and a slow smile spreads across its face. "I'm the Last"
The old soldier is pacing about her bedroom incredulous, speaking low for fear of waking her husband.
"So you're... 'the Last'... and you're here to finish what he started. You're too late"
"I'm not here to finish what he started. You did that for him." The thing calling its self the Last had settled in the form of a man the soldier recalled but had never actually met. He had been, she knew, the love of her sister's life, and she remembered every detail of their affair. But she never really met him.
"So, what you're here to try to annoy us all to death? That could have worked when I was sixteen but since then I've killed things that were stronger than you, scarier than you, more dangerous and less deserving than you. You can't trick me or confuse me or touch me."
"Okay. No need to be so defensive. I'm not here to to hurt you or taunt you. I'm not here to show how truly evil I am."
"So what are you here for?"
"To parlay"
"To what?"
"Parlay."
"You're kidding"
"No." A shift, and he is a lank haired man in priestly garb "you ever read the book of
Revelations, little girl?"
"Little Girl? I'm older than you"
"Well technically I'm eternal"
"Technically so am I now cut the crap"
"Says it right there little... lady. Bowls of the wrath of the lord shall turn the seas to blood and the lakes to wormwood"
The old soldier raises an eyebrow. "Another apocalypse"
"Not like the others"
"Because I haven't heard that before"
"It's not like the others, little lady, because this time I know I'm not gonna win"
"How is that new. You never win"
"The difference pet, is that usually we never win, and neither do you. That's the rules, the way it goes. Eternal struggle, good and evil right up until the end and in the end..." a pause, another wry smile "in the end good triumphs, once and for all"
"Remind my why that's a bad thing"
"Oh don't come that with me. You know what it would mean. You know that if it all ends, whoever wins nothing you love is going to make it out."
"How do I know you're not lying?"
"You know the rules pet. No lies, just deception. I'm eternal I'm everywhere, and nothing I say is other than what is"
"So why are you coming to me?"
"Because it's what you do. The hero thing. Eleventh hour, save the day. You beat us every time, do the same to them."
"You still haven't told me who 'them' is" a beat "Are. Whatever"
"Just demons. Mostly."
"Tell me something that narrows it down or stop bothering me"
"There's rules"
"There's always rules. Tell me."
"Forces are gathering..."
"Perhaps I should rephrase. Tell me something useful"
"Two guys, two girls, a host of critters and an army of men."
"And?"
"And what? And nothing. They're pure. Really pure. I can't touch them"
"You can't touch anything"
"I can't see them, I don't know what they're doing"
"And that scares you."
"Of course it bloody scares me. I'm bloody omniscient aren't I. I've never not known anything before"
"So you want me to do your donkey work"
"No..." a moment, a brief look of what could almost be distraction "You're about to get a call from America. Take it". And with that, the apparition is gone, and there is a ringing from the witch-woman's back pocket.
Alone again in a house in California, the old soldier makes an international call at stupid o'clock in the morning. Lesley would complain about the bill but he knew that there were more important things. He was good like that.
In a jazz club in West London a woman who has not been known to speak for as long as anybody can remember plays mute trumpet to a smoke-filled hall. As she plays she remembers an appointment she has with some old friends. She finishes her set early and leaves, humming a few bars to herself as she goes. In the gentlemen's toilets, for the briefest of moments, the taps run red.